Saturday, December 12, 2009

Home loan aid program fails thousands

When Renee Penny of Columbia, Tenn., heard about the federal government's "Making Home Affordable" loan modification program last spring, she thought she had found welcome relief.

But a few weeks ago, Bank of America mailed a response to the laid-off auto parts worker's request for mortgage help: The bank told her it would reduce her mortgage by $6 a month, to about $1,176 per payment.

"I feel like they're just waiting to snatch my house from me," said Penny, who has spent six months jousting with bank representatives while hoping for a better result. Now, she fears the bank will foreclose on her property unless she can pay her newly modified loan.

Penny isn't alone in her disappointment over a much-touted loan relief effort championed by the Obama administration. In fact, a U.S. Treasury Department report card released Thursday shows weak results under the "Making Home Affordable" plan, which has helped only 4 percent of the borrowers who signed up nationally.

Among big lenders, Bank of America Corp. had the worst performance in the Treasury report card. The nation's largest lender completed just 98 modifications for the 160,000 borrowers who had signed up by the end of November.

GMAC Mortgage had the most modifications of any lender included in the report — 7,100 cases.

About 760,000 borrowers have signed up for the program since it launched in March. As of last month, just over 31,000 homeowners had received permanent loan modifications. Nearly the same number have fallen out of the program completely either because they missed payments or were found to be ineligible for it.

Thursday's report shows the administration is not going to hit its long-term target of helping up to 4 million borrowers with modified loans, said Ted Gayer, an economist at the Brookings Institution.

About 14 percent of homeowners with a mortgage are either behind or in foreclosure nationwide. "Nobody really knows how big that wave will be," Gayer said.

It makes you 'kooky'

The Treasury Department said it plans to increase pressure on the financial industry to improve. The administration's focus is to "get as many of those eligible homeowners as possible into permanent modifications," said Phyllis Caldwell, head of Treasury's homeownership preservation office.

For feds, more get 6-figure salaries

The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal salary data.

Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months — and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.

Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.

The highest-paid federal employees are doing best of all on salary increases. Defense Department civilian employees earning $150,000 or more increased from 1,868 in December 2007 to 10,100 in June 2009, the most recent figure available.

When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.

The trend to six-figure salaries is occurring throughout the federal government, in agencies big and small, high-tech and low-tech. The primary cause: substantial pay raises and new salary rules.

"There's no way to justify this to the American people. It's ridiculous," says Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a first-term lawmaker who is on the House's federal workforce subcommittee.

Jessica Klement, government affairs director for the Federal Managers Association, says the federal workforce is highly paid because the government employs skilled people such as scientists, physicians and lawyers. She says federal employees make 26% less than private workers for comparable jobs.

USA TODAY analyzed the Office of Personnel Management's database that tracks salaries of more than 2 million federal workers. Excluded from OPM's data: the White House, Congress, the Postal Service, intelligence agencies and uniformed military personnel.

The growth in six-figure salaries has pushed the average federal worker's pay to $71,206, compared with $40,331 in the private sector.

Key reasons for the boom in six-figure salaries:

• Pay hikes. Then-president Bush recommended — and Congress approved — across-the-board raises of 3% in January 2008 and 3.9% in January 2009. President Obama has recommended 2% pay raises in January 2010, the smallest since 1975. Most federal workers also get longevity pay hikes — called steps — that average 1.5% per year.

New pay system. Congress created a new National Security Pay Scale for the Defense Department to reward merit, in addition to the across-the-board increases. The merit raises, which started in January 2008, were larger than expected and rewarded high-ranking employees. In October, Congress voted to end the new pay scale by 2012.

• Paycaps eased. Many top civil servants are prohibited from making more than an agency's leader. But if Congress lifts the boss' salary, others get raises, too. When the Federal Aviation Administration chief's salary rose, nearly 1,700 employees' had their salaries lifted above $170,000, too.

Obama's Big Sellout

he president has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway


Watch Matt Taibbi discuss "The Big Sellout" in a video on his blog, Taibblog.

Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.

Then he got elected.

What's taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.

How could Obama let this happen? Is he just a rookie in the political big leagues, hoodwinked by Beltway old-timers? Or is the vacillating, ineffectual servant of banking interests we've been seeing on TV this fall who Obama really is?

Whatever the president's real motives are, the extensive series of loophole-rich financial "reforms" that the Democrats are currently pushing may ultimately do more harm than good. In fact, some parts of the new reforms border on insanity, threatening to vastly amplify Wall Street's political power by institutionalizing the taxpayer's role as a welfare provider for the financial-services industry. At one point in the debate, Obama's top economic advisers demanded the power to award future bailouts without even going to Congress for approval — and without providing taxpayers a single dime in equity on the deals.

How did we get here? It started just moments after the election — and almost nobody noticed.


'Just look at the timeline of the Citigroup deal," says one leading Democratic consultant. "Just look at it. It's fucking amazing. Amazing! And nobody said a thing about it."

Barack Obama was still just the president-elect when it happened, but the revolting and inexcusable $306 billion bailout that Citigroup received was the first major act of his presidency. In order to grasp the full horror of what took place, however, one needs to go back a few weeks before the actual bailout — to November 5th, 2008, the day after Obama's election.

That was the day the jubilant Obama campaign announced its transition team. Though many of the names were familiar — former Bill Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, long-time Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett — the list was most notable for who was not on it, especially on the economic side. Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist who had served as one of Obama's chief advisers during the campaign, didn't make the cut. Neither did Karen Kornbluh, who had served as Obama's policy director and was instrumental in crafting the Democratic Party's platform. Both had emphasized populist themes during the campaign: Kornbluh was known for pushing Democrats to focus on the plight of the poor and middle class, while Goolsbee was an aggressive critic of Wall Street, declaring that AIG executives should receive "a Nobel Prize — for evil."

But come November 5th, both were banished from Obama's inner circle — and replaced with a group of Wall Street bankers. Leading the search for the president's new economic team was his close friend and Harvard Law classmate Michael Froman, a high-ranking executive at Citigroup. During the campaign, Froman had emerged as one of Obama's biggest fundraisers, bundling $200,000 in contributions and introducing the candidate to a host of heavy hitters — chief among them his mentor Bob Rubin, the former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs who served as Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton. Froman had served as chief of staff to Rubin at Treasury, and had followed his boss when Rubin left the Clinton administration to serve as a senior counselor to Citigroup (a massive new financial conglomerate created by deregulatory moves pushed through by Rubin himself).

Incredibly, Froman did not resign from the bank when he went to work for Obama: He remained in the employ of Citigroup for two more months, even as he helped appoint the very people who would shape the future of his own firm. And to help him pick Obama's economic team, Froman brought in none other than Jamie Rubin, a former Clinton diplomat who happens to be Bob Rubin's son. At the time, Jamie's dad was still earning roughly $15 million a year working for Citigroup, which was in the midst of a collapse brought on in part because Rubin had pushed the bank to invest heavily in mortgage-backed CDOs and other risky instruments.

Now here's where it gets really interesting. It's three weeks after the election. You have a lame-duck president in George W. Bush — still nominally in charge, but in reality already halfway to the golf-and-O'Doul's portion of his career and more than happy to vacate the scene. Left to deal with the still-reeling economy are lame-duck Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former head of Goldman Sachs, and New York Fed chief Timothy Geithner, who served under Bob Rubin in the Clinton White House. Running Obama's economic team are a still-employed Citigroup executive and the son of another Citigroup executive, who himself joined Obama's transition team that same month.

So on November 23rd, 2008, a deal is announced in which the government will bail out Rubin's messes at Citigroup with a massive buffet of taxpayer-funded cash and guarantees. It is a terrible deal for the government, almost universally panned by all serious economists, an outrage to anyone who pays taxes. Under the deal, the bank gets $20 billion in cash, on top of the $25 billion it had already received just weeks before as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. But that's just the appetizer. The government also agrees to charge taxpayers for up to $277 billion in losses on troubled Citi assets, many of them those toxic CDOs that Rubin had pushed Citi to invest in. No Citi executives are replaced, and few restrictions are placed on their compensation. It's the sweetheart deal of the century, putting generations of working-stiff taxpayers on the hook to pay off Bob Rubin's fuck-up-rich tenure at Citi. "If you had any doubts at all about the primacy of Wall Street over Main Street," former labor secretary Robert Reich declares when the bailout is announced, "your doubts should be laid to rest."

It is bad enough that one of Bob Rubin's former protégés from the Clinton years, the New York Fed chief Geithner, is intimately involved in the negotiations, which unsurprisingly leave the Federal Reserve massively exposed to future Citi losses. But the real stunner comes only hours after the bailout deal is struck, when the Obama transition team makes a cheerful announcement: Timothy Geithner is going to be Barack Obama's Treasury secretary!

Geithner, in other words, is hired to head the U.S. Treasury by an executive from Citigroup — Michael Froman — before the ink is even dry on a massive government giveaway to Citigroup that Geithner himself was instrumental in delivering. In the annals of brazen political swindles, this one has to go in the all-time Fuck-the-Optics Hall of Fame.

Wall Street loved the Citi bailout and the Geithner nomination so much that the Dow immediately posted its biggest two-day jump since 1987, rising 11.8 percent. Citi shares jumped 58 percent in a single day, and JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley soared more than 20 percent, as Wall Street embraced the news that the government's bailout generosity would not die with George W. Bush and Hank Paulson. "Geithner assures a smooth transition between the Bush administration and that of Obama, because he's already co-managing what's happening now," observed Stephen Leeb, president of Leeb Capital Management.

Left unnoticed, however, was the fact that Geithner had been hired by a sitting Citigroup executive who still had a big bonus coming despite his proximity to Obama. In January 2009, just over a month after the bailout, Citigroup paid Froman a year-end bonus of $2.25 million. But as outrageous as it was, that payoff would prove to be chump change for the banker crowd, who were about to get everything they wanted — and more — from the new president.

The irony of Bob Rubin: He's an unapologetic arch-capitalist demagogue whose very career is proof that a free-market meritocracy is a myth. Much like Alan Greenspan, a staggeringly incompetent economic forecaster who was worshipped by four decades of politicians because he once dated Barbara Walters, Rubin has been held in awe by the American political elite for nearly 20 years despite having fucked up virtually every project he ever got his hands on. He went from running Goldman Sachs (1990-1992) to the Clinton White House (1993-1999) to Citigroup (1999-2009), leaving behind a trail of historic gaffes that somehow boosted his stature every step of the way.

As Treasury secretary under Clinton, Rubin was the driving force behind two monstrous deregulatory actions that would be primary causes of last year's financial crisis: the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (passed specifically to legalize the Citigroup megamerger) and the deregulation of the derivatives market. Having set that time bomb, Rubin left government to join Citi, which promptly expressed its gratitude by giving him $126 million in compensation over the next eight years (they don't call it bribery in this country when they give you the money post factum). After urging management to amp up its risky investments in toxic vehicles, a strategy that very nearly destroyed the company, Rubin blamed Citi's board for his screw-ups and complained that he had been underpaid to boot. "I bet there's not a single year where I couldn't have gone somewhere else and made more," he said.

Despite being perhaps more responsible for last year's crash than any other single living person — his colossally stupid decisions at both the highest levels of government and the management of a private financial superpower make him unique — Rubin was the man Barack Obama chose to build his White House around.

There are four main ways to be connected to Bob Rubin: through Goldman Sachs, the Clinton administration, Citigroup and, finally, the Hamilton Project, a think tank Rubin spearheaded under the auspices of the Brookings Institute to promote his philosophy of balanced budgets, free trade and financial deregulation. The team Obama put in place to run his economic policy after his inauguration was dominated by people who boasted connections to at least one of these four institutions — so much so that the White House now looks like a backstage party for an episode of Bob Rubin, This Is Your Life!

At Treasury, there is Geithner, who worked under Rubin in the Clinton years. Serving as Geithner's "counselor" — a made-up post not subject to Senate confirmation — is Lewis Alexander, the former chief economist of Citigroup, who advised Citi back in 2007 that the upcoming housing crash was nothing to worry about. Two other top Geithner "counselors" — Gene Sperling and Lael Brainard — worked under Rubin at the National Economic Council, the key group that coordinates all economic policymaking for the White House.

As director of the NEC, meanwhile, Obama installed economic czar Larry Summers, who had served as Rubin's protégé at Treasury. Just below Summers is Jason Furman, who worked for Rubin in the Clinton White House and was one of the first directors of Rubin's Hamilton Project. The appointment of Furman — a persistent advocate of free-trade agreements like NAFTA and the author of droolingly pro-globalization reports with titles like "Walmart: A Progressive Success Story" — provided one of the first clues that Obama had only been posturing when he promised crowds of struggling Midwesterners during the campaign that he would renegotiate NAFTA, which facilitated the flight of blue-collar jobs to other countries. "NAFTA's shortcomings were evident when signed, and we must now amend the agreement to fix them," Obama declared. A few months after hiring Furman to help shape its economic policy, however, the White House quietly quashed any talk of renegotiating the trade deal. "The president has said we will look at all of our options, but I think they can be addressed without having to reopen the agreement," U.S. Trade Representative Ronald Kirk told reporters in a little-publicized conference call last April.

The announcement was not so surprising, given who Obama hired to serve alongside Furman at the NEC: management consultant Diana Farrell, who worked under Rubin at Goldman Sachs. In 2003, Farrell was the author of an infamous paper in which she argued that sending American jobs overseas might be "as beneficial to the U.S. as to the destination country, probably more so."

Joining Summers, Furman and Farrell at the NEC is Froman, who by then had been formally appointed to a unique position: He is not only Obama's international finance adviser at the National Economic Council, he simultaneously serves as deputy national security adviser at the National Security Council. The twin posts give Froman a direct line to the president, putting him in a position to coordinate Obama's international economic policy during a crisis. He'll have help from David Lipton, another joint appointee to the economics and security councils who worked with Rubin at Treasury and Citigroup, and from Jacob Lew, a former Citi colleague of Rubin's whom Obama named as deputy director at the State Department to focus on international finance.

Over at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is supposed to regulate derivatives trading, Obama appointed Gary Gensler, a former Goldman banker who worked under Rubin in the Clinton White House. Gensler had been instrumental in helping to pass the infamous Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which prevented deregulation of derivative instruments like CDOs and credit-default swaps that played such a big role in cratering the economy last year. And as head of the powerful Office of Management and Budget, Obama named Peter Orszag, who served as the first director of Rubin's Hamilton Project. Orszag once succinctly summed up the project's ideology as a sort of liberal spin on trickle-down Reaganomics: "Market competition and globalization generate significant economic benefits."

Taken together, the rash of appointments with ties to Bob Rubin may well represent the most sweeping influence by a single Wall Street insider in the history of government. "Rather than having a team of rivals, they've got a team of Rubins," says Steven Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. "You see that in policy choices that have resuscitated — but not reformed — Wall Street."

While Rubin's allies and acolytes got all the important jobs in the Obama administration, the academics and progressives got banished to semi-meaningless, even comical roles. Kornbluh was rewarded for being the chief policy architect of Obama's meteoric rise by being outfitted with a pith helmet and booted across the ocean to Paris, where she now serves as America's never-again-to-be-seen-on-TV ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Goolsbee, meanwhile, was appointed as staff director of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, a kind of dumping ground for Wall Street critics who had assisted Obama during the campaign; one top Democrat calls the panel "Siberia."

Joining Goolsbee as chairman of the PERAB gulag is former Fed chief Paul Volcker, who back in March 2008 helped candidate Obama write a speech declaring that the deregulatory efforts of the Eighties and Nineties had "excused and even embraced an ethic of greed, corner-cutting, insider dealing, things that have always threatened the long-term stability of our economic system." That speech met with rapturous applause, but the commission Obama gave Volcker to manage is so toothless that it didn't even meet for the first time until last May. The lone progressive in the White House, economist Jared Bernstein, holds the impressive-sounding title of chief economist and national policy adviser — except that the man he is advising is Joe Biden, who seems more interested in foreign policy than financial reform.

The significance of all of these appointments isn't that the Wall Street types are now in a position to provide direct favors to their former employers. It's that, with one or two exceptions, they collectively offer a microcosm of what the Democratic Party has come to stand for in the 21st century. Virtually all of the Rubinites brought in to manage the economy under Obama share the same fundamental political philosophy carefully articulated for years by the Hamilton Project: Expand the safety net to protect the poor, but let Wall Street do whatever it wants. "Bob Rubin, these guys, they're classic limousine liberals," says David Sirota, a former Democratic strategist. "These are basically people who have made shitloads of money in the speculative economy, but they want to call themselves good Democrats because they're willing to give a little more to the poor. That's the model for this Democratic Party: Let the rich do their thing, but give a fraction more to everyone else."

Even the members of Obama's economic team who have spent most of their lives in public office have managed to make small fortunes on Wall Street. The president's economic czar, Larry Summers, was paid more than $5.2 million in 2008 alone as a managing director of the hedge fund D.E. Shaw, and pocketed an additional $2.7 million in speaking fees from a smorgasbord of future bailout recipients, including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. At Treasury, Geithner's aide Gene Sperling earned a staggering $887,727 from Goldman Sachs last year for performing the punch-line-worthy service of "advice on charitable giving." Sperling's fellow Treasury appointee, Mark Patterson, received $637,492 as a full-time lobbyist for Goldman Sachs, and another top Geithner aide, Lee Sachs, made more than $3 million working for a New York hedge fund called Mariner Investment Group. The list goes on and on. Even Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who has been out of government for only 30 months of his adult life, managed to collect $18 million during his private-sector stint with a Wall Street firm called Wasserstein-Perella.

The point is that an economic team made up exclusively of callous millionaire-assholes has absolutely zero interest in reforming the gamed system that made them rich in the first place. "You can't expect these people to do anything other than protect Wall Street," says Rep. Cliff Stearns, a Republican from Florida. That thinking was clear from Obama's first address to Congress, when he stressed the importance of getting Americans to borrow like crazy again. "Credit is the lifeblood of the economy," he declared, pledging "the full force of the federal government to ensure that the major banks that Americans depend on have enough confidence and enough money." A president elected on a platform of change was announcing, in so many words, that he planned to change nothing fundamental when it came to the economy. Rather than doing what FDR had done during the Great Depression and institute stringent new rules to curb financial abuses, Obama planned to institutionalize the policy, firmly established during the Bush years, of keeping a few megafirms rich at the expense of everyone else.

Obama hasn't always toed the Rubin line when it comes to economic policy. Despite being surrounded by a team that is powerfully opposed to deficit spending — balanced budgets and deficit reduction have always been central to the Rubin way of thinking — Obama came out of the gate with a huge stimulus plan designed to kick-start the economy and address the job losses brought on by the 2008 crisis. "You have to give him credit there," says Sen. Bernie Sanders, an advocate of using government resources to address unemployment. "It's a very significant piece of legislation, and $787 billion is a lot of money."

But whatever jobs the stimulus has created or preserved so far — 640,329, according to an absurdly precise and already debunked calculation by the White House — the aid that Obama has provided to real people has been dwarfed in size and scope by the taxpayer money that has been handed over to America's financial giants. "They spent $75 billion on mortgage relief, but come on — look at how much they gave Wall Street," says a leading Democratic strategist. Neil Barofsky, the inspector general charged with overseeing TARP, estimates that the total cost of the Wall Street bailouts could eventually reach $23.7 trillion. And while the government continues to dole out big money to big banks, Obama and his team of Rubinites have done almost nothing to reform the warped financial system responsible for imploding the global economy in the first place.

The push for reform seemed to get off to a promising start. In the House, the charge was led by Rep. Barney Frank, the outspoken chair of the House Financial Services Committee, who emerged during last year's Bush bailouts as a sharp-tongued critic of Wall Street. Back when Obama was still a senator, he and Frank even worked together to introduce a populist bill targeting executive compensation. Last spring, with the economy shattered, Frank began to hold hearings on a host of reforms, crafted with significant input from the White House, that initially contained some very good elements. There were measures to curb abusive credit-card lending, prevent banks from charging excessive fees, force publicly traded firms to conduct meaningful risk assessment and allow shareholders to vote on executive compensation. There were even measures to crack down on risky derivatives and to bar firms like AIG from picking their own regulators.

Then the committee went to work — and the loopholes started to appear.

The most notable of these came in the proposal to regulate derivatives like credit-default swaps. Even Gary Gensler, the former Goldmanite whom Obama put in charge of commodities regulation, was pushing to make these normally obscure investments more transparent, enabling regulators and investors to identify speculative bubbles sooner. But in August, a month after Gensler came out in favor of reform, Geithner slapped him down by issuing a 115-page paper called "Improvements to Regulation of Over-the-Counter Derivatives Markets" that called for a series of exemptions for "end users" — i.e., almost all of the clients who buy derivatives from banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Even more stunning, Frank's bill included a blanket exception to the rules for currency swaps traded on foreign exchanges — the very instruments that had triggered the Long-Term Capital Management meltdown in the late 1990s.

Given that derivatives were at the heart of the financial meltdown last year, the decision to gut derivatives reform sent some legislators howling with disgust. Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, who estimates that as much as 90 percent of all derivatives could remain unregulated under the new rules, went so far as to say the new laws would make things worse. "Current law with its loopholes might actually be better than these loopholes," she said.

An even bigger loophole could do far worse damage to the economy. Under the original bill, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission were granted the power to ban any credit swaps deemed to be "detrimental to the stability of a financial market or of participants in a financial market." By the time Frank's committee was done with the bill, however, the SEC and the CFTC were left with no authority to do anything about abusive derivatives other than to send a report to Congress. The move, in effect, would leave the kind of credit-default swaps that brought down AIG largely unregulated.

Why would leading congressional Democrats, working closely with the Obama administration, agree to leave one of the riskiest of all financial instruments unregulated, even before the issue could be debated by the House? "There was concern that a broad grant to ban abusive swaps would be unsettling," Frank explained.

Unsettling to whom? Certainly not to you and me — but then again, actual people are not really part of the calculus when it comes to finance reform. According to those close to the markup process, Frank's committee inserted loopholes under pressure from "constituents" — by which they mean anyone "who can afford a lobbyist," says Michael Greenberger, the former head of trading at the CFTC under Clinton.

This pattern would repeat itself over and over again throughout the fall. Take the centerpiece of Obama's reform proposal: the much-ballyhooed creation of a Consumer Finance Protection Agency to protect the little guy from abusive bank practices. Like the derivatives bill, the debate over the CFPA ended up being dominated by horse-trading for loopholes. In the end, Frank not only agreed to exempt some 8,000 of the nation's 8,200 banks from oversight by the castrated-in-advance agency, leaving most consumers unprotected, he allowed the committee to pass the exemption by voice vote, meaning that congressmen could side with the banks without actually attaching their name to their "Aye."

To win the support of conservative Democrats, Frank also backed down on another issue that seemed like a slam-dunk: a requirement that all banks offer so-called "plain vanilla" products, such as no-frills mortgages, to give consumers an alternative to deceptive, "fully loaded" deals like adjustable-rate loans. Frank's last-minute reversal — made in consultation with Geithner — was such a transparent giveaway to the banks that even an economics writer for Reuters, hardly a far-left source, called it "the beginning of the end of meaningful regulatory reform."

But the real kicker came when Frank's committee took up what is known as "resolution authority" — government-speak for "Who the hell is in charge the next time somebody at AIG or Lehman Brothers decides to vaporize the economy?" What the committee initially introduced bore a striking resemblance to a proposal written by Geithner earlier in the summer. A masterpiece of legislative chicanery, the measure would have given the White House permanent and unlimited authority to execute future bailouts of megaconglomerates like Citigroup and Bear Stearns.

Democrats pushed the move as politically uncontroversial, claiming that the bill will force Wall Street to pay for any future bailouts and "doesn't use taxpayer money." In reality, that was complete bullshit. The way the bill was written, the FDIC would basically borrow money from the Treasury — i.e., from ordinary taxpayers — to bail out any of the nation's two dozen or so largest financial companies that the president deems in need of government assistance. After the bailout is executed, the president would then levy a tax on financial firms with assets of more than $10 billion to repay the Treasury within 60 months — unless, that is, the president decides he doesn't want to! "They can wait indefinitely to repay," says Rep. Brad Sherman of California, who dubbed the early version of the bill "TARP on steroids."

The new bailout authority also mandated that future bailouts would not include an exchange of equity "in any form" — meaning that taxpayers would get nothing in return for underwriting Wall Street's mistakes. Even more outrageous, it specifically prohibited Congress from rejecting tax giveaways to Wall Street, as it did last year, by removing all congressional oversight of future bailouts. In fact, the resolution authority proposed by Frank was such a slurpingly obvious blow job of Wall Street that it provoked a revolt among his own committee members, with junior Democrats waging a spirited fight that restored congressional oversight to future bailouts, requires equity for taxpayer money and caps assistance to troubled firms at $150 billion. Another amendment to force companies with more than $50 billion in assets to pay into a rainy-day fund for bailouts passed by a resounding vote of 52 to 17 — with the "Nays" all coming from Frank and other senior Democrats loyal to the administration.

Even as amended, however, resolution authority still has the potential to be truly revolutionary legislation. The Senate version still grants the president unlimited power over equity-free bailouts, and the amended House bill still institutionalizes a system of taxpayer support for the 20 to 25 biggest banks in the country. It would essentially grant economic immortality to those top few megafirms, who will continually gobble up greater and greater slices of market share as money becomes cheaper and cheaper for them to borrow (after all, who wouldn't lend to a company permanently backstopped by the federal government?). It would also formalize the government's role in the global economy and turn the presidential-appointment process into an important part of every big firm's business strategy. "If this passes, the very first thing these companies are going to do in the future is ask themselves, 'How do we make sure that one of our executives becomes assistant Treasury secretary?'" says Sherman.

On the Senate side, finance reform has yet to make it through the markup process, but there's every reason to believe that its final bill will be as watered down as the House version by the time it comes to a vote. The original measure, drafted by chairman Christopher Dodd of the Senate Banking Committee, is surprisingly tough on Wall Street — a fact that almost everyone in town chalks up to Dodd's desperation to shake the bad publicity he incurred by accepting a sweetheart mortgage from the notorious lender Countrywide. "He's got to do the shake-his-fist-at-Wall Street thing because of his, you know, problems," says a Democratic Senate aide. "So that's why the bill is starting out kind of tough."

The aide pauses. "The question is, though, what will it end up looking like?"

He's right — that is the question. Because the way it works is that all of these great-sounding reforms get whittled down bit by bit as they move through the committee markup process, until finally there's nothing left but the exceptions. In one example, a measure that would have forced financial companies to be more accountable to shareholders by holding elections for their entire boards every year has already been watered down to preserve the current system of staggered votes. In other cases, this being the Senate, loopholes were inserted before the debate even began: The Dodd bill included the exemption for foreign-currency swaps — a gift to Wall Street that only appeared in the Frank bill during the course of hearings — from the very outset.

The White House's refusal to push for real reform stands in stark contrast to what it should be doing. It was left to Rep. Pete Kanjorski in the House and Bernie Sanders in the Senate to propose bills to break up the so-called "too big to fail" banks. Both measures would give Congress the power to dismantle those pseudomonopolies controlling almost the entire derivatives market (Goldman, Citi, Chase, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America control 95 percent of the $290 trillion over-the-counter market) and the consumer-lending market (Citi, Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo issue one of every two mortgages, and two of every three credit cards). On November 18th, in a move that demonstrates just how nervous Democrats are getting about the growing outrage over taxpayer giveaways, Barney Frank's committee actually passed Kanjorski's measure. "It's a beginning," Kanjorski says hopefully. "We're on our way." But even if the Senate follows suit, big banks could well survive — depending on whom the president appoints to sit on the new regulatory board mandated by the measure. An oversight body filled with executives of the type Obama has favored to date from Citi and Goldman Sachs hardly seems like a strong bet to start taking an ax to concentrated wealth. And given the new bailout provisions that provide these megafirms a market advantage over smaller banks (those Paul Volcker calls "too small to save"), the failure to break them up qualifies as a major policy decision with potentially disastrous consequences.

"They should be doing what Teddy Roosevelt did," says Sanders. "They should be busting the trusts."

That probably won't happen anytime soon. But at a minimum, Obama should start on the road back to sanity by making a long-overdue move: firing Geithner. Not only are the mop-headed weenie of a Treasury secretary's fingerprints on virtually all the gross giveaways in the new reform legislation, he's a living symbol of the Rubinite gangrene crawling up the leg of this administration. Putting Geithner against the wall and replacing him with an actual human being not recently employed by a Wall Street megabank would do a lot to prove that Obama was listening this past Election Day. And while there are some who think Geithner is about to go — "he almost has to," says one Democratic strategist — at the moment, the president is still letting Wall Street do his talking.

Morning, the National Mall, November 5th. A year to the day after Obama named Michael Froman to his transition team, his political "opposition" has descended upon the city. Republican teabaggers from all 50 states have showed up, a vast horde of frowning, pissed-off middle-aged white people with their idiot placards in hand, ready to do cultural battle. They are here to protest Obama's "socialist" health care bill — you know, the one that even a bloodsucking capitalist interest group like Big Pharma spent $150 million to get passed.

These teabaggers don't know that, however. All they know is that a big government program might end up using tax dollars to pay the medical bills of rapidly breeding Dominican immigrants. So they hate it. They're also in a groove, knowing that at the polls a few days earlier, people like themselves had a big hand in ousting several Obama-allied Democrats, including a governor of New Jersey who just happened to be the former CEO of Goldman Sachs. A sign held up by New Jersey protesters bears the warning, "If You Vote For Obamacare, We Will Corzine You."

I approach a woman named Pat Defillipis from Toms River, New Jersey, and ask her why she's here. "To protest health care," she answers. "And then amnesty. You know, immigration amnesty."

I ask her if she's aware that there's a big hearing going on in the House today, where Barney Frank's committee is marking up a bill to reform the financial regulatory system. She recognizes Frank's name, wincing, but the rest of my question leaves her staring at me like I'm an alien.

"Do you care at all about economic regulation?" I ask. "There was sort of a big economic collapse last year. Do you have any ideas about how that whole deal should be fixed?"

"We got to slow down on spending," she says. "We can't afford it."

"But what do we do about the rules governing Wall Street . . ."

She walks away. She doesn't give a fuck. People like Pat aren't aware of it, but they're the best friends Obama has. They hate him, sure, but they don't hate him for any reasons that make sense. When it comes down to it, most of them hate the president for all the usual reasons they hate "liberals" — because he uses big words, doesn't believe in hell and doesn't flip out at the sight of gay people holding hands. Additionally, of course, he's black, and wasn't born in America, and is married to a woman who secretly hates our country.

These are the kinds of voters whom Obama's gang of Wall Street advisers is counting on: idiots. People whose votes depend not on whether the party in power delivers them jobs or protects them from economic villains, but on what cultural markers the candidate flashes on TV. Finance reform has become to Obama what Iraq War coffins were to Bush: something to be tucked safely out of sight.

Around the same time that finance reform was being watered down in Congress at the behest of his Treasury secretary, Obama was making a pit stop to raise money from Wall Street. On October 20th, the president went to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York and addressed some 200 financiers and business moguls, each of whom paid the maximum allowable contribution of $30,400 to the Democratic Party. But an organizer of the event, Daniel Fass, announced in advance that support for the president might be lighter than expected — bailed-out firms like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs were expected to contribute a meager $91,000 to the event — because bankers were tired of being lectured about their misdeeds.

"The investment community feels very put-upon," Fass explained. "They feel there is no reason why they shouldn't earn $1 million to $200 million a year, and they don't want to be held responsible for the global financial meltdown."

Which makes sense. Shit, who could blame the investment community for the meltdown? What kind of assholes are we to put any of this on them?

This is the kind of person who is working for the Obama administration, which makes it unsurprising that we're getting no real reform of the finance industry. There's no other way to say it: Barack Obama, a once-in-a-generation political talent whose graceful conquest of America's racial dragons en route to the White House inspired the entire world, has for some reason allowed his presidency to be hijacked by sniveling, low-rent shitheads. Instead of reining in Wall Street, Obama has allowed himself to be seduced by it, leaving even his erstwhile campaign adviser, ex-Fed chief Paul Volcker, concerned about a "moral hazard" creeping over his administration.

"The obvious danger is that with the passage of time, risk-taking will be encouraged and efforts at prudential restraint will be resisted," Volcker told Congress in September, expressing concerns about all the regulatory loopholes in Frank's bill. "Ultimately, the possibility of further crises — even greater crises — will increase."

What's most troubling is that we don't know if Obama has changed, or if the influence of Wall Street is simply a fundamental and ineradicable element of our electoral system. What we do know is that Barack Obama pulled a bait-and-switch on us. If it were any other politician, we wouldn't be surprised. Maybe it's our fault, for thinking he was different.

Poland, US sign deployment accord

Poland and the United States on Friday signed an agreement on the status of US troops in the eastern European country ahead of the deployment of US Patriot missiles.

"This agreement allows the stationing of US soldiers and materiel in Poland," Polish Defence Minister Bogdan Klich told the press. "For Poland it means that its security will be strengthened."

The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) is a pre-requisite to setting up a US ground-to-air missile base in Poland. US officials say deployment should start in 2010.

Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Ellen Tauscher, who signed the accord, hailed the agreement as "the latest example of the very strong and enduring relationship that we only want to make deeper between the United States of America and Poland".

The agreement was signed by Deputy Defence Minister Stanislaw Komorowski for the Polish side.

"We have entered a good agreement because it reflects well our interests as the host country," said Klich.

"It is also good because it very well reflects our allied cooperation between Poland and the United States (...) and because it adds detail to the NATO SOFA agreement which is the major agreement because it sets the conditions of the stationing of foreign troops in another NATO country."

In accordance with the agreement, Poland retains its primacy of jurisdiction, Klich added.

The signing ceremony, originally scheduled for Thursday, was delayed for one day to make sure both sides will interpret certain provisions concurrently.

Defence ministry officials said disagreements focussed on possible wrongdoings by US soldiers.

"We hope that no US soldier who will be on the territory of the Republic of Poland will break the law," said Klich.

"But if that was to happen, that soldier would be subject to the responsibility and liable under a Polish court, unless at the request of the US side, this liability will be transferred over to the US side."

US soldiers will also pay their taxes in the United States.

During an October visit to Warsaw by US Vice President Joe Biden, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said his country was ready to join a new US anti-missile system in central Europe.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said the United States wants to deploy SM-3 missiles in Poland and the neighbouring Czech Republic in 2015.

Gates' announcement came after President Barack Obama scrapped a plan agreed in 2008 to install a controversial anti-missile shield system in the two countries.

The shield, promoted by Obama's predecessor George W. Bush, had angered Russia which considered it a threat to its security.

The Patriots and SM-3s are part of the new system proposed by the United States.

Now EU Wants Global Transaction Tax To Fund More Bailouts

Now EU Wants Global Transaction Tax To Fund More Bailouts 111209top

On the heels of a similar proposal being pushed in Copenhagen in the name of fighting global warming, the European Union has asked the IMF to introduce a global tax on financial transactions in order to fund more bailouts – in other words, the globalists are devising yet more ways to plunder the taxpayer into servitude to the private banks that they own.

“The European Union increased pressure on the International Monetary Fund on Friday to consider a global tax on financial transactions to limit the risk of another economic crisis,” reports the London Telegraph.

The EU wants a “global financial transaction levy” in order to “fund future financial bailouts,” as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for during the G20.

This is nothing more than yet another veil for the global tobin tax that will be used to bankroll the system of world government that Brown, the EU and the IMF have incessantly called for and rapidly advanced on the back of the economic crisis.

Taxpayers in the European Union are already picking up the tab for the massive bailouts that have taken place over the past year in the form of higher taxes – now they are set to be financially raped further in the form of transaction taxes. Once the globalists get a foot in the door by taxing international transactions related to the financial industry, they will seek to expand the levy to cover all purchases. European citizens already pay such taxes domestically in the form of VAT (value added tax) on most purchases, which is set to revert back to 17.5 percent in the UK from January 1st.

So the globalists already take a huge chunk in tax from most purchases we make, they take another huge chunk in the form of higher taxes to pay for the bailouts that have already happened, and now they want to take another slice in the form of an international transaction tax – and this is before the raft of other taxes that are currently being readied in Copenhagen under the justification of the global warming fraud.

Higher taxes means people with less money being forced to get into more debt to the same private banks that will benefit from the transaction tax!

Will the raping and pillaging never cease?

During his appearance on The Alex Jones Show earlier this week, Lord Monckton revealed that the secretive Copenhagen agreement included provisions for the introduction of a global tax on international financial transactions in the name of stopping climate change.

However, as the leaked Danish text also revealed this week, such funds would in fact be paid directly into the coffers of the World Bank and IMF, and wouldn’t even be allocated to go to poorer countries as the original justification claimed.

There would be a “global levy on international monetary transactions – that means every transfer of money across borders will be taxed,” said Monckton, adding that this would be on top of a 2 percent GDP tax.

“This is how they are going to fund this vast new government they’re setting up,” said Monckton, adding that he counted around 700 new bureaucracies that would be created as a result of the treaty, which would also be bankrolled by taxpayers even outside of the raft of new taxes the treaty would create.

It’s not enough for the globalists to rule over us with the iron fist of a dictatorial world government – they want us to pay for it too – financing our own enslavement as our disposable income vanishes into the coffers of an unelected global empire that then uses the money to dominate and control us even further.

Houses Passes $1.1 Trillion Spending Bill

There was a time when the federal government’s annual budget was submitted by the president and decided by the Congress in a relatively straightforward fashion. A time when it wasn’t so difficult to figure out what the government spent taxpayers’ money on.

But this is, or soon will be, 2010, and President Obama’s promises of transparency aside, the new way of doing things in the perpetual wartime economy is to pass bulky spending bills filled with anything and everything Congressmen want on an accelerated schedule, every few months.

In today’s example, a 1088 page $1.1 trillion “compromise” spending bill passed through the House of Representatives in a 221-202 vote along partisan lines. The bill covers everything from veteran’s benefits to arbitration for car dealers and, of course, a hefty raise in the foreign aid budget.

The latest massive spending bill comes less than two months after the White House signed a $680 billion “Defense Spending Bill,” which included hate crimes legislation provisions and restarted military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay.

That bill itself came just a few months after a $106 billion “emergency” war spending bill, which included a number of “pet projects,” including the so-called Cash for Clunkers program that subsidized new car purchases in return for a promise to destroy what were in many cases servicable used cars.

Which of course came not long after the $787 billion “stimulus bill” aimed at hurling enough money at assorted government programs that the economy would improve.

When President Obama took office, he promised a more transparent budget, particularly with promises to stop requesting “emergency” war spending bills to pay for what are now several year old wars.

This promise, like so many others, will likely be ignored, as the defense budgets have projected a more rapid pullout from Iraq and did not include last week’s massive escalation of the Afghan War, itself a $30 billion addition to the annual cost. Instead, America seems poised to continue the new way of doing things, piecemeal spending bills which provide ample opportunity to include the trendy projects that Congress craves and the unclear picture of the overall cost of war that keeps the voter largely in the dark about how much the nation’s assorted adventures really cost.

Geithner Says Treasury Faces Losses From Autos, AIG (Update4)

Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the government is unlikely to recoup its investments in insurer American International Group Inc. or the automakers General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC.

Geithner, in testimony today before the Congressional Oversight Panel, also said he chose to extend the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to give the Obama administration more time to unwind its bank-rescue efforts. The economy faces “significant headwinds,” and housing markets remain dependent on government support even as they are stabilizing, he said.

Still, U.S. financial and economic conditions have improved, Geithner told the panel in Washington. The Treasury now expects to make money on its banking investments, if not on its efforts to stabilize the automobile and insurance industries.

“It’s unlikely that we will be repaid for all of our investments in AIG, G.M. and Chrysler,” Geithner said.

The Government Accountability Office yesterday said that U.S. taxpayers will lose $30.4 billion from the auto-industry bailout, down from a prior estimate of $43.7 billion. The GAO report predicted a similar loss of $30.4 billion in AIG, down from a previous estimate of $31.5 billion.

Bank Repayment

Asked about future repayment by the largest banks still with government investments, Geithner said it is “generally desirable” that they raise all the money they need to repay in equity offerings.

“Cleaner exit is better than a staged exit,” he said. “I’m not sure that is going to be possible in every circumstance.”

While he didn’t discuss Citigroup Inc.’s efforts to extricate itself from the TARP, Geithner did note Bank of America Corp.’s repayment, which came yesterday. “I got a check for $45 billion,” he said, adding that was a “good thing.”

Under questioning by panelists, Geithner defended the government’s handling of last year’s AIG rescue, which has come under fire because banks were given the full value on credit- default swaps purchased from the New York-based insurer. Geithner was president of the New York Federal Reserve at the time and had a leading role in the bailout.

“You cannot selectively default on contractual obligations without courting collapse,” Geithner told the panel, explaining why the government paid banks 100 cents on the dollar. “There is no other way in the context of that storm to protect the economy from that failure.”

Extend TARP

The Treasury chief also faced skepticism about his decision to extend the TARP until next October.

The program is “essentially a blank check to finance any macroeconomic stimulus initiative that the executive branch can imagine, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars,” said panel member Paul Atkins, a former Republican member of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“The economy would not be growing again without TARP,” Geithner said.

The U.S. economy expanded at a 2.8 percent annual rate in the third quarter after shrinking for a year. The economy will expand 2.6 percent in 2010, according to the median forecast of 58 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News this month. The jobless rate will average 10 percent next year.

Assisting AIG

While assisting AIG and the auto companies will cost taxpayers, the Treasury predicts a $19 billion profit on its banking investments, Geithner said.

Long-term TARP costs will be no higher than $140 billion, the Treasury said. The ultimate return will depend on how the economy fares, Geithner said.

The Treasury expects “substantial income” from sales of TARP warrants, received as part of the government’s investment in banks, in coming weeks, Geithner said. He said that auctions will often bring the highest returns for the government.

Banks that pay back their capital injections must also dispose of the warrants that the Treasury received, either by repurchasing them or allowing the department to sell them. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. redeemed its warrants for $1.1 billion, while JPMorgan Chase & Co. opted to allow the government to auction its warrants after the Treasury rejected an appraisal as too low.

Personnel Shift

Geithner appeared before the panel, led by Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, as it prepared for a personnel shift. Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, resigned yesterday.

Hensarling, who is being replaced by Dallas attorney Mark McWatters, has repeatedly criticized the bailout. George Rasley, a spokesman for the congressman, said Hensarling had agreed to stay on the panel for the expected duration of the TARP. The effort was set to expire Dec. 31 until Geithner extended it yesterday.

In his testimony, Geithner told the panel that the Treasury can’t force small banks to participate in initiatives aimed at stimulating small-business lending. He said these programs have been less successful than hoped because banks have been wary of submitting to the extra regulation that comes with taking TARP aid.

Geithner said parts of the securitization markets are “still impaired,” especially for securities backed by commercial mortgages. He also hailed improvements in the markets for asset-backed securities, which he said are no longer as dependent on publicly supported markets like the Federal Reserve’s Term Asset-Backed Securities Lending Facility.

Food Stamps Go to a Record 37.2 Million, USDA Says (Update2)

Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) -- A record 37.2 million people, or about one out of every eight Americans, received food stamps in September, as the recession drove a surging jobless rate, according to a government report.

Recipients of the subsidy for retail-food purchases climbed 18 percent from a year earlier, according to a statement posted today on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Web site. Participation has set records for 10 straight months.

The government boosted food aid as unemployment soared, heading to a 26-year high of 10.2 percent in October. The jobless rate cooled to 10 percent last month, the Labor Department said on Dec. 4.

“We’ve been working to get that money out the door” to families that need assistance, Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan said last week in an interview.

Nevada had the biggest increase in food-stamp participation rates from a year earlier, surging 54 percent, followed by a 46.5 percent jump in Utah, according to the USDA. Texas had the most recipients at 3.1 million, followed by California with 2.9 million and New York with 2.6 million.

Recipients increased in every state and the District of Columbia, except Louisiana. Because of a sharp rise after Hurricanes Ike and Gustav in 2008, the number of people in Louisiana getting food stamps fell 65 percent in September from a year earlier. Gains of more than 30 percent from 2008 were reported in 18 states.

35 Million Budgeted

About 35 million people are expected to receive food stamps each month through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, according to the budget that President Barack Obama sent to Congress in May.

“In this economic time, SNAP has been essential,” Merrigan said. The participation rate of state residents who are eligible for food stamps varies widely, the USDA said last month in a report based on 2007 data.

In Missouri, about 100 percent who were eligible that year took advantage of the program, the highest rate in the nation, followed by residents of Maine and Michigan, at 91 percent and 89 percent, respectively, the USDA said. Wyoming’s participation rate of 47 percent was the lowest in fiscal 2007, followed by California and Idaho at 48 percent and 50 percent, according to the study.

Nationwide, participation in the food-stamp program was 66 percent of those eligible for the aid in 2007, the USDA said. The department has budgeted for a rate of 68 percent in the current 2010 fiscal year.

“We know of a lot of people who are SNAP-eligible who are not participating in the program,” Merrigan said. “We are working with states to improve participation.”

Emergency Jobless Insurance Claims Surge By Most Ever In Prior Week

The number you won’t hear mentioned anywhere in the Mainstream Media: 327,729. That is how many people shifted to Emergency Unemployment Compensation programs in the last week alone, hitting an all time record high of 4.2 million! So as everyone is focused on the benign picture of initial claims in the last week which was “only” 474,000, the number of people rolling off continuing benefits has exploded and is now a stunning 592,579 only in the last two week. Look for this number to keep going into the stratosphere as the 6 month continuing claims cliff keeps getting hit by more and more people who are unemployed and keep looking not only for believable change, but actual jobs to go with it.

Emergency Jobless Insurance Claims Surge By Most Ever In Prior Week EUC%2012.10 0

And here is the chart that the administration would love to keep under lock and seal: the cumulative number of people on Emergency Insurance. At this rate those collecting EUC will surpass those on continuing claims (5.5 million) within a month.

Emergency Jobless Insurance Claims Surge By Most Ever In Prior Week EUC%20graph%2012.10

US terror suspect David Headley was American spy

David Coleman Headley: a case study of the covert infiltration of terrorsit groups and the recruitment of terrorist operatives by western intelligence community.

Headley served as American spy - YouTube

Pak PM's PRO admits he is Headley's half-brother - Times of India

Investigations into the connections of jailed US-based Lashkar terrorist David Coleman Headley have reached Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s office. [...] The confirmation ties in with the growing assessment here that Headley was chosen by US agencies to infiltrate the jehadi network in Pakistan because of his connections there. While his father Syed Salim Gilani was a known broadcaster who worked for Voice of America, Daood/Headley attended the well known Hasan Abdal Cadet College whose alumni include, besides army officers, diplomats. [...] Headley had come into contact with US authorities after he was busted on a drug trafficking charge in 1998. Because he 'sang like a canary' to authorities, he served a minor sentence. But this was used against him to have him work as an 'agent'.

Making of a Terrorist - The Daily Beast

The Daily Beast has since learned that Headley’s connections to the Drug Enforcement Administration's murky intelligence unit - which I confirmed yesterday - might have played a role in his alleged conversion to terrorism. Additionally, sources at a foreign intelligence agency tell me that he might have been a double agent who turned on the U.S. [...] Indian intelligence believes that Headley was an undercover U.S. agent who went rogue. This theory goes that Headley was used by U.S. intelligence to infiltrate the Lashkar terrorists, but gradually turned under the influence of those very terrorists he was supposed to spy on.

the usual doublespeak for a false flag agent - niqnaq

Headley could straddle the US and Pakistan with ease despite a run-in with the law in the US. A recent profile in the NYT said that in 1998, Headley (then known as Daood Gilani) was convicted of conspiring to smuggle heroin into US from Pakistan, and Court records show that after his arrest, he provided so much information about his own involvement with drug trafficking and about his Pakistani suppliers that he was sentenced to less than two years in jail and later went to Pakistan to conduct undercover surveillance operations for the DEA.

DCI Before the Joint Inquiry Committee 2002 - Federation of American Scientists

As the Intelligence Community improved its understanding of the threat, and as the threat grew, we refocused and intensified our efforts to track, disrupt, and bring the terrorists to justice. By 1998, the key elements of the CIA's strategy against Bin Ladin and al-Qa'ida - inside Afghanistan and globally - placed us in a strongly offensive posture. They included: [...] Recruiting or exposing operatives;

CIA's policy-and-objectives statement for the FY 1998 budget submission to Congress - which was prepared in early 1997 - reflects this determination to go on the offensive against terrorism. The submission outlined our Counterterrorist Center's offensive operations, listing as their goals to "render the masterminds, disrupt terrorist infrastructure, infiltrate terrorist groups, and work with foreign partners." Our FY 2000 submission noted our use of a wide range of operational techniques, joint operations with foreign partners, and the recruitment of well-placed agents.

George Carlin - Saving the Planet

Click this link ....... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw&feature=player_embedded

Ron Paul "What if"

Click this link ..... http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=8860

中國‧千年一遇最長日環食

(中國‧北京)1月將現千年一遇最長日環食。繼500年一遇的日全食後,1月15日將出現未來1000年持續時間最長的日環食。

此次日環食的環食帶,從印度洋經緬甸進入中國,雲南、四川和重慶等地可觀測到日環食的全過程,整個廣東省境內均可看到日食。

專家預料,這次日環食持續時間可達11分8秒,相信要到3043年才可打破這次日環食持續時間的紀錄。

丹麥‧氣候大會公報草案曝光‧2050年前減排50%

(丹麥‧哥本哈根)哥本哈根氣候變化大會公報草案週五(12月11日)曝光,草案要求在2050年前全球碳排放量要在1990年基礎上削減至少50%,以便把全球氣溫增幅控制在攝氏2度以內。

根據草案,若協議能夠達成,在2050年以前,各國的溫室氣體排放量將減至低於1990年水平的50%、85%或者95%。發達國家支持減排50%,而發展中大國則要求發達國家承擔接近全部的減排責任,否則拒絕接受這一目標。

草案寫道,“各方將合作以避免危險的氣候變化出現,承認全球平均氣溫比前工業化時期上升應不超過(1.5攝氏度至2攝氏度)(這一廣泛的科學觀點)。”

不過,草案對於發達國家援助發展中國家應對氣候變化的方式表達得相當含糊,沒有說明具體的金額數量。

這份草案將提交給與會近200個國家的環境部長討論,以期在18日的首腦峰會上獲得通過。

澳洲‧悉尼機場泄漏毒氣‧27人不適‧局部疏散人員

(澳洲‧悉尼)悉尼機場週五(12月11日)疑發生氣體泄漏事件,當局在部份地區疏散人員,有27人吸入氣體後感不適。

澳聯社報導,事發於晚間8時(大馬時間下午5時),在國際航站的職員與乘客聲稱聞到一股金屬味,當局遂發出警報。

當局派出消防員及危險物質探測隊伍展開調查,當局並在8個入境地區進行緊急疏散,大約900名乘客被迫轉往其他服務台辦理手續。

消防局副局長皮爾斯較後表示,仍無法確認氣體泄漏來源。

中國‧CPI雖“由負轉正”‧85%民眾憂明年物價上漲

(中國‧北京)中國政府宣佈11月份的消費者價格指數(CPI)“由負轉正”之際,多達85%民眾最擔心明年物價上漲。

《中國青年報》社會調查中心最近與中國網進行民調,約2萬民眾接受了調查。

民調顯示,高達85.6%的民眾預測,明年日常生活用品價格會上漲,其中,46.7%的人認為日常生活用品價格會全面普遍上漲,只有不到2%的人認為物價會穩定或下降。

關注四大民生問題

中國民眾最關注的四大民生議題,依次為物價、房價、看病難看病貴,以及貧差距問問題。

其中,高達80%的民眾擔心物價上漲。此外,民眾還關心就業率、環境保護、社會治安、股市、司法公正以及個稅調整、政府資訊公開等。

展望明年,中國民眾最渴望實現的消費或投資計劃中,排在首位的是旅遊,有39.2%的人表示希望實現旅遊計劃;緊隨其後的就是買房,有38.8%的人想實現買房計劃。

接下來是買股票、買基金等投資,以及買車、創業、換工作和上學深造。

中國‧房價高無戶籍砸碎都市夢‧百萬青年“逃離北上廣”

(中國‧北京)中國房價高企、戶籍制度不公、日趨惡化的市政建設……正將百萬青年的大都會夢砸魂粉碎,並掀起百萬青年逃離“北上廣”的現象。

奔向二線城市或回鄉

“北上廣”是北京、上海、廣州的簡稱,是中國發達大城市的代名詞。幾乎每個人都想在“北上廣”成就一番事業,但是,生活的 重壓,房價暴漲使得部份年輕人離開這個“夢天堂”,或奔向二線城市,或回鄉……“如果你身處北京、上海或廣州,你會選擇逃離還是堅守?”中國大型網站之一 搜狐週五(12月11日)推出“逃出北上廣”的專題報導,並進行調查,截止週五晚逾3萬多人參與投票,最多人選擇逃離的原因是“買不起房子”,其次是 “(戶口)制度不平”。

工資漲一點房價漲更多

“完全沒指望能弄到北京戶口,也完全沒有能力買房,工資每漲一點、房價就漲更多,4年換了將近10份工作,半年內不得已搬了三次家。”回憶在北京“戰鬥”時光,年輕的王艷至今心有餘悸。她稱,剛畢業時想法很簡單,覺得有夢想的人都應該去北京,但現實卻是很殘酷的。

在上海工作的張林和小紫,今年打算買房結婚。近4年來,兩人辛辛苦苦儲蓄了20多萬元(人民 幣,下同)。“但90平方米(約1000平方呎)的單位要180萬,首付兩成的話月供4000多元,這一點我和女友省一省還是沒問題的,但是30多萬的首 付加上買房的各種手續費和稅費,我們手上的存款實在是捉襟見肘。”

在現實面前,原本帶著雄心壯志想要在這座金融城裡大展拳腳的張林,不得已帶著新婚的妻子踏上了回老家廣西的列車。

高樓市下的眾生相

●白領夫妻“分居”校園

“房子距離我們越來越遠,結了婚的我們只能‘匿身’在校園中。”高房價已改變一些年輕白領的生活方式。

正在北京一所大學讀博士學位的文姬琳說,“丈夫月入6000元(人民幣,下同),我自己月入不到2000元,買套房子就意味著長時間不吃不喝才行。”

於是,已經領取結婚證的文姬琳和丈夫採取各自蝸居在校園,相互想念的時候就去賓館聚聚。她說:“像我們一樣‘匿身’高校的高學歷、博士、博士後夫妻很多,我們現在既不敢想要小孩,也不敢讓父母來看我們。”

●炒樓大學生擁4棟別墅

“我的經歷誰都可以複製!”

來自上海的中國傳媒大學四年級學生馬文亞,只有21歲,但他已在河北香河坐擁324萬元(人民幣,下同)的別墅。生活無憂,令人羨慕。

馬文亞的第一桶金是他中三那年拿2萬元儲蓄,說服父母買下一個單位,一年後沽出,身家增一倍。隨後他不斷炒樓,入大學之時已賺到50萬元。其後他轉戰股市慘敗,最後他重投樓市,大有斬獲。

●滬房價比東京貴8倍

在東京某跨國公司任職的北京人王棟發現,上海的房價比東京貴8倍。

今年3月,為了結婚,王棟花了約350萬元(人民幣,下同)買下1399呎位於江戶川區的單位,地理位置相當於上海的閘北區。他近日回上海看房時,卻發現閘北區大小一樣的二手房樓價竟高達400萬元。以生活指數計算,即上海樓價比東京貴8倍。他決定不在上海買樓。



高樓價下互聯網熱爆詞彙

負二代:負二代是指在改革開放中沒有產業的工人或者農民子女,他們很多仍屬於弱勢群體,在城市經常被取,甚至被欺負,迷戀個人奮鬥,但卻覺得奮鬥根本改變不了命運。

蝸居:《蝸居》是中國熱爆電視劇的片名,同時代表著在城市買不起樓的打工一族心聲。中國樓價急升,打工辛苦儲到錢後,樓價又升。為求一個簡陋的居室,打工一族幾乎透不過氣來。

房奴:房屋的奴隸,中國民眾按揭買樓,在生命的黃金20、30年中,每年要拿四成、一半甚至更大比例收入去供樓,造成長期家庭壓力,影響正常消費。

蟻族:泛指1980年後出生大學畢業的低收入聚居群體,他們與螞蟻有許多相類似的特點:高智、弱小、群居。他們亦依所在區域不同,被稱為京蟻(北京)、滬蟻(上海)、穗蟻(廣州)等。

裸婚:逼於生活壓力,時下80後結婚時,不買房、不買車、不辦婚禮、不買婚戒、不度蜜月,只與雙方家長見面。年輕人灑脫的背後,乃一片無奈。

中國‧溫家寶出席氣候峰會‧將闡述中應對暖化主張

(中國‧北京)中國外交部宣佈,總理溫家寶將於12月17日至18日出席在丹麥舉行的哥本哈根氣候峰會。

外交部在週五(12月11日)晚上發表簡短聲明,確認溫家寶將出席哥本哈根氣候大會最後階段的會議,屆時美國總統奧巴馬、印度總理辛格和法國總統薩爾科齊等領導人將齊聚一堂。

據悉,溫家寶將在會議上發表重要講話,全面闡述中國積極應對氣候變化、推動氣候變化國際合作的立場和主張。

此外,溫家寶週五晚應約與聯合國秘書長潘基文通電話,溫家寶表示,中方願與聯合國保持密切溝通,共同為此作出努力。

而潘基文則高度讚賞中國政府在控制溫室氣體排放方面所作的努力和宣佈的行動目標,認為這是對氣候變化國際合作的重大貢獻。

據報導,溫家寶當天較早前到中國氣象局考察時要求,要採取堅決有力措施,實現中國政府提出的減緩溫室氣體排放的行動目標。

新加坡‧職業影響婚姻美滿‧醫生藝人離婚率最高

(新加坡)美國一項調查顯示,一個人的職業與他的婚姻是否美滿有關,護士、精神科醫生、舞蹈員和藝人,都較有可能離婚!

美國維吉尼亞州的瑞德福大學的心理學教授阿莫特,發明出一套公式可計算出各行各業的離婚率。

他發現在449個職業中,有最高離婚比率的首5個行業包括了必需時常關懷他人的護士及醫生。身處在花花世界的藝人,也是高離婚率的一群。

心理醫生大衛威廉說︰“這項調查令人關注的是,那些從事關懷工作的人也很有可能離婚。這或許是因為他們花太多時間來關懷別人,而犧牲自己的家庭,或是,他們的性格較敏感,所以在處理自己的感時,也較脆弱。”

總裁善調解離婚機率低

總裁工作時間長,壓力大,但婚姻破裂率僅9.81%。

心理醫生凱羅琳舒斯特相信︰“總裁善於時間分配、調解糾紛、支配工作,並經常有很高的情緒智商,這些都是讓感情成功的重要元素。”

牙醫、驗光師、神職人員、足科醫生和農業工程師的婚姻美滿又長久,只有2%至7%離婚。

哪些行業的人,最可能離婚?
●舞蹈者︰43%
●調酒師︰38%
●按摩師︰38%
●醫療工作者︰29%
●藝人︰28%

泰國‧私人網頁上宣佈動向‧塔辛將訪亞洲3國

(泰國‧曼谷)流亡的泰國前首相塔辛今日(週六,12月12日)在“推特”(Twitter)私人網頁上宣佈,將進行長達一週的訪問亞洲3國行程。

塔辛11月獲委為柬埔寨政府經濟顧問後,曾訪問柬埔寨。柬埔寨總理洪森拒絕將塔辛引渡回泰國,引發柬泰外交風波。

塔辛在推特頁面上指出:“計劃在7至8天內,訪問亞洲3個國家,與這些國家的領導人交換意見。我已經向這3個國家徵取同意。”他未透露是哪3個國家。

Major makeover of Wall Street rules passes House

WASHINGTON — The House passed the most ambitious restructuring of federal financial regulations since the New Deal on Friday, aiming to head off any replay of last year's Wall Street failures that plunged the nation deep into recession.

The sprawling legislation would give the government new powers to break up companies that threaten the economy, create a new agency to oversee consumer banking transactions and shine a light into shadow financial markets that have escaped the oversight of regulators.

The vote was a party-line 223-202. No Republicans voted for the bill; 27 Democrats voted against it.

While a victory for the administration, the legislation dilutes some of President Barack Obama's recommendations, carving out exceptions to some of its toughest provisions. The burden now shifts to the Senate, which is not expected to act on its version of a regulatory overhaul until early next year.

The president praised the House action Friday, and called on Congress to act swiftly to get the bill to the White House for his signature.

"The crisis from which we are still recovering was born not only of failure on Wall Street, but also in Washington," Obama said. "We have a responsibility to learn from it and to put in place reforms that will promote sound investment, encourage real competition and innovation and prevent such a crisis from ever happening again. "

The legislation would govern the simplest payday loan and the most complicated high-finance trades. In its breadth, the measure seeks to impose restrictions on every house of finance, from two-teller neighborhood thrifts to huge interconnected conglomerates.

Democratic leaders had to fend off a last-minute attempt to kill a proposed consumer agency, a central element of the legislation and one the features pushed by the White House. The agency would take over consumer protection powers from current banking regulators, and big banks and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce vigorously opposed the idea.

Democrats said the broad legislation would help address problems that led to last year's calamitous financial crisis. Republicans argued that it overreached and would institutionalize bailouts for the financial industry.

"Let's put it to the American people: Do you prefer the Republican position of doing literally nothing to rein in these abuses or should we try to rein them in?" Rep. Barney Frank, who led the Democratic effort on the bill, asked moments before the final vote.

Republicans cast the regulatory bill as a burden to business and argued that it would continue to protect companies considered too big to fail. They offered an alternative that called for special bankruptcy proceedings to dismantle failing financial institutions. That alternative failed.

"This house has been on a spending spree, a bailout spree and a regulatory spree that I could never have imagined in any of my prior 18 years here in Congress," Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio said.

Democrats accused Republicans of doing the bidding of big banks, pointing to a meeting in the Capitol Visitors' Center this week between GOP leaders and about 100 lobbyists. Even the White House took a swipe at House Republicans.

"I didn't expect them to help after a meeting with 100 lobbyists for the financial industry," White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said in an interview. "I'm not surprised they are opposed to it. The lobbyists are trying to gut this."

Consumer advocates cheered the survival of the consumer protection agency but said the overall legislation fell short, especially in the regulation of complex investment instruments known as derivatives.

The legislation aims to prevent manipulation and bring transparency to the $600 trillion global derivatives market. But an amendment by New York Democrat Scott Murphy, adopted 304-124 Thursday night, created an exception for nonfinancial companies that use derivatives as a hedge against market fluctuations rather than as a speculative investment. The amendment exempted businesses considered too small to be a risk to the financial system.

A Democratic effort to make more companies subject to derivatives regulations and to end abusive-trading rules failed.

When the Obama administration first proposed a package, it called for regulations of derivatives without any exceptions. But a potent lobbying coalition that included Boeing Co., Caterpillar Inc., General Electric Co., Coca-Cola and other big companies persuaded lawmakers to dilute the restrictions.

"It's a weakness in the bill and a win for Wall Street," said Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America. "Hedge funds and others that are not bona fide hedgers of commercial risk will slip through this language."

The bill would create a Financial Services Oversight Council made up of the Treasury secretary, Federal Reserve chairman and heads of regulatory agencies to monitor the financial markets for potential threats to nation's system.

It would identify firms and activities that should be subject to heightened standards, including requirements that they place more money in reserve. The government could dismantle even healthy firms if they were considered a grave risk to the economy. Large firms with assets of more than $50 billion, and hedge funds with at least $10 billion in assets, would pay into a $150 billion resolution fund that would cover the costs of dismantling such a company.

It was that fund that Republicans argued amounted to yet another bailout pool.

But one Republican, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chairman Sheila Bair, rebutted the House GOP critics, commending the legislation for creating a system to dismantle failing firms. "Ending too-big-to-fail by creating an effective resolution regime that will apply to large financial institutions is the key to ensuring that we end the need for future bailouts," she said.

The Federal Reserve, criticized for not spotting last year's crisis, would lose power in the legislation. The measure would limit the Fed's unilateral ability to inject large amounts of money into financial institutions. It also would take away the Federal Reserve's consumer regulation authority and would subject it to a broad audit by Congress' investigative arm.

The legislation also takes on Wall Street compensation. Company shareholders would get a nonbinding vote on the pay of top executives. Federal banking regulators would have to approve compensation practices, though not actual pay, at banks and bank holding companies.

The House vote marked a personal triumph for Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who began drafting the legislation last summer. Frank had to steer the various pieces of the bill amid Republican opposition and misgivings from pro-business Democrats.

Conspiracy Theory: 911 Episode 2 part1/6

Click this link .... http://www.eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=8834

South African gold output continues to decline

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -

South African gold output fell 5.8 percent in volume terms and total mineral production dropped 8.5 percent in October compared with the same month in the previous year, official data showed on Thursday.

Production of non-gold minerals declined 8.9 percent, Statistics South Africa said on its website www.statssa.gov.za (Reporting by Muchena Zigomo)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Insiders Quietly Sold 82x More Stock Than They Bought

Insider selling has been massively outpacing insider buying, by 82x, according to FInviz data via Zero Hedge.

ZH: In the most recent data set, $11.6 million in stock was purchased by insiders, while a whopping $957 million was sold. And somehow pundits are still spinning this mass orchestrated sell into the bid by those in the know as a bull market.

Note the current selling vs. buying ratio is much higher than the 22x back in June. Thus while a high ratio isn't always a problem, clearly the relative increase has been enormous. Executives merely selling in order to fund their Christmas purchases? Tax-related selling? One can only hope.