Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Bain Capital Takes Center Stage At Republican Convention
HP | Amanda Terkel | 08/31/12

But Bain has faded fast. The company's name was barely mentioned throughout the convention, referred to obliquely as "a company" or "a great success story." Bain's relegation to anonymity was the result of attacks on the firm not just by Democrats, but by Romney's GOP primary opponents. Its reputation was further eroded by independent media reports of the private equity firm taking over companies, saddling them with debt, laying off workers, harvesting profits, and then putting them through bankruptcy, employing a business practice perhaps best explained by Tony Soprano. ... Read more

Bain Capital Explained By Tony Soprano
HuffingtonPost | Ryan Grim | 05/24/12

The national debate over private equity so far has hinged on the question of whether experience in the field qualifies Mitt Romney, the former Bain Capital executive, for the presidency. But a more vexing, and largely unanswered, question lies just beneath the surface: How is it, exactly, that an investment company can make millions even as the company it's ostensibly trying to turn around goes bust?

For that answer, we turned to what may seem like a less-than-reliable source: Tony Soprano.   The investors profit, it turns out, not despite the failure of the company, but in fact because of it. Read more

On Bernanke's Legacy In His Own Words
ZeroHedge | Author | 08/31/12

Overnight the WSJ's Jon Hilsenrath did his best to entirely redirect the discussion of Bernanke's legacy by setting up so many strawmen even TS Eliot would be totally lost. Instead of focusing on the person who was, together with his predecessor, was directly responsible for a crisis, which over the course of 30 years of "great moderation" pulled over $30 trillion in future demand to the present (benefiting almost exclusively the banker class), and which will guarantee pain and suffering for generations of Joe Sixpacks, he portrayed Bernanke in the light of St. Ben, or the person who may or may not have done enough to save Capitalism. We fail to fall for the bait. We hope nobody else will either. Which is why we present the following compilation of documented Chairsatan greatest hits from the public record. It speaks more than any planted article ever could. Read more

*TRNN | The GOP Goes Hard Right: Jeff Faux: Romney will try to mitigate the message (08/31/12) [14:43]

All Ron Paul's October 2011 GOP Debate answers [27:15]

*U.S. sets record arms sales in 2011
Center for Public Integrity | Aaron Mehta | 08/28/12

2011 was a very good year for U.S. arms sales, with more than triple the business from the year before.   According to a new report to Congress, worldwide sales of U.S. weapons last year added up to $66.3 billion. That accounts for more than three-quarters of 2011 arms sales worldwide, which is "the highest single year agreements total in the history of the U.S. arms export program."

In 2010, the U.S. authorized $21.4 billion in sales, which led CRS to describe the jump as "extraordinary." In terms of overall sales, Russia was distant second to the United States, having moved $4.8 billion. The previous record was in 2009, when the U.S. did almost $31 billion in sales.

Since the start of 2008, 81.4 percent of U.S. arms sales agreements have gone to the Middle East while 16.04 percent have gone to Asian countries. ... Read more

*Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital
Rolling Stones | Matt Taibbi | 08/29/12

Last May, in a much-touted speech in Iowa, Romney used language that was literally inflammatory to describe America's federal borrowing. "A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation," he declared. "Every day we fail to act, that fire gets closer to the homes and children we love." Our collective debt is no ordinary problem: According to Mitt, it's going to burn our children alive.

And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a "turnaround specialist," a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth. ...

... If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It's almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House. ... Read more

*John Boehner Backs Mitt Romney's False Welfare Claim
HuffingtonPost | Ryan Grim | 08/27/12/span>

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Monday backed Mitt Romney's false charge that President Barack Obama has ended welfare work requirements. ...

... Boehner's support of Romney's false charge plays into a larger strategy. The New York Times reported recently that the former governor's aides believe that the welfare attack "resonates with working-class voters who see government as doing nothing for them." ... Read more

*Paul Ryan Address: Convention Speech Built On Demonstrably Misleading Assertions
HuffingtonPost | Ryan Grim | 08/30/12

Paul Ryan pledged Wednesday that if he and his running mate Mitt Romney were elected president, they would usher in an ethic of responsibility. The Wisconsin congressman and GOP vice presidential candidate repeatedly chided President Barack Obama for blaming the jobs and housing crises on his predecessor, saying that his habit of "forever shifting blame to the last administration, is getting old. The man assumed office almost four years ago --- isn't it about time he assumed responsibility?" ...

... "We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers." ...

... After the speech, CNN's political commentators focused mostly on Ryan's misstatements, demonstrating the degree to which they were evident. ...

... Ryan, however, appears to have made the calculation that the misleading won't hurt him with voters. He might be right. CNN's David Gergen, while acknowledging some "misstatements" in Ryan's address, suggested that pundits focus elsewhere. "But let's not forget that this was a speech about big ideas," he told his audience.
Read more

What If Jesus Had Been A Republican?
AlterNet | James Martin | 08/26/12

This is a pretty interesting read. Go to the article on AlterNet and start reading about half way down the page at: "The Lazy Paralytic" .

The 5 Weirdest Bits in the 2012 GOP Platform
MotherJones | Adam Serwer | 08/29/12

The Republican Party platform for 2012 proclaims itself "a statement of who we are and what we believe as a Party and our vision for a stronger and freer America." It's also got some pretty strange things in it. Here are five of the weirdest: ... Read more

*Koch brothers have Paul Ryan's back
Politico | Bob King | 08/11/12

Critics of the Koch brothers should have a field day with Rep. Paul Ryan on the GOP ticket: They've been one of his biggest campaign contributors.   Koch Industries ranks as the Wisconsin Republican's sixth-largest source of campaign money throughout his career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which says the company's PAC and affiliated individuals have given him a total of $65,500 in donations. ... Read more

Even 'The Rich' Aren't Buying This Rally
ZeroHedge | Author | 08/30/12

Despite the near multi-year record highs in stock indices, which have typically correlated tick-for-tick with the-wealthy-people's view of the world, today's Bloomberg Consumer Comfort index sub-data has a rather nasty surprise in its tail. Those earning over $100k, the highest bracket interviewed in their survey, saw their 'comfort' plunge to its lowest of the year - massively diverging from the incessant rise in equity markets (and its supposed 'wealth effect' transmission channel). Read more

Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital
Rolling Stones | Matt Taibbi | 08/29/12

Last May, in a much-touted speech in Iowa, Romney used language that was literally inflammatory to describe America's federal borrowing. "A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation," he declared. "Every day we fail to act, that fire gets closer to the homes and children we love." Our collective debt is no ordinary problem: According to Mitt, it's going to burn our children alive.

And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a "turnaround specialist," a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth. ...

... If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It's almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House. ... Read more

'No Easy Day,' Bin Laden Raid Book: Osama Was Unarmed
HuffingtonPost | Marcus Baram | 08/28/12

The much-anticipated firsthand account of the Navy SEALs raid that killed Osama bin Laden reveals the terrorist leader was unarmed and was already dead with a bullet to the brain when the SEALs entered his bedroom in the compound at Abbottabad, Pakistan. ... Read more

TPP - The Pacific free trade deal that's anything but free
TheGuardian | Dean Baker | 08/27/12

... At this point, it's not really possible to discuss the merits of the TPP since the governments are keeping the proposed text a secret from the public. Only the negotiators themselves and a select group of corporate partners have access to the actual document. The top executives at General Electric, Goldman Sachs, and Pfizer probably all have drafts of the relevant sections of the TPP. However, the members of the relevant congressional committees have not yet been told what is being negotiated. ... Read more

The Hard Truth About Romney's Republican Party
HP | Robert L. Borosage | 08/29/12

But in fact, Mitt Romney's Republican Party isn't passionate about reducing deficits. A candidate that promises to hand out another $900 billion in tax breaks a year by 2015, mostly to the already wealthy, isn't focused on deficits. And telling "hard truths" is not a trait of a candidate who promises to pay for those tax cuts by closing loopholes he won't identify, and pledges deep cuts in spending but refuses to reveal what he would cut. While Tea Party and Christian Coalition activists may be the base of the party, Romney already has walked away from the extreme position on abortion. And a Romney administration won't waste much time or political capital trying to carry out the platform's draconian immigration posture or its anti-abortion promises, knowing Democrats will mobilize to stymie such efforts.

What this Romney-Ryan ticket represents in fact is clear: a preferential option for the rich and a punitive imposition on the poor. ... Read more

Ron Paul Delegates Cause Mayhem At Republican Convention
HuffingtonPost | Amanda Terkel | 08/28/12

A divided Republican Party was on full display Tuesday when Rep. Ron Paul's (R-Texas) supporters and other grassroots activists loudly booed House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on the first full day of the Republican National Convention. ... Read more

George W. Bush: The President Who Must Not Be Named At Republican Convention
HP | Sam Stein | 08/29/12

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright turned heads last week by saying that Democrats could very well blame George W. Bush's presidency forever for the nation's problems.   Republicans cried foul, arguing that it was well past time to move on from the former president. After all, they've basically expunged him from their memories. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Wednesday, August 29 [9:56]

DN | RNC Launches With Tea Party's Ted Cruz, Ann Romney & "We Built It" Theme Shaped By Karl Rove (08/29/12) [25:54]

TRNN | Lawrence Wilkerson: Failures of Obama administration opened door to far right revival (08/29/12) [10:23]

Donors Invest Millions In Romney For Billions In Returns
Bloomberg | Alison Fitzgerald | 08/29/12

Wealthy donors and corporations are more heavily invested in this presidential election than at any time since the 1972 Watergate scandal led to stricter campaign- finance laws.   A series of court decisions and regulatory changes in 2010 unraveled federal limits on donations, paving the way for a return of the big players. They are pooling their money in nonprofits, which keep contributor names secret, and super- political action committees, which amassed $350 million through the end of July.

One-quarter of that money comes from just 10 donors, led by Las Vegas casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based group that tracks such spending.   Top Republican contributors say they back the party's presidential candidate Mitt Romney because they agree with his small-government philosophy or oppose President Barack Obama's new regulations on banks and the health-care industry.   Yet Romney is more than just a political kindred spirit; he's a sound investment. Here's how a Romney presidency might pay off -- literally -- for some of these super-donors. ... Read more

Arctic Sea Ice Melted To Record Low Levels This Summer, National Snow and Ice Data Center Reports
HuffingtonPost | Seth Borenstein | 08/27/12

... Wagner and Scambos said in 2007 some people thought it was just an odd year that caused the dramatic melt, but years like this one show something bigger is happening.   This milestone is a "substantial step" to the day when there will be no significant sea ice in the Arctic in the summer, said NASA chief scientist Waleed Abdalati.

"Why do we care?," Abdalati, an ice scientist, asked. "This ice has been an important factor in determining the climate and weather conditions under which modern civilization has evolved."   Scientists sometimes call the Arctic the world's refrigerator and this is like leaving the fridge door open, Scambos said. ... Read more

One Man Against The Wall Street Lobby
HuffingtonPost | Simon Johnson | 08/25/12

On the other hand, there is a new powerful voice who knows how big banks really work and who is willing to tell the truth in great and convincing detail. Jeff Connaughton -- a former senior political adviser who has worked both for and against powerful Wall Street interests over the years -- has just published a page-turning memoir that is also a damning critique of how Wall Street operates, the political capture of Washington, and our collective failure to reform finance in the past four years. The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins, is the perfect antidote to disinformation put about by global megabanks and their friends. ... Read more

Libor Scandal's Potential Costs Exploding To $88 Billion Or More
HuffingtonPost | Mark Gongloff | 08/27/12

The latest estimates are found in a Wall Street Journal piece published Monday on all the lawyers piling up like brains-hungry zombies to file lawsuits against banks accused of manipulating Libor. The plaintiffs include small banks, like Berkshire Bank of New York, that claim they missed out on some sweet lending cash because rates were manipulated too low. They include state and local governments and other municipalities that say they lost money on interest-rate swaps because of Libor rigging. They include hedge funds and other investors who claim they were duped in trades with Libor manipulators.

The high-end estimate of the potential cost to the 16 banks being investigated in the Libor probe has risen to $176 billion, the WSJ writes, citing a July report by Australian firm Macquarie Research. Actually, the report (via zerohedge) suggested the banks might end up paying $88 billion in fines and settlements as a result of $176 billion in investor losses, but who's counting? ... Read more

Top Companies Paid 9% U.S. Tax Rate
NerdWallet | Author | 07/24/12

Below are the ten most profitable U.S. companies with their taxes for last year, both total provision and payments to the U.S. government. NerdWallet has also created a corporate tax rate tool with this information for 500 American companies. ... Read more

Documents Show Details on Romney Family Trusts
NYTimes | Nicholas Confessore, Floyd Norris and Julie Creswell | 08/24/12

Hundreds of pages of confidential internal documents from the private equity firm Bain Capital published online Thursday provided new details on investments held by the Romney family's trusts, as well as aggressive strategies that Bain appears to have used to minimize its investors' and partners' tax liabilities. ... Read more

Bankers Told to Watch What They Say at Bars
CNBC | Reuters | 08/27/12

... "Everyone is more paranoid, that's for sure," said one department head at a European investment bank, where the trading floor is festooned with posters reminding staff to report any suspicious behavior.   At his bank and at least one other European firm, executives said they were being asked to take part in an increasing number of behavioral coaching sessions, including simulations of pub outings. ... Read more

Americans Say Rich Are Greedy, Dishonest, Don't Pay Enough In Taxes: Pew Report
HuffingtonPost | Hope Yen | 08/27/12

As the income gap between rich and poor widens, a majority of Americans say the growing divide is bad for the country and believe that wealthy people are paying too little in taxes, according to a new survey.   The poll released Monday by the Pew Research Center points to a particular challenge for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, whose party's policies are viewed by a wide majority as favoring the rich over the middle class and poor.

The poll found that many Americans believe rich people to be intelligent and hardworking but also greedy and less honest than the average American. Nearly six in 10, or 58 percent, say the rich don't pay enough in taxes, while 26 percent believe the rich pay their fair share and 8 percent say they pay too much.

Even among those who describe themselves as "upper class" or "upper middle class," more than half -- or 52 percent -- said upper-income Americans don't pay enough in taxes; only 10 percent said they paid too much. This upper tier was more likely to say they are more financially secure now than 10 years ago -- 62 percent, compared to 44 percent for those who identified themselves as middle class and 29 percent for the lower class. They are less likely to report problems in paying rent or mortgage, losing a job, paying for medical care or other bills and cutting back on household expenses. ... Read more

Consumer Confidence In U.S. Declines By Most Since October
Bloomberg | Alex Kowalski | 08/28/12

Confidence among U.S. consumers fell in August by the most in 10 months as households grew more pessimistic about their employment prospects and the economic outlook.   The Conference Board's index decreased to 60.6 from a revised 65.4 in July, figures from the New York-based private research group showed today. The 4.8-point decrease was the biggest since October. Economists projected a reading of 66, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey. ... Read more

PUTIN'S GEO-POLITICAL CHESS GAME
Blog | F. William Engdahl | 07/25/12

Since reassuming his post as Russia's President, Vladimir Putin has lost no minute in addressing the most urgent geopolitical threats to Russia internationally. Not surprisingly, at the center of his agenda is the explosive situation in the Middle East, above all Syria. Here Putin is engaging every imaginable means of preventing a further deterioration of the situation into what easily could become another "world war by miscalculation." ... Read more

Disdain For The Poor Is Embraced By GOP As A Virtue
HuffingtonPost | Peter Goodman | 08/27/12

... People who depend upon the aid of the government via food stamps, unemployment checks and mortgage relief are typically written off as parasites and losers. Meanwhile, corporations that depend upon government largess for bailouts and subsidies and Tax write-offs are celebrated as paragons of free enterprise ... Read more

Lou Gerstner, Ex-IBM CEO: 'A Lot Of People In The Business Community Are Totally Fed Up' With Wall Street
HuffingtonPost | William D. Cohan | 08/27/12

... ... I am starting to get convinced. Even though there has been no accountability whatsoever for the Wall Street bankers, traders and executives who brought the American economy to its knees, the situation is so dire and the time to deal with it so short that the best option available is the one that Dimon, Welch, Gerstner and Wright agree on: Put aside the partisan bickering immediately and get the nation's true business and political leaders together to begin to solve our fiscal problems.

The former CEOs in that Nantucket gym agreed that a good place to start would be to raise taxes on the wealthy as part of a comprehensive tax and spending plan to achieve a modicum of fiscal responsibility. "Some of these problems can be fixed in a half an hour," Wright told the audience. The clock is ticking. ... Read more

*Be Careful What You Vote For! Be Very Careful
HuffingtonPost | Sherman Yellen | 08/26/12

but what I cannot so easily accept is the inevitability of the Romney/Ryan election. I find that this is the scariest, most dangerous election that America has faced in my lifetime, and I've been around long enough to experience quite a few frightening ones. ... Read more

*Mitt Romney After Bain Capital: Leaked Documents Connect Candidate To Adelson, Casinos, Cigarettes
HuffingtonPost | Jillian Berman | 08/23/12

... Though they are not nearly as revealing as the years of tax returns he refuses to release might be, they still have enough information and detail to make Romney uncomfortable. They show he has money indirectly invested in companies on which the Mormon church might frown and also highlight the lengths to which his complicated investments are shielded from taxes. ... Read more

*The Bain Files: Inside Mitt Romney's Tax-Dodging Cayman Schemes
Gawker | John Cook | 08/23/12

Mitt Romney's $250 million fortune is largely a black hole: Aside from the meager and vague disclosures he has filed under federal and Massachusetts laws, and the two years of partial tax returns (one filed and another provisional) he has released, there is almost no data on precisely what his vast holdings consist of, or what vehicles he has used to escape taxes on his income. Gawker has obtained a massive cache of confidential financial documents that shed a great deal of light on those finances, and on the tax-dodging tricks available to the hyper-rich that he has used to keep his effective tax rate at roughly 13% over the last decade. ... Read more

Romney: I'll Share My Pro-Oil Energy Plan With My Donors, But Not the Press
campaignmoney.org | Kurt Walters | 08/22/12

"Mitt Romney returned to Texas oil country Tuesday to fuel his campaign coffers with nearly $7 million raised in just one day, largely with money from top energy industry executives," according to a report from NBC news yesterday. ... Read more

Several People Shot Near Empire State Building, NYPD Says
Bloomberg | David McLaughlin | 08/24/12

As many as 10 people were injured, four of them shot, after a gunman opened fire near the Empire State Building in Manhattan, said Detective Martin Speechley. One of the man's victims died, the New York Times reported, citing an unidentified official.   Police killed the gunman, Speechley said.

Emergency personnel arrived soon after a call about the shooting came in about 9 a.m., prompting police to close Fifth Avenue near 34th Street and diverting traffic in busy Midtown, according to television reports on WABC 7. ... Read more

U.S. West Coast expecting major quake following Japan disaster
Magazine | Author | date

Japan's devastating earthquake has raised concerns among geoscientists that the West Coast of the United States is likely to be next. From southern California to Alaska, the coastline shares its geography with the San Andreas fault and the Cascadia subduction zone, both of which scientists say, are primed for a major quake. ...
Video Reuters | U.S. West Coast expecting major quake following Japan disaster [3:54]

US drone strikes target rescuers in Pakistan -- and the west stays silent
TheGuardian | Glenn Greenwald | 08/20/12

Attacking rescuers -- a tactic long deemed by the US a hallmark of terrorism -- is now routinely used by the Obama administration ... Read more

Matt Taibbi, Eliot Spitzer Discuss Eric Holder's Failure
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 08/22/12

Got a chance to talk with Eliot Spitzer last night about Eric Holder's decision not to prosecute Goldman Sachs for the offenses laid out in the Levin report. ... Read more

HAZMAT in USA on Wednesday, 22 August, 2012 at 03:18 (03:18 AM) UTC
RSOE Report | Author | 08/22/12

As part of the biggest, costliest environmental cleanup project in the nation's history - disposing of 53 million gallons of radioactive waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state - one thing was supposed to be sure: Waste stored in the sturdy, double-wall steel tanks that hold part of the toxic ooze wasn't going anywhere. But that reassurance has been thrown into question with the discovery of a 3-foot-long piece of radioactive material between the inner and outer steel walls of one of the storage tanks, prompting new worries at the troubled cleanup site. "We're taking it seriously, and we're doing an investigation so we can better understand what it is," Department of Energy spokeswoman Lori Gamache said. The discovery marks the first time material has been found outside the inner wall of one of the site's 28 double-shell tanks, thought to be relatively secure interim storage for the radioactive material generated when Hanford was one of the nation's major atomic production facilities. It opened in 1943 and began a gradual shutdown in 1964. Cleanup started in 1989. The $12.2-billion cleanup project eventually aims to turn most of the waste stored at Hanford into glass rods at a high-tech vitrification plant scheduled to be operational in 2019, assuming the formidable design and engineering hurdles can be overcome. In the meantime, plant engineers have been gathering waste stored in the facility's 149 aging, leaky single-wall storage tanks and redepositing them in the double0-shell tanks for safekeeping. Over the years, more than 1 million gallons of waste has leaked out of 67 single-wall tanks into the surrounding soil. ... Read more

Wall Street Lobbies to Prevent SEC Changes to High Frequency Trading and Stock Market Structure
HuffingtonPost | Jeff Connaughton | 08/23/12

In August 2009, then Senator Ted Kaufman wrote SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro to urge her to study quickly how dramatic changes in our stock markets had in only a few years time led to an explosive growth in computerized trading. THE PAYOFF: Why Wall Street Always Wins, written by Jeff Connaughton (Kaufman's chief of staff), tells how the letter triggered an "air wing" of Wall Street executives to fly to Washington and lobby Congress and the SEC Read more

How Scientists Stopped Klebsiella Pneumoniae: Deadly Superbug Killed 6 At NIH Clinical Center
HuffingtonPost | Lauran Neergaard | 08/22/12

Over six frightening months, a deadly germ untreatable by most antibiotics spread in the nation's leading research hospital. Pretty soon, a patient a week was catching the bug. Scientists at the National Institutes of Health locked down patients, cleaned with bleach, even ripped out plumbing -- and still the germ persisted. ... Read more

Boeing Loses Qantas Order For 35 Dreamliners After Delays
Bloomberg | David Fickling | 08/23/12

Qantas Airways Ltd. (QAN) canceled an order for 35 Boeing Co. (BA) 787-9s after posting its first annual loss in at least 17 years because of higher fuel costs, labor disputes and rising competition on international routes. ... Read more

Target Cheaper Than Wal-Mart As Gap Widest In Two Years
Bloomberg | Author | 08/23/12

Target Corp. (TGT) is living up to the second half of its "Expect more. Pay less." slogan by winning the latest round in its pricing battle with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) ... Read more

5 Reasons Why the Ryan-Romney Economic Plan Would Be A Disaster for America
HuffingtonPost | Robert Reich | 08/20/12

Mitt Romney hasn't provided details so we should be grateful he's selected as vice president a man with a detailed plan Romney says is "marvelous," "bold and exciting," "excellent," "much needed," and "consistent with" what he's put out.   So let's look at the five basic features of this "marvelous" Ryan plan. ... Read more

Food riots predicted over US crop failure
Aljazeera | Robert Kennedy | 08/21/12

The world is on the brink of a food "catastrophe" caused by the worst US drought in 50 years, and misguided government biofuel policy will exacerbate the perilous situation, scientists and activists warn.

When food prices spike and people go hungry, violence soon follows, they say. Riots caused by food shortages - similar to those of 2007-08 in countries like Bangladesh, Haiti, the Philippines and Burkina Faso among others - may be on the horizon, threatening social stability in impoverished nations that rely on US corn imports. ... Read more

Tilling the Ground for the Seeds of Terrorism
HuffingtonPost | Rep. Dennis Kucinich | 08/22/12

After more than 10 years of war against al Qaeda and the accompanying global "war on terrorism," we have failed to learn that our actions create reactions. Our presence creates destabilization, then radicalization. Occupations create insurgencies. In Afghanistan, we have fueled the very insurgency we struggle to fight. ... Read more

How the US army protects its trucks -- by paying the Taliban
TheGuardian | Aram Roston | 11/12/09

Insurance, security or extortion? The US is spending millions of dollars in Afghanistan to ensure its supply convoys get through -- and it's the Taliban who profit. ... Read more

'Dirty Dancing': 25 Things You Didn't Know About The Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey Classic
MoviePhone | Gary Susman | 08/21/12

Admit it: You've seen "Dirty Dancing" more times than you'd care to admit. You're drawn in by its blend of music, dance, nostalgia, and romance between macho-yet-tender Johnny (Patrick Swayze) and awkward-yet-brave Baby (Jennifer Grey) every time it's on TV. Which is often: it seems to have been running on endless loop since its release 25 years ago, on August 21, 1987. ... Read more

Why have no banking executives been prosecuted?
CBS News | Author | 2007

In the summer of 2007, Steve Kroft and his producer Frank Devine began reporting on something called "subprime lending." Little did they know, they'd be following that story through five years of global economic tumult. ... Read more

Understanding derivatives: The deadliest weapon on Wall Street
CBS News | Author | 08/05/08

... "Nobody really knew what could happen next," Steve Kroft recalls. "And after a while, you began to realize that it was because there was no regulation of derivatives. And no regulation of credit default swaps period. Nobody knew how many there were. Nobody knew who owned them. And it was incredibly scary." ... Read more

How Nonprofits Spend Millions on Elections and Call it Public Welfare
ProPublica | Author | 08/19/12

Matt Brooks describes the mission of the Republican Jewish Coalition as educating the Jewish community about critical domestic and foreign policy issues.   But the well-dressed crowd that gathered in May for a luncheon on the 24th floor of a New York law firm easily could have figured that the group had a different purpose: Helping Mitt Romney win the presidency. ... Read more

Peter Thiel, Early Facebook Investor, Sells Even More Shares, Donates To Tea Party PAC
HuffingtonPost | Barbara Ortutay | 08/20/12

Peter Thiel, one of Facebook's earliest investors and a member of its board, was among the insiders selling stock in the social network after a lockup expired last week.   A regulatory filing on Monday said that Thiel, a former CEO at PayPal sold about 20 million shares of Facebook through affiliates such as his Founders Fund and other entities last week. The shares were sold on Thursday and Friday for between $19.27 and $20.69, for a total of about $396 million.

Though Facebook's stock has lost nearly half of its value since its initial public offering, Thiel made out well. As one of Facebook's initial investors, he first invested $500,000 in the company in 2004. He sold 16.8 million shares in the company's May initial public offering for about $640 million. With last week's sale, Thiel has now sold most of his stake in the company. ... Read more

ATP Oil And Gas Files For Bankruptcy, CEO Blames Obama
ZeroHedge | Author | 08/18/12

Now that the "alternative energy" industry is in shambles following one after another solar company bankruptcy, as the realization that at current prices, alternative energy business models are still just too unsustainable, no matter how much public equity is pumped into them, more "traditional" companies have resumed circling the drain. First, it was Patriot Coal, which finally succumbed to reality a month ago. Now it is the turn of ATP Oil and Gas, which filed Chapter 11 in Texas last night. ... Read more

Paul Ryan Defended Stimulus -- When George W. Bush Wanted It In 2002
HuffingtonPost | Ryan Grim | 08/18/12

When Congressman Paul Ryan has been asked the past few years about the value of stimulus to the sagging economy and the nation's jobless, the Wisconsin Republican has dismissed it as meaningless, and dubbed it "sugar-high economics."

But that's when President Obama is pushing for the spending. When it was President George W. Bush arguing for more stimulus to boost a slow economy in the early 2000s, Ryan's economic analysis was entirely different. ... Read more

Top Companies Paid 9% U.S. Tax Rate
Financial Markets Tools & Research | Joanna | 07/24/12

A recent NerdWallet study found that the top ten most profitable American companies paid an average of 9% of their pre-tax earnings in taxes to the U.S. federal government last year. These same companies reported an average tax provision of 32%.   This information is available for 500 of America's largest companies in the NerdWallet Tax Rate Transparency Tool. ... Read more

Rich Companies that Pay Executives, but not much Tax
Financial Markets Tools & Research | Joanna | 07/26/12

The following U.S. companies each earned over $1 billion in pre-tax profits in the most fiscal year and paid their top executive over $25 million dollars. Yet all of these American companies paid less of their income to the U.S. federal government than the average American taxpayer. ... Read more

Goldman Non-Prosecution: AG Eric Holder Has No Balls
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 08/15/12

... In the notorious Hudson transaction, for instance, Goldman claimed, in writing, that it was fully "aligned" with the interests of its client, Morgan Stanley, because it owned a $6 million slice of the deal. What Goldman left out is that it had a $2 billion short position against the same deal.   If that isn't fraud, Mr. Holder, just what exactly is fraud? ... Read more

Krugman: Ryanomics Is And Always Has Been A Con Game
NYTimes | Paul Krugman | 08/19/12

... Let's talk about what's actually in the Ryan plan, and let's distinguish in particular between actual, specific policy proposals and unsupported assertions. To focus things a bit more, let's talk -- as most budget discussions do -- about what's supposed to happen over the next 10 years.

On the tax side, Mr. Ryan proposes big cuts in tax rates on top income brackets and corporations. He has tried to dodge the normal process in which tax proposals are "scored" by independent auditors, but the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has done the math, and the revenue loss from these cuts comes to $4.3 trillion over the next decade.

On the spending side, Mr. Ryan proposes huge cuts in Medicaid, turning it over to the states while sharply reducing funding relative to projections under current policy. That saves around $800 billion. He proposes similar harsh cuts in food stamps, saving a further $130 billion or so, plus a grab-bag of other cuts, such as reduced aid to college students. Let's be generous and say that all these cuts would save $1 trillion. ... Read more

HMS Hood Bell Recovery: Royal Navy Enlists 'Octopus,' Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen's Megayacht
HuffingtonPost | Ryan Grenoble | 08/15/12

Their mission, according to CNN: recover the bell from the HMS Hood, a British battle cruiser sunk by the German battleship Bismarck in 1941.

Their vessel: Octopus, a 414-foot yacht loaned to the British Navy by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The Octopus comes equipped with a 10-man submarine and remote-controlled submersible that should aid in finding and bringing the bell to the surface. Less critical, (but still likely to see some use), are Octopus' basketball court, spa, small fleet of jet skis, and multiple helicopter pads. ... Read more
Octopus Yacht Video

Mr. Romney's 'garbage'
WashingtonPost | Author |08/18/12

FORMER GOVERNOR Mitt Romney, the presumed Republican nominee for president, promises to lower everyone's income tax rate without reducing revenue. This sounds terrific. Why didn't we think of it sooner? ... Read more

Romney advisers confirm it: We're running a 'just trust me' campaign
WashingtonPost | Greg Sargent | 08/17/12

... The Romney strategy is simple: Hammer away at Obama for proposing cuts to Medicare and promise, in vague, aspirational ways, to protect the program for future retirees -- but don't get pulled into a public discussion of the most unpopular parts of the Ryan plan. ... Read more

A presidential campaign that's not serving the country
WashingtonPost | Author | 08/17/12

THE WEEK STARTED with hope that the presidential campaign would take an overdue turn to substance, and it has -- sort of. Perhaps it shouldn't surprise anyone, but the past few days have shown that modern politics can transform any serious issue into a demagogic slugfest. ... Read more

South Africa Mine Shooting: More Than 30 Striking Workers Killed
HuffingtonPost | Author | 08/17/12

South African police officers killed more than 30 miners who charged them at a Lonmin PLC platinum mine, authorities said Friday, as a national newspaper warned that a time bomb ticking over poor South Africans has exploded. ... Read more

Get Ready for a Catastrophic War: Israel Likely to Strike Iran Before November Elections
AlterNet | Ray McGovern | 08/13/12

More Washington insiders are coming to the conclusion that Israel's leaders are planning to attack Iran before the U.S. election in November in the expectation that American forces will be drawn in. There is widespread recognition that, without U.S. military involvement, an Israeli attack would be highly risky and, at best, only marginally successful. ... Read more

Bush Tax Cuts Saved 57 CEOs More Than $1 Million Each Last Year
AlterNet | Author | date

The Bush tax cuts, again, are set to expire at the end of the year, and President Obama haspromised to veto any extension of the cuts on income in excess of $250,000. Of course, Republicans are opposed to anything but a complete extension.   In a new report, the Institute for Policy Studies shows just how unnecessary the tax breaks on high income are, noting that last year, 57 of the top 100 CEOs in the country saved more than $1 million due to the Bush tax cuts alone: ... Read more

Trapwire: It's Not the Surveillance, It's the Sleaze
WireMagazine | Noah Shachtman | 08/14/12

... The documents show Stratfor being less than straight with its clients, using temporary jobs in government to set up Trapwire contracts, and calling it all a "wet dream." In their e-mails, executives at Stratfor may have been hyping up a surveillance technology. But what they really did was provide reconnaissance on the $25 billion world of intelligence-for-hire that's ordinarily hidden from public view. In this case, the sunlight isn't particularly flattering. ... Read more

Romney Tax Math Gets Easier With More Breaks On Table

Bloomberg | Author | 08/17/12

Mitt Romney's tax plan is more arithmetically feasible than previously estimated and more politically difficult, according to an updated analysis from the authors of a nonpartisan tax study.   The Tax Policy Center had initially calculated that Romney would need to shift $86 billion of the federal tax burden in 2015 from top earners to everyone else to meet other goals in his fiscal plan, because there aren't enough tax breaks for high earners to offset rate cuts for that group. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Thursday, August 17 [11:39]

Wes Clark - America's Foreign Policy (10/03/07) [7:36]

Finland prepares for expected euro zone break up
Reuters | Author | 08/16/12

European leaders must prepare for the looming break up of the euro zone, Finland's foreign minister, Erkki Tuomioja, said in the Daily Telegraph on Friday. ... Read more

The West Has Just Become A Giant Banana Republic
ZeroHedge | Author | 08/16/12

Legal precedent means nothing. Rule of law means nothing. Free speech means nothing. Their own treaties mean nothing. It's unbelievable. Anyone in the west who honestly thinks he's still living in a free society is either a fool or completely out of touch. If that seems too radical an idea, consider that ECUADOR is now the only nation which stands to defend freedom and human rights against an assault from the United States, the United Kingdom, and their spineless allies. The west has just become a giant banana republic. Have you hit your breaking point yet? If not now, when? ... Read more

Media: This race is a disgrace
Politico | Kevin Cirilli | 08/15/12

Even the media's had enough.   The race for the White House has grown so toxic that it's become a top topic among reporters and analysts covering the contest - and some are even calling on President Barack Obama and presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney to call a truce.

"You thought last week was bad? Just when you thought last week's third grade insults were as low as the campaign could go here, here we go again, the campaign has gotten even uglier," MSNBC's Chuck Todd said Wednesday. "It's not faux outrage, it's real outrage. Over the last 24 hours, the attacks from both sides have reached a new level of vitriol." ... Read more

Paul Krugman: Paul Ryan Budget Proposal 'Just A Fantasy, Not A Serious Policy Proposal'
HuffingtonPost | Paul Krugman | 08/13/12
Read more

What Paul Ryan's budget actually cuts -- and by how much
WashingtonPost | Brad Plumber | 08/13/12
Read more

The Worst Part of Paul Ryan's Budget
TheAtlantic |Derek Thompson | 03/21/12
Read more

Americans' Views On Economy Are Most Pessimistic Since November
Bloomberg | Author | 08/16/12

... "The American public appears to have tired of running harder to stand still, expressing their displeasure with the current state of economic affairs in the country and their own personal finances," said Joseph Brusuelas, a senior economist at Bloomberg LP in New York. ... Read more

HSBC, Credit Suisse Sacrifice Employees To U.S., Lawyers Say
Bloomberg | Giles Broom | 08/16/12

Swiss banks are turning over thousands of employee names to U.S. authorities as they seek leniency for their alleged role in helping American clients evade taxes, according to lawyers representing banking staff. At least five banks supplied e-mails and telephone records containing as many as 10,000 names to the U.S. Department of Justice, according to estimates by Douglas Hornung, a Geneva- based lawyer representing 40 current and former employees of HSBC Holdings Plc's Swiss unit, Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) and Julius Baer Group Ltd. (BAER) The data handover is illegal, said Alec Reymond, a former president of the Geneva Bar Association, who is representing two Credit Suisse staff members. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Thursday, August 16 [13:16]

Aljazeera | Inside Story Americas - Goldman Sachs: Off the hook? (08/11/12) [25:53]

Goldman Non-Prosecution: AG Eric Holder Has No Balls
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 08/15/12

... Last year I spent a lot of time and energy jabbering and gesticulating in public about what seemed to me the most obviously prosecutable offenses detailed in the report -- the seemingly blatant perjury before congress of Lloyd Blankfein and other Goldman executives, and the almost comically long list of frauds committed by the company in its desperate effort to unload its crappy "cats and dogs" mortgage-backed inventory. ... Read more

Israel Plans For Iran Strike As Citizens Say Government Serious
Bloomberg | Calev Ben-David | 08/14/12

Dozens of Israelis crowded in front of a storefront at a Jerusalem shopping mall yesterday to pick up new gas masks, part of civil defense preparations in case the military strikes Iran and the Islamic Republic or its allies retaliate. ... Read more

Charting Morgan Stanley's $60 Billion Crushing Of IPO Animal Spirits
ZeroHedge | Author | 08/14/12

Since November of 2011, Morgan Stanley has 'successfully' brought three of the biggest disasters of Silicon Valley to market - GRPN, ZNGA, and of course, most recently, FB (Facebook). ... Read more

Western Wildfires 2012: Blaze Destroys 60 Homes In Washington
Reuters | Jonathan Kaminsky | 08/14/12

Firefighters battled wildfires across the U.S. West on Tuesday, including a massive out-of-control blaze that has destroyed at least 60 homes and burned more than 28,000 acres between two national forests in Washington state. ... Read more

Defense Hawks, Rejoice--Paul Ryan's Your Man!
DailyBeast | Eli Lake | 08/11/12

With the Republican Party's foreign-policy establishment at odds over central questions on national security, the selection of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's choice for vice president tilts the ticket closer to the neoconservatives on key questions about America's role in the world and the size of the military. ... Read more

Paul Ryan: 7 Great Reads on Romney's Running Mate
DailyBeast | Andrew Carter | 08/11/12

Who is this guy, anyway? Read up on the Wisconsin congressman, from last week's definitive New Yorker profile to a revealing interview with Ezra Klein. ... Read more

What Paul Ryan Brings to the Romney Ticket
DailyBeast | Peter J. Boyer | 08/11/12

Tapping Paul Ryan gives Romney a ticket mate who believes the problems facing the country are too serious to demagogue. Good luck with that. ... Read more

Reflections on Paul Ryan's Transactions in Individual Bank Stocks in 2008
HuffingtonPost | Brad DeLong | 08/13/12

In Paul Ryan, The Right at Last Has Their Man
HuffingtonPost | Bill Moyers | 08/13/12

Eliot Spitzer: A Climate Change Fix Conservatives Can Love
MotherJones | Eliot Spitzer | 08/14/12

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Tuesday, August 14 [13:59]

Just How Libertarian Is Paul Ryan?
MotherJones | Dave Gilson | 08/13/12
Read more

Eliot Spitzer Extra: 'The worst election that money can buy': How 30 billionaires might choose our president (07/24/12) [1:04]

The Ryan Choice
HuffingtonPost | Robert Reich | 08/12/12

Paul Ryan is the reverse of Sarah Palin. She was all right-wing flash without much substance. He's all right-wing substance without much flash.   Ryan is not a firebrand. He's not smarmy. He doesn't ooze contempt for opponents or ridicule those who disagree with him. In style and tone, he doesn't even sound like an ideologue -- until you listen to what he has to say.

It's here -- in Ryan's views and policy judgments -- we find the true ideologue. More than any other politician today, Paul Ryan exemplifies the social Darwinism at the core of today's Republican Party: Reward the rich, penalize the poor, let everyone else fend for themselves. Dog eat dog. ... Read more

View On High Frequency Trading
ZeroHedge | Author | 08/12/12

In our last letter, we made some comments on high-frequency trading. Why is this important? Because more than half of the trading volume in equities in the main world exchanges is driven high-frequency trades today (More than 70% of volume in the US exchanges alone). ... Read more

Glass-Steagall Act (1933)
NYTimes | Author | 1933

The Glass-Steagall Act, also known as the Banking Act of 1933 (48 Stat. 162), was passed by Congress in 1933 and prohibits commercial banks from engaging in the investment business.

It was enacted as an emergency response to the failure of nearly 5,000 banks during the Great Depression. The act was originally part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program and became a permanent measure in 1945. It gave tighter regulation of national banks to the Federal Reserve System; prohibited bank sales of securities; and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which insures bank deposits with a pool of money appropriated from banks. ... Read more

The coming glut in oil -- and its impact
Reuters | Chrystia Freeland | 08/09/12

Until very recently, our collective assumption was that oil was running out. That was partly a matter of what seemed like geological common sense. It took millions of years for the earth to crush plankton into fossil fuels; it is logical to think that it would take millions of years to create more. The rise of the emerging markets, with their energy-hungry billions, was a further reason it seemed obvious we would have less oil and gas in 2020 than we do today.

Obvious -- but wrong. Thanks in part to technologies like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking, we are entering a new age of abundant oil. ... Read more

We May Be in for a Movie-like Apocalyptic Event: Hunger Games for Real
AlterNet | Tom Dispatch | 08/07/12

The Great Drought of 2012 has yet to come to an end, but we already know that its consequences will be severe. With more than one-half of America's counties designated as drought disaster areas, the 2012 harvest of corn, soybeans, and other food staples is guaranteed to fall far short of predictions. This, in turn, will boost food prices domestically and abroad, causing increased misery for farmers and low-income Americans and far greater hardship for poor people in countries that rely on imported U.S. grains. ... Read more

10 Most Obscene Lifestyles Choices of America's 1% Elite
AlterNet | David Sirota | 03/21/12

... The same cannot be said of some of these candidates' cronies in the 1 percent. Whether complaining about having to do their own dishes, or bragging about their car garages costing more than the average American makes in a lifetime, the 1 percenters are all but screaming "let them eat cake" from the ramparts. Here are 10 particularly egregious examples from the last few months. ... Read more

Municipal bankruptcy: The lessons of California
LATimes | Thomas Ferguson | 07/30/12

... Simply put, in the aftermath of the financial crisis emanating from Wall Street, the federal financial mess is bleeding over into state budgets in profound ways, adding enormous costs to already overburdened state coffers. That spillover, in conjunction with broader national crises in finance and healthcare, is overwhelming state and federal finances. ... Read more

Neil Barofsky on the "Broken Promises" of the Bank Bailouts
PBSFontline | Jason M. Breslow | 08/01/12

"By any objective standards, the Trouble Asset Relief Program [TARP] has worked," the Treasury Department wrote in a July progress report (PDF) on the $700 billion program that Congress authorized in 2008. "It helped stop widespread financial panic, it helped prevent what could have been a devastating collapse of our financial system, and it did so at a cost that is far less than what most people expected at the time the law was passed."

Neil Barofsky sees it much differently. From December 2008 to March 2011, Barofsky, a formal federal prosecutor and lifelong Democrat, served as special inspector general of TARP, charged with protecting against abuse and fraud in the program. In his new book about that experience, Bailout, he writes that the American people "should be enraged by the broken promises to Main Street and the unending protection of Wall Street." ... Read more

Flame and Stuxnet Cousin Targets Lebanese Bank Customers, Carries Mysterious Payload
WiredMagazine | Kim Zetter | 08/09/12

... According to Kaspersky, Gauss appears to have been created sometime in mid-2011 and was first deployed in September or October of last year, around the same time that DuQu was uncovered by researchers in Hungary. DuQu was an espionage tool discovered on machines in Iran, Sudan, and other countries around August 2011 and was designed to steal documents and other data from machines. Stuxnet and DuQu appeared to have been built on the same framework, using identical parts and using similar techniques. Flame and Stuxnet also shared a component, and now Flame and Gauss have been found to be using similar code as well. ... Read more

60Minutes | Wall Street: The Speed Traders (10/10/10) [13:36]

Enron The Smartest Guys In The Room (09/01/11) [1:49:19]

60Minutes | Your Bank Has Failed (03/08/09) [13:20]

Goldman Sachs Programmer Back in Court on New Charges
WiredMagazine | Kim Zetter | 08/09/12

Just when he thought his troubles were over, a former programmer for Goldman Sachs who downloaded source code for the investment firm's high-speed trading system from the company's computers is back in New York state court on new charges that he unlawfully duplicated and used the company's proprietary code.

Sergey Aleynikov was re-arrested last week, according to his attorney, and is being arraigned in Manhattan criminal court Thursday afternoon on state charges of "unlawful use of secret scientific material" and "unlawful duplication of computer related material." ...

... Aleynikov, 42, was convicted in 2010 under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 (EEA), in a high-profile case that was held up by federal prosecutors as an example of the Justice Department's serious intent to prosecute the theft of intellectual property and trade secrets. ... Read more

Goldman Gets Off Scott Free
HuffingtonPost | Reuters | 08/09/12

WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department said it will not pursue criminal charges against Goldman Sachs Group Inc or its employees related to accusations that the firm bet against the same subprime mortgage securities it was selling to clients.   The decision not to prosecute Goldman, a firm held up by critics as a symbol of Wall Street greed during the 2007-2009 financial crisis, highlights the difficulty in prosecuting crisis-related cases. ... Read more

Exclusive: U.S. banks told to make plans for preventing collapse
Reuters | Rick Rothacker | 08/10/12

U.S. regulators directed five of the country's biggest banks, including Bank of America Corp and Goldman Sachs Group Inc, to develop plans for staving off collapse if they faced serious problems, emphasizing that the banks could not count on government help.

The two-year-old program, which has been largely secret until now, is in addition to the "living wills" the banks crafted to help regulators dismantle them if they actually do fail. It shows how hard regulators are working to ensure that banks have plans for worst-case scenarios and can act rationally in times of distress. ... Read more

JPMorgan Chase Libor Subpoenas Coming From Everybody In The World
HuffingtonPost | Mark Gongloff | 08/09/12

Pretty much everybody in the world with subpoena power has hit JPMorgan Chase with requests for information in the Libor-rigging scandal.   The biggest U.S. bank revealed the extent of its involvement in the probe in a filing Thursday morning with the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying regulators in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Switzerland and more had asked it for information. ... Read more

Mitt Romney Started Bain Capital With Money From Families Tied To Death Squads
HuffingtonPost | Ryan Grim | Cole Stangler | 08/09/12

In 1983, Bill Bain asked Mitt Romney to launch Bain Capital, a private equity offshoot of the successful consulting firm Bain & Company. After some initial reluctance, Romney agreed. The new job came with a stipulation: Romney couldn't raise money from any current clients, Bain said, because if the private equity venture failed, he didn't want it taking the consulting firm down with it.

When Romney struggled to raise funds from other traditional sources, he and his partners started thinking outside the box. Bain executive Harry Strachan suggested that Romney meet with a group of Central American oligarchs who were looking for new investment vehicles as turmoil engulfed their region.

Romney was worried that the oligarchs might be tied to "illegal drug money, right-wing death squads, or left-wing terrorism," Strachan later told a Boston Globe reporter, as quoted in the 2012 book "The Real Romney." But, pressed for capital, Romney pushed his concerns aside and flew to Miami in mid-1984 to meet with the Salvadorans at a local bank. ... Read more

Mitt Romney's $12 Million Mystery Man
MotherJones | Andy Kroll | 08//12

Meet Carl Forti, the super-PAC whiz helping the GOP front-runner and conservative groups rake in piles of dark money. ... Read more

Ranchers Send Cows To Slaughter As U.S. Drought Sears Pasture
Bloomberg | Alan Bjerga | 08/10/12

The grass in Melvin Korte's 280 acres of pasture in northern Missouri is dead, burnt away in the worst drought in the Corn Belt in more than a half-century. Now he's doing all he can to keep his herd of 63 cattle alive. ... Read more

Aral Sea Reborn
Aljazeera | Author | 07/21/12

The Aral Sea was once the world's fourth largest lake. The World Bank and the Kazakh government spend millions of dollars to re-fill the sea and help revive its ecosystems. ... Read more

Global Warming's Terrifying New Math
RollingStone | Bill McKibben | 07/19/12

If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven't convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere -- the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe. ... Read more

Mitt Romney Sure Does Lie a Lot, Doesn't He?
MotherJones | Kevin Drum | 08/09/12

Paul Waldman has done a lot of academic research on political ads. In fact, he says, he has personally watched "every single presidential general election campaign ad ever aired since the first ones in 1952." So what does he think of Mitt Romney's new ad that claims President Obama has a plan for "dropping work requirements" for welfare? "Under Obama's plan," says the narrator, "you wouldn't have to work and wouldn't have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check."

I've seen ads that were more inflammatory than this one, and ads that were in various ways more reprehensible than this one (not many, but some). But I cannot recall a single presidential campaign ad in the history of American politics that lied more blatantly than this one. ... Read more

Charts: Just How Small Is the Super-PAC Gazillionaire Club?
MotherJones | Andy Kroll | 08/05/12

The 2012 elections are on track to be the nastiest in recent memory. By the tail end of primary season, in May, 70 percent of all presidential campaign ads were negative, up from a mere 9 percent at the same point in 2008. The culprits for this spike in attack ads were super-PACs and shadowy nonprofits, which together dominate the growing universe of outside political groups poised to spend billions of dollars this election season.

Now a new report from the liberal think tank Demos and the nonpartisan US Public Interest Research Group has revealed how what has been called a "tsunami of slime" is funded by a tiny cadre of wealthy donors. ... Read more

Neil Barofsky on the "Broken Promises" of the Bank Bailouts
PBSFontline | Jason M. Breslow | 08/01/12

"By any objective standards, the Trouble Asset Relief Program [TARP] has worked," the Treasury Department wrote in a July progress report (PDF) on the $700 billion program that Congress authorized in 2008. "It helped stop widespread financial panic, it helped prevent what could have been a devastating collapse of our financial system, and it did so at a cost that is far less than what most people expected at the time the law was passed."

Neil Barofsky sees it much differently. From December 2008 to March 2011, Barofsky, a formal federal prosecutor and lifelong Democrat, served as special inspector general of TARP, charged with protecting against abuse and fraud in the program. In his new book about that experience, Bailout, he writes that the American people "should be enraged by the broken promises to Main Street and the unending protection of Wall Street." ... Read more

The State of Reform: Dodd-Frank at Two Years Old
PBSFontline | Jason M. Breslow | 07/26/12

It was two years ago this Saturday that President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank financial reform into law. The landmark legislation -- which clocks in at more than 2,000 pages -- was meant to rein in a financial system that brought the economy to the brink of collapse in 2008. But push-back from industry lobbyists and Republicans in Congress has kept key aspects of the law from taking effect. ... Read more

The Pentagon's Shocking Cover-Up Of The Afghan National Military Hospital Scandal
BuzzFedd | Michael Hastings | 08/07/12

Top U.S. commanders in Afghanistan waged a sophisticated public relations campaign to obscure horrific conditions at the Afghan National Military Hospital, according to former U.S. military officials, Congressional investigators, and new photographic evidence obtained by BuzzFeed. ... Read more

Guest Post: US Government Proposes Law Making It Illegal For Them To Kill You
ZeroHedge | Author | 08/07/12

Last Friday, US Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced HR 6357, a bill which aims to 'prohibit the extrajudicial killing of United States citizens' by the federal government. In other words, in the Land of the Free, they need to pass a law to prevent the government from indiscriminately murdering its own citizens. Now if this doesn't give one reason to pause and consider the distortions of liberty that have taken place in western civilization, I don't know what will. Ask yourself, are you really living in a free society? Are you free? If not, why not? What else could possibly be more important? ... Read more

Libor, Naked and Exposed
NYTimes | Gary Gensler | 08/06/12

AMERICANS who save for the future, use credit cards or borrow money for tuition, cars and homes deserve assurance that the interest rates on their savings and loans are set in a reliable and honest way. ... Read more

Standard Chartered (Bank) Falls Most In 24 Years On Iran Probe
Bloomberg | Gavin Finch | 08/07/12

Standard Chartered Plc (STAN) fell the most in almost 24 years as an analyst estimated it may face costs of $5.5 billion after being accused of violating U.S. money laundering laws over its dealings with Iranian banks.   The shares fell 23 percent to 1,132 pence by 10:42 a.m. in London trading, their biggest decline since 1988, the earliest date for which data are available.

Standard Chartered may lose its license to operate in New York after the state's Department of Financial Services found the bank conducted $250 billion of deals with Iranian banks over seven years and earned hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for handling transactions for institutions subject to U.S. ... Read more

Iran accusations wipe $17 billion off StanChart shares
Reuters | Lawrence White | 08/07/12
Read more

Romneys, caught in housing bust, got tax cut in La Jolla
LATimes | Robin Abcarian | 08/05/12

Reassessment of their $12-million home, one of many reductions in San Diego County, has saved $109,000 over four years. ... Read more

Fed must do more, its Boston chief says
BostonGlobe | Steven Syre | 08/07/12
Read more

When Did Sandy Weill Change His Mind About Too Big To Fail? And Why?
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 08/03/12

former Citigroup chairman Sandy Weill, in which the creator of the Too-Big-To-Fail model told an astonished Andrew Ross Sorkin that it was time to break up the Too-Big-To-Fail banks. But one moment in particular flew under the radar: ... Read more

Ludicrous Times Op-Ed Forgets Entire Year of Wall Street History
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 03/01/12

Why this was funny: Through his ambitious (and at the time not yet legal) decision to merge Citibank, Travelers, and Salomon Brothers into one giant wrecking ball of greed, self-dealing and global irresponsibility called Citigroup, Weill more or less single-handedly created the Too-Big-To-Fail problem. You know, the one currently casting that thick, black doomlike shadow over all humanity which, if you look out your window, you can see floating over all our heads this very minute. ... Read more

California Nuke Simulator Is World's Most Powerful Computer
WiredMagazine | Robert McMillan | date

With 1.5 million processing cores, Livermore's Sequoia supercomputer weighs about the same as 30 elephants, and it can do more calculations per second than any machine ever built. How many? 16.3 quadrillion a second, according to benchmark numbers researchers at the national lab submitted for international supercomputing benchmarking contest called the Top500 list. In benchmarking terms, that translates to 16.3 petaflops per second.

... Sequoia will simulate nuclear explosions to a degree that was previously impossible, but it will also give researchers insight into what's happening to weapons in the country's weapons stockpile without actually testing nuclear bombs. ... Read more

Great Lakes Water Temperatures At Record Levels
ClimatCentral | Andrew Freedman | 07/25/12

Looking to escape to the beach this summer? Well, before you book that trip to Cape Cod or the Outer Banks of North Carolina, you might want to consider an unorthodox option -- the shores of Lake Superior. The lake, which is the northernmost, coldest, and deepest of the five Great Lakes, is the warmest it has been at this time of year in at least a century, thanks to the mild winter, warm spring, and hot, dry summer. ... Read more

Mars rover Curiosity lands on Red Planet

Mars Rover Landing: Curiosity Lands Early Monday Morning
HuffingtonPost | Author | 08/06/12

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has touched down on the surface of the Red Planet, completing a 154-million-mile journey, and marking the beginning of a new era in planetary exploration. ... Read more

Wade Michael Page Identified As Sikh Temple Shooting Suspect
HuffingtonPost | Author | 08/06/12

The suspect in the Sikh temple shooting who killed six in Wisconsin on Sunday has been identified as 40-year-old Wade Michael Page.   Authorities told CBS News this morning that Page -- who was also killed in a shootout with cops -- opened fire at a suburban Milwaukee temple, critically wounding three and killing six worshipers during Sunday services. ... Read more

Sikhism: 5 Things To Know About The Sikh Religion
HuffingtonPost | Author | 08/06/12

In light of the tragic shooting at the Wisconsin Sikh Temple, HuffPost Religion offers this brief introduction to Sikhism in hopes of increasing understanding and appreciations for this great world religion.   Sikhism is the fifth largest religion in the world with a population of upwards of 30 million worldwide. There are an estimated 250,000 Sikhs in the United States having first arrived in the late 19th century. ... Read more

Stop rigging system against small business
Politico | Elizabeth Warren | 08/05/12

... Washington politicians line up 10-deep to claim they support small businesses, but they avoid talking about a harsh reality: The system is rigged against small business. These owners can't afford armies of lobbyists in D.C., but the big corporations can. It's those armies of lobbyists that create the loopholes and special breaks that let big corporations off the hook for paying taxes. While small businesses are left to pay the bills. ... Read more

Does Cybercrime Really Cost $1 Trillion?
ProPublica | Peter Maass | 08/01/12

... Alexander warned that cyberattacks are causing "the greatest transfer of wealth in history," and he cited statistics from, among other sources, Symantec Corp. and McAfee Inc., which both sell software to protect computers from hackers. Crediting Symantec, he said the theft of intellectual property costs American companies $250 billion a year. He also mentioned a McAfee estimate that the global cost of cybercrime is $1 trillion. "That's our future disappearing in front of us," he said, urging Congress to enact legislation to improve America's cyberdefenses.

These estimates have been cited on many occasions by government officials, who portray them as evidence of the threat against America. They are hardly the only cyberstatistics used by officials, but they are recurring ones that get a lot of attention. In his first major cybersecurity speech in 2009, President Obama prominently referred to McAfee's $1 trillion estimate. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the main sponsors of the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 that is expected to be voted on this week, have also mentioned $1 trillion in cybercrime costs. Last week, arguing on the Senate floor in favor of putting their bill up for a vote, they both referenced the $250 billion estimate and repeated Alexander's warning about the greatest transfer of wealth in history. ... Read more

Draghi Heads Toward Fed-Style QE Bond-Purchase Plan: Euro Credit
Bloomberg | Mark Gilbert | 08/03/12

The European Central Bank is edging toward a bond-buying program that investors say could end up printing money, echoing efforts by the Federal Reserve and other central banks to fix a credit crisis nearing its sixth year. ...

... "I sense from Draghi's comments he is inching toward QE and now trying to get other ECB members to sign that off. It seems to me inevitable."   The Fed bought $2.3 trillion of mortgage and Treasury debt from 2008 to 2011 in two rounds of so-called quantitative easing to cap borrowing costs. ... Read more

Why Washington Accepts Mass Unemployment
NYTimes | Jonathan Chait | 08/03/12

Good news! The economy added 163,000 jobs last month, just a bit over the level required to keep up with population growth. A return to a free fall now seems less likely. On the other hand, there is the small footnote that the return to full employment is nowhere in sight. The recovery looks safe for those of us who are not already screwed. That, sadly, has come to be the primary focus of our economic policy. ... Read more

*Mandatory Budget Cuts From Sequestration Slammed By Republicans As 'Dumb,' 'Terrible'
HuffingtonPost | Michael McAuliff | 08/02/12

Republicans are sounding increasingly angry with the deficit-cutting deal, which was pushed through by their own leadership in the House, passing Congress last summer, and requires deep cuts to the military budget starting at the end of 2012. ... Read more

Knight Capital Shares Rally After Report Of Credit Line
Bloomberg | Michael P. Regan | 08/03/12

Knight shares jumped 23 percent to $3.17 at 9:47 a.m. after the Wall Street Journal said the credit line will allow the company to operate for the day and Knight asked firms to resume routing trades as usual. The newspaper cited people familiar with the matter. Knight spokeswoman Kara Fitzsimmons didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. The shares had plunged 75 percent in the previous two sessions.

Jersey City, New Jersey-based Knight, one of the biggest American market makers, is exploring strategic and financial alternatives as a software malfunction cost the company almost four times what it earned last year. ... Read more

*John Tamny and the Problem with Fractional Reserve Banking
ZeroHedge | Author | 08/03/12

John Tamny of Forbes is one of the more informed contributors in the increasingly dismal state of economic commentating. Tamny readily admits he is on the libertarian side of things and doesn't give into the money-making game of carrying the flag for a favored political party under the guise of a neutral observer. He condemns the whole of the Washington establishment for our current economic woes and realizes that government spending is wasteful in the sense that it is outside the sphere of profit and loss consideration. In short, Tamny's column for both Forbes and RealClearMarkets.com are a breath of fresh air in the stale rottenness of mainstream economic analysis. ... Read more

Interactive: US, Yemen lead the world in guns
Aljazeera | Mohammed Haddad | 07/26/12

On July 20, 2012, a lone gunman killed 12 and injured dozens more in a Colorado movie theatre, during a screening of Batman: The Dark Knight Rises. The tragedy has drawn renewed attention to the United States' unique relationship with firearms. Civilians in the US own an estimated 270 million guns, a higher number than any other country. ... Read more

global warming, physicist Richard Muller now says "global warming is real"
Democracy Now | Author | 08/02/12

Christian Leaders Blast GOP Tax Bill
HuffingtonPost | Chris Lisee | 08/02/12

A coalition of liberal Christian leaders blasted a GOP budget plan that would extend Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy while slashing key provisions for the poor. ... Read more

Knight Has 'All Hands On Deck' After $440 Million Bug
Bloomberg | Whitney Kisling | 08/02/12

Knight Capital Group Inc. (KCG) has "all hands on deck" and is in close contact with creditors, clients and counterparties as it tries to weather trading errors that cost it $440 million, Chief Executive Officer Thomas Joyce said.

Joyce said it's "hard to comment" on discussions with creditors as Knight stock extended a two-day plunge to 77 percent and the firm explored strategic and financial alternatives following a loss almost four times its annual profit. The problems were triggered by what Joyce called "a large bug" in software as the company, one of the largest U.S. market makers, prepared to trade with a New York Stock Exchange program catering to individual investors. Some clients refrained from doing business with the firm today. ... Read more

U.S. Stocks Fall For 4th Day As ECB'S Draghi Disappoints
Bloomberg | Rita Nazareth | Brian Womack

U.S. stocks fell, sending the Standard & Poor's 500 Index down for a fourth straight day, after European Central Bank President Mario Draghi failed to reassure investors on immediate efforts to bolster the economy.   Alcoa Inc. (AA), JPMorgan (JPM) Chase & Co. and General Electric Co. (GE) dropped at least 1.7 percent to pace losses in the biggest companies. Knight Capital (KCG) Group Inc. plunged 64 percent after saying losses from a trading breakdown are $440 million, more than some analysts had estimated, as it explores strategic and financial alternatives. General Motors Co. (GM) slid 2.2 percent as the automaker said second-quarter profit slumped 38 percent. ... Read more

Facebook Slump Continues After Two Senior Executives Exit
Bloomberg | Brian Womack| Brian Womack

... The most populous U.S. state's $91.3 billion budget, signed by Governor Jerry Brown in June, counted on $1.9 billion in income-tax revenue when company insiders such as Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg exercise options, assuming a per-share price of $35. Read more

Mitt Romney's Pork Barrel Olympics

The Romney campaign will run television ads during the games touting the candidate's experience as CEO of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, where he was widely credited with turning around the scandal-plagued organizing effort.

What Romney doesn't talk about is how he succeeded in Utah with government help -- lots of it -- and how millions in assistance that he pried out of the feds ended up bankrolling subsidies, sweetheart deals, and giveaways for land developers and other well-connected Utahns. ... Read more

America Has the World's Luckiest Billionaires
MotherJones | Josh Harkinson | 07/30/12
Read more

David Siegel, Florida Real Estate Mogul, Claims To Be 'Personally Responsible' For George W. Bush's 2000 Victory
HuffingtonPost | Adam Goldberg | 07/31/12

David Siegel, the Florida real estate mogul behind timeshare company Westgate Resorts, claims that he was "personally responsible" for George W. Bush's 2000 presidential victory. When the subject comes up in a newly released documentary, Siegel declines to elaborate, stating, "it may not necessarily have been legal." ... Read more

Jim Rogers, Commodities Trader, Profits From Drought-Driven High Corn Prices
HuffingtonPost | D.M. Levine | 07/31/12

Across the Midwest, one of the worst droughts in decades is ravaging crops and driving the price of corn and other basics to record heights. It's bad news for consumers, who will pay more at the supermarket as crops whither in the punishing heat.   But famed commodities trader and finance author Jim Rogers is making money.   Since the beginning of June, the index he owns -- the Rogers International Commodities Index for Agriculture, or RICIA, has jumped 18 percent. The index, which tracks the price of crops globally, is up roughly 10 percent for the year. Read more

The Increasing US Shadow Wars in Africa
MotherJones | Nick Turse | 07/12/12

They call it the New Spice Route, an homage to the medieval trade network that connected Europe, Africa, and Asia, even if today's "spice road" has nothing to do with cinnamon, cloves, or silks. Instead, it's a superpower's superhighway, on which trucks and ships shuttle fuel, food, and military equipment through a growing maritime and ground transportation infrastructure to a network of supply depots, tiny camps, and airfields meant to service a fast-growing US military presence in Africa. ... Read more
Original story ay TomDispatch.com
Nick Turse, The Changing Face of Empire

The Nature of the U.S. Military Presence in Africa
Colonel Tom Davis response back to Nick Turse
MotherJones | Author | 07/27/12

We read the recent article "Secret Wars, Secret Bases, and the Pentagon's 'New Spice Route' in Africa" with great interest. It is clear the author, Nick Turse, conducted a great deal of research, including reaching out to us, and we welcomed the opportunity to highlight US Africa Command's mission and activities. However, there were several inaccuracies and misrepresentations that we would like to address. ... Read more

The Nature of the U.S. Military Presence in Africa page 2
Nick Turse respaose back to Colonel Tom Davis
MotherJones | Author | date

Thank you very much for your note. It's flattering that you and your colleagues read my article, "Obama's Scramble for Africa: Secret Wars, Secret Bases, and the Pentagon's 'New Spice Route' in Africa," with such interest. It's always gratifying to know that a piece has had an impact on readers. ... Read more

As U.S. Postal Service Faces Default, Critics See Manufactured Crisis to Speed Up Privatization
DemocracyNow.org | Author | 08/01/12

For months, Americans have heard dire warnings about the impending collapse of the United States Postal Service due to fiscal insolvency. As Republicans push to privatize the post office, the agency is now bracing for its first-ever default today. Unlike every other governmental agency, the postal service is required to fund 75 years of retiree health benefits over just a 10-year span. ... Read more