Clipmarks | cduck19802002's clips

America’s Socialism for the Rich

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 05:38:51 GMT

clipped by: cduck19802002
clipper's remarks: Stiglitz should reexamine where he places blame but he's bang on otherwise.

Clip Source: www.project-syndicate.org

The old system worked well for the bankers

those America’s banks that are too big to fail are also too big to be managed

when a bank fails, the government engineers a financial restructuring; if it has to put in money, it, of course, gains a stake in the future

If they take big bets and win, they walk away with the proceeds; if they fail, the government picks up the tab

Rewriting the rules of the market economy – in a way that has benefited those that have caused so much pain to the entire global economy – is worse than financially costly

Their lobbying efforts worked well, first to deregulate, and then to have taxpayers pay for the cleanup. Their hope is that it will work once again to keep them free to do as they please, regardless of the risks for taxpayers and the economy.

U.S. Reforms No Pushover for Banks

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 05:14:58 GMT

clipped by: cduck19802002

Clip Source: online.wsj.com

There was immediate industry-group opposition to a proposal for a new regulator aimed at protecting consumers of financial products, to be called the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. In banking, fat profit margins can be made on products where borrowers aren't made clearly aware of a loan's potential costs.

Banks will likely also fight certain aspects of a plan to make large, systemically important institutions come under stricter supervision and face a capital surcharge

Moshe Kai Cavalin, 11, graduated from college

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 09:36:35 GMT

clipped by: cduck19802002

Clip Source: www.woodtv.com

"I want to be a movie actor and compete in the 2016 Olympics in martial arts," said Cavalin.

At a time when his peers are finishing 6th grade, this only child of a Taiwanese mother and an Israeli father is trying on a cap and gown preparing to graduate with a 4.0 from community college.

He's not only humble, he's also personable, outgoing and well rounded.

Moshe plays the piano, he's partial to Israeli folk songs and classical music, but his tastes are definitely varied.

"I feel it's a waste of time playing video games, I feel its a waste of time and it's not helping humanity in any way."

This avid book reader is also writing his own book intended to teach kids how to do well academically.
"I like to study just because knowledge goes to wisdom and only by wisdom can we help the world," said Cavalin.

Tags: good

Consumer borrowing plunges by $15.7B in April

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 00:58:33 GMT

clipped by: cduck19802002

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Borrowing by consumers fell by $15.7 billion in April

The Federal Reserve said Friday the April decline was the second largest ever in dollar terms

The April decline was more than double the $6 billion drop that economists had expected

Americans' personal savings rate jumped to 5.7 percent in April

The level of savings — $620.2 billion — was the most on records dating to January 1959

The category in Friday's report that includes credit card debt dropped at an annual rate of 11 percent in April

Auto loans and other non-revolving credit fell at an annual rate of 5.3 percent, following a 5.8 percent decline in March.

the government said the jobless rate jumped to a 25-year high of 9.4 percent in May as employers cut a net total of 345,000 jobs

The $15.7 billion drop in consumer borrowing in April left total consumer credit at $2.52 trillion. The Fed's measure of consumer credit does not include home mortgages or other loans secured by real estate.

Administration Is Near Finance Overhaul Plan

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 05:39:36 GMT

clipped by: cduck19802002
clipper's remarks: How do we regulate financial instruments such as CDS? I know teacher! Bring back Glass Steagall and get rid of GLB.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Under consideration is a new agency to regulate mortgages and credit cards, as well as tighter federal oversight of hedge funds and insurance

combining the four federal agencies overseeing banks and savings and loans into a single, super-regulator

the Office of Thrift Supervision, which was responsible for oversight of the American International Group, should be eliminated

Senator Christopher J. Dodd

and Representative Barney Frank

said they would be surprised if the Obama plan called for folding four bank regulatory agencies into one.

as much as the idea of concentrating too much power in the hands of one agency

The Department of Homeland Security makes me nervous for that very reason

there were too many bank regulators

A merger of two other federal agencies — the S.E.C. and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — would face fierce political resistance

how the federal government should more aggressively regulate insurance companies

credit-default swaps

how to regulate such instruments

Tags: acts, law

UC Berkeley researcher: Climate change hitting poor in the U.S. hardest

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 05:32:12 GMT

clipped by: cduck19802002
clipper's remarks: "California industries considered heavy emitters of greenhouse gases have a workforce that is 60 percent minority. Any climate plan that fails to transition those workers to new "green energy" jobs threatens to widen the racial economic divide.

It makes no difference to climate change, i.e. emissions trading and fee programs, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a dense urban neighborhood or an unpopulated rural area. But it can make a huge difference in public health.

Clip Source: www.insidebayarea.com

For instance, the report finds that African Americans living in Los Angeles are almost twice as likely to die as other Los Angelenos during a heat wave. Segregated in the inner city, they're more susceptible to the "heat island" effect, where temperatures are magnified by concrete and asphalt. Yet they're less likely to have access to air conditioning or cars.

Similarly, Latinos make up 77 percent of

California's agricultural workforce and will likely see economic hardship as climate change reworks the state's highest-value farm products.

Households in the lowest income bracket spend twice the proportion of their income on electricity

cost of energy will hurt the poor the most.

California industries considered heavy emitters of greenhouse gases have a workforce that is 60 percent minority. Any climate plan that fails to transition those workers to new "green energy" jobs threatens to widen the racial economic divide.

Tags: poverty, racism

GOP should declare bankruptcy

Fri, 29 May 2009 17:58:25 GMT

clipped by: cduck19802002

Clip Source: counterviews.com

The $3.5 trillion federal budget passed easily yesterday. There was little opposition--Why? Because there's no opposition party

the U.S. will borrow nearly $9.3 trillion over the next decade

national debt that would exceed 82 percent of the overall economy by 2019.

---The Congressional Budget Office puts next year's budget gap at nearly $1.4 trillion. And this year's deficit is now projected to soar past $1.8 trillion, or 13 percent of the economy -- the deepest well of red ink since the end of World War II.

The party’s former president was obsessed with Iraq. The party’s congressional representatives were obsessed with expensive pet projects. The GOP’s grassroots were obsessed with social issues.

The party must take full and complete responsibility for

devastating spending – which began when they were in power

Colin Powell's Truths

Wed, 27 May 2009 22:29:47 GMT

clipped by: cduck19802002
clipper's remarks: The republican party should beg Colin Powell to lead them back to prominence.

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

The sharpest dispute, it turned out, concerned interrogation practices discontinued six years ago.

"I didn't know he was still a Republican," observed Cheney, at his most terse and acerbic. Powell dismissed the comment as "misinformed," before criticizing the Republican Party as "very, very narrow."

In 1995, Powell pronounced himself unable "to find a perfect fit in either of the two existing parties" and floated the idea of running for president as an independent.

it is Powell to whom Republicans should be listening

Powell is calling attention to some unavoidable truths.

Powell is correct that the next successful Republican leader must include an element of nontraditional appeal. Powell cites as his ideal the recently deceased Jack Kemp, who "was as conservative as anybody" but who "believed in inclusiveness, reaching out" to minorities and the poor.

Big Oil Spends Bigger Money on Lobbyists

Tue, 26 May 2009 22:07:44 GMT

clipped by: cduck19802002
clipper's remarks: Private clean energy organizations are also lobbying more than ever.

Clip Source: www.cqpolitics.com

oil and gas industry players spent $37.3 million to lobby the federal government in the first three months of this year, 52 percent more than they did on average for the quarterly reporting periods in 2008

Clip Source: www.cqpolitics.com

ExxonMobil listed legislation that would have levied an additional tax on bonuses received from certain recipients of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP, PL 110-343).

California-based Chevron shelled out $6.8 million this past quarter, a little more than double the $3.2 million that was spent on average per quarter last year.

Solar energy equipment manufacturers spent $642,500 on lobbying in the first quarter of this year, a 128 percent increase over what they doled out on average for each quarter last year. Wind energy companies spent $1.4 million on lobbying, an 83 percent increase.

Clip Source: www.cqpolitics.com

“In defense of the industry, they are scared to death we are going to legislate them out of business,” he said.

Clip Source: www.cqpolitics.com

said G.K. Butterfield

Tags: lobbyists, oil, global warming

Credit card bill's impact to cardholders

Mon, 25 May 2009 00:59:12 GMT

clipped by: cduck19802002

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

card lenders will face new restrictions on rates and fees and be required to improve both the amount and speed of their disclosures.

"The average rate now is 13.8 percent and I could see it going north of 15 percent by early next year. When issuers report charge-off rates in the double digits, it's scary stuff."

Card companies will have to wait to raise rates on existing balances until borrowers are 60 days late

"Double-cycle" billing, where issuers look at balances over a two-month period to calculate finance charges, is out.

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

"Card companies are going to raise rates regardless

RATES RISE, CREDIT AVAILABILITY DROPS

US soldier gets life for Iraq rape

Fri, 22 May 2009 07:02:21 GMT

clipped by: cduck19802002

Clip Source: english.aljazeera.net

A former US soldier convicted of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killing her and her family, has been jailed for life, after a jury failed to agree on a death sentence.

Steven Dale Green, 24,

Green, 19 at the time of the crime, was described as the trigger-man in the group who donned black "ninja" outfits and raped Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi and shot her, her father, mother and six-year-old sister.

"Steven Green was responsible [for the rape and murders] but the United States of America failed Steven Green," Scott Wendelsdorf, a defence lawyer, told the jury in his final submission.

As representatives of the Iraqi family openly wept in court, Green smiled slightly when the jury gave its decision.

Why Ratings Are Failing Us

Mon, 18 May 2009 14:59:21 GMT

clipped by: cduck19802002
clipper's remarks: The only way out is to ban payments by issuers to rating agencies; this would force institutional investors to pick up the tab. They are the ones who need credible ratings in order to make smart investment decisions.

The economy can't recover until people trust that AAA means AAA.

Clip Source: www.newsweek.com

his guy had been told by his investment committee to purchase only high-quality bonds in the U.S. for his portfolio. So he invested in AAA-rated securities offered by major investment banks.

Unfortunately, he invested in the wrong AAAs—his were cut to D in only two days during the height of the credit crunch.

so many securities that were rated at or near AAA later experienced massive losses

Issuers of debt now provide 90 percent of the revenues for rating agencies. Naturally, they want the highest rating possible to reduce the cost of issuing debt. So, with the help of investment bankers, companies now go shopping to obtain the highest rating.

In this system, a conservative rating firm would turn out to be an underemployed rating firm

are protected from liability for malfeasance because ratings are deemed "speech" protected by the First Amendment

Firms can knowingly give a security a higher-than-deserved grade, safe in the knowledge that they can't be prosecuted for their "opinions."

Tags: global economics

We're headed for a whole new round of 'regulatory arbitrage'

Mon, 18 May 2009 14:50:28 GMT

clipped by: cduck19802002

Clip Source: www.newsweek.com

A crisis this fundamental calls for a complete rethinking of how Wall Street and other financial centers are regulated.

Because AIG bought a small savings and loan at one point, the giant parent company managed to place itself under the supervision of the tiny Office of Thrift Supervision-the financial equivalent of a gnat watching over an elephant. The result was that AIG's London finance unit went virtually unmonitored and wreaked disaster by selling credit default swaps worldwide. Countrywide Mortgage, one of the biggest peddlers of bad loans, used a similar strategy by also designating itself a thrift.

From 1932 to 1934 the Senate banking and currency committee held exhaustive hearings on the 1929 crash and found that commercial banks had misrepresented to their depositors

Tags: global economic meltdown

Credit Default Swaps: The Monster That Ate Wall Street

Mon, 18 May 2009 12:10:54 GMT

clipped by: cduck19802002
clipper's remarks: there's no central reporting mechanism to determine CDS value. That has clouded up the economy with billions of dollars' worth of black money

Clip Source: www.newsweek.com

By the mid-'90s, JPMorgan's books were loaded with tens of billions of dollars in loans to corporations and foreign governments, and by federal law it had to keep huge amounts of capital in reserve in case any of them went bad. But what if JPMorgan could create a device that would protect it if those loans defaulted, and free up that capital?

The country's biggest insurance company, AIG, had to be bailed out by American taxpayers after it defaulted on $14 billion worth of credit default swaps it had made to investment banks, insurance companies and scores of other entities.

credit default swaps were being used to encourage investors to buy into risky emerging markets such as Latin America and Russia by insuring the debt of developing countries

credit default swaps are privately negotiated contracts between two parties and aren't regulated by the government

Clip Source: www.newsweek.com

markets freak out and lenders pull back credit

Tags: economy

Financial deregulation; a timeline #1

Sun, 17 May 2009 17:07:19 GMT

clipped by: cduck19802002

Clip Source: www.netrootsmass.net

Treasury Department have concluded that the Government should encourage creation of very large banks

Formation of such large banks has been hampered by two of the nation’s principal banking laws: the Glass-Steagall Act of 1934, which separates underwriting and commercial banking, and the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, which prohibits nonbanking companies from owning banks.

Arthur Levitt Jr., a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, says Mr. Greenspan opposes regulating derivatives

The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 evolved from the bitter experience of the Depression, when American banking was in shambles. Left free to speculate in the 1920’s, banks naturally looked where profits seemed highest, and were inevitably drawn into risky propositions.

Greenspan said the Fed is not yet ready to recommend how far banks should be allowed to expand into insurance and real estate. Instead, he said, he would welcome legislation from Congress that would give the Fed guidelines.