MeSsAge iN A BoTtle!

Whitney Houston dies at 48

2012-02-15T12:43:00.000-08:00

Another tragedy, I think. Who would have thought Whitney Houston would slip away at the age of 48. She had money, though there are accounts saying Houston was broke at the time of her death. She was beautiful, I would have liked to have meet her,as probably hundreds of others. I guess I never will now.

Black woman get so hung up on the guys in her life. Her relationship with Bobby Brown,seemed to be fatal. What did that brother have that hundreds of other African-Americans didn't have? Why do these relationships have to be fatal sometimes for the women involved?

I Wasn't a fan of Houstons music, But I thought she had a terrific voice.

So long Whitney Houston...

We interrupt this program........

2012-02-03T13:14:00.002-08:00

Just wanted to express some thoughts about the passing OF R&B Music T.V host and owner ,Don Cornelius. Cornelius host and owned a show on American T.V called "Soul Train", and it featured Popular American Rhythm and blues artist, and dancers.

Cornelius was like the African American, "Dick Clark", as Dick Clark ran the popular "American BandStand". In my town, they often came on at the same time, being African-American myself, I often choose "Soul Train", though I was pretty envious of those Dancers on "Soul Train" there were other shows like "Soul train"on the air, but Cornelius's show really caught on..

Soul train was a musical showcase of all the popular R&B artist in the 70's, 80's even into the 90's. Has that show ran for 36 seasons.

Don Cornelius seemed a pretty cool dude, running a Moneycow, too bad at the eve of Black American History month, Cornelius chose to take his own like that at 75 years of age. It Ain't easy being old, but I have my doubts that Cornelius would actually shoot himself.

The Soul Train show was syndicated, is available on DVD and is likely to become a hot property, of Black American History. I love the older theme song of that show. It was called "TSOP", by the "Sound of Philadelphia."

Consumer group to Feds: Break up Bank of America

2012-01-25T14:40:00.000-08:00

Consumer group to feds: Break up Bank of America
By Alain Sherter

(MoneyWatch) Claiming that Bank of America (BAC) poses a "grave" threat to the U.S. financial system, a leading consumer-advocacy organization is urging the federal government to break up the banking giant.

Public Citizen said in a letter on Wednesday to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner that BofA is too large and interconnected with other financial institutions to manage properly, or even to regulate. The bank's poor financial condition could cause it to deteriorate "at any moment," the group said, undermining investor confidence in BofA and causing a run on the bank.

The group said that financial regulators have authority under the Dodd-Frank Act, a financial reform bill signed into law by President Obama in 2010, to make "systemically risky" banks smaller. In keeping with that mandate, the government should "reform Bank of America into one or more institutions that are smaller, less interconnected, less complex, more manageable and, as a result, less systemically dangerous," Public Citizen said.

In a related statement, a number of prominent economists and other financial experts pressed Bernanke, Geithner and FDIC head Martin Gruenberg to examine the stability of other large financial institutions. Specifically, the government should examine these companies to see if they are solvent, "excessively difficult" to manage and regulate, and capable of being liquidated, the group said. Signers of that statement included economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, economist and law professor William Black of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, and hedge fund manager Marshall Auerback.

A BofA spokesman declined comment.

Support for dissolving Wall Street banks and other "too big to fail" financial firms swelled immediately following the 2008 financial crisis. But Obama administration officials, particularly Geithner, have remained cool to the idea. David Arkush, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch division, acknowledged in an interview that there is little support on Capitol Hill for breaking up big banks. "I have no illusion that the Fed is going to read our petition and immediately move on it," he said. "The idea is to increase the public conversation."

Public Citizen is targeting BofA because industry analyses show that the company is the least stable of the nation's big banks. Bank of America "is a ticking time bomb," Arkush said, noting the company's large holdings of distressed mortgage loans and its exposure to the European financial crisis. "It could fail at any time and cause a crisis in the financial system."

Arkush also said the government is helping large financial institutions "limp along." That sends a signal to the market that the government is willing to guarantee the losses of these companies, encouraging banks to act recklessly and breeding risk throughout the financial system, he said.

President Barack Obama Serenades His Contributors

2012-01-22T18:11:00.000-08:00

Did you catch that News idem in the U.S about Obama trying to Sing..on national TV? Obama mentioned R&B artist, Al Green, who was in the audience. Then tried to sing a few bars of an Al Green Song, ala American Idol. What song did Al Green evoke for Obama, what was the first song that that came out of Obama's psyche?

It was Al Greens' " Let's stay together"....... I'm very familiar with Green and his Song, I didn't think it much of the song, But have you ever really listened to that song? What might it suggest, is Obama thinking about trying to reconcile his marriage with Michele ? Might it suggest his attitude toward his financial contributors of late? Who is Obama trying to woo?

A good indication that too much money runs the Presidential game in Washington D.C.

Listen to the song "Lets stay together"...here

Bill Moyers and Company

2012-01-21T19:39:00.000-08:00

Bill Moyers had an excellent program on the Sub-prime mortgage scandal, and "too big to fail banks" called "Crony Capitalism".

Moyers hosted the show with guest David Stockman. Stockman; The first whistle blower ,former secretary of the Treasury? Of the Reagan Administration. He quit or got fired before the end of his office, and wrote a tell all book. Fortunately there was no financial meltdown in America at that time, so I guest Stockman didn't get that much press at the time.

I sure what he had to say in his book was very interesting. Stockman said some interesting things in the recent T.V interview, basically he said many times that the event that occurred, the big financial meltdown that happened at the end of G.W Bush's term will probably happen again. Moyers next guest practically said the same thing, "Its not a matter of why or how ,but a matter of when!"

Well what would it take to fix something like that so it wouldn't happen again"? It would take an event probably more traumatic than what happened in the meltdown.

"How can we fix the system and these problems?" Stockman basically said "You have to get money out of politics." Because all the money in in a few hands in America and there using that money to influence legislation in America.

Seems like a bit of the conversation was inspired by the "Occupy" movement that's somewhat active in America. Which might be topical but somewhat unfortunate because the "occupy"movement , at least in Oakland California, seems influenced by alot of divergent view, some of these views colliding with local politics.

I added a link where you can see the show, on the right.

The City of Berkeley clamps down HARD on the Homeless!!!

2011-11-26T01:22:00.000-08:00

The Photos of these people I gathered for this blog,are from a couple of cities in the Bay Area, California. This is not to make light of these cities.I believe this is a phenomena commonplace in cities through America.

One of the reasons it caught my notice, Is that this area is abit of an affluent area, it was rare to young people bumming out on the streets here,but not anymore. The Sign of an American economy where young people cannot find meaningful work.

I captured some of these faces,most of them I rarely see anymore. In the photos I tried to omitt landmarks , so that the authorities would not target these places and people because of publicity, but it looks like the City of Berkeley, California is clamping down on homeless people here. The two guys sitting down here seemed peaceable enough ,one with a cat the other with a dog (typical).

Well the police roused these two guys....

And even took away there pets......

The Mayor of Berkeley is Tom Bates, I believe the area where these guys are being arrested is in District 4, Jesse Arreguin.

Occupy Oakland

2011-11-08T10:09:00.000-08:00

The calm before the Storm...

The Cops move in to clear out encampments!

The Encampments are back, The City shies aways from using force to clear the park, a local strike (by the Campers) is called, People take it to the streets.

The Aftermath.....

Some local businesses are vandalized, by rough individuals in the
"Occupy: Oakland" movement. Obama Campaign office is even caught in the general strike.

The Group Who Fought Back!!

2011-10-14T10:41:00.000-07:00

So apparently teens and people or all ages are beginning to organize and protest financial machinations that is affecting and have affected there lives. There protesting these changes by "sitting in" finacial institutions in Cities around the U.S.

So far in the area of the U.S, I live in, there are two major sit-ins going on presently, One in Oakland, California, called" Occupy; Oakland", the Other in San Francisco, California, called Occupy; San Francisco. I have been to these protests, here are some of the the photos of what I call, The people who fought back!

OCCUPY:OAKLAND

The Oakland group is alittle more orderly.... A group of Educators and teachers.

Like in My Previous post, I have complaints about this movement, though it is early in development. These guys in Oakland get points for being a bit more orderly than the San Francisco bunch, and points for being neat. But deduct points for lobbying outside Oakland City Hall! What does Oakland City hall have to do with Economic policy for the U.S? Though that park is be a great place to camp. The main thing they seemed to have accomphished there was the resignation of the "Chief of Police" Mr. Anthony Batts.

The good thing about Oakland is that Federal Offices and State offices are only a block a way from City Hall. A bad thing is that both of the Representatives here have decent records in regards to votes affecting our general popular econmics.

Barbara Lee is a decent legislator in the House of Representatives. Barabra Boxer is a decent Senator ,who actually voted against the repeal of "Glass-Stegall". So there aren't any good places to protest in Oakland. But again they could still be protesting outside the Federal/State Buildings instead of City Hall, For instance California Govenor Jerry Brown ,a nice guy,( former mayor of Oakland) signed a part of the "Dream act" into legislation, a "Act" that would help the children of illegal immigrants get into college. This is a time when ordinary citizens need to and/or can't get into college. This is also a time of Budget cuts.Wehave an illegalimmigration probelm in this country, Jerry Brown wants to give them a free education.

Also the movement in Oakland, has some of the same probelms as in S.F, some of the protesters don't know of the Glass-Stegall act for example, they are part of the disaffected; lost homes,lost jobs, cant get a job, can't afford to go to school, can't afford to teach, some feel powerless,depressed and for them the solution seems to have to do with Anarchy.

The movement in Oakland Is a grassroots movement. I stood in and listened to some guys have a Pow-wow about the movement..its was painful listening to has some rational white guys try to reason with a bum, who was rough in speech and insulted people. Another guy was run off, we wereall exhorted to "Get on the Bus"..... Yeah lets do that.

Occupy: San Francisco

2011-10-14T08:48:00.000-07:00

More Photos, of the Protesters of "Occupy: San Francisco". The Group protesting financial organization and institutions,Financial machination in the U.S That have wreaked the economy and ruined their lives.

Occupy: San Francisco

The San Francisco group I found were mostly camping outside the Federal Reserve Bank. They seemed a bit unruly and disorganized, ,but they had probably been camping overnight outside the Fed Reserve for days. They had lots of food there.

My complaint about these protest like the one in Oakland, (though the S.F group get points for protesting outside the Federal Reserve Bank). is that I don't believe it is going to do much good lobbying these people at financial institutions, particularly like this, they've (wall Street) made millions if not, billions of dollars by all this money wrangling, and in this case, Money Talks, Bullshit walks. I took a walk , the protesters still stuck around.

Most of the protesters there probably didn't know what the "Glass Stegall act was? Not like its a big deal, but it was, and if you want to understand about how the U.S got to where it is now financially, it seems to me you have to know about "Glass Stegall". Instead It seems alot of the protesters were spouting some crap about 1% vs 99%, has if they are the 99% protesting against a 1% in America who have all the wealth, and wield power. While it may be true,it seems like a lousy argument,we are still a society of laws and even a democracy. We can still vote. In fact Its my contention that in protesting these financial institutions in the U.S, they really ought to be Complaining/Protesting about ,and to, there government legislators.

It is the legislators that are mostly responsible for all the changes going one that has adversely affected the 99%. In Fact Dianne Feinstein, a ordinarily fine senator, voted for the repeal of Glass-Steagall,in favorof the Gramm ....machination.

One of Her offices in S.F was just a couple of blocks, down the street. Yet there were no protesters there! These legislators helped in large part made all these changes possible.

The Voters /Protesters should let her know there dissatisfied with her , and her voting record, instead these protesters do things like disrupting a bank like Wells Fargo ( Ha!)..they just only get arrested and make a nuisance of themselves. Lest they'll be noticed. But the other thing about some of these protesters are the disaffected, people who have lost there jobs, lost there homes, pensions, can't get jobs. They feel powerless, so for some of them , they tend to believe that anarchy is the way for them in a system that will not consider them or listen to them.

The protesters are at a "rock and a hard place". The Wall Street types might not listen much to these people, even there legislators might not listen much, in the end, but at least if the Legislators end up being unfaithful to the protesters , they can vote them out. That is there main trump card.

Sold out!!

2011-10-07T10:19:00.000-07:00

12 Key Policy Decisions Led to American Finacial Cataclysm From the Wall Street Watch website.

Financial deregulation led directly to the current economic meltdown. For the last three decades, government regulators, Congress and the executive branch, on a bipartisan basis, steadily eroded the regulatory system that restrained the financial sector from acting on its own worst tendencies. "Sold Out" details a dozen key steps to financial meltdown, revealing how industry pressure led to these deregulatory moves and their consequences:

1. In 1999, Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which had prohibited the merger of commercial banking and investment banking.

2.Regulatory rules permitted off-balance sheet accounting -- tricks that enabled banks to hide their liabilities.

3.The Clinton administration blocked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating financial derivatives -- which became the basis for massive speculation.

4.Congress in 2000 prohibited regulation of financial derivatives when it passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.

5.The Securities and Exchange Commission in 2004 adopted a voluntary regulation scheme for investment banks that enabled them to incur much higher levels of debt.

6.Rules adopted by global regulators at the behest of the financial industry would enable commercial banks to determine their own capital reserve requirements, based on their internal "risk-assessment models."

7.Federal regulators refused to block widespread predatory lending practices earlier in this decade, failing to either issue appropriate regulations or even enforce existing ones.

8.Federal bank regulators claimed the power to supersede state consumer protection laws that could have diminished predatory lending and other abusive practices.

9.Federal rules prevent victims of abusive loans from suing firms that bought their loans from the banks that issued the original loan.

10.Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac expanded beyond their traditional scope of business and entered the subprime market, ultimately costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.

11.The abandonment of antitrust and related regulatory principles enabled the creation of too-big-to-fail megabanks, which engaged in much riskier practices than smaller banks.

12.Beset by conflicts of interest, private credit rating companies incorrectly assessed the quality of mortgage-backed securities; a 2006 law handcuffed the SEC from properly regulating the firms.

Financial Sector Political Money and 3000 Lobbyists Dictated Washington Policy

During the period 1998-2008:

Commercial banks spent more than $154 million on campaign contributions, while investing $363 million in officially registered lobbying:

Accounting firms spent $68 million on campaign contributions and $115 million on lobbying;

Insurance companies donated more than $218 million and spent more than $1.1 billion on lobbying;

Securities firms invested more than $504 million in campaign contributions, and an additional $576 million in lobbying. Included in this total: private equity firms contributed $56 million to federal candidates and spent $33 million on lobbying; and hedge funds spent $32 million on campaign contributions (about half in the 2008 election cycle).

The betrayal was bipartisan: about 55 percent of the political donations went to Republicans and 45 percent to Democrats, primarily reflecting the balance of power over the decade. Democrats took just more than half of the financial sector's 2008 election cycle contributions.

The financial sector buttressed its political strength by placing Wall Street expatriates in top regulatory positions, including the post of Treasury Secretary held by two former Goldman Sachs chairs, Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson.

Financial firms employed a legion of lobbyists, maintaining nearly 3,000 separate lobbyists in 2007 alone.

These companies drew heavily from government in choosing their lobbyists. Surveying 20 leading financial firms, "Sold Out" finds 142 of the lobbyists they employed from 1998-2008 were previously high-ranking officials or employees in the Executive Branch or Congress.

Who is Phil Gramm?

2011-09-08T22:32:00.000-07:00

Foreclosure Phil

"Years before Phil Gramm was a McCain campaign adviser and a lobbyist for a Swiss bank at the center of the housing credit crisis, he pulled a sly maneuver in the Senate that helped create today's subprime meltdown."

—By David Corn

"Who's to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown. Yet has Gramm been banished from the corridors of power? Reviled as the villain who bankrupted Middle America? Hardly. Now a well-paid executive at a Swiss bank, Gramm cochairs Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign and advises the Republican candidate on economic matters. He's been mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary should McCain win. That's right: A guy who helped screw up the global financial system could end up in charge of US economic policy. Talk about a market failure.

Gramm's long been a handmaiden to Big Finance. In the 1990s, as chairman of the Senate banking committee, he routinely turned down Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt's requests for more money to police Wall Street; during this period, the sec's workload shot up 80 percent, but its staff grew only 20 percent. Gramm also opposed an sec rule that would have prohibited accounting firms from getting too close to the companies they audited—at one point, according to Levitt's memoir, he warned the sec chairman that if the commission adopted the rule, its funding would be cut. And in 1999, Gramm pushed through a historic banking deregulation bill that decimated Depression-era firewalls between commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and securities firms—setting off a wave of merger mania.

But Gramm's most cunning coup on behalf of his friends in the financial services industry—friends who gave him millions over his 24-year congressional career—came on December 15, 2000. It was an especially tense time in Washington. Only two days earlier, the Supreme Court had issued its decision on Bush v. Gore. President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress were locked in a budget showdown. It was the perfect moment for a wily senator to game the system. As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384-billion omnibus spending bill, Gramm slipped in a 262-page measure called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Written with the help of financial industry lobbyists and cosponsored by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the agriculture committee, the measure had been considered dead—even by Gramm. Few lawmakers had either the opportunity or inclination to read the version of the bill Gramm inserted. "Nobody in either chamber had any knowledge of what was going on or what was in it," says a congressional aide familiar with the bill's history.

It's not exactly like Gramm hid his handiwork—far from it. The balding and bespectacled Texan strode onto the Senate floor to hail the act's inclusion into the must-pass budget package. But only an expert, or a lobbyist, could have followed what Gramm was saying. The act, he declared, would ensure that neither the sec nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (cftc) got into the business of regulating newfangled financial products called swaps—and would thus "protect financial institutions from overregulation" and "position our financial services industries to be world leaders into the new century."

But the Enron loophole was small potatoes compared to the devastation that unregulated swaps would unleash. Credit default swaps are essentially insurance policies covering the losses on securities in the event of a default. Financial institutions buy them to protect themselves if an investment they hold goes south. It's like bookies trading bets, with banks and hedge funds gambling on whether an investment (say, a pile of subprime mortgages bundled into a security) will succeed or fail. Because of the swap-related provisions of Gramm's bill—which were supported by Fed chairman Alan Greenspan and Treasury secretary Larry Summers—a $62 trillion market (nearly four times the size of the entire US stock market) remained utterly unregulated, meaning no one made sure the banks and hedge funds had the assets to cover the losses they guaranteed.

In essence, Wall Street's biggest players (which, thanks to Gramm's earlier banking deregulation efforts, now incorporated everything from your checking account to your pension fund) ran a secret casino. "Tens of trillions of dollars of transactions were done in the dark," says University of San Diego law professor Frank Partnoy, an expert on financial markets and derivatives. "No one had a picture of where the risks were flowing." Betting on the risk of any given transaction became more important—and more lucrative—than the transactions themselves, Partnoy notes: "So there was more betting on the riskiest subprime mortgages than there were actual mortgages." Banks and hedge funds, notes Michael Greenberger, who directed the cftc's division of trading and markets in the late 1990s, "were betting the subprimes would pay off and they would not need the capital to support their bets."

These unregulated swaps have been at "the heart of the subprime meltdown," says Greenberger. "I happen to think Gramm did not know what he was doing. I don't think a member in Congress had read the 262-page bill or had thought of the cataclysm it would cause." In 1998, Greenberger's division at the cftc proposed applying regulations to the burgeoning derivatives market. But, he says, "all hell broke loose. The lobbyists for major commercial banks and investment banks and hedge funds went wild. They all wanted to be trading without the government looking over their shoulder."

Now, belatedly, the feds are swooping in—but not to regulate the industry, only to bail it out, as they did in engineering the March takeover of investment banking giant Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase, fearing the firm's collapse could trigger a dominoes-like crash of the entire credit derivatives market.

No one in Washington apologizes for anything, so it's no surprise that Gramm has failed to issue any mea culpa. Post-Enron, says Greenberger, the senator even called him to say, "You're going around saying this was my fault—and it's not my fault. I didn't intend this."

Whether or not Gramm had bothered to ponder the potential downsides of his commodities legislation, having helped set off an industry free-for-all, he reaped the rewards. In 2003, he left the Senate to take a highly lucrative job at ubs, Switzerland's largest bank, which had been able to acquire investment house PaineWebber due to his banking deregulation bill. He would soon be lobbying Congress, the Fed, and the Treasury Department for ubs on banking and mortgage matters. There was a moment of poetic justice when ubs became one of the subprime crisis' top losers, writing down $37 billion as of this spring—an amount equal to its previous four years of profits combined. In a report explaining how it had managed to mess up so grandly, ubs noted that two-thirds of its losses were the fault of collateralized debt obligations—securities backed largely by subprime instruments—and that credit default swaps had been "key to the growth" of its out-of-control cdo business. (Gramm declined to comment for this article.)

Gramm's record as a reckless deregulator has not affected his rating as a Republican economic expert. Sen. John McCain has relied on him for policy advice, especially, according to the campaign, on housing matters. The two have been buddies ever since they served together in the House in the 1980s; in 1996, McCain chaired Gramm's flop of a presidential campaign. (Gramm spent $21 million and earned only 10 delegates during the gop primaries.) In 2005, McCain told a Wall Street Journal columnist that Gramm was his economic guru. Two years later, Gramm wrote a piece for the Journal extolling McCain as a modern-day Abraham Lincoln, and he's hailed McCain's love of tax cuts and free trade. Media accounts have identified Gramm as a contender for the top slot at the Treasury Department if McCain reaches the White House. "If McCain gets in," frets Lynn Turner, a former chief sec accountant, "we'll have more of the same deregulatory mess. I like John McCain, but given what I know about Phil Gramm, I wouldn't vote for McCain."

As a thriving bank exec and presidential adviser, Gramm has defied a prime economic principle: Bad products are driven out of the market. In John McCain, he has gained an important customer, so his stock has gone up in value. And there's no telling when the Gramm bubble will burst."

David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He's also on Twitter and Facebook. Get David Corn's RSS feed

Sure is hard to keep A Saving Account.

2011-09-02T14:50:00.000-07:00

Well Fargo Bank, Called me and asked me if I wanted to start a Saving account. I'm still employed and need to start saving some money, and want to help the economy ( like keeping the phone bankers employed) so I agreed, to open a new savings account. I might have closed my Saving account before because of the same problems I'm telling you about now.

Before I got assessed so much money in Overdraft fees, I'd say from the year 2000 to 2010 , I was probably assessed more than 300.00 in overdraft fees if not more. In spite of having an income, and a saving account,and a direct deposit account, sometimes I wasn't careful enough... I got a negative balance. It would be like I'd check out my account at the Automatic Teller on the day before a direct deposit from my job. It would show a negative balance. Sometimes I'd borrow the money ( direct deposit advance), to cover the amount only too discover the next day and find out I was still assessed Overdraft fees ( $35.00 a pop), alot of money for me, particularly if you are overdrawn by .05 cents,many separate times.

Now days its supposed to be alittle better? The banks offer Overdraft protection, ( which I had previously), and now Debit card overdraft protection. this is all helpful provided that you have a Saving Account, so that if your overdrawn on a checking account,the bank will pull money from your savings .

This is why I wanted a saving account and money in it. I signed up for another Saving Account after the bank called me for one. But the new caveat for keeping a Saving account at Well fargo at least,is that you can only have a few transactions in it, a month, otherwise the bank might change the Saving account into a Checking account..thusly you lose overdraft protection since your Saving account doesn't exist, and the bank won't pull whatever money is owed from your newly designated Checking account .

So recently I incurred over a hundred dollars in Overdraft fees, because the bank changed the designation of my Saving account into a Checking account. Theoretically I now have two checking accounts. I incurred overdrafts on one of them, in spite of the fact that I had money in both accounts (one formally a Saving account), overdraft protection and debit card overdraft protection.

Sure the bank tell you by mail if there changing your saving account.I barely read letters or statement s by mail from my bank, since I can get whatever information about my account "Online" plus I have lots of other bills , and not alot of money in the bank, so I mostly ignore that stuff.

I called Wells Fargo, the teller offered my half the account they took out in Overdrafts, about $50.00. Probably not totally out of kindness, because there issues like the bank was taking automatic amounts out of my checking account to move into my Saving , monthly. That and other factors probably cause an overdraft. The point is though, that I had money in my Saving account,The intent of that account was to save money in. I had, overdraft, debit protection..it still failed.

What does any consumer need with two checking accounts from a bank?, So I had them cancel the newly designed Checking account, and lost my saving account. I tired of playing this shell game with the banks. Its like I got robbed of &50 00, Mooney I could use to pay rent, pay my Martial art dues, whatever.

I got mad enough to try to see if there was some sort of outside consumer protection agency for banks in cases like this, on the Internet.

The first site I hit was a Consumer agency located as part of the Federal Reserve Bank. Although the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States would seem to rank low in regards to consumer protection against banks in the U.S , I tried them anyway. After all , don't they manage ALL the banks in the United States?

Apparently not, They don't have any jurisdiction? over Wells Fargo bank, they referred me to an office called the OCC Office of the Currency Comptroller?. Isn't like the office "Brooksely Born" used to manage, I guess not. Anyway I haven't contacted them yet about this Flim-Flammery with Well Fargo bank.

I guess not having a Glass-Stegall act, for protection of consumers can hurt, in people like me. Maybe if the U.S Government could "Bail me out", or maybe Warren Buffet.

....................................................................................

MEANWHILE

Meanwhile in the News. Phil Gramm, former Republican Senator for the State of Texas, rears up his head and decided to endorse Republican candidate for United States President ..... Rick Perry. Turns out Rick Perry is a friend and former student of Gramm's.

Wasn't it was Phil Gramm that pushed legislation for the repeal of Glass-Stegall act in the Congress, and the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, which de-regulated the 500 trillion dollar "derivative" market. Also Gramms wife was implicated in that "Enron" scandal, where all those people lost there jobs, and Pensions in that company , and we thought it couldn't happen to us.

Also It seems that The Wall Street Crowd, banks and Investments,Dirty Bastards Incorporated the group that brought you Unemployment, the lost of your homes, Saving and Pensions..are now going to the Republic Presidential candidates. Candidates like Mit Rommney, who has a 1/4 of his campaign funded by "The Wall Street".

The new faces of Poverty in America

2011-08-24T10:02:00.000-07:00

The New face of Poverty and Homeless in America are its young people. What's different about it is that is coming so stark. Normally, a few years ago you wouldn't see this, especially in more affluent neighborhoods, but this isn't the case any more. Most of these kids (and some older) are white. Has for other kids of color ,my guess is they'll usually end up in prison,taking to crime readily if they can't get a job, or money in this society.

Below; A duo of traveling Homeless/Jobless youth hanging out, outside a local restaurant McDonald's.

A friendly guy hanging out with a group of teens on the streets.

A group of impoverished teens hanging out outside a ,different,local McDonald's.

A Huckleberry Finn looking Kid, hanging out on the street. With a Puppy dog

Our formally "Grateful Dead" fan now entertaining a group of impoverished Teens. IS he homeless or a "deadhead"?

Our"Deadhead" above entertaining these groups of girls, I couldn't tell if they were homeless ,impoverished or students of the local university.

Seen this guy before,that "Huck Finn" looking dude,get a job,Huck!

Its kind of a blessing that I can even take these pictures. In order to combat crime, and gang related activities in some cities. Government officials there enact "Teen Curfews". American Cities like Chicago, come to mind (under the mayorship of people like Raul Emmanuel, Former Chief of Staff in the White House).

This might be a good strategy to combat crime by Teens, But it can also hide the appalling state of Youth in America ,by hiding the problem, rather than fixing the problem in large cities.

Teens need to exercise there political force in this Country, after all ,"You got to fight, for your right, to party...."

..."'Maybe we should all hide in the Basement"......

2011-08-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

A few economists,(Paul Krugman) say the result of the budget debate in Washington D.C over the National deficit, has been a general disaster then there was the slight downgrading of the nation credit rating down from AAA+ to AA. Other Economists like Nomi Prins say that the Ben Bernanke's (Federal Reserve Chairman) decision to lower interest rates is tantamount to doing nothing.. I say based on her analysis, its like he's saying they should all "hide in the basement", like in that movie, George Romero movie "Night of the Living Dead". Hiding in the basement was one of the ways the characters in that movie could protect themselves from the onslaught of the Living Dead.

Our hero, and the hero in that Movie, "Night of the Living Dead", and our President of the United States, Barack Obama, should be fighting for the upstairs. There was a radio and TV upstairs in the Movie, they could get good information has to what was going on; there was a way to escape if they had to (thus there was some transparency that the characters could see what was going on, a point some Economist make when talking about the current financial crisis in the U.S). Survival was all critically dependant on all the characters in the movie working together.

Really, I wanted to break up the monotony of my other post. In spite of the Problems facing Americans these days One could argue that more should be done for the downtrodden in America, and perhaps you could blame Barak Obama for not doing more.. I don't see how you can blame all this on Barack Obama,and it not quite my attempt to do so.

It seems that the Power elites and the Media in the America would do just that. These are the people (Whites) that wanted Barack Obama in there in the first place,its not like African-Americans decided on Barack Obama to be President.

I think there was a African-American who wrote a book, before , Barack Obama came into power. It was a social treatise on "White Guilt". This was during the Clinton Administration ,and I thought how does white guilty feelings have to do with the price of tea and such, don't be silly I'd think to myself!.

Then they voted a person of color as President of the United States. He given a Bankrupt, corrupt legislature ,an increasing damaged world. When Obama can't quite make the Grade, then the voters and the elites who voted him into power , "Poo-Poo" him, after all its make them, look better, and they can have someone else to blame rather than the (white) administrations before him, and attitudes about how there dealing with the world i.e dealing with their economy, their attitudes toward Nations of Color.

Perhaps Barack didn't foresee all the problems that we would be facing as President. Any person of Color would have loved to get in Office there at Washington D.C, but probably very,very few would want to face the type of situations Barack Obama is facing there as President of The United States.

He's facing a disastrous financial situation, triggered by the Sub-prime mortgage debacle. Where the Nations is now 14 trillion dollars in due, partly due to bad( lucrative) loans made by banks and Mortgage companies and little if no federal oversight.

He faced one of the biggest ecological disasters in U.S history caused by British /Pacific Oil company, in the Gulf of Mexico, "Deepwater Horizon".

Plus, strange climate changes in the U.S, natural disasters of all kinds here,.The Nuclear accident in Fukashima, Japan, a meltdown of three nuclear reactors?

Not to mention three wars , the Nation is involving in,Iraq, Afghanistan and the "War against Terror".

Yet, in the coming election year, they want to blame alot of the economic woes On Barack Obama. They want to claim he's spending too much money. Well heck, there isn't any money in the Government coffers. And very likely Obama didn't cause the Financial woes that that is besetting the nation.

But On the negative side of voting for a Barack Obama. He came into the Presidency of the U.S with the blessing of the people who caused the financial debacle in the first place, even having some them as advisers on his Presidential campaign,as did the Republican Candidate.

Thus, some economists were saying that Obama hasn't enacted in true banking or financial reforms in the U.S, but maybe voters ought to be glad he didn't; at least threes still a banking system in America that offers credit, they avoided a Depression. But maybe what we have now is more of a "Zombie Economy", and economy that cannot grow and thrive ,or die.

Alot of people didn't like the safeguards George W. Bush put in as President of the United States, like various measures in the "Patriot Act". Barack Obama as President of the U.S is slow to remove them. He said he would close Guantanamo Base, it is still open.

Though Obama is slow to end conflicts in regional disputes in Afghanistan and Iraq, he's started us on a new round of them in Libya, Egypt, Yemen.

In spite of the terrible ecological mess of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Obama seems soft on these Oil companies and is still allowing "Deepwater" oil drilling off the coast of the U.S.

Obama or somebody opened up the rebate in Washington D.C, concerning the debt ceiling, all that squabbling resulted in was a lowering of the U.S Credit rating by one of the rating agencies out there,"Standard and Poor's". Mostly "Poor's" because these were the same companies,that gave AAA ratings to some bad loans, banks and mortgage companies made, packaged off and tried to sell on the market to investors, with AAA rating by Firms like "Moodys" , and "Standard and Poor's".

I digress here, but was it fraud for the rating agencies to do that? ..maybe not ...perhaps these firms knew that the U.S Government, the United States taxpayers, was going to bail out those investors with those bad loans, that's why the rating agencies gave those CDO'S ( collateral debt obligations) AAA rating.

Why not, after all Goldman Sachs had their pointman in Washington "Henry Paulsen" to make sure they (Wall Street) wouldn't take the hit ,when the bills came due. This All came to a head in the "Sub-Prime" mortgage scandal.

It came like some kind of accident..but it couldn't have been an accident if someone or alot of people in the George W. Bush administration knew the bubble was going to bust, particularly the rating agencies. George W. was very preoccupied with fighting the "War on terror "at the time. I'm convinced that, that incident couldn't have happened without the complicity of legislators/ Executives in Washington D.C. It was not "accident". And the Bush administration was culpable.

I think its going to be interesting to see what the other political candidates come up with to challenge Barack Obama with. Shall they Tax more? on the Backs of who? Spending cuts? whats going to become of the Country then? Perhaps the first people who should take pay cuts should be those in Washington D.C itself. Then there must be something done about the political "Cross-purposing" and general Corruption going on in D.C, or Problems like the "Sub-Prime Mortgage scandal are going to continue.

Should there be more regulation, or Less? Should we break up these "Too Big To Fail" banks", or persons, or keep them going?

Meanwhile the People holding all of our money, Banks/Investment firms, the "Wall Street" types are making there rounds in Washington,and in the coffers of our Presidential candidates for and in Academic circles.... There trying push the idea that deregulation is best, not more regulation. Incidents like the "Sub-prime mortgage scandal couldn't have happened with good regulation of financial practices and effective legal, and punitive oversight, they want to do away with any other regulation and gamble with your ,our money on the Stock market.

How about closing public discussion of government budget debt ceilings in the future? Wouldn't you like to know what your government is doing and how its spending your money?

Its going to be interesting to see whom the Wall street types can "buy out" , and which of the political Presidential candidates in the U.S is going to stand up speak out and have the fortitude to take it.

None of the Above.

The New faces of homelessness

2011-08-01T14:10:00.000-07:00

A very photogenic girl and her friend,panhandling on the street.

A guy and his dog.

The photogenic girl sits with a friend

"To be a rock and not to roll"

This Young person couldn't have been older than 18 years old

A Street regular with his wares.

A young homeless person and a friend.He is a talented guitar player, who played some interesting soundsby tapping his fingers on the fretboard.

Homelessness/Poverty in America..con't

2011-07-21T02:07:00.000-07:00

The U.S is having budget problems. So its not really a housing Issue, its an issue about a government that has forsaken its people.

There's alot of talk in the legislature about just how there going to pay, or tax U.S citizens to keep the super wealthy happy. One thing that upset me a bit was listening to a talk radio host,talking about how the the top 10% in this country pay most of the taxes,aren't they Taxed enough? Maybe we should tax these people, looks like they have money.

He'll they have 90% of the wealth in this country .In the United States we are too tough on the Rich/Wealthy. I'm all for wealth, but Many people have complained about the type of Capitalism we have in American where the U.S government subsidies the wealthy, 10% of the Country at the expense of the other 90%. Laissez-faire Capitalism

The Future of America, This kid lacks one thing if he's going to live out in the streets of America.

His Dogs....aaarrff

A photogenic fellow...Where's the wife? Wheres the pitchfork? This guy is trying trying to get "spare change"...obviously a believer in Laissez-faire capitalism

Scavenging for Lunch, outside a Starbucks store

Catching a nap in Chinatown Though China has a population of over 1.3 billion people, the United states with its population of over 400 million has more people living below the poverty line.

Homelessness/Poverty in America

2011-07-13T20:11:00.000-07:00

Look at the New face of Homelessness and Poverty in America....Young People....Disenfranchised,in debt, drug addicted, troubled, they're hitting the streets in the U.S. While our legislators decided whether who they should tax,or whether or not the executive branch can decide whom to declare War on in the name of fighting Terrorism. But its our government and our legislators that mostly responsible for the economic mess were in.

Here are some of the Homeless I encounter on a day in the Bay Area, San Francisco California.

The New face of the disenfrancised in America..Young People. You have to have a dog with you.

These pictures,I took with my Ipod4 Touch,The IPod4 takes So/So still pictures. Here a group of teens camping out on the sidewalk.

Here's a guy who said he had an advanced degree in computing or something, he asked if I could take a picture of him on his laptop.

I got this guy to take a photo, he was fishing out of the garbage, sitting next to him.

This guys been living on the streets for a while.

About a half a mile down the street,another Homeless person is on the streets with his dog, the other fellow is in the second photo from the top. Below is a friend he's with, she was pissing in an alleyway. I talked to her ,she told me that she had an advanced college degree, but that she picked up an Heroin habit, they were headed for Chinatown. She was sangiune about the idea of being homeless, saying that they don't get any government assisatance, or help.

"...... Screw banks/not people"

2011-06-04T09:58:00.000-07:00

Thursday, June 2, 2011 at 9:24AM
Nomi Prins

"This morning, amidst news of Moodys cutting Greece's debt rating to Caa1, I came across a phrase I wish I'd thought of first, reading through a friend's morning commentary. The phrase? "Too Stupid to Stop".

According to Bill Blain, Senior Director at Newedge in London, and self-professed Euro skeptic, "'Too Stupid to Stop' is based on politicians behaving as rational maximisers of their electoral objectives." He was referring to the real reason behind all the bank-demanded bailout loans for austerity measures throughout Europe.

In the United States, that mantra can be extended to include appointed officials, like Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner (still not admitting our record debt increase came directly from the $4 trillion worth of Treasury issuance and other forms of assistance extended to our banking system since late 2008, as we endure his stomach-churning 'show-begging' to the GOP for a debt cap raise) and Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke (ditto). It also, of course, applies to congress people whose political survival depends on corporate and bank contributions and financial support, the ones that believe the Dodd-Frank bill changes anything.

Rather than considering how governments have systematically done, and continue to do, the wrong (as in immoral, unfair, and uneconomically sound) thing by trying to preserve banks, any politicians possessing the ability to think independently (an oxymoron, I know) should be asking themselves instead, how clever they could be about closing them down. Take a cue from Iceland.

But, the 'Too Stupid to Stop" behavior, prevents this from occurring.

Bill and I used to work together at Bear Stearns in London during the 1990s, before the Euro came into being. Then, arguments in favor of its inception were more about how it would lead to a 'much-needed' consolidation of political-economic control, rather than an engendering of widespread economic well-being to more European citizens, which didn't even enter the realm of political discussion.

Fifteen years, marked by global currency crises, a US recession caused by energy and telecommunications fraud, a bank fostered global Depression, and a persistent strategy to gouge citizens to pay for the sins of bankers, later - nothing has changed.

What Greece should do is default. Not as a sign of economic weakness, but as a sign of protective strength befitting the notion of Democracy that the country is credited for having brought to the world. Default as an act of much-needed financial defiance and independence from the insatiability of banks.

Last year, Greece's bailout was fashioned in order to make foreign banks and their investors 'whole' on their investments in Greece. It had zero to do with strengthening Greece's local economy or its citizens' financial futures. Indeed, it was designed to further trash the Greek economy, to chain the country to untenable loan conditions that required selling assets at discount prices to pay off new and old debt, while callously condemning its population to decreased average wages and increased unemployment rates, particularly amongst the nation's youth.

Rather than telling those banks that were out the money - THEY HAD RISKED to begin with, to take the free-market, s**t happens, hit, all sorts of austerity measures were attached to the $157 billion bailout loan. They hurt citizens immediately in terms of reducing pension and other social-economic benefits, and hurt them ad infinitum by forcing ongoing fire sales of their national assets which resulted in job losses. The same banks on the hook for lending money to Greece during Phase 1 of the massive global leveraged bet gone wrong, demanded repayment for their risk (otherwise their investors would be upset). Now, they have a greater opportunity to scrounge (read: extract fees) for new deals via brokering European and global firms swooping in for fresh kill, amidst the remains of Greece's assets, such as communication and energy infrastructure.

And yet, rather than say - screw you - to the ECB and the IMF, and all the mega-banking conglomerates that signed off and received fees on deals and debt gone wrong, rather than say - you know what? - we owe a debt to OUR CITIZENS, not the banks that bet against them, and we don't like the terms of this arrangement, Greek politicians are saying - screw you citizens. Again.
Greece is set to present a brand new austerity plan on Friday calling for a FASTER pace of privatization, and more tax hikes on its citizens - just to be able to pay off bondholders and the risk incurred by international banks. This won't end well. If Greece does get a second bailout package, everyone will discover that absent a strategy to revive the local economy, the package will incur further pain, and at some point there won't be any national infrastructure left to sell, and unemployment will skyrocket further. A few bondholders will be happy temporarily because they DON'T CARE whether Greece succeeds or the ECB and IMF keeps creating debt to prop debt (like we do here in the US as a matter of economic policy), same difference. A few banks won't have to write down their losses for the same reason, and a few global corporations will have bought some more assets at rock-bottom prices in a country whose citizens won't be able to afford the payments that will be counted upon to price the related securitization deals. And Greece will be screwed even more.

The better plan would be to disband the Too Stupid to Stop mentality. Screw the banks. Sadly, it's a self-fullfilling downward spiral of incompetence - in Greece, Ireland, Portgual, Spain, Italy, and the United States where the Fed is gearing up for some verison of QE3 in the wake, ironically, of Euro-pay-the-banks, indenture-the-citizens, chaos.

I have a feeling meanwhile, there will be a lot more Greeks protesting in the streets come Friday."

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Another great article by Nomi Prins. Kind of sums up the situation in the U.S as well. AT a time when under political gamesmanship, potential Presidential campaigner "John Edwards" is arrested for taking illegal campaign contribution. Why doesn't the Obama campaign use its Federal machinery to indict some of these people responsible for that Sub-prime mortgage scandal? Even the rating company's like Moody's could be indicted for fraud, for all they were worth during that Scandal.

Our Poor people can kick China's Butt.

2011-05-17T00:57:00.000-07:00

Here's an article by an economist,I occasionally read though I know little about this American economic system. The "Sub-Prime" mortgage scandal gave us all a "crash course" in U.S free market policy. What's next, one wonders?

I copied this writing of economist Nomi Prins because in the essay she asserts once again a solution to the budget problems that are plaguing the U.S right now, where the treasury secretary, or the FED tells us we have reached a debt ceiling. Congress will have to raise the debt ceiling or pay up, thus make Draconian cuts...in U.S social programs,raising taxes on U.S citizens..partly because of the lack of regulation in the U.S economic policies. Could Ms.Prins solution work?

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The Global Economy Burns, While its Leaders Fiddle

Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 8:05AM
By Nomi Prins

"China is by no means a panacea of economic equality or perfect policy. It has a fast growing portion of billionaires and accounts for nearly a third of the world’s luxury goods consumption, while its per capita GDP ranks 125th globally, and 2.8% of Chinese live below the poverty line (according to ‘official’ stats).

In contrast, the US has an official poverty rate of 14%, though think tanks like the Economic Policy Institute, consider this estimate low. Still, in its latest 5-year economic plan, the Chinese government at least gave lip service to how to deal with its growing inequality - by increasing certain wages by 40%, decreasing taxes on the poor and increasing them on the rich.

The US government has no such strategy, except in campaign speeches, as reflected by our anemic economy. Instead, we witness inane partisan prattling over the deficit and what mini-budget modifications are needed to bring it into line, most of which would disproportionately detract from the people that had the least to do with inflating it. (i.e. anyone not running a bank or hedge fund.)

Yet, like our own, inequality figures will worsen for China, which will ultimately destabilize its economy. The result of attracting that menacing, mercurial entity called ‘global capital’ is inflated growth figures predicated on bulging service sectors and population wealth gaps. The more capital sloshing around a country, the more destabilized it becomes, and the more its leaders pretend that’s not the case.

Global speculative capital (the kind flowing through any major financial entity) is cunning, aggressive, greedy, shortsighted, and yes, cowardly (it doesn’t stick around when things get shaky.) If it were a person, it would smack down minions of grandmothers and infants to get to the door of a fiery building first, and then deny burn victims healthcare. It hates rules, which is why it likes promoting the notion of markets free of them.

Individual investors in silver are the latest casualties of speculative capital’s fickleness. People that invested their own money in silver were snuffed by the entities that borrowed or invested other people’s money to do the same. The COMEX found the anti-speculation religion it never sought during run-ups of commodities prices for items like food and fuel, and raised silver trading margins. Though those hikes were the prevalent reason for silver’s price plummet, all they really did was give fast capital a chance to book profits and alter course.

Any investment is subject to fundamental forces, like supply and demand or how much US economic policy is devaluing its currency. But, it’s more subject to speculative whims, like who's in and out, by how much and how fast, whether its a fund or an entire nation.

The time-honored scheme in which controlling capital cons ordinary people (or governments) to join it before crashing or heading for the hills has devastated many individuals and economies. That ploy ran rampant during the crash of 1929. Banks put up their ‘own’ capital, which was really borrowed capital, to spur individuals to do the same with their savings. When banks pulled out, people were hosed thrice – through the loss of their savings, the decimation of their bank accounts that the powerhouses used for speculative purposes - under the guise of – serving their clients, and by a raging Depression that killed jobs and hopes.

Not much has changed. Matt Taibbi’s recent excoriation of Goldman Sachs reveals how gray the line is between screwing and screwing, one’s clients. Only now, when banks lose money, governments and central banks reward them with trillions of dollars of subsidies, using the excuse of aiding the population and avoiding larger catastrophe. They say things like - it takes time to increase employment, but we can waste no time in propping up our financial system. Or - pensions and teachers caused budget failures, but we’ll keep holding excess reserves, borne of debt, for banks in case they need it, and pay interest on it.

We are in an ongoing global economic depression. The signs are everywhere, even as they are lost on economic leaders that put private banks and short-term speculative capital before citizens and long-term working capital. Central banks use other people’s future money in the form of debt to do this. No central bank holds, and thus enables, more national debt than the Federal Reserve.

I hate to keep repeating this, but until someone of some ability to do anything gets it, I’m going to keep going. Last week, Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, co-enabler with Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner (among others) of our ballooning debt and mis-prioritized economic policy, urged Congress for another debt cap increase, or else. The guy holds about $2.5 trillion of debt on his books, being used for – nothing helpful to the general economy. A simple transfer would solve the debt cap problem in a nanosecond. Going a step further, a simple exchange of any of the $1.5 trillion of excess bank reserves receiving interest from the Fed, would do the same. Instead of defaulting on, how about retiring, some debt? Thinking outside the box.

All around the world, the bodies and countries with the most power keep screwing people (some like IMF head, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, literally) and entire nations, while supporting their banking systems. Last week, S&P announced it would downgrade Portugal if it didn’t play ball with the IMF and EU over its 4-year 78E billion-bailout program in return for hacking public programs.

Echoing our own Congressional goons spewing spending cuts in the face of inadequate revenues and for-bank-manufactured mega-debt, the S&P noted, “Two-thirds of the projected savings in [Portugal’s] 2012 budget will likely come from spending cuts.”

On a roll, the IMF also declared Italy needs ‘structural reform’, meaning labor market reform, less public ownership and more private investment to “unlock its growth potential.” (aka invite more speculative capital at its earliest convenience.)

Meanwhile, thousands of people are again striking in Greece, as the IMF and EU discuss more austerity measures, following the bank bailout that provoked public outrage a year ago, and a rating downgrade by S&P. The EU remains more concerned with investors regaining confidence in Greece than economic stability of its citizens. Then, there’s Ireland, for whom its last bailout didn’t dent its 14.5% unemployment rate, or fill in the gaping holes its banks dug.

In short, the global ‘remedy’ for depressed economies and debt-bloated banking sectors remains to do – more of the same - and pretend this will beget a different outcome. Yet, there is no way this strategy will result in more stable economies. What we can expect instead is further widespread deterioration.
"http://www.nomiprins.com/thoughts/2011/5/15/the-global-economy-burns-while-its-leaders-fiddle.html
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Note: Just did some of the Math. China is one of the most populous nations in the world. Its population at 1,355,855,436 at present, over a billion people. 2.8 Percent of that is 37,963,952 .

The population of the U.S at present is 312,871,117 persons, 14% of that is 43,801,956.

43,801,956 U.S.A vs 37,963,952 China. Nomi, your right .The U.S.A beats China in the number of people living beloow the poverty line even though China has nearly 4 times the population size.

Lets invade Switzerland!

2011-05-05T11:17:00.000-07:00

I was going to call Obama's presidency a "Harvard death". A Harvard death is that in spite of a Doctor doing everything right to save a patient, the patient dies anyway. Usually because of an undying ,unknown factor. Barack Obama must have understood this sentiment, and decided to undertake some executive action.

He may have shot himself in the foot with killing Osama. Obama, a Harvard law professor gone bad? Wouldn't it have been preferable if they could have gotten Osama alive to appear for trial in the U.S, instead of executing him? Executing the guy by Court of public opinion, rather than "Due Process in a court of law"?

Possibly the reason Osama is dead is because he didn't contribute to Obama's Presidential campaign? Plus Obama looks bad after practically declaring war on Libya and M.Qaddafi, then after a attempted N.A.T.O assassination attempt on Qaddafi, N.A.T.O fails and takes out Qaddafi's son. all an unqualified act of War on Libya, and Qaddafi

Obama "Wags the dog", is the assassination just to boost his "approval rating" and Boost his campaign fund of his contributors to his $35,000.00, $75,000.00 plate dinner fundraisers. Similar to what president Bill Clinton did during his trial in U.S Congress about sexual misconduct,then he stared bombing Kosovo.

How about Obama using his executive power to go after the people who staged, aided and abetted the "Sub-prime mortgage scandal, If you look in the Feb issue of "Mother Jones" some economist estimate the true cost of the T.A.R.P bailout is in the trillions of dollars (14 trillion dollars ,Mother Jone,s Feb 2010)... in which we the tax-payers or the U.S will have to pay. If your out of work, losing your pension, lost your home, can't afford to go to school maybe you blame your leaders in Congress, not Osama Bin Laden.

Obama's only solution to the mortgage scandal in the U.S has been a "Band-Aid" on the problem by installing a "Brooksley Born" type of person around the Federal Reserve types. Only Elizabeth Warren doesn't have nearly the "bite" of a "Brooksley Born".Brooksley born was a female working in a government office attempting to fight for more government regulation of "derivative", during the Clinton Administration under Federal Reserve conman, "Alan Greenspan", and administration members Robert Rubin, and that fat dude.

Possibly the only reason These people aren't in jail is because Wall street owns the Congress of the U.S, including the President. And Obama isn't willing to come clean about it, I wonder if his predecessor will, people like Donald Trump?

I remember, maybe I shouldn't fault Obama too much, after all maybe the message he is really telling us american is they ,(Obama's handlers, don't really care about US.)

The real reasons why the West and Europe want to remove Gaddafi?

2011-04-25T10:57:00.001-07:00

The Lies Behind the West's War on Libya
Jean-Paul Pougala
14 April 2011

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Africans should think about the real reasons why western countries are waging war on Libya, writes Jean-Paul Pougala, in an analysis that traces the country's role in shaping the African Union and the development of the continent.

It was Gaddafi's Libya that offered all of Africa its first revolution in modern times - connecting the entire continent by telephone, television, radio broadcasting and several other technological applications such as telemedicine and distance teaching. And thanks to the WMAX radio bridge, a low cost connection was made available across the continent, including in rural areas.

It began in 1992, when 45 African nations established RASCOM (Regional African Satellite Communication Organization) so that Africa would have its own satellite and slash communication costs in the continent. This was a time when phone calls to and from Africa were the most expensive in the world because of the annual US$500 million fee pocketed by Europe for the use of its satellites like Intelsat for phone conversations, including those within the same country.

An African satellite only cost a onetime payment of US$400 million and the continent no longer had to pay a US$500 million annual lease. Which banker wouldn't finance such a project? But the problem remained - how can slaves, seeking to free themselves from their master's exploitation ask the master's help to achieve that freedom? Not surprisingly, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the USA, Europe only made vague promises for 14 years. Gaddafi put an end to these futile pleas to the western 'benefactors' with their exorbitant interest rates. The Libyan guide put US$300 million on the table; the African Development Bank added US$50 million more and the West African Development Bank a further US$27 million - and that's how Africa got its first communications satellite on 26 December 2007.

China and Russia followed suit and shared their technology and helped launch satellites for South Africa, Nigeria, Angola, Algeria and a second African satellite was launched in July 2010. The first totally indigenously built satellite and manufactured on African soil, in Algeria, is set for 2020. This satellite is aimed at competing with the best in the world, but at ten times less the cost, a real challenge.

This is how a symbolic gesture of a mere US$300 million changed the life of an entire continent. Gaddafi's Libya cost the West, not just depriving it of US$500 million per year but the billions of dollars in debt and interest that the initial loan would generate for years to come and in an exponential manner, thereby helping maintain an occult system in order to plunder the continent.

AFRICAN MONETARY FUND, AFRICAN CENTRAL BANK, AFRICAN INVESTMENT BANK

The US$30 billion frozen by Mr Obama belong to the Libyan Central Bank and had been earmarked as the Libyan contribution to three key projects which would add the finishing touches to the African federation - the African Investment Bank in Syrte, Libya, the establishment in 2011 of the African Monetary Fund to be based in Yaounde with a US$42 billion capital fund and the Abuja-based African Central Bank in Nigeria which when it starts printing African money will ring the death knell for the CFA franc through which Paris has been able to maintain its hold on some African countries for the last fifty years. It is easy to understand the French wrath against Gaddafi.

The African Monetary Fund is expected to totally supplant the African activities of the International Monetary Fund which, with only US$25 billion, was able to bring an entire continent to its knees and make it swallow questionable privatisation like forcing African countries to move from public to private monopolies. No surprise then that on 16-17December 2010, the Africans unanimously rejected attempts by Western countries to join the African Monetary Fund, saying it was open only to African nations.

It is increasingly obvious that after Libya, the western coalition will go after Algeria, because apart from its huge energy resources, the country has cash reserves of around a 150 billion. This is what lures the countries that are bombing Libya and they all have one thing in common - they are practically bankrupt. The USA alone, has a staggering debt of $US14,000 billion, France, Great Britain and Italy each have a US$2,000 billion public deficit compared to less than US$400 billion in public debt for 46 African countries combined.

Inciting spurious wars in Africa in the hope that this will revitalise their economies which are sinking ever more into the doldrums will ultimately hasten the western decline which actually began in 1884 during the notorious Berlin Conference. As the American economist Adam Smith predicted in 1865 when he publicly backed Abraham Lincoln for the abolition of slavery, 'the economy of any country which relies on the slavery of blacks is destined to descend into hell the day those countries awaken'.

REGIONAL UNITY AS AN OBSTABLE TO THE CREATION OF A UNITED STATES OF AFRICA

To destabilise and destroy the African union which was veering dangerously (for the West) towards a United States of Africa under the guiding hand of Gaddafi, the European Union first tried, unsuccessfully, to create the Union for the Mediterranean (UPM). North Africa somehow had to be cut off from the rest of Africa, using the old tired racist clichés of the 18th and 19th centuries ,which claimed that Africans of Arab origin were more evolved and civilised than the rest of the continent. This failed because Gaddafi refused to buy into it. He soon understood what game was being played when only a handful of African countries were invited to join the Mediterranean grouping without informing the African Union but inviting all 27 members of the European Union.

Without the driving force behind the African Federation, the UPM failed even before it began, still-born with Sarkozy as president and Mubarak as vice president. The French foreign minister, Alain Juppe is now attempting to re-launch the idea, banking no doubt on the fall of Gaddafi. What African leaders fail to understand is that as long as the European Union continues to finance the African Union, the status quo will remain, because no real independence. This is why the European Union has encouraged and financed regional groupings in Africa.

It is obvious that the West African Economic Community (ECOWAS), which has an embassy in Brussels and depends for the bulk of its funding on the European Union, is a vociferous opponent to the African federation. That's why Lincoln fought in the US war of secession because the moment a group of countries come together in a regional political organisation, it weakens the main group. That is what Europe wanted and the Africans have never understood the game plan, creating a plethora of regional groupings, COMESA, UDEAC, SADC, and the Great Maghreb which never saw the light of day thanks to Gaddafi who understood what was happening.

GADDAFI, THE AFRICAN WHO CLEANSED THE CONTINENT FROM THE HUMILIATION OF APARTHEID

For most Africans, Gaddafi is a generous man, a humanist, known for his unselfish support for the struggle against the racist regime in South Africa. If he had been an egotist, he wouldn't have risked the wrath of the West to help the ANC both militarily and financially in the fight against apartheid. This was why Mandela, soon after his release from 27 years in jail, decided to break the UN embargo and travel to Libya on 23 October 1997. For five long years, no plane could touch down in Libya because of the embargo. One needed to take a plane to the Tunisian city of Jerba and continue by road for five hours to reach Ben Gardane, cross the border and continue on a desert road for three hours before reaching Tripoli. The other solution was to go through Malta, and take a night ferry on ill-maintained boats to the Libyan coast. A hellish journey for a whole people, simply to punish one man.

Mandela didn't mince his words when the former US president Bill Clinton said the visit was an 'unwelcome' one - 'No country can claim to be the policeman of the world and no state can dictate to another what it should do'. He added - 'Those that yesterday were friends of our enemies have the gall today to tell me not to visit my brother Gaddafi, they are advising us to be ungrateful and forget our friends of the past.'

Indeed, the West still considered the South African racists to be their brothers who needed to be protected. That's why the members of the ANC, including Nelson Mandela, were considered to be dangerous terrorists. It was only on 2 July 2008, that the US Congress finally voted a law to remove the name of Nelson Mandela and his ANC comrades from their black list, not because they realised how stupid that list was but because they wanted to mark Mandela's 90th birthday. If the West was truly sorry for its past support for Mandela's enemies and really sincere when they name streets and places after him, how can they continue to wage war against someone who helped Mandela and his people to be victorious, Gaddafi?

ARE THOSE WHO WANT TO EXPORT DEMOCRACY THEMSELVES DEMOCRATS?

And what if Gaddafi's Libya were more democratic than the USA, France, Britain and other countries waging war to export democracy to Libya? On 19 March 2003, President George Bush began bombing Iraq under the pretext of bringing democracy. On 19 March 2011, exactly eight years later to the day, it was the French president's turn to rain down bombs over Libya, once again claiming it was to bring democracy. Nobel peace prize-winner and US President Obama says unleashing cruise missiles from submarines is to oust the dictator and introduce democracy.

The question that anyone with even minimum intelligence cannot help asking is the following: Are countries like France, England, the USA, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Poland who defend their right to bomb Libya on the strength of their self proclaimed democratic status really democratic? If yes, are they more democratic than Gaddafi's Libya? The answer in fact is a resounding NO, for the plain and simple reason that democracy doesn't exist. This isn't a personal opinion, but a quote from someone whose native town Geneva, hosts the bulk of UN institutions. The quote is from Jean Jacques Rousseau, born in Geneva in 1712 and who writes in chapter four of the third book of the famous 'Social Contract' that 'there never was a true democracy and there never will be.'

Rousseau sets out the following four conditions for a country to be labelled a democracy and according to these Gaddafi's Libya is far more democratic than the USA, France and the others claiming to export democracy:

1. The State: The bigger a country, the less democratic it can be. According to Rousseau, the state has to be extremely small so that people can come together and know each other. Before asking people to vote, one must ensure that everybody knows everyone else, otherwise voting will be an act without any democratic basis, a simulacrum of democracy to elect a dictator.

The Libyan state is based on a system of tribal allegiances, which by definition group people together in small entities. The democratic spirit is much more present in a tribe, a village than in a big country, simply because people know each other, share a common life rhythm which involves a kind of self-regulation or even self-censorship in that the reactions and counter reactions of other members impacts on the group.

From this perspective, it would appear that Libya fits Rousseau's conditions better than the USA, France and Great Britain, all highly urbanised societies where most neighbours don't even say hello to each other and therefore don't know each other even if they have lived side by side for twenty years. These countries leapfrogged leaped into the next stage - 'the vote' - which has been cleverly sanctified to obfuscate the fact that voting on the future of the country is useless if the voter doesn't know the other citizens. This has been pushed to ridiculous limits with voting rights being given to people living abroad. Communicating with and amongst each other is a precondition for any democratic debate before an election.

2. Simplicity in customs and behavioural patterns are also essential if one is to avoid spending the bulk of the time debating legal and judicial procedures in order to deal with the multitude of conflicts of interest inevitable in a large and complex society. Western countries define themselves as civilised nations with a more complex social structure whereas Libya is described as a primitive country with a simple set of customs. This aspect too indicates that Libya responds better to Rousseau's democratic criteria than all those trying to give lessons in democracy. Conflicts in complex societies are most often won by those with more power, which is why the rich manage to avoid prison because they can afford to hire top lawyers and instead arrange for state repression to be directed against someone one who stole a banana in a supermarket rather than a financial criminal who ruined a bank. In the city of New York for example where 75 per cent of the population is white, 80 per cent of management posts are occupied by whites who make up only 20 per cent of incarcerated people.

3. Equality in status and wealth: A look at the Forbes 2010 list shows who the richest people in each of the countries currently bombing Libya are and the difference between them and those who earn the lowest salaries in those nations; a similar exercise on Libya will reveal that in terms of wealth distribution, Libya has much more to teach than those fighting it now, and not the contrary. So here too, using Rousseau's criteria, Libya is more democratic than the nations pompously pretending to bring democracy. In the USA, 5 per cent of the population owns 60 per cent of the national wealth, making it the most unequal and unbalanced society in the world.

4. No luxuries: according to Rousseau there can't be any luxury if there is to be democracy. Luxury, he says, makes wealth a necessity which then becomes a virtue in itself, it, and not the welfare of the people becomes the goal to be reached at all cost, 'Luxury corrupts both the rich and the poor, the one through possession and the other through envy; it makes the nation soft and prey to vanity; it distances people from the State and enslaves them, making them a slave to opinion.'

Is there more luxury in France than in Libya? The reports on employees committing suicide because of stressful working conditions even in public or semi-public companies, all in the name of maximising profit for a minority and keeping them in luxury, happen in the West, not in Libya.

The American sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote in 1956 that American democracy was a 'dictatorship of the elite'. According to Mills, the USA is not a democracy because it is money that talks during elections and not the people. The results of each election are the expression of the voice of money and not the voice of the people. After Bush senior and Bush junior, they are already talking about a younger Bush for the 2012 Republican primaries. Moreover, as Max Weber pointed out, since political power is dependent on the bureaucracy, the US has 43 million bureaucrats and military personnel who effectively rule the country but without being elected and are not accountable to the people for their actions. One person (a rich one) is elected, but the real power lies with the caste of the wealthy who then get nominated to be ambassadors, generals, etc.

How many people in these self-proclaimed democracies know that Peru's constitution prohibits an outgoing president from seeking a second consecutive mandate? How many know that in Guatemala, not only can an outgoing president not seek re-election to the same post, no one from that person's family can aspire to the top job either? Or that Rwanda is the only country in the world that has 56 per cent female parliamentarians? How many people know that in the 2007 CIA index, four of the world's best-governed countries are African? That the top prize goes to Equatorial Guinea whose public debt represents only 1.14 per cent of GDP?

Rousseau maintains that civil wars, revolts and rebellions are the ingredients of the beginning of democracy. Because democracy is not an end, but a permanent process of the reaffirmation of the natural rights of human beings which in countries all over the world (without exception) are trampled upon by a handful of men and women who have hijacked the power of the people to perpetuate their supremacy. There are here and there groups of people who have usurped the term 'democracy' - instead of it being an ideal towards which one strives it has become a label to be appropriated or a slogan which is used by people who can shout louder than others. If a country is calm, like France or the USA, that is to say without any rebellions, it only means, from Rousseau's perspective, that the dictatorial system is sufficiently repressive to pre-empt any revolt.

It wouldn't be a bad thing if the Libyans revolted. What is bad is to affirm that people stoically accept a system that represses them all over the world without reacting. And Rousseau concludes: 'Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium - translation - If gods were people, they would govern themselves democratically. Such a perfect government is not applicable to human beings.' To claim that one is killing Libyans for their own good is a hoax.

WHAT LESSONS FOR AFRICA?

After 500 years of a profoundly unequal relationship with the West, it is clear that we don't have the same criteria of what is good and bad. We have deeply divergent interests. How can one not deplore the 'yes' votes from three sub-Saharan countries (Nigeria, South Africa and Gabon) for resolution 1973 that inaugurated the latest form of colonisation baptised 'the protection of peoples', which legitimises the racist theories that have informed Europeans since the 18th century and according to which North Africa has nothing to do with sub-Saharan Africa, that North Africa is more evolved, cultivated and civilised than the rest of Africa?

It is as if Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Algeria were not part of Africa, Even the United Nations seems to ignore the role of the African Union in the affairs of member states. The aim is to isolate sub Saharan African countries to better isolate and control them. Indeed, Algeria (US$16 billion) and Libya (US$10 billion ) together contribute 62 per cent of the US$42 billion which constitute the capital of the African Monetary Fund (AMF). The biggest and most populous country in sub Saharan Africa, Nigeria, followed by South Africa are far behind with only 3 billion dollars each.

It is disconcerting to say the least that for the first time in the history of the United Nations, war has been declared against a people without having explored the slightest possibility of a peaceful solution to the crisis. Does Africa really belong anymore to this organisation? Nigeria and South Africa are prepared to vote 'Yes' to everything the West asks because they naively believe the vague promises of a permanent seat at the Security Council with similar veto rights. They both forget that France has no power to offer anything. If it did, Mitterand would have long done the needful for Helmut Kohl's Germany.

A reform of the United Nations is not on the agenda. The only way to make a point is to use the Chinese method - all 50 African nations should quit the United Nations and only return if their longstanding demand is finally met, a seat for the entire African federation or nothing. This non-violent method is the only weapon of justice available to the poor and weak that we are. We should simply quit the United Nations because this organisation, by its very structure and hierarchy, is at the service of the most powerful.

We should leave the United Nations to register our rejection of a worldview based on the annihilation of those who are weaker. They are free to continue as before but at least we will not be party to it and say we agree when we were never asked for our opinion. And even when we expressed our point of view, like we did on Saturday 19 March in Nouakchott, when we opposed the military action, our opinion was simply ignored and the bombs started falling on the African people.

Today's events are reminiscent of what happened with China in the past. Today, one recognises the Ouattara government, the rebel government in Libya, like one did at the end of the Second World War with China. The so-called international community chose Taiwan to be the sole representative of the Chinese people instead of Mao's China. It took 26 years when on 25 October 1971, for the UN to pass resolution 2758 which all Africans should read to put an end to human folly. China was admitted and on its terms - it refused to be a member if it didn't have a veto right. When the demand was met and the resolution tabled, it still took a year for the Chinese foreign minister to respond in writing to the UN Secretary General on 29 September 1972, a letter which didn't say yes or thank you but spelt out guarantees required for China's dignity to be respected.

What does Africa hope to achieve from the United Nations without playing hard ball? We saw how in Cote d'Ivoire a UN bureaucrat considers himself to be above the constitution of the country. We entered this organisation by agreeing to be slaves and to believe that we will be invited to dine at the same table and eat from plates we ourselves washed is not just credulous, it is stupid.

When the African Union endorsed Ouattara's victory and glossed over contrary reports from its own electoral observers simply to please our former masters, how can we expect to be respected? When South African president Zuma declares that Ouattara hasn't won the elections and then says the exact opposite during a trip to Paris, one is entitled to question the credibility of these leaders who claim to represent and speak on behalf of a billion Africans.

Africa's strength and real freedom will only come if it can take properly thought out actions and assume the consequences. Dignity and respect come with a price tag. Are we prepared to pay it? Otherwise, our place is in the kitchen and in the toilets in order to make others comfortable.

Jean-Paul Pougala is a Cameroonian writer. Translated from the French by Sputnik
From All Africa news.

EXtREmE Makeover:Muammar Gaddafi

2011-04-10T13:08:00.000-07:00

This episode of EXtREmE Makeover is Dedicated to Muammar Gaddafi.

Face it Muammar you need a image change, first you can start by ditching that floral garb of yours, whatever happened to that handsome fellow?

The Muammar of today..well could a makeover. Your probably pretty old though , but how about some exercise? How about doing some Tae-Bo with some of your women security guards..to work out those hostility issues and to work away those flabs? We know your from Libya but everyone looks in a three-European suit Muammar. Not everyone looks good in that Michael Jackson (the King of Pop) garb except Michael Jackson,and he's dead Muammar.

And if you cannot beat them them Muammar, join them. If you cannot get respect from people like Barack Obama, run against them in the next American campaign for the presidency. If you got the money Muammar, maybe you or someone else you know can run in the U.S. You could run for presidency here, then bomb your own Country while your in. At the very least you could open up a Liquor store here in the U.S.

While if your in the U.S really you could make personal appearances, appear in "Live" question and answer sessions in the American Media, talk show, the "View", make your case to the American public. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, tried to do as much here in the U.S, doing talk at Columbia University, or on television shows like "Charlie Rose", you could even visit Disneyland here in the U.S. That's nothing to throw a shoe at.

C'mon funny face, how about a smile!

Okay, well how can I make a difference?

2011-03-09T10:24:00.000-08:00

Are there alot of things going on these days in currents events to cause one to feel overwhelmed, that there are so many things going on , that the forces of corruption in this society are just increasing. If your a sane person hoping for a "productive" positive life , what are you to do?

Well, whats going on?

President Obama recently decided to re-open the prisons/re-trial political prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. So whats if your decided on taking some kind of political action or demonstration or activity against against the policies of this government, you better think again.

Meanwhile Obama seeks to start a conflict in another front. This time in North Africa.

2.The Story out of Philadelphia that twenty or so Catholic priest have been disciplined on charges of molestation. Hasn't the Catholic Church had enough of this?
It just kind of fits in with my idea that if your a child molester, what the best place to do that sort of thing with impunity? Become a Catholic priest. Demons,demons you say? or maybe there the one who dislike the Catholic church, victims of the pedophile priest?

If the Catholic church wants to start doing something about the problem of Evil in the world, it should begin to address this problem.. Should we expect much hope expect much help from Pope Ratzinger, he's got a repudiation for "sweeping such things under the carpet". While President George W.Bush, pardoned some charges like this against the Catholic church.

But this is a problem for the society "en masse", its everyone in their own intimate but important way have been "molested". How many people have lost there jobs,there homes, their livelihoods, there pensions just because of someone else's failure to take timely action against an injustice? Its as if you witness or see a crime take place in front of you, but do nothing ..maybe out of fear. You feel okay about it, but then it happens to you , and by then there no one left to care.

3.The Daily Bummer of going to work (being one of the somewhat lucky ones), and actually seeing young people dressed as paupers, pushing along a shopping cart.Seeing former friends and acquaintances really hitting the skids.

Seeing young people,seemingly with loose morals and no money..cause they can't find a job. They'll start whoring, prostituting themselves maybe for money, maybe cause they think its cool,and hip. To me ,its backwards. This country's society and some of its people is going out of it way to tell its citizenry that this type of loose morality is okay. When its based on exploitation, and debasement of people in lower economic scales on most levels whats so hip about it?

4.Then I run into these people at the end of my day coming back to my hotel, potentially accosted by street people, some young. I don't know maybe some of them just need a friend..some just seem to be potential sex workers, some are. Most aren't working, Lots of them are doing illicit drugs.. All of which are supposed to be illegal in this Madrone Residential Hotel. But how can I tell these young people to stop begging, quit whoring..shun drugs...when there are no jobs? It as if there country and its leaders have forsaken them/us. How can I tell them there maybe a better way?

Its easy to get overwhelmed by this in my Life I certainly need to move but don't really have the resource to move , even so I'm afraid of leaving my mother, and stepfather alone to deal with all this stuff by themselves , so I kinda feel a bit stuck here.

4. A bit of good news, listening on a talk Radio show, K.G.O AM, Talk host John Rothman, had on his show 3-8-2011. a Public Defender, by the name of Jeff Adachi, who was going against some of the police corruption in the San Francisco, California Police department. A pretty courageous, yet maybe naive guy, but maybe he can do something. Seems like S.F.P.D has some problems, the last District attorney for San Francisco, Kamela Harris , got voted to the State of California Attorney General position. The former mayor of S.F got voted up (because his term was up) to lieutenant Governor, but before he left S.F he promoted then the San Francisco Chief of Police Gus Gascon, to the District Attorney position.

Why did Gascon want out of the S.F.P.D?, Who's running the ship over there? Does S.F.P.D have a corruption problem?

Besides dealing with the corruption problem in S.F, Adachi, also has tried ,and is attempting again to put a proposition on the voting ballot, modifying county pension plans. He thinks the current situation is untenable.the State and county pension plans are bankrupting States...he thinks that county employees will have to "pay-in" to there own pension plans. Adachi's first attempt to put that on the ballot was voted down.

Lets all say a prayer, and a word of "thanks "to guys like Public Defender, Jeff Adachi.

5. Pet peeve Number five, trying hunt around for some technology like an "Apple" IPAD, and not being able to afford it. All the best of that kind of technology is expensive, costing almost 1000.00. In spite of having some money ,I am reduced to buying this equipment "second-hand". Right now expect to pay $350..$400 for a used 16 Gig 1st generation Ipad.

After playing around with an IPad, I don't see how its much better than my old Wi-fi capable Laptop..the Ipad 1st generation has a good picture quality...But I didn't notice alot of it. Worth the money?

Mystics say, that if you want to change the world, start with yourself? Hmmm something to consider before trying to start a revolution.

Last words for Black History Month in America

2011-02-27T17:13:00.000-08:00

I haven't said much about Politics these days ,not that I'm not interested in the world that I live in ..it is because I am afraid. The recent comments made in the media concerning events in the Middle East, and our Presidents and response of the world to them and its the last days of Black History Month.

To me, it just seems like more interference by the U.S in foreign affairs. It comes at the cost of lives , property, freedom and security of the people living in the U.S. Should we be concerned about events in our own little sphere instead of what is going on in Afghanistan? We already have some people taken prisoner in Iran, they are being called Spies. The government of Iran is beginning to prosecute them, but that news was preempted by "events"in the Middle East. Freedom and democracy breaking out supposedly in the Middle East, but is it really that? Or is it more meddling by the U.S in foreign governments? Were those people arrested in Iran really meddlers has Iran is trying to assert? Can Iran make that case? will it be covered in our media, now that's news.

One could make a good case for the U.S and our President,here in the United States by trying to get rid of the leaders of foreign governments who are hostile to America. After all, this country is significantly weaker because of the financial woes we've been through, and if we are in a decline, then maybe it might sense to take out any hostiles out there that would only cause more suffering in our last days as America.

One might ask though ,who are the "real" enemies of America,and American Democracy? Is it Qaddafi, leader of Libya? was it Mubarak ,former President of Egypt,is it the Leader of Iran? maybe the problem is with Fundamental Islam?

Maybe the problem lies in the leaders of this Country. We can pat ourselves on the back that other Countries are fighting to be like U.S, but I'm kinda reminded by the U.S actions abroad that today's freedom fighters around the world are often tomorrows "terrorists" to the U.s government. We supported the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, now we are leading a major insurgency against the former Mujaheddin into Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan to fight the people we supported in the first place.

Its really too bad that Americans can't move with the vehemence of the Egyptians and Libyans, and rouse some of there So-called leaders in America today out of there office. Its really too bad in America that people don't rally up all these people who have lost there homes, all these people who have lost their jobs, Disenfranchised youth, who can't afford to go to school to get an education, and cannot find a job, or elderly people who have to work but cannot, People who've worked most of there lives but lost pensions , or the new up-and-comers would won't get a Pension. etc,etc.

Too bad someone can't rally all these people in America, and have them camp out in front of the White house , and the seat of government in Washington D.C and Media...Until the leaders there make some meaningful reform.

Now that would be News.

Meantime I wanted to post some famous words said by Martin Luther King Jr. Concerning events that happened many years ago. It came at a time when King was trying to promote Human rights, and the civil rights of people of color. The leaders of America then sought to lead of into a War, in Vietnam....times that resemble the present.

"King offered the most severe moral indictment of imperialism of his generation. He boldly condemned America's Vietnam War as an unjustified,cynical and hopeless slaughter of poor people of color.

He critiqued the origins and effects of the war, in which a million Vietnamese had already died, but he went further,saying, "The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit."
He spoke of corporate investments abroad and American support for military dictatorships, and greed.

"We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profits motives and property rights are consider more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
"King attacked the war as damaging to the Vietnamese but also to Americans, and particularly African-Americans. The Nations conduct abroad taught people at home to accept violence while it consumed society's resources like a "Demonic suctioning tube."

"President Johnson's War on poverty, he said ,had been shot down on the battlefields of Vietnam, while the "flamethrowers in Vietnam fan the flames in our cities." King did not just say the war was wrong; he indicted the system that brought it about. He called for "a true revolution of values," a reordering of priorities to "develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole," to join the world revolution on behalf of the poor, the colonized, and the oppressed.

"Everyone must protest the war," he said, "for silence is betrayal." He feared "there is such a thing as being too late....If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long,dark shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strenght without sight."

From "Going Down Jericho Road" by Michael K.Honey.Published by W.W. Norton& Company. New York. 2007 Pg 94.

Bonfire of the Vanities

2011-02-07T23:59:00.000-08:00

Look at me you fools , I'm Rich!! ..Christy Brinkley eat your heart out.

I think we live in extravagant times. Have you Heard..... America Online is giving 300 million dollars to purchase the Huffington post from Arianna Huffignton.

Gee AOL you know I started these blogs here on Blogger before Mrs Huffington started her world renown Post.In fact Huffington probably got her ideas from other bloggers , being that the Huffington Post is just a sort of Blog itself. I would have offered you mine for a mere million. Ariana's Post is worth 300 Million?

How could AOL pay out 300 million dollars for the Huffington Post. I mean The Post is a pretty good rag, but there are better ones out there, "Salon.com" is supposed to be good, and it was out before Mrs. Huffingtons Post.

Its a Sure sign that these people from AOL are out of ideas, and have nothing to do,but have alot of money. A sad fate that AOL may end up like the other programs that AOL usurped, programs like "Prodigy", or "CompuServe","The Well".

Goodbye Arnold Schwarzenegger

2011-01-02T22:15:00.000-08:00

R.I.P Arnold Schwarzenegger, who vasctes his post as Govenor of California today.
What a Kick-Ass govenor, and dude, who I first saw on Television doing this part in a T.V show called "The Streets of San Francisco".

Taking his place in California is Jerry Brown 3rd time... AKA Mr Burns.

Aren't Geithner and Bernanke eerily quiet about the Foreclosure Crisis?

2010-10-13T08:48:00.000-07:00

Sunday, October 10, 2010 at 10:31PM
Naomi Prins

"Maybe I'm missing something, but it strikes me there's been a deafening silence emanating from Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, and Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, on the foreclosure front. It’s as if they a) don’t read the news or b) are afraid someone will notice their incompetence. While Senator Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and other Congress people are dispensing irate pre-election sound-bites, Attorney Generals across the country are gearing up for investigations and lawsuits, and banks are announcing foreclosure moratoriums because it’s quarterly earnings season and uncertainty is bad for stock prices, (plus they are afraid their REO customers (private equity funds, asset managers, etc) will fear future legal repercussions, so they’ll have nowhere to dump all the properties they can’t sell), Geithner spent last week defending TARP (again) and talking up the merits of global economic coordination and the dollar. Meanwhile, the Fed is gearing up to buy more Treasuries (in addition to its $300 billion program) because no one else wants them, like some kind of alien that spawns offspring so it can eat its own progeny.

Foreclosure fraud is not new, many sane people and organizations have been talking about it for years, plus you don’t manufacture $14 trillion worth of mortgage backed securities in all their permuted and over-leveraged glory out of $1.4 trillion worth of subprime loans in 5 years without cutting a lot of corners. But the reason this situation is hairy for Geithner and Bernanke is that the government owns or is backing trillions of dollars worth of assets predicated on the same suspicious loans that were defaulting into the 2008 crisis period they did nothing to stop, while lavishing the banks that promulgated them with the biggest bailout and subsidization in US history.

The Fed owns nearly $1.5 trillion toxic assets that already have no bid (actual buyer), and will have less of a bid the more uncertainty there is about the loans that fill them. The Treasury is directly backing $400 billion of GSE securities, and is behind another $6.8 trillion of indirect backup to the GSE's. Both entities are desperately hoping the financial market doesn't seize up (yes the market, they don’t seem to be bothered about individuals and their homes), so they don't become the only bid again (well, actually still) behind any securitized asset. That would ruin their story – that the bailout worked even though it did absolutely nothing to help borrowers at the loan level, or by extension the general economy."

Will the new Financial Reform Bill do the job?

2010-09-06T10:57:00.000-07:00

Shadow Banking

Reforms pending in Congress would not touch the abuses of hedge funds and private equity.

Nomi Prins | May 4, 2010

Despite all the noise about financial reform, the shadow banking system that helped create the financial crisis would remain fundamentally unaltered by the legislation now pending in Congress. Indeed, leveraged entities such as private-equity, venture-capital, and hedge funds get only minor regulatory attention.

These barely regulated, nontransparent bastions of speculation propagated systemic risks beyond any that could be created by the banks themselves. Whether housed at banks, created by banks, or freestanding, they exist to enable speculative risk-taking hidden from either regulatory or market scrutiny while camouflaging layers of debt and enabling the complex-securitization deals that caused the financial collapse.

Yet, neither the House bill passed last December nor the most recent Senate bill submitted by Sen. Chris Dodd does more than impose marginal adjustments on the shadow banking system. Even those measures contain loopholes so inviting that JPMorgan Chase, the largest hedge-fund manager by assets worldwide, scoffs at the notion it will be adversely affected.

Leaving Shadow Banks Intact. Under the most recent Senate bill, hedge funds managing more than $100 million worth of assets would have to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission as investment advisers. But private-equity and venture-capital funds would not. Dodd's bill leaves it up to the SEC to construct a definition for private-equity and venture-capital funds as differentiated from hedge funds. (There's no standardized definition of hedge fund yet.) Cue industry lawyers.

Loophole No. 1: Private-equity funds are financial-pyramid bottom-feeders; they buy distressed companies or assets, load them up with debt, extract near-term profit, and are gone before any collapse occurs. And since private-equity funds can both invest in hedge funds and do anything a hedge fund does (it's all a matter of how they pitch what they do to their investors), hedge funds could just change their name to avoid registration or information sharing. Dodd's bill would charge banks and any non-bank financial company supervised by the Fed holding $50 billion or more in assets to pay into an "orderly liquidation fund." But hedge, private-equity, and venture-capital funds wouldn't have to contribute.

Loophole No. 2: Neither the Senate nor the House bill alters the way in which hedge and private-equity funds do business. They only minimally alter where a fraction of the funds' business can't be done. A collapse of all or part of the banking system due to hedge-fund or private-equity abuses would necessitate use of a resolution fund -- into which shadow bankers have made no payment. They pile on the risk but don't pay for the fallout.

The Volcker Rule Minus Teeth. The latest Senate bill ostensibly adopts the so-called Volcker Rule restrictions prohibiting depository institutions and bank-holding companies from sponsoring or investing in a hedge or private-equity fund (it makes no explicit mention of venture-capital funds). A new Financial Stability Oversight Council would decide how to implement and interpret this regulation. Additionally, the comptroller general is required to conduct a feasibility study regarding a self--regulatory private-equity and venture-capital fund oversight and submit a report to the House Financial Services and Senate Banking committees within a year after enactment. Of course, a year gives lobbyists plenty of time to figure out ways to circumvent any form of regulation.

Loophole No. 3: Under the Senate bill, foreign-based firms that aren't directly or indirectly controlled by a firm organized under U.S. laws are exempted. European banks could thus expand their private-equity and hedge-fund game on our soil, thereby spreading globalized risk.

Loophole No. 4: Though large banks like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs run hedge funds, the language in Dodd's bill doesn't prohibit a bank from managing the portfolio of a client who chooses to invest in hedge funds. Since banks aren't required to delineate or disclose exactly what's proprietary and what's client-oriented (a major deficiency of the Volcker Rule itself), there's nothing to keep them from calling nearly every hedge-fund activity client--oriented, thereby getting around this rule.

Missing the Problem: Hedge Funds. Despite lobbyist claims to the contrary, the hedge-fund industry played a key role in the run-up to the banking crisis. It was an eager buyer and trader of the equity in toxic collateralized-debt obligations (CDOs) and other complex high-risk securities while heavily leveraging the higher-rated pieces of these securities. In other words, the industry provided the seed money to create these securities and a market for them while excessively borrowing money from the banks creating them. By doing so, the industry inflated the perceived value and demand for these securities, as well as systemic risk and leverage.

Indeed, the hedge-fund industry tripled to an estimated $1.8 trillion business between 2002 and 2008, just as the sub-prime loan and complex--securitization market was expanding. Not a coincidence.

Bear Stearns' infamous credit hedge funds were designed to leverage structured credit securities by as much as 35 to 1, enticing "hot money" investors who ultimately ran for the hills when they smelled potential losses, creating chaos in their wake. Current proposals might prohibit banks from outright owning such funds (and only if they aren't "client oriented"), but they don't constrain how the funds operate.

Private-Equity Firms Weren't Innocent Bystanders. Private-equity funds financed both mortgage-lending and real-estate-development companies, both directly and by purchasing equity in commercial CDOs. Now, they are picking up the broken pieces of those endeavors by buying failed banks and lenders on the cheap (as hedge funds go about buying cheap bank stocks in bulk).

Major private-equity firms like Fortress and the Carlyle Group are busy raising capital to buy chunks of more than $1 trillion of distressed commercial real-estate debt that lies underwater on the books of banks, insurance companies, and other lenders. Much of that original debt had been securitized in complex assets with high leverage, just like sub-prime loans were -- and could ignite another crisis when defaults cumulate.

Between 2002 and early 2008, roughly $1.4 trillion worth of sub-prime loans were originated by now-fallen lenders like New Century Financial. If such loans were our only problem, the theoretical solution would have involved the government subsidizing these mortgages for the maximum cost of $1.4 trillion. However, according to Thomson Reuters, nearly $14 trillion worth of complex-securitized products were created, predominantly on top of them, precisely because leveraged funds abetted every step of their production and dispersion. Thus, at the height of federal payouts in July 2009, the government had put up $17.5 trillion to support Wall Street's pyramid Ponzi system, not $1.4 trillion. The destruction in the commercial lending market could spur the next implosion.

As long as leveraged funds bolster these markets (whether inside or outside of banks), the true value of complex securities will be unknowable and subject to extreme cycles of bubble and collapse. This time it was sub-prime; next time it could be commercial real estate, oil, or food.

The Reforms We Need. Current reforms won't deter the reckless financial engineering, investing, and inflation of values upon which leveraged funds thrive. Right now, Wall Street funds are inhaling a host of new distressed security concoctions (a k a toxic assets part II) that scoop up all the junk out there and regift it to the markets. This all operates under the radar screen.

Thus it is imperative that banks with any form of leveraged fund, even if it belongs to a client, must provide detailed information to the SEC, no exceptions. Every hedge fund, private-equity firm, and venture-capital company, no matter what its size, should be required to register with the SEC and be subject to stringent reporting requirements and limits on leverage.

Private-equity firms should have to confer with regulators and make public all steps of their actions when buying and operating failed banks whose deposits are government-insured; otherwise we will maintain this unbalanced situation where banks can't own private-equity funds, but private-equity funds can manage banks.

Hedge funds should have restrictions on the percentage of securitized assets they can buy and the percentage of federally backed banks or financial firms they can own. Hedge funds currently own 6 percent of Citigroup, for example; if they dump their stock, the ripple effect could generate a need for more federal aid.

Without addressing these structural issues, shining a high-beam of transparency, and dramatically restraining the leverage and risk that these funds can take or enable, we are doomed to crash again.

IRONMAN SEZ.......

2010-06-18T23:08:00.000-07:00

U.S President picks Hagen as associate justice!

2010-05-10T10:51:00.000-07:00

President Obama taps "Festus" Hagen as associate Supreme court justice.

Friends of Festus Hagen in Dodge City, Kansas; "Doc", and "Ms.Kitty" were delighted by Obama's choice,. Doc was quoted as saying " Were glad to get rid of him". Hagen's former employer, Marshall Matt Dillon, of Dodge City, Kansas, was quoted as saying, "He couldn't have picked a finer man.

Does the Census Bureau Discriminate?

2010-05-05T09:31:00.000-07:00

I recently was denied employment by the U.S Census Bureau, because I failed there criminal background check, I talked about this previously in this blog.

The Census bureau does a 10 year (I presume)criminal background check for applicants for the Census taker jobs. I assuming I failed the background check because of an incident in 11/2000 , where I was fingerprinted and booked, and detained in jail for a couple of days.

I kept that original piece of paper though that says I was "detained", and sent a copy of it along with my fingerprints to the U.S Census Bureau (hiring)..where my application was rejected anyway. On the census application form it does ask...

"During the last 10 years, have you been convicted, been imprisoned,
been on probation, or been
on parole? (Includes felonies, firearms or explosives violations,
misdemeanors, and all other offenses. If "YES," use
Item 32 to provide the date, explanation of the violation, place of
occurrence, and the name and address of the police
department or court involved.)

I answered "No" to that question, because ,I forgot about that incident where I was fingerprinted and booked in 11-2000, and That incident in 11-2000 didn't qualify as an arrest.Though according to the records I have of that incident, the police say I was "detained" not arrested, hence I didn't have to go to court over that incident. SO, I was detained for 48 hours and no charges were filed.

Below is from a website that is trying to file a complaint against the U.S Census Bureau, for discriminatory hiring practices. Apparently, This has happened to alot of African-Americans trying to work for the U.S Census bureau, there is also an article in Mother Jones magazine.

"The work conducted by Census forms a cornerstone of our democracy, and it is imperative that Census carry out its mission accurately and in a manner that is fair and free of discrimination for all individuals and communities. That imperative must apply consistently not only to the counting work at the core of Census’ mission, but also to the way in which Census hires its workforce. If this hiring were done appropriately, Census would identify the most qualified workers and screen out those who pose a legitimate risk to public safety and the integrity of the census. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

All applicants for the 2010 Census with an arrest record for any offense at any point in their lives – no matter how trivial or disconnected from the requirements of the job – face an arbitrary barrier to employment. Census requires that within 30 days these particular applicants must produce the “official” court records of the disposition of their arrests to remain eligible for employment. Because of the difficulty, and often impossibility, of obtaining such proof, many people who have never been prosecuted or convicted of a crime are deterred or excluded outright from working for Census. Census’ screening procedure also results in the exclusion of many people with old and minor convictions for non-criminal offenses, misdemeanors, and other crimes that do not involve violence or dishonesty, which are irrelevant according to Census’ own policy for work in the field or at a desk job.

Because the arrest and conviction rates of African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans far exceed those of whites nationwide, Census’ use of an arbitrary pre-employment screen has the result of discriminating on the basis of race, ethnicity, color, and national origin. By importing the discriminatory bias of the criminal justice system into its hiring practice, Census is thereby violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

The Plaintiffs in this case -- all Census applicants -- are deeply committed to Census’ goal of reaching communities at risk of being undercounted, particularly low-income people of color and immigrants. They seek simple changes to Census' hiring process which will not only reduce its discriminatory practices, but will promote the public interest by expanding Census' hiring base in historically under-counted communities, thereby achieving the Constitutional goal of counting all who live in the United States."

Could Goldman/Sachs lose?

2010-04-23T13:49:00.000-07:00

Here why the suit The lawsuit against Goldman-Sachs might fail.....simply it may be lawful in the United States for them to do this.
Posted on "The Disgruntled Astrologer".

Lynn A. Stout is the Paul Hastings professor of corporate and securities law at U.C.L.A. and an expert on corporate governance.

"If the allegations against Goldman Sachs are true, then much of the blame for investors’ losses in the Abacus deal can be laid at the feet of an obscure statute passed by Congress in 2000, the “Commodities Futures Modernization Act.”

In one dramatic move, that act eliminated a longstanding legal rule that deemed derivatives bets made outside regulated exchanges to be legally enforceable only if one of the parties to the bet was hedging against a pre-existing risk.

This traditional derivatives rule against purely speculative derivatives trading has a parallel in insurance law, because insurance, like derivatives trading, is really just a form of betting. A homeowner’s fire insurance policy, for example, is a bet with an insurance company that your house will burn down.

If we allow the unscrupulous to buy fire insurance on other people’s houses, the incidence of arson would rise sharply.
In one dramatic move, that act eliminated a longstanding legal rule that deemed derivatives bets made outside regulated exchanges to be legally enforceable only if one of the parties to the bet was hedging against a pre-existing risk. "...

So am I understanding correctly here, that if you a homeowner can buy fire insurance against your home. Your buying insurance against your own home, the person issuing the insurance is assuming your not going to burn down your own home, right?

But what if a third party can buy fire insurance on your home? In that article she suggest that the incident of crimes like "Arson" would vastly increase, as maybe a third party can collect insurance on your home. Is she suggesting this is the situation that has been going on economically, and the situation in the lawsuit with SEC? I

The lawsuit against G/S simply might fail because it may have been lawful for Goldman/Sachs to do that.

I predicted G/S would win the lawsuit..or there would be some kinda of "surprise" involved here. Maybe someone should speak about Cosmic Justice if there is such a thing. Maybe I am being a bit "cynical" (Saturn in Virgo ) . Although it might be somewhat easy to suggest that G/S will win......

Investment banks practically bankrolled Obama into the Presidency. Hank Paulsen, the Treasury Secretary under George Bush, Paulsen Ok'd the T.A.R.P loans remember..well before he was Treasury Sect, He worked for Goldman /Sachs ("One hand washes the others back"). There are a number of former G/S people in Obama's Cabinet at the moment if I remember correctly.

Investment banks spent more than 2 billion dollars lobbying congress to pass bills like the "Commodities Futures Modernization Act", repelling the Glass-Steagall act , and others so when the S.E.C goes to testify in congress, they'll be talking to a bit of a Kangaroo court.

Just about every congress person there will have probably received some kind of money from investment banks, including some from Goldman/Sachs.

I guess that the Obama administration is under alot of international pressure to go along with the S.E.C findings...after all if they lose the suit...the international community might sanction the U.S economically..no one is going to want to do business with the U.S. Sarkozy,the P.M of France is ready to admit Moslem's in his country, Ice is ready to blow here top. Greece is asking for spare change.
Yet Obama is probably under even more pressure from the Wall Street community.

And don't forget were in a war, which is seemingly about Oil. The one reason were not in dire financial straits and still a player in the international community is because of Oil. We got Iraq, they have oil. We can sell oil in U.S Dollars. Our competitor seems to be Iran, they have oil too, and are selling it in Euro's.

If this skulduggery is allowed to continue in the U.S, maybe the world might side with the Iranians, and buy only their oil, The Iranians might respond by lower there prices for oil. Now I think I understand better why the U.S or Israel isn't so keen on attacking Iran.....because Iran might respond by by bombing bases in Iraq and oil facilities there...if we bomb theres in Iran.

Yet though maybe theres some room here for some intervention here. in a couple of months you might have something like +=AP ( Aries point) that's a pretty cosmic connection isn't it. Maybe the SEC might win because their move has impetus,boldness and thrust.

I'm hoping that the SEC will really win that case, if your asking me. Though the S.E.C is in trouble. Someone is claiming that S.E.C employees spend too much time watching pornography at work.

Why Perservere?

2010-04-03T16:05:00.000-07:00

Today I got my sixth bike stolen, this one from outside my Hotel Room. I'm on the fourth floor, and the bike was parked just outside my room in the afternoon. I kinda should have expected that someone might grab it , but didn't expect anyone to be so brazen to steal it from in front of my door. There was a tenant doing laundry on my floor, and the hallways are about 3ft across, I asked him if he seen anyone with the bike he , said he didn't. When I kept asking him about this he got irate about me asking him,as if I was blaming him, But he was walking around on the floor all morning, he didn't have time to notice someone carrying off a big red bike off the 4th floor here? He went back to his room and started gesturing like he had a gun.

It took me at least 15 minutes+ for me to connect with the police on the phone, to see if I could try to get them to come out, they wouldn't and suggested I try to file a police report online. I did.

Normally, losing a bike wouldn't drive a person to quit working to abandon their employment, especially in these times, But I feel, I could easily become a statistic here and no one would particularly care...

It's the 6th bike I've had stolen at least while I've been staying here, and it makes me think that there is very little reason to continue staying in this place, events in my life make it undesirable to stay in this area,but hard to leave unless I abandon most of the stuff I'm doing here.

I'd be leaving my job. But who cares, Most of my money goes into paying rent, for a job that gets tougher to do , while I get older..while the economy gets worse....and people get more desperate...and while I get ostracized for things I didn't do. Its ultimately a waste of time.

I was ready to give notice, and 30 days notice for leaving this Hotel. Living in the streets might be better than continuing to stay here, but I guess I asked myself.."Has there been anything I accomplished here? " I haven't really accomplished much, but recently I did get a green Belt in Judo!

My Instructor just handed it to me. I had been studying Judo for a couple of months and hadn't expect anything like that.I thought the green belt and Judo might actually be a burden for me at 48 years old. I could have went to Judo class this morning..if I did , maybe I'd still have that Bike.

I guess there are some thing more important that bikes, some thing more important than material things. I use the bike mostly to commute to work. So having something like that stolen again, and again, and again..brings it issues about whether working and living in this area is ultimately worthwhile. But then I thought about that Green belt....and maybe things seem alittle worthwhile.

Besides I keep a spare bike just in-case.

Was it something I said?

2010-03-04T11:28:00.000-08:00

In follow up from my previous Post, about Jobs in the Federal government.
I called the U.S Census bureau in regards to my application for Federal employment in the Census Bureau. My application for employment was denied.

I am trying follow-up with questions to the Federal Census Bureau, with specific questions as to why,they barred me. I guess with the large number of applicants for the Census, if your name comes up in a Federal Bureau of Investigation background check, for a Federal job..even if you haven't been "officially arrested" or have no otherwise criminal background..you can be denied employment from the Federal Government.

After talking to the Oakland police about the incident I was arrested for back in 2000!, The Officer told, me that that it was unlikely that anybody could use that information legally against me, since it wasn't a arrest.

I'm beginning to wonder, If the reason I was being denied employment at for the Federal Bureau of the Census is because of something else. If so , how did my name come up in a FBI background check, if it wasn't because I was finger-printed and booked in 2000?

On the day I wrote this post, I received the letter from the Census Bureau notifying me that I had been rejected from from the position it reads....

I don't think its very accurate in the least, if the FBI is collecting erroneous information and the Census Bureau is using that information.

Obama wants more Jobs...Why not start with the Fed!

2010-03-02T11:12:00.000-08:00

U.S President Barack Obama wants more jobs for the people of the U.S.

Here's some advice for you Mr. Obama if you want more jobs for the people why not start first with the U.S Government.

The reason I say this is because The U.S is heading into U.S Census time, that is the 10 year population count for the United States. The citizenry and their lives are recorded into the U.S Census data.

When the Census occurs The U.S government starts employing large numbers of people to go out and check address, actually interview people for the Census, as well as hiring support crew, bookkeepers, management etc, all for this one year "ten year" Census count.

So the Census ought to be a great opportunity for people to get temporary part-time or even full-time work. God, knows many people at this time need work. One major
obstacle for employment through for the Census I have recently found out is passing the criminal background check , run by the FBI.

Definitely, I guess you would need a background check like this to get government work? But if you want to hire many people..a background check at present way it is going to get in the way of employing alot of people. Some good people who could get into places, other people may of difficulty doing.

I may not be one of these people, but I worked alot with the U.S Census around the Year 2000, not only did I work on the 10 year census, I also worked about a year, doing some full-time work for the Census Bureau as well, I also worked a couple years more doing other Survey work where I'd be getting information interviewing people. It was the census work that I did ten years ago that helped me find employment... doing what I am doing, right now.

But during this up-coming Census year 2010, I applied for employment again with the Census Bureau but I found that I have been temporarily? blocked from employment in the Census , because I failed a criminal background check.

I have tried to maintain my freedom, and a criminal free lifestyle. When I applied for the Census, they ask you if you have been arrested or committed a felony within a certain time of applying for a Job with the Bureau. Within the time parameter mentioned, I did not recall doing anything or being convicted of a felony. So I wrote "No" to all those questions.

Then I discovered that my name came up in an FBI background check, and I could no longer be considered for employment, unless I provided the U.S government with more information about alleged run in with the criminal justice system and or a copy of my fingerprints. I thought , Have I been put on some kind of terrorist watch list? have I said too much on these blogs?

I had to be really honest with myself, and I did remember a time when I spent a couple of days in jail, and was booked by the Oakland Police...possibly for an assault. The possible assault and battery was on the Person I mention here in the early part of this Blog, the on-going shenanigans that was going on in the residential Hotel, The "Oaks Hotel".

After 2 days, I was released from jail. I received a small letter saying that "I was not arrested, but "Detained"", and I guess the charges were dropped. I never saw a judge. Nevertheless before that outcome I was photographed and fingerprinted, hence maybe this came up in the FBI background check.

I kept that memo when I got out of jail, its dated either in the year 2000or 2001, it was the first time I had ever been arrested for anything,much less over the results of staying in a residential hotel in California when I couldn't afford to stay anywhere else. I was 38,39 years old. I got bombed by this tenant in the mornings ( upstairs tenant making unruly noises early in the morning)..after trying to work two jobs, and dealing with family problems, I decided to confront the "troll" with a baseball bat. It wasn't my intent to hit the guy with it, and I didn't, I just wanted to get the guy off my back. I got two days in jail.

Maybe I was lucky charges were not filed, maybe I could have been arrested for Assault and Battery which is probably a felony though I didn't actually hit the guy with the bat. But at least If I had been prosecuted for that,.... people would have known better about the conditions that were going on at that Hotel, being subsidized by the housing authority and the Federal government.

There are probably alot of other people who are not so lucky, Many African-Americans in U.S society probably don't fare as well as I did , confounded by the U.S Criminal justice system, in which they are more the victims of a bureaucracy that just "ran them over" and could not even afford to pay to get fingerprinted to get a part-time job with the Census Bureau. Some of the unlucky people who are American citizens, who have lost there jobs, victimized by the system,or patriots in for standing up for an American system they where taught to believe in..that has failed them miserably and continues to fail them. While the people who profit and succeed in this government, seem to be "Above the Law", who commit crimes far more heinous and damaging to people and the American government.

They are apparently not barred form working for the American Government.

So Mr. Obama ,You want more jobs for American Citizens,not for Mexican immigrants coming to this country illegally. Why not start first with the American Government. Supposing you Mr.Obama, or Mr.George W.Bush could be barred from the office of the Presidency of the United States because you fail a FBI background check,because of something you did in your younger days could you then provide the legal documents for it?

Then you might also make sure that the American Government isn't the cause of people being unemployed or incarcerated in the first place by enforcing and upholding the laws of the land in the first place.

The Real Cost of T.A.R.P to American Taxpapers

2010-01-16T12:51:00.000-08:00

The Real Size of the Bailout (featured from an article in "Mother Jones " magazine)
— By Nomi Prins

The price tag for the Wall Street bailout is often put at $700 billion—the size of the Troubled Assets Relief Program. But TARP is just the tip of the iceberg of money paid out or set aside by the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve. In her book, It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street, Nomi Prins uncovers the hush-hush programs and crunches the hidden numbers to calculate the shocking actual size of the bailout: $14.4 trillion and counting.

12 Better Uses for the Bailout Bucks

Vaccinate kids, fix poverty, buy the world an iPhone. And that's just a start.

— By Marian Wang

What else could $14 trillion buy?
-----------------------------------------------------------
10 years of vaccines for kids in 117 countries
$110 billion

10 years of $10,000 bonuses for all US public school teachers
$318 billion

Sending all 2009 US high school grads to private college
$347 billion

Doubling US spending on HIV/AIDS and cancer research for 20 years
$493 billion

10 years of CO2 offsets for all Americans
$559 billion

Meeting UN anti-poverty goals by 2015
$757 billion

20 years of universal preschool in US
$860 billion

Buying a house for every homeless American
$878 billion

10 years of helping developing countries deal with the effects of climate change
$2 trillion

Buying the world an iPhone 3GS
$2 trillion

10 years of private health insurance for uninsured Americans
$2.2 trillion

Paying off 1/3 of US home mortgages
$3.5 trillion
-------------------------------------------------------
Total: $14 trillion

This chart is part of Mother Jones' (Too big to Jail) Magazine.

R.I.P Teddy Pendergrass

2010-01-14T00:45:00.000-08:00

I wasn't that much of a fan, but he had a great voice, and the ladies loved him. There wasn't any guy on the Planet who didn't wish he was Teddy Pendergrass, before he got into that accident. Teddy Pendergrass gone and not forgotten. An Era is passing.

The "Marburg" Virus reaches U.S...and you were worried about exploding airplanes?

2009-12-30T23:34:00.000-08:00

Very Sick, and Now a Curiosity

By DENISE GRADY

Published: December 21, 2009

Michelle Barnes never imagined that her vacation to Uganda would make her a medical celebrity.

Ms. Barnes, 44, became ill in January 2008, a few days after returning home to Golden, Colo. At first, she seemed to have a typical case of traveler’s diarrhea, but she soon worsened. She broke out in a rash and developed abdominal pain, terrible fatigue, weakness and confusion. Blood tests found her white-cell count low and her liver and kidneys beginning to fail. She was hospitalized, still deteriorating. Her blood was taking too long to clot, and her pancreas and her muscles were inflamed.

Tests for a long list of tropical diseases all came up negative. Doctors were stumped. Their best diagnosis was, “basically, some undefined viral illness,” said Dr. Norman K. Fujita, an infectious disease specialist.

Ms. Barnes spent 10 days in the hospital. After that, her recovery was long and slow, with many months of fatigue, abdominal pain and mental fog. She returned to work, as an interim director for nonprofit groups, but went home exhausted at night.

“I felt like I was really jet-lagged all the time,” she said.

Seven months after she left the hospital, a news article caught her attention. A Dutch woman who had also traveled to Uganda had died from Marburg hemorrhagic fever, a viral disease. She was thought to have contracted it from exposure to bats and their droppings in the Python Cave, in the Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda. (The cave has since been closed.)

Ms. Barnes had visited the same cave. Although she had already been tested for Marburg, she asked Dr. Fujita to test her again. This time, more sensitive tests were used, and they came back positive.

It was a sobering result. The Marburg virus had never before reached North America, as far as experts know. It is a close relative of Ebola, and the diseases these viruses cause are among the world’s most dreaded, because they can have horrific symptoms and high death rates and are easily transmitted by bodily fluids. There is no vaccine, cure or even specific treatment.

Infectious disease experts had warned for years that someday an infected person might board a plane and carry one of these deadly viruses halfway around the world, potentially exposing countless others along the way. Now it had happened.

But Ms. Barnes survived, and no one else became infected, even though epidemiologists calculated that 260 people — hospital and lab workers, friends and family — had potentially been exposed.

The first detailed report on her puzzling case was published in the Dec. 18 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ms. Barnes and her husband had entered the bat cave with a group, and yet only she became sick. The reason is unknown, but she thought she might have touched guano-soiled rocks and then covered her nose and mouth with her hands because the cave smelled so bad.

It is also unclear why she survived, but Dr. Eileen Farnon, an epidemiologist at the disease centers, said Ms. Barnes was healthy and fit, received excellent care and might have taken in a small dose of the virus. Even though Ms. Barnes took more than a year to recover fully, she had a fairly mild case, as Marburg goes.

She probably did not infect anyone else, Dr. Farnon said, at least in part because Dr. Fujita was astute and cautious enough to order “contact precautions,” meaning gloves and gowns, for everyone who came in contact with her at the hospital.

When scientists trying to develop a Marburg vaccine at the National Institutes of Health heard about Ms. Barnes, they were eager to take blood samples from her. She agreed. They invited her and Dr. Fujita to Bethesda, Md., last June, to present her case to a standing-room-only crowd of researchers who had never seen a Marburg survivor.

Dr. Julie E. Ledgerwood, deputy chief of the clinical trials core of the vaccine research center, said scientists there were still studying Ms. Barnes’s immune response, for clues that would help them determine what a vaccine should do.

Ms. Barnes said she was happy to help. “It’s a horrible thing to get Marburg and I don’t wish it on anyone,” she said. “But if you can be part of helping to find the vaccine, that’s great.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The "Marburg" virus is one virus mentioned in Robert Preston's Book "The Hot Zone".
Its a Viral hemorrhagic disease (like Ebola Zaire) you don't want to get. Only Marburg doesn't have high mortality rate as "Ebola Zaire"..That just seems to make "Marburg" even more dreaded... This disease got its name for an outbreak that got started in Germany.

In 2005 there were 300 fatalities (lots of children) in Angola, reported to be caused by an outbreak of Marburg.. Now doctors have reported a case of this in the U.S.

I mentioned it because all though this story didn't get much play in the media, you can bet that "Marburg" is alot more dangerous than H1N1 and it represent a more integral problem than the recent hysteria over the failed bomb attempt over the U.S Airlines.

A radio medical Personality mention that the person carrying the virus, probably transported from Africa to the U.S over the Airlines carrying "Marburg".... It was fortunate that no other persons were infected, ("That we the "public" know of"). It is fortunate that this person was able to get the health care that was needed, and that many other weren't infected (That we know of). If you think the hysteria over H1N1 was bad,what would happen in an outbreak of Marburg in the U.S?

It make you wonder just how secure our we in this country, , probably alot less than you think. If Marburg can get here overseas via the airlines, what about other pathogens like "Ebola Zaire", or something like Smallpox? How would the U.S deal with outbreak of these pathogens like these? How could the Airlines or the Department of Homeland Security prevent this from happening much less prevent a dedicated "terrorist" from spreading an outbreak of this in the U.S.

Now Americans are hung up on the idea of of terrorist exploding a plane, full of people, but a dedicated, well financed terrorist could probably do alot worse,than murdering lots of people on an Airplane. yet because of media spin doctors, they've labeled the "would-be-terrorist" as an "Islamic fundamentalist". Subscribers to these spin doctors are ready to bomb the "terrorist" country with nuclear weapons to end the threat, in Yemen or Nigeria,but there is a much bigger threat looming here in the U.S. Bombing Yemen, Sending troops in Afghanistan,installing body detectors in Airports, a Nuclear response in Yemen, Iran or Nigeria won't help much.

Perhaps the President Barack Obama must be aware of this and did try to do something by starting an initiative to improve health care in the U.S.

Without adequate health care in this country all types of people are going to be vulnerable to problems like this not just the poor, and any kind of outbreak like "Marburg" this in the U.S would have the potential to bring the Country to a standstill.

Don't You Think It's Time to Reinstate the Laws That Would Have Prevented the Financial Crash?

2009-12-01T12:55:00.000-08:00

Don't You Think It's Time to Reinstate the Laws That Would Have Prevented the Financial Crash?

By Nomi Prins, AlterNet
Posted on November 14, 2009, Printed on December 1, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143942/

This week marks the tenth year anniversary of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley or Financial Services Modernization Act, marking the moment when we were royally screwed by the banking system. Thank you to all those involved.

It's amazing how downright ebullient, President Bill Clinton was at that signing ceremony on November 12, 1999. an event introduced by then Treasury Secretary (now Obama advisor) Larry Summers, successor to Robert Rubin. Those restricting, anti-competitive Depression era, laws were finally behind us. Awesome.

Fast-forward to now and must of us know how devastatingly expensive that signature was for the American public. Yet, despite our government having deployed or made available over $14.1 trillion worth of federal subsidies to fix Wall Street, the banking landscape is less stable than it was before last year's crisis. And, despite national unemployment approaching double digits, and another record quarter of foreclosures, we stand farther away from the intent of Glass Steagall than ever.

Banks weren't handled with kid gloves then. They were treated like the spoiled, reckless, destructive beings they were. After the stock market crash in 1929, the country sunk into the throes of the Great Depression, characterized by 25% unemployment, bread lines, rampant foreclosures, and general despair. In 1932, the Pecora commission examined the shady banking practices that contributed to the devastation, all of which hinged on one thing - banks had used depositor capital and loans to speculate with. Exactly like the practices going on before and since last fall's financial calamity. The result of that speculation gone wrong tanked the economy. Glass-Steagall logically sought to ensure this wouldn't happen again. It divided up the banking landscape into two parts, commercial banks and investment banks. The federal government would back commercial banks and consumer deposits through establishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). But, it wouldn't be Wall Street's investment bank bookie and bitch.

Over the decades, the financial sector, armed with cunning lobbyists and overpaid lawyers, took many swipes at Glass-Steagall, but none as devastating as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Since then, the banking sector's powerful ate its weak, amidst a wave of massive consolidation. Nearly half of the nation's biggest bank mergers took place just before or since that Act was passed. All these mega banks can thus churn deposits and loans into debt or capital to fund speculation, risk, and create a roller coaster of an economy that is defined simply on whether those bets, or asset creations, work or not, at any given moment. Heads they win, tails we lose.

Last fall, the Federal Reserve, and to some extent the Treasury Department, not only blessed, but subsidized the mergers and moniker changes (like seriously, if Carrie Prejean's title can be stripped, certainly Goldman's behavior warrants removal of the bank holding company title), helping too big to fail to become even bigger with riskier profiles than ever before. Only this time they are floated on public assistance. This is not progress. It's expensive insanity. And, it will blow up again. It is a matter of when, not if.

Meanwhile, as reform bills from Senator Christopher Dodd's (D-CT) to Representative Barney Frank's (D-MA), to the plans from the Treasury Department and the White House, make their way from concept to draft to vote, we've got to keep one thing in mind. The beast that is today's complicated, convoluted, risk taking, federal capital sucking, and bonus paying mega-bank is still roaming around free.

As long as it remains out of its cage, creating plans to slow its movements are always going to be much harder, than putting it back in a stronger cage. Though, it's important to have a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, better derivatives regulation (if only that were on the table for real), and 'funeral plans' as Dodd's bill calls them, to put too big to fail banks to bed just before they keel over, it doesn't change the nature of the beast.

And though one way to keep some of our money out of the mouths of the most rapacious banks, would be to reduce leverage limits and increase capital requirements for the riskiest banks, or as Tim Geithner and Fed Chairman, Ben Benanke like to call them, 'the systemically important' ones so they can pay for their own clean-up - this too has a catch.

The more capital banks are required to hold, while being allowed to operate as investment banks that use hoarded capital as collateral for increasing their own borrowing and trading businesses, the less lending they will provide to ordinary citizens and small businesses. Without splitting up the banking structure to avoid the hoard to trade, not to lend, scenario, we are creating legislation to help banks bloat on risk - they will have less than no incentive to do much else.

And as far as regulatory bodies are concerned? I dare any regulator, or for that matter human-being in Washington to come up with one single consistent risk parameter that can be used to determine exactly what percentage of each of the big bank's profits comes from speculative vs. customer driven business. Because, by virtue of how complex they all are, and have been allowed to remain, no two balance sheets are remotely similar - and I'm not talking about accounting terms, I'm talking about risk clarification ones.

Thus, whether we merge all regulators into one ginormous one, or have a council of them to deal with the hard issues of mega-collapse and crisis, or even place one inside the office of every top bank CEO, shadowing him like a probation officer (no that's not in one of the bills, it would just be fun to watch unfold), the beast remains out of the cage.

That's why we need to reinstate Glass-Steagall. Now. We need to dissect the speculative from the boring within our country's financial institutions. And yes, it's possible to achieve. Banks split off pieces of companies and move them around every day. Plus, the Glass Steagall Act didn't wave a magic wand that divided up bank divisions, it ingeniously used banks' own competitive desires against them, by giving banks a one-year period to dramatically reduce the portion of profit they made from investment banking activities to 10% of total profits. Banks were free to choose how to do this, knowing commercial banking got government backing, and investment backing didn't. Betting behaviors are more conservative when it's your own money, and not someone else's on the line. Stability follows.

We need to specifically reinstate section 16 of the Glass-Steagall Act that had restricted national commercial banks from engaging in most investment banking activities, up to a certain small percentage, coming from client directives, not their own proprietary trading. And, on the flip side, we need to reinstate section 21 that restricted investment banks from engaging in any commercial banking up to a certain percentage limit.

Doing these two things, would reduce the more systemically risky competitive desires between these two types of banks that spurs them to merge into institutions that are too big to exist without our help, or take the kinds of leveraged risks that drive short-term profits and bonuses, at the expense of long term financial system stability.

Similar to the original Glass-Steagall Act, commercial institutions would have say, eighteen months to reduce the percentage of their income derived from any type of equity, asset-backed securities, CDO or derivative products origination and trading to 10 percent, and one year to present a plan to do so.

While banks are learning to comply with these new-old laws, we should immediately reinstating lower deposit concentration limits on the banking industry to discourage further consolidation. Plus, we need to force the Fed to do its job to enforce existing limits, or give that enforcement power to the FDIC or another body that shows itself capable of performing this basic regulatory function. Today, two banks, Bank of America and Wells-Fargo are above 10 percent deposit concentration limits, and JPM Chase is close to 10 percent. Thank you for that, Fed. You're fired.

It's time to put the beast back in its cage, while taming it, by re-instating Glass Steagall, and keep it from inflicting even more danger on the rest of us. Meanwhile, we need to support all those in Washington that get this, and keep pressuring those who don't.

Nomi Prins is a senior fellow at the public policy center Demos and author of It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street.

© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/143942/

NOTE;

I'VE PUT OUT ALOT OF GOOD INFORMATION, AND THERE ARE ALOT OF EXPERTS OUT THERE WHO SEEM TO KNOW THAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT ( THOUGH ,BEWARE OF "EXPERTS"). THE REMEDY SEEMS OBVIOUS, WHY DOESN'T ANYONE IN THIS OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, ACT ON ANY OF THIS INFORMATION. ALL THAT INFORMATION SEEMS TO FALL ON DEAF EARS.

COULD IT BE THAT "THEY DON'T WANT TO REINSTATE "GLASS-STEGALL"? IS THERE AN ADVANTAGE IN HAVING NO SEPARATION BETWEEN YOUR SAVING IN BANKS AND INVESTMENTS IN THESE BANK?

IN SUCH CONDITIONS THE BANKS SORT OF GAMBLE WITH YOUR MONEY...ER THE GOVERNMENTS' MONEY. WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT USELESS THEY SIMPLY WANT TO USE YOUR MONEY TO FUND
THESE WARS IN AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ? THE GOVERNMENT COULD GET THE BANKS TO FUND THE WAR..BANKS LIKE GOLDMAN-SACHS, ESPECIALLY SINCE SO MANY PEOPLE FROM "GOLDMAN-SACHS" IS ON THE OBAMA CABINET, AND THE GOVERNMENT HAS INVESTED SO MUCH MONEY IN THESE INVESTMENT FIRMS BUT IT IS YOUR MONEY ON THE LINE HERE, AND THAT SITUATION WOULD INVITE ATTACKS ON AMERICA'S FINANCIAL SYSTEM, SO ALL OF YOUR MONEY WOULD BE AT EVEN MORE RISK..

15 things Americans can do to fix this System , by Michael Moore

2009-11-23T12:32:00.000-08:00

October 22nd, 2009 5:51 AM
"Michael Moore's Action Plan: 15 Things Every American Can Do Right Now"
You've Seen the Movie -- Now It's Time to ACT!

Friends,

It's the #1 question I'm constantly asked after people see my movie: "OK -- so NOW what can I DO?!"

You want something to do? Well, you've come to the right place! 'Cause I got 15 things you and I can do right now to fight back and try to fix this very broken system.
Here they are:

FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY:

1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people's homes are now truly worth -- and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.

2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare For All will end this misery. The bill to make this happen is H.R. 3200 -- but this bill is worthless without the amendment from Rep. Anthony Weiner that will bring us closer to the real bill that should be passed: H.R. 676. You must call AND write your members of Congress and demand that they support this amendment, no compromises allowed.

3. Demand publicly-funded elections and a prohibition on elected officials leaving office and becoming lobbyists. Yes, those very members of Congress who solicit and receive millions of dollars from wealthy interests must vote to remove ALL money from our electoral and legislative process. Tell your members of Congress they must support campaign finance bill H.R.1826.

4. Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota. Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies -- and all the other industries that have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies -- you name it. If a company's primary motive to exist is to make a profit, then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by -- and the first rule is "Do no harm." The second rule: The question must always be asked -- "Is this for the common good?" (Click here for some info about the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.)

5. Save this fragile planet and declare that all the energy resources above and beneath the ground are owned collectively by all of us. Just like they do it in Sarah Palin's socialist Alaska. We only have a few decades of oil left. The public must be the owners and landlords of the natural resources and energy that exists within our borders or we will descend further into corporate anarchy. And when it comes to burning fossil fuels to transport ourselves, we must cease using the internal combustion engine and instruct our auto/transportation companies to rehire our skilled workforce and build mass transit (clean buses, light rail, subways, bullet trains, etc.) and new cars that don't contribute to climate change. (For more on this, here's a proposal I wrote in December.) Demand that General Motors' de facto chairman, Barack Obama, issue a JFK man-on-the-moon-style challenge to turn our country into a nation of trains and buses and subways. For Pete's sake, people, we were the ones who invented (or perfected) these damn things in the first place!!

FIVE THINGS WE CAN DO TO MAKE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT LISTEN TO US:

1. Each of us must get into the daily habit of taking 5 minutes to make four brief calls: One to the President (202-456-1414), one to your Congressperson (202-224-3121) and one to each of your two Senators (202-224-3121). To find out who represents you, click here. Take just one minute on each of these calls to let them know how you expect them to vote on a particular issue. Let them know you will have no hesitation voting for a primary opponent -- or even a candidate from another party -- if they don't do our bidding. Trust me, they will listen. If you have another five minutes, click here to send them each an email. And if you really want to drop an anvil on them, send them a snail mail letter!

2. Take over your local Democratic Party. Remember how much fun you had with all those friends and neighbors working together to get Barack Obama elected? YOU DID THE IMPOSSIBLE. It's time to re-up! Get everyone back together and go to the monthly meeting of your town or county Democratic Party -- and become the majority that runs it! There will not be many in attendance and they will either be happy or in shock that you and the Obama Revolution have entered the room looking like you mean business. President Obama's agenda will never happen without mass grass roots action -- and he won't feel encouraged to do the right thing if no one has his back, whether it's to stand with him, or push him in the right direction. When you all become the local Democratic Party, send me a photo of the group and I'll post it on my website.

3. Recruit someone to run for office who can win in your local elections next year -- or, better yet, consider running for office yourself! You don't have to settle for the incumbent who always expects to win. You can be our next representative! Don't believe it can happen? Check out these examples of regular citizens who got elected: State Senator Deb Simpson, California State Assemblyman Isadore Hall, Tempe, Arizona City Councilman Corey Woods, Wisconsin State Assemblyman Chris Danou, and Washington State Representative Larry Seaquist. The list goes on and on -- and you should be on it!

4. Show up. Picket the local branch of a big bank that took the bailout money. Hold vigils and marches. Consider civil disobedience. Those town hall meetings are open to you, too (and there's more of us than there are of them!). Make some noise, have some fun, get on the local news. Place "Capitalism Did This" signs on empty foreclosed homes, closed down businesses, crumbling schools and infrastructure. (You can download them from my website.)

5. Start your own media. You. Just you (or you and a couple friends). The mainstream media is owned by corporate America and, with few exceptions, it will never tell the whole truth -- so you have to do it! Start a blog! Start a website of real local news (here's an example: The Michigan Messenger). Tweet your friends and use Facebook to let them know what they need to do politically. The daily papers are dying. If you don't fill that void, who will?

FIVE THINGS WE SHOULD DO TO PROTECT OURSELVES AND OUR LOVED ONES UNTIL WE GET THROUGH THIS MESS:

1. Take your money out of your bank if it took bailout money and place it in a locally-owned bank or, preferably, a credit union.

2. Get rid of all your credit cards but one -- the kind where you have to pay up at the end of the month or you lose your card.

3. Do not invest in the stock market. If you have any extra cash, put it away in a savings account or, if you can, pay down on your mortgage so you can own your home as soon as possible. You can also buy very safe government savings bonds or T-bills. Or just buy your mother some flowers.

4. Unionize your workplace so that you and your coworkers have a say in how your business is run. Here's how to do it (more info here). Nothing is more American than democracy, and democracy shouldn't be checked at the door when you enter your workplace. Another way to Americanize your workplace is to turn your business into a worker-owned cooperative. You are not a wage slave. You are a free person, and you giving up eight hours of your life every day to someone else is to be properly compensated and respected.

5. Take care of yourself and your family. Sorry to go all Oprah on you, but she's right: Find a place of peace in your life and make the choice to be around people who are not full of negativity and cynicism. Look for those who nurture and love. Turn off the TV and the Blackberry and go for a 30-minute walk every day. Eat fruits and vegetables and cut down on anything that has sugar, high fructose corn syrup, white flour or too much sodium (salt) in it (and, as Michael Pollan says, "Eat (real) food, not too much, mostly plants"). Get seven hours of sleep each night and take the time to read a book a month. I know this sounds like I've turned into your grandma, but, dammit, take a good hard look at Granny -- she's fit, she's rested and she knows the names of both of her U.S. Senators without having to Google them. We might do well to listen to her. If we don't put our own "oxygen mask" on first (as they say on the airplane), we will be of no use to the rest of the nation in enacting any of this action plan!

I'm sure there are many other ideas you can come up with on how we can build this movement. Get creative. Think outside the politics-as-usual box. BE SUBVERSIVE! Think of that local action no one else has tried. Behave as if your life depended on it. Be bold! Try doing something with reckless abandon. It may just liberate you and your community and your nation.

And when you act, send me your stories, your photos and your video -- and be sure to post your ideas in the comments beneath this letter on my site so they can be shared with millions.

C'mon people -- we can do this! I expect nothing less of all of you, my true and trusted fellow travelers!

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

UPDATE: My position that a single-payer system is the only solution to the health care crisis remains the same. I do not support H.R. 3200 unless it includes Rep. Anthony Weiner's amendment, which would essentially gut H.R. 3200 and replace it with Rep. John Conyers Jr.'s H.R. 676. In July, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised Rep. Weiner an up or down vote on his amendment before the end of the year. At that moment this became our best chance for a single-payer, universal health care plan for all. In the heat of the health care debate, strategies change from day to day, but as it stands right now, Rep. Weiner's amendment to H.R. 3200 is the best chance we have at achieving a single-payer system in the U.S. This is the same position held by the foremost activist groups for a single-payer health care plan: Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, and Healthcare-NOW! Let's ride his Trojan horse out of this mess. Write your congressmembers to demand that they support Rep. Weiner’s amendment. One thing remains clear: No health care system will be safe until every for-profit insurance company has been removed from it.

Bite Me ...With Dr.MIKE

2009-11-15T21:55:00.000-08:00

Off subject of late, but if your interested in Biology, Micro-biology or Pathology, here was an American Television show to see. I was called "Bite Me...with Dr.Mike" and it was on the Travel Channel in the U.S.

It featured the adventures of a Ph.D Virologist, Dr. Mike Leahy, who went traveling around the world investigating toxic venomous creatures and pathogens. The show lasted for about 7 episode . We have yet to see if there will be anymore episode cause frankly I think Dr. Mike may have had his share of adventures.

Dr. Mike must have visited every toxic creature on the planet in those seven episodes, including...Exposing himself to a highly dangerous and deadly "Sea wasp" Jellyfish. " Now on a scale between 1 to 10 , I'd rate that a 10, ouch!", he says as his crew helps he walk away. He plays with a "Stone fish", who's, sharp spines can cause agonizing death.

He eats unwashed vegetables in India, and has predicted he get intestinal roundworms, he later shits them out,( don't eat unwashed vegetables in India!) and shows us a handful of worms! This must be a favorite thing of his ,cause earlier in Vietnam, he eats a Beef Tapeworm cyst, a little tiny thing, and tells us by the end of the episode he going to show us what the little cyst evolved into. As promised he shits out a tapeworm more than a meter long.

Does television get better than this? Too bad there aren't any more episode out there, what happen to poor Dr Mike Leahy, we all wish him the best. you can catch some episodes of this show " Bite Me" on the Web at this address...for free! Just click on the title of this blog for the link, you my have to fool around with the viewer to get it to work, also I'll add a link.

House of Representatives votes to water down Consumer protection from Banks

2009-10-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

From the Huffington Post:
And Article by Marilyn Barrett

"Early Sunday morning a man who lives two blocks from me died after he called the police, threatened to kill his girlfriend and himself, and the police shot him after he brandished a gun toward them. His girlfriend, fortunately not harmed, told the police that her boyfriend was distraught because he was unemployed. Just a few days ago, a friend recounted meeting a father who was full of shame, despair and feelings of inadequacy because he was losing his family's home in foreclosure and his ability to provide adequate shelter for his children was now uncertain.

While these stories of tragedy and hardship on Main Street continue to multiply, Wall Street is once again persuading Congress to dilute financial regulations proposed by the Obama administration to protect Main Street Americans against future financial meltdowns and to protect US taxpayers from having to again bail out banks who are reckless and "too big to fail."

The Obama administration introduced two primary pieces of legislation to protect us against another financial debacle -- regulation of derivatives and creation of a consumer financial protection agency to oversee financial products such as credit cards and loans. Even though the unemployment rate rose to 9.8% last month, wages are at a 19-year low, and home foreclosures jumped 29.2% from a year earlier, Wall Street is aggressively lobbying Congress to dilute the these regulations so they will not be impeded in their continuing pursuit of the almighty dollar. The top 5 banks reportedly were on track to earn more than $35 billion trading unregulated derivative contracts during the 2nd quarter of 2009 alone and regulation could cost them real money. So far it appears that Wall Street is succeeding.

On October 15, the House Financial Services Committee, chaired by Barney Frank, approved legislation to regulate derivatives that includes exemptions so big the proverbial truck can drive through it. For example, derivatives purchased for risk management are excluded from regulation. The AIG credit default swaps (which cost the taxpayers billions of dollars) would likely have been covered by this exemption since those were issued insure bond funds holding subprime debt against losses. Financial experts outside of Wall Street are dismayed at what is happening.

As reported by Bloomberg.com, Christopher Whalen, a managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, described the Committee legislation as "clearly the weakest of all the proposals I've seen to date. Frank's committee seems to be intent on gutting any meaningful reform." Or, as reported by www.freerisk.org, Michael Greenberger, a University of Maryland law professor described the legislation as "a Christmas tree of decorative gifts to the banking industry. ...it's a return to the regulatory environment that led us into the meltdown. It would tie the hands of effective regulation by the CFTC to the detriment of economic recovery. The [Obama] administration had it completely right in its proposal."

And the banks are not only focusing on derivatives. They also oppose creation of a consumer financial protection agency to protect consumers from punitive interest rates, penalties and predatory practices on credit cards and loans. They claim that consumer protection would hurt consumers by reducing the amount of available credit. They also want the law to prevent states from regulating their activities (like the 2000 law that prohibited both federal and state regulation of derivatives, including state laws regulating gambling). Unlike NBA basketball games where referees try to make sure that both sides play by the rules, the banks don't want any referees overseeing their activities and don't want any rules.

Influence doesn't come cheap and the financial industry has been generous with its political contributions. According to The Center for Responsive Politics, the TARP recipients spent $77 million on lobbying and $37 million on political contributions. TARP paid them $295.2 billion for a return on investment of 258,449%. The Center for Responsive Politics further reports that, for the short 3-month period from July 1 through September 30, 2009, all members of Congress collected contributions totaling $48.3 million.

Many Americans feel powerless against the wall of money that corporate American and their hired lobbyists throw at Congress. We need to keep in mind, however, that while we may not be able to match money contributions, we have more votes than Wall Street and the lobbyists and we can vote out Congresspersons and Senators who bow to the wishes of the big money guys rather than protect their Main Street constituents. Ultimately, under our Constitution, average Americans hold the most power. We need to use it. "

Follow Marilyn Barrett on Twitter

Here are the memebers that are on the House Banking committee, that are arguing this Bill.

Chairman Barney Frank
Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski, PA
Rep. Maxine Waters, CA
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, NY
Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, IL
Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez, NY
Rep. Melvin L. Watt, NC
Rep. Gary L. Ackerman, NY
Rep. Brad Sherman, CA
Rep. Gregory W. Meeks, NY
Rep. Dennis Moore, KS
Rep. Michael E. Capuano, MA
Rep. Rubén Hinojosa, TX
Rep. William Lacy Clay, MO
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, NY
Rep. Joe Baca, CA
Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, MA
Rep. Brad Miller, NC
Rep. David Scott, GA
Rep. Al Green, TX
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, MO
Rep. Melissa L. Bean, IL
Rep. Gwen Moore, WI
Rep. Paul W. Hodes, NH
Rep. Keith Ellison, MN
Rep. Ron Klein, FL
Rep. Charles Wilson, OH
Rep. Ed Perlmutter, CO
Rep. Joe Donnelly, IN
Rep. Bill Foster, IL
Rep. Andre Carson, IN
Rep. Jackie Speier, CA
Rep. Travis Childers, MS
Rep. Walt Minnick, ID
Rep. John Adler, NJ
Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy, OH
Rep. Steve Driehaus, OH
Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, FL
Rep. Alan Grayson, FL
Rep. Jim Himes, CT
Rep. Gary Peters, MI
Rep. Dan Maffei, NY

Republican Members

Rep. Spencer Bachus, AL
Rep. Michael N. Castle, DE
Rep. Peter King, NY
Rep. Edward R. Royce, CA
Rep. Frank D. Lucas, OK
Rep. Ron Paul, TX
Rep. Donald A. Manzullo, IL
Rep. Walter B. Jones , NC
Rep. Judy Biggert, IL
Rep. Gary G. Miller, CA
Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, WV
Rep. Jeb Hensarling, TX
Rep. Scott Garrett, NJ
Rep. J. Gresham Barrett, SC
Rep. Jim Gerlach, PA
Rep. Randy Neugebauer, TX
Rep. Tom Price, GA
Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, NC
Rep. John Campbell, CA
Rep. Adam Putnam, FL
Rep. Michele Bachmann, MN
Rep. Kenny Marchant, TX
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, MI
Rep. Kevin McCarthy, CA
Rep. Bill Posey, FL
Rep. Lynn Jenkins, KS
Rep. Christopher Lee, NY
Rep. Erik Paulsen, MN
Rep. Leonard Lance, NJ

An Explanation of the Subprime Mortage scandal, for the intellectually impaired.

2009-10-01T11:27:00.000-07:00

By Nomi Prins & Christopher HayesThis article appeared in the October 12, 2009 edition of The Nation.

As we mark the end of the first year of the financial bailout, the public seems to regard the government's actions with a toxic combination of rage and confusion. People are pissed off but too bewildered to know what to do with that anger. The confusion isn't an accident. The government hasn't exactly been forthcoming about how it's made buckets of money available to the banking sector. When it does disclose some information--such as in July's SIGTARP report from the Treasury or the Federal Reserve's weekly balance sheet--it's in the form of intimidating descriptions, accounting mumbo jumbo and technical reports that do little to illuminate just what the hell is going on.

What's worse, banks and the establishment press have portrayed TARP as the sum of the banking industry's federal subsidies. An August 30 New York Times article, "As Banks Repay Bailout Money, U.S. Sees a Profit," gives the impression that taxpayers should be happy to have made $4 billion on the deal, as if our checks were in the mail. But when the government became Wall Street's bank, it wasn't just $700 billion of TARP money that flew north to Wall Street. TARP was but a small fraction (roughly 4 percent) of the full $17.5 trillion bailout and subsidization of the financial sector. [See image.] The details of this total bailout are complicated, but the basic mechanisms aren't beyond the average citizen's grasp. We're going to walk you through it.

Five Easy Pieces: The Tale of Joe and Katie

There are five ways the Treasury, the Fed and other government entities have propped up the banking sector. In order to understand how each of these works, let's consider how this assistance might have looked had it been directed at a household, rather than a bank, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. The analogy isn't exact, but considering the bailout in this manner helps make the whole thing a lot clearer.

Imagine a couple living in a three-bedroom house outside the Twin Cities. Call them Joe and Katie Hazzard. The Hazzards own a small off-track-betting (OTB) business and have some investments and a mortgage on their house. But business is terrible (no one has extra money to make bets); Katie recently lost her job; their investments have hemorrhaged value; and they can't make their mortgage, car or credit card payments. So they ask their local bank for a loan. "No dice," says the bank. "We can't give you money to pay your debts because you're no longer a good credit risk for us." That's more or less what happened to the banks last fall: they couldn't and wouldn't lend to one another.

Capital Injections and Direct Loans

So the Hazzards go to the Federal Bailout Bank, which says, "Here's some money. Do with it what you want, and someday down the road, if and when you're out of the woods, you'll have to pay us back with a little bit of interest." That's roughly what the $700 billion TARP was: a direct injection of capital to purchase preferred shares, which is really more like extending a loan than making the investment the government said it was, with some very light strings attached.

But then Joe says that the handout isn't enough. It turns out that not only does he own a gambling business; he has a bit of a gambling habit. Joe made big money in previous years betting on the New England Patriots to win the Super Bowl and figured he couldn't go wrong placing the same wager again. But then Tom Brady injured his knee last year, and Joe got creamed. Inveterate gambler that he is, he's doubled down on the Patriots this year, but he won't be paid off (if, that is, the Patriots win) until later in the year. But Joe has a boatload of outstanding gambling debts he needs to pay now.

So the Federal Bailout Bank decides it'll help out. To cover the truly pressing debts (the bookie is about to send over some goons with baseball bats), the bank will just write a check. That's what the Fed did to back the losses of AIG's credit default swaps and other businesses, and what the Fed and Treasury did together by providing protection to Citigroup in the event that more of its toxic assets lost value. The money--$1.4 trillion--was structured as a loan, but it's a bit unclear how it will ever be paid back.

In addition to his bets on the Patriots, it turns out, Joe's been making bets on just about anything, the outcomes of which have yet to be determined. The Hazzards are scared that a lot of these bets don't look too promising (e.g., Joe's wager that Kanye West will win this year's Nobel Peace Prize). What they want is to unload their positions in those bets, to have some other gambler pay them the original sum they put down and take on the risk. If the bet makes good, the new gambler would get the rewards. If it doesn't, he would take the loss. But they can't find anyone to do that because so many of Joe's wagers were so reckless.

Once again, the Bailout Bank steps in to sweeten the deal, telling would-be gamblers it will put in $6 for every $1 they put up. That means Joe's Kanye West bet for $100 (at very long odds) can now be purchased by a fellow gambler for just $14.28. If Kanye does, in fact, win the Nobel, then this lucky gambler will get paid as if he had put up the whole $100. If not, he's only out fourteen bucks. That's the crux of Tim Geithner's $1 trillion Public-Private Investment Fund, which would bring the full amount of capital injections and direct loans to $2.4 trillion.

Indirect Loans and Guarantees

The Hazzards come back and claim that wasn't enough; they're still screwed. So the bank says, "We can give you some more short-term, thirty-day loans to get you through (even longer-term ones if that doesn't work), but you have to post collateral. It doesn't have to be very valuable: your old bicycles in the garage, your basement sofa-bed, maybe that baseball card collection you planned to use to pay for your kids' college educations. And if you still need more at the end of the thirty days, you can post some more junk from your attic as collateral."

This more or less corresponds to the newly established Federal Reserve facilities (think: credit unions for banks), which provide money to banks in exchange for various assets as collateral. Both the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York administer these facilities. They run the gamut from the $1.8 trillion Commercial Paper Funding Facility, created to provide more credit for households and businesses (which, to be fair, did help calm the markets; but it didn't get to households or to most small businesses), to the $540 billion Money Market Investor Funding Facility, created to back private funds owned by banks, insurance companies or investment advisory companies.

Joe comes back again to Bailout Bank and says that he's still short, but he has a proposal. "I'm not going to ask you for any more loans. Promise. Instead, I'm going to see if someone else will lend me money. The problem is, I'm such a terrible credit risk I need someone to back me up. Maybe instead of me asking for a loan, I could kind of use your name to ask?" That's the role the FDIC played for Goldman Sachs and other firms, which took advantage of $940 billion in FDIC guarantees to raise cheap money for themselves and another $684 billion of backing for their trading accounts as an additional perk.

All in all, these kinds of guarantees, along with the indirect collateral loans for the banking industry, total $6.7 trillion, and there is precious little transparency coming from the Fed regarding most of it. In fact, Ben Bernanke told Congress in November that too much transparency about which banks got which loans and for what collateral would be "counterproductive."

General Backing and Subsidization

Bailout Bank isn't done helping the Hazzards. It turns out that the couple also has a vacation condo that's lost some value. As part of propping up their balance sheet, the Bailout Bank promises to guarantee the price of the condo. In other words, if Joe and Katie are forced to sell the condo for less than its value before the housing crisis, the Bailout Bank will write them a check for the difference in price.

This is considered "general backing," and in the bailout economy it applies to all kinds of things that weren't supposed to lose value but did and might continue to do so in the future--most important, money market funds. About $4.4 trillion was set aside for general backing of financial firms, including $3.7 trillion to mitigate any future problems with money market funds and an extra $700 billion for the FDIC to continue to back depositor funds. (The banks didn't want to pony up more premiums to do it themselves. Can you imagine just deciding you don't want to pay your insurance premiums, yet receiving insurance anyway? Well, it's like that.)

Government-Sponsored Entities Help

Another part of what's putting the hurt on the Hazzards is the plummeting value of their big investment in what had been the rock-solid, blue-chip ABC Corp. This was supposed to be one of their safest investments, but now they can't sell the stock without taking a massive loss. So the Bailout Bank steps in. It starts buying tons of ABC stock, flooding it with capital and creating an inflated price for the stock in the process. This in turn raises the value of the Hazzards' investment. Bailout Bank even goes so far as to start buying ABC's products, hoping to increase its sales and thus its stock price.

Though a bit imprecise, this is basically how the Fed and Treasury propped up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and in the process helped the banks. The Treasury bought Fannie and Freddie stock and also the mortgages that the two enterprises sell, plus it gave them some extra money to lend. All the government's financial assistance to prop up entities that were considered safe at one point comes to $2.2 trillion.

Global Market and Credit Expansions

Finally, just to make sure the Hazzards can get by, the Bailout Bank decides to help everyone who might use their business with some capital of their own. Since the couple runs an OTB business, when the bank gives a shot of money to everyone in town, a few people start gambling with the Hazzards again. In effect, that's what the Fed did when it dumped $905 billion into international markets to move things along and another $881 billion into domestic ones. Throwing cash here and there into the markets is the Fed's job; throwing the amounts it did was an act of desperation, although almost certainly needed.

It's important to remember that not everything the government did was solely bank-friendly. The Fed and Treasury extended $1.82 trillion in fiscal support, including about $1 trillion in direct consumer assistance (including the Recovery Act, the Cash for Clunkers program and first-time homebuyer tax breaks). It gave another $881 billion to help guarantee various federal home mortgage programs, which really did help homeowners. But this help is dwarfed by the mountains of dollars thrown at Wall Street

Meet the Hazzards

Our Joe and Katie Hazzard parable is inexact. Not every bank took advantage of every kind of assistance (though some, like Citigroup, pretty much did). And households aren't structured like banks; they don't lend money or borrow big to bet big. But that's why cheap credit is a much bigger boon to banks than to households. Borrowing at a lower rate than they lend is how banks make money. Getting to borrow for next to nothing almost guarantees massive profits.

The Hazzards' tale does illuminate a few key aspects of the bailout that tend to be obscured by acronyms and decimal places. It shows the extraordinary measures the government took to prop up the banks and the financial system. It's not just one mechanism, one check or one loan. It's concentric circles of support, from "Here's some money to cover your losses" (AIG) to "We're gonna make sure there's money flowing through all the neighborhoods near you so you keep having customers" (international assistance).

It also shows how hard it is to answer the question, How much did it all cost? The amount of money that's been floated, injected and dispersed in the ways we've listed above is $17.5 trillion. But what the final cost will be is not yet clear. A lot depends on how the Hazzards do. They might pay back a lot of the loans (perhaps even with interest) and not use up the guarantees. Their condo may rise in value, or they might have to sell it at a loss and rely on the Bailout Bank's price guarantee. The baseball card collection taken as collateral may end up in the bank's hands, and then the total loss will depend on what the card collection turns out to be worth. In short, while we can add up the total exposure of the bailouts, we can't yet tally their cost.

Finally, our tale shows how fully the banking industry has relied on the government to keep it afloat. This is a crucial point because many banks want to argue that once they've paid back their TARP money, they have discharged their obligations and are private entities again, unbeholden in any way to taxpayers.

Another question our parable doesn't answer is, Where does all the money come from? Most of it has been "printed" by the Fed, which expanded its balance sheet and, in so doing, created money out of thin air. There's nothing wrong with printing money for the sake of keeping us from another Great Depression. In fact, not taking this step would have been disastrous. But the problem is how the money has been channeled. All that money was funneled through the banks; the real Joe and Katies--the actual households facing foreclosure and declining assets--haven't gotten much help. In fact, foreclosures are at an all-time high (7.5 million US homes are in foreclosure), and there have been 1.25 million personal bankruptcies this year through June (up 34 percent from last year). Unemployment continues to climb. The FDIC continues to take over failing banks. Credit has tightened, not loosened as all the pre-bailout rhetoric promised.

A fraction of the $17.5 trillion bailout could have been used to cut the principal of homeowners' mortgages (using homes, even devalued ones, as collateral) and cover student loans at zero percent interest. Rather than pouring it into the top layers--the banks--a people's bailout would have cost less and been more humane. And it likely would have prevented the ongoing increase in defaults, foreclosures and general economic anxiety.

The banks would have hated that, of course. Even in their degraded state they have a lot of friends in Washington. Imagine if the Hazzards started using some of their easy money to hire lobbyists to make sure the Bailout Bank maintained its pro-Hazzard policies. Because that's what's going on. Banks are lobbying Congress very hard to maintain their setup. Just one year after the crisis, boasting record profits and on track for record bonuses, they are darkly warning that any new regulation could hamper growth.

Given the banks' newfound publicly sponsored financial health, Washington has little incentive to rock the boat by proposing serious reforms. True, some necessary steps are being discussed by Congress: it's important to have a Consumer Financial Protection Agency to counteract the damage caused by lax oversight, and higher capital requirements so that banks can pay for their own risk fallout. But the Fed should not be the premier risk regulator, nor should we believe that it will cap extreme bonuses--President Obama doesn't even support a cap. Parts of the media are already reporting the end of the recession; Obama has moved to reappoint Bernanke, crediting him with keeping the country from a Great Depression, and has given tacit approval to the free flow of bank subsidies. The Treasury, headed by the man who was at the helm of the New York Fed when it nearly went down, is no less culpable for bad decisions.

Such lack of accountability seems to be something of a theme. Despite conducting themselves recklessly, compulsively, almost sociopathically, our fictional Joe and Katie Hazzard got a lot of money to help maintain their lifestyle and assets. But what happens when they take all that money and double down on the wrong bet? Will they be back for another helping? Why wouldn't they be? Given everything our government has said and done so far, and the meager reform ideas on the table, it's very likely there will be another bad bet coming from the entire industry--and with it, the vaporizing of much of the assistance doled out to avoid that very occurrence.

About Nomi Prins
Nomi Prins is a senior fellow at Demos, a nonpartisan public policy think tank. Before becoming a journalist, she served as a managing director for Goldman Sachs in New York. She is the author of Other People's Money: The Corporate Mugging of America, Jacked: How "Conservatives" Are Picking Your Pocket and It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals From Washington to Wall Street. She is a frequent commentator on CNBC and the BBC. more...
About Christopher Hayes
Christopher Hayes is The Nation's Washington, DC Editor. His essays, articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Nation,The American Prospect, The New Republic, The Washington Monthly, The Guardian and The Chicago Reader. From 2005 to 2006, Hayes was a Schumann Center Writing Fellow at In These Times. He is currently a fellow at the New America Foundation. His wife works in the White House Counsel's office.

Project Censored Top 25 censored news stories for 2010!

2009-09-23T09:10:00.000-07:00

Top 25 Censored Stories for 2010

http://www.projectcensored.org/

Project Censored was founded by Carl Jensen in 1976, and is a media research program working in cooperation with numerous independent media groups in the US. Project Censored’s principle objective is training of SSU students in media research and First Amendment issues and the advocacy for, and protection of, free press rights in the United States. Project Censored has trained over 1,500 students in investigative research in the past three decades.

Through a partnership of faculty, students, and the community, Project Censored conducts research on important national news stories that are underreported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored by the US corporate media. Each year, Project Censored publishes a ranking of the top 25 most censored nationally important news stories in the yearbook, Censored: Media Democracy in Action, which is released in September. Recent Censored books have been published in Spanish, Italian and Arabic.

The Project works in cooperation with SSU academic classes Sociology of Media and Sociology of Censorship, where students earn credit for their research and participate in writing the annual yearbook. Additionally, Project Censored sponsors and supervises over 60 student interns a year who do in depth investigative research, sponsor campus events and speakers, and organize a series of Modern Censorship Lectures each fall semester. Students also participate in writing the Project Censored quarterly newsletter (circulation 9,000) and assist with maintaining the Project Censored website www.projectcensored.org, which receives over a million views a month from all over the world.

Between 700 and 1000 stories are submitted to Project Censored each year from journalists, scholars, librarians, and concerned citizens around the world. With the help of more than 200 Sonoma State University faculty, students, and community members, Project Censored reviews the story submissions for coverage, content, reliability of sources and national significance. The university community selects 25 stories to submit to the Project Censored panel of judges who then rank them in order of importance. Current or previous national judges include: Noam Chomsky, Susan Faludi, George Gerbner, Sut Jhally, Frances Moore Lappe, Michael Parenti, Herbert I. Schiller, Barbara Seaman, Erna Smith, Mike Wallace and Howard Zinn. All 25 stories are featured in the yearbook, Censored: The News That Didn’t Make the News.

Project Censored is administered through the SSU Sociology Department with financial support from the SSU Instructionally Related Activity Fund, School of Social Science, Media Freedom Foundation Inc. and donations from thousands of supporters around the country.

1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street
2. US Schools are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s
3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates
4. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina
5. Europe Blocks US Toxic Products
6. Lobbyists Buy Congress
7. Obama’s Military Appointments Have Corrupt Past
8. Bailed out Banks and America’s Wealthiest Cheat IRS Out of Billions
9. US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza
10. Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate
11. Private Corporations Profit from the Occupation of Palestine
12. Mysterious Death of Mike Connell—Karl Rove’s Election Thief
13. Katrina’s Hidden Race War
14. Congress Invested in Defense Contracts
15. World Bank’s Carbon Trade Fiasco
16. US Repression of Haiti Continues
17. The ICC Facilitates US Covert War in Sudan
18. Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature
19. Bank Bailout Recipients Spent to Defeat Labor
20. Secret Control of the Presidential Debates
21. Recession Causes States to Cut Welfare
22. Obama’s Trilateral Commission Team
23. Activists Slam World Water Forum as a Corporate-Driven Fraud
24. Dollar Glut Finances US Military Expansion
25. Fast Track Oil Exploitation in Western Amazon

Obama Banking Too Much on Banks

2009-09-21T10:21:00.000-07:00

From Democracy Now!
Nomi Prins: “Obama Banking Too Much on Banks”

President Obama visited Wall Street Monday to promote a regulatory overhaul of the US financial system. The visit came on the one-year anniversary of the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers. Lehman’s bankruptcy set off a series of events across the financial markets, leading to a full-scale economic meltdown. Speaking at Federal Hall, Obama promoted Democratic proposals for new financial oversight and a consumer protection agency to protect Americans from unfair loans, but Nomi Prins, an investment banker turned journalist, says Obama’s proposed reforms don’t go deep enough

Guest:

Nomi Prins, former investment banker turned journalist. She worked at Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns. She is the author of several books; her latest, just out, is called It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street. Her latest article is titled ‘Obama Banking Too Much on Banks’

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: President Obama visited Wall Street Monday to promote a regulatory overhaul of the US financial system. The visit came on the one-year anniversary of the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers. Lehman’s bankruptcy set off a series of events across the financial markets, leading to a full-scale economic meltdown.

Speaking at Federal Hall, Obama touted the federal government response in the year since, including the massive Wall Street bailout. He also promoted Democratic proposals for new financial oversight and a consumer protection agency to protect Americans from unfair loans. In some of his most pointed criticism of Wall Street to date, Obama said “reckless behavior and unchecked excess” was “at the heart of the crisis.”

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: While full recovery of the financial system will take a great deal more time and work, the growing stability resulting from these interventions means we’re beginning to return to normalcy. But here’s what I want to emphasize today: normalcy cannot lead to complacency.
Unfortunately, there are some in the financial industry who are misreading this moment. Instead of learning the lessons of Lehman and the crisis from which we’re still recovering, they’re choosing to ignore those lessons. I’m convinced they do so not just at their own peril, but at our nation’s. So I want everybody here to hear my words: we will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess that was at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses. Those on Wall Street cannot resume taking risks without regard for consequences and expect that next time American taxpayers will be there to break their fall.
And that’s why we need strong rules of the road to guard against the kind of systemic risks that we’ve seen. And we have a responsibility to write and enforce these rules to protect consumers of financial products, to protect taxpayers, and to protect our economy as a whole. Yes, there must—these rules must be developed in a way that doesn’t stifle innovation and enterprise. And I want to say very clearly here today, we want to work with the financial industry to achieve that end. But the old ways that led to this crisis cannot stand. And to the extent that some have so readily returned to them underscores the need for change and change now. History cannot be allowed to repeat itself.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Although Obama had harsh words for Wall Street, he took a softer line in asking for a series of voluntary changes, including overhauling pay structures and subjecting bonuses to a shareholder vote.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Here on Wall Street, you have a responsibility. The reforms I’ve laid out will pass, and these changes will become law. But one of the most important ways to rebuild the system stronger than it was before is to rebuild trust stronger than before. And you don’t have to wait for a new law to do that. You don’t have to wait to use plain language in your dealings with consumers. You don’t have to wait for legislation to put the 2009 bonuses of your senior executives up for a shareholder vote. You don’t have to wait for a law to overhaul your pay system so that folks are rewarded for long-term performance instead of short-term gains.
The fact is, many of the firms that are now returning to prosperity owe a debt to the American people. They were not the cause of this crisis, and yet American taxpayers, through their government, had to take extraordinary action to stabilize the financial industry. They shouldered the burden of the bailout, and they are still bearing the burden of the fallout—in lost jobs and lost homes and lost opportunities. It is neither right nor responsible, after you’ve recovered with the help of your government, to shirk your obligation to the goal of wider recovery, a more stable system and a more broadly shared prosperity.
So I want to urge you to demonstrate that you take this obligation to heart; to put greater effort into helping families who need their mortgages modified under my administration’s homeownership plan; to help small business owners who desperately need loans and who are bearing the brunt of the decline in available credit; to help communities that would benefit from the financing you could provide or the community development institutions you could support; to come up with creative approaches to improve financial education and to bring banking to those who live and work entirely outside of the banking system; and, of course, to embrace serious financial reform, not resist it.

AMY GOODMAN: For more on Obama’s speech and the one year since the outbreak of the financial collapse, we are joined by Nomi Prins. She is a former investment banker who worked at Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns, now a journalist and author of several books, including her latest, just out, It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street. Her latest article, posted on the Mother Jones website, is called “Obama Banking Too Much on Banks.” She joins us from Los Angeles today.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Nomi. Well, let’s start with that title. Why “Banking Too Much on Banks”?

NOMI PRINS: Well, most of what Obama was saying to the Wall Street leaders who were in that room was kind of help us do what we need to do. You know, you cut down your bonuses, you take care of helping homeowners renegotiate their mortgages. Kind of, we’re not going to make you do it. We will probably pass few reforms that will do something to that effect, but, you know, could you guys help us out restrain you?

And just that very notion and the notion that because Wall Street is healthier than it was last year after receiving something like $17.5 billion worth of guarantees, of cheap loans, of other kinds of subsidies, of backup for in case they lose money again, the fact that they’ve returned to some kind of health and normalcy, as Obama put it, rather than looking at what Main Street is actually going through and how it has declined in terms of its own economic health, really just places the emphasis on the wrong group of people.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And what about the issue of these big banks becoming even bigger? Part of the reason for the bailout was, we were told, they were too big to fail; if they failed, it would cause a systemic collapse of the financial system. Now, a year later after this, many of these big banks are even bigger, and if the risk taking is left unchecked, doesn’t that set us up for a bigger fall?

NOMI PRINS: Absolutely. This time the bigger fall will have been federally funded and federally invoked, because, yes, for one thing, the bigger banks are bigger.

JPMorgan Chase was given Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, with some padding from the US government in terms of guaranteeing additional losses that it might incur from acquiring those companies. It became bigger.

Wells Fargo-Wachovia became bigger. Wachovia was run for a little bit by a former Goldman executive. It became bigger under a Fed and Treasury decision, although it’s ultimately the Fed’s decision to push mergers.

Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, bigger. That is a risky, risky institution. Merrill Lynch was on the brink of failure; it was about to become a Lehman Brothers, and the choice was to give it to Bank of America and make the combined entity bigger.

So now we have three banks that actually push outside of the ten percent limit laws that the FDIC is supposed to enforce and has in place to restrict the amount of deposits, consumer deposits, they can hold. They are all at or above the limits. And they were put there by the federal government.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And what about the issue of Wall Street compensation? We saw earlier this year an uproar over the bonuses at AIG. Goldman Sachs this year is on track, on average, per employee, to earn $700,000, on average. It does not seem that compensation has been curtailed at all.

NOMI PRINS: No. In fact, compensation is actually running ahead of what it was in 2007. So not only has it not been curtailed at a place like Goldman Sachs, it’s actually on track to be more than it was before the crisis. So the idea that there’s going to be any sort of constraint or restraint coming from inside the meeting rooms where bonuses are fought for and discussed really every day of the year after every big trade that happens is just ludicrous.

AMY GOODMAN: Just following up on that point, a headline that we just read about the bank—the court that challenged the bonuses, can you talk about the significance of that?

NOMI PRINS: Well, I’m actually really glad you brought up that point, because I thought it was insane that the SEC agreed to a $33.5 million settlement on a $3.6 billion bonus misrepresentation, when the federal government backed the acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America at the end of last year that took effect on January of this year. The fact that there was even a settlement to begin with, so quick and so cheap, was absolutely insane. So Judge Rakoff absolutely did the right thing to say, wait a minute, this is not moral, this isn’t just, this isn’t right.

We’ve paid money to have that merger happen. And you know what? We are still paying money to float the risk that that merger has incurred. We are still paying money into Bank of America. It still has a lot of taxpayer money, almost $118 billion that is on record, and more in loans from the Fed that the Fed refuses to disclose the exact nature of.

And that fact that the SEC, under President Obama, made the decision to allow a sort of little wrist slap for that behavior was wrong to begin with. So I hope this will be looked into further. I don’t know that it will change the bonus structure on Wall Street in general. Again, that fight for bonuses goes on all the time, and bonuses are collectively more. But it is good that that decision was made.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: The total level of the bailout, in your article, you put that figure at over $19 trillion, over $17 [trillion] of which went to the financial industry. How did you come up with this number? We’ve heard it reported much less.

NOMI PRINS: Well, I actually also reported it as less not too long ago. That number is compiled. And I run the reports on a regular updated basis on my website. It is compiled out of all publicly available information, from releases from the FDIC, from going into their databases, which anyone can do—you just kind of have to tinker to find how banks are doing and what they’ve gotten in terms of FDIC guarantees for their debt—looking at the Fed’s balance sheet, looking at the language—and some of it’s very convoluted—of what comes out of the Treasury when they change programs and enhance programs that have already been given to the banks, that don’t tend to get headline news when they happen. So it’s really kind of digging and scratching into what is publicly available and changes publicly, but not openly, to try and compile a picture of where the ballot has been.

And I do break it down then into what’s come out of the Fed, which is about $8 trillion of that; what’s come out of the Treasury Department, which is around $5.5 trillion; another almost $2 [trillion] from the FDIC; more in terms of joint efforts by all three that are a little harder to figure out who’s getting what risk and who’s paying what to the industry, and compile it that way. And that $17.5 trillion, that also includes a recent addition, which is $3.5 trillion to back money market funds. Recall, those were having deep problems at the end of last year and throughout the fall. They’re not having as many problems now, but there was still a choice made between the Treasury Department and the—excuse me—the FDIC to enhance the guarantees in case those fall apart again.

So, some of the money has been given direct; some of the money is on loan from the Fed, where we don’t have all of the details; and some of it’s kind of there as deep backup in case things go really south again for the banking industry. And then a small portion of that actually has been given to consumers in some way, through the fiscal stimulus package, through the Recovery Act, through some tax incentives to first-time home buyers, and through the cash-for-clunkers program. So there is a small portion, less than nine percent, that’s kind of been given to individuals, but the rest of it, the other 91 percent, has been given to Wall Street or to the markets in general.

AMY GOODMAN: Nomi, what about the proposal for a consumer financial protection agency and the Chamber of Commerce launching a multi-million-dollar campaign to kill it, the agency that would monitor the products that banks and institutions sell to consumers, including subprime loans?

NOMI PRINS: Well, exactly. Obviously, the Wall Street lobbies and the Chamber of Commerce have gotten together, because this is the one thing they fear, that the business that they do is somehow going to be hampered, that the next time they come up with something creative, which tends to mean obtuse, won’t be able to be produced for their customers, they won’t be able to make money off it.

And the reason they’re also so scared goes to why a lot of this crisis happened. It wasn’t necessarily because of the subprime loans and those foreclosures and those defaults. It was because the banking industry packaged and repackaged and borrowed against and created this whole mass pyramid of risk on top of these little layer of loans, and that’s the problem. And they don’t want that layer to go away, because they cannot build up the risk and the debt above what’s not there. And that’s why they are scared.

So we definitely need a strong consumer financial protection agency, not in name, not as another regulatory body going through reports, but legitimately able to restrain the types of risks that are in products so that consumers do not get hurt by using products that ultimately are leveraged to the hilt and cause the risk and chaos to the general financial system that Wall Street created from them. So, to be really effective, I hope that the consumer financial protection agency does get created and does have the power to both help consumers and to get in the way—and that’s the thing that scares Wall Street the most, so you know it’s the right thing to do—to get in the way of packaging things and creating risk on top of consumers, as well, because that decays the entire system, as well as hurts consumers.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And finally, Nomi Prins, your new book, It Takes a Pillage, talk about the premise of what the book is and also this issue of real reform. You call for a return to the Glass-Steagall Act, bringing that back?

NOMI PRINS: Well, exactly. We’re not talking about true reform right now. When I wrote the book, it was just as—after the financial crisis had been developing after the fall. And because I had no idea originally where all the bailout money was coming from, which entities in Washington, where it was going, what conversations were happening in terms of making all of those decisions, and by whom. So the book is really about tracking what truly went on; who said what to whom; how, for example, the meetings between Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who was a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, and the current CEO of Goldman Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, went down; how the meetings between the current CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, and the other powers that be in Washington went down, when his piece of the banking pie was reconstructed, and all of that; how we wound up paying for that, not just in actual direct money, which we did, but also in all the loans and guarantees and debt to the system, that only—only serve to create a status quo situation that will potentially devolve into more risk, but on our money.

It used to be that the banking system floated on its own investments and raising its own capital and using, unfortunately, our loans and our credit products to borrow against and leverage up against and create more risk. Now they’re using the government’s money. So now we’re in a far worse situation. I thought it was really important to explain exactly why that is. And the bailout was never about the little guy and never about the subprime mortgage; it was about so much more.

And in terms of reform, I absolutely think we need to return to Glass-Steagall. That was a time, in 1933, when Wall Street had really wrecked the rest of the economy, where the same types of practices, actually, that we now know today—the risk, the selling securities based on other little loans that don’t have as much value as they say they have, and all of that—that was happening in 1929. It was just with different stuff. It’s the same process. And in 1933, the decision by Congress, by FDR, who was a Democratic president, by a Treasury secretary that was a Republican, was that the banks should be divided into two components: a commercial bank that dealt with deposits and consumers and checking accounts and, you know, regular loans; and the risky investment bank and trading entities that could do whatever they wanted to do, but they didn’t get the government’s backing and the government’s help and the government guarantees to go and do it.

And that distinction, had we had that, would have saved us a lot of money. It also would have made sure that we don’t have banks trading on the back of consumer loans and therefore giving the incentive to screw around with consumer loans and to make them so nontransparent, because that is how they are most profitable when they get packaged up.

And so, dividing the landscape like was done then also allowed the regulatory agency at the time, the FDIC, to do its job better, to back deposits better. Now it keeps running out of money and asking Congress for more, because it’s supposed to back banks that have taken on all these other risks that have nothing to do with consumer deposits. And so, dividing the landscape really is the only way to bring stability, to really rein in Wall Street, not to ask them if it’s OK, but to just go ahead and do it. It will be cheaper for the country. It’ll be more stable for the economy. It will make more sense, actually, for the banking system.

AMY GOODMAN: Nomi Prins, we want to thank you for being with us. Former investment banker turned journalist, she worked at Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns, author of a number of books. Her newest is just out; it’s called It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street.

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"It used to be that the banking system floated on its own investments and raising its own capital and using, unfortunately, our loans and our credit products to borrow against and leverage up against and create more risk. Now they’re using the government’s money. So now we’re in a far worse situation. I thought it was really important to explain exactly why that is. And the bailout was never about the little guy and never about the subprime mortgage; it was about so much more."

One of the little reforms (controversal) reforms Obama made was to sort of re-hire Ben Bernanke as head of the Federal Reserve Bank, supposedly the Federal Reserve Bank has more power to regulate/investigate itself under Obama's new reforms. Sort of like the foxes guarding the Hen-house, as sugested by some economist like Naomi Prins.
The Federal Reserve bank is supposed to be a comglomerate of bankers, investmentment organizations, Wall Street type who control money,but has Mrs.Prins says in the passage , the Banks "used to" make there money,and the federal reserve bank existed to direct how that money is used. If its our money or the governments money that is floating these financial organizations then why should people like Bernanke be chairing the Fed? it should be a public representative chairing that organization if taxpaper money is floating these big banks.

Going, Going...GONE

2009-09-19T17:36:00.000-07:00

The M/B shopping Mall In Oakland Calif, is demolished, part of it still exist ( on the side) Kaiser /Permanante has offices there. Perhaps rebuilding the area something nice will take its place.

( Bail us out Obama!) Harbringer of the future:Devastated Detroit.

2009-08-13T11:41:00.000-07:00

This is an great article I saw in Aug 2009 "Street Spirit",by Robert L.Terrell. It caught my attention because of a person I know who was complaining about trying to sell her home,and move out of Detroit. This article talks about the problems in Detroit. It is a growing tragedy.

Harbinger of the Future: Devastated Detroit

"The full significance of the financial crisis bedeviling the United States, and much of the rest of the developed world, is clearly apparent to those who dare seek to acquire an up close and personal view of the massive, full spectrum collapse underway in Detroit. The once prosperous city used to be one of the nation’s most prestigious industrial centers, providing well-paying jobs, and upward social mobility to residents throughout southeastern Michigan. But this is no longer the case. Detroit is collapsing, and the tragic, seemingly irreversible process, is destroying the dreams and financial viability of an entire region crucial to the nation’s overall economic health and well-being.

Taken as a whole, the scale of destruction and decline is unprecedented in U. S. history, excepting times of vicious, prolonged warfare. For this reason, and many others, more critical attention should be devoted to the manner in which forces such and de-industrialization and globalization are spreading hardship and chaos that may well eventually engender catastrophic collapse across the length and breadth of this still wealthy nation.

The scene shifts from troubled to disastrous as one rides into town along any of the major corridors leading into the downtown area where the big, gleaming gambling casinos sit in isolated splendor hard on the shores of the muscular Detroit River. The first signs of the massive decay underway in the heart of the city are the abandoned, boarded up businesses. Soon after one crosses the city’s perimeter, they appear on both sides of the street in growing numbers. For block after block, they are interspersed with greasy spoon restaurants, junk dealers, second hand stores and down market pawnshops. Garbage and trash line the streets in heaps that are frequently shoulder high. Weed-filled lots are so common, and so grossly overgrown, that it is difficult to reject the notion that much of the city is returning to bush of the sort associated with the African outback. Excepting stores whose primary product is “beer and wine,” there is no commercial presence in many neighborhoods.

Moreover, the distressing truth is that in virtually every section of town, burned out hulks of abandoned buildings dominates the setting. They come in all shapes and sizes, many of them old, and once distinguished. In a way, the burned out hulks that tens of thousands of people used to call home, have come to symbolize contemporary Detroit. Their smell of old, rotting, wood permeates the air in many neighborhoods. But it is not the most pervasive odor in Detroit’s neighborhoods. That dubious honor belongs to the sagging hulks of the abandoned, burned out homes that litter the city’s neighborhoods. The hulks of the abandoned homes have their own distinctive smell. It is a cloying, acrid, oily odor that clings to the insides of one’s nostrils in a nauseating manner, reminding one with every breadth of the terrible tragedy unfolding across the length and breadth of the once proud, confident city.

Detroit still contains streets that would be considered attractive in most major U.S. cities. But virtually all of them are located within two or three blocks from rat-infested neighborhoods that reek of human misery of the sort historically synonymous with abject Third World poverty. The two words most useful in describing the scene are abandonment and decay. Moreover, every indication is that the neighborhoods where most Detroiters subsist are experiencing an escalating rate of decline and deterioration, represented most dramatically in the form of collapsing homes, institutions and infrastructure. This thoroughly demoralizing process includes all of the social pillars that typically anchor communities, and channel their aspirations for personal and communal achievement.

For Sale for $1250

People speak in slow, measured voices when they discuss the devastating forces of destruction that dominate their lives. This is particularly the case when they are reminded of the large number of schools, churches, businesses, and social service agencies that have been boarded up and abandoned during recent years. Their sense of abandonment is palpable, and it has come to dominate their troubled perspectives of the future. It is difficult to reject the strong impression that many Detroiters are victims of a municipal version of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder of the sort associated with warfare. Given the plethora of financial, social and political crises they are enduring with no hope of substantive relief any time in the immediate future, it is relatively easy to understand why this might be the case.

In addition, Detroiters are experiencing substantial stress due to the large, and growing number of alcoholics and drug addicts moving into the tens of thousands of abandoned buildings located throughout the city. Down and out, with little or nothing to lose, members of these particularly desperate cohorts are frequent sources of deadly violence. As a result, many of the city’s beleaguered residents have become wary and withdrawn.
They have good reasons to be wary. Detroit consistently ranks as one of the highest crime rate cities in the U.S. For example, in 2007 Detroit was ranked sixth in the nation for violent crime in cities with populations exceeding 500,000 residents. There were 368 homicides in Detroit in 2008, making it the nation’s murder capital for cities with more than 500,000 residents.

Over the past quarter a century, the city has averaged approximately one murder per day. The fact that 65-70 percent of the city’s murders are associated with illegal drugs provides a rough sense of the death grip that narcotics have on residents. When two teenagers recently shot and wounded seven junior high school students waiting for a bus to take them home from summer school, none of the scores of people who witnessed the violent assault dared to publicly identify the perpetrators. Talking to the police about such matters can easily produce a street-level death sentence.

Much time, attention and fiscal resources have been devoted to upgrading the Detroit Police Department during the past two years, but to little avail. Detroit is still one of the most dangerous cities in the nation. Moreover, there is little indication that the situation will improve any time soon. Rape, robbery and burglary continue to be major problems in most sections of the city. Extremely violent drug syndicates dominate the streets and commons areas in many neighborhoods. And given the police department’s inadequate efforts to cope with the situation, citizens protect themselves, as best they can, in their homes behind bolted doors and barred windows.

Crime is, of course, only one of the myriad reasons why Detroit’s population is collapsing. Fed up with the danger and uncertainty engendered by the omnipresent threat of crime, hundreds of thousands of Detroiters have packed their belongings and decamped. This is particularly true of the city’s white residents, who have left in such large numbers that few of them are left. Nonetheless, it should be noted that whites are not alone in the abandonment of the city. Middle-class people from every racial group are participating in an escalating wave of out migration. Few subjects upset Detroiters more than the rate in which the city is hemorrhaging residents. In 1950, Detroit was booming and the future looked as if it would be endlessly bright.

At the time, Detroit had 1.9 million residents, making it the fourth largest city in the United States. But the postwar optimism, and booming economic progress engendered by the expanding automobile industry, began heading south by the onset of the 1960s. With the passage of each succeeding decade, conditions in the city worsened. The net result is that Detroit has lost more than half of its population. Current estimates indicate that the population is approximately 920,000. Approximately 1,200 residents per month are leaving, and Detroit is now the eleventh most populous city in the United States. Moreover, experts are predicting that the city will eventually lose at least 400,000 additional residents.

Given this, city and state official are preparing for the time in the not too distant future when Detroit is expected to collapse as a consolidated municipality. Some suggest that the city will shrink into a relatively small enclave centered on the downtown area. Others suggest that major portions of the city’s land will be returned to agriculture. As might be imagined, desperate future prospects of this sort are having a devastatingly depressive impact on property values. This past April, there were 6,259 foreclosures in the Detroit metropolitan area, one for every 303 housing units. Bank repossessed properties are being sold in bundles of 100 or more, with each house selling for less than $10,000. Seeking to profit from the city’s misery, buyers are flying in from afar to take advantage of perceived opportunities. They include newly wealthy entrepreneurs from and flush groups of buyers from locations as distant as California, Australia and China.

The city’s remaining residents know that they are enmeshed in the vortex of a collapsing financial system. More than one of every five municipal residents is unemployed. And tens of thousands more will lose their jobs in the immediate future due to the imploding automobile industry. Constrained by a precipitous downward trend in municipal revenues, largely due to the catastrophic exodus of tax paying residents, the municipal government is incapable of reversing the rate and scale of economic collapse. Although their finances are in somewhat better shape than Detroit’s, nearby county governments are incapable of providing appreciable financial assistance. And the state government is nearly bankrupt.

Although the Obama administration is providing financial assistance to the automobile industry, it has no plans to address the broad array of problems currently sucking life and vitality from Detroit, and the scores of nearby communities that depend on it for their own financial viability.
Most important, there are many good reasons to believe that Detroit’s decline will not prove to be unique. For example, two decades ago Michael Moore’s film “Roger and Me” focused attention on the desperate plight of residents in Flint, Michigan in the wake of the closure of local General Motor’s production plants. Flint has not recovered, and in the interim several other major Michigan cities have declined so precipitously that they are in danger of replicating Detroit’s tragic collapse.

Finally, there are many good reasons to believe that Detroit’s desperate plight will be replicated in other major industrial cities across the nation. While there is time to prepare, the nation’s leaders need to turn their attention to the endangered fate of urban, industrialized America. If nothing else, they need to understand that if they can’t save Detroit, and similarly situated American cities; there is little or no possibility that they will prove capable of saving far off targets of imperial hubris such as Baghdad and Kabul."

Face the Nation...

2009-08-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

I just watched Larry Summers a member in the Obama administration, former Clinton advisor on "Face The Nation" ( an American political journalism program on popular media), although I think he was honest in his assessment in the direction this nation is heading, He's one of the People who helped create this financial mess the country is in. . Boy, have they really wrecked this Country. I try not to be prejudge or anti-Semitic, but its just been my observation over the years.

I don't see how Larry Summers should be giving advice to the Country about anything...all their ( Fiscal liberals) policies have done is created a huge deficits, with possibly no way out. Now they got to make galling cutbacks and tax the hell out of people, and that's definitely going to hurt any recovery this Nation is going to make and that's if they can get the jobs back.

This affects me cause I was over Moms house. I'm 47, but I'm worried about my mom, she's 60+ years old, she really been the only woman in my life, but If I value my life, sanity and possibly the lives of others maybe I may have to abandon her there. Its like I have to live in two places at one time ( I'M a Gemini rising). My Mom takes care of her mother,and my niece who is 19 year old a a sort of socially depressed urban setting. Plus I don't have much of a social life.

Recently I 've been having disturbing ideas, I'm trying to get help but, just running into slight delays now, seems my normal counselor , wants to plays emotional games or whatever... he's not available.

So I think about getting the hell out. I afraid if I stay here , I'm going to end up in Prison, Dead soon, or possibly harming others.. and this is over some bullshit. This little community has problems that THEY can't deal with so they try to blame or coerce others in taking action, when they themselves maybe be the blame, and this is like an epidemic in this community ..part of the reason this country is in soo much trouble now, because people are willing to look away, and not do anything. If someone is being raped right in front of you, should you not provide assistance, instead of deriding the victim as "Being too cold"?

Its mostly cause I kinda want out...of wherever, just somewhere a country that more together than the U.S, I mean am I just putting myself in jeopardy staying here. maybe its just better to leave.

Why Can't we be friends...Class Warfare?

2009-08-01T09:26:00.000-07:00

Oddly enough "Class Warfare", was one of the predicted results of that Economic "Sub-prime" mortgage fiasco that occurred later last year.It was predicted by one of the economists analysing the situation. You can see it now in the resulting debate about Health care in the U.S. Obama proposes some plan to adjust health care in the U.S. Alot of people are balking about the idea because there hip on the idea that the U.S might not be able to afford "free Health Care."

They downplay in the News Media Places like Canada, and England that have Universal Health Care systems ....they want to downplay their system in favor for an American system of health care that is practically non-existent. I'm listening now to a radio talk show. The host really downplayed the idea of a the health care solutions being presented", but didn't seem to offer one herself. Now she's talking about Botox treatments.

So is it the case of the "Haves" not really wanting to give anything to the "Have-Nots".. Not that they don't want to , but just that we are all really strapped for money... after all we give the money to Bankers and Bad Investment Organizations that lost all our money on a bad bet.

So President Barack Obama asks the existential question, "Can't we just all get along?" "Why can't we be friends?" Basically a good question to ask. Maybe if American people, and policy makers could just sit down and have a beer with someone they have a difference with, maybe we'd all come away with a better understanding... I guess its a good example the President wants to set. Its certainly something I'll think about more...if Obama can do it, maybe I should give it a try right?

But I'm sure Obama realizes that there are alot of people, that have disagreements with American Foreign policy, American government, the whole bit. If your an Iraqi civilian how do you forgive America for bring troops into their homes, killing and terrorizing them? If your American, how do you forgive the Bad guys who rammed airplanes into the World Trade Center? The point is though that we don't really know who rammed those buildings. Some people speculate ,that our own government might have done that. For what purpose? To liberate you from your money..to the tune of trillions of dollars. We in America have fucked so many people over, I guess they ran out of people to fuck over. So we do what we do best , fuck over each other. Why not, its what we do best.

What the point of this article? Its just to say, that while maybe some of us could benefit by asking " Why can't we be friends?", Some of us far too often end up saying .."No, I can't go for that...Oh no, no, no can do". It started in the George W. Bush administration. Maybe Obama's got a better solution. Maybe I should, and many other could reconsider, maybe people like Obama should consider the "Hall and Oates" tune "I can't go for that."

The Real Deal about the state of this American economy..

2009-08-01T09:10:00.000-07:00

Excerpt from "Democracy Now" a show aired June 22, 2009. Concerning Investment banks like Goldman/Sachs paying out a record amount of bonuses to its employees. Guess what folks its mostly your money that paying them. Something to think about if you know a friend or friend that has been affected indirectly because of the Country economic foes. Something to think about if your getting cuts in pay, or no check at all.

AMY GOODMAN: Economist, journalist, Demos senior fellow and former investment banker Nomi Prins thinks that Obama’s new plan is not such a sweeping overhaul of the financial system, after all. She is the author of the forthcoming book It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street. Her latest article is an assessment of Obama’s reform proposals. It’s called “Obama’s New Economic Plan: The Good, the Bad and the Weak.” It was just published in Mother Jones. She joins us here in our firehouse studio.

Before you comment on the whole plan that was laid out, this latest news. You used to work at Bear Stearns, and you worked at Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs has just said that their staff can look forward to the biggest bonus bailouts in the firm’s 140-year history. How is this possible?

NOMI PRINS: It is possible because our government has chosen to effectively give Goldman the money to do that, in a number of different ways. One is the $10 billion that it got through the TARP program, which both Goldman and the government want us to believe is the only bit of federal subsidy it has gotten, which is why, when it said it would pay back the TARP program, it was all this gesture of “we’re healthy, we’re good, we’re paying it back, we didn’t really need it,” but really they didn’t want government oversight attached to it, not that there was a lot.

The bigger amount of money that has gone to Goldman has come through $12.9 billion from the AIG bailout that went straight to Goldman, its biggest counterparty; $28 billion worth of FDIC-backed guaranteed debt, meaning the FDIC put up a program last fall, and it said, “For banks that deal with consumers”—not banks that deal with multibillion-dollar companies or investors, but people—“we will provide guarantees for debt,” which means that those companies can raise debt to help consumers cheaply. Goldman said, “Alright, fine, we’ll take some of that.” And they took $28 billion worth of that, and they have up to $35 billion that they can take under the FDIC program that was never meant for a company like Goldman Sachs.

In addition, there is a ton of money, there are trillions of dollars at the Fed, not all of that went to Goldman, but that has secretly gone to a number of banks in the system, of which Goldman is one, for which the Fed refuses to disclose any information or any detail, which also goes into this. So when Goldman says—has the nerve to say, feels entitled to say—that it’s going to pay its bankers record bonuses after the travesty that it and other banks have created in the markets, it is on the back of federal subsidies that effectively come from our pockets.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I think you’ve made the point that the $780 billion-odd TARP money is only a small portion, that the actual federal support for the banking industry is about $13 trillion?

NOMI PRINS: That’s exactly right. The media has constantly focused, and Wall Street has been very happy about this focus, on this measly—and I say “measly”—$700 billion worth of TARP money that Congress allowed to be allocated last October. And that money has gone out to a number of banks, including Goldman and JPMorgan and Bank of America, Citigroup and other banks.

But in addition to that, there have been over two-and-a-half trillion dollars’ worth of guarantees and other types of subsidies from the Treasury Department; over seven-and-a-half trillion from the Federal Reserve, which a lot has gone through the bank at—the New York Federal Reserve during the Tim Geithner period, when he was running it, as well as the Federal Reserve component in Washington; and then all these extra FDIC guarantees, which have the backing of the Fed and the Treasury Department.

So we’re talking about almost 13.6, actually, now—the count keeps going up every time I look at it—trillion dollars’ worth of subsidization of the banking industry. $700 billion is a part—it’s a big part, but there are so many more trillions, that just do not get the right coverage and the right perspective from the media, that exists, that are secret. Some are not. But it’s a lot, a lot of money. It could basically pay for every single mortgage in this country and healthcare and subsidizing student loans. So when it wants to, the government can come up with a way to subsidize what it wants to subsidize. It chose to subsidize the banking industry.

AMY GOODMAN: Nomi Prins, let’s talk about how this fits into what President Obama just laid out this past week.

NOMI PRINS: Well, so, Obama said a couple of things in his proposal, his eighty-eight-page white paper that will be created into a big congressional 400- or 500- or 600-page paper for debate probably later in some sort of an act. There were three things that he basically proposed.

When we talked—you had a clip just now on the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. That is a good idea. It is high time there is some agency in Washington that is on par with the SEC or the Fed or other regulatory bodies, if this agency can be given that kind of enforcement and power. The agency that would look at mortgage loans being more transparent and safer for individuals, potentially capping credit cards, and most importantly, making sure that the banks who issue the loans and who also package them up and sell them globally and make tons of money on it actually have to keep some of those loans and some of those packages on their own books, so if there are losses, they get hit with the losses—that’s the part that the banking industry has gone up in arms about. This one agency is the part that the Wall Street banks have been most upset about, which is why we know that it could be the best part of his proposal, if it gets the play and the enforcement capabilities it deserves. But it’s going to be a knock-down, drag-out fight.

The other things that this proposal did was a little bit of a shuffling of deck chairs, unfortunately, in the regulatory system. We had something called an Office of Thrift Supervision, which was effectively responsible for monitoring S&Ls. And the most problematic S&L, which was AIG—now, we think of AIG as an insurance company slash hedge fund slash a thing that took $220 billion worth of federal subsidies because its systemic failure would ruin the world. However, AIG is actually classified as an S&L. The Office of Thrift Supervision, which is not equipped to deal with an S&L of the complexity of an AIG, which isn’t really one, failed in that responsibility. They’re being deleted, and they and another regulatory body in Washington, the Office of Comptroller of the Treasury, will be consolidated into a new regulatory agency called the National Banking Supervisor. Those are two things.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I’d like to ask you about the—I guess the nuclear bomb of all this financial crisis, which was the question of all of these unregulated derivatives and credit default swaps that were occurring basically outside the banking system and that the Obama administration is now claiming that it will attempt to regulate. But you’re a little skeptical about what you’ve seen so far of the proposal, right?

NOMI PRINS: The proposal has said, quote, “it will regulate standardized OTC,” which are over-the-counter, these types of derivatives—“standardized” meaning the ones that basically are so generic they’re not actually that harmful.

What was harmful in this particular saga were things called CDOs, which were collateralized debt obligations, which were packages of derivatives and all sorts of other things combined with loans and other types of securities. And two trillion of those were issued. But the leverage, or the amount that banks could borrow on the back of that, ranged from ten to thirty times. So a $2 trillion set of stuff became something like a $20 trillion to $60 trillion set of risk. Those are things that will not be under the Obama plan for regulation.

And again, these are things that have been lobbied substantially by the banking industry. “Do not take the least generic things, the most complex things, that we can make the most amount of money out of, because neither the regulators nor our investors, frankly, really understand what we’re doing in them. Do not take those away from us.” And the administration was like, “OK, but we’re going to create this sort of sweeping standardized regulatory system for some of the derivatives.” Will it help a little bit? Yes. Will it help the real problem? No, it will not.

AMY GOODMAN: You referred to this, Nomi, in discussing Goldman Sachs, but the bigger picture of what you call the “big bank bailout payback bamboozle”?

NOMI PRINS: Well, this is part of the $13.6 trillion versus the $700 billion. A couple weeks ago, ten banks said—or were allowed by the Treasury Department to pay back all or a portion of the TARP money they had received. One was Goldman, that had $10 billion; one was JPMorgan Chase, that had $25 billion; and so forth. The collective money of those ten banks was $68 billion they would be paying back. They happen to owe $229 billion.

The media didn’t really mention that part. They only mentioned, “Oh, the banks are paying back this money. Things must be healthy. The financial system must be stabilizing. And all is sort of good.”

The reality is, they owe $229 billion just from the FDIC guarantees they were able to use and from the AIG money. That does not include the trillions of dollars—and this is the biggest problem in all of this—that are on the Fed’s books that we do not know how it was divided out among these banks. So we know of $229 billion. We also know there are multiple trillions of dollars on the Fed’s books that went out to these and other banks. We don’t know how much, because they will not disclose that information.

AMY GOODMAN: Why aren’t they forced to?

NOMI PRINS: Well, this is the biggest part of both the overhaul that Obama has mentioned and also the fact that the Fed is the most powerful regulator already. They’re responsible for the banking system. They’re responsible for subsidizing it.

There have been multiple FOIA requests, Freedom of Information Act requests, to the Fed from bodies between—I worked with The Nation to try to get information, through to Bloomberg to Fox. The entire spectrum of media has tried to get information from the Fed on these loans, and the Fed has basically said—and Bernanke has said this to the Senate and to the House—that this would actually be dangerous. It would be dangerous to give this information out, because somehow if people knew, it would create some larger catastrophic situation.

The reality is, we kind of know who these banks are. The bigger banks have the tightest relationship with the Fed. They actually own portions of the Fed, because they actually own shares in the Fed. They have an incredibly symbiotic relationship. And they’ve gotten trillions of dollars of subsidies. We don’t know what the Fed won’t say. The Fed hasn’t been made to say.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you one last question. Both Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were allowed in September, right in the midst of the crisis, to turn themselves into bank holding companies overnight. Could you explain the significance of that?

NOMI PRINS: Yeah. There was a chaotic Sunday evening, September 21st, where Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley noted that Lehman Brothers had just fallen apart, that they actually did not have enough money to pay their ongoing day-to-day debts. They were literally about to become insolvent, one or both of these institutions.

The only thing that they could do is push the Fed to allow them to become bank holding companies, which would give them access to federal subsidies. Just legally, in terms of the legislative construct, if they get to be a bank holding company, they get more access to our money. So they said, “OK.” The Fed, at night, on a Sunday, without even waiting for the five-day mandatory antitrust period, decided “OK, fine.” That enabled Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to become bank holding companies, to get under the public subsidy tent, and to get a lot of this money, the FDIC guarantees, the Fed backing and everything else. And that was the Fed’s decision. They could have said no. They said, “Come on, and we’ll do it really quick. Just tell us where to sign.”

AMY GOODMAN: Nomi Prins, we want to thank you for being with us. Nomi Prins is an economist. She used to work with Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns; now she is exposing them. Her article, “The Big Bank Bailout Payback Bamboozle,” appears in Mother Jones, and her article “Obama’s New Economic Plan: The Good, the Bad and the Weak” is at Alternet.org.

Kaiser Permanente...."Thrive"

2009-07-20T12:41:00.002-07:00

Kaiser Permanante is an HMO (A Heath care provider in the United States}. In my opinion they are one of the better Health care providers in the U.S , if you are fortunate enough to have an account with Kaiser. I hear they are very expensive these days. I was fortunate enough to be covered by Kaiser growing-up. When I reached late adolescence I lost my Kaiser Coverage.

In Spite of that, back in 2000 I was looking into coverage with Kaiser, looking at 150.00 or more a month for just myself. In Spite Kaiser being a great HMO, I bet there are plenty of complaints by members of that HMO about the quality of service Members get. The Statistics are like half the Homeless in America are that way because of health problems and medical bills and a good majority of those had health insurance.

I think The Presidents plan has some grave problems with it, like how are we going to pay for this! But Tax-payers and leadership in this Country has been so irresponsible in regards to money, decades of Spend, spend, spend, and Tax cuts! No one wanted to spend money on a Health care systems or make needed reforms, when they could. They were too busy "on the take " by Health insurance companies. Then because or the further irresponsibility of our American legislative branch..Tax money that could have went into Health Care, is partly going into the pockets of Wall Street CEO's, employees, and Investment Bankers.

Maybe the way to begin working on Health Care in America, is by reforming the way Health insurance companies do business in America, taking some of their profits , to create some sort of health care for people who normally can't afford it, or enhance the system they already have. I wonder if the President is going to have much luck squeezing that money from taxpayers.

Meanwhile...Kaiser in Oakland, is thriving, but small business is failing, as the shopping mall across the street from Kaiser-Oakland is going down.

Had some nice memories at that Mall, and the thriving business that were once there some 20 years ago. Somehow that doesn't seem like a long bit of time, but Kaiser was there at that time also. What does it say about our society, when health care providers like Kaiser-permanente..are thriving..but few people have adequate Health care,or can afford it and small businesses are failing, to such a degree?

The MacArthur/Broadway mall is going down. The Multi-story building is part of it.

More of Kaiser's Property nearby.

Kaiser's Main Building in the background, you can see some of the Mall is intact.

Some remaining advertisement for the Mall

IS there still time ,Brother?

Commodity Futures Modernization Act (The Vote)

2009-07-16T23:35:00.000-07:00

"From the Wall Street Watch website.

Financial deregulation led directly to the current economic meltdown. For the last three decades, government regulators, Congress and the executive branch, on a bipartisan basis, steadily eroded the regulatory system that restrained the financial sector from acting on its own worst tendencies. "Sold Out" details a dozen key steps to financial meltdown, revealing how industry pressure led to these deregulatory moves and their consequences:

1. In 1999, Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which had prohibited the merger of commercial banking and investment banking.

2.Regulatory rules permitted off-balance sheet accounting -- tricks that enabled banks to hide their liabilities.

3.The Clinton administration blocked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating financial derivatives -- which became the basis for massive speculation.

4.Congress in 2000 prohibited regulation of financial derivatives when it passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.

A short history of the Commodity futures Modernization Act by the "Sunlight foundation"...

"The saga of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act begins in 1998. At the time, the economy was booming, stocks soared, and new instruments of trading were found to make more money while evading the oversight of regulatory bodies. Two of those growing instruments were financial derivatives and credit-default swaps. As these new financial instruments emerged a debate began over whether or not to regulate them.

The chairman of the Commodity Futures Trade Commission (CFTC) Brooksley Born issued a first call for her regulatory commission to have power to oversee financial derivatives. While previous legislative attempts had been made earlier, Born’s efforts were the most direct and threatening to the financial industry. During an April 1998 meeting of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (and later Secretary Larry Summers), and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Arthur Levitt opposed Born’s efforts and attempted to derail her.

Soon afterwards, Born released a “concept” paper with ideas of what regulation of derivatives and swaps could look like under the CFTC’s oversight authority. The response to Born’s paper was swift. The financial industry and government officials responded fiercely in opposition to Born’s ideas. Greenspan, Summers, and Senate committee chairmen all criticized her and her proposals.

In the midst of this debate Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), a major hedge fund employing some of the top economists, collapsed. LTCM was highly over-leveraged and held a big portfolio of swaps. In the end, during the government organized bailout of the company, LTCM recorded a loss of $1.6 billion on swaps alone.

Born felt that an unregulated derivatives market that spawned the LTCM bailout could “pose grave dangers to our economy.” In the end, Born lost her battle and, in May 1999, asked to be replaced as CFTC chairman. The new chairman, William Rainer, was more amenable to the positions of industry leaders and the major government officials Summers, Greenspan, and Levitt. Later that year, the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets released a report calling for “no regulations” of derivatives and swaps and began crafting a program to make that possible. Meanwhile in Congress, lawmakers were still up-in-arms over Born’s attempts to regulate the financial derivatives market and began working to pass their own set of deregulatory language.

Leading the charge in Congress were Sens. Phil Gramm (R-TX) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Rep. Thomas Ewing (R-IL). In May of 2000, Rep. Ewing introduced his Commodity Futures Modernization Act. While Ewing’s bill sailed quickly through the House, it stalled in the Senate, as Sen. Gramm desired stricter deregulatory language be inserted into the bill. Gramm opposed any language that could provide the SEC or the CFTC with any hope of authority in regulating or oversight of financial derivatives and swaps. Gramm’s opposition held the bill in limbo until Congress went into recess for the 2000 election.

Throughout the better part of the year Gramm, Lugar and Ewing worked with the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets—most specifically, Treasury Secretary Summers, CFTC Chairman Rainer and SEC Chairman Levitt—to strike a deal on the bill.

Little attention followed Congress as the contentious 2000 presidential election was stuck in a stalemate as lawyers and khaki-clad protesters fought over the Florida recount to decide whether Gov. George W. Bush or Vice President Al Gore would be the next president.

During a lame-duck December session, while the media was focused on the recounts and court cases, Gramm and Ewing sought to strike a compromise on the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. The day after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gov. Bush, December 14, Ewing introduced a new version of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. On December 15, with little warning or fanfare—aside from the overshadowed discussions on the floors of Congress—the new, compromise version was included as a rider to the Consolidated Appropriations Act for FY 2001, an 11,000 page omnibus appropriations conference report.

HedgeWorld Daily News, a trade publication for hedge funds and one of the few news outlets following the bill, stated, “Details of the final language are not immediately available. Congressional aides said Sen. Gramm did succeed in getting additional language protecting the legal certainty of swap, especially those traded by banks, which are the main users of the products.”

The final language, which the public was hardly aware of, contained some new sections not in the original Ewing bill that, for all intents and purposes, exempted swaps and derivatives from regulation by both the CFTC, which had already implemented rules that it would not regulate swaps and derivatives, and the SEC. Also, hidden within the bill was an exemption for energy derivative trading, which would later become known as the “Enron loophole” – this loophole would provide the impetus for Enron’s nose dive into full blown corporate corruption.

On December 15, at 4:48 pm, the conference report containing the Commodity Futures Modernization Act was introduced. At 4:52 pm, the House began consideration of the report. The House approved the legislation 292-60 and the Senate cast a voice vote in favor. The bill was signed by President Clinton on December 21."

The bill that contained this Commodity Futures Moderazation act, was finaly approved in a package of other appropiations, in the House Bill 4577 so by approving this appropiation..they passed this Commodity Futures ACT. The Appropiaption bill looked so wholesome who wouldn't not have voted for it?

H.R. 4577 was an appropriations/budget bill encompassing the funding for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education for fiscal year 2001 which had already begun in September 2000.[17] This budget bill included:

H.R. 5656 - Labor HHS Education Appropriations;
H.R. 5657 - Legislative Branch Appropriations;
H.R. 5658 - Treasury Appropriations;
H.R. 5666 - Miscellaneous Appropriations - except section 123 relating to the enactment of H.R. 4904;
H.R. 5660 - Commodity Futures Modernization;
H.R. 5661 - Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP Benefits Improvement and Protection;
H.R. 5662 - Community Renewal Tax Relief and Medical Savings Accounts;
H.R. 5663 - New Markets Venture Capital Program; and
H.R. 5667 - Small Business Reauthorization.
Wikipedia

This bill was passed uninamously in the Senate.

H R 4577 YEA-AND-NAY 15-Dec-2000 6:39 PM
QUESTION: On Agreeing to the Conference Report
BILL TITLE: Making Appropriations for Labor, Health and Human Services for Fiscal Year 2001

---- YEAS 292 ---

Abercrombie
Allen
Andrews
Archer
Armey
Baca
Bachus
Baird
Baldacci
Baldwin
Barcia
Barrett (NE)
Barrett (WI)
Bass
Becerra
Bentsen
Bereuter
Berkley
Berry
Biggert
Bilirakis
Bishop
Blagojevich
Bliley
Boehner
Borski
Boucher
Boyd
Brady (PA)
Brady (TX)
Brown (OH)
Bryant
Burr
Buyer
Camp
Canady
Capps
Capuano
Cardin
Carson
Castle
Chambliss
Clayton
Clement
Clyburn
Coble
Collins
Combest
Condit
Cooksey
Costello
Coyne
Cramer
Crowley
Cubin
Cummings
Cunningham
Davis (FL)
Davis (IL)
Davis (VA)
DeGette
DeLauro
Deutsch
Diaz-Balart
Dickey
Dicks
Dingell
Doggett
Doolittle
Doyle
Dreier
Dunn
Edwards
Ehlers
Ehrlich
Emerson
Engel
English
Etheridge
Evans
Ewing
Fletcher
Foley
Ford
Fossella
Fowler
Franks (NJ)
Frelinghuysen
Frost
Gallegly
Ganske
Gekas
Gephardt
Gibbons
Gilchrest
Gilman
Gonzalez
Goode
Goodling
Gordon
Goss
Green (TX)
Greenwood
Gutknecht
Hall (OH)
Hall (TX)
Hastert
Hastings (WA)
Hayes
Hill (IN)
Hilleary
Hilliard
Hinchey
Hinojosa
Hoeffel
Holden
Hooley
Horn
Hoyer
Hulshof
Hunter
Hutchinson
Hyde
Isakson
Istook
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Jefferson
Jenkins
John
Johnson (CT)
Johnson, E. B.
Jones (OH)
Kanjorski
Kaptur
Kasich
Kelly
Kennedy
Kildee
Kilpatrick
King (NY)
Kleczka
Knollenberg
Kuykendall
LaHood
Lampson
Larson
LaTourette
Lazio
Leach
Lee
Levin
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (GA)
Lewis (KY)
Linder
Lipinski
LoBiondo
Lowey
Lucas (KY)
Lucas (OK)
Luther
Maloney (CT)
Maloney (NY)
Markey
Martinez
Mascara
Matsui
McCarthy (MO)
McCarthy (NY)
McCollum
McCrery
McGovern
McHugh
McIntyre
McNulty
Meehan
Meeks (NY)
Menendez
Miller (FL)
Minge
Mink
Moore
Moran (KS)
Morella
Murtha
Myrick
Nadler
Neal
Nethercutt
Ney
Northup
Nussle
Obey
Olver
Ose
Owens
Oxley
Packard
Pallone
Pascrell
Pastor
Payne
Pease
Peterson (MN)
Petri
Phelps
Pickering
Pomeroy
Porter
Pryce (OH)
Quinn
Rahall
Ramstad
Rangel
Regula
Reyes
Reynolds
Rivers
Rodriguez
Roemer
Rogan
Rothman
Roukema
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Sabo
Sanders
Sawyer
Saxton
Schakowsky
Scott
Serrano
Shaw
Shays
Sherman
Sherwood
Shimkus
Shows
Simpson
Sisisky
Skeen
Skelton
Slaughter
Smith (TX)
Spence
Spratt
Stabenow
Stenholm
Strickland
Stump
Stupak
Sununu
Sweeney
Talent
Tanner
Tauscher
Tauzin
Taylor (MS)
Taylor (NC)
Thomas
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Thornberry
Thune
Tiahrt
Tierney
Towns
Traficant
Turner
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Upton
Velazquez
Visclosky
Wamp
Watkins
Watt (NC)
Watts (OK)
Weiner
Weldon (PA)
Weller
Wexler
Weygand
Whitfield
Wilson
Wise
Wolf
Woolsey
Wu
Wynn
Young (AK)

---- NAYS 60 ---

Aderholt
Barr
Bartlett
Barton
Blunt
Boswell
Burton
Cannon
Chabot
Chenoweth-Hage
Cook
Cox
Crane
Deal
DeFazio
DeLay
DeMint
Duncan
Frank (MA)
Goodlatte
Graham
Granger
Green (WI)
Hayworth
Herger
Hoekstra
Hostettler
Inslee
Johnson, Sam
Jones (NC)
Kind (WI)
Kingston
Kucinich
Manzullo
Metcalf
Paul
Pitts
Pombo
Radanovich
Riley
Rohrabacher
Royce
Ryan (WI)
Ryun (KS)
Salmon
Sanford
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Smith (MI)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (WA)
Stark
Stearns
Tancredo
Terry
Thurman
Toomey
Vitter
Weldon (FL)
Wicker

---- NOT VOTING 80 ---

Ackerman
Baker
Ballenger
Berman
Bilbray
Blumenauer
Boehlert
Bonilla
Bonior
Bono
Brown (FL)
Callahan
Calvert
Campbell
Clay
Coburn
Conyers
Danner
Delahunt
Dooley
Eshoo
Everett
Farr
Fattah
Filner
Forbes
Gejdenson
Gillmor
Gutierrez
Hansen
Hastings (FL)
Hefley
Hill (MT)
Hobson
Holt
Houghton
Klink
Kolbe
LaFalce
Lantos
Largent
Latham
Lofgren
McDermott
McInnis
McIntosh
McKeon
McKinney
Meek (FL)
Mica
Millender-McDonald
Miller, Gary
Miller, George
Moakley
Mollohan
Moran (VA)
Napolitano
Norwood
Oberstar
Ortiz
Pelosi
Peterson (PA)
Pickett
Portman
Price (NC)
Rogers
Ros-Lehtinen
Sanchez
Sandlin
Scarborough
Schaffer
Shadegg
Shuster
Snyder
Souder
Walden
Walsh
Waters
Waxman
Young (FL)

Top 100 AIDS Science Inconsistencies

2009-07-01T04:12:00.000-07:00

Top 100AIDS Science Inconsistencies

by John Kirkham
BreakForNews.com 15th July, 2004
http://www.BreakForNews.com/articles/Top100AidsInconsistencies_print.htm

1. A new medical definition (Idiopathic CD4+ T-cell lymphocytopenia) was created to avoid the fact that AIDS occurs in the absence of HIV (65, 87)

2. HIV does not satisfy Koch's postulates, the criteria that must be met in order to prove that a microbe causes a disease (90)

3. Anti-HIV drugs, including protease inhibitors, destroy T-cells (4 - 10)

4. Septrin (also called Septra, Bactrim, Co-trimoxazole) and anti-HIV drugs destroy mitochondria (11, 12)

5. The PCP (Pneumocystis Carinii pneumonia) fungus becomes resistant to Septrin (12)

6. Recreational drugs (heroin, poppers, crystal met, ecstasy, cocaine) reduce CD4 cell numbers (13 - 18,
58, 66 - 68)

7. HIV positive patients recover after they stop taking drugs (58)

8. Recreational drugs cause AIDS-defining diseases (see table 7 of 58)

9. Anti-HIV drugs cause AIDS-defining diseases (58)

10. Anti-HIV drugs inhibit human enzymes (11)

11. HIV positive Africans in dire poverty in Uganda and no access to anti-HIV drugs lived as long as HIV positives in the west who took anti-HIV drugs (33)

12. There are no comparative studies of survival in HIV negatives and combo-free HIV positive heterosexuals with no other risk factors

13. Only 38% of healthy long-term positives had ever used AZT or other nuleoside analogs Compared with 94% of progressors (80)

14. Decreases in AIDS cases preceded the introduction of new drug treatments (Dec 1995) by three full years (see fig.6 of 106)

15 Anti-HIV drugs have anti-microbial effects (49, 50, 10)

16. The introduction of AZT (1987) did not cause a decline in the AIDS death rate (105)

17. In the only long term trial of AZT (The Concorde study) 172 participants died, 169 while taking AZT, 3 while on placebo (51)

18. Nucleoside analog drugs suppress/destroy the bone marrow where all immune system cells are born (26, 32, 111)

19. HIV+ children born to AZT treated mothers had a higher probability of developing severe disease or severe immunsuppression (53)

20. "Drug holidays" recover immune responses

21. AZT caused the same transient increase in CD4 count in HIV negatives as in HIV positives (55)

22. There are no controlled studies showing that AIDS occurs in the absence of all other possible non-HIV causal factors

23. Long-living, healthy, drug-free HIV positives are mostly ignored by AIDS researchers

24. Apart from the early (fraudulent) AZT studies and the Concorde study no efficacy studies compare drugs with placebo.

25. There are well documented, non-HIV causes for every AIDS disease

26. The incidence of AIDS-defining diseases among Western non-drug users has not been shown to exceed national backgrounds (58)

27. Early AIDS coincided with the cumulative effects of unprecedented, intense use of volatile nitrite (poppers) as an aphrodisiac marketed almost exclusively to homosexuals (102)

28. AIDS can be treated effectively without anti-HIV drugs (39 - 42)

29. On average, viral load overestimates infectious HIV by a factor of 60,000 (21)

30. Even a PCR method that can detect 1 infected cell in 100000 found very little HIV DNA in HIV positives (23)

31. HIV could not be cultured from people with a detectable viral load (19, 21)

32. HIV has never been properly isolated (20)

33. After many billions of dollars of research effort over 20 years, HIV scientists still cannot explain how HIV causes AIDS

34. After many billions of dollars of research effort over 20 years there is no vaccine and no cure, there are only toxic drugs

35. There was no increase in HIV seroprevalence outside risk groups in the UK despite record STD rates and teenage pregnancy rates (25)

36. HIV DNA was found to be constant from the time of seroconversion, but CD4 count continually went down (29)

37. CD4 count goes down and viral load goes up while on the anti-HIV drugs

38. AZT is hardly triphosphorylated by the body so it cannot possibly have an anti-HIV effect (30)

39. AZT has no effect on HIV DNA but makes viral load (HIV RNA) go down (31)

40. Research throughout the 1970s showed that retroviruses do not kill cells

41. The probability of heterosexual transmission of HIV was found to be very low (1 in a 1000) (34)

42. HIV antibody tests give repeated false positives and seroreversions can occur

43. HIV tests are sensitive to nonspecific antibody binding

44. HIV tests involve an arbitrary dilution factor, everyone tests positive (because of nonspecific antibody binding) if their serum is undiluted (104)

45. All the proteins used in the HIV test are associated with retroviral genes that are found naturally (endogenous) in all humans (72)

46. Endogenous retroviruses can generate immune responses in humans (73, 74)

47. None of the HIV proteins tested for have been proven to belong to HIV (75)

48. There are over 60 different conditions, including pregnancy, that have been known to generate false positives on the HIV test (91)

49. The Elisa, Western Blot and PCR tests for HIV all carry disclaimers nullifying their detection of HIV

50. The criteria for HIV-positivity used in the antibody tests varies between countries and between organizations within a country and can produce indeterminate (neither positive or negative) results (75, 109)

51. The viral load PCR primers were found to be nonspecific for "HIV" genetic sequences (35)

52. The viral load test gives false negatives (36)

53. The viral load test gives false positives (36)

54. The viral load test has low reproducibility (36 - 38)

55. Direct measurements showed no correlation between viral load and CD4 count (43)

56. Many conditions cause reduced CD4 counts (86)

57. CD4 counts between 200 and 300 have been observed in healthy HIV negatives (87)

58. There are no studies comparing CD4 cell variations in combo-free HIV positives (with no risk factors) and HIV negatives

59. According to the AIDS establishment, a heterosexual AIDS "epidemic" of African origin started off in the West as a homosexual "epidemic"

60. In 1985 HIV incidence in Southern Africa was confined to homosexuals who had been to the US and those who had had sex with them (88, 89)

61. The USA was found to be the world's most sexually promiscuous nation (27)

62. Condoms (made from polyisoprene) have holes in much larger than HIV (28, 110)

63. Reducing STD incidence in Africa did not reduce the rate of HIV seroconversion * (101)

64. Only a minute proportion of Africans have actually been tested for HIV, seroprevalence estimates are derived from extrapolations based on unrepresentative samples from maternity clinics

65. In Africa a single positive ELISA test or even a single "rapid" (saliva/urine) test is considered proof of HIV infection, "proof" in the developed world requires a series of tests

66. HIV seroprevalence was found to be much lower in South African prisons than in the general population (1)

67. The vast majority of African "AIDS patients" tested HIV negative (44, 45)

68. In "AIDS ravaged" Zambia since 1980 the population has increased and even the rate of increase in population has increased! (46)

69. In "AIDS ravaged" South Africa many coffin makers are either doing a slack trade or have gone out of business (47)

70. The total number of AIDS cases in Africa consists almost entirely of estimated cases rather than known, registered cases (54)

71. PCP is the typical AIDS defining disease in Western adults but it is almost entirely confined to young children in Africa (2, 3)

72. There is no Western heterosexual AIDS epidemic

73. IVDUs who consistently used a clean needle exchange program were 10.2 to 22.9 times MORE likely to test HIV positive than nonusers (48)

74. Non-human primates "progress" to AIDS (SAIDS) much quicker than humans do (107)

75. SIV does not cause SAIDS in wild primate populations (108)

76. SIV seroprevalence is too low in wild primate populations to account for SIV resistance in these populations (22)

77. SIV seroprevalence in captive SIV naïve primate populations was found to be very low (22)

78. Until the early 1930s many thousands of European men received transplants from chimpanzees and did not get AIDS (62)

79. Uganda study showed HIV-positivity did not indicate a new cause of disease, only decreased mortality in HIV negatives (52)

80. One thousand medical staff a year accidentally contract hepatitis from needles yet by 1998 there were no documented cases of surgeons or emergency medical technicians/paramedics getting AIDS, or even HIV, from occupational exposure (58, Table 16
of 106 )

81. All AIDS patients have lowered levels of glutathione, the major water soluble intracellular antioxidant (59, 60)

82. The antioxidant N-acetyl cysteine inhibits "HIV replication" (61)

83. Reactive oxygen species are implicated in the induction of HIV expression and cell death (40)

84. Treatment with oxidizing, mitogenic*** agents is necessary for HIV "isolation" from cell culture (56, 57)

85. Rectally deposited sperm can be immunosuppressive, mitogenic, oxidizing and a stimulator of antigen production (94 -100)

86. Low T-cell counts were shown to occur before HIV seroconversion and to predict seroconversion (92, 93)

87. HIV-like genetic sequences have been found in the HIV negative human genome (63)

88. Epitopes** of HIV regulatory proteins tat, rev and nef are expressed in normal human tissue (71)

89. Toxic intracellular stresses can create novel genetic sequences (64)

90. HIV showed over 40% variation in an essential gene (protease) sequence (103)

91. Foreign protein transfusions were found to be immune suppressive (79, 81, 84, 85)

92. Hemophiliacs can have hypergammaglobulinaemia which can cause false HIV positive test results (69)

93. Up to 99.9% of HIV genomes in plasma may be defective (70)

94. Mortality in hemophiliacs began to increase in exactly the same year they began taking AZT (81, 82)

95. The AIDS risk of hemophiliacs on AZT was 4.5 times higher, and mortality 2.4 times higher, than untreated controls (83)

96. Infectious HIV (a delicate virus) does not survive the Factor VIII preparation process (76 - 78)

97. HIV theorists have made incorrect predictions throughout the HIV era

98. Corticosteroids and endogenous cortisol suppress cellular immune responses and cortisol destroys immature T-cells (24)

99. Effective cellular immunity relies upon nitric oxide gas defense, see for example Eur. J. Immunol. 2002, 32(5):1455-63

100. AIDS spreads non-exponentially, unlike infectious disease (58)
These inconsistencies have been researched and compiled by John Kirkham, who
has a Master of Research Degree in Science and has been peer-review published.
Table and HTML presentation by Fintan Dunne, Editor, SickOfDoctors.com
References

Footnotes
* Conversion from HIV negative to HIV positive
** Epitopes are parts of a molecule against which antibodies are made
*** Stimulates cell division

References
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(2) American J of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 1994, 149(6):1591-1596
(3) Central African J of Medicine 1999, 45:127-8
(4) J Virol 2002, 76(12):5966-73
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(6) Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy 1990, 34:637-641
(7) Antiviral Chemistry and Chemotherapy 1991, 2:125-132
(8) AIDS 1989, 3:417-422
(9) NEJM 1987, 317:192-197
(10) Physicians Desk Reference 1999
(11) Nature Medicine 1995, 1(5):417-422
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(13) Pharmacotherapy 1984, 4:284-291
(14) Cancer Research 1983, 43:1365-1371
(15) Lancet 1982, Feb 20, 412-416
(16) AIDS 1991, 5:35-41
(17) Annals NY Acad. Sci. 1987, 496:711-21
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(24) Medical Hypothesis 1996, 46:551-555
(25) The Times (UK) June 2nd 2001.
(26) Adverse Drug Reaction Bulletin 1996, 178:675-8
(27) Durex Global Sex Survey 2001, see also http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/press01/sex.html
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(31) J. AIDS 1991, 4:766-9
(32) Manufacturers insert at http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/pdr-azt.htm ( Bone Marrow Suppression)
(33) http://healtoronto.com/richards.html
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(35) AIDS 1998, 12:2076-2077
(36) Annals of Internal Medicine 1996, 124:803-815
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(38) J. AIDS 1992, 5(9):872-877
(39) Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 1997, 94:1967-1972
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(41) Trans. Assoc. Am. Phys. 1984, 97:70-79
(42) Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol. Med. 1997, 216:201-210
(43) Nature Medicine 1999, 5(1):83-89 (see fig. 4b)
(44) J. AIDS 1994, 7(8):876-877
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"A Cure for US AIDS – Travel to Canada"

2009-07-01T02:23:00.000-07:00

President Obama, said recently that all Americans should be tested for AIDS
recently after the death of Michael Jackson, but Obama's information might be faulty, if you really want to beat an HIV/AIDS diagnosis...Move to Canada!
As in this Article from the "Re-thinking AIDS" website.

A Cure for US AIDS – Travel to Canada

April, 2009 — The U.S. has an AIDS death rate (adjusted for population) 59 times that of Canada, according to 2007 AIDS mortality statistics taken from both the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Canadian equivalent.

Canada had 28 AIDS deaths in 2007 compared to almost 15,000 for the United States. Since Canadians test to have HIV antibodies at half (1/2) the rate of their U.S. neighbor, and with adjustment for this, Canadians judged “HIV–positive” die from AIDS at 1/30 the rate of their U.S. HIV–positive counterparts.

Canada’s 28 deaths from acquired immune dysfunction syndrome (AIDS) now occur at virtually the background rate before the term ‘AIDS’ was coined, and come from a variety of health conditions and drug addictions that have been with mankind forever. What is new is the acronym created in 1985.

In fact, Canada is not alone in conquering AIDS deaths. Western European countries (and Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Rim including Japan and the Philippines) are all averaging AIDS mortality rates similar to Canada’s.

So, how and why does the U.S. have such a stupendous AIDS mortality discrepancy?

The answer is simple: In 1993, the United States Health Authorities created a new category of AIDS, comprising but two cofactors: The combination of a person being;

1) “HIV–antibody positive,” and

2) Having a low white blood cell count below an arbitrary threshhold (a threshhold that many completely healthy people, including superb athletes, would fail, in part because white blood cells normally reside in interstitial tissue and not in the bloodstream).

Since 1993, this unique U S. category has risen to be over 90% of AIDS diagnoses.

All other western nations: Canada, and European countries, Australia, etc., refused to adopt the unique U.S. AIDS definition that depends on low white blood cell counts. Since 1995, with the most risky anti–HIV drugs steadily discarded, these countries have had AIDS mortality falling steadily toward zero (For instance, Germany with 81 million people had but 73 AIDS deaths in 2007, echoing Canada).

The result is that, even though many other nations have populations testing similarly to having ‘HIV antibodies,” few are determined to have “AIDS.” Thus, few are prescribed the strongest antiretroviral regimens, in contrast to the U.S.

Springing from the unique U.S. category of AIDS, the treatment drugs inevitably bring side effects, unavoidably linked to the U.S. death toll. Corroborating these drug risks, a recent study by Danish health authorities was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine and reviewed all those HIV+ in Denmark. This study found that 25% refused the offered anti–HIV regimens but nevertheless had the lowest mortality rates, with projected life expectancies close to the average Dane, despite being HIV+.

The bottom line: Those in the U.S. deemed to have AIDS have only to cross into Canada for a second opinion. AIDS diagnoses, and deaths will dive towards zero. It’s that simple. And that evident.

David M. Burd
Medical Technology Consultant/Writer
Alexandria, VA

Case in point rockstar, Michael Jackson. Was Michael deemed HIV Positive? Because his sudden death at 50 sounds alot like the type of fatality of a person who was taking anti-HIV medicines.

Anti-HIV medicine is nototisly toxic, death resulted by Heart attack or liver disease. Was Micheal Jackson taking Anti-HIV medicines, because that could explain his sudden death, but it is something we'll probably never know about the star. Some people even doubt if the rock star is really gone (me).

R.I.P Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett

2009-06-25T19:58:00.000-07:00

WOW, I grew up listening to the Jackson 5, watched young Michael on T.V.
He's only a few years older than me,I was really envious. Admiration, Money, Young Michael had it all. I got ganged up in school, by some kids who wanted to know if I was Michael Jackson's cousin as I claimed to be. I'm not, but I might as well have been.

I never did take much stock in the idea that Michael Jackson was a pedophile, I might think Jacks grew up to be alittle weird, but when you grow up like Micheal Jackson with all that fame and money,who knows how you might end up. The lost of Michael Jackson is like a personal loss. It the ending of an ERA.

Part of a letter I wrote to a talk show host about Jackson.

Hey Brian, You sure picked a bad topic to relate to listeners,Who are mostly white, and really couldn't give a dam about Michael Jackson. Some though like me certainly grew up with Jackson. I'm African-American , I grew up listening to Michael Jackson.

I'm old enough to remember the Micheal Jackson of the Jackson 5, a different beast than the Micheal Jackson who took his place , and went single. I remember the mocha skinned boy with the nice fro...

Listening now to some of his stuff from the Jackson 5 . It brought back memories. Memories of my own lost childhood.. I was a few years younger than Jackson but he was a phenomena. How could I compete with the Micheal Jackson of the Jackson 5? The way he sang, all the adoration he got, the money...How at 13, 14, 15, 16 was I going to compete with him.. He had more girls than James Bond, I couldn't compete with him either. But I wasn't jealous, I was a fan.

I almost got beat up in grade school by some kids , who wanted to know if I was Micheal Jackson's cousin has I claimed, the only thing I really lied about in life.

I listened to people talk on KBLAH about Jackson...saying stuff like " They something wrong for a 40 year old man to be sleeping with kids". But later I thought ..well Michael had at least 5 brothers, he must have slept together with them at one time growing up with them...so it probably wasn't an unusually experience for him.

When I think of Pedophiles, I also think of people who would try to take advantage of exploited young people in order to gain sexual favors from them...I don't think Jackson fits profile of this kind of a pedophile. Indeed its hard to see Micheal Jackson as a pedophile in any case.

Micheal claims , and laments about his lost childhood, but he stole mine and many other with the Jackson 5...I'm still stuck at that time. Trying to find the girl Micheal is singing about in "Got to be there"

I grew up when everone was admiring Farah. She a lovely woman, wasn't my type. she had this wholesomeness about her , I couldn't dig, but you admired her for that. She was an American beauty, she originally married Lee majors " The Six Million Dollar Man.

Ohh La, Las Vegas Pt 3.

2009-06-17T10:43:00.000-07:00

As you travel out of the city into other parts of Vegas, you can see below...tents cities. I can't think of anything more unfortunate then having to live in one of these tents in 90+ degree heat. Nevada is a dry, rocky arid place.

I hope the police will not roust these people out of the areas, it just a part you don't see in the strip of Las Vegas. You can't fault the casinos too much after all, there are some places you can go in , in Vegas where you can get free drinks, (Beer, Lemonade, Water) for just sitting down and playing some of there machines. With just alittle money , playing on the Poker machines I was able to at least double my money in a short time. Some of these tent people might find alittle respite in some of those places, maybe even a job.

There is a dark side to Vegas, maybe it underlies there politics there. Las Vegas was founded on the adventurism of some serious gangsters. Is it basically "Mob rules" there in Vegas despite all the modern trappings of a modern city?

While I was staying there,there was this story in the local news, about a young cop (African-American) in Las Vegas, who got killed in his car in a traffic accident, when a civilian.... "broadsided" his car him while the officer was on an emergency call.

Metro Police Officer James Manor

The guy who broadsided him, was intoxicated, but below legal liability( alleged), plus the "authorities" who were investigating the accident say that the officer, didn't have on his siren and lights in response to an emergency call, thus the accident was the officers fault. No charges were placed on the assailant. That how there where doing the story in Vegas. It was the officers fault....The officer had been on the force for only two years.

What a great way to "whack " a cop. Like some kind of a Casino game! Come to Vegas to whack a cop, especially a Black cop. No wonder the cops are reported to be real tough in Vegas they have to be. If your a cop and black in Vegas the message is..they'll kill you quick, especially if your Black. It reminded me of that "Ye olde" racism,where it "your fault"! I got alittle itchy to get out of Vegas after hearing that story. Back to the Bay Area, where here, we had an ex-parolee ,fresh out of prison, "whack" four cops, and an over-zealous ( B.A.R.T) officer whacked one passenger, while he was on the ground handcuffed. Life is so good in Vegas.

Earlier and later in the month.. Barack Obama debuted in Vegas... Who's is that guys handler.

Ooh la, Las Vegas, Pt 2

2009-06-17T10:16:00.000-07:00

I stayed in the "Old part of las Vegas.I got a very decent room in one of the many casinos there "The Golden Gate" Away from all these modern buildings, but in the main strip where all those lighted casinos ( that you see on American T.V ) are. This place didn't really resemble the place I'd image it to be...it's alot smaller ( except the modern area), like the size of a small strip mall. Also this area was covered with a pixilated roof, where they could display lighted images.

During the time I was there they put on a terrific light show, using those pixilated lights. They did a Homage to the rock band 'Queen" playing tunes like "We will rock you", "We are the Champions", they cut off all the light and did this light show...it rocked.

That's not the blue sky, friends...its a light show.

Staying in the Old Strip has its pluses everything is there in one place, the Modern strip though has all the celebrity shows, I but I thought they were all over priced. C'mon, $65.00 a show? I'll wait for the CD.

Ohh la , Las Vegas....

2009-06-17T09:37:00.000-07:00

About a month ago I got a chance to visit Las Vegas. I didn't get a chance to see alot of pretty ladies, just a bunch of old folks. man was it hot there in the three days I stayed there it was all most 100 degrees Fahrenheit every day. I'll still getting used to the much cooler temperature here in the Bay Area.

It was my first trip to Vegas, I got a great deal on a room there. On my arrival to Vegas , I felt like I was truly entering the 21 century. I felt as if I was like in "The Jetsons". The Architecture of those buildings for the New casinos in Vegas is eye-popping, too bad its not more than just Casinos, too bad Hospitals, police stations, Libraries aren't made that way. I can see why President Obama spent some time there. Its a model of how cities in the U.S ought to look. The city Planners in Las Vegas really deserve a hand in that regard.

The Architecture was break-taking..it literally draws you in , even in 100 degree heat!

I'm actually on my bike down the main street here in Vegas

There was much more to see, like Caesar's Place, there was a building that looked like the "Eiffel Tower", the Trump building with its gold windows , it looked like a golden slim cigarette lighter, but there was a building farther down with gold windows( like Trumps's) that was 3x wider!

What if the Obama Administration Treated Detroit like Wall Street?

2009-05-30T01:41:00.000-07:00

What if the Obama Administration Treated Detroit like Wall Street?
By Robert Weissman

April 1, 2009

What if the Obama administration treated the auto industry like Wall Street?

There’d be no talk of potential bankruptcy, no firing of executives, no demands to shed failing subsidiaries, no demands for honest accounting, no insistence that creditors share some of the companies’ pain. And we certainly wouldn’t hear about re-writing contracts, heretofore described as sacrosanct.

Instead, we’d be hearing about a scheme to get private sector players “now sitting on the sidelines” to invest in absorbing the auto industry’s excess capacity.

We’d see the Treasury Department announcing a Public-Private Investment Plan to tap hedge funds’ pools of capital and expertise to create demand for autos that GM and Chrysler could manufacture but are presently unable to sell at a satisfactory price. These excess cars would be called “legacy assets” (the euphemism for failing mortgage-related securities, more widely called “toxic”).

If the plan really paralleled Treasury Secretary’s Timothy Geithner’s proposal for dealing with Wall Street’s toxic assets, it would “incentivize” the hedge funds to buy up hundreds of thousands or millions of cars, and hold them for later sale, when the overall economy improves. The idea would be that the private investors may be willing to pay a price below the list price, but above the price at which GM and Chrysler could actually sell their excess cars right now — a price high enough to help GM and Chrysler.

What would be the incentive for the private investors to take this gamble? The government would offer to contribute $13 for every dollar contributed by the hedge funds. Thus, an investor could spend $1 billion to buy cars — bought well below sticker price — while paying only $71 million out of pocket.

With that kind of deal, it’s possible the private investors would pay enough to help GM and Chrysler. In doing so, they would be taking on enormous risk — they would be betting that they someday could sell the cars for more than $1 billion — but if they couldn’t … well, taxpayers would bear all of the losses except for the $71 million.

Does this sound crazy?

It is.

The Treasury plan for the banks’ toxic assets is impossibly complex, but its core feature is a massive, disguised taxpayer subsidy to Wall Street (Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University roughly estimates the giveaway component as $276 billion, based on realistic assumptions about the risks embedded in buying the assets).

The Geithner plan for the banks contrasts starkly with the very tough and hard-headed approach taken by the Obama administration to the automakers.

The administration’s response to the automakers is deeply flawed. It should be faulted for continuing to demand still-more givebacks from unionized workers; for focusing too much on short-to-medium term results and not enough on investments in fuel efficiency and transformative technologies; and for threatening the use of bankruptcy, a move which would undermine efforts to direct the companies to major investments in R&D and sustainable technologies. These are very major problems.

But the overall approach is right in asserting: If the taxpayers are going to provide tens of billions in supports, then they have the right to make demands on the beneficiaries. They should demand the firing of CEOs who drove firms into insolvency. They should demand specific plans for transformation. They should demand creditors accept some of the cost of insolvency.

Why the tough love for Detroit and kid gloves for Wall Street? You can make up whatever story you like about the systemic importance of the financial sector as compared to auto manufacturing, but it is utterly uncompelling — especially as we move out of the phase of acute crisis and into chronic economic downturn.

There’s just no escaping that Wall Street has bought its gentle treatment through a long-term investment in Washington, the effect of which goes far beyond any specific policy. At the Treasury Department, they understand the point of view of Wall Street — there is a unity of culture between top officials at Treasury and Wall Street, not least because the decision makers at Treasury so often come from Wall Street. Treasury Department officials can’t imagine themselves in the shoes of auto executives, let alone auto workers.

The administration’s plan for the auto industry is deeply flawed, but at least it has the right attitude. Quick consideration of what it would like if the government treated Detroit like Wall Street shows how ridiculous the idea is.

What everyone should be asking is, What would it look like if the government treated Wall Street like Detroit? And, why isn’t that happening?

American Health Care Versus the American Economy

2009-05-04T14:24:00.000-07:00

I was in Oakland ,California ,near Kaiser-Permanente Hospital. And I saw a sight there that is kind of a horror to behold.

The New Kaiser Blgd.

Kaiser-Permanente HMO in Oakland is obviously doing real well.. Though I cannot, and alot of other people cannot afford to get care there. I used to be on a "Kaiser" Plan when I was young, under my Father insurance plan. The last time I checked to enroll in Kaiser, I think I was looking at paying 150.00 a month (in 1999), now I think it is $200.00 300.00 a month to enroll in a Kaiser plan. I probably couldn't get in because I been an Asthmatic all my life and now I am diagnosed with Type "2", Diabetes. Overall Kaiser I think is a pretty good health provider to have if you can afford them, however some people have some complaints.

Old Kaiser Hospital in Oakland is a big area, this is part of a seven-story bldg, with more in the back.

Part of the "New Kaiser Hospital just across the street in Oakland. They just finished building this.

Yet Kaiser seems to be doing real well in Oakland, they just finished building a ( Kaiser) new building, yet the Shopping mall across the street from Kaiser is slated for demolition.

Another view of the M/B Mall, includeing the multi-story office buildings, all slated for demolition I presume.

This Mall is also very large also, but small compared to other malls. There were lots of businesses here here, restaurants, with rooftop parking and multi-story business offices, decades ago. Just across the street from the "Old" Kaiser.

A Sordid tale as I just to Shop in that Mall years ago. It was fulled with lots of restaurants when business was bad, finally they just had a few clothes shops. Now it is slated for demolition...I think Kaiser Hospital is buying the space.

Part of that Mall, Kaiser brought some office space there.

How is it that Kaiser-Permanante HMO, is doing so well, which such high rates, and yet Average Business owners and shops are closing down. In this case , shouldn't be the other way around, Individual businesses thriving, but health care centers closing down, because they can't afford to stay open? Its part of the Economic puzzle that the Obama Administration as to figure out, they can't blame it on the "War on Terrorism."

Just a Block down the street, I think Kaiser owns or rents office space there too,

Below here are some facts and Pictures about health Care In America.

• In 2006, the U.S. census reported that 46 million Americans (recently revised downward to 45 million) have no health insurance.

• “Over a third (36%) of families living below the poverty line are uninsured. Hispanic Americans (34%) are more than twice as likely to be uninsured as white Americans,(13%) while 21% of black Americans have no health insurance.”

More of the Old Oakland Kaiser Hospital.

• More than 9 million children lack health insurance in America.

• Eighteen thousand people die each year because they are uninsured.

• According to the UN Human Development Report, “The uninsured are less likely to have regular outpatient care, so they are more likely to be hospitalized for avoidable health problems. Once in hospital, they receive fewer services and are more likely to die in the hospital than are insured patients. They also receive less preventive care. Over 40% of the uninsured do not have a regular place to go when they are sick and over a third of the uninsured say that they or someone in their family went without needed care, including recommended treatments or prescription drugs in the last year, because of cost.”

• Half of all bankruptcies are caused by medical bills. Three-quarters of those filings are from people with health insurance.

An Aerial View of the M/B Mall.

The End of to America?....Who needs a World Trade Center?

2009-04-21T09:02:00.000-07:00

Well , I hope this isn't end of my little rants. I originally started this Blog, because of trouble I got in at an old residential hotel. I was being harassed by this troll, a sexual predator type, an older man. This was going on in Oakland ,California. I have to say in some ways the City of Oakland is cleaning up its act these days, under Mayor Ron Dellums.

This situation started for me in Oakland,Calif. Ex-California Governor, Jerry Brown was Mayor at this time.

I paraded around City ,State, Federal offices with this sign. Little that I know that Americans are about to be "Ho'd" en mass scale.

Anyway I made a big fuss about this type of harassment at the Hotel, after all I was working, paying taxes trying to "pull my weight", I was all over town with this sign. I even think I handed Jerry Brown one of those leaflets I was giving out to people complaining about this harassment.

I got some legal help from the State, but I was still being harassed and threatened. Jerry Brown was a very accessible guy in while Mayor in Oakland. and I would see him sitting down outside a downtown cafe drinking coffee, and he must have recognized me because he said to me a several occasions, " Yeah, man I think you just ought to "Ho" him." I didn't have the guts to confront him on this as he was just sitting there...but I shoulda. After his term of Mayor expired in Oakland, Jerry Brown was successfully elected as the State Attorney General.

The Hotel was basically assisting and aiding the man(Troll) in harassing me. They knew about it, that made them party to it. Since the harassment was of a Sexual nature that happens to be against California (State) Law, and these residential hotels tend to be subsided by the State/Government.. I am still occasionally harassed by this fellow, that was five years ago. I moved into another area nearby.

I didn't intend to stay long at this new Hotel, but I've been here since Oct 2005.
Once again , I end up filling a complaint with the State about allegations of Sexual harassment even related to my last case, in a Federally subsidized "S.R.O". This time my case was heard quickly in a Conciliation service.

I am verboten to talk about the details here, because its part of my conciliation agreement. I Probably made a mistake in not getting a lawyer, but I had a hell of a time trying to get any free legal help. as I was constantly playing phone tag with "Free" legal advisers who wouldn't return calls, and when I was about to reach one..like always they say , "Sorry but there is nothing we can do for you..., I couldn't even talk to the local legal lawyer on the AM radio. He specializes in Trust and Estates, but rather than talking to me, he merely hung the phone on me...twice.

But this isn't really what I'm complaining about.

My Beef these days is about the current economic situation existing in this country.
Its funny because earlier in this Blog I sort of predicted this situation."The End and destruction" of America, in graphic form. This was easy to figure out While George W. Bush was leading the country. I thought me might actually get into a Nuclear exchange . But no lay person, that I know of ( including George W. Bush)probably couldn't have predicted the type of economic situation that that was going to happen . They were so busy with there "War on Terrorism and War in Iraq" they neglected to tend to the business of this country.. This is going to end up costing Tax-payers ,Trillions of Dollars. Has one economist said..."George W. Bush was responsible for more damage to this country than Osama Bin Laden could ever dreamed of." Sad but...true?

All this was started because of the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York on 2001, 9-11. We all know that two hijacked Airlines rammed the World trade Building causing it to crash, killing more than 4000 occupants of that bldg and on the Airline.

Though, "We the People" are led to believe that Foreign Hijackers caused the destruction of those Buildings,other foreign sources question whether if "Foreigners" were really behind 9-11. Domestic sources in the U.S question the destruction of the World Trade Center, whether the Bldg was deliberately demolished or not, causing the deaths of many people inside that building who was trying to escape.

For me, its hard to imagine that our own government could be culpable in the destruction and death of its citizens to a degree on this scale, there is still the element of doubt, but not if you look at what is happening today in America. Could it be that 9-11, the Iraq War was staged just as a diversion, to rob and fleece American tax payers to the tune of multi-trillions of dollars?

Would you orchestrate the deaths of thousand of your citizens, and property for a couple of millions dollars in your bank account? How about 500 Million, how about a billion? Some would. Maybe I could. You even had some United States Senators on the 9-11 commission working making decisions in the Senate Banking committee. How would New Yorkers feel if there own government was culpable of the deaths that occurred in 9-11?

This is situation in America today, because of this economic fiasco is 1000x worse than than 9-11, and yet, no one really seems to be angry about it.

Our current President Barak Obama seems to be catering to the forces that created this situation. Isn't that what "Politicians" in Washington D.C do? I expected more. I suppose many other people ...don't. Meanwhile , millions, Billions of dollars are being thrown about which is supposed to be subsidized by tax payers. There a HUGE element of fraud here, and the money that is going to Wall Street may end up back in the pockets book of our political representatives...insuring that nothing will really be done about this economic fiasco for a really long ,long time. This might be true since it is a fact that Banking and investment lobby's in the U.S spent billions of dollars to have our representatives look the other way, in the last couple of years ,while Banking and investment firms went unregulated.

Coming to a theatre near you
Golly, I was only kidding when I wrote this years ago, during the Bush administration, didn't know those days might come to pass..in a few more years.

It seems futile to keep funneling money to these besmirched banks, when there is no transparency, no accountability for our money And Hey guess what folks. I get to help pay for this.

I wouldn't/and probably can't even get a Credit Card. Not that I particularly want one, giving people credit in this economy might be a major boon, particularly when there isn't any real wealth, value behind the money, here. I'm 46 year old, I don't even own a home, thats why I'm living in a residential Hotel. But at least I can afford to live here at the moment.

I resent having to pay rich white people for making bad loans,and bad bets on other peoples money. I resent having to fit the bill for other peoples indiscretions, who then curse and spit at me.

I think its the working people in this country who are keeping this Country going...were the ones pumping actually cash into this economy. Working people paying cash. How about some help for us. Mr President?

You have to give them some credit , our Representatives and Senators standing up recently for the rights of Credit Card holders. The Credit card companies are really trying to fleece these people, and our trusty legislators are keeping this system and current economic mess going on, by keeping the current credit system going, in the guise of helping credit card holders, but what else can they do?

The Banks and Credit card issuers were sending armies of lobbyist in Washington..to stick-it to the credit card holders. I guess I'm fortunate has I do not own one. But I think the Government and its representatives fail the American people in trying to keep this economic situation going on anyway.

The Zombie investors win, Taxpayers lose. Obama's Plan

2009-03-23T20:15:00.000-07:00

The Zombie Ideas Have Won”–Paul Krugman on $1 Trillion Geithner Plan to Buy Toxic Bank Assets Democracy Now.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is preparing to unveil a plan today to purchase as much as $1 trillion in troubled mortgages and other assets from banks. The government is reaching out to hedge funds, private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds to help buy the toxic assets. The Obama administration has described the plan as a public-private partnership, but most of the actual money will be put up by the government. We speak with Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman. [includes rush transcript]
Guest:

Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, and a columnist at the New York Times. His latest book is The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008.

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Paul Krugman's blog, "The Conscience of a Liberal"

AMY GOODMAN: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner today is unveiling the Obama administration’s plan to finance the purchase of up to $1 trillion in so-called toxic assets from banks and other ailing financial institutions. The plan relies on private investors, namely hedge funds and private equity firms, to team up with the government to relieve banks of assets tied to loans and mortgage-linked securities. There have been virtually no buyers of these assets thus far because of their uncertain risk. As part of the program, the government plans to offer subsidies in the form of low-interest loans to coax private funds to form partnerships with the government to buy troubled assets from banks. This is intended to unclog the balance sheets of banks and allow them to resume normal lending.

Also, the Obama administration this week is expected to announce new proposals for financial regulation, executive pay, accounting standards and other issues, ahead of the G20 summit in London on April 2nd. The new economic proposals come as Congress is to begin debating the administration’s $3.6 trillion budget proposal for next year.

Meanwhile, public outrage over the AIG bonus scandal has further undermined support for Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary. AIG is paying out over $165 million in bonuses after receiving a $170 billion taxpayer bailout. Geithner has been criticized in Congress and elsewhere for not doing more to block the AIG bonuses and his overall response to the financial crisis.

In an interview broadcast last night on 60 Minutes, President Obama expressed strong support for Geithner. He was interviewed by 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft.

STEVE KROFT: Your Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, has been under a lot of pressure this week, and there have been people in Congress calling for his head. Have there been discussions in the White House about replacing him?

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: No.

STEVE KROFT: Has he volunteered to or come to you and said, “Do you think I should step down?”

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: No, and he shouldn’t. And if he were to come to me, I’d say, “Sorry, buddy, you still got the job.” But look, he’s got a lot of stuff on his plate, and he is doing a terrific job. And I take responsibility for not, I think, having given him as much help as he needs.

AMY GOODMAN: Geithner is scheduled to testify before the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday about overhauling financial regulation.

Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist, professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, and a columnist at the New York Times. His latest book is The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008. His column in today’s Times is headlined “Financial Policy Despair.” He joins us on the phone from his home in New Jersey.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Paul.

PAUL KRUGMAN: Good morning, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, you say, “Zombie ideas have won.” Why are you calling that Timothy Geithner’s plan today?

PAUL KRUGMAN: A zombie idea is an idea that you keep on killing, because it’s a bad idea, but it just keeps on coming back. And what this is is we’ve had this idea since Henry Paulson came out with his plan six months ago, the Bush administration, that the real problem is that the market is undervaluing all of these toxic assets, and what we need to do is have taxpayers go in and buy them at a fair price, and that will solve all of our financial problems. And that’s what happened. The Geithner plan is a complicated, disguised variant on the same idea. It’s the zombie that you keep killing, and it just keeps coming back.

AMY GOODMAN: Called “cash for trash”?

PAUL KRUGMAN: Yeah, that’s—that was the phrase that was out there six months ago, which I picked up. And yeah, it’s basically saying that, you know, there’s nothing really fundamentally wrong with our banking system; there’s just this crisis of confidence, and so nobody wants to buy, you know, asset-backed securities, nobody wants to buy stuff that’s ultimately backed by home mortgages, and if only we could get people to see that these things are really pretty decent assets, then the banks will be in fine shape. And that’s the trouble. You know, there’s an argument that says maybe they were somewhat underpriced, but to make this the centerpiece of your financial rescue plan is just—well, as I wrote in the column, it leaves me with a feeling of despair.

AMY GOODMAN: Members of the Obama administration hit the Sunday talk show circuit yesterday to drum up support for the administration’s plan to purchase up to a trillion dollars in troubled mortgages and other so-called toxic assets. Austan Goolsbee, a key White House economic adviser, was on Face the Nation. Harry Smith of CBS News quoted from your writing about the administration’s plan. This is an excerpt.

HARRY SMITH: There’s been a lot of negative press about this thing that hasn’t even been unveiled yet, and Paul Krugman, in his blog today, said, “For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose.”

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: I don’t think that’s an accurate description. I mean, if the government doesn’t make money, the private sector doesn’t make money either. I mean, these guys are coming in in a partnership, and one of the reasons you want to have the partnership is precisely so that, A, the government doesn’t massively overpay for these troubled assets that are on the balance sheets, and B, so that everybody’s got skin in the game and you don’t get into situations where you’re paying guys for failure.
AMY GOODMAN: Paul Krugman, your response?

PAUL KRUGMAN: The important thing is not the shared equity. I’m sorry, it’s hard to avoid lapsing into jargon here. But 85 percent, at least according to the counts over the weekend, 85 percent of the money is going to be a loan from the government, which is a non-recourse loan, which means that it’s backed only by the assets that these guys are buying, which means that if the thing loses more than 15 percent of its value, which is highly, you know, possible, given how uncertain these things are worth, then the investors, the private investors, just walk away. So there’s—exactly, it’s a heads I win, tails you lose. If the stuff—you buy something at $100 and it goes up to $150, you make $50. You buy it at $100 and it goes down to $50, then you only lose $15, because the other $35 gets even by the taxpayer. So it’s a—it’s the same thing.

It’s basically what happened with savings and loans in the 1980s. They were deregulated and basically put in the position where the deposits were guaranteed, but the owners of the banks could do whatever they wanted, and so they took these huge risks, and most of the risks turned out bad. But if the risks turned out bad, it was the taxpayers’ problem, not the bank owners’ problem. Same thing here. They’re deliberately setting it up, so that there’s this huge incentive to—you know, basically where the upside belongs to the private investors, but most of the downside belongs to you and me.

AMY GOODMAN: So you socialize the debt, you privatize the profit. Why—

PAUL KRUGMAN: Yes, it’s—you know, it’s, yeah, lemon socialism. The minuses are the taxpayers; the pluses are the private investors.

AMY GOODMAN: Why doesn’t the government just buy all up all of the toxic assets then, like the FDIC does?

PAUL KRUGMAN: Well, it’s actually—the FDIC doesn’t—the FDIC guarantees a bank’s debts, basically, so the deposits are secure, and then if it says the bank is bankrupt, then it goes in and it seizes the bank and then sells the toxic stuff for whatever it can get. That’s what I advocate; that’s what we ought to be doing. They are—I think they’re just daunted by the scale of this thing. The FDIC normally does, you know, two or three banks a week, even in bad times, and they’re small banks. Here we’re talking about quite possibly Citigroup, which is $2 trillion in assets. It’s a very big thing. And I think the reason they keep on coming back, the reason the zombie ideas won’t stay dead, is the lure of an easy solution, that you can just wave a magic wand and the problem goes away, and they’re still looking for magic.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to break just for sixty seconds, then we come back to Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, professor of economics, Princeton, columnist at the New York Times. Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman, professor at Princeton, New York Times columnist. Do you think Timothy Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, Paul, should step down?

PAUL KRUGMAN: You know, I don’t have a strong view on that. It’s certainly becoming a problem, and he’s really got to clean up his act if he wants to stay there. But it’s just—it’s been really—you know, basically, look, this is not Geithner. Ultimately, the buck stops in the Oval Office. The question is, why is President Obama going with the soft side, the hope over analysis, on this stuff? So I’m not—I don’t have a big commitment on Geithner, one way or the other.

AMY GOODMAN: Can I ask you something about the AIG bonuses that have caused such an uproar? I mean, why wasn’t there strict regulations about how the stimulus money could be used, how the TARP could be used? Why wasn’t there regulation here?

PAUL KRUGMAN: Well, if I was going to take the side of the government people, I’d say it’s hard to write those regulations in a way that doesn’t have unintended consequences. You know, there was a time when they tried to put limits on CEO pay, and it ended up leading to the explosion of stock options, which was not a good thing.

But I think it basically comes down to the mindset, that the view still, apparently, dominant in—even in this administration is that there’s nothing really fundamentally wrong with the system. There were some mistakes, and there was some bad luck, but we don’t want to shake up the system too much. We don’t want to really rebuild it. We don’t want to tear up the relationships with those people who we thought were so smart and now look so dumb, really are smart, and we want to keep them on the job. It’s a problem. I think there’s too much conventionality. To some extent, the Obama administration is still partying like it’s 2006.

AMY GOODMAN: Paul Krugman, what would a new system look like? What would you advocate?

PAUL KRUGMAN: I think, in the end, we’re going to have to go back to something that is kind of like the system that emerged from the New Deal, which was tightly regulated banks and financial institutions, limits on risk taking, fairly high taxes for high earners, which—it turns out that, you know, low tax rates create incentives, but the incentives are actually to play dangerous games with other people’s money. A lot of things need to be updated for the twenty-first century and information technology and so on, but basically, our grandfathers got this thing right. Our grandfathers understood that finance is useful but dangerous and needs to be very tightly hedged about with regulations.

AMY GOODMAN: You write, “The Obama administration has apparently made the judgment that there would be a public outcry if it announced a straightforward plan along these lines,” which is, you know, government buying up the troubled assets, “so it has produced what Yves Smith calls ‘a lot of bells and whistles to finesse the fact that the government will wind up paying well above market [value] for”—and you can’t say the rest.

PAUL KRUGMAN: Yeah, I still can’t say the rest, which was not Times style. But yeah, ultimately, when you get the—when you get through the complexities and the salesmanship, this is just a complicated way of having the government pay, having you and me pay, for buying these assets at more than any private investor is willing to pay for them.

AMY GOODMAN: You talk about why you’re so vehement about this right now, why you see this is the critical moment.

PAUL KRUGMAN: I think—this is a political judgment. We can argue this back and orth. But I think that Obama doesn’t get many shots at this, maybe just one. There’s already a huge public outcry, which doesn’t distinguish between the things we need to do and the things that were just mistakes. And for Obama to go and do this plan and put a lot of taxpayer money on the line and for it not to work, which I’m almost certain is what would happen, I don’t think he can come back to Congress for a plan that might actually work. I think that there’s a real—the stimulus is something of the same thing. You have to do this right, right away, because the political mood is getting ugly, for good reason, and there’s not a lot of patience with failed approaches, especially failed approaches that seem like your administration is just too close to Wall Street.

AMY GOODMAN: Paul Krugman, can you talk about the role of foreign sovereign wealth funds and explain what they are?

PAUL KRUGMAN: Oh, yeah. It’s just when a foreign government has a bunch of money which it is investing in the United States or in other countries, and as opposed to—this is when you do something beyond just plain parking lots of money in bank deposits or US government debt, which is where most of the foreign money is. You know, I think that’s a much exaggerated issue. It’s—yeah, these are governments playing with large sums of money. At least so far, all the evidence is that they’ve been really pretty dumb investors. The Chinese appear to have given us a substantial subsidy by buying a lot of stocks at the top of the market and losing them. So I’m not that—I don’t think it’s a central issue.

AMY GOODMAN: And this issue of counterparties, a word we’re just learning right now, that AIG gets all of these billions of dollars, and they use some of it to pass through to banks once—well, to entities like Goldman Sachs, to UBS, which had to pay a massive fine to the US government, so we’re paying their fine for violating us?

PAUL KRUGMAN: Well, this is—the counterparties—basically, think of the financial system as this web of connections. And the reason that we’re stepping in to rescue these companies in the first place is that we’re afraid that if you break the web at one point, it unravels across a pretty wide range. And that’s not just a theory. When Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail, in fact, a huge gaping hole opened up across the financial system. So this is the reason that we’re rescuing them in the first place.

Now, the only thing you can say is that if we’re going to be doing this, then we do need to look hard at who else we’re rescuing, and we need to say, “Look, you guys have to make some sacrifices as part of this, as well.” What we’re seeing right now is that it’s basically all free money from the taxpayer with no quid pro quo. And that gets to the heart of the dispute over what our policy is right now.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Paul Krugman, has this made you reevaluate your support of NAFTA, the whole push for sort of unregulated globalization, why so many people took to the streets in the Battle of Seattle, for example?

PAUL KRUGMAN: Yeah, the answer is no. There’s a huge distinction between letting actual trade in goods, stuff, real physical stuff, proceed, which is terribly important to the poorest countries, above all—when somebody asks, you know, why am I in favor of, more or less, free trade, my answer is, I’m really thinking about countries like Bangladesh, which literally are only able to keep their heads above water by their ability to sell labor-intensive stuff, thanks to their low wages. It’s really critical.

I’ve never been a fan of unregulated movement of capital internationally. This was a big fight back in the late ’90s between some of us who say, you know, “We need to regulate, we need to limit this stuff,” and people who said, “Oh, no. You have to trust the markets.” And what’s—it’s the hot money that’s the issue here; it’s not the auto parts from Mexico. That’s a different discussion. It’s the hot money from all over the world that is the crisis right now.

AMY GOODMAN: And the UN panel that will next week recommend the world ditch the dollar as its reserve currency in favor of a shared basket of currencies?

PAUL KRUGMAN: You know, there have been millions of plans—well, I’m exaggerating, but there have been many plans along those lines. That’s not a decision that can be taken by an international body. The dollar is the reserve currency because people think it’s the safest place to park their money. The euro is a natural competitor, except that the Europeans are as messed up in their policies as we are, if not more so, right now. But the way to deal with that is not to have some body agree that we’re going to do something different, but to simply have the world—have the natural competitors to the dollar make themselves worthy of the competition.

AMY GOODMAN: Paul Krugman, I want to thank you for being with us, Nobel Prize-winning economist, professor of economics at Princeton University, and columnist with the New York Times. His latest book is called The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008. Thanks so much for joining us. He joined us from New Jersey.

PAUL KRUGMAN: Thanks a lot.