Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Angela Merkel: Big Loser Of Eurozone Showdown
Retuers | Author | 06/30/12

Angela Merkel was portrayed across Europe as the big loser of a euro zone showdown in Brussels after the German chancellor was forced to accept the crisis-fighting measures championed by countries struggling with their debts. ... Read more

The Euro Zone Is No Worse Than the United States
Truthout | Paul Krugman | 06/29/12
Interesting article comparing EU States and USA States

As we contemplate the euro mess, there's a strong tendency to think of it as having a lot to do with the fundamental inequalities in overall productivity and economic development between euro members -- backward, semideveloped countries like Greece or Portugal (not my view, but what you often hear) awkwardly tied to powerhouses like Germany. ... Read more

Xi Jinping, the man in line to be China's next president, warned officials on a 2004 anti-graft
Bloomberg | Author | 06/29/12
Interesting read on China's Elite

Xi Jinping, the man in line to be China's next president, warned officials on a 2004 anti-graft conference call: "Rein in your spouses, children, relatives, friends and staff, and vow not to use power for personal gain." ... Read more

Virginia, D.C., Maryland Derecho 2012: Aggressive Storm System Heads Toward Nation's Capital
HuffingtonPost | Author | 06/29/12

According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, a derecho "is a widespread, long-lived wind storm that is associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms. Although a derecho can produce destruction similar to that of tornadoes, the damage typically is directed in one direction along a relatively straight swath." ... Read more

Michael Marin, Ex-Wall Street Trader, Dies In Courtroom After Conviction
HuffingtonPost | Author | 06/29/12

... Though he had grown accustomed to a lifestyle that reportedly included owning Picasso sketches and $800 climbing boots, Marin's financial situation grew dire the year before the fire. His bank account balance fell to only $50 from $900,000 even while he had a monthly mortgage payment of more than $17,000, according to the Arizona Republic. ... Read more

Ten Reasons Not to Bank On (or With) Bank of America
Truthout | Nomi Prins | 06/29/12

There is no shortage of hatred for the biggest banks. Indeed, the Occupy Wall Street movement is leading a national revolution against these Byzantine, powerful Goliaths for the economic devastation they have caused. This makes it difficult to choose the worst of the bunch. That said, a strong case can be made that Bank of America deserves the title of the nation's most despised bank.   Here are ten reasons to take your money out of Bank of America - and park it at a credit union or community bank near you. ... Read more

China hails space mission's success as crew returns to Earth
Reuters | Michael Martina | 06/29/12

China's Shenzhou 9 spacecraft returned to Earth on Friday, ending a mission that put the country's first woman in space and completed a manned docking test critical to its goal of building a space station by 2020.   The spacecraft's gumdrop-shaped return capsule descended to Earth by parachute and touched down shortly after 10 a.m. EDT (0200 GMT) in China's northwestern Inner Mongolia region with its three-member crew, including female astronaut Liu Yang. ... Read more

Reuters | China launches space mission [1:24]

Bernie Sanders blasts 'oligarchic form' of U.S. government
HuffingtonPost | Eric W. Dolan | 06/27/12

... "The wealthy people in this country are becoming wealthier, the middle class is disappearing and poverty is increasing," Sanders said. "Now, when we talk about an oligarchic form of government, what we're talking about is not just a handful of families owning entire nations. We're also talking about the politics of the nation." ... Read more

Matt Davis, Former GOP Spokesman, Suggests 'Armed Rebellion' After Supreme Court Ruling
HuffingtonPost | Benjamin Hart | 06/28/12

... Matt Davis, a Michigan attorney who was once the state Republican Party's spokesman, sent out an email that asked whether armed rebellion would be justified in the wake of the court's decision. ... Read more

Worst wildfire ever in Colorado claims first victim
Reuters | Keith Coffman | 06/29/12

A wildfire that forced the evacuation of 35,000 people from the edge of Colorado's second-largest city has killed at least one person and incinerated 346 homes, making it the most destructive blaze in state history, officials said on Thursday.   Lighter winds helped firefighters gain new ground against the inferno, which had roared unchecked on Tuesday night through communities in the northwestern corner of Colorado Springs and threatened the U.S. Air Force Academy campus in town. ... Read more

From Nazi to Terminator, Europe's media target Merkel
Reuters | Madeline Chambers | 06/28/12

Demonized in Europe's media as a red-eyed Terminator robot, a flabby centerfold pinup and a fleshy Roman god eating Greeks, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has become the subject of a new wave of vitriol for her tough stance on the euro zone crisis. ... Read more

European Stocks Fall As EU Leaders Hold Summit
Bloomberg | Sarah Jones | 06/28/12

European stocks retreated after Spain's bond yields surged and Germany's unemployment rate rose more than forecast as a two-day summit of the region's leaders started in Brussels.

Barclays Plc (BARC) plunged 16 percent after fines for falsifying London interbank-offered rate submissions sparked speculation lawsuits will follow. Commerzbank AG (CBK) sank 7.2 percent as the lender issued new shares.   The Stoxx Europe 600 Index slid 0.5 percent to 244.67 at the close in London, after earlier dropping as much as 1.3 percent. The benchmark measure has fallen 10 percent from its high in March, paring its gain for the year to 0.1 percent, as the euro area's sovereign-debt crisis threatened a slowdown in global growth. ... Read more

Supreme Court Health Care Decision: Individual Mandate Survives
HuffingtonPost | Mike Sacks | 06/28/12

The individual health insurance mandate is constitutional, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday, upholding the central provision of President Barack Obama's signature Affordable Care Act.   The 5-4 majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld the mandate as a tax, although concluded it was not valid as an exercise of Congress' commerce clause power. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined in the majority. ... Read more

JPMorgan Trading Loss Reportedly May Reach $9 Billion
HuffingtonPost | Author | 06/28/12

Shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. tumbled in premarket trading Thursday as a published report said that the bank's losses on a bad trade may reach as much as $9 billion -- far higher than the estimated $2 billion loss disclosed last month.   In May, JPMorgan said the loss came from trading in credit derivatives that was designed to hedge against financial risk, and not to make a profit for the New York bank. ... Read more

U.S. Stocks Fall As JPMorgan Tumbles On Trading Report
Bloomberg | Rita Nazareth | 06/28/12

JPMorgan slumped 2.9 percent after the New York Times said the trading losses may exceed the firm's initial estimate. Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and Citigroup Inc. (C) decreased at least 3.5 percent. U.S. health-care stocks remained lower after the Supreme Court upheld President Barack Obama's overhaul of the industry. Family Dollar Stores Inc. (FDO) retreated 8 percent after the retailer narrowed its fiscal 2012 profit forecast. ... Read more

GOP-style jobs program
WashingtonPost | Dana Milbank | 06/27/12

"Here in the House," Speaker John Boehner announced after meeting with his caucus Wednesday morning, "Republicans are going to continue to stay focused on jobs."   It's true. Technically, House Republicans are focused on jobs: Eric Holder's and President Obama's. They want to put both men out of work. Tying up this administration is Job One for the opposition party, and never more so than this week. ... Read more

Colorado wildfire destroys hundreds of homes; further assessment will come soon, officials say
WashingtonPost | AP | 06/28/12

Colorado Springs officials said Thursday that hundreds of homes have been destroyed by a raging wildfire that has encroached on the state's second-largest city and threatened the U.S. Air Force Academy.   Mayor Steve Bach said a more accurate account will be available later in the day of the damage from a blaze that has burned out of control for much of the week and forced more than 30,000 evacuees to frantically pack up belongings and flee. ... Read more

Korean Drought Worst In A Century For North And South Korea
HuffingtonPost | AP | 06/26/12

North Korea dispatched soldiers to pour buckets of water on parched fields and South Korean officials scrambled to save a rare mollusk threatened by the heat as the worst dry spell in a century gripped the Korean peninsula. ... Read more

Draghi (ECB - Europe Central Bank) May Enter Twilight Zone Where Fed Fears To Tread
Bloomberg | Jana Randow | 06/27/12

... cutting the deposit rate from 0.25 percent is no longer a taboo, two euro-area central bank officials said on June 15.   "The European recession is worsening, the ECB has to do more," said Julian Callow, chief European economist at Barclays Capital in London, who forecasts rates will be cut at the ECB's next policy meeting on July 5. "A negative deposit rate is something they need to consider but taking it to zero as a first step is more likely." ... Read more

Colorado Wildfires 2012: Waldo Canyon Fire Erupts, 32,000 Evacuated
HuffingtonPost | Solomon Banda | 06/26/12

WOODLAND PARK, Colo. -- More than 2,100 residents were being evacuating from the Air Force Academy's grounds Tuesday night as heavy smoke billowed from a wildfire that has burned homes near Colorado Springs. ... Read more

Breaking Up Big Banks Hard To Do As Market Forces Fail
Bloomberg | Christine Harper | 06/27/12

The stocks of five of the six biggest U.S. banks -- JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Citigroup Inc. (C), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS) -- are languishing at or below tangible book value. That means the pieces are worth more than the whole, Price said. ... Read more

Wall Street Wins Neither With Obama Nor Romney Amid Glare
Bloomberg | Jason Kelly | 06/27/12

Campaign season has been rough on Wall Street, with President Barack Obama demonizing Bain Capital Partners LLC when challenger Mitt Romney was its leader, and Romney himself bringing unwanted scrutiny to private equity.   Wall Street has decided overwhelmingly to back Romney so far. The Republican has collected $9.4 million from the investment and securities industry, according to the Washington- based Center for Responsive Politics. Obama has amassed $3.4 million, hurt by comments about "fat cat bankers" and an advertising campaign against Romney's private-equity record. ... Read more

The Supreme Court's Rightward Shift
MotherJones | Dave Gilson | 06/26/12

If the Supreme Court strikes down all or part of the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, it will undoubtedly cement the Roberts court's reputation as the most conservative in years. That's not an entirely a matter of opinion. Thanks to an amazing trove of data collected by law professors Andrew Martin and Kevin Quinn and the Supreme Court Database, the court's rightward trajectory can be confirmed. ... Read more

George Soros: Germany Has 3 Days Left To Save Eurozone Through Fiscal Union
HuffingtonPost | Bonnie Kavoussi | 06/25/12

Billionaire investor George Soros says Germany has three days left to spearhead the creation of the "embryo" of a European fiscal union in order to save the eurozone. ... Read more

Fears Accompany Fishermen in Japanese Disaster Region
NYTimes | HIROKO TABUCHI | 06/25/12

The catch from six small fishing boats, the first to resume commercial fishing in the waters off Fukushima since last year's nuclear catastrophe, went on sale at local supermarkets on Monday, raising hopes and concerns in a region struggling to return to something like normal. ... Read more

Big Bank CEO Pay Spiked An Average Of 12 Percent In 2011, Study Says
HuffingtonPost | Bonnie Kavoussi | 06/25/12
Read more

US Army General Warns of Impending Fukushima Doom
PRWeb | Author | 05/14/12

... General Stubblebine details in his riveting video the amounts of radioactive materials that will be propelled across the Pacific and across the United States if the Fukushima reactor structures (especially Spent Fuel Pool Number 4) collapse. With over 15,000 'spent fuel rods' on the site, the Fukushima reactors have accumulated one of the largest stockpiles of these dangerous, intensely radioactive materials on the planet. ... Read more

European Bloodbath As Merkel Won't Go Dutch
ZeroHedge | Author | 06/25/12

Equity, credit, and sovereigns all ugly. Merkel's unequivocal comment on her nation's unwillingness to 'share' burdens and slap the proverbial cheek of Monsieur Hollande, Italy's banking union looking for more 'aid', Spain actually asking for their bailout, Greece 'avoiding' reality, and Cyprus pulling the 'China rescue plan' last ditch retort to market angst; but apart from that, things are dismal in Europe. ... Read more

Europe fears spook equities, euro
Reuter | Emelia Sithole-Matarise | 06/25/12

Equities hit a one-week low and Spanish borrowing costs rose on Monday as investors worried that policymakers at a European summit this week would make little progress in solving the debt crisis that is hurting world economic growth. ... Read more

Greek PM to miss EU summit; hopes fade of major action
Reuter | Author | 06/25/12

Illness means both Greece's new prime minister and finance minister will miss an anxiously awaited summit of European leaders later this week and delayed a visit by the country's international lenders.. ... Read more

U.S. Banks Aren't Nearly Ready for Coming European Crisis
Bloomfield | Simon Johnson | 06/24/12

... Even the optimists now say openly that Europe will only solve its problems when the alternatives look sufficiently bleak and time has run out. Less optimistic people increasingly think that the euro area will break up because all the proposed solutions are pie-in-the-sky. If the latter view is right -- or even if concern about dissolution grows in coming months -- markets, investors, regulators and governments need to worry not just about interest-rate risk and credit risk, but also dissolution risk. ... Read more

Follow the Dark Money
MotherJones | Andy Kroll | 07/01/12

"There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can't remember what the second one is."--Mark Hanna, 19th-century mining tycoon and GOP fundraiser. ... Read more

Lawmakers reworked financial portfolios after talks with Fed, Treasury officials
WashingtonPost | Kimberly Kindy, Scott Higham | 06/24/12

In January 2008, President George W. Bush was scrambling to bolster the American economy. The subprime mortgage industry was collapsing, and the Dow Jones industrial average had lost more than 2,000 points in less than three months.   House Minority Leader John A. Boehner became the Bush administration's point person on Capitol Hill to negotiate a $150 billion stimulus package.

Boehner is one of 34 members of Congress who took steps to recast their financial portfolios during the financial crisis after phone calls or meetings with Paulson; his successor, Timothy F. Geithner; or Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, according to a Washington Post examination of appointment calendars and congressional disclosure forms. ... Read more

Congressional rules on trading had their start in 1789
WashingtonPost | Kimberly Kindy | 06/23/12

... It was 1789, and state-backed revolutionary war bonds had become virtually worthless. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton moved in to shore up the investments.   Before word spread, members of Congress secretly scooped up thousands of the bonds from unsuspecting farmers and war veterans, paying pennies on the dollar. ... Read more

Romney to Latinos: Pay No Attention to That Man From the GOP Primary
MotherJones | Adam Serwer | 06/21/12

During the Republican Primary, Mitt Romney had a very clear position on immigration: All unauthorized immigrants need to leave.   Heading into the general election, Romney's position on immigration now sounds more like a relationship status on Facebook: It's complicated. ... Read more

IMF Sees Euro Crisis At Critical Stage, Sees Bank Stress
Bloomberg | Jeff Kearns | 06/21/12

The euro area crisis has reached a "critical stage" and member nations must make a "strong commitment" to the shared currency to stop the plunge in investor confidence, the International Monetary Fund said in a report that recommended issuing common debt as one solution. ... Read more

Mario Monti: we have a week to save the eurozone
TheGuardian | John Hooper | 06/21/12

Italy's prime minister, Mario Monti, has warned of the apocalyptic consequences of failure at next week's summit of EU leaders, outlining a potential death spiral that could threaten the political and economic future of Europe.   The Italian leader is to hold talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, the French president, François Hollande, and Spain's prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, in the hope that the single currency's big four countries can pave the way for a breakthrough at next week's meeting. ... Read more

The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 06/21/12
Another Great article by Matt Taibbi

The defendants in the case -- Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm -- worked for GE Capital, the finance arm of General Electric. Along with virtually every major bank and finance company on Wall Street -- not just GE, but J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Wachovia and more -- these three Wall Street wiseguys spent the past decade taking part in a breathtakingly broad scheme to skim billions of dollars from the coffers of cities and small towns across America. ... Read more

Moody's Downgrades Global Banks
HuffingtonPost | Mark Gongloff | 06/21/12

... Moody's just took a hatchet to the credit ratings of the biggest global banks.   The rating agency on Thursday cut its rating for banks in the U.S., U.K. and Europe -- 15 in all, including all of the "too big to fail" banks in the U.S. ... Read more

Supreme Court: U.S. Chamber Of Commerce Undefeated This Term
HuffingtonPost | Mike Sacks | 06/21/12

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is undefeated at the Supreme Court this term, continuing to improve its success in securing business-friendly judgments since Chief Justice John Roberts took the bench in 2005.   The Constitutional Accountability Center, a left-leaning think tank and law firm, reported its findings on Thursday, noting that this term, which began in October and will likely conclude by the end of June, could be the chamber's "first 'perfect' term before the Supreme Court since at least 1994." ... Read more

How to Fight Wall Street -- and Transform a Nation
HuffingtonPost | Richard Eskow | 06/21/12

New York State's Attorney General told an audience at the Take Back the American Dream Conference that we need a "transformational politics" that will change the way we look at ourselves, our society, and our economy.

The wealthy have amassed an ever-greater share of our national income through conscious policy choices, said Schneiderman, not through an act of God.They've been able to divert our nation from a production economy to a financial-speculation economy the same way.   Schneiderman was suggesting that political action should help us change the way we view our economic world. ... Read more

Stocks Drop As Commodities Enter Bear Market On Economy
Bloomberg | Michael P. Regan | 06/21/12
Good article

U.S. stocks tumbled, driving the Standard & Poor's 500 Index to the second-biggest loss of the year, and commodities entered a bear market while Treasuries and the dollar rallied as reports on global manufacturing fueled concern the economy is slowing. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Friday, June 22 [13:29]

60Minutes | Confronting Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner on insider trading (06/17/12) [4:00]

60Minutes | The case against Lehman Brothers: Steve Kroft talks to the bank examiner whose investigation reveals the how and why of the spectacular financial collapse of Lehman Brothers, the bankruptcy that triggered the world financial crisis. (04/22/12) [13:41]

Eliot Spitzer | 'Wall Street will always blow itself up': Henry Blodget argues banks can't be 'too big to fail (06/13/12) [2:22]

TRNN | Why Pass Indefinite Military Detention Law (NDAA) Now? (06/19/12) [16:37]

Krugman: Ireland 'doing everything the right wants,' and 'it's not working'
TheRawStory | Kay Steiger | 06/19/12

In a conversation between New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and MSNBC host Chris Hayes on Tuesday at the Take Back the American Dream conference in Washington, D.C., they agreed that the right's economic policies are actually running a "natural experiment" in Ireland, and it's not working out so well. ... Read more

Paul Krugman: Greece Isn't 'Walking A Tightrope,' It's 'Walking The Plank'
HuffingtonPost | Author | 06/21/12

Following the election of a pro-bailout party in Greece on June 17, the new Greek government being formed this week will try once more to negotiate a solution to its intractable debt crisis that will keep it in the eurozone. But how did Greece get into this situation in the first place? Are other countries at risk of falling into the same predicament? In a panel discussion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art earlier this year sponsored by the Review and Fritt Ord, these and other questions were explored by Paul Krugman, Edmund Phelps, Jeffrey Sachs, and George Soros. Many of their comments remain relevant now. Here are some excerpts. ... Read more
Video

Germany Never Lets Europe Have Any Fun: Seven And A Half Things To Know
HuffingtonPost | Mark Gongloff | 06/21/12

Investors got all excited yesterday by talk coming out of Europe that the still-under-construction European Stability Mechanism, a warehouse full of bailout cash, could just straight-up buy sovereign debt. ... Read more

C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition
NYTimes | ERIC SCHMITT | 06/21/12

A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.

The weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria's Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the officials said. ... Read more

Obama Executive Privilege Claim 'Like Setting Off A Nuclear Bomb'
HuffingtonPost | John Rudolf | 06/20/12

President Barack Obama, invoking executive privilege for the first time on Wednesday, blocked a House Republican subpoena of Justice Department deliberations over a botched gun trafficking investigation and set up a potentially explosive political confrontation just as the presidential election heats up.

Using executive privilege "is like setting off a nuclear bomb in these disputes," said Mitchel Sollenberger, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, and an expert on executive branch power. "It's hard, but not impossible, to go back to negotiation and compromise." ... Read more

Dimon in the Rough: How Wall Street Aims to Keep U.S. Regulators Out of Its Global Betting Parlor
HuffingtonPost | Robert Reich | 06/20/12
Good article

"If JPMorgan overseas operates under different rules than our foreign competitors," warned Jamie Dimon, chair and CEO of JP Morgan, Wall Street would lose financial business to the banks of nations with fewer regulations, allowing "Deutsche Bank to make the better deal."

This is the same Jamie Dimon who chose London as the place to make highly-risky derivatives trades that have lost the firm upwards of $2 billion so far -- and could leave American taxpayers holding the bag if JPMorgan's exposure to tottering European banks gets much worse.

Dimon's foreign affair is itself proof that unless the overseas operations of Wall Street banks are covered by U.S. regulations, giant banks like JPMorgan will just move more of their betting abroad -- hiding their wildly-risky bets overseas so U.S. regulators can't control them. Even now no one knows how badly JPMorgan or any other Wall Street bank will be shaken if major banks in Spain or elsewhere in Europe go down. ... Read more

Hedge Funds Helping, Not Harpooning, 'London Whale' Now
HedgeFund | Author | 06/21/12

There are only a few funds in the credit markets who are big enough to help manage a position the size of JPM's CIO office and, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, BlueMountain (one of the biggest) has helped JPM unwind their position by entering the market to take positions that it then sold on to the bank. ... Read more

Prepare for Lehmans re-run, Bank official warns
TheTelegraph | Philip Aldrick | 06/20/12

Banks and traders must prepare for a devastating market seizure as governments grapple with the escalating economic crisis in Europe, a Bank of England policymaker has warned. ... Read more

Financial Crisis
TheTelegraph | Author | 06/19-20/12

The Pain Trade: Market Sees 70% Chance Of More Fed Easing
ZeroHedge | Author | 06/20/12

Think the Fed will pump more today? You are not alone: an implicit 7 out of 10 market participants do so too... Others like Citi, Deutsche and now SocGen, believe that a real policy intervention will come in only following a market crash. ... Read more

Fed Seen Extending Operation Twist And Avoiding Bond Buys
Bloomberg | Steve Matthews | 06/20/12

The Federal Reserve will probably decide today to expand Operation Twist beyond $400 billion to spur growth and buy protection against a deeper crisis in Europe, according to a Bloomberg News survey of economists. ... they may decide an additional round of quantitative easing isn't needed for now, economists said. ... Read more

Fed To Twist Again, In A Fashion Similar To Last Summer: Seven And A Half Things To Know
HuffingtonPost | Mark Gongloff | 06/20/12

Thing One: Fed Prepares Money Cannon: We now come to the part of our program where the Fed starts blasting money into the stands with one of those t-shirt cannons, and the crowd screams for more. ... Because having the Fed firing money at you with a t-shirt cannon is always awesome, right? Except! If the Fed is firing money at you, it's because it thinks the economy is at risk of tipping back into recession. ... Read more

The Economic Abuse Of Veterans In America
ZeroHedge | Brandon Smith | 06/20/12

... No matter what era of war an American soldier happens to take part in, his desire is usually simple and honest; most seek to defend the underlying principles of freedom which have guided the soul of this country for generations. They seek a righteous cause, and transparent leadership. ... Read more

Japan Earthquake 2012: 6.4 Magnitude Quake Strikes Off Southeast Coast
Reuters | Author | 06/17/12

TOKYO, June 18 (Reuters) - A 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Japan early on Monday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, but there were no immediate reports of damage. ... Read more

EU official says Greek bailout terms up for talks
Reuters | Jan Strupczewski | 06/19/12

Greece and its international lenders will renegotiate the program on which its second financial bailout is based because circumstances have changed, a senior euro zone official said on Tuesday. ... Read more

European Leaders to Present Plan to Quell the Crisis Quickly
NYTimes | JACK EWING | 06/16/12

Mario Draghi, the president of the central bank and one of the authors of the plan, said Friday that it would be unveiled within days, ahead of a meeting of European leaders at the end of June.   Under the plan, euro zone leaders will seek to establish the central bank as supreme bank regulator with broad powers, in place of the relatively toothless European Banking Authority. ... Read more

Google: Censorship Requests 'Alarming'
HuffingtonPost | Reuters | 06/18/12

Google has received more than 1,000 requests from authorities to take down content from its search results or YouTube video in the last six months of 2011, the company said on Monday, denouncing what it said was an alarming trend.   In its twice-yearly Transparency Report, the world's largest web search engine said the requests were aimed at having some 12,000 items overall removed, about a quarter more than during the first half of last year. ... Read more

California Nuke Simulator Is World's Most Powerful Computer
WiredMagazine | Robert McMillan | 06/18/12

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

Intel Feeds China's Supercomputers With New Xeon Chip
WiredMagazine | Robert McMillan | 05/14/12
Read more

Highland Park Schools In Michigan Could Convert To Public-Charter Hybrid Under Emergency Manager's Plan
HuffingtonPost | David Sands | 06/18/12

Highland Park Schools in Highland Park, Mich., could be converting to a combination public-charter district next school year under a plan announced Monday by Emergency Manager Joyce Parker. ...

... The Highland Park School District has struggled with bad finances and falling enrollment for several years. In January, a financial review team found pupil enrollment for the district had fallen 58 percent between the 2006 and 2011 school years. It totaled the district's cumulative general fund deficit at over $11 million in June of 2011. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Tuesday, June 19 [12:55]

Jon Steward | Exclusive - Edward Conard: In this exclusive, unedited interview, Edward Conard -- formerly of Bain Capital -- argues that risk-taking isn't the enemy of a properly functioning economy. Part 1 (06/07/12) [6:51]

Jon Steward | Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, authors of "It's Even Worse Than It Looks," explain how obstructionism impacts the American political process. Part 1 (06/04/12) [6:33]

1. Named Jaguar for its speed, it clocked in at 1.75 petaflops, officially becoming the world's fastest computer in 2009.
2. But alas, by late 2011 the Jaguar (now with a peak speed of 2.33 petaflops) ranked third behind Japan's "K Computer," with an impressive 10.51 petaflops, and the Chinese Tianhe-1A system, with 2.57 petaflops.
3. Its next goal is to reach exaflop speed, one quintillion (10¹⁸) operations a second, and eventually zettaflop (10²¹) and yottaflop.

1. Total of all human knowledge created from the dawn of man to 2003 totaled 5 exabytes.
2. Global Internet traffic will quadruple from 2010 to 2015, reaching 966 exabytes per year.
3. A million exabytes equal a yottabyte.
4. Should the agency ever fill the Utah center with a yottabyte of information, it would be equal to about 500 quintillion (500,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text.

1. Initially Electricity will come from the center's own substation built by Rocky Mountain Power to satisfy the 65-megawatt power demand. Such a mammoth amount of energy comes with a mammoth price tag -- about $40 million a year, according to one estimate.

When the computer gets to yottaflop size...

2. It will have an extraordinary appetite for electricity, eventually using about 200 megawatts, enough to power 200,000 homes. The computer will also produce a gargantuan amount of heat, requiring 60,000 tons of cooling equipment, the same amount that was needed to serve both of the World Trade Center towers.

You Aren't Hearing About Yemen's Biggest Problems
PBS Frontline | Azmat Khan | 06/07/12

Every day headlines highlight Yemen's growing Al Qaeda threat, the terror plots to attack the U.S. homeland hatched from within its borders and America's escalating campaign of air strikes in the country.   But some of Yemen's biggest challenges -- many of which helped spark last year's democracy protests-- are largely absent from Western media. More conventional domestic and economic issues may define Yemen's stability, and in doing so define regional and global security. ... Read more

Sheila Bair: From Regulator To Watchdog
PBS Frontline | Jason M. Breslow | 06/12/12

Here in the U.S., the Dodd-Frank law was designed, in part, to eliminate systemic risk -- that is, the idea that the failure of one institution could be big enough to bring down an entire economy. Implementing financial reform has taken longer than expected, though, and that has many watchdogs increasingly on edge.   Count Sheila Bair among the concerned. Last week, Bair, the former chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, announced she will be leading a new private sector group called the Systemic Risk Council whose mission will be to encourage reform. .. Read more

Small Banks Under Pressure From New Capital Requirements
Frontline | Jason M. Breslow | 06/08/12

In a potential strain on many of the nation's smallest lenders, the Federal Reserve will seek to hold U.S. banks to a new capital standard that more than triples the amount they must currently set aside to guard against losses. ... Read more

How Much Did the Financial Crisis Cost?
Frontline | Sarah Childress | 05/31/12

There's little in the way of comprehensive bean-counting when it comes to the financial crisis. That's in part because it's still unfolding. ... Read more

Facing Down the Bankers
NYTimes | ANNIE LOWREY | 05/30/12

Sitting in a corner office high above K Street here, Dennis M. Kelleher, one of the most powerful lobbyists on financial regulatory reform, looks every bit the corporate lawyer and high-ranking Senate aide he formerly was: tailored suit, quick smile, assertive tone.   But Mr. Kelleher does not work for banks. He works against them. ... Read more

Putin Wants New Long-Range Bombers and a Gazillion Drones
WiredMagazine | Robert Beckhusen | 06/14/12

Russia's fleet of rusty strategic bombers has seen better days. For one, they haven't seen significant upgrades in decades. For two, the fleet is less than half the size of America's combined force of conventional B-52s, B-1Bs and B-2 stealth bombers. And with plans by the U.S. to build a stealthy new bomber augmented by a plethora of new drones, Russia risks not only being left behind, but being put out to pasture. There is also NATO's deployment of missile interceptors in Europe for Russia to worry about. ... Read more

Lone Senator Blocks Renewal of NSA Wiretap Program
WiredMagazine | David Kravets | 06/14/12

But Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) has stepped in to stop the bill because the government refuses to say how often the spy powers are being used.   Wyden has barred the Senate from a routine vote using a little-used legislative power -- called a hold -- to block lawmakers from taking a procedural consent vote. Instead, he demands a floor debate that can draw out the approval process indefinitely via the filibuster.

Wyden did the same thing a year ago with the Protect IP Act. That legislation, which would have dramatically increased the government's legal power to disrupt and shutter websites "dedicated to infringing activities," subsequently died a loud death in January amid a turbulent internet backlash. ... Read more

Congress Looking Happy to Reauthorize Broad, Secret Spying Powers
WiredMagazine | David Kravets | 05/31/12

House lawmakers of both stripes in a Thursday hearing seemed amenable to the Obama administration's request to continue giving the government broad, warrantless electronic surveillance powers over American citizens -- though some suggested Americans or at least members of Congress deserved to know how many people have been caught up in the dragnet. ... Read more

US Outsources Its Africa Spying
WiredMagazine | Spencer Ackerman | 06/15/12

Africa is important enough to the United States to spy on. Just not with official US military personnel. The military's Africa Command is outsourcing dramatic amounts of surveillance missions. And if something should go wrong, the contractors are on their own.   That's what the Washington Post's Craig Whitlock found after poking through an obscure program called Tusker Sand. Starting in 2009, Africa Command, known as AFRICOM, began paying private firms to fly MC-12 Beechcrafts outfitted with sensitive cameras to perform sensitive spy missions in places where the military doesn't typically operate, like Uganda or Burkina Faso. ... Read more

'Obama's Secret Wars' Against America's Threats
NPR FreshAir | Terry Gross | 06/04/12

Last week, The New York Times reported that Stuxnet, the computer worm that infected computers around the world in 2010, was developed by the United States in conjunction with Israel to destroy Iran's nuclear centrifuges.

"It appears to be the first time the United States has repeatedly used cyberweapons to cripple another country's infrastructure, achieving, with computer code, what until then could be accomplished only by bombing a country or sending in agents to plant explosives," wrote David Sanger, the paper's chief Washington correspondent. ... Read more

Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran
NYTimes | DAVID E. SANGER | 06/01/12

From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran's main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America's first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program. ... Read more

Tomgram: Nick Turse, The Changing Face of Empire
TomDispathch.com | Author | 06/14/12

... On his recent trip to Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who has earned a reputation for saying whatever comes into his head, insisted that Washington had just about had it with Pakistan. "Reaching the limits of our patience" was the way he put it (not once but twice). ...

How far Washington has come from the days (back in 2001) when an American official could reportedly march self-confidently into the office of Pakistan's intelligence chief, and tell him that his country had better decide whether it was for us or against us. Otherwise, he reportedly added, Pakistan should expect to be bombed "back to the Stone Age. ... Read more

NPR | Tom Ashbrook OnPoint: Environmental champion Bill McKibben wrote nearly a quarter century ago about what he called "the end of nature." The untouched wild. (06/15/12) [1hr]

NPR | Tom Ashbrook OnPoint: No More Too Big To Fail? With JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon on the hot seat, we look at the loud call to fix American banking by breaking up the biggest banks. (06/13/12) [46:13]

Greece Will Be Ruining Your Weekend Now: Seven And A Half Things To Know
HuffingtonPost | Mark Gongloff | 06/15/12

Thing One: Zombie Weekend: One reliable feature of the global financial crisis-zombie apocalypse we've been enduring for the past four years is that everything truly bad happens over the weekend.

Lehman Brothers bankruptcy? Happened on a pleasant fall Sunday. U.S. debt downgrade? A quiet summer Friday evening. What's going to be ruining this weekend? Just the biggest moment for Greek democracy since Pericles. Greeks go to the polls on Sunday to decide, essentially, whether they want to stay in the euro zone or not. And nobody really knows how it's going to go, the Wall Street Journal writes, which is awesome. Who doesn't love surprises? Which means your money might or might not have been turned into a smoldering pile of ash when you go into work on Monday. The UK and Switzerland are taking no chances; yesterday they put their banks in the financial root cellar to protect them from the firestorm ahead, The New York Times writes. Read more

Central Banks Warn Greek-Led Euro Stress Threatens World
Bloomberg | Simon Kennedy | 06/15/12

Central banks intensified warnings that Europe's failure to tame its debt crisis threatens to roil the world's financial markets and economy as Greece's election in two days looms as the next flashpoint for investors.

Monetary policy makers from the U.K. to Japan and Canada sounded the alert about potential fallout from the single currency bloc's troubles. They spoke as Group of 20 leaders prepare to meet in Mexico next week amid the weakest international economy since the 2009 recession, with a video call for European heads of government scheduled for today. ... Read more

Inside the Koch World convention
Politico & HuffingtonPost | KENNETH P. VOGEL | 06/15/12

The Koch brothers' political operation has increasingly come to resemble its own political party -- and later this month in San Diego, it will hold what amounts to its most ambitious convention to date.   Many of the dozens of rich conservative invitees are expected to write huge checks to a pool of cash distributed among Koch-approved groups, potentially boosting the Kochs' 2012 spending plan beyond their historic $395 million goal. And it's also a chance for the Kochs to show off their increasingly robust political machine, including a growing voter database project called Themis that played a major role in conservatives' recent efforts in Wisconsin and in which POLITICO has learned Koch operatives have discussed investing $20 million. ... Read more

The Three Big Lies Upon Which the Romney Campaign Is Based
HuffingtonPost | Eric Zuesse | 06/13/12

John Hawkins, at Right Wing News, observed that, "Since Mitt Romney had a mediocre record of job creation as the governor of Massachussetts, he has touted his record of creating jobs at Bain Capital. He's noted time and again that he created 100,000 jobs at Bain." Hawkins added that since Romney refused to say precisely how he calculated this, or what the numbers were from which he calculated it, or what assumptions he was using when calculating it, Hawkins himself looked at the historical record, and he estimated that Romney's net jobs-production at Bain had probably been closer to a loss of seven thousand jobs. ... Read more

Consumer Confidence Plunges, Biggest Miss Since February 2006
ZeroHedge | Author | 06/15/12

Following misses to expectations in every single economic data point for the past week, not to mention today's Empire Index, Industrial Production, and Capacity Utilization we just got the latest June University of Michigan Consumer Confidence number which, lo and behold, printed at 74.1 on expectations of 77.5, and a plunge from May's 79.3. In brief, this was the biggest miss to expectations since February of 2006. If this latest economic datapoint abortion does not send the market soaring, nothing will. ... Read more

What Are Bonds Worried About That Stocks Aren't?
ZeroHedge | Author | 06/15/12

Equity markets remain exuberantly willing to carry risk into the weekend on the "it's discounted" argument or the "Central Banks will save us" scenario. However, it appears investors are more anxiously buying Treasury bonds into the weekend as safe-haven flows continue (and Spanish bond yields press back up to 7%) and Swiss 2Y rates hold at -32bps. Euro strength on repatriation flows and stocks diverging from risk-assets in general make us nervous for this rally holding. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Friday, June 15 [15:04]

DN | Ralph Nader: 30 Million Workers Would Benefit From Raising Minimum Wage to 1968 Level (06/15/12) [12:34]

TRNN | Euro-Crisis Used to Destroy Social Contract (06/15/12) [15:18]

Wired | Revealed: 64 Drone Bases on American Soil (06/13/12)

Navy Loses Giant Drone in Maryland Crash
WiredMagazine | Spencer Ackerman | 06/11/12

The Navy was all set to roll out its upgraded spy drone, a 44-foot behemoth. Then one of its Global Hawks crashed into an eastern Maryland marsh on Monday. It's the latest setback for the Navy's robotic aircraft.   An unarmed RQ-4A Global Hawk went down during a training exercise near the Naval aviation base at Patuxent River, Maryland on Monday, CNN reports. Local news has footage of the wreckage. No one was hurt except the Navy's pride. ... Read more

CIA Refuses to Confirm or Deny Drone Attacks Obama Brags About
WiredMagazine | David Kravets | 06/15/12

The Central Intelligence Agency continues to refuse to confirm or deny the covert military use of drones to kill suspected terrorists overseas, despite President Barack Obama's and even a former CIA director's admission of the agency's targeted killing program.

Despite numerous public comments on the CIA's drone attacks in far-flung locales such as Yemen from various government officials, including former CIA Director Leon Panetta and President Obama, the CIA is taking the position in court that it would have to eliminate you with one of its drones if it acknowledged the program.   So on Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal appeals court to expedite a hearing (.pdf) on its Freedom of Information Act request seeking details of the drone program. Hours later, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit set a September 20 oral argument. (.pdf) ... Read more

George W. Bush Blamed For Economic Troubles More Than Barack Obama, Poll Finds
HuffingtonPost | Sabrina Siddiqui | 06/14/12

Although the struggling economy under President Barack Obama's leadership will likely define the outcome of this year's general election, more Americans continue to hold former President George W. Bush accountable for the nation's economic problems, according to a new poll. ... Read more

Jamie Dimon's 'Family Reunion' With the Senate Banking Committee
HuffingtonPost | Bill Moyers | 06/13/12

Thomas Frank about the friendly faces greeting Jamie Dimon when he appeared before the Senate Banking Committee this morning. Seven members of the committee were big recipients of money from the megabank.   Frank describes the revolving door of employment between government and corporate America, especially when it comes to Congressional staffers-turned-lobbyists. ... Read more

Consumer Prices In U.S. Fell In May By Most In Three Years
Bloomberg | Alex Kowalski | 06/14/12

The consumer-price index declined 0.3 percent, more than forecast and the biggest drop since December 2008, after no change the prior month, the Labor Department reported today in Washington. Economists projected a 0.2 percent decrease, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. The so-called core measure, which excludes more volatile food and energy costs, increased 0.2 percent for a third month.

Cheaper energy costs may provide some relief for Americans against a backdrop of moderating job and wage gains that has slowed consumer spending. With inflation cooling, Fed policy makers also have more flexibility to take further action to bolster U.S. economic growth ... Read more

GOP Begins Judge Blockade
RollCall | John Stanton | 06/14/12

With less than four and a half months until Election Day, Senate Republicans are shutting off the bipartisan spigot when it comes to confirming President Barack Obama's nominees to the nation's top courts ... Read more

Economics and Morality: Paul Krugman's Framing
HuffingtonPost | George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling | 06/14/12
Read more

California Hedge Fund Is Latest Euro Crisis Casualty
Bloomberg | Saijel Kishan | 06/14/12

Hedge-fund manager Paul Sinclair is the latest casualty of Europe's sovereign-debt turmoil, almost six thousand miles away from the epicenter of the crisis.   Sinclair, who is based in Los Angeles, is liquidating his $458 million health-care equities fund, Expo Capital Management LLC, after more than five years, as political decisions made on the other side of the globe have undermined his stock picks and spurred losses for a second year.

"I don't have an edge on Greek elections, the Spanish banking system, what the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Chinese government, Angela Merkel, or the U.S. Federal Reserve will do," he said in a telephone interview yesterday. ... Read more

Beltway Bundlers Have Mitt Romney Sitting Pretty
RollCall | Eliza Newlin Carney | 06/14/12

It's hard to say who gets more out of Mitt Romney's increasingly cozy relationship with Washington, D.C., lobbyists -- the presumptive GOP nominee or the K Street insiders rounding up checks for him.

Romney's success in outraising President Barack Obama last month was thanks in part to his exclusive team of Beltway lobbyist bundlers, who have collectively pulled in $1.2 million for his campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

But Romney's friends on K Street, who include not only fundraisers but an inner circle of well-placed strategic and policy advisers, are reaping their own rewards. The top bundlers, many of whom Romney has not identified, enjoy weekly telephone briefings with the campaign, VIP entry to exclusive receptions and retreats and, in some cases, the chance to bend Romney's ear on policy issues. ... Read more

Spain Shows Policymakers Are Running Out of Time
HuffingtonPost | Mohamed A. El-Erian | 06/12/12

Monday's disappointing market reception to the bailout package for Spanish banks is a reminder to European policymakers of something that is more than familiar to veteran sovereign crisis managers in emerging countries: The greater the erosion of policymaking credibility, the harder it is to get the private sector to buy into your plans. ... Read more

More Gruel, More Gruel
ZeroHedge | Mark Grant, author of Out of the Box | 06/13/12

... It is really rather pathetic. The Prime Minister of Spain today called for a deposit guarantee fund, pleaded for the EU to take over the budget of Spain and said Spain would cede its sovereignty over its banks. This is all just one thing; a cry for money and money at any cost. The poor fellow has obviously lost whatever self-respect that he had and is behaving no differently than some street urchin begging for alms. What can be seen from this kind of behavior is the desperate state that Spain is in and it is reflected in his desperate pleas for help. I would speculate that so much has been hidden and so many balance sheets falsified that Spain has suddenly found itself in a sea of their own making which could be termed, "Dire Straits." When Rajoy termed the bailout for Spain as a "Victory for Europe" I knew that he had left "sense and sensibility" behind and headed into the land of Don Quixote where windmills were imagined to be giants and fantasy had replaced reality. ... Read more

Forget Three Months: Italy May Have Two Weeks Tops, As "It Already Is Where Spain Is Heading"
ZeroHedge | Author | 06/13/12

Yesterday, Austrian finance minister Maria Fekter ruffled the unelected Italian PM's feather by saying "forget Spain, Italy is next in the bailout line" - a statement which as expected was promptly loudly refuted, mocked, and scorned by everyone possible: the type of reaction that only the truth can possibly generate in Europe. So far so good: after all the typical European reaction to any instance of the truth is loud screams of "lies, lies" and promptly sticking your head deep in the sand. However, this time around Italy may not have the benefit of the doubt, nor the benefit of some sacrificial replacement of a prime minister: Silvio is long gone, and at this point switching one banker figurehead with another will do precisely nothing. Which is why this morning's assessment from Bloomberg economist David Powell is spot on: "Italy would probably be forced into receiving a bailout if it were to face another two weeks like the last seven days." But the punchline: "The bad news for Italy is the country's stock of debt is already as large as Spain's may become after years of fiscal turmoil. In other words, Italy already is where Spain may be heading." ... Read more

Ponying Up: How Much Have Big Banks Been Docked for the Financial Crisis?
ProPublica | Cora Currier | 03/27/12

We put together a chart of notable settlements reached between big banks and the government -- namely, the SEC and the Department of Justice -- over charges stemming from the crisis. In the case of the SEC settlements we list here, the firms neither admitted nor denied the charges when agreeing to the terms of the settlement. (The SEC's habit of letting banks sidestep the question of culpability has been widely criticized.)

Overall, the SEC says it has brought in almost $2 billion in penalties as well as money for investors from settlements related to the crisis, and the Department of Justice lists dozens of criminal cases it has brought against smaller players. And the investigating isn't over yet. The SEC recently sent notices of possible charges to JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo, and the DOJ reportedly has issued subpoenas to eleven financial institutions related to mortgage securities. ... Read more

Why The Economy Can't Get Out of First Gear
HuffingtonPost | Robert Reich | 06/12/12

The major reason this recovery has been so anemic is not Europe's debt crisis. It's not Japan's tsumami. It's not Wall Street's continuing excesses. It's not, as right-wing economists tell us, because taxes are too high on corporations and the rich, and safety nets are too generous to the needy. It's not even, as some liberals contend, because the Obama administration hasn't spent enough on a temporary Keynesian stimulus.   The answer is in front of our faces. It's because American consumers, whose spending is 70 percent of economic activity, don't have the dough to buy enough to boost the economy -- and they can no longer borrow like they could before the crash of 2008. ... Read more

Fed faces political heat in weighing more economic stimulus
WashingtonPost | Zachary A. Goldfarb | 06/05/12

With Europe falling deeper into crisis and Congress paralyzed, only one institution may have the flexibility to try to keep the U.S. economic recovery on track: the Federal Reserve

But the Fed faces a daunting burden. Any new action could provoke tough political criticism. Republicans, in particular, have expressed deep concern about the measures taken by the Fed to support the economy -- and could be doubly upset if new efforts goose the stock market and are perceived to work in favor of President Obama's reelection. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Wednesday, June 13 [11:56]

DN | Military Suicides on Rise: More US Soldiers Killed Themselves Than Died in Combat in 2012 (06/13/12) [16:45]

Scores killed in Iraq attacks (06/13/12) [4:47]

TRNN | What Would a Green Industrial Strategy Look Like? (06/13/12) [11:28]

TYT | Iceland proves that bailing out the middle class works better than bailing out banks (06/12/12) [4:05]

Wholesale Prices In U.S. Fell 1% In May On Cheaper Energy
Bloomberg | Alex Kowalski | 06/13/12

Wholesale prices in the U.S. dropped in May by the most since July 2009 as costs of energy and food decreased, easing pressure on companies to pass expenses to customers. ... Read more

Americans Suffered Record Decline In Wealth During Recession: Report
HuffingtonPost | Reuters | 06/11/12

Americans suffered a record decline in wealth between 2007 and 2010 as home values tumbled, according to a Federal Reserve report on Monday that underscored the severity of the recent recession.   The median family's net worth dropped 38.8 percent during the three-year period, the Fed said in its latest report on changes in U.S. Family Finances, derived from a survey of consumer finances. Fed economists told reporters that this was the biggest drop in net worth since the survey started in 1989. ... Read more

The Right's New Tactic to Pit the Middle Class Against Itself
AlterNet | Dean Bakopoulos | 06/08/12

... A new kind of class warfare is emerging in the Heartland, and it is one the Republicans have been so good at orchestrating in order to win elections.

In the Bible Belt, Republicans have long been able to divide working people (by that I mean anyone who depends on an earned paycheck to stay afloat) on social issues -- gay rights and abortion. In the Rust Belt and Grain Belt, that's been a bit harder, as there is a strong "live and let live" ethic in the Midwest. We like our neighbors and tend to accept, if not value, our differences. . .. Read more

Campaign Spending Shows Political Ties, Self-Dealing
ProPublica | Kim Barker | 03/28/12 (older)

... With the rise of super PACs, the jet-fueled political action committees that can take unlimited contributions, many campaign finance watchdogs have focused on the hundreds of millions of dollars being raised this presidential election cycle. But after the most recent campaign filings came in last week, ProPublica decided to track the other side of the equation: Where the money goes. ... Read more

Republicans Vote to Block Transparency on Political Ads
ProPublica | Justin Elliott | 06/07/12

The opponents of a new rule to post political ad information online have opened up another front in a long-running fight, inserting language into an appropriations bill that would bar the Federal Communications Commission from implementing the transparency measure. ... Read more

Toxic Flame Retardants: Now In Your Food
MotherJones | Kate Sheppard | 05/31/12

... Researchers tested foods like fish, beef, and deli meats from a local grocery stores in Dallas, Texas. They found that 15 of the 36 foods they tested had detectable levels of hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD), a brominated flame retardant often found in insulation and electrical equipment. HBCD has been linked to problems in the immune and reproductive systems and endocrine disruption, and has been found to cause neurotoxic effects in children. ... Read more

Big Tobacco and Big Chemical Partner to Put Toxic Chemicals in Your Home
MotherJones | Kate Sheppard | 06/11/12

... As the story notes, the use of flame-retardant chemicals has increased from 526 million pounds per year in 1983 in to 3.4 billion pounds in 2009. That figure is expected to grow to 4.4 billion pounds by 2014. They rose to prominence, as the series documents, with the help of Big Tobacco, which saw using the chemicals as preferable to designing cigarettes that wouldn't set the couch on fire if the smoker fell asleep. ... Read more

Chemical companies, Big Tobacco and the toxic products in your home
ChicagoTribune | Author | date

The average American baby is born with 10 fingers, 10 toes and the highest recorded levels of flame retardants among infants in the world. The toxic chemicals are present in nearly every home, packed into couches, chairs and many other products. Two powerful industries -- Big Tobacco and chemical manufacturers -- waged deceptive campaigns that led to the proliferation of these chemicals, which don't even work as promised. ... Read more

Rio+ 20 Earth summit could collapse, WWF warns
TheGuardian | John Vidal | 06/06/12

The Rio+ 20 Earth summit could collapse after countries failed to agree on acceptable language just two weeks before 120 world leaders arrive at the biggest UN summit ever organised, WWF warned on Wednesday.  An extra week given over to the UN's preparatory negotiations in New York fell into disarray over the weekend as talks aimed to bring countries together to set a new path for sustainable development splintered into 19 separate dialogues with major internal disagreements on the processes to be followed. ... Read more

The Fate of the Ocean
MotherJones | Julia Whitty | March/April 2006 Issue

... I'm alarmed by what I'm seeing. Although we carry the ocean within ourselves, in our blood and in our eyes, so that we essentially see through seawater, we appear blind to its fate. Many scientists speak only to each other and studiously avoid educating the press. The media seems unwilling to report environmental news, and caters to a public stalled by sloth, fear, or greed and generally confused by science. Overall, we seem unable to recognize that the proofs so many politicians demand already exist in the form of hindsight. Written into the long history of our planet, in one form or another, is the record of what is coming our way. ... Read more

Joseph Stiglitz: Spain Bank Bailout 'Not Going To Work'
HuffingtonPost | Reuters | 06/10/12

Europe's plan to lend money to Spain to heal some of its banks may not work because the government and the country's lenders will in effect be propping each other up, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said.  "The system ... is the Spanish government bails out Spanish banks, and Spanish banks bail out the Spanish government," Stiglitz said in an interview.

The plan to lend Spain up to 100 billion euros ($125 billion), agreed on Saturday by euro zone finance ministers, was bigger than most estimates of the needs of Spanish banks that have been hit by the bursting of a real estate bubble, recession and mass unemployment. ... Read more

Spain: Just the beginning
Aljazeera | Abid Ali | 06/11/12

... Its current bailout has no austerity string attached, more austerity would be a disaster for Europe's fourth largest economy. (Portugal, Ireland and Greece must be looking at this and considering going back to the troika -- IMF, EU, ECB - asking for more lenient terms.). ... Read more

Italy Moves Into Debt-Crisis Crosshairs After Spain
Bloomberg | Andrew Davis | 06/11/12

The 100 billion-euro ($126 billion) rescue for Spain's banks moved Italy to the front line of Europe's debt crisis as an initial rally in the country's bonds fizzled on concern it may be the next to succumb.

Italy has 2 trillion euros of debt, more as a share of its economy than any developed nation other than Greece and Japan. The Treasury has to sell more than 35 billion euros of bonds and bills per month -- more than the annual output of each of the three smallest euro members, Cyprus, Estonia and Malta. ... Read more

Candidates in Mexico Signal a New Tack in the Drug War
NYTimes | RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD | 06/10/12

MEXICO CITY -- The top three contenders for Mexico's presidency have all promised a major shift in the country's drug war strategy, placing a higher priority on reducing the violence in Mexico than on using arrests and seizures to block the flow of drugs to the United States. ... Read more

Wall Street Shrugs As JPMorgan Trades Lop Off $27 Billion
Bloomberg | Max Abelson | 06/11/12

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon plans to testify before Congress this week about his firm's $2 billion trading loss. His Wall Street colleagues don't understand why. ... Read more

Does Congress Want Another Economic Meltdown?
Bloomberg | William D. Cohan | 06/10/12

Here's a question to consider as Congress prepares to grill JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon on Wednesday: Will the bank's $3 billion (and growing) trading loss change anything on Wall Street?   A sad truth remains: Despite all the public hand-wringing about the need to finally nail down the details of the regulations that will govern risk-taking at big banks, Wall Street's well-paid army of lawyers and lobbyists continues to make a mockery of the whole re-regulation process.

It seems increasingly likely that, by the time the charade is over, the American people will end up with fewer substantive rules and limitations on the crazy risks Wall Street can take than we have now. By some counts -- including that of Matt Taibbi, at Rolling Stone -- there are nine obscure pieces of legislation introduced in Congress this year that are designed to in one way or another weaken the already weak provisions of the Dodd-Frank law, passed in July 2010. ... Read more

How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 05/10/12

... Two years later, Dodd-Frank is groaning on its deathbed. The giant reform bill turned out to be like the fish reeled in by Hemingway's Old Man -- no sooner caught than set upon by sharks that strip it to nothing long before it ever reaches the shore. In a furious below-the-radar effort at gutting the law -- roundly despised by Washington's Wall Street paymasters -- a troop of water-carrying Eric Cantor Republicans are speeding nine separate bills through the House, all designed to roll back the few genuinely toothy portions left in Dodd-Frank. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Monday, June 11 [11:54]

DN | Mariela Castro on Ending Embargo, Releasing Cuban Five for Jailed U.S. Citizen Allan Gross (06/11/12) [12:24]

Spain to access eurozone rescue funds (06/09/12) [2:09]

TRNN | America has an Industrial Policy - It's Run by the Pentagon () [9:49]

Dylan Ratigan | Adam Gelb, Pew Center, talks about the growing prison population and what it means for our nation. (06/05/12) [7:34]

Dylan Ratigan | Lee Camp talks about his book "Moments of Clarity", his thoughts on politics, media and the military. (06/04/12) [7:35]

Firepower bristles in South China Sea as rivalries harden
Reuters | David Lague | 06/10/12

Now, more than three decades after paramount leader Deng launched his reforms, that policy has seemingly lapsed or simply become unworkable as China's military muscle becomes too expansive to conceal and its ambitions too pressing to postpone.   The current row with Southeast Asian nations over territorial claims in the energy-rich South China Sea is a prime manifestation of this change, especially the standoff with the Philippines over Scarborough Shoal. ... Read more

Europe braces for Spanish banks bailout
Aljazeera | Author | 06/08/12

Finance officials from across Europe are set to hold talks this weekend to discuss a possible bailout for Spain in case Madrid asks for help amid rumours that a request could come as early as Saturday.   The move comes after credit ratings agency Fitch cut Spain's sovereign rating by three notches to BBB on Thursday, highlighting the Spanish banking sector's exposure to bad property loans and contagion from Greece's debt crisis. ... Read more

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein: Company Engaged in Contingency Planning for Defaults in Europe
HuffingtonPost | D.M. Levine | 06/08/12

... In February, it was revealed that Goldman sold $142.4 billion in credit default swaps that would pay out in the event Greece, Ireland, Portugal or Spain defaulted on its debt. Goldman also purchased swaps on the same debt worth an estimated $147.3 billion in all, according to Bloomberg. ... Read more

What if Democrats hang tough at fiscal cliff?
Politico | Isabel Sawhill | 06/05/12

Any solution to the nation's fiscal problems remains elusive. Virtually everyone agrees that nothing much will likely be resolved before the election. A lame-duck Congress and president will instead confront a fiscal cliff -- when a variety of tax provisions expire at the end of the year and a sequester and debt ceiling loom. ... Read more

Today marks 11 years since the Bush tax breaks for the rich were enacted.
HuffingtonPost | Alan Grayson | 06/07/12

President George W. Bush signed the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act on June 7, 2001.  Bush claimed (as right-wingers always do) that tax breaks for the rich would create jobs in the private sector. Well, they haven't. There were 110 million private sector jobs in America in 2001. There are 110 million private sector jobs in America today. Despite a population increase of more than 25 million, there are no more private sector jobs today than when the Bush tax breaks for the rich became law.

In the past 11 years, the number of Americans living in poverty has increased from 33 million to 44 million. The number of Americans receiving food stamps has risen from 18 million to 46 million. "Trickle-down" has not even been a trickle. ... Read more

Cyberattacks on Iran -- Stuxnet and Flame
NewYorkTimes | Author | 06/01/12

According to an article in The New York Times in June 2012, during President Obama's first few months in office, he secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on Iran's computer systems at its nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America's first sustained use of cyberweapons. ... Read more

White House Leaks: Eric Holder Appoints 2 Prosecutors To Lead Investigation
HuffingtonPost | PETE YOST | 06/09/12

Two U.S. attorneys are taking over separate FBI investigations into leaks of national security information that critics have accused the White House of orchestrating to improve President Barack Obama's re-election chances, a claim Obama calls "offensive" and "wrong."

Recent news articles contained details of U.S. involvement in a partially successful computer virus attack on Iran's nuclear program and on the selection of targets for counterterrorism assassination plots. The leaked information generally painted Obama as a decisive and hands-on commander in chief. ... Read more

Are Our Oceans on a Collision Course?
MotherJones | Tom Philpott | 06/06/12

... The researchers highlighted what they called an "ongoing erosion of diversity" in sea life that, if left unchecked, would lead to the "collapse of all taxa currently being fished by the mid-21st century."   Stripped of scientese, what the report described was the real possibility of the ocean as a vast, fetid gray zone, not quite dead but no longer able to provide a significant amount of food to humanity. And not in some unimaginably distant future, but rather in just four short decades, around the time when your aughts-era infant will reach middle age. ... Read more

Earth Tipping Point Study In Nature Journal Predicts Disturbing And Unpredictable Changes
HuffingtonPost | Author | 06/07/12

Earth is rapidly headed toward a catastrophic breakdown if humans don't get their act together, according to an international group of scientists.  Writing Wednesday (June 6) in the journal Nature, the researchers warn that the world is headed toward a tipping point marked by extinctions and unpredictable changes on a scale not seen since the glaciers retreated 12,000 years ago. ... Read more

What Do the World's Most Powerful Pesticide Honchos Eat for Dinner?
MotherJones | Tom Philpott | 05/23/12

I've made a career of sorts writing about the "big six" agrichemical companies--Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, DuPont, Syngenta, and BASF--that produce the great bulk of the world's pesticides and, increasingly, seeds. But last week, I did something different. Rather than investigate and critique these companies in print, I broke bread with some of their executives. ... Read more

Is "Meat Glue" As Gross As It Sounds?
MotherJones | Tom Philpott | 05/07/12

"If you were disturbed to hear about 'pink slime' in your burger, you'll want to know about 'meat glue,' because a fat, rare-cooked filet mignon may not be what it seems," ABC News' Bay Area affiliate gasped last week. ... Read more

United Nations: Eurozone Crisis Is The Biggest Threat To The Global Economy
HuffingtonPost | Reuters | 06/07/12

The euro zone debt crisis is the leading danger for the global economy and any worsening will likely lead to even weaker world growth, the United Nations said in a report on Thursday. ... Read more

Occupy Wall Street's Survival In Question As Donations Dry Up
HuffingtonPost | Reuters | 06/07/12

More than eight months after Occupy Wall Street burst onto the global stage, decrying income inequality and coining the phrase "We are the 99 percent," the movement's survival and continued relevance is far from assured.  Donations to the flagship New York chapter have slowed to a trickle. Polls show that public support is rapidly waning. Media attention has dropped precipitously. ... Read more

The Nuclear Weapons Industry's Money Bombs
MotherJones | R. Jeffrey Smith | 06/06/12

The Center for International Policy, a nonprofit group that supports the "demilitarization" of US foreign policy issued a report.  Employees of private companies that produce the main pieces of the US nuclear arsenal have invested more than $18 million in the election campaigns of lawmakers that oversee related federal spending, and the companies also employ more than 95 former members of Congress or Capitol Hill staff to lobby for government funding, according to a new report. ... Read more

Dramatic Decline in Microscopic Life on BP's Oiled Beaches
MotherJones | Julia Whitty | 06/06/12

The damage may be invisible to the naked eye but researchers report dramatic changes to the community of microbes living in the sands along shorelines oiled by BP's Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.  These communities of the very small -- comprised of microscopic worms, fungi, protists, algae, and the larval stages of larger species less than a millimeter in size -- underpin vital ecosystem functions in the ocean. They provide food and nutrients for other species, churn the sediments, and contribute to the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur within marine ecosystems. ... Read more

Homeland Security Bill 2012: House Passes $46 Billion Measure Containing Anti-Abortion Rider
HuffingtonPost | ALICIA A. CALDWELL | 06/07/12

The provision was attached to a $46 billion Homeland Security spending bill approved on a party-line 234-182 vote. It has little chance of surviving in the Democratic-controlled Senate. ... Read more

Supreme Court Poll: Only 44 Percent Of Americans Approve Of The Job The Court Is Doing
HuffingtonPost | author | 06/08/12

... According to a new poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News, just 44 percent of Americans approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing.  Three-quarters said the nine justices sometimes decided cases based on their personal or political views, rather than along constitutional lines. Only 1 in 8 Americans said the justices decided cases based solely on legal analysis, The New York Times reported. ... Read more

Suicide bombing in Kandahar, airstrike in Logar mark deadly day in Afghanistan
McClatchy | Jon Stephenson | 06/06/12

Twenty-two civilians were killed and 50 wounded in a double suicide bombing on Wednesday in the restive southern province of Kandahar, while a further 18 were reported killed in a U.S.-led coalition airstrike in eastern Logar province. ... Read more

Japanese more opposed to nuclear power a year after tsunami, poll finds
McClatchy | CAROL J. WILLIAMS | 06/05/12

Seventy percent of Japanese surveyed by the Washington-based Pew Research Center said they wanted nuclear power reduced or eliminated, while a year ago the nation was nearly evenly divided on the subject, with 44 percent urging a phase-out and 46 percent backing continued generation. ... Read more

Greece and the Euro: Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover
AlterNet | Ellen Brown |06/07/12span>

The Euro appears to be a marriage of incompatible partners. A June 1st article in the UK Telegraph titled "Why ' Love Affair with the European Project Is Ending" reported that two-thirds of 9,000 respondents thought that having the euro as their single currency was a mistake. ... Read more

Finnish Leader Says U.S. Worried About Europe Banks
Bloomberg | Meera Louis | 06/06/12

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke are concerned about the European banking industry, Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen said after meeting the two U.S. officials.   "They were very worried about what was going on," Katainen said in a Bloomberg News telephone interview yesterday. Katainen said he discussed with Geithner and Bernanke the options for recapitalizing banks in trouble. ... Read more

Fed faces political heat in weighing more economic stimulus
WashingtonPost | Zachary A. Goldfarb | 06/05/12

"The Fed is going to try to do the right thing," said Vincent Reinhart, a longtime Fed economist and now top U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley. But, he added, "The headline they most worry about is 'The Fed acts to help the incumbent.'?" Read more

The 1 Percent's Problem
VanityFair | Joseph Stiglitz | 06/04/12

Why won't America's 1 percent --- such as the six Walmart heirs, whose wealth equals that of the entire bottom 30 percent -- be a bit more... selfish? As the widening financial divide cripples the U.S. economy, even those at the top will pay a steep price. ... Read more

Why We Have to Raise Taxes on the Rich and End the Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy
HuffingtonPost | Robert Reich | 06/06/12

... According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Romney's tax plan would boost the incomes of people earning more than $1 million a year by an average of $295,874 annually.   Meanwhile, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Romney's plan would throw ten million low-income people off the benefits rolls for food stamps or cut benefits by thousands of dollars a year, or both. "These cuts would primarily affect very low-income families with children, seniors and people with disabilities," the Center concludes. ... Read more

Beijing Alone Has 50% More Vacant Housing Than The US
ZeroHedge | Author | 06/05/12

Total housing inventory at the end of April rose 9.5 percent to 2.54 million existing homes available for sale, a seasonal increase which represents a 6.6-month supply at the current sales pace, up from a 6.2-month supply in March. Listed inventory is 20.6 percent below a year ago when there was a 9.1-month supply; the record for unsold inventory was 4.04 million in July 2007. ... Read more

Drone attacks create terrorist safe havens, warns former CIA official
TheGuardian | Paul Harris | 06/05/12

Indiscriminate use of drones in Middle East causes too many civilian casualties, warns former CIA counterterrorism head ... Read more

Panetta Defends Drones In Pakistan
HuffingtonPost | LOLITA C. BALDOR | 06/06/12

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is delivering a strong defense of the U.S. use of drones to kill insurgents in Pakistan, telling an audience next door in India on Wednesday that America has made it clear to Islamabad it will continue to target al-Qaida leaders in that country. ... Read more

Wanna Buy a World-Controlling Investment Firm?
WiredMagazine | Spencer Ackerman | 12/07/10

To the conspiracy-minded: if you've got a mind for finance, get ready to be happy. The Carlyle Group, which may or may not control the world, is thinking about going public. Buy enough shares and you'll discover the hidden funding that determines the contours of geopolitics. Or at least you can tell the internet you did. ... Read more

Paycheck Fairness Act Fails Senate Vote
HuffingtonPost | Jennifer Bendery | 06/06/12

Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked a bill that would have ensured women are paid the same amount as their male counterparts. ... Read more

Big Money Wins in Wisconsin: Walker Spent 88% of the Money to Get 53% of the Vote
HuffingtonPost | Peter Dreier | 06/06/12

... Walker's Republican campaign outspent Barrett's Democratic campaign by $30.5 million to $4 million -- that's a 7.5 to 1 advantage. Another way of saying this is that of the $34.5 million spent on their campaigns, Walker spend 88% of the money.

Walker beat Barrett by 1,316,989 votes to 1,145,190 votes -- 53% to 46% (with 1% going to an independent candidate).  Here's another way of saying that: Walker spent $23 for each vote he received, while Barrett spent only $3.47 per vote. ... Read more

There's a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says
WiredMagazine | Spencer Ackerman | 05/25/11

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) "We're getting to a gap between what the public thinks the Patriot Act law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says."  "It is fair to say that the business-records provision is a part of the Patriot Act that I am extremely interested in reforming," Wyden says. "I know a fair amount about how it's interpreted, and I am going to keep pushing, as I have, to get more information about how the Patriot Act is being interpreted declassified. I think the public has a right to public debate about it." ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Wednesday, June 6 [13:01]

DN | Joseph Stiglitz on Occupy and Why U.S.-Europe Austerity Will Only Weaken Economic Recovery (06/06/12) [11:07]

Bloomberg Television's "Behind The Wall": China's Ghost Cities [4:04]

China's Ghost Cities and Malls [14:38]

Resolving Ambiguity: Costing Nuclear Weapons
SimpsonReport | Author | 06/05/12

This report estimates that the Department of Defense spends $23 billion in support of strategic nuclear offensive forces. Of these costs, $12 billion are found in the account dedicated to strategic forces, while $11 billion support strategic nuclear offensive forces, but lay outside of the account dedicated to strategic nuclear offensive forces. ... Read more
Costing Nuclear Weapons (pdf)

The Hobbit - Full Production Video Blogs 1-6 - Lord of the Rings [1:08:48]

The Reign In Spain Is Over
ZeroHedge | Author | 06/05/12

Spain has now officially asked the European Union for aid for its banks. The markets seem to be responding as if the bank issue is isolated. It is not isolated. We are following the same schematic as we did with Ireland; first it was the banks and then it was the country and then the "Men in Black" showed up to take over. Spain says it is a 50 billion Euro problem and the reality is probably more like a 400 billion Euro problem. There is all kinds of cross lending between the banks in Spain and while Spain's largest two banks have tried everything they could to isolate themselves; I predict there will be no escape for anyone. ... Read more

Pakistan: Drone Strikes Are Violations Of Sovereignty
HuffingtonPost | Author | 06/04/12

ISLAMABAD, June 4 (Reuters) - Pakistan on Monday strongly condemned a jump in U.S. drone strikes on its territory, using language that could increase tension between strategic allies already in dispute over military supply routes for NATO that Pakistan has closed.  Three drone strikes in as many days on suspected militants have killed 27 people, Pakistani intelligence officials say. ... Read more

This Republican Economy
NewYorkTimes | PAUL KRUGMAN | 06/03/12

... So the Republican electoral strategy is, in effect, a gigantic con game: it depends on convincing voters that the bad economy is the result of big-spending policies that President Obama hasn't followed (in large part because the G.O.P. wouldn't let him), and that our woes can be cured by pursuing more of the same policies that have already failed. ... Read more

Bank Of America Executives Explain How They Hid Merrill Lynch Losses In Their Own Words
HuffingtonPost | Cora Currier | 06/04/12

... As the New York Times detailed this morning, a brief in a new lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan recounts sworn testimony and internal emails in which execs admitted to giving bad information to shareholders and that they had worried about the legal ramifications of doing so. ... Read more

The 1 Percent's Problem
VanityFair | Joseph Stiglitz | 06/04/12

Why won't America's 1 percent --- such as the six Walmart heirs, whose wealth equals that of the entire bottom 30 percent -- be a bit more... selfish? As the widening financial divide cripples the U.S. economy, even those at the top will pay a steep price. ... Read more

Bleeding Cash Conservatives Wasting Money To Punish Vulnerable Americans
HuffingtonPost | Peter S. Goodman | 06/04/12

These days we need a new term to describe a strain of politics that has become dominant in many areas of civic life, from the foreclosure crisis to long-term unemployment. We are living through what may be called the age of "bleeding cash conservatism," a time when powerful and mean-spirited authorities waste taxpayer money on their own version of feel-good policies that punish vulnerable people who have landed in trouble. ... Read more

The Phone Call To Save Europe: Seven And A Half Things
HuffingtonPost | Mark Gongloff | 06/05/12

The Emergency Phone Call To Save Democracy For Our Children (EPCSDFOC) will take place some time today on a secure conferencing service hosted by Nick Fury in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s floating command center somewhere over the Bering Sea, and will involve all of the finance ministers and central-bank leaders of the Group of Seven nations, the Financial Times reports. These important people are going to solve this whole gosh-darn European debt hoo-ha once and for all, where 4,327 other conference calls, summits, back-room bull sessions and late-night key parties have failed. ... Read more

Merrill Losses Were Withheld Before Bank of America Deal
New YorkTimes | GRETCHEN MORGENSON | 06/03/12

... Days before Bank of America shareholders approved the bank's $50 billion purchase of Merrill Lynch in December 2008, top bank executives were advised that losses at the investment firm would most likely hammer the combined companies' earnings in the years to come. But shareholders were not told about the looming losses, which would prompt a second taxpayer bailout of $20 billion, leaving them instead to rely on rosier projections from the bank that the deal would make money relatively soon after it was completed. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Tuesday, June 5 [10:58]

Norman Finkelstein: Waning Jewish-American Support for Israel Boosts Hope for Mideast Peace (06/04/12) [12:37]

WSJ | MF Global and John Corzine | Stock Market Today

SEC: Taking on Big Firms is 'Tempting,' But We Prefer Picking on Little Guys
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 05/30/12

It's by now been well-established that the S.E.C.'s performance in policing Wall Street before, after, and during the crash has been comically inept. It would be putting it generously to say that the top cop on the financial services beat has demonstrated particular incompetence with regard to investigations of high-profile targets at powerhouse banks and financial companies. ... Read more

Wall Street's Repeat Violations, Despite Repeated Promises
NewYorkTimes | Author | 11/07/11

Many big Wall Street firms have settled fraud cases brought by the government with a promise to never violate the same law. But an analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission documents by The New York Times found that since 1996, there have been at least 51 repeat violations by those firms. Bank of America and Citigroup have each had six repeat violations, while Merrill Lynch and UBS have each had five. ... Read more and Read more

Help Matt Taibbi Stand Up for Wall Street Reform
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 05/30/12
Read more

The Facebook IPO: Shareholders Weren't Invited to the Real Party
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 05/23/12
Read more

Merkel Rejects Debt Sharing As Obama Urges Europe Action
Bloomberg | Brian Parkin | 06/03/12

German Chancellor Angela Merkel hardened her opposition to joint debt sharing in the euro region as President Barack Obama singled out Europe's leaders for not doing enough to arrest the financial crisis.  With Europe's debt crisis cited last week for canceled IPOs, weaker-than-expected Chinese manufacturing figures and a rise in the U.S. jobless rate, Merkel rejected joint debt issuance in the 17-nation euro area as a solution, saying "under no circumstances" would she agree to Germany-backed euro bonds. ... Read more

World slowdown fears hit shares and commodities
Bloomberg | Richard Hubbard | 06/04/12

(Reuters) - The uncertain worldwide growth outlook flushed more investors out of riskier assets on Monday, sending shares and commodities down, despite signs that a drive by Europe's leaders to tackle the region's debt crisis was gathering momentum.  The euro slid 0.2 percent to $1.2430, though it was trading well above the $1.2288 it hit on Friday, its lowest level since July 2010, while Brent crude oil fell below $97 a barrel to a 16-month low. ... Read more

Retired justice says campaign finance ruling made cash king
Yahoo News | James Vicini | 05/31/12

(Reuters) - Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens leveled new criticism on Wednesday against the court's landmark 2010 ruling on campaign financing, saying it had allowed corporations to ramp up spending and non-voters to influence the outcome of elections.  Stevens, who dissented from the "Citizens United" ruling, said it had increased the importance of cash in contested elections, opened the floodgates for foreign campaign spending and put corporations or other out-of-state speakers ahead of voters interested in local issues. ... Read more

Florida Voter Purge Will Continue, Defying Federal Warning
HuffingtonPost | Janell Ross | 06/02/12

Florida will defy a federal warning to stop purging people the state suspects aren't U.S. citizens from voter registration rolls.  Despite a Justice Department letter, objections from county elections officials and evidence that a disproportionate number are voters of color, ... Read more

As Soros Starts A Three Month Countdown To D(oom)-Day, Europe Plans A New Master Plan
ZeroHedge | Author | 06/03/12

What would the weekend be without at least one rumor that Europe is on the verge of fixing everything, or failing that, planning for a master fix, OR failing that, planning for a master plan to fix everything. Sure enough, we just got the latter, which considering nobody really believes anything out of Europe anymore, especially not something that has not been signed, stamped and approved by Merkel herself, is rather ballsy. Nonetheless, one can't blame them for trying: "The chiefs of four European institutions are in the process of creating a master plan for the euro zone, the daily Die Welt reports Saturday, ... Read more

U.S. Service Industries Probably Kept Growing
Bloomberg | Shobhana Chandra | 06/03/12

Service industries in the U.S. probably grew in May at the same pace as the prior month, indicating the economy is failing to gain momentum as employment slows and the European crisis intensifies, economists said before reports this week. ... Read more

Meet the Corporate Front Groups Fighting to Make Sure You Can't Know What's in Your Food
AlterNet | Alexis Baden-Mayer | 05/31/12

What do a former mouthpiece for tobacco and big oil, a corporate-interest PR flack, and the regional director of a Monsanto-funded tort reform group have in common?  They're all part of the anti-labeling PR team that will soon unleash a massive advertising and PR campaign in California, designed to scare voters into rejecting the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Monday, June 4 [12:25]

12-year old Victoria Grant explains why her homeland, Canada, and most of the world, is in debt (05/08/12) [6:43]

Rachel Maddow As go unions, so goes the Democratic Party

Naomi Klein on The Rachel Maddow Show: Naomi talks to Rachel Maddow about how the Shock Doctrine applies to recent attacks on unions. (03/09/11) [7:17]

Matt Taibbi: "Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?" (08/23/11) [10:20]

The Most Beautiful Bookstore In The World
BuzzFeed | Author | 06/03/12

I thought this was a great use of an beautiful space. ... Read more

Without Dodd-Frank, AIG Could Happen Again
HuffingtonPost | Matthew Schoenfeld | 06/01/12

The near-failure of insurance firm American International Group Inc. (AIG) in 2008 was arguably the most perilous moment of the global financial crisis. Unfortunately, something similar could easily happen again. ... Read more

Citigroup, Other Big Banks Didn't Learn Much From The Financial Crisis, New Report Suggests
HuffingtonPost | Emily Peck | 05/31/12

Citi knowingly misled the federal government into insuring thousands of risky mortgages, costing taxpayers nearly $200 million, the Justice Department claimed. This took place "before, during and after the financial crisis, and even into 2012," Ivry writes in the latest issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine. ... Read more   also see article below

Woman Who Couldn'T Be Intimidated By Citigroup Wins $31 Million
Bloomberg | Bob Ivry | 05/31/12

The Jobs Stall
HuffingtonPost | Robert Reich | 06/01/12

Republicans will have a field day with today's jobs report, taking it as a sign that Obama's economic policies have failed and we need instead their brand of fiscal austerity combined with more tax cuts for the wealthy. But that's precisely the reverse of what's needed. ... Read more

Dow Jones Industrial Average Plunges More Than 200 Points On May Jobs Report
HuffingtonPost | DANIEL WAGNER | 06/01/12

The stock market suffered its worst day of the year Friday after a surprisingly weak report about hiring and employment cast a pall of gloom over the U.S. economy. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 275 points. .. Read more

Seattle Is Leading An American Manufacturing Revival - Top Manufacturing Growth Regions
NewGeography | Joel Kotkin | 05/24/12

In this still tepid recovery, the biggest feel-good story has been the resurgence of American manufacturing. As industrial production has fallen in Europe and growth has slowed in China, U.S. factories have continued an expansion that has stretched on for over 33 months. ... Read more