Laughing Squid treats us to this funny clip from an episode of Quincy. Jack Klugman is trying to save a young girl lured into the violent world of the punk underground. He visits to a punk rock club, bravely goes on stage, and pleads passionately for information about the girl's whereabouts. The punks, in preposterously clownish make-up, respond with sarcasm, socio-political rhetoric, and snot-nosed apathy. I enjoyed this almost as much as the Ironside clip with Tiny Tim at a beatnik club.
This was on the Consumerist last month, but I just came across it. On the left, the box for a kiddie pool. On the right, a photo of the actual kiddie pool. A note on the box reads: "Product may not be as appears on image." Banzai Wild Waves Water Park Box Picture Vs Reality
Thousands of bailout stories around. Nobody knows WTF is going to happen now that we have passed the "oh shit" moment. There's lots of "hope" though. HA
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd says the United States may be "days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system" and Congress is working quickly to prevent that.
Dodd said Friday that Democrats and Republicans on the Hill are coming together to support the Bush administration's developing plan to buy up bad debt from financial institutions and get the credit system working again. Dodd told ABC's "Good Morning America" that the nation's credit is seizing up and people can't get loans.
The Treasury Department said Friday it will provide temporary relief for the U.S. money market fund industry by pledging to insure the holdings of any publicly offered money market mutual fund.
The agency said it would guarantee up to $50 billion dollars for the next year for both retail and institutional investors.
Money market funds invest in short-term debt issued by the federal government or by companies, and are widely used by consumers as a place to stash their extra cash.
Typically, putting money in these funds was thought to be as safe as money in the bank.
But these funds, which also serve as a fundamental source of financing for both financial institutions and capital markets, have come under severe strain in recent days following the dramatic events from earlier this week including the dramatic collapse of Lehman Brothers and the federal government's rescue of the insurance giant AIG.
The Treasury Department said the action should help return some confidence to the market and alleviate investors' fears about the ability for money market mutual funds to absorb a loss.
Several financial institutions - including Wachovia's Evergreen Investments and Frank Russell Funds - announced plans Thursday to step in to prop up their funds now, but experts seemed certain that they could not do it indefinitely.
ABC News' Imtiyaz Delawala Reports: Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin warned against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's pursuit of nuclear weapons for a "second holocaust," while blaming "Democrat partisans" for forcing rally organizers to withdraw her invitation to speak before an anti-Iran protest in New York next week.
"John McCain and I are committed to drawing attention to the danger posed by Iran's nuclear program and we will not waver in our commitment," Palin told a crowd of 9,000 supporters in Blaine, MN. "I will continue to call for sustained action to prevent Iranian President Ahmadinejad from getting these weapons that he wants for a second holocaust."
And now, this latest dispatch from the U.S. Department of Unintentional Irony: Sen. John McCain spoke out against the Federal Reserve's recent bids to give life support (read: gigantic amounts of money) to failing financial institutions. Isn't he the same guy who has looked to Phil Gramm for economic advice?
Apparently, McCain is at least willing to entertain the possibility that the nation is facing an actual recession, not just the "mental" variety Gramm described in his now-famous "nation of whiners" remark.
AP via Huffington Post:
McCain made little mention of the massive proposal being crafted by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that could amount to a $1 trillion taxpayer bailout of the mortgage industry. McCain said simply that leaders should put aside partisan differences and "any action should be designed to keep people in their homes and safeguard the life savings of all Americans."
[...] "A strong dollar will reduce energy and food prices," McCain said to applause from the Green Bay Chamber of Commerce. "It will stimulate sustainable economic growth and get this economy moving again."
The Arizona senator again criticized Democratic rival Barack Obama for ties to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and for advocating tax increases McCain said would "turn a recession into a depression."
By: SilentPatriot on Friday, September 19th, 2008 at 2:10 PM - PDT
After definitively proving that John McCain has been entirely consistent with his attacks on Barack Obama, Stephen decides to try out some of the same "consistency" on McCain himself.
"For the record, John McCain has not accepted my invitation to appear on this show, so unfortunately I have no choice but to spread horrible lies about him. Here we go: John McCain wants to harvest the organs of sleeping toddlers, inject RedBull into his taint, and is determined to run a campaign based on straight talk and decency. Phew. Thank God none of that is true."
Homeless advocates: Most visible rise in homeless camps in a generation
Groups: Rise in homelessness began after foreclosure crisis started in 2007
Reno homeless shelters full; tent city in Reno houses 150 homeless people
Tent cities also in Washington state, Oregon, California, Tennessee, Georgia, Ohio
RENO, Nevada (AP) -- A few tents cropped up hard by the railroad tracks, pitched by men left with nowhere to go once the emergency winter shelter closed for the summer.
Then others appeared -- people who had lost their jobs to the ailing economy, or newcomers who had moved to Reno for work and discovered no one was hiring.
Within weeks, more than 150 people were living in tents big and small, barely a foot apart in a patch of dirt slated to be a parking lot for a campus of shelters Reno is building for its homeless population. Like many other cities, Reno has found itself with a "tent city" -- an encampment of people who had nowhere else to go.
From Seattle to Athens, Georgia, homeless advocacy groups and city agencies are reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments in a generation.
Nearly 61 percent of local and state homeless coalitions say they've experienced a rise in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, according to a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless. The group says the problem has worsened since the report's release in April, with foreclosures mounting, gas and food prices rising and the job market tightening. iReport.com: What are tough times forcing you to give up?
"It's clear that poverty and homelessness have increased," said Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the coalition. "The economy is in chaos, we're in an unofficial recession and Americans are worried, from the homeless to the middle class, about their future."
The phenomenon of encampments has caught advocacy groups somewhat by surprise, largely because of how quickly they have sprung up.
"What you're seeing is encampments that I haven't seen since the 80s," said Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, an umbrella group for homeless advocacy organizations in the California cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland -- and in Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington.
The relatively tony city of Santa Barbara, California, has given over a parking lot to people who sleep in cars and vans. The city of Fresno, California, is trying to manage several proliferating tent cities, including an encampment where people have made shelters out of scrap wood.
In Portland, and Seattle, homeless advocacy groups have paired with nonprofits or faith-based groups to manage tent cities as outdoor shelters. Other cities where tent cities have either appeared or expanded include include Chattanooga, Tennessee; San Diego, California; and Columbus, Ohio.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development recently reported a 12 percent drop in homelessness nationally in two years, from about 754,000 in January 2005 to 666,000 in January 2007. But the 2007 numbers omitted people who previously had been considered homeless -- such as those staying with relatives or friends or living in campgrounds or motel rooms for more than a week.
In addition, the housing and economic crisis began soon after HUD's most recent data was compiled.
"The data predates the housing crisis," said Brian Sullivan, a spokesman for HUD. "From the headlines, it might appear that the report is about yesterday. How is the housing situation affecting homelessness? That's a great question. We're still trying to get to that."
In Seattle, which is experiencing a building boom and an influx of affluent professionals in neighborhoods the working class once owned, homeless encampments have been springing up -- in remote places to avoid police sweeps.
"What's happening in Seattle is what's happening everywhere else -- on steroids," said Tim Harris, executive director of Real Change, an advocacy organization that publishes a weekly newspaper sold by homeless people.
Homeless people and their advocates have organized three tent cities at City Hall in recent months to call attention to the homeless and protest the sweeps -- acts of militancy, said Harris, "that we really haven't seen around homeless activism since the early '90s."
In Reno, officials decided to let the tent city be because shelters were already filled.
Officials don't know how many homeless people are in Reno. "But we do know that the soup kitchens are serving hundreds more meals a day and that we have more people who are homeless than we can remember," said Jodi Royal-Goodwin, the city's redevelopment agency director.
Those in the tents have to register and are monitored weekly to see what progress they are making in finding jobs or real housing. They are provided times to take showers in the shelter, and told where to go for food and meals.
Sylvia Flynn, 51, came from northern California but lost a job almost immediately and then her apartment.
Since the cheapest motels here charge upward of $200 a week, Flynn ended up at the Reno women's shelter, which has only 20 beds and a two-week limit on stays.
Out of a dozen people interviewed in the tent city, six had come to Reno from California or elsewhere over the last year, hoping for casino jobs.
"I figured this would be a great place for a job," said Max Perez, a 19-year-old from Iowa. He couldn't find one and ended up taking showers at the men's shelter and sleeping in a pup tent barely big enough to cover his body.
The casinos are actually starting to lay off employees.
"Sometimes I think we need to put out an ad: 'No, we don't have any more jobs than you do,"' Royal-Goodwin said.
The city will shut down the tent city as soon as early October because the tents sit on what will be a parking lot for a complex of shelters and services for homeless people. The complex will include a men's shelter, a women's shelter, a family shelter and a resource center.
Reno officials aren't sure whether the construction will eliminate the need for the tent city. The demand, they say, keeps growing.
How McCain's economic advisor, and Bill Clinton's, screwed the American economy
This week's Wall Street problems look far away. They are not. Around 20 percent of all the tax revenue in New York State is derived from taxes on the salaries and transactions that occur on Wall Street. New Yorkers should brace themselves for a significant change in the way that Governor David Paterson's staff will prepare the 2008-2009 budget.
Expect more of what county executives and city mayors and town supervisors call "downloading," which is another way of saying that the State of New York will tell all the 4,500-odd little governments outside New York City that they can continue to exist, but that they're going to do so without as much Albany money as they're used to getting.
County governments in particular will face a crunch, as county governments function as branch offices of state government. "Downloading" in counties will mean that Albany will mandate that counties still provide services, but will tell counties to get more local money in order to fund those services.
Expect squealing and drama, but please note that Upstate New York has been on Wall Street's dole for decades. As New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's budget office showed in a 2004 report, Upstate gets $11 billion more of Albany's money than Upstate pays in. The "oppression" of Albany is actually an amazingly lucrative transfer of value from Downstate to Upstate—as richer and more populous Downstate foots our bills.
The trouble now is that Wall Street has been the largest single source of those funds.
This week's Wall Street troubles will hit home. But because of some changes Washington made during the height of the Monica Lewinski distraction in 1998 and 1999, what we're experiencing is not just one of those occasional stock market swoons or interest-rate tangos.
What's going on now is a calamity of the sort not seen since—dare we say it?—the dark days of 1929.
The FIRE bubble is bursting.
Finance, insurance, real estate
There's this scary economist named Eric Janszen whose Web site is iTulip.com. He doesn't care if you think he's nuts, because he's been correct about every economic up and down for the past decade, including the tech-stock crash of 2000. Smart rich people I know swear by him. Other economists respect him.
Janszen says that we've been in a "bubble" economy fueled by insane, irrational, irresponsible speculation on real estate. He predicts housing values to drop by almost 40 percent. That may not sound like much of a problem up here in the North, where housing prices never went nutso as they have in the large metro areas of the East and West Coasts and in the Sun Belt.
But therein lays the problem. There has been so much of what Janszen calls "fictitious value" created by the real-estate boom—and then so much speculation by big hedge funds and other financial institutions based on that fictitious value—that the fantasy of real-estate riches came to dominate our economy.
His Web site can be a tough read. But in the February 2008 issue of Harpers magazine, he wrote a long article in fairly plain English about how the housing bubble came about and why, in the era of Republican-led deregulation and federal budget deficits, it's a huge problem.
"The housing bubble has left us in dire shape, worse than after the technology-stock bubble, when the Federal Reserve Funds Rate was 6 percent, the dollar was at a multi-decade peak, the federal government was running a surplus, and tax rates were relatively high, making reflation—interest-rate cuts, dollar depreciation, increased government spending, and tax cuts—relatively painless," Janszen wrote earlier this year.
In other words, the Clinton years of surpluses, and Clinton's 1993 tax increases on upper-income earners, plus the technology-driven economic expansion, made recovering from the dot-com collapse of March 2000 a relatively easy adjustment.
But then came the Republican-dominated Congress with a Republican president, which meant further deregulation, tax cuts for high-income and wealthy folks, and budget and trade deficits.
"Now the Funds Rate is only 4.5 percent, the dollar is at multi-decade lows, the federal budget is in deficit, and tax cuts are still in effect," Janszen wrote. "The chronic trade deficit, the sudden depreciation of our currency, and the lack of foreign buyers willing to purchase its debt will require the United States government to print new money simply to fund its own operations and pay its 22 million employees."
In other words, nothing is easy now.
Janszen says that the only way out of this mess is to await a new bubble—a new technology bubble like the dot-com bubble that burst in 2000, or a Web 2.0 bubble, or an alternative energy bubble. Janszen thinks that only a massive rush of capital into alternative energy has a chance of lifting the American economy…but it's not an instantaneous thing, and not everybody agrees with him. Kevin Phillips, author of Bad Money, is skeptical that wind, solar, or even nuclear will come on-line in time to meaningfully supplant foreign-produced petroleum.
But Janszen, Phillips, and others agree that the FIRE economy is burning us. By letting the speculators gamble everybody's money on made-up, invented, totally bogus investments, our elected representatives in Washington—who were supposed to be regulating Wall Street—put our country at risk of a sudden, sharp economic collapse.
Which is what we're facing now.
Whodunit?
After the Wall Street crash of 1929, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democratic majority in Congress reined in the speculators who had put bank depositors, home-owners, and other small-time savers' money into the Wall Street casino. They enacted a very stodgy piece of legislation called the Glass-Steagall Act.
That legislation put a wall up between commercial banks and investment banks. For 60 years, until 1998, your savings account did not fund speculation on Wall Street. Your world of risk, as a depositor in a commercial bank, was small.
But then, at the height of the Monica Lewinsky distraction, Republicans in Congress, and Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, collaborated in taking away the rules that protected this country from facing another 1929.
Democratic President Bill Clinton signed the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This law effectively deleted the prohibition on commercial banks owning investment banks and vice versa.
Remember these names:
Former Senator Phil Gramm, who now advises Senator John McCain and is the person who says that folks who fret about current economic conditions are "whiners"; Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, one of whose protégés advises Senator Barack Obama; and Alan Greenspan, former chief of the Federal Reserve.
Gramm, Rubin, and Greenspan made this debacle possible.
"Our economy is in serious trouble," writes Janszen on iTulip.com. "Both the production-consumption sector and the FIRE sector know that a debt-deflation Armageddon is nigh, and both are praying for a timely miracle, a new bubble to keep the economy from slipping into a depression."
The politics of this is going to be ugly.
Local and state politics in New York will get a whole lot uglier in the next little while, because Albany—certainly a victim of Washington's 1999 policy shift—is stuck paying for federal social programs and for suburban school districts even as unemployment grows, petroleum prices spike, and employee pension costs swell.
Meanwhile, the national anti-government rhetoric will start escalating again—even though there is a broad consensus even among investors, speculators, Wall Street professionals, and economists that the problem of the FIRE economy bubble came about not because of too much government, but rather because of not enough.
And expect to hear the "d" word, too. Depression. And not just because the autumnal equinox marks the end of summer next week.
t r u t h o u t | Moguls Steal Home While Companies Strike Out From our offices in Manhattan, we look out on the tall, gleaming skyscrapers that are cathedrals of wealth and power - the Olympus ruled by the gods of finance, the temples of the mighty, the holy of holies, whose priests guard the sacred texts of salvation - the ones containing the secrets of subprime lending and derivatives as mysterious and elusive as the Grail itself.
This last couple of weeks, ordinary mortals below could almost hear the ripcords of golden parachutes being pulled as the divinities on high prepared for soft, safe landings - all this while tossing their workers like sacrificial lambs into the purgatory of unemployment.
During the last five years of his tenure as CEO of now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld's total take was $354 million. John Thain, the current chairman of Merrill Lynch, taken over this week by Bank of America, has been on the job for just nine months. He pocketed a $15 million signing bonus. His predecessor, Stan O'Neal, retired with a package valued at $161 million, after the company reported an $8 billion loss in a single quarter. And remember Bear Stearns's Chairman James Cayne? After the company collapsed earlier this year and was up for sale at bargain basement prices, he sold his stake for more than $60 million.
Daniel Mudd and Richard Syron, the former heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - aka the gods who failed - are fighting to keep severance packages of close to $24 million combined - on top of the millions in salary each earned last year while slaughtering the golden calf. As it is written in the Gospel According to Me, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
But let's change the metaphor for a moment and go to our sports desk, because if religion is no longer the soul of capitalism, as Max Weber once taught us it was, we have to venture somewhere else to try to understand the continuing follies of the new gilded age. And so, we travel just a few miles north of Wall Street to the House that Ruth Built. Babe Ruth - the Sultan of Swat - who ruled Yankee Stadium and sired generations of princes after him: DiMaggio and Gehrig, Mantle, Maris, Berra and Jackson. Yankee Stadium, as fabled a place to Americans as Ilium was to the ancient Greeks, is about to be demolished and replaced next year by a brand new stadium.
On Opening Day in 1923, New York Governor Al Smith threw out the first ball and John Philip Sousa led a big brass band playing his famous marches. It was the Roaring Twenties, when the money flowed like bootleg whiskey, the pride before the fall. In 1930, the year after the market crashed, as the Great Depression began, Babe Ruth was taking home $80,000 a year, more than the president of the United States, Herbert Hoover. "Why not?" Ruth asked. "I had a better year than he did."
Yankee star Alex Rodriguez had a better year than both of them. This season, A-Rod is making $28 million, just part of an annual Yankee payroll of $209 million, the richest in baseball. Their owner, George Steinbrenner, is among the Forbes 400, one of the country's richest tycoons.
But when it came to paying for the new, $1.3 billion pleasure dome, the millionaires on the field and King Midas in his skybox came up with some razzle-dazzle plays to finance their new wealth machine - tax-free bonds, requiring ordinary citizens to subsidize the construction, and hundreds of millions more for new parking garages, a train station and parks that supposedly will replace the ones seized by the city to make room for the new stadium. The Little League games that used to flourish on sandlots just outside the old ballpark have been moved miles away, sent down to the minors on a long road trip.
That's O.K., you may think; there will be plenty of room in the new stadium for the tax-paying public to come root, root, root for the home team - even the Coliseum in ancient Rome had bleachers for the commoners. But, in fact, there will be 5,000 fewer seats in the stands. And while the Yankees reportedly promise that half of what's left will cost $45 or less, those seats that used to cost $250, right behind the dugout, will now cost you $850. And if you want to be near home plate, you'll have to cough up $2,500 - per game.
Meanwhile, there will be more luxury suites and party rooms where fat cats can gather, safely removed from the sweaty masses. Corporations and wealthy individuals will be able to rent the luxury suites for anywhere from $600,000-$850,000 a year - tax deductible - assuming they haven't filed for bankruptcy this week.
Why aren't the fans and taxpayers giving the Yankees a Bronx cheer? They did, but city officials rolled over them while making sure local politicians stayed in the lineup. The politicians are getting their own luxury suite at the new stadium for free - and first shot at buying the best available seats.
The new colossus will cast its majestic shadow across the South Bronx, one of the nation's poorest neighborhoods. The residents will watch from the outside as suburban drivers avail themselves of 9,000 new or refurbished parking spaces. Never mind all the exhaust, even though in this part of New York City respiratory disease is already so high they call it "Asthma Alley."
Not that the well-to-do in the infield seats will have to hear the wheezing. They'll have exclusive access to a private club, a private entrance and a private elevator, totems of this gilded age. Let the games begin.
Last time I checked, an adult male should consume 2,500 calories a day, and this shake nearly meets that requirement! The saturated fat present in that shake is over 3 times the RDA of 20 grams, which will put you on the fast track for heart disease. Of course, that's if the Type 2 diabetes caused by all 266 grams of that sugar doesn't get you first.
While I believe that people should be held responsible for what they consume, I think corporations need to share just a little responsibility too, and not sell piles of liquid sugar and fat like this. I'd be surprised if even 1 in 100 of the folks that consume that shake know just how bad it is.
On the plus side, it does provide 120% of the RDA for calcium. Oh, and about 1600% of the RDA for Heath candy bars.
Whoops! As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman pointed out Friday, presidential nominees Barack Obama and John McCain both have articles in the latest edition of Contingencies magazine about how they would reform America's health care industry. In light of certain recent events in the banking world, McCain may want to reconsider his position.
Paul Krugman's "The Conscience of a Liberal" blog in The New York Times:
Here's what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:
Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.
It makes me sick: "The immediate line-up of both parties and the media behind the bailout plan for Wall Street stands in the starkest contrast to their indifference and inaction in regard to the plight of millions of American working people, who face a rising tide of home foreclosures, layoffs and sinking living standards. When it comes to the social needs of the people, the universal cry from corporate America and the two parties is, "There is no money," but when the fortunes of the financial elite are threatened, the full power of the government and unlimited resources are marshaled virtually at a moment's notice."
The Bush administration on Friday announced plans for a massive and unprecedented federal bailout of the US banking system. In separate appearances Friday morning, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and President Bush announced a series of measures to shore up collapsing financial markets and called on Congress to pass legislation next week to use, in Paulson's words, "hundreds of billions" of taxpayer dollars to buy virtually worthless mortgage-backed assets that cannot be sold on the market from banks and other financial institutions.
Paulson said he would meet over the weekend with congressional leaders to lay out the details of the government plan.
With this plan, the full cost of the immense debts piled up by the banks will be imposed on the American people. It will shift the banks' liabilities onto the federal government, sharply increasing government budget deficits and the US debt, a process that can only further erode the creditworthiness of the United States and place a bigger question mark on the value of the US dollar.
In the past week alone, the US Treasury has announced cash injections into the Federal Reserve Board of $200 billion to bolster the sagging balance sheet of the central bank, which has already expended hundreds of billions in loans and subsidies to the major Wall Street banks and put out another $85 billion in the takeover this week of the insurance giant American International Group.
The presidential candidates of both major parties, Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senator Barack Obama, quickly signaled their support for the wholesale bailout of the banks and big investors, and prominent congressional Democrats issued assurances that they would obey the demands of Paulson, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and Bush and pass the required legislation by the end of next week.
The immediate line-up of both parties and the media behind the bailout plan for Wall Street stands in the starkest contrast to their indifference and inaction in regard to the plight of millions of American working people, who face a rising tide of home foreclosures, layoffs and sinking living standards. When it comes to the social needs of the people, the universal cry from corporate America and the two parties is, "There is no money," but when the fortunes of the financial elite are threatened, the full power of the government and unlimited resources are marshaled virtually at a moment's notice.
There was no suggestion in the statements of Bush and Paulson of any relief for the working class—nothing to stop home foreclosures or help those who have already lost their homes. Rather, hundreds of billions—and more likely trillions—of dollars in public funds will be used to prop up the banks.
The resulting bankrupting of the government will be used to justify a brutal assault on what remains of social programs, including Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, and demand even greater financial "sacrifices" from workers, whether the next administration is headed by Obama or McCain. Nothing could more clearly demonstrate that behind the façade of American democracy there stands a dictatorship of big business.
Paulson made his announcement following a meeting Thursday night, with Bernanke and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox also in attendance, along with congressional leaders from both parties. At the meeting, Paulson warned that the US and global financial system was on the brink of collapse and outlined in general terms the plan to set up some form of government agency to take "illiquid" mortgage-backed securities off of the balance sheets of the banks.
News of the plan first broke Thursday afternoon, at a point when a massive injection of liquidity by the Federal Reserve and central banks in Europe, Canada and Japan had failed to unfreeze credit markets that had collapsed over the previous days. The Fed loaned $180 billion to the other central banks and then added another $120 billion in an attempt to get banks to lend to one another and to other companies, under conditions where confidence in the financial markets and major institutions had fallen so sharply that credit markets had ceased to function. But instead of lending the fresh money to other companies, the big banks were hoarding it to protect themselves against possible default.
The breakdown in the world capitalist system—widely acknowledged to be the worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash and heading toward another Great Depression—came in the wake of the US government takeover of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac less than two weeks ago and the collapse this week of Wall Street icons Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, followed on Tuesday by the US takeover of American International Group.
In the aftermath of these developments, other major US banks had come under immense pressure and were facing bankruptcy, including the investment bank Morgan Stanley and the savings and loan giant Washington Mutual. Both were scrambling to find buyers as their share prices plummeted. The domino effect of falling banks was threatening the biggest US investment bank, Goldman Sachs, headed by Paulson prior to his becoming treasury secretary, whose stock had suffered enormous losses in the course of the week.
The crisis reached the tipping point on Tuesday and Wednesday when major US money market funds announced losses and some were forced to close. This sparked a growing run on the funds, with $78.7 billion withdrawn from the largest funds on Wednesday and, according to one industry estimate, a total of $145.3 billion over a two-day period.
Money market funds are considered the safest form of investment, and tens of millions of Americans have their savings in them. More immediately, from the standpoint of Wall Street, the funds pump money into credit markets by buying short-term IOUs issued by banks and companies, called "commercial paper." The growing crisis of the money market funds threatened to collapse the commercial paper market, precipitating a chain reaction of defaults and bankruptcies across the economy.
"It's the ultimate nightmare to have a run on the money markets—that is truly Armageddon—and they're not going to allow that to happen," said Paul McCulley at Pacific Investment Management Co.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average had already lost nearly 800 points in the first three trading days of the week, and by Thursday afternoon a rally sparked by the coordinated action of the Fed and other central banks that morning was faltering. At about 3 PM news broke of the government's plan for a bailout of the banks, the floor of the New York Stock Exchange erupted in cheers, and the market immediately reversed itself and rocketed upward in a frenzy of buying.
In the final hour of trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average recouped most of Wednesday's 449-point loss, rising 410.03 points in the biggest percentage gain in almost six years. From its midday low to its late-afternoon high, shortly before the finish, the Dow swung 617 points.
The biggest winners were the financial stocks, including Morgan Stanley and Washington Mutual, which lurched from heavy losses to big gains.
On Friday morning, the government announced a series of immediate measures to bail out the markets, including a temporary ban on short-selling (betting on a fall in prices) of financial stocks and a $50 billion government program to insure money market funds. The Treasury Department also announced that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, now under government ownership, would increase their purchases of mortgage-backed securities and the Treasury would directly buy up a larger number of such assets. The Fed added that it would extend low-cost loans to the banks to unfreeze the commercial paper market.
These moves and the statements of Paulson and Bush set off another orgy of buying on the stock exchange, with the Dow closing up 368.75 for the day.
In his statement, Paulson said "comprehensive" action was needed "to address the root cause of our financial system stresses. The underlying weakness in our financial system today is illiquid mortgage assets that have lost value as the housing correction has proceeded."
This is a lie. The root cause of the crisis is the unbridled parasitism of American capitalism, which over a period of decades has dismantled huge sections of industry in order to reap super profits for the rich by means of financial speculation and fraud, based on a colossal buildup of debt. Now the bill is being passed to the American people.
Bush, flanked by Paulson, Bernanke and Cox, called for a government bailout of Wall Street in the name of "our system of free enterprise."
"There will be ample opportunity to debate the origins of this problem," he said. "Now is the time to solve it."
There will, in fact, be no debate or discussion. Nobody will be held accountable for the greatest financial scandal in world history. There will be no penalties. No one who made tens and hundreds of millions from the plundering of America will be forced to give back a dime.
All of the financial resources of the United States are being placed at the disposal of Wall Street and every American citizen, without being asked, is being given the responsibility for covering the debts of the richest people in the country.
Certainly no debate or resistance will come from the supposed political opposition—the Democratic Party. Speaking Friday in Miami, Obama said he fully supported the bailout plan. "John McCain and I can continue to argue about our different economic agendas for next year, but we should come together now to work on what this country urgently needs this year," he said.
Obama is no less bound to Wall Street than his Republican opponent. In fact, he has received more campaign money from the financial industry—$22.5 million—than McCain, who has taken in $19.6 million.
Democratic congressional leaders lined up Friday to back the administration plan. New York Senator Charles Schumer, who chairs the Joint Economic Committee, said he was optimistic that Congress could approve the package in a week.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, said his panel could hold a vote on the package as soon as Wednesday. "They said they would like legislation to do it, and there was virtually unanimous agreement that there would be legislation to do it," said Frank.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, added, "We hope to move very quickly—time is of the essence."
All of those involved in pushing through this scheme to funnel the entire wealth of the country into the coffers of the financial elite have direct financial stakes in the outcome. Paulson made hundreds of millions of dollars as chairman of Goldman Sachs. Pelosi reportedly has major investments in American International Group. Many of the congressional leaders of both parties are themselves multi-millionaires and rely on handouts from big business to get elected. They are all ruled by personal interests that reflect the interest of the American ruling class.
The result of the government moves announced Thursday and Friday has already been to not only cover the debts of the super-rich, but to expand their stock portfolios and bank accounts by millions more through the run-up of share prices.
Danny Schechter is a media activist, critic, independent filmmaker, TV producer as well as an author of 10 books and lecturer on media issues. Some call him "The News Dissector," and that's the name of his popular blog on media issues. He's also co-founder of Media Channel.org. It covers the "political, cultural and social impacts of the media," and provides information unavailable in the mainstream.
Schechter's books include Media Wars; Embedded - weapons of Mass Deception; The Death of Media; The More You Watch The Less You Know; and his newest and subject of this review, Plunder. Subtitled: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal, Schechter examines the fallout from the current economic and financial crisis. What the mainstream media (MSM) suppresses:
decades of wealth transfers to the rich;
the economy in recession;
the result of multiple imploding bubbles: housing, mortgage finance, and an alphabet soup of SDOs, SIVs, SPVs, and a whole menu of levered-up, high-risk securitized assets amounting to financial alchemy; largely outright fraud;
the risk things may worsen;
from drowning in debt and speculative excess;
bankrupt by some measures;
huge amounts of corruption;
government hiding how bad it is; complicit in it as well;
over one million homeowners foreclosed since summer 2007;
another million are 90 days past due on payments; foreclosures about to go out on them;
three million more potentially in coming months with up to five million total at risk over the next few years in the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression and too little government help provided too late;
rising unemployment;
failing banks;
rising inflation; and
consumers maxed out on credit and strapped by indebtedness the way Schechter portrayed them in his 2006 film titled "In Debt We Trust."
Schechter's book is timely, important, and frightening. He does a masterful job deconstructing a complicated subject. One covered up in the mainstream. Its dark side papered over suppressed.
Schechter explains it fully and clearly for lay readers to understand. It's essential they do it because it touches everyone. No one knows how bad it may get, but the current crisis has legs. The worst of it may be ahead, and before it ends millions may feel it painfully. "Plunder" provides ammunition. A blueprint of what's unfolding. Explaining that government help won't be forthcoming, so we're responsible for making the best of a very bad situation.
It begins with understanding the scandalous dilemma unfolding. The complicity of government and Wall Street behind it. The dominant media promoting it. What author Kevin Phillips calls the "rise of big finance" and "global crisis of American capitalism;" "Frankenstein finance;" and a problem so potentially grave that "there may no longer be a plausible way out."
Schechter calls it "financialization" to describe "the kind of control (a Credit and Loan Complex) exert(s) over society every bit as insidious as the Military-Industrial Complex." Made up of Wall Street; big banks; an array of finance, credit card and related companies preying on middle-America and the poor and transferring enormous wealth to the rich. A regulatory environment allowing it. Creating an open field for fraud. Taking full advantage because so-called "watchdogs" are part of the problem. The administration and Federal Reserve as well. The entire power structure allied against working people. A shameful and potentially disastrous situation as a result.
Schechter envisions a different future and dedicates his book to one "free of debt and a world where markets serve the public interest." Light years from what "Credit Card Nation" author Robert Manning writes in the Preface:
industrial employment ravaged by neoliberal "free trade" and corporate outsourcing;
malls replacing factories as the economy's engine;
declining wages in the face of soaring expenses;
most families dependent on credit to survive;
the calamitous effects of banking deregulation;
a corrupted "symbiotic financial-industrial complex" called "financialization;"
a new Gilded Age exalting greed;
turning consumers into debt slaves; and
making the country "perilously dependent" on foreign capital sources for economic security.
Schechter continues in his prologue:
sinking markets from a "full-blown credit/debt crisis;"
"waves of layoffs," bankruptcies and foreclosures;
distorted media coverage on causes and solutions;
fear that the worst is ahead;
the infectious effect of the spreading "subprime crisis;"
trillions of dollars being lost;
millions of homeowners at risk; millions of working people also;
a Ponzi scheme writ large; the bigger they are, the harder they implode; what PIMCO's Managing Director and economist Paul McCulley calls a "Minsky Moment" that derives from economist Hyman Minsky's analysis; the unwinding of excess exuberance; deflating euphoria; proving market bubbles always burst, and their downward momentum is far more severe and faster than their upside; and
a "calculated crime" putting America and the global economy at risk; Schechter says "This is an angry book (because) so many of us are in denial or unaware of the importance of economic forces in shaping our future;" he also rails at his colleagues who've done "such a poor job reporting on the run-up to this disaster."
Schechter chronicles what happened. The threat of depression. Alerting people to the possibility. Highlighting concern about the victims. Challenging the media and chastising their ignoring and distorting the story. Telling us that "democracy must have an economic underpinning and a commitment to fairness." Offering ways to achieve it. Explain how debt restructured the economy and created "a burden that many will never crawl out of." Exposing "shameless profiteers" and calling for an investigation of their crimes and prosecution. Asking for debt relief for Americans. "Urging citizens to get involved and (demand) politicians respond." Getting upset and aroused enough to act.
"It's the Economy Stupid," according to Schechter in his introduction, and, of course, it always is but especially when times are hard. What Senator Chris Dodd calls "a 50-state Katrina," but these waters are rising and uncertainty remains on whether something far more calamitous is coming.
Corruption is pervasive. The public uneasy but largely uninformed. The worst of what's going on is hidden. A vast shady network of "interconnected institutions working through highly legalized and poorly understood systems." Moving unimaginable sums around the world in seconds. Seducing people into the most outrageous schemes involving unrepayable debt. Then having to borrow more to service amounts already unaffordable. Heading for what money manager Jeremy Grantham calls a "slow motion trainwreck"- the inevitability that bubbles always burst. His advice in the current environment. What he calls the "first truly global bubble:" hunker down and "take as little risk as possible" because "I for one am officially scared."
The Origins of the Scandal
When it began, "subprime lending" wasn't a term in common usage, let alone understood outside financial circles. One of its late 1990s originators was Obama campaign finance chairperson Penny Pritzker when she served on the Board of the failed family-owned Hinsdale, IL Superior Bank. It cost the FDIC $700 million and depositors another $65 million, while Pritzker made millions on predatory lending now called "subprime" mortgage schemes. One definition is as follows: "the practice of making loans to borrowers who do not qualify for the best market interest rates because of their deficient credit history." Another in the recent environment was to force-feed them to the largest number of homebuying prospects possible.
There's lots of them, and predatory lenders took full advantage until things erupted into scandal, and the economy headed south. Only then did regulators take notice and decide to investigate - into how "banks, credit rating firms, and lenders value and disclose complex mortgage-backed securities." Three areas specifically, according to Reuters: "the securitization process, the origination process and the retail area." Also insider trading, a common illegal practice that's rarely caught or even looked for. However, the scope of the investigation would be narrow, and its aim was "deterrence." Of what, asked Schechter, now that the horse is out of the barn, and investors and mortgage holders are left holding the bag?
When it's too late to matter, they agree, along with critics, that "inadequate disclosure (or lack of transparency) was at the root of the problem." According to a Senate report, it began in 1997 when house prices began appreciating and registered a 124% gain by 2006. Housing was driving the economy with seven million subprime mortgage loans. Business boomed. Underwriting standards deteriorated, while banks and other lenders invented new ways to make money - "fast" and easy.
In the 1980s, state usury rate ceilings were lifted, creating a whole new market for people who previously couldn't qualify. At higher interest rates, fees, and other add-ons they did. Most borrowers got so-called "2/28" and "3/27" hybrid adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs). They originated with low fixed "teaser" rates, good for a two-year period. Afterwards, they're reset semi-annually based on an interest-rate benchmark, or the current going rate. For many holders, payments soared 30% and became unaffordable, and by 2004, 90% of subprime loans were these type ARMs. It was well-known in the industry that "these borrowers (are) most likely to default or become delinquent (and) face foreclosure." The idea was to cash in and let holders take the pain.
Here's how the scheme worked. "So-called 'intermediaries,' unregulated and often unscrupulous mortgage brokers, hustled their way into the housing market" and took over. Using a range of tactics, including "deceptive advertising to block-to-block solicitations to get people to buy and sell, always promising more than they (could) deliver."
So-called "birddogs" were used to get prospects, and all kinds of practices were employed - "abusive, illegal and predatory." They pushed, "enticed...seduced (even) threatened." According to the Joint Economic Report, "For 2006, Inside Mortgage Finance estimates that 63.3% of all subprime originations came through brokers....19.4% through retail channels (and) 17.4% through correspondent lenders....broker share increas(ed steadily) from 2003 through 2006." These companies aren't regulated and pretty much operate freely. By 2005, the percent of securitized subprime mortgages reached "a peak value of more than 81%...."
Housing sales were on a roll, and so was Wall Street, quick to see a lucrative new income stream and ready to cash in. "Now they could make fees originating loans and even more money selling the paper into (the) secondary market, where mortgages could be securitized and sold again for even more money as investments."
The Finmanac financial blog explained its origination:
when Solomon Brothers launched Mortgage-Based Securities (MBS) in the 1980s - "bonds with bundles of mortgages, bought from bank lenders, as collateral;"
they used a "special purpose vehicle known as Collateralized Mortgage Obligation (CMO);"
monthly installments were used to pay interest; and
others were quick to cash in on the scheme.
The secondary market became a marriage between "the most reputable financial organizations and the sleaziest grass-roots operators. As is often the case, sleaze moved upwards" because the potential profits were huge but so are the risks.
"Since anyone can originate a loan and sell it to the Investment Banks (to package and sell as MBS), it tempts originators (to write) risky loans (without) worry(ing) about payback(s):"
slicing MBS into tranches by risk profile handles the problem;
so does having different maturity dates;
they're rated by S & P, Fitch and other agencies for legitimacy;
hedge and some pension funds bought the most risky paper;
risks were discounted because the potential returns were huge as long as economic conditions stayed sound and/or markets continued to rise; and
it always helps to have friendly Fed chairmen like Alan Greenspan fueling bubbles.
At the height of the 2000 one he said: "Lofty equity prices have reduced the cost of capital. The result has been a veritable explosion of (high-tech) spending (and) I see nothing to suggest that these opportunities will peter out anytime soon." A week later the Nasdaq peaked. Dropped 78% to its bottom. The S & P 500 49%, and retail investors lost out while Greenspan was busy engineering another bubble now unwinding at the cost of trillions of dollars, millions of people hurt, and the "Maestro" assuming none of the blame.
Economist Anna Schwartz said otherwise and called the Federal Reserve the main cause of today's trouble. She told The Sunday Telegraph: "There never would have been a sub-prime mortgage crisis if the Fed had been alert. This is something Alan Greenspan must answer for." The US Treasury also as one of its senior officials warned subprime lenders about it but was ignored. Even worse, despite state efforts to ban predatory practices, the Bush administration blocked attempts to curtail them and bears major responsibility.
Schechter refers to "an unholy trinity of private players, Wall street firms, and non-regulating regulators" who saw a way to profit hugely. Do it with shady practices, and thus partner in a "criminal conspiracy" to rip off millions of working Americans. "It was the largest robbery in history - not a bank heist but a heist by banks."
The Real Capital of America (and the World)
Wall Street, of course - a city with "a history of causing disasters from its earliest days." Succeeding ones keep getting bigger, but unaffected most often are the powerful banks and investment houses. "Masters of the universe," according to author Tom Wolfe. Well insulated in their luxury board rooms with power, incomes and privileges afforded royalty. Treated like them also in a culture that "rewards clever and devious strategies" within or outside the law. No one is guilty unless caught. Rarely ever does it happen, and when it does the penalties are inconsequential compared to enormous ill-gotten gains. Incentive enough for players to invent new schemes, and they do.
This time, however, they may have been too smart by half. They overreached and are themselves hurt by the fallout. Some won't survive. Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers already. Others barely hanging on. Merrill Lynch forced to sell out cheap to Bank of America. The Fed bailing out AIG, and it's anyone's guess who or what's next or if the worst is yet to come. When trouble first surfaced, "only a handful of writers and analysts" understood what was going on - chickens coming home to roost, "a crime in progress, a white collar crime wave" involving trillions of dollars, from working people to the rich. The Wall Street crowd. Mortgage brokers, banks and investment houses, rating agencies and appraisers who overvalued homes for higher fees. Well-designed schemes to let the devil take the hindmost, and they are but so are the perpetrators. Schechter is right calling this "a big story - one of the biggest" and from which "consumers and citizens" have to learn how to cope. It won't be easy.
The Unspoken Context
Crime writ large, and in early 2008 the FBI announced 14 unnamed mortgage companies were being investigated. Ones engaged in predatory lending. That may have deliberately steered customers to more expensive loans and concealed hidden payments and fees. In some cases unfairly jacked up for even higher profits. Targeting the most vulnerable. A 2008 Inner City Press/Fair Finance Watch study confirmed these practices. It called mortgage brokers "the wild, wild west of Capitalism."
Shadowy operators using aggressive, unethical marketing in ghetto and low-income neighborhoods. Making phone solicitations. Door-to-door canvassing. Posing as debt consolidation experts with home improvement schemes and foreclosure "rescue" services. Merchants of sleaze cornering victims and entrapping them in unrepayable debt. Criminal fraud involving respectable bankers as well. Willing to engage in dirty practices because the profits were so tempting and the market so huge. Too big to pass up so it wasn't.
From 2004 to 2006, Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) mushroomed from $157 billion to $559 billion, and 10 investment banks underwrote 70% of $486 billion in 2006 securitizations. Players made millions and top executives far more. A gravy train, and collectively in 2006, at the cycle's peak, the big banks earned $130 billion. It looked like more ahead, and their schemes were perfectly legal in an unregulated environment permitting them. They still are short of future regulatory reform that may or may not come but never will be close to what's needed. Not when both parties embrace a pro-corporate agenda and won't allow it.
The Charleston Observer published a flow chart on how predatory lending typically works:
low income, minority and the elderly are targets;
loan originators contact and high-pressure them to sign up;
brokers arrange loans between targets and lenders;
appraisers inflate property values for higher fees and new business;
lenders may "bundle" new loans to sell off to other institutions; and
Wall Street sits atop this enormous pyramid; in the "catbird seat;" orchestrating the process; and redistributing millions of loan bundles into pools to back up investments worldwide.
Borrowers have no idea how they're being used and set up to be scammed by future mortgage resets. Unaffordable so that millions will lose everything in foreclosure. "Where are the prosecutors," asks Schechter? A Congressional probe. Indictments to go after the guilty. Faint hope along with any chance for redress for victims. No chance either for most people to understand an "opaque and unregulated global financial system" with obscure terminology, according to economist Nouriel Roubini. A highly levered "financial monster that eventually leads to uncertainty, panic, market seizure, liquidity crunch, systemic risk and economic hard landing."
In spring 2006, over a year before things began unravelling, Schechter wrote about inadequate and deceptive media coverage in an article titled "Investigating the Nation's Exploding Credit Squeeze." He examined losers and winners and suggested concrete approaches for responsible reporting:
doing it regularly and truthfully about a serious growing problem;
identifying the key corporate institutions involved;
spotlighting how special interests and lobbyists influence Congress for favorable policies and deregulation;
credit card companies also and how their ad dollars affect media coverage of their practices;
predatory lending methods in poor neighborhoods; crimes committed against vulnerable working people;
what people can do to fight back; and
getting people involved at state and local levels; enlisting attorney generals to file class action lawsuits; and pressuring key legislators.
Strong material but the response was "tepid" as well as to a follow-up email campaign with tens of thousands of requests for more media coverage of a vital national issue - well before the crisis hit and a public spotlight might have cooled it. Big Media prefer a sanitized world of market "ups and downs" and one-sided Wall Street and Washington views - unrelated to the real world, what affects most people, and it got Schechter to ask: "where's the outrage?"
Chronicling the Implosion, 2007
In his blogs, newsletters, and articles, Schechter "tracked the evolution of the crisis by week" - a story still evolving about "an economy that is....still unraveling," It began in July 2007 when Dusseldorf-based IKB surprised markets with a profit warning. It set off sharp falls in other German bank shares, and ended up with IKB needing $11.8 billion in bailout aid to survive. Cracks also began showing up in the multi-trillion dollar US securitization markets. They created a crisis for two Bear Stearns (BS) hedge funds. Like IKB, they were heavily into subprime mortgages, highly levered, and it forced BS to sell out to JP Morgan Chase for pennies on the dollar.
Things then began spreading, and it was soon apparent the trouble was systemic, growing, and could touch down wherever outsized risks were taken. According to Business Week, what began as subprime now affected other kinds of debt as well and far more seriously than originally thought. Involving "real money" and danger, "the kind that terrifies bankers and the elite."
The Dow Average topped out in early October and headed down while government jawboning and Fed interest rate cuts and huge liquidity injections didn't help. They still haven't as markets remain volatile, and no one for sure knows what's coming. So jitters remain high and with good reason. The economy is far from healthy. Contagion is spreading offshore. Unemployment is rising. So are foreclosures. Inflation also, and hundreds of billions of bailout dollars haven't helped.
None of this should have happened, and warning signs should have been heeded early on. Schechter chronicled it daily as events unfolded and explained that things were pretty bad and getting worse. Bankers were debating how to handle record losses. Desperation and even panic began surfacing. And America's debt crunch became a personal crisis for millions.
His book reviewed events as they unfolded:
jawboning after Wall Street and bankers began reacting and "blaming everybody but themselves;"
pundits then "calling for higher standards of transparency;"
bailouts involving real money in the hundreds of billions; first the Fed, then major central banks around the world;
the result: very little; continued panic; more lending companies imploded; 247 up to April 2008;
then interest rate cuts and still no relief; mortgage rates rose as banks are reluctant to lend and want higher returns when they do; after the government's Fannie and Freddie takeover, 30-year fixed-rates fell from 6.26% to 5.88%, but with the economy weak and consumers strapped it's not clear how much this will help, at least in the short term;
multi-billions in writedowns continue, likely more coming ahead, and "bear in mind," Schechter observes: "the banks created these problems by lowering their standards and working in collusion with the alchemists at the rating agencies that turned their junk into gold." And government regulators looked the other way and let it happen.
Throughout the crisis, real analysis and understanding was missing - like the 50 million "Missing Americans" Bill Moyers profiled on PBS. The ones Michael Harrington called "The Other America" in which he documented the country's poverty and influenced policy debate in Washington as a result. Today's victims are largely above the poverty line but just barely with two wage-earners and one or both having multiple (low-paying) jobs. They became predatory lending targets, but practically nothing is being done to help them. Billions for the perpetrators. Lip service only for the vulnerable.
What Happens Now?
Crucial to understand is that the current economic crisis "is an outgrowth of the very corporatist policies that will haunt this country for decades." Plus our costly wars. "Obscenely high levels of corruption," and many other characteristics of a nation off its moorings and in trouble. This one in "the quicksand of debt and delusion." Proving unfettered capitalism doesn't work. At a time Business Week magazine suggested "an irresistible force (is) meet(ing) an immovable object." The force is the economy and object an unrepayable wall of debt.
Despite billions of Fed-injected liquidity, the crisis persists and may be worsening. No one knows for sure or how or when it will end. Trillions have been lost. More still to come. Serious talk about a depression. The middle class is shrinking. People are entrapped by debt. Worldwide respect for the country plummeted, and 81% of the public believes things are headed in the wrong direction. Banks are failing. Real estate hit the wall, and in February the Economist magazine wrote that "The world had a weekend to save it from collapsing."
Contagion is spreading everywhere affecting Wall Street, large and smaller banks, investment firms, insurance companies, hedge funds, non-bank lenders, and the greater economy dependent on them. Experts believe fixing things could take years and would require a vast overhaul of a clearly failed system. Establishing workable regulation. Reinstating Glass-Steagall to separate commercial from investment banks. Curbing speculation, and ending the whole range of predatory lending practices. Under a two-party duopoly, chances for that are practically nil.
Debt As A Global Issue
For better or worse, a global economic system interlocks nations and markets. When the US catches cold, pneumonia threatens the world, and it shows in what the Vigilant Investor website reported: that in one week months back the Fed, ECB, and Japanese and Australian central banks injected $458 billion into the markets "to allow the big players to avoid selling off otherwise healthy assets to cover for heavy losses related to the unfolding housing debacle in the US, led over the cliff by subprimes." And in America, the combination of credit card and other debt remains a ticking time bomb some see as another eventual bubble to burst.
They're worried about what author Kevin Phillips calls "a house of cards" built on "reckless finance." And longtime Wall Street economist Henry Kaufman blames years of irresponsible federal banking for "allowing the expansion of credit in huge magnitudes" and calling today's crisis a "global calamity." Former Fed director of monetary affairs and its policy-making panel secretary, Vincent Reinhart, compares today to "the great contraction" of the 1930s and "the great inflation of the 1970s."
Little of this gets media attention or is addressed in political discourse. Never mind huge structural problems, an economy in crisis, millions in duress, and barely a sign of remedial help coming for the vulnerable. As conditions worsen "when will the American people realize how badly they have been had and turn on the plunderers," asks Schechter? The politicians and regulators also who allowed it.
How did it happen:
"warnings were ignored;" for example from Bruce Marks, the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA) CEO; in 2000, he testified before Congress and warned about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac engaging in predatory subprime lending; all for naught;
"the (Alan Greenspan) Fed encourag(ing) the securitization of mortgages calling it 'financial innovation;' " and
"Wall Street firms ignor(ing) worries (from) their own risk managers (and engaging in) shadowy underground banking....They made a fortune - until they didn't."
Hundreds of small players have been indicted but only a few symbolic "truly fat cats" and none of the fattest. The way it always is.
Last Words
Capitalism is characterized by economic ups and downs, speculative frenzies, and panics. But, as Schechter observes, "Few have posed such a serious threat to the entire financial system, (yet most media) coverage has been relegated to not widely read business sections (and) the fortunes of CEOs and business enterprises, not citizens, consumers and most of all homeowners" who've lost or may lose their homes and livelihoods.
Even worse, "many newspapers and TV outlets were complicit." They got huge amounts of ad revenue (often deceptive) from "shady mortgage lenders and credit card companies that encouraged readers and viewers to accept more debt. Some major newspapers are connected with local real estate syndicates and get kickbacks from sales tied to their extensive advertising of homes for sale." Worse still is that coverage (once it began) "may have missed the truly criminal aspects of this crisis" even though there's plenty of evidence around and the FBI is currently investigating 14 mortgage companies.
Overall reporting largely supports business and hesitates being critical. It builds confidence instead, stays upbeat, generates more heat than light, and engages in what Schechter calls "Investotainment" as their specialty. Well layered with deception and boosterism as well.
They ignored victims dating back to the 1990s and even warnings from people like David Walker, the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and Government Accounting Office (GEO) head. For years, he was a voice in the wilderness about our growing debt burden that could lead to a sudden collapse and threaten national security. The National Association of Business Economists as well saying: "The combined threat of subprime loan defaults and excessive indebtedness has supplanted terrorism and the Middle East as the biggest short-term threat to the US economy."
And John Kenneth Galbraith in his 1961 classic, "The Great Crash 1929," now prophetic: "The fact was that American enterprise in the twenties had opened its hospitable arms to an exceptional number of promoters, grafters, swindlers, impostors, and frauds. This, in the long history of such activities, was a kind of flood tide of corporate larceny."
Writer Mike Whitney updates it in one of his commentaries saying: "The financial system has been handed over to scam-artists and fraudsters who've created a multi-trillion dollar inverted pyramid of shaky, hyper-inflated, subprime slop that they've sold around the world, with the tacit support of the ratings agencies and the US political establishment."
The story has legs. Banks are in serious trouble. By mid-summer, seven had failed, others since, and many dozens more are at risk. Worldwide as well as contagion spreads everywhere. Huge write-downs have been taken. Unknown amounts more may follow. The Fed has injected over $900 billion to stabilize things with little idea if it will. Then add in lost homes, lender foreclosure costs, falling property prices, equity losses, multiple deflating bubbles, and hundreds of billions for wars and debt service, and the picture is grim, frightening, and according to some experts in the early innings.
Consider a recent "truly stunning but not widely reported" Bank of America study on current "Credit Crisis" losses - $7.7 trillion dollars in equity value globally since the October market peak. Affecting nations everywhere, B of A called it "one of the most vicious (crises) in financial history." Investor George Soros calls it a "systemic crisis," the result of "easy credit, financial innovation and contagion." And economist Ludwig von Misses once said: "There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought on by credit expansion. The question is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved."
Schechter concludes by adding: "Bubbles are rarely foreseen (or want to be seen), as investors scramble into opportunities delivering high returns....self-interest and money-making are the real drivers in the world of finance." They also drive politics, and now at a time of crisis, it's "hard to believe that as the house of cards comes tumbling down, there seems to be a trifecta of failure. The government is unwilling to act decisively. The Congress prevaricates. And the media (engages in) boosterism" and keeps the public uninformed "at the very time when exposure might have stopped these practices before they became too deep and/or expensive to 'fix.' "
Little wonder 81% of the public believes the country is headed in the wrong direction. George Bush's approval rating fluctuates from the low to high 20s. And the July Rasmussen Reports gave Congress its lowest ever rating at 9% with only 2% of respondents calling its performance excellent. Imagine future poll numbers if the economy crashes, millions more become unemployed, lose their homes, and hundreds of billions keep being spent on fruitless wars by whomever becomes president and whichever party controls Washington. Imagine also how people affected will respond or should.
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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM - 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening.
(To be clear: Joe was referring to McCain's established pattern of engaging in sleazy or dishonest behavior knowing he can latter come back to the Washington bigs, moral hat in hand, for absolution.)
So after running the sleaziest and most dishonest campaign in modern presidential campaign history, now McCain 'regrets' the negativity.
The political Quote of the Day comes from Republican Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain who is framing this election as one between a candidate who cares for his country (him) and a candidate who really only cares for his own political advancement (Democratic Sen. Barack Obama) — suggesting his opponent knowingly discards the vital interest of the United States for cynical political purposes, unlike someone else whose pronouncements are pure (himself):
And that's how we see this election, country first or Obama first and I have a feeling [chant of "Country First, Country First"]… So when it comes to cutting taxes for seniors, for working families, for small businesses my opponent didn't put the hardworking people of this country first. When it came time to support our troops fighting to protect our freedoms and way of life my opponent said he'd never deprive them of the funds they needed to fight and then did just that.
What a world of difference there is between this Richard Nixon-like John McCain, who all but uses the word "traitor" in describing his opponent, and the 2000 John McCain that so many independent voters (including yours truly) supported eight years ago because he wasn't just another divide and rule or demonize and defeat politician. This McCain is right out of this book.
At some point, you would think the McCain Palin team would stop to breathe between lies…
Two lies, real quick, from the world's worst liars; John McCain, and Sarah Palin.
The first lie, actually, started off with a rumor that Obama had tried to appeal to the Iraqis to slow down any US troop drawdowns. Now I remember when this first came up; I didn't even bother addressing it because, as my thought process goes, 'There just can't be any there, there. If there was, we would have heard about it AGES ago, and it would have started out not in the backwaters of conservative punditry, but instead on the front page of the Mainstream Media.' After all, if Obama really DID do what he was being accused of, that would be major.
So, I just sat, and watched to see where this one would go. As it turns out, it was slowly gaining grown in Wingnuttia to the point where even the McCain campaign was picking the ball up and running with it… just in time for it to be debunked…
…by Republicans. You simply gotta love Jake Tapper's tone here; you can almost feel him getting more and more upset at the duplicity of the McCain campaign:
Two officials of the Bush administration say that if Obama had done what the Post story asserted – which they believe to be untrue – U.S. Ambassador Crocker and embassy officials attending the meeting would have ensured that the Bush administration heard about it immediately. If such an incident occurred in front of officials of the Bush administration, it would have constituted a foreign policy breach and would have been front-page huge news; it would not have leaked out two months later in an op-ed column.
Nonetheless, based on nothing more than the Post report, McCain senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann issued a statement earlier this week expressing outrage.
"It should be concerning to all that (Obama) reportedly urged that the democratically-elected Iraqi government listen to him rather than the US administration in power," Scheunemann said, apparently not having talked to anyone with knowledge about the meeting in Bush administration, the US Embassy in Baghdad, GOP Sen. Hagel, or any Republican staffers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"If news reports are accurate, this is an egregious act of political interference by a presidential candidate seeking political advantage overseas," Scheunemann continued. "Senator Obama needs to reveal what he said to Iraq's Foreign Minister during their closed door meeting. The charge that he sought to delay the withdrawal of Americans from Iraq raises serious questions about Senator Obama's judgment and it demands an explanation."
What actually demands an explanation is why the McCain campaign was so willing to give credence to such a questionable story with such tremendous international implications without first talking to Republicans present at Obama's meeting with Maliki, who back Obama's version of the meeting and completely dismiss the Post column as untrue.
What's awesome about this lie is that all of wingnuttia gets to share in the disgrace–well played, folks. You keep the lies coming, and we'll keep using them to win the election.
Next up, Sarah Palin. Sarah "Thanks but no thanks" Palin. As part of her narrative that she's a crusader against wasteful government spending, we were not only told that she didn't take earmarks (she totally did), we were not only told she opposed the bridge to nowhere (she totally didn't), but we were also told that she gave herself a paycut as the mayor of Wasilla (she sorda did, but ended up watching her pay increase anyway).
As Greg Sargent reports, yes, the Moose Hunter did give herself paycuts; two to be exact. But the pay increases she received overrode the pay cuts. So this isn't a 100% lie due to the fact that she did give herself pay cuts, but it's still at least a 75%er because her self inflicted pay cuts actually failed to, you know, cut her pay.
Even as I write this, I see more lies coming down the pike, but you know what? For the time being I'm just going to call it there, I can only handle so much lying from a prospective president and vice president or else it will just ruin my weekend.
John McCain's claim in an ad yesterday that former Fannie Mae CEO Frank Raines is a leading adviser to Barack Obama is based largely on a Washington Post article reporting that Raines had "taken calls" from Obama's campaign "seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters."
The notion that that makes Raines a leading adviser to Obama himself, of course, is a pretty ridiculous stretch.
Now The Washington Post's very own fact-checker has declared that the McCain campaign is "exaggerating wildly," dismissing the Raines claim as "particularly dubious."
That's nice to hear. But we have to take issue with the notion that the McCain camp's assertion is "particularly dubious." In truth, when compared to some of the more ambitions and even epic falsehoods that we've heard from the McCain campaign in recent weeks, this latest act of deception sounds like an angel's hymn.
Here's what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:
Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.
So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago — and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!
...instead of by the greedy individuals that created the mess in the 1st place. History will look back on this week and say that the US was bought to its knees by an economic system that favors the wealthy, has no scruples, and bailed out its financial mess and saddled its taxpayers with even more debt, to over 11 trillion dollars. I now know how long it takes those in power to forget history - its the time from the last great depression to today - because had those in power and in control of the money system remembered history I do not think we would be in this mess today. I hope our country gets out of this mess because if you want a glimpse of how bad it can get when our money system tanks, do some research on what happened to Argentina in the later 90's and early 2000's. Its scary stuff.
This mess we are in should be the exclamation point on what will be looked back upon as the worst presidency in history. I wish I had the money, the education, and the courage to run for some kind of office. We need people to get angry at this mess and step up and work to make change. Our system cannot sustain itself like this.
It was a room full of pople who rarely hold their tongues. But as the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, laid out the potentially devastating ramifications of the financial crisis before congressional leaders on Thursday night, there was a stunned silence at first.
Mr. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had made an urgent and unusual evening visit to Capitol Hill, and they were gathered around a conference table in the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
"When you listened to him describe it you gulped," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.
As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program "Good Morning America," the congressional leaders were told "that we're literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally."
Mr. Schumer added, "History was sort of hanging over it, like this was a moment."
When Mr. Schumer described the meeting as "somber," Mr. Dodd cut in. "Somber doesn't begin to justify the words," he said. "We have never heard language like this."
Bernanke Admits The Truth
Congress was stunned because Bernanke finally admitted the truth (or at least came closer to doing so). Congress ought to be reading blogs rather than listening to clowns like Paulson and Bernanke.
The list of reasons the financial system is unsound grew massively today, by the tune of a $1.2 trillion taxpayer funded bailout designed to bail out the wealthy at the expense of the poor.
Earlier today Paulson has the gall to state "this will cost the tax payer less than the alternative".
No one bothered to ask why it should cost the taxpayer anything at all.
Furthermore, Paulson once again proved he needs simple arithmetic lessons. Shifting losses from those who should bear them (stock and bond holders of failing companies) to the taxpayers is not going to save the taxpayers a dime, rather it is going to cost them plenty, $1.2 trillion plenty as noted in US Taxpayer: A Giant Dumpster For Illiquid Assets.
The Whole Truth And Nothing But The Truth?
Of course not.
Bernanke did not really admit the truth, he only hinted at it. Congress was too dumb to pick it up. The truth is the US financial system is insolvent.
You see, even before John McCain selected as his running mate the virulently anti-choice Sarah Palin - a woman who doesn't trust other women to make their own decisions about childbearing - Planned Parenthood Action Fund was already fighting a Bush administration attack on women's health care and reproductive rights that has put Planned Parenthood and the people it serves in the fight of our lives.
Just three weeks ago, the Bush administration issued a rule that would limit the rights of patients to receive complete and accurate reproductive health information when they visit the doctor. It's more of the Bush administration's bad medicine, and we need your help to stop it.
My mother, Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas and a remarkable feminist leader, would have been downright outraged right now. She would have seen this rule as a desperate parting gift from Bush to the extreme anti-choice groups that have his ear - with no regard for the devastating impact on women's health.
And then, the presidential election. As I'm sure you know, the stakes in this election just got unbelievably higher. More than ever before, the November 4 election is the most important vote for women's rights of my generation. And our actions in the next eight weeks - yours, mine, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund's - have never been more critical. Believe me, I don't say that lightly. It's time to get to work - and hard.
Thank you for standing up with us, as always.
Sincerely,
Cecile Richards, President Planned Parenthood Action Fund
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Last week, MSNBC debuted a new prime-time political show hosted by Rachel Maddow, a progressive radio host on Air America. The debut attracted more viewers than both Larry King and Glenn Beck's programs, on CNN and CNN Headline News, respectively. After one week on air, Maddow's was MSNBC's highest-rated show on Tuesday, with Keith Olbermann's Countdown in second place. When Olbermann announced Maddow's new show last month on the progressive blog Daily Kos, he wrote to its readers, "Yes, you had something to do with it." Maddow's show is one of the few success stories of the efforts by progressives to see more progressive voices on TV. In fact, the day before Maddow's debut, MSNBC announced it was pulling Olbermann and Chris Matthews from its election coverage -- a move the New York Times said was a "direct result of tensions associated with the channel's perceived shift to the political left." Despite Olbermann and Maddow's rating successes, MSNBC and the other networks still don't seem to be getting the message: Americans want to hear progressive voices on television.
ANTI-WAR VOICES SHUT OUT: After 9/11, and particularly in the lead-up to the Iraq war, news programs purged their ranks of several voices seen as remotely hesitant about President Bush's foreign policy. After political commenter Bill Maher criticized the war in Afghanistan, "he was quickly alerted that he had gone beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse -- even though that's his job. (Remember, his show is called 'Politically Incorrect.')," David Talbot at Salon.com noted. In fact, then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer declared ominously, "Americans need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is." At MSNBC, progressive host Phil Donahue was fired in February 2003 for his anti-war views, despite the fact that his show was the network's highest-rated program. An internal NBC memo said Donahue presented a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. ... He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives." The memo outlined a possible nightmare scenario in which the show would become "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity." The same week Donahue was fired, the network brought on Jesse Ventura and right-wing shock jock Michael Savage.
'IF IT'S SUNDAY, ITS CONSERVATIVE': In early 2006, Media Matters for America published a study showing the overwhelming dominance of conservative voices on the most influential Sunday political talk shows. Analyzing guests on the shows between 1997 and 2005, Media Matters found that -- though the balance between progressives and conservatives was relatively equal during President Clinton's second term -- "conservatives held a dramatic advantage" during Bush's first term, "outnumbering Democrats/progressives by 58 percent to 42 percent." Counting only elected officials, the conservative advantage during Bush's first term was 61 percent to 39 percent; in the late 1990s, by contrast, the progressive advantage was only 53 percent to 45 percent. What's more, during both the Clinton and Bush years, journalists who appeared as guests were far more likely to be conservative: "In Clinton's second term, 61 percent of the ideologically identifiable journalists were conservative; in Bush's first term, that figure rose to 69 percent." Finally, the study found that "congressional opponents of the Iraq war were largely absent from the Sunday shows, particularly during the period just before the war began." These shows often "define the people and arguments that represent 'reasonable debate' in the nation's capital," and so the conservative bent affects a far wider audience than those who are watching the programs.
DOUBLE STANDARD FOR FOX NEWS: MSNBC's decision to pull its outspoken progressive host Keith Olbermann from its election coverage received wide playthroughoutthe media and the blogosphere; Fox News and right-wing blogs celebrated the silencing of Olbermann's "disgraceful," "hard-left views." But for the last 12 years, since its inception in 1996, Fox News has presented a strong and unabashed right-wing perspective -- with hardly a peep of protest from the rest of the mainstream media. It's no secret that Fox News both caters to and generates a hard-right, conservative audience. An August poll showed that 67 percent of Fox News viewers planned to vote for the Republican candidate for president, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). The poll "lines up neatly with a poll that showed that in the 2004 election, 88 percent of those who watched FNC supported George W. Bush over John Kerry" -- making Fox News viewers Bush's most loyal demographic. A 2003 New Yorker piece described the network as "opinionated and conservative, and its news is delivered by people who themselves are often unabashedly opinionated and conservative." With dominion over Fox News, conservatives own an entire third of the cable news programs, and yet CNN and MSNBC are perpetually concerned about being perceivedeven slightly to the left -- or they ignore their success when they do present progressive views. Conservative views are consistently accepted as being mainstream. Progressive opinions are therefore outside of the norm and more risky. As the New Yorker's Ken Auletta noted, "Fox found its niche; MSNBC hasn't, and CNN seems to have lost the one it had."
JUSTICE -- PODESTA: TOO MUCH SECRECY PUTS OUR NATION AT RISK: This week, John Podesta, the President and CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and Mark Agrast, Senior Fellow at CAPAF, testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution. In his testimony on Secrecy and the Rule of Law, Podesta explained that "most Americans appreciate the need to keep secret national security information whose disclosure would pose a genuine risk of harm. But as the 9/11 Commission concluded, too much secrecy can put our nation at greater risk, hindering oversight, accountability, and information sharing." "Over the past seven years," he said, "the Bush administration has increased secrecy and curtailed access to information through a variety of means." He cited the slow pace of declassification of government records, the withdrawing of previously unclassified documents, failure to preserve White House communications, excessive invoking of executive privilege, and the threatening of journalists and whistleblowers. Agrast explained that "it is time to consider how Congress and the next administration can begin to turn the page on this appalling chapter in our history." Podesta made many recommendations for the next administration, including the establishment of "a presumption against classification," tightening the standards for preservation of electronic records, and enacting protection for whistleblowers. Yesterday, Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) introduced legislation that "would require the U.S. Attorney General to tell Congress whenever the executive branch decides it is not bound by federal law."
ECONOMY -- BUSH TAX CUTS LOOK EVEN MORE RECKLESS IN LIGHT OF FEDERAL BAILOUTS: On Tuesday evening, the Federal Reserve announced that it would lend troubled insurer AIG $85 billion in return for a 79.9 percent stake in the company. This move comes on the heels of the bailouts of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and just months after the bailout of Bear Stearns. CNBC has put the total tab for the recent government rescues by the Fed and the Treasury Department at $900 billion. The rescues, while necessary to prevent a wider financial meltdown, will cause the already near-record federal deficit of $407 billion to explode. Before the bailouts, the projected federal deficit for 2009 was $546 billion. When President George Bush came to office eight years ago, it was projected that America would have a budget surplus next year of $710 billion. So what happened? As an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows, 42 percent of the "fiscal deterioration" was due to the Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003. For FY2009, roughly $1 trillion of the $1.3 trillion deterioration in the nation's fiscal finances stems from policy actions. Tax cuts account for 42 percent of this $1 trillion deterioration.
RADICAL RIGHT -- VIRGINIA GOP RALLY REACHING OUT TO MINORITIES WILL FEATURE FMR. SEN. GEORGE ALLEN : The Washington Post reported this week that "Northern Virginia Republicans, realizing they need to improve their appeal among the region's large ethnic population, will stage a 'unity' rally Saturday that they say will draw 1,000 people." Yet the rally will feature former Republican Virginia senator George Allen, who, when running for re-election in 2006, famously called a young man of Indian decent the racial slur "macaca." When Talking Points Memo checked in with the state GOP to ask if Allen is "really an effective front-man for the party's efforts to win over minorities, communications director Gerry Scimeca said, "George Allen has an excellent record on issues of diversity, reaching out to people...his whole career, his whole life have been a testament to a guy who's treated people equally across racial lines, across every kind of line."
Homeless advocacy groups and city agencies across the country are "reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments in a generation." These tent cities -- reminiscent of Hoovervilles during the Great Depression -- continue to grow with "with foreclosures mounting, gas and food prices rising and the job market tightening."
Though it was near completion a month ago, an agreement to extend the American military mandate in Iraq beyond this year "has stalled over objections by Iraqi leaders and could be in danger of falling apart." The major point of contention is whether American troops and military contractors will be "subject to the country's criminal justice system for any crime committed outside of a military operation."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class-action lawsuit yesterday against Bush administration officials, "seeking to halt what it describes as illegal surveillance of Americans' telephone and Internet traffic." The lawsuit parallels legal action EFF sought against AT&T in 2006 that was derailed this year when Congress granted immunity to telecom companies that had assisted the surveillance program.
Federal officials told the Associated Press that after a "lengthy investigation into his lurid messages to underage congressional pages," no charges will be filed against former Republican congressman Mark Foley.
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne "pledged yesterday to squelch the 'ethics storm' exposed by investigators who said agency workers rigged bids, accepted gifts, and had sex with energy company officials doing business with the government." Inspector General Earl Devaney told Congress he was disappointed that two now-retired employees were not prosecuted by the DOJ.
The federal government is now "embracing the need for a comprehensive approach to the financial crisis." Regulators are considering a number of proposals that would "take bad assets off the balance sheets of financial companies." Congressional leaders and regulators met yesterday to discuss the plan which would "require what several officials said would be a substantial appropriation of federal dollars."
And finally: "People who startle easily in response to threatening images or loud sounds seem to have a biological predisposition to adopt conservative political positions on many hot-button issues," according to a study published yesterday. It concludes that people "who adopt political views you disagree with are not be stupid or irrational. Rather, they may arrive at their positions in part because they are predisposed to be more or less worried about risk."
"Women have entered politics in greater numbers than ever in the past decade, accounting for 18.4 percent of parliament members worldwide, according to a study released Thursday by the United Nations Development Fund for Women."
TEXAS: State attorney general is helping advance a program to prevent teen dating violence.
ENVIRONMENT: "Environmental officials from several states that have tried to force the Pentagon to clean up polluted military sites say the Defense Department has retaliated by reducing or withholding federal oversight dollars." ECONOMY: In the long term, states fear that "a prolonged financial crisis that further reduces already shrinking tax revenue."
THINK PROGRESS: Laura Ingraham: Lawmakers who worry about the economic crisis are "girly."
WONK ROOM: March 2008: Conservatives were for deregulation before they were against it.
YGLESIAS: The differences between Americans and Canadians in terms of knowing other countries' political histories.
GRISTMILL: GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz denies anthropogenic climate change.
"[M]ore and better and earlier communication between us [Congress and the White House] is always a better thing." -- White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, 9/18/08
VERSUS
"House Minority Leader John Boehner said his conference was forced to cancel a meeting Thursday morning after the administration 'refused' to send over a representative to brief House Republicans on the federal government's response to the latest financial turmoil." -- Politico, 9/18/08
The research team that brings you The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org needs fall interns! Click here for more information.
Here is the full contact information for 18 different Blue Cross Blue Shield CEOs. Name, address, phone number, and the contact info for their assistants. If you have an unresolved issue with one of these health insurance groups that regular customer service can't or won't solve, might want to give the appropriate honchos one the following list a holler.
Angela Braly President and CEO Of WellPoint (oversees 13 BCBS plans) Angela.Braly@Wellpoint.com 120 monument circle Indianapolis, IN 46204 Mailpoint IN0104-a300 Phone: 317-488-6476 Fax: 317-488-6477 Assistants: Lisa Moran 317-488-6480 lisa.moran@wellpoint.com Linda McAdams 317-488-6489 linda.mcadams@wellpoint.com
G. N. (Arnie) Arnott President and CEO Saskatchewan Blue Cross 516 – 2nd Avenue North Saskatoon, SK S7K 2C5 Canada Phone: (306) 667-5271 Fax: (306) 664-1945 Email: aarnott@sk.bluecross.ca Asst: Melanie Wilson Phone: (306) 667-5270 Email: mwilson@sk.bluecross.ca
Tom Bowser President and CEO Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City 2301 Main Street Kansas City, MO 64108 Phone: (816) 395-2001 Fax: (816) 395-2035 Email: tom.bowser@bcbskc.com Asst: Marcia Zanko Phone: (816) 395-2019 Email: marcia.zanko@bcbskc.com
Mark W. Banks, M.D. CEO BlueCross and BlueShield of Minnesota P.O. Box 64560 St. Paul, MN 55164-0560 3535 Blue Cross Road St. Paul, MN 55122 Phone: (651) 662-8438 Fax: (651) 662-7767 Email: mark_w_banks@bluecrossmn.com Asst: Mary Beth Olson Phone: (651) 662-6679 Email: mary_b_olson@bluecrossmn.com
Sherry Cladouhos President and CEO BlueCross BlueShield of Montana P.O. Box 4309 Helena, MT 59604-4309 560 North Park Avenue Helena, MT 59601 Phone: (406) 444-8441 Fax: (406) 447-8607 Email: scladouhos@bcbsmt.com Asst: Velma Dalton Phone: (406) 444-8267 Email: vdalton@bcbsmt.com
Richard Boals President and CEO Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Arizona, Inc. P.O. Box 13466 Phoenix, AZ 85002-3466 2444 West Las Palmaritas Drive Phoenix, AZ 85021 Phone: (602) 864-4305 Fax: (602) 864-4200 Email: rboals@phx1.bcbsaz.com Asst: Rebekah Mendez Phone: (602) 864-4431 Email: rmendez@phx1.bcbsaz.com
Tim J. Crilly President and CEO Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Wyoming P.O. Box 2266 Cheyenne, WY 82003-2266 4000 House Avenue Cheyenne, WY 82001-2266 Phone: (307) 432-2701 Fax: (307) 432-2708 Email: tim.crilly@bcbswy.com Asst: Carla Lofton Phone: (307) 432-2706 Email: carla.lofton@bcbswy.com
Kenneth Martin President and CEO Pacific Blue Cross P.O. Box 7000 Vancouver, BC V6B 4E1 Canada 4250 Canada Way Burnaby, BC V5G 4W6 Canada Phone: (604) 419-2021 Fax: (604) 419-2020 Email: kmartin@pac.bluecross.ca Asst: Fran Darbyshire Phone: (604) 419-2050 Email: fdarbyshire@pac.bluecross.ca
Steven S. Martin President and CEO BlueCross and BlueShield of Nebraska P.O. Box 3248, Main P.O. Station Omaha, NE 68180-0001 7261 Mercy Road Omaha, NE 68180-0001 Phone: (402) 390-1810 Fax: (402) 398-3836 Email: steve.martin@bcbsne.com Asst: Susan Unger Phone: (402) 343-3546 Email: susan.unger@bcbsne.com
Raymond F. McCaskey President and CEO Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma 300 East Randolph Street Chicago, IL 60601-5099 Phone: (312) 653-6746 Fax: (312) 938-3657 Email: mccaskeyr@bcbsil.com Asst: Lynne Recupido Phone: (312) 653-6818 Email: recupidol@bcbsil.com
Bruce G. Bodaken Chairman, President and CEO Blue Shield of California P.O. Box 7168 San Francisco, CA 94120-7168 50 Beale Street San Francisco, CA 94105 Phone: (415) 229-5086 Fax: (415) 229-5056 Email: bruce.bodaken@blueshieldca.com Asst.: Leslie Monahan Phone: (415) 229-5096 Email: leslie.monahan@blueshieldca.com
D. Scott Ideson President Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah P.O. Box 30270 Salt Lake City, Utah 84130-0270 2890 East Cottonwood Parkway Salt Lake City, Utah 84121 Phone: (801) 333-5664 Fax: (801) 333-6516 Email: sideson@regence.com Asst: Wendy Cowley Phone: (801) 333-5290 Email: whcowley@regence.com
Mark Ganz President & CEO The Regence Group P.O. Box 1071, E15A Portland, OR 97207-1071 100 SW Market Street Portland, OR 97201 Phone: (503) 226-8721 Fax: (503) 225-6797 Email: mbganz@regence.com Asst: Denise Thayer Phone: (503) 225-5228 Email: dethaye@regence.com
J. Bart McMullan, Jr., M.D. President Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon P.O. Box 1271 Portland, OR 97207 – 1271 100 SW Market Street Portland, OR 97201 Phone: (503) 225-5351 Fax: (503) 226-8795 Email: jbmcmul@regence.com Asst: Carol Brandt Phone: (503) 225-6894 Email: csbrand@regence.com
John Stellmon President Regence BlueShield of Idaho 1211 West Myrtle, Suite 110 Boise, Idaho 83702 Phone: (208) 395-7703 Fax: (208) 395-7704 Email: jstellmon.id@regence.com Asst: Terri Redmond Phone: (208) 333-7823 Email: tredmond.id@regence.com
Mary O. McWilliams President Regence BlueShield 1800 Ninth Avenue, M/S S1600 Seattle, WA 98101 Phone: (206) 464-3756 Fax: (206) 287-5413 Email: mmcwilliams@regence.com Asst: Paula Lyons Phone: (206) 464-5524 Email: pjlyons@regence.com
Michael B. Unhjem President and CEO BlueCross BlueShield of North Dakota 4510 13th Avenue, S.W. Fargo, ND 58121-0001 Phone: (701) 282-1327 Fax: (701) 282-1866 Email: mike.unhjem@bcbsnd.com Asst: Mary Ann Schaan Phone: (701) 282-1328 Email: maryann.schaan@bcbsnd.com
Robert Shoptaw President and CEO BlueCross and BlueShield of Arkansas P.O. Box 2181 Little Rock, AR 72203 601 Gaines Street Little Rock, AR 72201 Phone: (501) 378-2242 Fax: (501) 378-2037 Email: rlshoptaw@arkbluecross.com Asst: Carolyn Henry Phone: (501) 378-2243 Email: cjhenry@arkbluecross.com
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia Main #: (404) 842-8000 Fax #: (404) 842-8010 Main #: (866) 777-9636 Website: www.bcbsga.com 3350 Peachtree Road, NE Atlanta, GA 30326-1040 USA
Ms. Monye Connolly President of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia mmc6213@wellpoint.com Direct: (404) 842-8509 Assistant: Tina
If you have a problem with Blizzard Entertainment, makers of World of Warcraft, among other diversions, and contacting regular customer doesn't help, try some of the contact info inside...
If you're concerned about your RFID-chipped credit cards being skimmed, you might want to consider shielding them. DIFRwear makes a wallet with the shielding already included, and now roguewallet in Maine has introduced its own RFID-shielded version, with a fin-shaped design so it fits better in your front pocket to thwart pickpockets. Unfortunately, it's also $50, compared to $20 for the more conventional looking DIFRwear hip-pocket design. (Both are FIPS 201 compliant, if that means anything to you.)
Or, if you want to go the really cash-conscious route, make your own.
Dude, you cannot ignore this anymore.* We are screwed. Oh my god, really really screwed. China is screwed. For Chrissakes, Russia is screwed. Investors are so panicked they are paying the government interest for the privilege of buying their T-bills just to get the hell out of the market. Wait, really? Yeah really. Says Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke "We have lost control." Unemployment claims have already started flooding in. What's next? What's a "naked short"? Is it still cool to detest investment bankers? We scoured the internet for a preliminary syllabus.
Can I really figure out the crisis on the internet? Okay, so not really. On Tuesday Slate's new business site The Big Money posted a story on the next dominoes. Morgan Stanley was not even listed. Morgan Stanley was not listed because no one was talking about Morgan Stanley failing on Monday. Well that was all the way back then, and this is now. So yeah, no one writing on the internet really has a handle on what's happening, but that is why it is so important to figure out who can at least tell you what just happened.
In that vein, do you mean to tell me the systems of the financial capital of the universe made it possible for these guys to not only put up a hundred bucks to borrow five thousand bucks worth of a company's stock in hopes that the company's stock would plunge on account of all the guys borrowing shares with the intention of having it plunge, but to do all of this without even actually borrowing the stock to begin with? Uh yes? But not anymore because so-called "naked" shorting is being outlawed? Here is how Dealbreaker explained it last month:
It's Saturday afternoon and you stop by your ex girlfriend's apartment to pick some of your old stuff. You guys are friends and all, so you just let yourself in. You're grabbing your clothes from behind the fridge and see that she's got a case of Budweiser sitting in the pantry next to it. You happen to be on your way to a pool party and you know that your frat boy friends will be out of beer by the time you make your "casually late" entrance.
So you "borrow" that case of beer from your ex. That's called the locate, and since you didn't get her permission then that'd be called doing it naked. (Hey, stay focused here and stop dreaming about your ex's great body. I'm learnin' y'all something right now.)
Is there a cool animated graphic that could visually connect my own mortgage payments to all these complex securities that got bundled together and repackaged with so many ever-credulity-straining "terms" that by the time all was sold and done they were worth 22 cents on the dollar? Well that is not why Si Newhouse created it but Portfolio has a very cool one!
Where is the definitive guide to how the Chinese Communist Party made all this happen when it decided the best way to make everyone forget about democracy was to keep the lives of its citizens improving at a dramatic but steadily controlled rate by getting them all jobs manufacturing stuff Americans could not really afford because they work retail but would buy anyway because of the cheap credit that got us into this mess and anyway, the US Treasury will bail everyone out, because no matter how much they overpay the mercenaries keeping the peace in The Iraq China will always have excess wads cash under the mattress to lend them? Glad you asked! It's in the Atlantic Monthly of about nine months back.
So are We Turning Communist? Hey, yes, and the communist country that gave you Jerome Kerviel is totally schadenfreuding at our gargantuan hypocrisy, and the Trotksyists over at the economics blog Marginal Revolution is laughing with them. But Equity Private over at Dealbreaker points out, this kind of inane oversimplification of shit is how we got into this mess to begin with.
I do grow a bit tired of hearing about this or that being "nationalized." You would think a prerequisite for being a member of the "financial media" would be the proper use of the word "nationalization" and its derivatives.
It has almost gotten to the point that "bailout" was at with reference to Bear Stearns. I understand that it is all the rage with the kids these days to bend and twist meaning until all semblance of communication is the same muddy color as brackish harbor silt, but that has to end at some point. No?
I find it difficult not to draw a connection between this sloppy linguistic tendency and the crash. After all, when every corner is rounded off, every edge dulled, every sacking becomes a change to "pursue other opportunities," every slip in revenue a "market harmonization," every crash a "correction," every incompetent failure an "emerging challenge," every takeover a "strategic opportunity" every CDO "Triple A," every auction rate security "just like cash" and every mass firing a "downsizing," how the hell is anyone supposed to know what's risky and what isn't?
Hey, do you think there could possibly be a photo gallery of some of the lesser-known hot babes of CNBC? The blog CNBC Sucks has one. The blog CNBC Sucks is incidentally awesome! Not least for this endorsement of Barack Obama:
Let me break it down for you. Obama is 47, McCain is 72. If you are 47 or younger, you can expect to live another 30 years. ALL of McCain's policies are based on him being safely dead by the time we starve and kill each other on the streets as a consequence of his policies.
This is an unfair world. Most of the time, it feels as if there is no God. No old dude with a beard making sure that if two bad things happen to you, then two good things will happen down the line. The amount of suffering in the world is not evenly distributed. Poor people get crushed. Rich people get breaks. Most of us are not destined to be the ones seated inside the fancy restaurant; we're the ones outside on the sidewalk, looking at what's on their plates. So as disastrous as the market crash may be for all of us in the long run, take a minute and enjoy one part of it. Revel in their misery. Toast their unemployment and celebrate their pain!
But you know what, dude? We are just not feeling it today.
*Well, of course you can, that is the whole point.
I just got my first application in the iTunes App Store, and I wanted to tell the story of what it's like to publish one, from start to finish. The app, NetAwake, is an independent project I wrote with my friend Joshua. It makes an interesting story, I think, because unlike the sordid tale of some people's struggle to get accepted into the iPhone developer program, my personal experience was perfectly normal. (As far as I know.)
But even a perfectly normal experience with the iPhone developer program is intensely weird. Compared to the simplicity of developing and distributing a Mac app, Apple's iPhone program is extremely convoluted and strange. Here's the story, step by step.
1. Sign up with the iPhone Dev Center The iPhone Dev Center is Apple's portal page for iPhone development. Here, you can download the SDK and find tutorial videos and documentation. For reasons unknown to me, merely having an account with the Apple Developer Connection does not suffice. I have to sign up again for the iPhone site. This is pretty straightforward, however: just click through some scary legal forms and off you go. Now I can download the SDK and get started.
2. Enroll in the iPhone Developer Program I'm not done signing up with stuff yet! You see, although I signed up and clicked through the scary legal stuff and downloaded the SDK, I can't actually install any software on my iPhone. I can read documentation, write code, compile it, and even run it in the iPhone simulator, but I can't get it onto my actual iPhone.
(And don't think that the simulator makes for an adequate development platform. There's a reason it's called a "simulator" and not an "emulator". Running on the real hardware ends up being pretty different.)
For this privilege, Apple makes me sign up for the developer program. I get to fill out some more forms, click through some more scary legal stuff, and send off my request.
Request? That's right, I don't get an answer immediately. Instead I get to....
3. Wait This step is going to come up again. I believe that this time the answer came the next business day.
4. Pay Did I mention that the program is not free? And remember, this isn't to distribute apps, it's just to start realistically working on them. $99 to put apps on my own iPhone. (Or as it happens, on my own iPod Touch.) But I pay my money and shortly afterwards I receive an activation code.
Now I'm ready to put software on my iPhone! Well, not quite.
5. Provision A stock iPhone won't take any software that hasn't been signed by Apple. This puts us third-party guys in a bind, because we can't get Apple to sign every single build we make. So what Apple does is allow you to create a provisioning profile. This is a cryptographic blob which essentially tells your iPhone to accept apps signed by you and not just Apple. To create it, we have to get the iPhone's unique identifier (accessible through Xcode) and then paste it into Apple's web form, then download the result from Apple. Very oddly, although I am enrolled as an individual developer, I still have to make a request and then manually approve my own request before the provisioning profile can be generated.
I download the profile, install it using Xcode, and now I'm ready to put software on my iPhone!
And if you believe that, you haven't been paying attention.
6. Certificate I said that the provisioning profile tells the iPhone to accept software signed by you. Well, you also need a certificate to sign with. And of course this can't be any old certificate, but a special one made by Apple. The process here is fairly involved. You get to open Keychain Access, go to a little-used corner, generate a certificate request, open the result in a text editor, copy/paste the blob of random characters into Apple's web form, and then submit it. Then you get to download and install the result (after placing a request, and then approving that same request) as well as an intermediate certificate provided by Apple. And if you're like me, you also get to scratch your head over a bunch of really bizarre errors until you have a sudden flash of inspiration and run Keychain First Aid to fix corruption.
But now it's all done! My iPhone (iPod Touch) is provisioned, I have my certificate, I have the intermediate certificate, and I am now finally ready to put software on it.
Come on, you know better than that by now.
7. Screw about in Xcode Of course none of this goes quite right. There are a bunch of settings in Xcode that have to perfectly match the stuff that you gave to Apple, and they don't start out matching. The errors are essentially worthless. I believe I only ever saw Xcode generate one error, over and over and over again, as it encountered a whole bunch of different problems.
But by careful log reading, insight, pure random luck, and internet searches, I finally arrive at a working system. I build in Xcode, and the application appears on my iPhone (iPod Touch). Yes, really. I'm not kidding this time. It actually worked, at last.
8. Develop! This is what I'm here for, after all. Now that all the pieces are finally in place, I can get down to writing code. (Yes, I could write code before. But I couldn't run it on the hardware that it was targeting, which made it somewhat less useful that it otherwise could be.)
As everybody knows, developing for the iPhone is a lot like developing for the Mac. Instead of Cocoa, you have Cocoa touch, which is very similar. There are significant differences as well, though, so it takes some getting used to.
In addition to the perfectly natural difficulties encountered from working on a new platform, there's also a big artificial difficulty. As any experienced developer knows, a great deal of help can be had from simply talking to other developers working on the same system. But Apple doesn't let us do that! If you'll recall, I mentioned a bunch of scary legal stuff that you had to click through to sign up with the program. Among all the other stuff, it included the &*%#ing NDA (WARNING: link contains extremely large curse words) which says that we can't talk about this stuff, with anyone, ever.
And it's not just boilerplate. If you read between the lines a bit on Apple's cocoa-dev info page, they pretty much come right out and threaten to sue anyone who violates their NDA on the mailing list.
It's not just code that takes the hit. Xcode took a lot of magic incantations to work as well. It would have been a lot easier if I had been able to (legally) talk with my fellow developers about it.
9. Ship At last, the product is complete, and it's ready to be given to the customers. Well, not quite. This being the iPhone, Apple has a lot more hoops for me to jump through first! I had thought that all the craziness with certificates was behind me. I should have known better.
10. Certificate For reasons entirely unknown to me, a build that is intended for distribution through the iTunes App Store needs to be built with a special distribution certificate. I don't understand why Apple can't just sign the build with their own special certificate. But apparently that's not good enough. So I go through the whole process all over again. Keychain Access, request, approve my own request, download, install.
Now I'm ready to ship.
I realize you're probably getting tired of this game, so I'll stop. Next time I say that I'm ready to ship, I'll mean it. Because of course, I'm not ready yet!
11. Provision I forgot to mention that you need a special distribution provisioning profile too. I don't really understand why. You can't even install the built-for-distribution app on the iPhone. But there you have it.
12. Screw about in Xcode You may recognize this from step 7. It's the same basic thing, but with a new twist. There are literally pages of instructions (admittedly, largely due to having a bunch of screenshots) detailing how to reconfigure the Xcode project to use this special magic distribution certificate instead of the development certificate I had before. The first time I went through these pages of instructions, I apparently missed something because when I built I got The Error instead of having things work. When I went back and redid the instructions from the top, suddenly it worked!
13. Submit This involves filling out a pretty standard web form. First they ask a bunch of basic information about the app, such as its name, its version number, a description, and whether it includes cryptography. (Apps which include cryptography need a special license to be sold outside the United States. As if the US had some sort of monopoly on cryptography! And yes, this foolishness is due to Uncle Sam, not Apple.)
Next I get to a screen where I can upload the application, a large size icon, and screenshots. I click and upload the application. Then I do the icon. For some reason, Apple does not accept PNG files for either the icon or the screenshots, even though that's what their screenshot tools generate (on both platforms) and Mac OS X has had support for it since day one. They do support TIFF and JPEG. Alas, I don't notice this prohibition at first, and I upload a PNG version of my large icon. Somewhere in this process, something chokes, and I'm shown a cryptic error screen.
I press the back button, and I'm informed that my session has timed out. I go back to the main page, log in again, and go to the applications area. Nothing is listed. All of my previous work has been lost, and I have to re-enter everything a second time.
Fantastic.
I go through it all a second time, this time noticing and respecting the TIFF/JPEG requirements, and I make it through successfully. I set a price for the program, and now, at last, finally, it is ready to be purchased.
Just kidding! I'm sorry. I know I said I wouldn't do this anymore. But I couldn't resist.
14. Wait The app sits in the list with this nice yellow gumdrop and a tag reading "In Review". There is no indication of progress, no ETA, no indication that anything is being done. I assume that something is, but I have to take this completely on faith.
This is when I started writing this post. While researching it, I went back and went through some of the motions that I had to do earlier on, so I could remember what they looked like. While I was doing this, I managed to hit all the right buttons to sign up with the iPhone Developer Program. Not one to let sanity stand in their way, Apple happily accepted my submission a second time. And so my account was thrown back in time, from being enrolled to once again waiting for acceptance.
I quickly sent off an e-mail to Apple requesting help, and then sat down for some low level panic. Fortunately, my status was changed back to being accepted within a couple of hours. Apple finally replied to my frantic request for help last week, about three weeks after I sent it. You'd think that with the NDA in place preventing us from helping each other, the least Apple could do would be to answer their e-mails in a timely fashion.
15. Get Rejected About a week later, I get an e-mail from Apple. Wouldn't you know it, Apple can't make the thing work, so they reject the application. This e-mail is actually pretty decent, with the majority of it obviously written by an actual human about my particular case. When I write back to ask if they had run through NetAwake's troubleshooting guide, they reply within just a few hours to say that they had and it didn't help. Good on them for being so responsive!
Of course this puts my partner and me in a tough situation. The program works fine on our networks, but not on Apple's. And while Apple was nice about responding to my query, it's obvious that I can't get them to bust out a network sniffer and tell me about their router configuration.
After a great deal of thought we come up with a couple of things that might help it work on Apple's network, apply the fixes, and are ready to try them out on Apple.
16. Screw about in Xcode This time it doesn't take nearly as long, but Xcode still has to put up some token resistance. There are two code-signing files that are supposed to be embedded in the application, and only one shows up in my initial build. After some clean building and a great deal of cussing, suddenly both of them show up, and I'm good to go.
17. Resubmit Fortunately Apple provides a streamlined process for submitting a new build of a rejected application. A special link appears in the application's information on the submission site, and uploading the new application is just a couple of clicks away.
18. Wait Of course once you're rejected you go to the back of the line, and I get to wait another week to see if the fixes did the trick or not.
19. Get Rejected Again A week after resubmitting (nearly three weeks after the original submission), another e-mail from Apple arrives. This time they've found a legitimate bug in the application, and have rejected it because of that. This is perfectly understandable, and is actually a very good service they provide. But it is extremely annoying to have to wait a week to discover that they've found a bug, and then wait another week to see if the fix works for them.
(Note, I'm not saying that the first rejection wasn't a bug. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. I don't really have enough information to say one way or the other. This one definitely was, though.)
20. Re-Resubmit My partner makes the fix, I submit again, and the waiting game begins. This is somewhat nail-biting by now, because not only is it possible that our bug fix didn't quite work and we've just wasted another week (although unlikely), but because of this bug we still don't know whether our fix for the original rejection worked.
21. Wait Again Of course it takes Apple another week to check our new submission. As explained, much nail biting ensues.
22. Accepted! Finally, nearly a month after the original submission, the application is accepted by Apple and appears in the store. It spent longer going through Apple's approval process than it did in development! And while Apple did find a legitimate bug, spending a month in limbo for a single bug is a very poor tradeoff.
Conclusion Development for iPhone is an incredibly difficult process, much more difficult than it needs to be. The arduous process of shipping an application for the Mac suddenly appears to be absolutely straightforward after going through this mess. I really don't envy those companies who have staked their success to the iPhone platform. The amount of arbitrary hassle, uncertainty, and delay in the process can only feel vastly worse when your livelihood depends on it.
The Stanford Education Everywhere program offers online access to full courses in the school's engineering program—including classes in computer science and artificial intelligence. Courses include lecture videos, reading lists, handouts, quizzes, tests, and even a social network for fellow online students. Not quite your speed? Check out other ways you can get a free college education online.
EVANSVILLE, Ind. — Evansville police say a woman stabbed her boyfriend to death, and then she, a friend and the woman's 13-year-old daughter wrapped the body in plastic and wheeled it into nearby woods in a shopping cart.
• I see what you did there: Those crafty rapscallions in the editorial department at the Notre Dame Rivals site are either snickering right now or getting lambasted by the higher-ups. Charlie Weis will inevitably demand an apology. [The World Of Isaac]
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One question:
Where exactly is the "relief" in that email?
It sounds much more like a call for customers to use their cards to rack up some good ol' American debt. I hope not very many people have to take them up on their offer. Evacuating for a hurricane is a perfect example of why families need an emergency fund.
It's one thing to understand what just happened to the financial markets, and yet another to actually be able to explain what just happened. Thankfully, Steven Levitt from Freakonomics walked down the hall and found two economists from the University of Chicago (Doug Diamond and Anil Kashyap,) who gave him the best explanation I've been able to find about what the hell just happened.
From A.I.G. and credit default swaps to why Bear Stearns got a bailout but Lehman Brothers did not, this Q&A sheds some much appreciated light on the most nagging puzzles presented to us in the past week.
Here's a taste:
The Fannie and Freddie situation was a result of their unique roles in the economy. They had been set up to support the housing market. They helped guarantee mortgages (provided they met certain standards), and were able to fund these guarantees by issuing their own debt, which was in turn tacitly backed by the government. The government guarantees allowed Fannie and Freddie to take on far more debt than a normal company. In principle, they were also supposed to use the government guarantee to reduce the mortgage cost to the homeowners, but the Fed and others have argued that this hardly occurred. Instead, they appear to have used the funding advantage to rack up huge profits and squeeze the private sector out of the "conforming" mortgage market. Regardless, many firms and foreign governments considered the debt of Fannie and Freddie as a substitute for U.S. Treasury securities and snapped it up eagerly.
Fannie and Freddie were weakly supervised and strayed from the core mission. They began using their subsidized financing to buy mortgage-backed securities which were backed by pools of mortgages that did not meet their usual standards. Over the last year, it became clear that their thin capital was not enough to cover the losses on these subprime mortgages. The massive amount of diffusely held debt would have caused collapses everywhere if it was defaulted upon; so the Treasury announced that it would explicitly guarantee the debt.
But once the debt was guaranteed to be secure (and the government would wipe out shareholders if it carried through with the guarantee), no self-interested investor was willing to supply more equity to help buffer the losses. Hence, the Treasury ended up taking them over.
Awhile ago we told you the story of Leo Hildebrand, the 104-year-old Cubs fan whose one big wish was to throw out the first pitch for a game at Wrigley Field. Of course he'd probably need a relay man, and a diaper change to complete the task. But still, how could the Cubs deny the only person in Chicago who was alive when the team last won a World Series? The cry of Let Leo Pitch resonated throughout Cubdome.
But it was not to be. Cubs spokesman Jason Carr — who in his spare time steals Christmas gifts from Whoville residents — said that the team "can't accommodate everyone." Yeah, pretty lame. But perhaps to stem a flow of negative publicity, the Cubs said that they will bring Leo to a game this weekend and let him sit in the Cubs dugout.
David Marggraf, the executive director of the senior living community where Hildebrand lives, said the Cubs were "very, very helpful." They offered him four free tickets and the chance to meet the players before the game.
I guess the CEO's felt Bush needed to make an appearance today so he made one, a really, really brief one. Bush usually makes time for questions to the press pool, he calls them funny names and tries to make a joke or two, but instead hurriedly ran off the stage. I guess it's tough to face the music when his administration is responsible for the worst economic collapse we've seen since the depression. Usually he'll make believe there really are no problems going on, (remember when he seemed oblivious to gas at 4$ a gallon?) but not today.
WH: THE PRESIDENT: The American people are concerned about the situation in our financial markets and our economy, and I share their concerns. I've canceled my travel today to stay in Washington, where I will continue to closely monitor the situation in our financial markets and consult with my economic advisors. I spoke to Secretary Paulson this morning, and I will meet with him later on today.
In recent weeks, the federal government has taken extraordinary measures to address the challenges confronting our financial markets. We've taken control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the home finance agencies — to help promote market stability and to ensure they can continue to play a role in helping our housing market recover. This week, the Federal Reserve acted to prevent the disorderly failure of the insurance company AIG — a development that could have caused a severe disruption in our financial markets and threatened other sectors of the economy.
Yesterday, the Security and Exchange Commission took action to strengthen investor protections and step up its enforcement actions against illegal market manipulation. Last night, the Federal Reserve, in coordination with central banks around the world, took a substantial step to provide additional liquidity to the U.S. financial system.
These actions are necessary, and they're important. And the markets are adjusting to them. Our financial markets continue to deal with serious challenges. As our recent actions demonstrate, my administration is focused on meeting these challenges. The American people can be sure we will continue to act to strengthen and stabilize our financial markets and improve investor confidence.
Last night in a joint townhall meeting, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) touted their supposed support for gender equality, especially equal pay. Palin called herself "a product of Title IX" and declared she and McCain would "create more legislation" to ensure equal pay. McCain jumped in and declared himself an equally ardent supporter of women's rights, pledging his administration would go to court to protect workplace equality:
PALIN: I was a product of Title IX where legislation allowed that equal opportunity. Now if we still have to keep going down that road to create more legislation to get with it in the 21st century to make sure that women have equality, especially in the work place, then we're there. […]
MCCAIN: I want to assure you, that we not only have a role model, but we will hire people and we will make sure people come to our administration wherever there is discrimination. We will eliminate it, we will fight it, and if necessary we'll take 'em to court. We'll do those things.
McCain's determination to take discriminatory employers "to court" sure would come as a surprise to Lilly Ledbetter, the woman who sued Goodyear Tire for discrimination after she was paid less than her male coworkers for nearly twenty years. The Supreme Court dismissed her case because she had not filed it within 180 days of her very first discriminatory paycheck — despite the fact she had no idea she was being paid less.
To recap: McCain opposed a bill that would have made it easier for women to sue over pay discrimination. Perhaps what he meant was that he'll "take 'em to court" only "in concept."
Northern Virginia Republicans, realizing they need to improve their appeal among the region's large ethnic population, will stage a "unity" rally Saturday that they say will draw 1,000 people.
Organizers said the annual rally, which has grown in recent years, is particularly significant this year because ethnic minorities represent an increasingly powerful voting bloc that will help decide which presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. John McCain, wins the state Nov. 4.
…Hyland said he expects as many as 1,000 supporters to turn out for the event at Edison High School, where former senator George Allen and Reps. Tom Davis and Frank R. Wolf are expected to speak. Former Virginia governor James S. Gilmore III is planning to attend, as is a widely known surrogate from McCain's campaign, organizers said.
Yesterday in his town hall meeting with Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) advocated offshore oil drilling by pushing three myths: 1) Hurricanes won't damage oil rigs, 2) Fish love oil rigs, and 3) Cuba is allowing China to drill near the U.S. coast:
McCAIN: An oil rig off of the Louisiana coast. It survived hurricanes. It is safe, it is sound, and to somehow —
And by the way, on that oil rig — and I'm sure you've probably heard this story — you look down, and there's fish everywhere! There's fish everywhere! Yeah, the fish love to be around those rigs. So not only can it be helpful for energy, it can be helpful for some pretty good meals as well. […]
As far as China and Cuba are concerned, we continue to hear that there is negotiations or conversations or — I'm not exactly sure what the state of play is, but it's not a healthy thing, obviously.
MYTH #2: Fish love oil rigs. McCain is pushing an oil industry talking point. While marine biologists have seen fish congregating around oil rigs, it doesn't mean they are good for wildlife. "That's like taking a picture of birds on a telephone wire and saying it's essential habitat," said the Environmental Defense Center's Linda Krop. Without the platforms, fish would likely return to natural reefs.
MYTH #3: Cuba is allowing China to drill near the U.S. coast. The Congressional Research Service has unequivocally concluded that Cuba has not permitted China to drill near the U.S. coastline in the Gulf of Mexico. Even Vice President Cheney has admitted this talking point is false.
McCain's second claim is especially silly. Not too long ago, conservatives were also trying to argue that the United States should start drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Reserve because oil pipelines would "become a meeting ground and 'coffee klatch' for caribou." (HT: AMERICAblog)
The House approved a package of energy initiatives yesterday, including measures that would allow oil drilling as close as 50 miles off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and finance the long-term development of alternative energy sources.
Defense attorneys for Blackwater Worldwide employees are trying to head off Justice Department charges against the company's bodyguards who were involved in the deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians exactly one year ago.
In a meeting with prosecutors Tuesday, the Blackwater guards' legal team outlined legal and factual reasons the Justice Department would lose at trial if they are indicted, three people close to the investigation said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the ongoing investigation.
Prosecutors agreed to take Blackwater's argument into consideration but did not indicate whether they would continue to pursue charges or drop the case. The company itself is not a target of the investigation and has pledged to cooperate with the probe.
Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd declined to comment.
For months, a federal grand jury has been investigating the fatal shooting of the civilians, including several young children, in Baghdad's Nisoor Square on Sept. 16, 2007. As few as three bodyguards have been targeted for prosecution, according to lawyers close to the case.
Based in Moyock, N.C., Blackwater has played down suggestions that indictments could hurt the company.
In an interview with The Associated Press in July, Blackwater president Gary Jackson predicted that charges would have few negative effects.
"Our Internet sales will go through the roof," Jackson quipped. "There will be more people on our Web site than you can shake a stick at. And guess what? We're going to weather that one, too."
Blackwater maintains its convoy was under attack before it opened fire in self-defense. Follow-up investigations by the Iraqi government and the U.S. military, however, concluded that Blackwater's men were unprovoked.
Meanwhile, the government's investigation has hit several legal snags _ chief among them promises of limited immunity to the guards.
That issue was one of Blackwater's top defenses Tuesday, with lawyers arguing that the Justice Department investigation may have been influenced by information gathered during an initial probe by the State Department immediately after the shootings. The State Department agreed that the bodyguards' statements would only be used internally - and not for criminal prosecutions.
That means the statements could not be used at trial, forcing prosecutors to build a case based on other evidence from a crime scene that was then weeks old.
Additionally, the Blackwater guards' attorneys argued that the Justice Department would not be able to prove it has jurisdiction to bring criminal charges.
Blackwater and other contractors operate in a legal gray area. They are immune from prosecution in Iraqi courts. If the Justice Department wants to bring criminal charges such as assault, manslaughter or murder in a U.S. court, prosecutors would have to do so under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act.
That would require the government to show that State Department contractors were "supporting the mission of the Department of Defense overseas." Blackwater, however, claims that its contract guarding diplomats was a purely a State Department function, one independent from the Pentagon.
That could give Blackwater the legal cover it needs to avoid charges against its employees.
In a test case last month, a former Marine accused of war crimes in Iraq was acquitted on federal manslaughter charges. The civilian jurors said later the case should have been tried in a military court because they had no combat experience.
Rep. David Price, D-N.C., is seeking to close the law's loophole, but in a statement this week he blamed unidentified senators and Bush administration officials for blocking his efforts.
Human rights advocates said they were outraged that even after a year, the government so far has failed to charge the bodyguards.
"A year later, we are still waiting for justice in this case," said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA. "Robust protections must be in place to guarantee that personnel are held accountable for indiscriminate shootings and killings of civilians."
I don’t think anyone who wants to increase the burden of government regulation and higher taxes has any real understanding of economics and the economy and what is needed in order to ensure the future of this country.” – John McCain[McCain Town Hall in Inez, Kentucky, 4/23/08]
McCain Is An Avid Supporter Of Lax Rules For Financial Institutions
McCain Supported A Banking Bill Because It Eliminated “The Tremendous Regulatory Burden Imposed On Financial Institutions.” While speaking in favor of bank deregulation on the floor of the senate, John McCain said, “This legislation takes a small but important step toward eliminating the tremendous regulatory burden imposed on financial institutions… One principal reason banks are unable to make loans is the bewildering array of statutory and regulatory restrictions and paperwork requirements imposed by Congress and the regulatory agencies. While a case can certainly be made that every law and regulation is intended to serve a laudable purpose, the aggregate effect of the rapidly increasing regulatory burden imposed on banks is to cause them to devote substantial time, energy and money to compliance rather than meeting the credit needs of the community.” [Congressional Record, 11/19/93; emphasis added]
McCain Supported A Bill To “Takes A Small Step Forward Toward Eliminating Unnecessary Regulatory Burdens Imposed On Banks.” While speaking in favor of bank deregulation on the floor of the senate, John McCain said, “While a case can certainly be made that every law and regulation is intended to serve a laudable purpose, the aggregate effect of the rapidly increasing regulatory burden imposed on banks is to cause them to devote substantial time, energy and money to compliance rather than meeting the credit needs of the community … This bill recognizes this fact, and takes a small step forward toward eliminating unnecessary regulatory burdens imposed on banks.” [Congressional Record, 11/19/93; emphasis added]
McCain Said The Best Thing Government Can Do For Business Is “Stay Out Of Its Way.” While speaking about the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act on the floor on the Senate in 2000, John McCain said, “I am convinced that the best thing government can often do to advance the fortunes of the private sector is to stay out of its way. I support this bill because it makes progress toward that end, by improving companies’ flexibility to hire the talent they need, while providing for the regulatory framework and new educational opportunities to protect and promote American workers.” [Congressional Record, 10/3/00; emphasis added]
In 1999, McCain Supported Phil Gramm’s Banking Deregulation Bill. In 1999, John McCain voted for passage of the Senate version of a bill that would eliminate current barriers erected by the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and other laws that impede affiliations between banking, securities, insurance and other firms. The bill also would exempt small, non-urban banks from the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), revise the Federal Home Loan Bank system and require that owners of automated teller machines (ATMs) provide notice on the ATM and on-screen of any charges imposed for the use of the terminal. The bill passed 54-44. [S. 900, Vote #105, 5/6/99]
McCain Missed The Vote For Final Passage Because He Was Campaigning In New Hampshire. John McCain missed the final vote on Phil Gramm’s banking deregulation bill because he was campaigning in New Hampshire. [NPR, “Morning Edition,” 11/5/99; S. 900, Vote #354, 11/4/99]
McCain Has Based His 2008 Campaign On Promoting Less Regulation
McCain: “I Don’t Think Anyone Who Wants To Increase The Burden Of Government Regulation And Higher Taxes Has Any Real Understanding Of Economics.” During a McCain Town Hall in Inez, Kentucky, John McCain said, “When we come out of this recession and we will because I believe that the fundamentals of our economy are good … Sen. Clinton wants the government to make the decisions for you on your health care, I want the families to make the decisions on their health care. I don’t think anyone who wants to increase the burden of government regulation and higher taxes has any real understanding of economics and the economy and what is needed in order to ensure the future of this country.” [McCain Town Hall in Inez, Kentucky, 4/23/08; emphasis added]
McCain: “I Understand Why The AFL-CIO And Maybe Other Unions May Oppose My Free Market, Less Regulation, Right To Work.” During an appearance on Fox’s “Special Report with Brit Hume,” John McCain said, “I understand why the AFL-CIO and maybe other unions may oppose my free market less regulation right to work. I think we have honest differences of opinion. I respect those labor unions, but I’m sure that those differences are very intense and very real.” [Fox News,” Special Report with Brit Hume,” 3/12/08]
McCain: “Let’s Reduce Regulation.” While speaking about the economy in St. Louis, Missouri, John McCain said, “I’m asked all the time are we in a recession or not in a recession. And I don’t know the answer to that because it’s kind of a technical term… I do not believe we should raise your taxes. I think it would be the worst thing we could do. And that means to me I think the tax cuts need to be made permanent. When you’ve got a bad economy, the worst thing you can do is increase people’s tax burden. Let’s reduce it. Let’s reduce regulation.” [CNN, “Ballot Bowl, 3/15/08]
McCain: “We Need To Return To The Reagan Years… We Need Less Regulation.” As shown on PBS’s “Washington Week,” John McCain said, “We need to return to the Reagan years. We need to have fiscal conservatism. We need less government. We need less regulation. We need to end of spending spree which has eroded our base of Republican support.” [PBS, “Washington Week,” 1/25/08]
McCain Promised To “Give Them Lower Taxes, Less Regulation, Less Government In Their Lives.” As shown on CNN’s “CNN Newsroom,” John McCain said, “We’ve got to do the other things necessary to encourage business and give them lower taxes, less regulation, less government in their lives, and that means a simpler, fairer — tax code. The tax code in America is broken and it needs to be fixed.” [CNN, “CNN Newsroom,” 2/14/08]
To Fix the Economy, McCain Would “We’ve Got To Take Specific Actions, Keep Their Taxes Low, Less Regulation.” As shown on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” John McCain said, “That our economy is in terrible shape, that we’ve got to take specific actions, keep their taxes low, less regulation, get - start exploring and exploiting offshore oil deposits.” [ABC, “Good Morning America,” 7/2/08]
McCain Said The Difference Between Obama & Himself Would Be “More Regulation Or Less Regulation.” During a media availability in Phoenix, Arizona, John McCain said, “I think the important thing is that there will be stark differences between either Senator [Clinton] or Senator Obama and me because they are liberal Democrats and I’m a conservative Republican… whether we pursue the present strategy in Iraq or whether we — or whether we set a date for withdrawal, which will mean Al Qaida wins; whether we have more regulation or less regulation.” [McCain Media Availability via CQ Transcriptions, 3/3/08; emphasis added]
McCain: “Less Government, Lower Taxes, Less Regulation, Safer America Is What I Can Give America.” During an appearance on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” John McCain said, “I can make a case that a less government, lower taxes, less regulation, safer America is what I can give America. But I don’t underestimate the size of the challenge.” [CBS, “60 Minutes,” 3/9/08]
McCain Is Long-Time Supporter Of Deregulation
McCain: “I Am A Deregulator. I Believe In Deregulation.” While speaking about the cable and satellite television during an appearance on CNN’s “On the Money,” John McCain said, “I am a deregulator. I believe in deregulation.” [CNN, “In the Money,” 7/13/03]
McCain: “The Basic Core Principles Of The Republican Party… Less Government Is Best Government, Less Regulation.” When asked how the Republican Party can recover after the losses in the 2006 election, John McCain said, “By returning to the basic core principles of the Republican Party, very careful stewardship of tax dollars, less government is best government, less regulation, lower taxes, strong national defense, community and family values.” [CNN, “CNN Newsroom,” 11/8/06]
McCain: “I Have A Long Voting Record In Support Of Deregulation.” The St. Petersburg Times quoted McCain at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing as having said, “I have a long voting record in support of deregulation.” [St. Petersburg Times, 6/5/03]
McCain: “I Continue To Believe In A Strong National Defense, Free Trade, Deregulation.” During an appearance on CNN’s “Wolf Blitzer Reports,” John McCain said, “I continue to believe in a strong national defense, free trade, deregulation. I’m pro-life. There are many, many issues that I feel would make it very difficult for Democrats to embrace me.” [CNN, “Wolf Blitzer Reports,” 5/8/02; emphasis added]
McCain: “Keep The Regulation Of The Government As Much As Possible Out Of People’s Lives.” During an appearance on PBS’s “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” John McCain said, “If you inspect my 17-year voting record, it’s a proud conservative Republican who acts on principles and one who obviously has a very strong commitment to the leadership role the United States has to play… I think that’s probably one of our first efforts - keep the regulation of the government as much as possible out of people’s lives.” [PBS, “NewHour with Jim Lehrer,” 2/2/00]
McCain: “I Believe In Smaller Government… Less Regulation.” During an interview on PBS’s “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” John McCain said, “, I would argue that I have 17 years of legislative experience with a clear voting record of a strong conservative. I believe in smaller government, stronger defense, lower taxes, less regulation, encouragement of entrepreneurship, encouragement of legal immigration. I think that my fundamental philosophies and beliefs are very clear, and I’ve articulated them for years and years. And most importantly, I voted on them.” [PBS, “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” 10/15/99]
McCain: “I’ve Been A Good Party Member. I Agree On Most Issues, Fundamentals Of Lower Taxes, Less Regulation.” During an appearance on CNN’s “Crossfire,” John McCain said, “I’ve been a good party member. I agree on most issues, fundamentals of lower taxes, less regulation, smaller government, coherent foreign policy, strong national defense.” [CNN, “Crossfire,” 9/13/99]
McCain Supports Deregulation Whenever Possible. The Journal of Commerce reported, “A McCain aide notes in the past he has supported deregulation of other industries. ‘Any time you can responsibly deregulate, Sen. McCain wants to deregulate,’ the aide said.” [Journal of Commerce, 1/6/97]
Verizon, which has no problem helping the government spy on its customers, suddenly turned stupid in June when a police department asked them for help finding the body of a woman who had been abducted on camera. Despite pleas from the woman's parents, the police, and the FBI, it was four days before a technician was sent out to the appropriate cell tower. When that technician gave the police the location info, they found Kelsey Smith's body within 45 minutes. Verizon won't respond to requests for an explanation of why they couldn't help sooner.
The Johnson County District Attorney, Phill Kline, told Fox News that Verizon not only seemed unhelpful, but possibly incompetent:
We did have a problem with Verizon. We're talking about 3 hours afterwards, they [the police] were already pushing for this information, with the sergeant speaking to Verizon directly at 2:30 a.m., demanding that this information be provided and it wasn't.
There was a lack of understanding on their end of what they were incapable of doing. I was on the conference call with Verizon, and we had three technicians telling us different things and using different terms, and we can't guess their mind. We've got a girl that's missing. We have a girl that's missing, we have a likely abduction, we need to find her.
Everyone involved in the search has made it clear that Verizon's incompetence had nothing to do with Kelsey's death, but it could have made the search a lot shorter, and saved a lot of people unnecessary grief. Unfortunately, when Verizon's president met with Kline and Kelsey's parents two months later, he brought three lawyers with him for protection.
Kelsey's mom told Fox, "If [Verizon] brought them because you think we're here to sue you, that's not what this is about." Says Kline, "They didn't realize that they have an opportunity... to establish a course that leads the way that is right and responsible, and instead they chose a different posture, and that's unfortunate."
Kelsey's mom:
We almost didn't get to say to goodbye to Kelsey, because of her body decomposition from being out there so long.
Kelsey's dad:
We never did get a why, that was the thing that was so frustrating, why can't you do this. That question was never answered.
WaMu has begun to try to sell itself. So far, no takers. If no one buys it, one of two things will happen. Either it will be placed into a conservatorship, like IndyMac, or form a bridge bank, a kind of temporary bank. So the question for depositors is: wait to find out who your new masters are, or pull out now and decide for yourself?
Looking presidential as he discussed Monday's stock market crash in Golden, Colorado, this is what Senator Barack Obama stated, "This morning, instead of offering up concrete plans to solve these issues, Sen. McCain offered up the oldest Washington stunt in the book – you pass the buck to a commission to study the problem," He then went onto say, "But here's the thing – this isn't 9/11. We know how we got into this mess. What we need now is leadership that gets us out." The somber tone used showed just how grave this crash was to those affected and those who will be affected as this shockwave ripples out.This was the Barack Obama that Americans needed to see.
In speaking of commissions this is what I wrote in a previous column where McCain was not in favor of one when it came to Hurricane Katrina, "According toFactCheck.org, when it came to voting for independent investigations after Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast, "McCain actually voted twice, in 2005 and 2006, to defeat a Democratic amendment that would have set up an independent commission along the lines of the 9/11 Commission." While one was a natural disaster, this one is man made.In both cases human lives were/are destroyed.One from Mother Nature's wrath and one from man's greed.
While some may question what leadership will come from him, all I can say is look at the failed leadership coming from Bush and McCain that led to this shockwave felt clear across the country. For his close ties to Bushanomics, McCain must share the blame.
As McCain cited that the "fundamentals of this economy are strong", I wonder how those words were taken by those who were forced to clean out their desks when the DOW crashed by over 500 points this past Monday.I suppose many of them as they traveled home to their families did so in fear.
When Sarah Palin stated yet again, "We are going to shake things up in Washington" those who lost their jobs this past Monday are already shaken to the core.
The McCain/Palin response to this magnitude eight crash showed no emotional connection to those affected or we the people wanting to know how our futures will be.
Both of their responses were programmed responses similar to the ones they have been giving on the campaign trail and we deserve more than that.I was almost waiting for Sarah Palin to speak out on the bridge to no where.Meanwhile a financial bridge was blown up in front of our eyes on Monday.If she did say that again, someone alert me.
In his stump speech before a crowd gathered in Media, Pennsylvania Senator Joe Biden called McCain, "Bush 44" since he relayed to all there will be no difference.
Biden also said this of McCain concerning the devastating crash on Wall Street, "Today he's talking about the greed of Wall Street. Yesterday, the day before, a week before, two years before, he was on Wall Street, heralding the fact that he was proudly shredding whatever regulation and oversight that in fact worked to manage these markets that now he calls greedy,"
After his stump speech in Media, Pennsylvania, he took an Amtrak train back to Wilmington, Delaware. I suppose using humor, this is what was written of him, "You're on television now, I'm sorry, can't control this," he told one passenger, explaining the ever-present camera crew accompanying him on board. "If we get elected, it will be the most train-friendly administration ever," he told another." That speaks volumes in how he is connected with the American people.
I do think it is about time to hear more of what Biden has to say; don't you?
In the days, weeks, and months ahead, I suppose those laid off this past Monday as their personal earthquake shook their world, many will need 'community organizers' to help them strategize how they will go on. They will need their fellow Americans coming to their aid in how to navigate and chart a course for what is now an uncertain future.
While the character Gordon Gekko played by Michael Douglas stated that "Greed is good" I can't help but think that the greed shown by the executives of these various companies destroyed so many lives. His speech in that movie is at the very heart of what transpired on Monday and it needs a leader today to help solve this crisis and not a man who will kick the can down the road.Those who lost their jobs are trembling in fear wondering how they will survive.
FAIRBANKS — A nonpartisan fact-checking organization says Gov. Sarah Palin is "not even close" to the truth in her claims that Alaska supplies 20 percent of the country's energy.
FactCheck.org said Sen. John McCain also is wrong when he touts Palin as being in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply.
Both candidates issued the claims in interviews with ABC's Charles Gibson. Palin also made the claim at a campaign event Monday in Golden, Colo.
Palin was interviewed several times during two days last week in Alaska by Gibson. According to the transcript on ABC's Web site, www.abc.com, Palin said, "Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that's with the energy independence that I've been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy."
Hold it right there, FactCheck.org says. Twenty percent?
"If you're going to be an energy expert — if that's going to be your credential for being vice president of the United States — you should at least be able to get the numbers straight," said Brooks Jackson, director of FactCheck.org.
For 2007, Alaska is credited with 14 percent of U.S. domestic oil production, or 263.6 million barrels, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. However, Alaska accounts for only 5 percent of U.S. oil supplies, which come from foreign and domestic sources. But, Palin failed to qualify the stats as oil-only production. Alaska was responsible for 3.5 percent of domestic energy production and only 2.4 percent of total energy consumed in the U.S.
"Either way, whether she meant total energy production or total energy consumption, she was off by a full order of magnitude," Jackson said. "I'm sure it was true once, that Alaska produced 20 percent of the oil produced in the U.S., but certainly not 20 percent of the oil consumed in the U.S."
In a Sept. 3 interview with Gibson, McCain, talking about his running mate, said: "This is a very dynamic person. (Palin has) been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply."
According to the fact-checking group, McCain used the figure again in an interview Thursday with a Maine news station.
When questioned, a campaign spokesman said Palin was referring to "oil and gas production," Jackson said. "Lumping oil and gas in together really gets you farther away from the 20 percent figure. ... Her statistics were way off."
The factcheck.org account says that McCain's campaign pointed to the Resource Development Council for Alaska for the citation.
The nonprofit council is funded by its members, businesses and individuals from many resource sectors to promote responsible development of Alaska's resources, including support for mining, oil and gas, fishing, timber and tourism industries.
The McCain campaign did not return a call by press time asking for comment.
Jackson said political reporters seem to be paying more attention to the factual accuracy of what candidates are claiming this year — and that they're getting frustrated when candidates called out on factual errors keep handing out the same message.
In particular, he said, Palin and McCain were put to task last week on claims that Palin told Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks," on the so-called Bridge to Nowhere, as she has repeated often on the campaign trail. Yet, Palin kept using the phrase in speeches.
"For a lot of reporters, this was kind of a slap in the face," Jackson said.
"I think you saw quite a reaction to that."
Palin hadn't even taken office when Congress removed a controversial earmark on money for two Alaska bridges, the Knik Arm bridge near Anchorage and a separate bridge that would have linked Ketchikan with its airport on Gravina Island.
The state got the money anyway, based on a federal transportation funding formula.
Her claims about the bridge are wrong in another sense, which has earned her a "flip-flopper" tag from another fact-checking group, PolitiFact.com.
After winning the gubernatorial primary but before the 2006 general election, a Palin spokesperson, Curtis Smith, told the Associated Press that Palin supported the Ketchikan bridge project.
By early February, the new governor, Palin, had cut funding for Ketchikan's bridge from a state budget proposed by former Gov. Frank Murkowski.
In September 2007, Palin directed the state Department of Transportation to find a fiscally responsible alternative for access to Ketchikan's airport. She said that without federal funding, the state would not be able to afford a bridge and should instead upgrade the existing ferry system, according to an Associated Press news article.
FactCheck.org is a consumer advocate for voters, "a place where perplexed, confused voters can go when they hear dubious claims from candidates … or when they hear conflicting claims," Jackson said.
The organization is not so bold as to think its work will change politicians' behavior. But, Jackson said, voters should know candidates are at best giving only one side of the story, and, at worst, embellishing or falsifying.
Fact-checking groups can iron out the talk and offer up straight information.
"You can't count on just listening to the candidates to get the full picture," he said.
Faulty claims can be even more damaging when they're tied to a basic premise.
McCain is zeroing in on Palin's experience with oil and gas issues as a way to ground his claims that she is ready for the vice presidency.
After her tenure as mayor of Wasilla, Palin served about a year on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, a $118,000-per-year appointment. The quasi-judicial state agency manages oil and gas drilling, development and production and other matters on land that falls under the state's jurisdiction.
The commission's general concern is protection of health, safety and the environment.
Palin also is credited with securing a deal that could spur construction of a 1,715 mile long natural gas pipeline from Alaska's far north, with an estimated 224 trillion cubic feet of natural gas resources, to a major natural gas hub in Alberta, Canada.
The deal, forged under the state's Alaska Gasline Inducement Act, gives TransCanada $500 million in state funds as reimbursement for costs incurred in obtaining pipeline regulatory approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The license does not guarantee that the project — billed as the largest construction project in North America — will actually get off the ground.
Alaska political leaders have sought a natural gas line for years. When Palin took office, she scrapped plans made by her predecessor, Gov. Frank Murkowski, with producers. Instead, in early 2007, Palin proposed AGIA as a transparent, competitive process.
After more than a month of hearings, the Legislature granted an AGIA license to TransCanada in August, as the project that would "maximize benefits to Alaskans," according to findings by the state Department of Natural Resources.
TransCanada was the sole applicant to meet all the state's criteria.
Palin actively promoted TransCanada's proposal before a legislature that was, at times, divided on whether to issue the license.
At a Fairbanks rally Sept. 10 welcoming her return to Alaska, Palin said national energy dependence will start in Alaska with the gas line.
"When the last section of that pipeline is laid and the valves are open, our state — our state — Alaska will be a leader in energy policy and our state will have brought Americans one step closer to energy independence and one step closer to an America free of foreign suppliers that do not have our interests at heart," Palin said.
CNN) — Top McCain-Palin official Carly Fiorina is facing criticism from some within the campaign for a day of what they call "very Biden-like" comments, after the former Hewlett-Packard CEO told two separate interviewers that neither member of the Republican ticket would be capable of running a company.
Democratic VP nominee Joe Biden is noted for his off-the-cuff gaffes.
Asked by a St. Louis radio station whether she thought Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin could run a company like Hewlett-Packard, Fiorina responded: "No, I don't.
"But that's not what she's running for. Running a corporation is a different set of things."
Asked about that remark on MSNBC, she made the same unprompted assessment of the GOP presidential nominee. "I don't think John McCain could run a major corporation."
She also said she did not believe Democrats Barack Obama or Joe Biden had the right business background either.
But with the economy center stage in the campaign, the words that gave Democrats easy fodder to attack the Republican ticket.
A top McCain official contacted by CNN said, on condition on anonymity, "No big deal, but not how you get on the surrogate all-star team. Very Biden-like."
"This campaign source said Fiorina would be discouraged from additional media interviews.
Another top campaign adviser was far less diplomatic.
"Carly will now disappear," this source said. "Senator McCain was furious." Asked to define "disappear," this source said, adding that she would be off TV for a while – but remain at the Republican National Committee and keep her role as head of the party's joint fundraising committee with the McCain campaign.
Fiorina was booked for several TV interviews over the next few days, including one on CNN. Those interviews have been canceled.
A third source said "it was another bad day for her, and important people are mad because the timing is horrible… But I would not necessarily buy the Siberia storyline."
Fiorina has forced the campaign off message before. In July, she told reporters women often express frustration over the fact many health insurance plans cover Viagra but not birth control medication.
"Let me give you a real, live example, which I've been hearing a lot about from women. There are many health insurance plans that will cover Viagra but won't cover birth control medication. Those women would like a choice," she said.
It was a topic McCain wasn't as keen to talk about. "I certainly do not want to discuss that issue," he said, when reporters asked if he shared that view." That comment, and the pause that preceded it, captured headlines for days.
NEW YORK, Sept 17 (Reuters) - The yield on 3-month U.S. Treasury bills <US3MT=RR> fell to 0.02 percent early afternoon New York trade on Wednesday amid investors' panicked scramble into the safe haven of ultra short-dated government securities, traders said.
The 3-month U.S. Treasury bill yield "last traded at 0.02 percent as an actual trade and may have traded negative earlier today," said Sean Murphy, Treasuries trader at RBC Capital Markets in New York, shortly after 12:30 p.m. EDT (1630 GMT).
The last time the 3-month U.S. T-bill yield was at or below zero was in January 1940, said Bryan Taylor, chief economist with Global Financial Data in Los Angeles.
Murphy cited "a flight to quality into the Treasury bill market." "People are just panicking and they just want their principal," he said.
Andrew Brenner, analyst at MF Global Inc, said the 3-month bill traded at 0.02 percent.
"Probably there's disappointment in the Fed's decision (to hold interest rates unchanged) yesterday and what's transpiring is that banks are just pulling back and not lending and not being able to get the funding they need," Murphy said.
(Reporting by John Parry; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
It was inevitable. James Taranto of WSJ knows that the current market crisis is an albatross around John McCain's neck. Today, he tried his best to deflect attention to the Democratic Party's vote on a bill which lies at the nucleus of Wall Street's bloodletting - naming Joe Biden and Harry Reid as having supported that bill, and exonerating John McCain.
Problem is, he is lying. Follow me across the fold and I'll explain.
Forewarning: I work in the financial industry, and am partial to fiscal conservatism. However, I hate being lied to, and I don't exactly have a soft spot in my heart for liars - especially those who work in or around my field of business. Proving my honesty to the general public is difficult enough as it is, without partisan clowns and snake-oil salesmen tilting the odds against me. So thanks very much, James Taranto. You just goaded me - a fiscal conservative - into posting my first DailyKos diary.
Idiot.
Anyhoo, on to the story.
You probably recognize this man.
That's Phil Gramm. The man who believes America to be a "nation of whiners." The man who introduced the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act to the Republican-dominated US Senate, and enabled its passage in the Senate, on the 6th of May, 1999. Remember that date.
Today, Harry Reid tore a strip out of Gramm and that radioactive bill, blaming it for the current market crisis:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) picked up on that line during a scathing floor speech Tuesday morning that compared Sen. McCain's (R-Ariz.) approach to the economy with that of the Hoover administration. In his speech, Reid blasted the Republican candidate's decision to choose Gramm as a top economic adviser.
"The same Phil Gramm who, as a senator, was responsible for deregulation in the financial services industries that paved the way for much of this crisis to occur," Reid said. "It was Phil Gramm who pushed legislation through a Republican Senate that allowed firms like Enron to avoid regulation and destroy the life savings of its employees, and it was Phil Gramm's legislation that now allows Wall Street traders to bid up the price of oil, leaving us to pay the bill."
Reid is correct. Gramm-Leach-Bliley effectively repealed the second Glass-Steagall Act which, among other things, barred investment banks and retail banks from merging. Gramm-Leach-Bliley effectively removed this restriction, allowing a single institution to both create a debt-based investment, and then facilitate its sale. Previously, with two institutions involved in that process (Three if you count the investment rating company - Moody's for example), there would have to be a high degree of clarity involved. One institution (Investment bank) wouldn't just buy, repackage, and re-sell another institution's (Retail bank) products without first understanding exactly what it was. It would also be far less likely to hold those assets and count them as capital.
With a single institution operating on both the commercial and investment banking fronts, the motive for clarity was eliminated.
Well, given that Reid is the Republican Party's favourite piñata, given that he squeals so well when the phrase "Do Nothing Congress" is tied to his name, one would naturally expect some blowback for that statement. James Taranto, of the Wall Street Journal, wasted no time:
Given those highly impolitic remarks, you can hardly blame Democrats for wanting to remind people about Gramm. But this particular line of attack is a bit problematic. As an unnamed McCain aide points out to the Hill, the chief House co-sponsor of the bill, then-Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa, is a co-founder of Republicans for Obama. If he has had second thoughts about banking deregulation, he did not mention them in his Democratic Convention speech.
In the Senate, Gramm-Leach-Bliley passed by a vote of 90-8 before being signed into law by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Among those voting "aye" were Scathing Sen. Harry Reid and Sen. Joe Biden, Barack Obama's running mate. John McCain was absent, off campaigning for the 2000 New Hampshire primary.
Two items of note.
This is the page that Taranto linked to in that first bold quote (90-8) as evidence of who did and did not vote for passage of the bill.
Using the roll call from that linked page, he says "John McCain was absent"
Problem is, that page is not a transcript of the roll call vote for the bill. This is. It took place on May 6, 1999. The page that Taranto linked to was a vote on the conference report, which took place 6 months after the bill had already passed in the senate, and just over a week before it was signed into law. The bill was not passed 90-8; it was passed 54-44, almost strictly down party lines (The lone Democrat to vote for the bill was Ernest Hollings of South Carolina).
This is the roll call from the actual Senate vote:
Just so we're clear here - Biden and Reid voted against that bill. McCain was, in fact, present for the vote.
He voted for it.
A simple Google search of "Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act" would lead, within two clicks, to the correct link that I provided above. Those two clicks would yield both the correct date of the bill, and the Senate roll call. To find that conference report roll call actually took some digging, and I'm just not going to give Taranto the benefit of the doubt that this was an honest mistake. He pulled a simple bait-and-switch, hoping no one would notice.
James Taranto is a liar. The Wall Street Journal just allowed one of its staff to perpetuate a blatant lie on its behalf.
I thought you should all know that.
Update: Whoops, sorry guys. The link to the correct Senate roll call was the same as the wrong one. That has been amended. Thanks for the comments - I've just rifled off an e-mail to the Wall Street Journal, informing them of their screwup. Let's see if it takes.
Update 2: Reclisted! Thanks so much, ladies and gents.
Update 3: I'm seeing a lot of comments about the significance of Democrats having voted for the Conference Report. I'll just go ahead and repost my reply to robertacker13:
"The Conference Report is nothing but an editing session. During the session, a a team picked from both the House and Senate meet in order to reconcile differences between the versions of the bills already passed in both chambers. This is the reason it took from May until November to get the bill passed. This is the reason GLBA passed that 4 November vote with such an overwhelming majority - it had already been approved in both houses, and the only formality left was for language to be amended by the conferees.
The 4 November vote was not a vote on the merits of the bill. It was a vote on the language of the bill.
Blocking the conference report does not kill a vote. Even if the report was voted against by every last Democrat, it was going to get pushed through anyway."
The biggest flub came this morning when McCain slammed Wall Street "fat cats" even though his single biggest donor is Merrill Lynch. After denouncing the very people that help pay for his campaign, McCain suggested the government set up a commission to look into what went wrong. Barack Obama criticized McCain for "passing the buck" on the economy:
Democratic candidate Barack Obama says he will take regulatory oversight seriously as president and accuses his Republican opponent, John McCain, of wanting to "pass the buck."
McCain proposed Tuesday to create a commission to study how the economic crisis came about. McCain compared it to the Sept. 11 commission established to investigate the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Evidence of evolutionary selection found in 544 genes: "(PhysOrg.com) -- By comparing the genomes of humans and five other mammals, Cornell researchers have identified 544 genes that have been shaped by positive selection over millions of years of evolution."
Shocking new photos released today reveal the existence of a massive stockpile of old-growth logs that are destined to become disposable products like Kleenex tissue and Cottonelle toilet paper for tissue giant Kimberly-Clark Corporation (K-C). The logs originate from the Ogoki Forest, the single most ecologically valuable area left in Ontario's southern Boreal Forest and the site of growing controversy.
The stockpile is evidence of Kimberly-Clark's egregious mismanagement of the forests despite company claims that "much of [the] fiber from the Canadian Boreal forest comes to K-C in the form of wood pulp produced from sawdust and chips – or leftovers – of the lumber production process."1
As these new photos and recent government correspondence reveal, Kimberly-Clark is currently purchasing huge quantities of pulp made primarily from whole, old-growth trees from intact areas of Canada's Boreal Forest. According to the Ontario Ministry of Environment, the stockpile contained 85,000 cubic metres of wood as of the end of March 2008. That's equivalent to over 7,000 logging trucks full of wood. Since the closure of an area sawmill in June 2008, this wood has been trucked to the Terrace Bay pulp mill where it is being turned directly into pulp for Kleenex and other disposable products. In total, the logs will have been trucked 6-7 hours from the forest to the mill.
What's worse, even with this massive stockpile of timber already cut and waiting to be pulped, the Ogoki Forest continues to be logged, largely in order to supply Kimberly-Clark.
The Ogoki Forest is the northernmost area in Ontario subject to logging. Unlike other forests in the province that have been logged for the last 70-100 years, the first industrial logging in Ogoki did not occur until 1998. For this reason, it is the most intact of all the forest management units in Ontario. Because the neighboring Kenogami Forest was managed so poorly by Kimberly-Clark and then Buchanan Forest Products, and because regeneration there has been so unsuccessful, logging company Buchanan is pushing further and further north to supply its pulp mill at Terrace Bay.
The size, location, and near pristine state of the Ogoki Forest make it critical habitat for the threatened woodland caribou, while its carbon-dense trees and soils make it critical for mitigating climate change. As detailed in Greenpeace's Cut & Run report, the Kenogami Forest was turned from a vast expanse of healthy, near-pristine forest to a severely damaged landscape rife with environmental problems during 70 years of mismanagement by K-C.2 The Ogoki Forest cannot be allowed to become the next Kenogami.
Unfortunately, as this new photographic evidence shows, Ogoki is already being subjected to the same gross mismanagement as the Kenogami. As incredible as it may seem, K-C is apparently willing to risk total devastation of yet another valuable eco-system in order to make its disposable paper products.
In light of the discovery of this staggering woodpile that was once pristine ancient Boreal Forest, Greenpeace is calling on Kimberly-Clark to ensure that no more fiber from the Ogoki Forest enters its product stream by immediately engaging with us and other stakeholders in a process to revise its ineffective and unsustainable fiber procurement policy.
- As of the end of March 2008, the stockpile contained 85,000 cubic metres of wood, equivalent to over 7,000 full logging trucks - According to the Ontario Ministry of Environment, the stockpile has now diminished to 12,000 cubic metres, as large amounts of pulp have been shipped to Terrace Bay for pulping since the shutdown of the Nakina sawmill in June - The distance between where the stockpiled wood was logged and where it will be pulped is an approximately 6-7 hour drive - Kimberly-Clark purchases 55 per cent of the 420,000 metric tonnes (462,970 tons) of pulp produced at the Terrace Bay pulp mill each year, an amount equal to the weight of over 1150 jumbo jets - Kimberly-Clark uses the pulp produced at Terrace Bay to make Kleenex, Cottonelle, Scott and Viva brand products that are sold across North America and Europe.
Tell Kimberly-Clark to stop destroying ancient forests!
NEW YORK -- Derek Jeter got to first base and heard the cheers. He had broken Lou Gehrig's record for hits at Yankee Stadium with his first-inning single, and the sellout crowd of 52,558 kept on applauding. Finally, after close to a minute, Jeter took off his helmet and waved it.
"I'm always a little uncomfortable in those situations," Jeter said.
Jeter
Jeter's hit off Gavin Floyd was his 1,270th in the 85-year-old ballpark, scheduled to close Sunday. But the skidding Yankees, who almost surely will miss the playoffs for the first time since 1993, lost to the Chicago White Sox 6-2 Tuesday night.
"It's kind of hard to enjoy it because we lost the game," Jeter said. "I was talking with my parents last night. They were saying, you know, you need to sit back and try to enjoy it while it's happening, because I'm always thinking about how we can win and things like that. But this is something that is pretty special. I mean, I'd be lying to you if I said it wasn't. Records are made to be broken, but this one at least will never be broken."
The hit came in Jeter's 8,002nd major league at-bat, and he passed Gehrig for second on the Yankees' career list behind Mickey Mantle (8,102). Jeter added a fifth-inning single.
"He's a true Yankee," manager Joe Girardi said. "I think he embodies what baseball people want to see in a player: a guy that goes about his business the right way. He stays out of the headlines. He just does a lot of great things. He's important to the community. He gives back all the time, to children, to everyone."
Gehrig played with New York from 1923 -- Yankee Stadium's opening season -- until 1939, when he retired due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He died of ALS two years later. The 34-year-old Jeter first came up to the Yankees in 1995 and like Gehrig became the team's captain.
While the Yankees have faded from contention, Jeter has played his best late this year. He is batting .397 since Aug. 12, raising his season average to .306.
Jeter said the attribute he admired most in Gehrig was his consistency.
"He was as consistent probably as any player that ever played the game. What he did year in, and year out, I think it's something that all players admire," he said.
White Sox third baseman Juan Uribe, playing on the edge of the infield grass, tried to backhand the sharp grounder in the first but it went under his glove.
There were camera flashes with every pitch thrown to Jeter in recent days. Jeter didn't want to react too quickly after reaching first base.
"I didn't know if it was a hit. You can't really tip your cap," he said.
Next year, New York moves to a new $1.3 billion Yankee Stadium, being built across the street.
But Jeter, surely the last of the Yankees with single-digit numbers, will always have the ball and the lineup card from this night. This record will stand forever.
"I don't know how many can't be broken," he said. "It's pretty special, this stadium. It's kind of funny how it all worked out."
Tuesday's roundup of killer freebies for Windows reminded me that I haven't covered iPhone/iPod Touch freeware in awhile, so here's another list of must-have apps that won't cost you a penny:
Air Sharing Turns your device into a portable, wireless hard drive and document viewer. Note: this jewel will eventually be priced at $6.99, but for the next few days you can snag it free.
Graphing Calculator Why spend big bucks on a graphing calculator when your iPhone/touch can do the job for nada? This uber-handy tool offers functions ranging from absolute value to tangent.
Hanoi A beautiful rendition of the classic Towers of Hanoi game. The object is simple: move a stack of disks from one side of the board to the other. I couldn't put it down.
Instapaper Free When you're browsing on your PC and come across a Web site (cough *Cheapskate* cough), blog post, news item, feature, or whatever that you want to read later, just click the Instapaper bookmarklet. Then fire up the Instapaper app on your iPhone, and presto: there's the Web page. Genius!
White Noise Having trouble getting to sleep? White Noise offers an assortment of ambient sounds--waves, rain, wind chimes, etc.--to help you drift off. And there's a shut-off timer so you don't wake up to a dead battery.
If you like this list, be sure to check out my original roundup of iPhone freebies and the sequel. In the meantime, hit the comments and vote for your favorite no-cost iPhone apps.
With all the hoopla surrounding a few stadiums closing this year, I decided to take another look through my scrapbooks. Why? To find a list of lasts at old Comiskey Park.
Some may be surprising, some may not. Either way, here are some of the lasts for that grand old park, now gone forever.
Last Sox player to come on the field to start the game: Carlton Fisk.
Last player to leave the field: Carlton Fisk.
Last ceremonial first pitch: By Mayor Daley to Steve Lyons.
Last Comiskey game time climate: sunny, 62 degrees, NW wind at 16 mph.
Last Comiskey roof shot by a left-hander: Dan Pasqua, May 30, 1989.
Last Comiskey roof shot by a right-hander: Ron Kittle, April 17, 1990.
Last grand slam: By Seattle's Alvin Davis, Sept. 28, 1990, off Steve Rosenberg.
Last no-hitter: Detroit pitcher Jack Morris, April 7, 1984.
Last triple: Dan Pasqua, Sept. 30, 1990, off Rich DeLucia.
Last double: By Seattle catcher Dave Valle, Sept. 30, 1990 (7th inning), off Jack McDowell.
Last homer: By Seattle's Alvin Davis, Sept. 29, 1990, off Eric King.
Last Sox victory: 2-1 over Seattle, Sept. 30, 1990.
Last Sox loss: 13-4 to Seattle, Sept. 28, 1990.
Last pitch: at 4:23 PM by Bobby Thigpen to Seattle's Harold Reynolds.
Last out: Seattle's Harold Reynolds groundout from second baseman Scott Fletcher to first baseman Steve Lyons.
Last songs: Kiss Him Goodbye and Auld Lang Syne.
Last strikeout: Seattle's Tino Martinez (8th inning), Sept. 30, 1990, by Jack McDowell.
Last Sox strikeout: Carlton Fisk (6th inning), Sept. 30, 1990, by Seattle's Rich Delucia.
Last wild pitch: by Jack McDowell to Seattle's Alvin Davis (6th inning), Sept. 30, 1990.
Last double play: by Seattle from second baseman Harold Reynolds to shortstop Omar Vizquel to first baseman Tino Martinez (hit by Lance Johnson forcing Ivan Calderon), in the 7th inning, Sept. 30, 1990.
Last Sox hit: Frank Thomas (8th inning), Sept. 30, 1990, off Seattle's Rich DeLucia.
Last hit: by Seattle pinch hitter Scott Bradley off Bobby Thigpen (9th inning), Sept. 30, 1990.
Last winning pitcher: Jack McDowell (14-9)
Last losing pitcher: Seattle's Rich DeLucia (1-2)
Last save: Bobby Thigpen, number 57, Sept. 30, 1990.
Last length of game: 2 hours, 43 minutes.
OK, how many of you lost money by not knowing that Dan Pasqua hit the last triple in old Comiskey Park? Yeah, me too.
***Update***
I used a vintage list from a local paper from 1990 when compiling this list. Since then, Andy Hawkins no-hitter on July 1, 1990 has been declared not an official no-hitter. I honestly had forgotten about that ruling. The list has been updated to reflect that.
A few more lasts that I have found.
Last hit by pitch: Eric King hit Seattle's Jay Buhner, Sept. 29, 1990.
Last cycle: Milwaukee's Robin Yount, June 12, 1988.
Last balk: Greg Hibbard, Sept. 26, 1990.
Last inside the park home run: Milwaukee's Robin Yount, Spet. 13, 1988.
Last sacrifice fly: Scott Fletcher, Sept. 29, 1990.
Last umpires: Joe Brinkman, Derryl Cousins, Rick Reed, Terry Cooney
Last managers: Jeff Torborg (White Sox), Jim Lefebvre (Mariners)
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) continues to insist that the "fundamentals of our economy are strong." As Eric Rauchway notes in the American Prospect, McCain's response to this economic crisis is reminiscent of President Herbert Hoover's "do-nothing" response to the Great Depression. On October 25, 1929, a day after what is now known as Black Thursday, Hoover declared:
The fundamental business of the country, that is the production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis.
On MSNBC's Morning Joe today, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney defended Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) attack ad against Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) that claims Obama wanted kindergarteners to be "learning about sex before learning to read." The ad has been denounced by non-partisan fact-checking organizations as "simply false" and a "Pants on Fire" lie.
"The specific bill that Barack Obama voted for calls for sex education beginning as low as the kindergarten," claimed Romney. Romney then declared that he and McCain both believe that "the only sex education that's appropriate in kindergarten is no sex education":
ROMNEY: Well, the specific bill that he, the specific bill that Barack Obama voted for calls for sex education beginning as low as the kindergarten and it includes in that bill language which says that each class is to learn about sexually transmitted diseases. And in my opinion, and John McCain and I share the same view, the only sex education that's appropriate in kindergarten is no sex education.
But Romney's claims don't match his own record on K-12 sex education. As ABC News pointed out recently, Massachusetts established a set of K-12 goals for the teaching of sex education prior to Romney's term as governor. "Those standards remained in place" during his tenure and "he did not challenge them."
Romney has also previously stated his support for "responsible, age-appropriate, factually accurate" sex education:
Planned Parenthood: Do you support the teaching of responsible, age-appropriate, factually accurate health and sexuality education, including information about both abstinence and contraception, in public schools?
Romney: Yes.
The bill cited by McCain, which Obama voted for in the Illinois State Senate, mandated that all sex education "be age and developmentally appropriate." Additionally, as MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski told Romney, under the legislation, "what kindergarteners would have been learning is how to protect themselves from predators."
Hey, I didn't make the rules that changing your mind based on changing information was "weak" and made you a "flip-flopper", Republicans did. So...sauce for the goose, baby.
John McCain, then:
In 2002, McCain introduced a bill to deregulate the broadband Internet market, warning that "the potential for government interference with market forces is not limited to federal regulation." Three years earlier, McCain had joined with other Republicans to push through landmark legislation sponsored by then-Sen. Phil Gramm (Tex.), who is now an economic adviser to his campaign. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act aimed to make the country's financial institutions competitive by removing the Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies.
That bill allowed AIG to participate in the gold rush of a rapidly expanding global banking and investment market. But the legislation also helped pave the way for companies such as AIG and Lehman Brothers to become behemoths laden with bad loans and investments.
John McCain, now:
McCain now condemns the executives at those companies for pursuing the ambitions that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act made possible, saying that "in an endless quest for easy money, they dreamed up investment schemes that they themselves don't even understand."
He said the misconduct was aided by "casual oversight by regulatory agencies in Washington," where he said oversight is "scattered, unfocused and ineffective."
"They haven't been doing their job right," McCain said yesterday, "or else we wouldn't have these massive problems on Wall Street, and that's a fact. At their worst, they've been caught up in Washington turf wars instead of working together to protect investors and the public interest."
Flip-flop! Flip-flop!
Now, I could be convinced to give McCain credit for adjusting to new information -- if he admitted that he had been wrong. But he hasn't. He's just hoping no one was paying attention, and that the Intart00bz don't exist, and that there isn't a record of his earlier support for regulation:
In 1995, he said that regulation was "destroying the American family, the American dream" and voters "want these regulations stopped."
In March of this year, he said "I'm always for less regulation," and that he's "fundamentally a deregulator. ..."
...unless deregulation stands in the way of him being president, in which case he sings a different tune.
So I wonder what the economic conservatives think of the new, regulation-friendly John McCain?
And I wonder when the media are going to pick up the "flip-flop" meme that they were so willing to use against John Kerry and turn it back on McCain?
On September 2, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) filed an ethics complaint against herself with the state's Personnel Board in an effort to move the "Troopergate" investigation from the state's legislature to the three-member board she oversees. Yesterday, Ed O'Callaghan, a former U.S. Attorney that the McCain campaign sent to Alaska to advise Palin's lawyers on the case, said Palin "is 100 percent going to cooperate with the Personnel Board inquiry." However, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff reports that O'Callaghan is actually in Alaska to shut down the investigation that Palin initiated:
Then this week, [Palin's attorney Thomas] Van Flein (again assisted by O'Callaghan) filed a new motion with the Personnel Board. This one argued that, after a review of the evidence, including internal e-mails within the governor's office, the governor's lawyers had determined there was "no probable cause" to pursue any ethics inquiry into Palin at all. As a result, it argued, the previous motion for an ethics inquiry (which Van Flein himself had filed less than two weeks ago) should be dismissed.
Yesterday, the federal government offered insurance giant AIG an $85 billion loan to in the biggest government takeover thus far in the ongoing credit crisis. Interviewed on NBC's Today Show before the decision yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that "we cannot have the taxpayers bail out AIG or anybody else":
No, I do not believe that the American taxpayer should be on the hook for AIG and I'm glad that the Secretary Paulson has apparently taken the same line.
Interviewed on ABC this morning, however, McCain suggested that he supported the bail out:
I didn't want to do that. And I don't think anybody I know wanted to do that. But there are literally millions of people whose retirement, whose investment, whose insurance were at risk here. They were going to have their lives destroyed because of the greed and excess and corruption.
ABC observed that McCain today "sound[ed] somewhat accepting of the Fed's action on AIG." Watch a compilation:
McCain's change on AIG comes on the heels of economy-related flip flop. McCain told NBC yesterday, "Of course I don't like excessive and unnecessary regulation." But on CBS's Early Show minutes later, McCain said, "Do I believe in excess government regulation? Yes."
Yglesias observes, "It would be pretty mavericky of McCain to stick with his guns on this. … The good thing about being a maverick, I guess, is that either response would have sufficed as a mavericky one. Or else that McCain just doesn't know what he's talking about." See ThinkProgress's running tally of McCain's flip-flops here.
It took a little work, but I can see now that we are totally, utterly screwed. I'm buying S&P 500 puts as I type this. The last time this happened the market was dead for years.
Graphic explanation after the jump.
Just imagine what will happen if they make the series.
I realized three things tonight. For one, if you are a McCain/Palin/Bush voter, you and I do not have a difference of opinion. We have a difference in brain power. Two, she really is as ignorant as I feared. And, three, she really is kinda hot. Basically, I want to have sex with her on my Barack Obama sheets while my wife reads aloud from the Constitution. (My wife is cool with this if I promise to "first wipe off Palin's tranny makeup." I married well.)
Now, I want to be clear and speak directly to those of you who LOVED that Palin interview. You're an idiot. I mean that. This is not one of those cases where we're going to agree to disagree. This isn't one of those situations where we debate it passionately and then walk away thinking that the other guy is wrong but argued well. I'm not going to think of you as a thoughtful but misguided person with different ideas who still really cares about the country and the world. No, sorry, not this time. This time, if you watched those interview excerpts and weren't scared out of your freakin' mind, then you're mentally ill, mentally disabled, or mentally disturbed. What you are NOT is responsible, informed, curious, thoughtful, mature, educated, empathetic, or remotely serious. I mean it.
But I like to think that anyone can change.
Stop voting for people you want to have a beer with. Stop voting for folksy. Stop voting for people who remind you of your neighbor. Stop voting for the ideologically intransigent, the staggeringly ignorant, and the blazingly incompetent.
Vote for someone smarter than you. Vote for someone who inspires you. Vote for someone who has not only traveled the world but who has also shown a deep understanding and compassion for it. The stakes are real and they're terrifyingly high. This election matters. It matters. It really matters. Let me say that one more time. This. Really. Matters.
Bad news, Obama partisans: a prominent female Hillary supporter has openly defected to John McCain, calling the Democratic candidate "an elitist." That supporter? Lynn Forester de Rothschild. You know, of the Rothschilds. The beloved Real American, salt of the earth banking and finance dynasty. Their very name is synonymous with heartland values like a life of suffocating spiritually empty glamor and excess. So we're sure John McCain is thrilled that he now has the support of Lady de Rothschild. Except, you know, he actually probably is happy about this, because she has lots and lots and lots of money. Oh but Barack Obama still has the support of America's real elites. [Political Ticker/CNN]
Immigrants seeking permanent legal residency in the U.S. are now mandated to take an expensive and controversial vaccine that has been linked with thousands of serious complaints and several deaths.
The Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine — known as Gardasil — is one of five the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recently added to the required list, reports Fox 8 News.
A press release from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Agency confirms that the requirements for the vaccine went into effect on July 1, 2008.
The regulation represents a total dismissal of the recommendation of Dr. Jon Abramson, chairman of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's advisory committee on immunization practices. In February 2007, Abramson said that he and the 15-member panel at the CDC opposed making Gardasil mandatory because the sexually transmitted HPV is not a contagious disease like measles or chicken pox.
At $162 per dose, the three-dose vaccine is set to make millions in profits for Gardasil manufacturer Merck, a company that has a history of both lobbying intensely for state mandates and entering into crony deals to hoodwink Americans into believing HPV vaccinations are compulsory.
Merck were unable to sell the "benefits" of the vaccine to make enough profit out of it, so instead they turned to state legislature and attempted to pay off Governors and other officials to curry favor and force eleven year old girls (and in other states children as young as eight) who aren't even sexually active to take the shot.
However, the pharmaceutical giant agreed to stop lobbying state legislatures to make it mandatory for schoolgirls to be inoculated with Gardasil after a fierce backlash from concerned parents and religious organizations.
We previously exposed Merck's role one such crony deal with Texas Governor Rick Perry which saw a resulting media campaign fool parents into thinking that the HPV vaccine had been made compulsory by law for all young girls.
Without consulting and doctors, scientists or medical experts, Perry, who has various close ties to Merck, issued an executive order requiring girls to be vaccinated against HPV. Several Texas lawmakers subsequently petitioned for a reversal of the decision without success.
Almost immediately following Perry's announcement, newspapers and TV stations began to report that it was "the law" that parents had to have their child vaccinated. This reflects a national and international hoax that is repeatedly being perpetrated shortly before school terms begin each year.
There is no law in America, aside from those applying to medical workers, that says any citizen or their children have to take any vaccine whatsoever, no matter what any executive order, requirement, mandate or policy dictates.
As in the case of all other vaccines, Perry's executive order merely stated that the vaccine is "recommended," yet the mass media drumbeat constantly conditions people to believe that if they don't take their shots they will be kicked out of school, arrested and thrown in jail.
Last November we reported on a case in Prince George's County, Maryland, where parents of more than 1600 children were told they could be put in jail for failing to get their kids vaccinated. At the time a local Fox News affiliate reported, "A new law was passed last year requiring children from 5th through to 10th grade to have the vaccine," which was a total lie.
The non-complying parents were not charged not under vaccination laws (because there aren't any) but under truancy, neglect or child in need of supervision laws, which state that the parent is culpable after 30 days of a child's unexplained absence from school.
The school itself triggered the truancy violation by unfairly kicking the kids out of school, and failing to inform parents about vaccine waiver forms. A state prosecutor involved in the case then admitted that there is no law that mandates any vaccine.
This trick will continue to hoodwink Americans into taking all manner of dangerous and untested vaccines, the number of which rises every year, until they realize that there is no law that forces them to take any vaccine.
Until this is drilled home with parents we will also keep seeing relatively unchallenged moves to pass legislation to make mandatory all vaccines recommended by the CDC for all children, including infants and toddlers.
As we have previously seen with other controversial schemes such as Real ID, immigrant populations provide a prime testing ground to quietly introduce policies that may later be subject to efforts to make them mandatory for all American citizens.
"Negative side effects of Gardasil, a new Merck vaccine to prevent the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer, are being reported in the District of Columbia and 20 states, including Virginia. The reactions range from loss of consciousness to seizures," reported the Washington Times.
"Young girls are experiencing severe headaches, dizziness, temporary loss of vision and some girls have lost consciousness during what appear to be seizures," said Vicky Debold, health policy analyst for the National Vaccine Information Center, a nonprofit watchdog organization that was created in the early 1980s to prevent vaccine injuries."
The report quotes physicians who debunk the claim that the HPV vaccine even prevents cervical cancer, as is claimed by Merck and the FDA.
"There is no proof Gardasil will stop cervical cancer," said Clayton Young, an obstetrician/gynecologist in Texas, "They haven't been studying it long enough to make that claim."
Non-profit, public interest group Judicial Watch, released a report at the end of June this year which revealed that there had been 9,749 adverse reactions and 21 reported deaths related to Gardasil in the last two years.
According to the report, there have been 78 severe outbreaks of genital warts, six cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome and at least 10 miscarriages reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) since the approval of Gardasil. However, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that clinicians, patients and drug companies report only about 10 percent of side effects to VAERS, so the actual number of Gardasil side effects could be much higher.
The CDC subsequently released a statement on July 22 which stated "Based on ongoing assessments of vaccine safety information, the FDA and CDC continue to find that Gardasil is a safe and effective vaccine… The benefits continue to outweigh the risks."
Merck also issued a statement in response to the data, saying it "believes that no safety issue related to the vaccine has been identified. These types of events are events that could also be seen in the general population, even in the absence of vaccination."
The CDC plans to release a study in October that it says will help determine whether a true linkage between Gardasil and the reported adverse reactions exists.
The U.S. distributed 2.2 million doses of the vaccine in 2006 and 11.3 million in 2007.
Immigrants seeking permanent legal residency in the U.S. are now mandated to take an expensive and controversial vaccine that has been linked with thousands of serious complaints and several deaths.
The Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine — known as Gardasil — is one of five the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recently added to the required list, reports Fox 8 News.
A press release from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Agency confirms that the requirements for the vaccine went into effect on July 1, 2008.
The regulation represents a total dismissal of the recommendation of Dr. Jon Abramson, chairman of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's advisory committee on immunization practices. In February 2007, Abramson said that he and the 15-member panel at the CDC opposed making Gardasil mandatory because the sexually transmitted HPV is not a contagious disease like measles or chicken pox.
At $162 per dose, the three-dose vaccine is set to make millions in profits for Gardasil manufacturer Merck, a company that has a history of both lobbying intensely for state mandates and entering into crony deals to hoodwink Americans into believing HPV vaccinations are compulsory.
Merck were unable to sell the "benefits" of the vaccine to make enough profit out of it, so instead they turned to state legislature and attempted to pay off Governors and other officials to curry favor and force eleven year old girls (and in other states children as young as eight) who aren't even sexually active to take the shot.
In the same week that the US stock market has crashed hundreds of points due to the failure of two major US banks, the Obama campaign took time to point out the flaw in John McCain's Social Security privatization scheme and to discuss how to strengthen Social Security without harming retirees and younger workers.
Speaking on a conference call from Florida on Tuesday, Sept. 16th, Obama surrogate Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) highlighted McCain's distance from working families and retirees by pointing out that McCain, for the 16th time in this campaign, told a smaller-than-expected Jacksonville audience that the "fundamentals of our economy are strong."
Florida's unemployment is greater than six percent with the largest job loss in the country over the last year. Floridians are facing record foreclosure and ballooning home insurance rates.
In the same week that the US stock market has crashed hundreds of points due to the failure of two major US banks, the Obama campaign took time to point out the flaw in John McCain's Social Security privatization scheme and to discuss how to strengthen Social Security without harming retirees and younger workers.
Speaking on a conference call from Florida on Tuesday, Sept. 16th, Obama surrogate Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) highlighted McCain's distance from working families and retirees by pointing out that McCain, for the 16th time in this campaign, told a smaller-than-expected Jacksonville audience that the "fundamentals of our economy are strong."
Florida's unemployment is greater than six percent with the largest job loss in the country over the last year. Floridians are facing record foreclosure and ballooning home insurance rates.
"And what John McCain proposes for Social Security is to in effect put our Social Security in the same stock market that lost 500 points yesterday [Sept. 15th]," Wexler said.
McCain is offering a "risky" plan to "gamble away our Social Security," Wexler added. McCain's offers essentially the same plan as George W. Bush's failed 2005 plan, which McCain voted for in the Senate.
In sharp contrast with McCain, Barack Obama has always opposed privatization, Wexler added. In addition, Barack Obama proposes to eliminate income taxes for seniors who earn less than $50,000 per year, while McCain offers no economic relief for seniors.
Wexler focused the issue on his home state of Florida. The state, he said, has 3.5 million residents who are Social Security beneficiaries, 2.5 million of whom are over 65.
"So the issue of Social Security, whether or not to privatize it, whether or not to risk Social Security in terms of investing in a stock market that is fluctuating in an extremely dramatic fashion, is extremely important to our state," Wexler said.
Wexler said that Obama's plan for Social Security rejects cutting benefits, raising the retirement age, and privatizing it – all of which McCain wants.
Instead, Barack Obama calls for a partial lift of the cap on the program for people who make over $250,000 per year. His plan would lift the payroll tax on the highest wage earners by between two and four percent, to be shared by the employers and employees.
"Partially lifting the cap on the highest income earners, only above $250,000, would go a long way to shore up the long-term financial stability of Social Security," Wexler pointed out.
Wexler added that McCain's proposal to privatize Social Security, by investing money in the volatile stock market, would add trillions to the national debt, because benefits would have to be paid out of the general fund, rather than with new contributions from workers.
Obama's plan to lift the Social Security cap is also in keeping with his pledge to not raise taxes on 95 percent of all working families earning $250,000 a year or less. His proposal to eliminate taxes for seniors earning under $50,000 is also in line with his tax relief plan for 101 million middle-class households, who would see an average of at least $1,000 in tax breaks under an Obama administration.
In the same week that the US stock market has crashed hundreds of points due to the failure of two major US banks, the Obama campaign took time to point out the flaw in John McCain's Social Security privatization scheme and to discuss how to strengthen Social Security without harming retirees and younger workers.
Speaking on a conference call from Florida on Tuesday, Sept. 16th, Obama surrogate Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) highlighted McCain's distance from working families and retirees by pointing out that McCain, for the 16th time in this campaign, told a smaller-than-expected Jacksonville audience that the "fundamentals of our economy are strong."
Florida's unemployment is greater than six percent with the largest job loss in the country over the last year. Floridians are facing record foreclosure and ballooning home insurance rates.
"And what John McCain proposes for Social Security is to in effect put our Social Security in the same stock market that lost 500 points yesterday [Sept. 15th]," Wexler said.
McCain is offering a "risky" plan to "gamble away our Social Security," Wexler added. McCain's offers essentially the same plan as George W. Bush's failed 2005 plan, which McCain voted for in the Senate.
In sharp contrast with McCain, Barack Obama has always opposed privatization, Wexler added. In addition, Barack Obama proposes to eliminate income taxes for seniors who earn less than $50,000 per year, while McCain offers no economic relief for seniors.
Wexler focused the issue on his home state of Florida. The state, he said, has 3.5 million residents who are Social Security beneficiaries, 2.5 million of whom are over 65.
"So the issue of Social Security, whether or not to privatize it, whether or not to risk Social Security in terms of investing in a stock market that is fluctuating in an extremely dramatic fashion, is extremely important to our state," Wexler said.
Wexler said that Obama's plan for Social Security rejects cutting benefits, raising the retirement age, and privatizing it – all of which McCain wants.
Instead, Barack Obama calls for a partial lift of the cap on the program for people who make over $250,000 per year. His plan would lift the payroll tax on the highest wage earners by between two and four percent, to be shared by the employers and employees.
"Partially lifting the cap on the highest income earners, only above $250,000, would go a long way to shore up the long-term financial stability of Social Security," Wexler pointed out.
Wexler added that McCain's proposal to privatize Social Security, by investing money in the volatile stock market, would add trillions to the national debt, because benefits would have to be paid out of the general fund, rather than with new contributions from workers.
Obama's plan to lift the Social Security cap is also in keeping with his pledge to not raise taxes on 95 percent of all working families earning $250,000 a year or less. His proposal to eliminate taxes for seniors earning under $50,000 is also in line with his tax relief plan for 101 million middle-class households, who would see an average of at least $1,000 in tax breaks under an Obama administration.
McCain is offering a "risky" plan to "gamble away our Social Security," Wexler added. McCain's offers essentially the same plan as George W. Bush's failed 2005 plan, which McCain voted for in the Senate.
In sharp contrast with McCain, Barack Obama has always opposed privatization, Wexler added. In addition, Barack Obama proposes to eliminate income taxes for seniors who earn less than $50,000 per year, while McCain offers no economic relief for seniors.
Wexler focused the issue on his home state of Florida. The state, he said, has 3.5 million residents who are Social Security beneficiaries, 2.5 million of whom are over 65.
"So the issue of Social Security, whether or not to privatize it, whether or not to risk Social Security in terms of investing in a stock market that is fluctuating in an extremely dramatic fashion, is extremely important to our state," Wexler said.
Wexler said that Obama's plan for Social Security rejects cutting benefits, raising the retirement age, and privatizing it – all of which McCain wants.
Instead, Barack Obama calls for a partial lift of the cap on the program for people who make over $250,000 per year. His plan would lift the payroll tax on the highest wage earners by between two and four percent, to be shared by the employers and employees.
"Partially lifting the cap on the highest income earners, only above $250,000, would go a long way to shore up the long-term financial stability of Social Security," Wexler pointed out.
Wexler added that McCain's proposal to privatize Social Security, by investing money in the volatile stock market, would add trillions to the national debt, because benefits would have to be paid out of the general fund, rather than with new contributions from workers.
Obama's plan to lift the Social Security cap is also in keeping with his pledge to not raise taxes on 95 percent of all working families earning $250,000 a year or less. His proposal to eliminate taxes for seniors earning under $50,000 is also in line with his tax relief plan for 101 million middle-class households, who would see an average of at least $1,000 in tax breaks under an Obama administration.
Breathtaking. Via: Prison Planet: Immigrants seeking permanent legal residency in the U.S. are now mandated to take an expensive and controversial vaccine that has been linked with thousands of serious complaints and several deaths. The Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine — known as Gardasil — is one of five the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recently added to the [...]
In the history of money market funds, says the NYT, only one had ever "broken the buck" or actually lost money... before yesterday. On Tuesday, the managers of a multi-billion dollar money market fund announced that their customers might lose money in the fund— a type of investment that is considered as safe as a savings account.
From the NYT:
The announcement was made by the Primary Fund, which had almost $65 billion in assets at the end of May. It is part of the Reserve Fund, a group whose founder helped invent the money market fund more than 30 years ago.
The fund said that because the value of some investments had fallen, customers now have only 97 cents for each dollar they had invested.
This is only the second time in history that a money market fund has "broken the buck" — that is, reported a share's value was less than a dollar.
How could this happen? The NYT says that in this year alone banks have poured billions of dollars into shoring up money market funds that were caught holding questionable mortgage backed securities — leading millions of investors to pull their money out of other investments and place it into money market funds.
The trouble came when The Primary Fund realized that its stake in now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers was essentially worthless, causing the fund's value to drop to 97 cents per share. For now, the fund will rely its right to delay redemption for seven days:
But, as prospectuses and regulators make clear, money funds are not legally required to keep their share prices at or above a dollar, or to redeem investors' shares immediately. Like all regulated mutual funds, their share prices are determined solely by dividing total portfolio assets by the number of shares outstanding, and they have seven days to meet redemption demands.
Those facts would probably surprise most money fund investors, who have come to think of money funds as being "just like cash, just like a checking account," a fund industry lawyer, Jay Baris, said.
The Investment Company Institute tried to reassure investors in a statement Tuesday. Here it is:
"Today, Reserve Management Corporation announced that one of its money market mutual funds is unable to maintain a $1.00 net asset value (NAV), an event triggered by unprecedented market conditions that have affected a wide range of financial firms. This type of event—known as "breaking the buck"—is extremely rare.
"Money market mutual funds have been a successful financial product for millions of investors. Although money market funds are not guaranteed, investors have benefited from the security, liquidity, and diversification that these funds provide under stringent and effective regulation. Today, money market funds hold $3.5 trillion in assets for a wide range of individual and institutional investors.
"ICI is working closely with its members and with regulators, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve, to maintain open communications about market conditions and their impact on funds.
"The fundamental structure of money market funds remains sound. These funds are subject to strict regulation governing credit quality, liquidity, diversification, and transparency. Rule 2a-7, administered by the SEC, strictly limits the types of securities in which money market funds can invest. Securities held by money market funds must be judged highly credit-worthy by both objective and subjective tests, and Rule 2a-7 imposes strict requirements for diversification of assets. The provisions of Rule 2a-7 have operated to help money market funds maintain a stable NAV of $1.00 per share. While not obligated to do so, fund sponsors have voluntarily lent support to their money market funds with credit lines or cash infusions in a number of recent instances.
"In the only previous instance of a money market fund breaking the buck, Community Bancshares, a small institutional money market fund, paid investors 96 percent of their principal."
What will John McCain do without the Bush administration? After all, to any question on current events, McCain casts his gaze in the direction of Bush and answers, "Whatever he said."
The AIG bail-out is a perfect example. McCain, on the Today Show Monday:
McCain might have an actual opinion. And just as soon as Bush tells him what it is, we'll let you know.
McCain: "…No, I do not believe that the American taxpayer should be on the hook for AIG and I'm glad that the Secretary Paulson has apparently taken the same line."
Q: "So, if we get to the point, in the middle of the week when AIG might have to file for bankruptcy, they're on their own."
McCain: "Well, they're on their own. We cannot have the taxpayers bail out AIG or anybody else, this is something that we're going to have to work through."
But then the Bush administration acted, which meant McCain flip-flopped, uh, changed his mind, or um, rather, clarified his position. McCain, on Good Morning America today:
"Now on the bailout itself, I didn't want to do that. And I don't think anybody I know wanted to do that. But there are literally millions of people whose retirement, whose investment, whose insurance were at risk here. They were going to have their lives destroyed because of the greed and excess and corruption."
Somewhere between "They're on their own" and, "My God, we've got to do something!" McCain might have an actual opinion. And just as soon as Bush tells him what it is, we'll let you know.
After reports that the Michigan Republican party planned to challenge voters whose homes had been foreclosed, thirteen senators have petitioned Attorney General Michael Mukasey to ensure that such voters would not be harassed or intimidated at their polling places.
"Foreclosures are devastating enough for affected families and neighborhoods without adding the outrage of disenfranchisement," wrote Sens. Charles Schumer (D-NY), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Joseph Biden (D-DE), Herb Kohl (D-WI), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Russell Feingold (D-WI), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Barack Obama (D-IL), Carl Levin (D-MI), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), and Sherrod Brown (D-OH).
In their letter, the senators called the tactic "simply a new variant of the destructive practice of voter 'caging.'" Voter caging is a term used to describe discouraging eligible voters to vote.
"In the middle of the worst economy in recent memory, with so many Americans fighting to stay in their homes, these allegations suggest a mean-spirited and desperate attempt to suppress the vote," said Whitehouse, who has authored legislation on voter suppression.
XM/Sirius have (temporarily?) canceled two punk rock stations, Fungus 53 and Sirius Punk, and are redirecting listeners to a 24-hour station "dedicated to Australian hard rock act AC/DC." We've been told by readers that this is a temporary promotion and happens all the time, to which we ask, wtf? XM/Sirius sometime cancels real programming channels to run paid-for promotions? Do you get a refund on those channels, or what? [Punknews.org] (Thanks to Craig!)
India - According to the National Coalition of Health Care in America, in 2007, total national health expenditures were expected to rise 6.9 percent - twice the rate of inflation. health care spending is 4.3 times the amount spent on national defense. And although 47 million Americans are uninsured, the United States spends more on health care than other industrialized nations.
It is no wonder then that scores of American citizens are heading off to foreign shores for their health care needs.
New Yorker Danelle New, 29, was suffering from epilepsy, the residual effect of a car accident during high school. She suffered grand mal seizures lasting up to 20 minutes, which she says western doctors could not explain or understand. "My body would build up resistances to the pharmaceutical drugs and they would no longer work, which forced me to try and find other ways to solve the problem."
New traveled to India in 2004, and has been seizure-free since. "It was a significant cost savings, as I had already spent thousands of dollars in medical expenses, not to mention the tens of thousands of dollars spent by my insurance company," she says. This included a five-day hospital stay and medications that cost more than $700 a month.
In India, she spent $1,200 for successful therapy with "less than two months of prescription medication," she adds.
India is, indeed, one of the biggest markets for medical tourism, where tourism companies now offer attractive packages that include treatment with a splendid view of the ocean.
"For many procedures, the cost is 50-90 percent lower in India versus the US," says Herb Stephens, Co-Founder and CEO of Health Travel Guides. For instance, he says, open heart surgery costs between $55,000 to $100,000 in the US. In India, you would get it for $8,500. Hip replacement is $65,000 in the US, around $8,000 in India.
Mexico, too, is a popular destination, especially for Americans. The prices are comparable to those in India, but the flights are direct and cheaper.
The benefit, says Stephens, of working with a company such as his is that they take care of all the travel and medical details - no worrying about how to get to the hospital, which flights to book, and where to check in.
There are problems, however.
The British Medical Association advises people to be careful when considering treatment abroad, and says flying soon after surgery can cause complications. Some experts also question the health care available in countries such as India and Mexico.
"Some countries have image issues that extend erroneously to assumptions about health care," says Stephens. "For example, India is a country with a very large population that includes a very large and visible segment of poor people. Many Americans see media examples of this poverty and erroneously assume that good health care must not be available. It's a definite issue that international health care providers have to work to overcome."
In his experience, he says, the prejudice is quickly and decisively dispelled for medical travelers who venture abroad. Most are shocked by the quality and modernity of the facilities, doctor training, hospital staff and equipment. "This is true not only of Indian hospitals like Apollo Group, but also hospitals in Mexico such as Grupo Angeles in Tijuana, ABC Hospital in Mexico City and Amerimed in Puerto Vallarta.
New admits to being pleasantly surprised during her trip to India. "I was surprised by how therapeutic the entire process was. I believe I had mentally prepared myself for something much more strange and maybe even more invasive than what I actually experienced."
New sought natural treatments in India, but for most travelers, western medicine is still the big pull.
And the numbers are continuously increasing. Over 150,000 medical tourists traveled to India in 2002. The rate of increase has been 15 percent since then and reports indicate that India's medical tourism earnings alone will increase to $2 billion by 2012.
The Government of India is making sure the country is ready by investing $6.5 billion in medical tourism infrastructure. In Mexico, StarMedica hospital groups built seven hospitals in the last five years, AmeriMed is opening ten new hospitals by 2012, and Grupo, the largest private hospital group in Mexico, is spending $700 million to build 15 hospitals in the next three years.
What does this mean for the United States? Plenty. It means that with rising international competition, American hospitals are likely to adopt aggressive marketing strategies, and maybe even create policy shifts allowing for better health care within the country.
In the meantime, patients seem happy with a variety of options available to them - at home or abroad.
"I would have spent multiple more thousands out of pocket to actually cure or even just more successfully treat my condition," says New. Instead, she spent three months in India, "for a successful therapy that truly changed my body, my mind, and my approach to life."
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Mridu Khullar is an independent journalist from New Delhi, India. For the past six years, she has written extensively about human rights and women's issues in Asia and Africa. Her work has been published in Time, Elle, Marie Claire, Ms., Women's eNews, and East West, among others. Visit her website at www.mridukhullar.com.
Washington - Barack Obama today sought to regain momentum in the presidential race by portraying John McCain as out of touch with Americans' economic pain as US markets struggled to recover from their largest single-day drop in seven years.
The Democratic presidential nominee said McCain fundamentally agrees with conservative laissez-faire economic policies, and cautioned voters against trusting McCain's recent call for increased regulation during a campaign event in Colorado.
Mocking McCain's proposal to appoint a commission to study the origins of the economic crisis, Obama said: "We know how we got into this mess."
"What we need now is leadership that gets us out. I'll provide it, John McCain won't, and that's the choice for the American people in this election."
Obama offered no new policy details today, but reiterated a proposal he unveiled in March that would toughen federal oversight of US credit markets and the financial services industry.
He linked McCain with an economic "philosophy" that "says even common-sense regulations are unnecessary and unwise".
"What we've seen the last few days is nothing less than the final verdict on an economic philosophy that has completely failed," he said in Golden, Colorado.
Over the weekend, Wall Street's Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and Merrill Lynch agreed to be sold to a competitor. Yesterday, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 4.4%, its worst day since September 17 2001, when the New York stock exchange reopened following the September 11 terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has risen and home values continue to sink.
Polls have shown voters trust Obama more than McCain on economic issues, though McCain recently has eroded that lead. Democrats say the increasingly dire financial news will pull voters' attention from Sarah Palin and McCain attacks on Obama and toward economic issues.
Jim Kessler, vice president of policy for centrist Democratic research group Third Way, said Obama should continue to remind voters that McCain subscribes to the Republican notion that, "We need to let business alone and let business figure it out".
McCain has run as a Washington reformer who's fought to slash government spending, but has acknowledged that he is not strong on economic issues. Kessler said McCain does not seem comfortable talking about them, and also said the crisis "takes the lustre" off Palin.
"Palin is just a rank amateur on this stuff, he said. "People aren't looking for someone who can skin a moose at this moment."
Obama said borrowers should be subject to closer federal oversight. He called for stronger capital requirements for complex financial instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and other derivatives, and said mortgage brokers should be subject to the same regulatory guidelines as commercial banks.
He would also "streamline" the US regulatory framework to end prevent agencies from overlapping and competing with one another, and pledged to crack down on manipulation of US securities markets.
But today Obama focused on shooting holes in McCain's pledges to clean up Wall Street, noting that the Arizonan had long described himself as a proponent of deregulation.
"John McCain's newfound support for regulation bears no resemblance to his scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement," he said. "John McCain cannot be trusted to re-establish proper oversight of our financial markets for one simple reason: he has shown time and again that he does not believe in it."
McCain's economic plan relies largely on making permanent George Bush's first-term tax cuts, cutting corporate and other taxes, and on eliminating congressional "earmark" spending that totals about 1% of the US budget.
So in the last 4 days Lehman goes under, Merrill Lynch was sold to BofA and now AIG is being bailed out by the Central Bank. News like this makes me wonder what's going to be left for the little guy. The government believers in saving Wall Street, not main street. We live in corporate socialism, not capitalism. It is all obscene.
Merrill's Thain, Aides May Get $200 Million for Year (Update1)
By Jonathan Keehner and Bradley Keoun
Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Merrill Lynch & Co. Chief Executive Officer John Thain and two former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. colleagues he recruited may reap almost $200 million for their year running Merrill if they leave or are given lesser roles after Bank of America Corp. buys the brokerage.
Thain, who got a $15 million bonus when hired in December, stands to get an additional $11 million in accelerated stock payouts if he doesn't stay after the deal, compensation consultant Graef Crystal said. Trading chief Thomas Montag, who joined in August, may get $76 million including bonus and accelerated awards. Strategy head Peter Kraus was given $95 million including bonus and stock awards to replace a Goldman package he had to forfeit, people familiar with the matter said.
While Thain managed to negotiate a merger even as rival Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. sank into bankruptcy, shareholders may resent the executive payouts. Merrill's stock returned more than 13 percent a year from 2000 through 2006. Since Dec. 1 of last year, Thain's first day, the shares have fallen more than 60 percent, as writedowns on devalued mortgage holdings eroded the company's financial results.
``Investors will definitely be disappointed,'' said Richard Bove, an analyst at Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. ``Thain's claim to fame here is that he kept them from going bankrupt.''
Under terms of the deal announced yesterday by Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America, each Merrill share will be exchanged for 0.8595 shares of Bank of America stock. Based on Bank of America's stock price of $33.74 on Sept. 12, that works out to about $29 a share.
Bonus Payments
Because the payment is in stock, Merrill shareholders would get less if Bank of America's share price falls before the deal's closing date, scheduled for the first quarter of next year. Based on Bank of America's share price today, the offer is worth $23.58 per Merrill share.
Merrill shares plunged 36 percent last week as investors speculated that the New York-based firm might suffer the fate of Lehman. Since the deal was announced early yesterday, they have climbed 17 percent.
At a press conference yesterday, Thain, 53, acknowledged that he wanted a better result.
``This isn't necessarily the outcome I would have expected when I took this job,'' Thain said. He said his future role at the combined company hasn't been decided.
`Mr. Fixit'
At a meeting with employees at the firm's headquarters in New York's World Financial Center, Thain appeared to fight back tears when expressing regret that Merrill's 94-year run as an independent firm ended on his watch, according to two people who attended.
Thain earned the moniker ``Mr. Fixit'' for his stewardship of the New York Stock Exchange for four years beginning in January 2004. Before that, he was president and chief operating officer at New York-based Goldman, where he served under then- CEO Henry Paulson. Now U.S. Treasury secretary, Paulson helped to lead a weekend of discussions during which Bank of America initially weighed a bid for Lehman.
Thain said Merrill's talks with Bank of America began on the morning of Sept. 13. The deal was done by nightfall the next day.
Writedowns on mortgage-linked investments have stuck Merrill with almost $19 billion of net losses over the past year, and Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Meredith Whitney predicted last week that Merrill would post a $6.87 billion deficit in the current quarter. Most of the bad investments were accumulated under Thain's predecessor, Stan O'Neal, who was ousted last October.
Magnitude, Risk
``I doubt Thain understood the magnitude of risk and exposure on Merrill's balance sheet,'' Bove said. ``I don't think anyone could have done a whole lot.''
If Thain leaves the newly merged company, he will get 379,637 shares, worth $11 million at $29 per share, according to Crystal.
The payouts wouldn't be much of a raise compared with the $20.2 million Thain got during his last year at Goldman Sachs in 2003.
``Thain wasn't at Merrill for very long,'' said David Schmidt, a senior consultant for New York-based compensation firm James F. Reda & Associates. ``My sense is he isn't coming out ahead relative to where he was.''
In January, Thain began recruiting Montag, who agreed in April to join as head of trading and sales with a start date of Aug. 4. In addition to a $39 million guaranteed 2008 bonus to be paid in January, Montag got 1.05 million shares subject to vesting over three years, according to regulatory filings, awarded to replace stock grants from his prior employer that he forfeited by joining Merrill. Those, worth $30 million at $29 a share, may vest in a change of control.
Direct Report
Montag, 51, also has 10-year options on 2.4 million shares of Merrill Lynch stock carrying a strike price of $26.40, Crystal said. Those options, which would fully vest if he left the combined company, would be worth a minimum of $6.4 million at the $29 per share price, according to Crystal, and could be worth far more.
Montag's contract states that his stock automatically vests after a change of control if there's a
After definitively proving that John McCain has been entirely consistent with his attacks on Barack Obama, Stephen decides to try out some of the same "consistency" on McCain himself.
Please, do not ever buy 
Keith does a great job of breaking down Palin's second TV interview.
John McCain's claim in an 
Here is the full contact information for 18 different Blue Cross Blue Shield CEOs. Name, address, phone number, and the contact info for their assistants. If you have an unresolved issue with one of these health insurance groups that regular customer service can't or won't solve, might want to give the appropriate honchos one the following list a holler.
If you have a problem with Blizzard Entertainment, makers of World of Warcraft, among other diversions, and contacting regular customer doesn't help, try some of the contact info inside...
If you're concerned about your RFID-chipped credit cards being skimmed, you might want to consider shielding them. DIFRwear makes a wallet 
Dude, you cannot ignore this anymore.* We are screwed. Oh my god, really really screwed. China is screwed. For Chrissakes, 
• I see what you did there: Those crafty rapscallions in the editorial department at the Notre Dame Rivals site are either snickering right now or getting lambasted by the higher-ups. Charlie Weis will inevitably demand an apology. [
It's one thing to understand what just happened to the financial markets, and yet another to actually be able to explain what just happened. Thankfully, Steven Levitt from Freakonomics walked down the hall and found two economists from the University of Chicago (Doug Diamond and Anil Kashyap,) who gave him the best explanation I've been able to find about what the hell just happened.
Awhile ago we told you 
Verizon, which has no problem helping the government spy on its customers, suddenly turned stupid in June when a police department asked them for help finding the body of a woman who had been abducted on camera. Despite pleas from the woman's parents, the police, and the FBI, 
WaMu has 
Bad news, Obama partisans: a prominent female Hillary supporter has openly defected to John McCain, calling the Democratic candidate "an elitist." That supporter? Lynn Forester de Rothschild. You know, of the Rothschilds. The beloved Real American, salt of the earth banking and finance dynasty. Their very name is synonymous with heartland values like a life of suffocating spiritually empty glamor and excess. So we're sure John McCain is thrilled that he now has the support of Lady de Rothschild. Except, you know, he actually probably is happy about this, because she has lots and lots and lots of money. Oh but Barack Obama still has the support of America's 
Immigrants seeking permanent legal residency in the U.S. are now mandated to take an expensive and controversial vaccine that has been linked with thousands of serious complaints and several deaths.
In the history of money market funds, says the NYT, only one had ever "broken the buck" or actually lost money... before yesterday. On Tuesday, the managers of a multi-billion dollar money market fund announced that their customers might lose money in the fund— a type of investment that is considered as safe as a savings account.