Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

*A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR, Public television's attempts to placate David Koch
The New Yorker | Jane Mayer | 05/27/13

Last fall, Alex Gibney, a documentary filmmaker who won an Academy Award in 2008 for an exposé of torture at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, completed a film called "Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream." It was scheduled to air on PBS on November 12th. The movie had been produced independently, in part with support from the Gates Foundation. "Park Avenue" is a pointed exploration of the growing economic inequality in America and a meditation on the often self-justifying mind-set of "the one per cent." As a narrative device, Gibney focusses on one of the most expensive apartment buildings in Manhattan--740 Park Avenue--portraying it as an emblem of concentrated wealth and contrasting the lives of its inhabitants with those of poor people living at the other end of Park Avenue, in the Bronx.

Among the wealthiest residents of 740 Park is David Koch, the billionaire industrialist, who, with his brother Charles, owns Koch Industries, a huge energy-and-chemical conglomerate. The Koch brothers are known for their strongly conservative politics and for their efforts to finance a network of advocacy groups whose goal is to move the country to the right. ... Read more

Stephen Cobert | On David Koch And PBS [2:17]

*United States of ALEC... Update
Bill Moyers | author | 05/30/13

2013 legislative sessions are in full swing in state capitols across America, and ALEC has once again managed to fit its sticky fingers into scores of legislative cookie jars. This year, renewable energy, state-funded education and your tax dollars are among the many items poised to be gobbled up.

ALEC makes no bones about its opposition to state Renewable Energy Standards (RES), which require that states derive a certain percentage of energy from renewable sources. Todd Wynn, the director of ALEC's energy task force, told Bloomberg News outright that ALEC is opposed to such mandates, going as far as to say: "Natural gas is a clean fuel, and regulators and policymakers are seeing how it's much more affordable than renewable energy." ... Read more

Bill Moyers | United States of ALEC (09/28/12) [31:58]

*Gretchen Morgenson on Why Banks Are Still Too Big To Fail
Bill Moyers | author | 05/24/13

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Gretchen Morgenson tells Bill that, five years after the country's economic near-collapse, banks are still too big to fail, too big to manage, and too big to trust. Stockholders' reaffirmation of Jamie Dimon as JP Morgan Chase's chairman and CEO this week -- despite a year of accusations and investigations at the bank -- is further evidence, she says, of an unchecked system that continues to covet profits and eschew accountability, putting our economy and democracy at risk. Morgenson also discusses how behemoth companies like Apple manipulate the system and avail themselves of the biggest tax loopholes money and influence can buy. ... Read more

Bill Moyers | Gretchen Morgenson on Why Banks Are Still Too Big To Fail (05/24/13) [18:40]

Wealth Inequality in America [6:25]

Congress Still Puts Out for Wall Street
TruthDig | Robert Scheer | 05/27/13

What does it take to make a Wall Street banker squirm with shame? Not content with having swindled tens of millions of Americans out of their homes and life savings, the very bankers who caused the biggest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression are now subverting government regulations designed to prevent comparable disasters in the future.

Top of the list of those responsible are the hustlers at Citigroup, once the world's largest financial conglomerate, and a leading practitioner of the sordid behavior that caused the housing meltdown. Indeed, Citigroup was allowed to form as a merger of the investment banking of Travelers and the federal insured commercial banking of Citicorp only because lobbyists for those institutions successfully engineered the reversal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall law that had banned such combinations. ... Read more

*Americans have rebuilt less than half of wealth lost to the recession, study says
Washington Post | Ylan Q. Mui | 05/30/13

American households have rebuilt less than half of the wealth lost during the recession, according to a new analysis from the Federal Reserve, hampering the country's economic recovery.

The research from the St. Louis Fed shows that households had accumulated net worth totaling $66 trillion at the end of last year. After adjusting for inflation and population growth, the bank found that number amounted to only 45 percent of the wealth that Americans had during the peak of the boom in 2007.   In addition, most of the improvement was due to gains in the stock market, according to the report, primarily benefiting wealthy families. That means the recovery for most households was even weaker. ... Read more

Blankfein (Goldman Sach) Leads Bank CEO Pay With $26 Million Deemed Overpaid
Bloomberg | Elizabeth Dexheimer | 05/29/13

Bankers at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) had a tumultuous 2012. The firm cut 900 jobs, promoted the fewest executives to the exalted post of partner in more than a decade and slashed the portion of revenue set aside for compensation to 38 percent from 42 percent a year earlier.

For the man at the very top of Goldman Sachs's pay pyramid, Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein, 2012 was his finest year since the boom times of 2007. Blankfein, 58, was awarded $26 million for his work last year, lifting him to No. 1 in the Bloomberg Markets ranking of the best-paid CEOs at North America's 20 largest financial companies by customer deposits. ... Read more

*Colorado River Meeting In San Diego Brings Western States, Tribes And Conservation Groups Together
HP & AP | author | 05/28/13

Water managers from seven states, Indian tribes and conservation groups are pledging to find ways to wring more from every drop of water in the drought-stricken Colorado River.

Looming shortages are predicted on the river serving some 40 million people in California, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming. Mexico also has a stake. ... Read more

Running Dry - drought-stricken Colorado River [1:41]

Make Peace With Meat
NYTimes | Mark Bittman | 05/28/13

I probably eat a third as much meat as I used to and, on the not-rare (three times a week?) occasions that I do indulge, I eat less of it.

I'm reminded of a really good plate of slow-roasted lamb shoulder I had in Seattle two weeks ago; there were about six ounces on the plate, and I ate half. It was delicious, and it was enough. This is no longer a conscious thing but a new habit. ... Read more

The World's Richest 8% Earn Half of All Planetary Income
AlterNet | Eric Zuesse | 05/28/13

The lead research economist at the World Bank, Branko Milanovic, will be reporting soon, in the journal Global Policy, the first calculation of global income-inequality, and he has found that the top 8% of global earners are drawing 50% of all of this planet's income. He notes: "Global inequality is much greater than inequality within any individual country."

... Milanovich says: "Among the global top 1 per cent, we find the richest 12 per cent of Americans, ... and between 3 and 6 per cent of the richest Britons, Japanese, Germans and French. It is a 'club' that is still overwhelmingly composed of the 'old rich'," who pass on to their children (tax-free in the many countries that have no estate-taxes) the fortunes that they have accumulated, and who help set them up in businesses of their own - often after having sent them first to the most prestigious universities (many in the United States), where those children meet and make friends of others who are similarly situated as themselves. ... Read more

Gun Makers Saw No Role in Curbing Improper Sales
NYTimes | Mike McIntire | 05/27/13

The Glock executive testified that he would keep doing business with a gun dealer who had been indicted on a charge of violating firearms laws because "This is still America" and "You're still innocent until proven guilty."

The president of Sturm, Ruger was not interested in knowing how often the police traced guns back to the company's distributors, saying it "wouldn't show us anything."

And a top executive for Taurus International said his company made no attempt to learn if dealers who sell its products were involved in gun trafficking on the black market. "I don't even know what a gun trafficker is," he said.

The world's firearms manufacturers have been largely silent in the debate over gun violence. But their voices emerge from thousands of pages of depositions in a series of liability lawsuits a decade ago, before Congress passed a law shielding them from such suits in 2005, and the only time many of them were forced to answer such questions. ... Read more

White House briefings lay out new drone rulebook -- but questions remain
thebureauinvestigates.com | Chris Woods | 05/24/13

Two of the most controversial aspects of the US covert drone campaign -- CIA control of strikes in Pakistan, and the use of so-called signature strikes -- look set to continue until at least 2014, papers released by the White House indicate.

In the wake of President Obama's Thursday speech on counter-terrorism policy, White House national security officials have released two key documents. The first, US Policy Standards and Procedures for the Use of Force in Counterterrorism, lays out the standards now being used to decide whether to deploy 'lethal force' outside the battlefield. ... Read more
U.S. Policy Standards and Procedures for the Use of Force in Counterterrorism Operations Outside the United States and Areas of Active Hostilities.pdf

TYT | Highly Secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Deal Would Undermine U.S. Sovereignty (05/28/13) [3:19]

40 'Frightening' Facts On The Fall Of The US Economy
ZeroHedge | author | 05/27/13

If you know someone that actually believes that the U.S. economy is in good shape, just show them the statistics in this article. When you step back and look at the long-term trends, it is undeniable what is happening to us. We are in the midst of a horrifying economic decline that is the result of decades of very bad decisions. 30 years ago, the U.S. national debt was about one trillion dollars. Today, it is almost 17 trillion dollars. 40 years ago, the total amount of debt in the United States was about 2 trillion dollars. Today, it is more than 56 trillion dollars. At the same time that we have been running up all of this debt, our economic infrastructure and our ability to produce wealth has been absolutely gutted. ... Read more

HELL: 450 Murdered In Iraq This Month
HP | Adam Schreck | 05/27/13

Iraq Bombing Attacks: Explosions Rip Through Baghdad, Killing Dozens

A coordinated wave of car bombings tore through mostly Shiite areas of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 66 people and maiming nearly 200 as insurgents step up the bloodshed roiling Iraq.

The attacks in markets and other areas frequented by civilians are the latest sign of a rapid deterioration in security as sectarian tensions are exacerbated by anti-government protests and the war in neighboring Syria grinds on. ... Read more

Beware Capitalist Tools
HP | Robert Reich | 05/27/13

Forbes magazine likes to call itself a "capitalist tool," and routinely offers tool-like justifications for whatever it is that profit-seeking corporations want to do. Recently it has deployed its small army of corporate defenders and apologists in the multi-billion dollar fight to keep the effective tax rates of global corporations low.

... It's the fact of their power to manipulate laws by playing nations off against one another -- determining how much they pay in taxes, as well as how much they get in corporate welfare subsidies, how much regulation they're subject to, and so on -- that raises the question of how citizens can countermand this power. ... Read more

*Why Democrats Can't be Trusted to Control Wall Street
robertreich.org/ | Robert Reich | 05/24/13

According to the New York Times, a bill that's already moved through the House Financial Services Committee, allowing more of the very kind of derivatives trading (bets on bets) that got the Street into trouble, was drafted by Citigroup -- whose recommended language was copied nearly word for word in 70 lines of the 85-line bill.

Where were House Democrats? Right behind it. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, Democrat of New York, a major recipient of the Street's political largesse, co-sponsored it. Most of the Democrats on the Committee, also receiving generous donations from the big banks, voted for it. Rep. Jim Himes, another proponent of the bill and a former banker at Goldman Sachs, now leads the Democrat's fund-raising effort in the House.

Bob Rubin -- co-chair of Goldman before he joined the Clinton White House, and chair of Citigroup's management committee after he left it -- is still influential in the Party, and his protégés are all over the Obama administration. I like Bob personally but I battled his Street-centric views the whole time I served, and soon after I left the administration he persuaded Clinton to support a repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Tuesday, May 28 [10:43]

*The Entire Globe is a Battlefield for Pentagon [7:46]

Military Quietly Grants Itself the Power to Police the Streets Without Local or State Consent
AlterNet | Jed Morey | 05/15/13

... The lines blurred even further Monday as a new dynamic was introduced to the militarization of domestic law enforcement. By making a few subtle changes to a regulation in the U.S. Code titled "Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies" the military has quietly granted itself the ability to police the streets without obtaining prior local or state consent, upending a precedent that has been in place for more than two centuries.

The most objectionable aspect of the regulatory change is the inclusion of vague language that permits military intervention in the event of "civil disturbances." According to the rule: "Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances." ... Read more

*Obama 'Put a Target on Their Backs', SEAL Team 6 Family Members Say
USNews | Paul D. Shinkman | 05/09/13

In all, 17 members of the SEAL Team 6 counterterrorist force were on board the CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter, along with its Army National Guard aircrew, several support personnel and seven Afghan commandos. In all 38 troops died after the helicopter was shot down by what a review determined to be a Taliban RPG over Wardak Province, Afghanistan, on Aug. 6, 2011

... During a press conference on Washington Thursday, family and advocates for the fallen troops called into question the rules of engagement that they say prohibited their sons from being able to return fire, and the White House's decision to announce shortly after the killing of Osama bin Laden that SEAL Team 6 was responsible for the raid. ... Read more

Banks' Lobbyists Help in Drafting Financial Bills
NYTimes | Eric Lipton | 05/23/13

Bank lobbyists are not leaving it to lawmakers to draft legislation that softens financial regulations. Instead, the lobbyists are helping to write it themselves.

In a sign of Wall Street's resurgent influence in Washington, Citigroup's recommendations were reflected in more than 70 lines of the House committee's 85-line bill. Two crucial paragraphs, prepared by Citigroup in conjunction with other Wall Street banks, were copied nearly word for word. (Lawmakers changed two words to make them plural.) ...

... The passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, which took aim at culprits of the financial crisis like lax mortgage lending and the $700 trillion derivatives market, ushered in a new phase of Wall Street lobbying. Over the last three years, bank lobbyists have blitzed the regulatory agencies writing rules under Dodd-Frank, chipping away at some regulations. ... Read more

5 Most Horrifying Things About Monsanto--Why You Should Join the Global Movement and Protest on Saturday
AlterNet | April M. Short | 05/22/13

Fed up with health concerns, environmental threats and political corruption, a Utah mom organizes a global movement against the biotech giant.

Fed up with the fact that she has to spend "a small fortune" in order to feed her family things she says "aren't poisonous," Tami Canal of Utah has organized a global movement against the giant chemical and seed corporation Monsanto. Monsanto is the conglomerate mastermind behind many of the pesticides and genetically engineered seeds that pervade farm fields around the world. Monsanto produces the world's top-selling herbicide; 40 percent of US crops contain its genes; it spends millions lobbying the government each year; and several of its factories are now toxic Superfund sites. ... Read more

Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I.
NYTimes | David K. Shipler | 04/28/13

THE United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years -- or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.

But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested. ... Read more

Fox News | Judge Napolitano: Admit FBI Have Been Involved In 17 False Flag Terror Non-Events

"Terminal State Of Broken"
ZeroHedge | author | 05/23/13

The world has taken on a "virtual reality" with no reference to what really is. This is the biggest market power play of smoke and mirrors in history. It is happening because the financial system is in a terminal state of broken.

The terminal state of broken applies to government and the institutions contained therein. Furthermore, these areas have infected non-governmental institutions, especially those which derive their existence and/or success from a close association with government. These include the educational system, defense industry, highly regulated industries like medicine and finance and a host of others. ... Read more

Delinquent Student Loans Hit Record, 30% Of 20-24 Year Olds Are Unemployed And Not In School
ZeroHedge | author | 05/23/13

Almost a year ago we shared a calculation according to which "Over $120 Billion In Federal Student Loans In Default", suggesting that the next credit crisis has already arrived. Since then the topic of the student loan bubble has become a household topic. Sadly, that does not mean it has gotten any better. In fact, according to the latest Education Department data it has gotten as bad as it has ever been. As Bloomberg reports, not only have overdue student loans reached an all-time high but the number of young people aged 20-24 out of school and unemployed is at a record high ... Read more

Exclusive: Congressman Preps Bill to End Terror War Authority
WireMagazine | Spencer Ackerman | 05/23/13

In the wake of President Obama's big speech about restraining the war on terrorism, a member of the House intelligence committee is working on a bill to undo the basic authorities to wage it.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is preparing a piece of legislation that would "sunset" the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), a foundational law passed in the days after the 9/11. "The current AUMF is outdated and straining at the edges to justify the use of force outside the war theater," Schiff tells Danger Room. ... Read more

*Deja Vu on the Hill: Wall Street Lobbyists Roll Back Finance Reform, Again
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 05/21/13

It's becoming an annual tradition: Spring rolls around, and while nobody is looking, Wall Street quietly lays siege to Washington and reaches a hand out to yank the last remaining teeth out of the government's financial regulatory head.

In the last two weeks, we've seen two major developments here. There was a wave of deregulatory bills that snuck through the House with surprisingly bipartisan support, and a series of regulatory decisions by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that will seriously weaken the already-weak Dodd-Frank reform legislation, particularly with regard to derivatives trades. ... Read more

Hospital Charges Grow Like 'Compound Interest' In Opaque And Irrational U.S. Health Care System
HP | Jeffrey Young | 05/24/13

Why would Orange Park Medical Center in Florida charge $117,445 to place a stent into a patient's artery, while the Mayo Clinic half an hour away in Jacksonville charges less than 45 percent of that amount?

The answer, in short, is because the U.S. health care system doesn't operate according to the standards of competition that govern other industries. Hospitals often rule local fiefdoms using their own idiosyncratic price-setting conventions, and the health insurance companies that pay the bills have little incentive to wage risky wars against prominent local institutions. ... Read more

Where Has All The Money Gone
Nation of Change | Tom Dispatch | 05/14/13

Outside the United States, the Pentagon controls a collection of military bases unprecedented in history. With U.S. troops gone from Iraq and the withdrawal from Afghanistan underway, it's easy to forget that we probably still have about 1,000 military bases in other peoples' lands. This giant collection of bases receives remarkably little media attention, costs a fortune, and even when cost cutting is the subject du jour, it still seems to get a free ride.

... Not surprisingly, when it comes to such contracts and given our recent wars, the top two countries into which taxpayer dollars flowed were Afghanistan and Iraq (around $160 billion). Next comes Kuwait ($37.2 billion), where the military has had a significant presence since the first Gulf War of 1990-1991, followed by Germany ($27.8 billion), South Korea ($18.2 billion), Japan ($15.2 billion), and Britain ($14.7 billion). While some of these costs are for weapons procurement, rather than for bases and troop support, the hundreds of thousands of contracts believed to be omitted from these tallies thanks to government accounting errors make the numbers a reasonable reflection of the everyday moneys flowing to private contractors for the world of bases the United States has maintained since World War II. ... Read more

Commission on Wartime Contracting website
Wartime Contracting: Controlling costs.pdf [5.2MB]

The Military Balance: The annual assessment of global military capabilities and defence economics
The International Institute For Strategic Studies | 2013

Click to zoom

Larry Wilkerson: Six big arms monopolies profit from tension and war; promote a strategic vision that favors their short term commercial interest. (04/16/13)[15:42]

Texas to take BP and Halliburton to court
Aljazeera | author | 05/19/13

Texas has joined the crowd of Gulf of Mexico states to file suit against BP Plc, Halliburton Co and others for their role in one of the worst oil spills in US history.   The complaint, filed on Friday in US District Court in Beaumont, Texas, alleges that the companies and others "engaged in wilful and wanton misconduct" for their role in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The state has accused the firms - as well as Transocean, Anadarko and BP America in its suit - of violating Texas' environmental regulations. Texas is seeking money from "lost" tourism revenues due to the spill, as well as monies that would have been generated from state park entrance and concession fees by visitors to the coastal communities. ... Read more

*Too-Big-To-Jail Dogs Obama's Justice Department As Government Documents Raise Questions
HP | Shahien Nasiripour | 05/22/13

The U.S. Department of Justice appears to have neither conducted nor received any analyses that would show whether criminal charges against large financial institutions would harm the economy, potentially undermining a key DOJ argument for why the world's biggest banks have escaped indictment.

Testimony by a top Justice official and fresh documents made public on Wednesday during a House financial services committee hearing revealed that financial regulators and the Treasury Department did not provide warnings to prosecutors weighing the economic consequences or fallout in the financial system of criminal indictments against large financial groups. DOJ also could find no records that would substantiate its previous claims that it weighed potentially negative economic or financial impacts when considering criminal charges, said Mythili Raman, acting assistant attorney general for the criminal division. ... Read more

Approaching 'peak oil'?
Aljazeera | author | 05/04/13

The idea of 'peak oil' - or the point in time when maximum petroleum extraction has been reached - is something that has been around since the 1950s.   These days though, the debate centres on whether oil has or has not yet reached its 'peak', given that we have extracted so much of it, and that reserves are declining.

But as new extraction techniques evolve - things like fracking, tar sands, deep water drilling - do we really have fuel that could last for centuries?

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), more than 95 percent of all oil in the world has already been discovered, and half of those total reserves of 2.5 trillion barrels have already been consumed. That's because we, as an entire planet, consume 85 million barrels of oil every day. ... Read more

Here's What a Real Political Cover-up Looks Like -- Orchestrated by the Right-Wingers Who Know It Best
AlterNet | Robert Parry | 05/21/13

Exclusive: Republicans won't let go of their conspiracy theory about some nefarious "cover-up" in "talking points" for Ambassador Susan Rice's TV interviews on the Benghazi attack. But they should at least have better skills for detecting a real cover-up, since they've had direct experience, as Robert Parry documents.

... In 2011, I gained access to files at the George H.W. Bush library in College Station, Texas, showing how Bush's White House reacted to allegations in 1991 that he had joined in an operation in 1980 to sabotage President Jimmy Carter's negotiations to free 52 American hostages then held in Iran.

What those files revealed was how to run a cover-up! Its framework was set on Nov. 6, 1991, by White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray, who explained to an inter-agency strategy session how to contain and frustrate a congressional investigation into the so-called October Surprise case. The explicit goal was to insure the scandal would not hurt President Bush's reelection hopes in 1992. ... Read more

Monsanto Has Taken Over the USDA
Nation of Change | David Swanson | 05/09/13

Clearly, an investigation of large-scale government corruption by this singularly destructive corporation is long overdue.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been taken over by an outside organization. RootsAction has launched a campaign demanding a Congressional investigation.   The organization is called Monsanto.

Monsanto is, of course, the world's largest biotech corporation. These are the people who brought us Roundup weed killer and the resulting superweeds and superbugs, along with growth hormones for cows, genetically engineered and patented seeds, PCBs, and Agent Orange -- which Monsanto now wants us to use as herbicide on genetically engineered corn and soybeans. ... Read more

Is Wall Street Still "Untouchable"?
PBS Frontline | author | 05/21/13

This fall will mark the five-year anniversary of Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy, sparking the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. When the anniversary hits, many legal experts agree, any chance federal prosecutors will have had to hold Wall Street accountable will have come and gone with the passing of the statute of limitations.

In The Untouchables, which re-airs tonight on Frontline, correspondent Martin Smith examines why not one major Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for fraud tied to the sale of bad mortgages. ... Read more

Another Chilling Leak Investigation
NYTimes | Editorial Board | 05/21/13

With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible "co-conspirator" in a criminal investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.

The latest reported episode involves James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News. In 2009, Mr. Rosen reported on FoxNews.com that North Korea planned to launch a missile in response to the condemnation of its nuclear tests by the United Nations Security Council. The Justice Department investigated the source of the article and later indicted Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department security adviser, on charges of leaking classified information. Mr. Kim pleaded not guilty. Normally, the inquiry would have ended with Mr. Kim -- leak investigations usually focus on the source, not the reporter. But ... Read more

Iceland Freezes EU Plans as New Government Shuns Euro Crisis
Bloomberg | Omar R. Valdimarsson | 05/22/13

Iceland's new government is turning its back on the European Union and will shelve accession talks that started in 2010 as the nation seeks to protect its economic recovery from the debt crisis.

Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, who will take over as prime minister this week, has decided that a January decision to freeze EU membership talks will be extended indefinitely, his political adviser Johannes Thor Skulason said in a phone interview today. ... Read more

Ben Bernanke meets privately with Darrell Issa
Politico | Jon Prior | 05/21/13

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke met privately last week with House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and other lawmakers to discuss the central bank's efforts to stimulate the economy and how it could exit this strategy in the future, according to people who attended the meeting.

The meeting followed a letter that Issa (R-Calif.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) sent Bernanke in April expressing dismay that the Fed was not providing lawmakers with more information about how in the future it plans to wind down its bond portfolio, which has grown to more than $3.3 trillion as a result of the Fed's efforts to boost economic growth. ... Read more

Oklahoma Tornado 2013 Devastates Moore, Kills Dozens
HP & Reuters | author | 05/20/13

A massive tornado tore through the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore on Monday, killing at least 51 people with winds of up to 200 miles per hour (320 kph) that flattened entire tracts of homes, two schools and a hospital, leaving a wake of tangled wreckage.

... Some 20 to 30 school children were missing and feared dead beneath the rubble, KFOR television reported, citing unnamed officials from the scene. ... Read more

Detroit Bankruptcy Decision Depends On Next 6 Weeks As Kevyn Orr Deals With Debt
HP & Reuters | author | 05/19/13

Bond restructurings, negotiated settlements with bondholders and bond insurers, and tough talk with unionized workers are on the agenda as Detroit's emergency financial manager tries to meet a self-imposed, six-week deadline to decide whether the city can get through its financial crisis without a bankruptcy filing.

... Orr's spokesman, Bill Nowling, said the emergency manager expects to decide soon whether talks with the affected parties will get the job done. "It's safe to say we will have a good idea of whether we can reach an out-of-court restructuring with our bondholders, pensioners, retirees and city employees within six weeks," Nowling said. "This is not going to be a prolonged process. We are in a financial crisis." ... Read more

Study: Human Disaster Looms if Global Temps Rise 4ºC
Common Dreams | Jon Queally | 05/20/13

New research from Europe predicts a 4ºC global temperature rise is well within the range of possibility this century, and that even if the worst predictions of climate change disasters do not materialize the cost of this global change will mean "human disaster" for the planet.

As The Guardian's Fiona Harvey reports, the study--which appears in the journal Nature Geoscience-- shows that as the world's oceans reach their capacity to absorb much of the world's carbon pollution, the increased temperature rise to the atmosphere will create "catastrophe across large swaths of the Earth, causing droughts, storms, floods and heatwaves, and drastic effects on agricultural productivity leading to secondary effects such as mass migration." ... Read more

'Act of Congress' Hopeful Creation of Dodd-Frank, Omits Grim Ending
Propublica | Jesse Eisinger | 05/10/13

President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank financial reform law in July 2010, hailing it as an overhaul to prevent the kind of crisis that hit the world economy in 2008 and one of the signature achievements of his first term. Almost three years later, much of the big stuff the law calls for is on hold, under legal and legislative assault, or still working its way through the regulatory intestines. According to a law firm that tracks the legislation, only 38 percent of the 398 Dodd-Frank rules have been imposed, while regulators haven't yet publicly put forward versions of almost a third of them. ... Read more

Inside the Liar's Loan
Slate | Mark Gimein | older, but good

Here's the narrative we've heard about the mortgage meltdown: miscalculation and unfounded optimism, clueless investors, cash-strapped home buyers clobbered by rate resets.

But there's one piece of the mortgage-meltdown tale that virtually every article or television program dances around without ever quite confronting. It's the simplest aspect of the crisis to understand and also the most troubling, because it's not about complicated financial dealings and can't be fixed with bailouts. It's about an astounding breakdown of social norms. It's the story of the liar's loan. ... Read more

The Coming Collapse Of The Petrodollar System
ZeroHedge | author | 05/20/13

The theory of Petrodollar Warfare can be attributed to US analyst and author William R Clarke, and his 2005 book of that title which interpreted the US-UK decision to invade Iraq in 2003. He called this an "oil currency war", but the concept of the petrodollar system and petrodollar recyling dates back to the eve of the first Oil Shock in 1973-1974. The role of the petrodollar system as a driving force of US foreign policy is explained by analysts and historians as basic to maintaining the dollar's status as the world's dominant reserve currency - and the currency in which oil is priced. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Tuesday, May 21 [11:30]

*Albert Bartlett, professor emeritus of Physics at Univ of Colorado-Boulder, talks about how to view unfettered growth [1:13:54]

Tar sands exploitation would mean game over for climate, warns leading scientist
theGuardian | Damian Carrington | 05/19/13

Prof James Hansen rebukes oil firms and Canadian government over stance on exploiting fossil fuel, which he says would make climate problem unsolvable

Major international oil companies are buying off governments, according to the world's most prominent climate scientist, Prof James Hansen. During a visit to London, he accused the Canadian government of acting as the industry's tar sands salesman and "holding a club" over the UK and European nations to accept its "dirty" oil.

"Oil from tar sands makes sense only for a small number of people who are making a lot of money from that product," he said in an interview with the Guardian. "It doesn't make sense for the rest of the people on the planet. We are getting close to the dangerous level of carbon in the atmosphere and if we add on to that unconventional fossil fuels, which have a tremendous amount of carbon, then the climate problem becomes unsolvable." ... Read more

Kansas, Oklahoma Hit By Tornadoes, Storm System Tears Across The Plains And Midwest
HP | Sean Murphy | 05/19/13

SHAWNEE, Okla. When Lindsay Carter heard on the radio that a violent storm was approaching her rural Oklahoma neighborhood, she gathered her belongings and fled. When she returned, there was little left of the community Carter had called home. Several tornadoes struck parts of the nation's midsection Sunday, concentrating damage in central Oklahoma and Wichita, Kan. One person was killed near Shawnee, Okla., and 21 injuries were reported throughout the state. ... Read more

Portugal Banks Warn European Leaders: "You Can't Keep Playing With Fire"
ZeroHedge | author | 05/20/13

While we are told day after day that not only is Europe 'fixed' but that Cyprus was not a template, it seems the bankers in the peripheral nations are a little less confident (never mind their record amount of reach-around-based domestic bond buying). European "leaders need to moderate their language," warned one bank CEO, and as the FT reports, another feared a "Cyprus virus," adding that "you can't keep playing with fire." ... Read more

*The Most Dangerous Country In Europe
ZeroHedge | author | 05/20/13

One of the primary focuses of "Out of the Box" is on where you might get hurt and, more importantly, seriously hurt. "Preservation of Capital," the first ten rules of my thinking, has reached epic seriousness in a world with interest rates at unsustainable lows and underlying economic fundamentals that cannot support today's yields. The irrational game goes on based upon one thing and one thing only which is the creation of capital by all of the world's central banks. The money must go somewhere and so it does but the disconnect between the equity markets and bond yields from the real world is frightening. ...

... That title, in my opinion, belongs to France. ... Read more

*The 4 Big Ways That Insatiable Corporate Hunger for Profits Has Devastated American Life -- and the World Along with It
AlterNet | Paul Buchheit | 05/09/13

Calling Themselves 'Multinationals': No Allegiance to Anyone - Big business is making its way around the world like a modern-day Attila the Hun, pillaging and despoiling the planet.

The damage caused by the relentless corporate drive for profits has become more clear in recent years. In the most important areas of American life, devastating changes have occurred: ... Read more

Judd Gregg Redefines "Revolving Door" - From US Senator, To Goldman Sachs Advisor, To Head Of SIFMA
ZeroHedge | author | 05/20/13

Behold the definition of a "revolving door" - Judd Gregg: from US Senator, to Goldman Sachs advisor, to Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) head, all in under two years. ...

... "SIFMA is the leading trade association for the capital markets business with an outstanding member base and dedicated employee team," Bentsen said. "Judd Gregg will bring a strong voice and leadership to underscoring the role of finance in fostering capital formation, wealth creation and jobs and economic development in the United States. I look forward to working with Judd and our members as we promote effective and efficient markets, at home and abroad, to finance a growing American economy." ... Read more

Smashing the Absurd Myth That More Guns Make Us Safer
AlterNet | Sean McElwee | 05/15/13

Gun rights advocates are jumping at recent polls showing that gun violence has decreased, and the public is unaware of this phenomenon. Rush Limbaugh argues that, "as America arms up, gun violence goes down," parroting the infamous book by Dr. John Lott, More Guns, Less Crime. Emily Miller argues in the Washington Times that, liberals have been "muzzled" by the news. But, in fact, research shows that those who oppose gun control ask the wrong questions. ... Read more

Iraq Bombing Kills At Least 43 Outside Sunni Mosque In Baquba
Reuters | author | 05/17/13

BAQUBA, Iraq, May 17 (Reuters) - Two bombs exploded outside a Sunni Muslim mosque the Iraqi city of Baquba as worshippers left after Friday prayers, killing at least 43 people in one of the deadliest attacks in a month-long surge in sectarian violence.

Attacks on Sunni and Shi'ite mosques, security forces and Sunni tribal leaders have spread since troops raided a Sunni protest camp near Kirkuk a month ago, and fears are intensifying of a return to all-out Shi'ite-Sunni conflict. ... Read more

Hear Ye, Future Deep Throats: This Is How to Leak to the Press
Wired Magazine | Nicholas Weaver | 05/14/13

We now live in a world where public servants informing the public about government behavior or wrongdoing must practice the tradecraft of drug dealers and spies. Otherwise, these informants could get caught in the web of administrations that view George Orwell's 1984 as an operations manual.

With the recent revelation that the Department of Justice under the Obama administration secretly obtained phone records for Associated Press journalists -- and previous subpoenas by the Bush administration targeting the Washington Post and New York Times -- it is clear that whether Democrat or Republican, we now live in a surveillance dystopia beyond Orwell's Big Brother vision. Even privately collected data isn't immune, and some highly sensitive data is particularly vulnerable thanks to the Third Party Doctrine.   So how can one safely leak information to the press? ... Read more

Jeremy Scahill and Noam Chomsky: The Truth About America's Secret, Dirty Wars
AlterNet | Jeremy Scahill, Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman | 05/16/13

"Dirty Wars" discussion Scahill & Chomsky with Goodman (05/08/13) [34:07], Part 2 [38:57]

The World's Uberwealthy Scramble To Buy Greek Isles
ZeroHedge | author | 05/17/13

The emir of Qatar is a busy man: in addition to providing funding and weapons to the mercenary group formerly known as Syrian "rebels" in order to boost his already incalculable wealth and promote his LNG interests in the region over those of Saudi Arabia, in the process isolating Russia as the marginal provider of energy to Europe and furthering western interests even if it means escalating the Syrian civil war, he is also diversifying his assets. And he is doing so in a way that would provide for a quick and painless getaway should things in his country turn sour (now that the US and Russian fleets are converging nearby, this is no longer a merely token possibility): by buying Greek islands. So now that the world has seen the "lead investors" step in, the uber-wealthiest are scrambling to copycat one of the world's richest people and stake their own Greek island claim. ... Read more

*TYT | Wall Street Deregulation Coming Soon! (05/15/13) [6:01]

*TYT | Koch-blocked! App Helps You Boycott Koch Brothers and Monsanto (05/15/13) [3:32]

*TYT | Obama Hopes Reporter Shield Law WIll Avenge His Administration (05/15/13) [4:13]

*TYT | Should Anyone be JAILED for the IRS Scandal? (05/15/13) [10:27]

TYT | Angelina Jolie's Bold Choice for a Double Mastectomy (05/15/13) [7:29]

TYT | Elizabeth Warren Pushes Feds For Answers on Big Banks (05/15/13) [5:25]

TYT | Fight For Education, War on Science, & Chinese Iron Man (05/15/13) [53:48]

Elizabeth Warren Confronts Eric Holder, Ben Bernanke And Mary Jo White On Too-Big-To-Jail
ZeroHedge | author | 05/15/13

Elizabeth Warren is one of the few Senators out there pushing to understand why the federal government has created an untouchable class of criminals in America that can do whatever they want whenever they want and, not only get away with it, but also get bailed out when they make mistakes. In case you missed it, I highlighted a powerful video a few months ago in which she made regulators squirm when confronted on "too big to jail." Now she has written a letter to Ben Bernanke, Eric Holder and Mary Jo White. My favorite line is:

"If large financial institutions can break the law and accumulate millions in profits and, if they get caught, settle by paying out of those profits, they do not have much incentive to follow the law." ... Read more

Hanford Nuclear Cleanup May Be Too Dangerous, Future Of Storage Plant Uncertain
HP & Scientific American | Valerie Brown | 05/09/13

The most toxic and voluminous nuclear waste in the U.S.--208 million liters --sits in decaying underground tanks at the Hanford Site (a nuclear reservation) in southeastern Washington State. It accumulated there from the middle of World War II, when the Manhattan Project invented the first nuclear weapon, to 1987, when the last reactor shut down. ....

... After decades of research, experimentation and political inertia, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) started building the "Vit Plant" at Hanford in 2000. It's intended to sequester the waste in stainless steel--encased glass logs, a process known as vitrification (hence "Vit"), so it cannot escape into the environment, barring natural disasters like earthquakes or catastrophic fires. But progress on the plant slowed to a crawl last August, when numerous interested parties acknowledged that the plant's design might present serious safety risks. In response, then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu appointed an expert panel to find a way forward. Because 60 of the 177 underground tanks have already leaked and all are at increasing risk to do so, solving the problem is urgent. ... Read more

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Note: Boston Bombing Suspect Allegedly Wrote Confession In Boat, CBS Reports
HP | author | 05/16/13

CFTC Waters Down Derivatives Rule In Victory For Wall Street
HP | Shahien Nasiripour | 05/15/13

The U.S. regulator overseeing the derivatives market is set to retreat from an ambitious proposal that would have increased competition in the swaps market, handing victory to large banks including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission will vote Thursday on final rules that will govern a large portion of transactions in the $633 trillion swaps market. Some derivatives are known as swaps because they "swap" risk from one party to another. ... Read more

*Elizabeth Warren, a Great Investment
Truthdig | Robert Scheer | 05/14/13

How astonishing to have a public servant who actually cares to inform the public about the inner workings of the system of crony capitalism that has wedded big government with big business. ... Read more

*The 182 Percent Loan: How Installment Lenders Put Borrowers in a World of Hurt
ProPublica | Paul Kiel | 05/13/13

One day late last year, Katrina Sutton stood at a gas pump outside Atlanta and swiped her debit card. Insufficient funds. But that couldn't be. She'd been careful to wait until her $270 paycheck from Walmart had hit her account. The money wasn't there? It was all she had. And without gas, she couldn't get to work.

She tried not to panic, but after she called her card company, she couldn't help it. Her funds had been frozen, she was told, by World Finance.   Sutton lives in Georgia, a state that has banned payday loans. But World Finance, a billion-dollar company, peddles installment loans, a product that often drives borrowers into a similar quagmire of debt. ... Read more
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*Monsanto Has Taken Over the USDA
Nation of Change | David Swanson | 05/09/13

Clearly, an investigation of large-scale government corruption by this singularly destructive corporation is long overdue.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been taken over by an outside organization. RootsAction has launched a campaign demanding a Congressional investigation.   The organization is called Monsanto.   Monsanto is, of course, the world's largest biotech corporation. These are the people who brought us Roundup weed killer and the resulting superweeds and superbugs, along with growth hormones for cows, genetically engineered and patented seeds, PCBs, and Agent Orange -- which Monsanto now wants us to use as herbicide on genetically engineered corn and soybeans. ... Read more

Everything is Rigged, Continued: European Commission Raids Oil Companies in Price-Fixing Probe
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 05/15/13

According to numerous reports, the European Commission regulators yesterday raided the offices of oil companies in London, the Netherlands and Norway as part of an investigation into possible price-rigging in the oil markets. The targeted companies include BP, Shell and the Norweigan company Statoil. The Guardian explains that officials believe that oil companies colluded to manipulate pricing data: ... Read more

*'Who's Going To Jail Over This Scandal?'
HP | Sabrina Siddiqui | 05/15/13

The nation's top two Republican leaders suggested Wednesday that criminal acts were likely committed by the Internal Revenue Service in its apparent targeting of tea party groups that were seeking tax-exempt status from the agency.

Their comments come after the release of an inspector general report that found the tax collectors improperly singled out the groups who were applying to be "social welfare" groups under the tax code's 501(c)4 provisions, largely because of ineffective management. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Tuesday, May 15

*Jon Stewart | The IRS shifts the burden of proof from the tinfoil behatted to the government by targeting the Tea Party and other conservative groups. (05/13/13) [6:46]

*Jon Stewart | Following Time Magazine's health care expose, the government investigates comparative medical costs across 3,000 US hospitals. (05/13/13) [4:38]

OK, He Didn't Cause Hurricane Katrina. But He Is Guilty of Fraud.
Wired Magazine | Noah Shachtman | 05/10/13

In the history of U.S. military research, there's never been a project with such a combination of big science, high sleaze, and pure conspiratorial strangeness. Yet somehow, some way, the story of the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP, just got sleazier and stranger -- all thanks to an elderly physicist named Alfred Wong.

HAARP was originally pitched back in the Cold War as a way for plasma physicists to study the ionosphere by blasting it with radio frequency emissions. If you build this series of RF antennas in remote Alaska, the scientists told the Pentagon, HAARP wound not only advance our understanding of this crucial field. It could also be used to fry incoming Soviet missiles and spy on underground bunkers. One physicist working for the Arco oil-and-gas conglomerate even suggested that HAARP could be used to weaponize hurricanes. ... Read more

Political Intelligence: Transparency or Insider Trading?
Bill Moyers | John Light | 05/10/13

There are many ways corporations and financial interests can exercise influence in Washington. Some donate money to political campaigns while others hire lobbyists to be their megaphones to legislator ears. But information flows the other way, too. And since the financial crisis, details about the laws and regulations being hashed out behind closed doors is more valuable than ever.

A story from the Washington Post this week looks at the growing popularity of "political intelligence" firms that sell analysis of federal actions, and the likely policy ramifications of those actions, to interested parties. Oftentimes, the clients are investors in a company that will be affected by a policy decision or a proposed regulation. ... Read more

*Will Predator Banksters at JPMorgan Chase Finally Pay for Their Misdeeds?
AlterNet | Richard (RJ) Eskow | 05/13/13

Recent revelations show that Chase is the poster child for all that is corrupt, contemptible, and criminal about today's megabanks.

Will California Attorney General Kamala Harris hang tough in her new lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, the first to target individual bankers accused of defrauding the public? If so, it would be the first time in five years that executives at a major bank have personally paid a price for their misdeeds.

Recent revelations have shown the world that JPMorgan Chase comes as close as any institution in America to embodying all this is corrupt, contemptible, and criminal about today's megabanks. This is gratifying, at least on a personal level, since that was not a popular position when we first started writing about JPM and CEO Jamie Dimon a few years back. ... Read more

*One More Ag-Gag Bill Bites the Dust!
Care2 | Piper Hoffman | 05/13/13

One more ag-gag bill bites the dust! Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam vetoed the bill after the state legislature passed it, protecting his state from travesties like the silliness that happened in Utah, where a woman almost went to jail for standing on a public sidewalk and recording what was plainly visible at the slaughterhouse across the street. Utah eventually dropped the charges against her.   51,000 Care2 members have signed our petition against ag-gag laws. We have already helped kill bills in California and Indiana, as I've written here. We have momentum on our side. ... Read more

Lehman Reaches Beyond Grave to Grab Millions From Nonprofits
Bloomberg | Martin Z. Braun | 05/13/13

Remember Lehman Brothers? It's back!

Almost five years after Lehman Brothers Holding Inc (LEHMQ). filed for bankruptcy and set off the global financial crisis, managers of the bank's estate are demanding millions of dollars from retirement homes, colleges and hospitals. ... Read more

Benghazi, IRS, immigration and repealing 'Obamacare' (again): The week to come in Congress
WashingtonPost | Ed O'Keefe | 05/13/13

Scandal, not legislation, could dominate Congress this week as lawmakers in both parties continue to respond to revelations that the Internal Revenue Service gave extra scrutiny to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status and continue to accuse the opposing party of playing politics with the attack at a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. ... Read more

Homeland Insecurity
Bill Moyers | Peter Van Buren | 05/11/13

What do words mean in a post-9/11 world? Apart from the now clichéd Orwellian twists that turn brutal torture into mere enhanced interrogation, the devil is in the details. Robert MacLean is a former air marshal fired for an act of whistleblowing. He has continued to fight over seven long years for what once would have passed as simple justice: getting his job back. His is an all-too-twenty-first-century story of the extraordinary lengths to which the U.S. government is willing to go to thwart whistleblowers. ... Read more

Large Corporations Seek U.S.--European 'Free Trade Agreement' to Further Global Dominance
AlterNet | Andrew Gavin Marshall | 05/10/13

corporate world order is emerging, and like any parasite, it is slowly killing off its host. Unfortunately, the "host" happens to be the planet, and all life upon and within it. So, while the extinction of the species will be the end result of passively accepting a corporate-driven world, on the other hand, it's very profitable for those corporations and their shareholders.

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is the latest corporate-driven agenda in what is commonly called a "free trade agreement," but which really amounts to 'cosmopolitical corporate consolidation': large corporations dictating and directing the policies of states -- both nationally and internationally -- into constructing structures which facilitate regional and global consolidation of financial, economic, and political power into the hands of relatively few large corporations. ... Read more

*Elizabeth Warren, a Great Investment
Truthdig | Robert Scheer | 05/14/13

How astonishing to have a public servant who actually cares to inform the public about the inner workings of the system of crony capitalism that has wedded big government with big business.

Elizabeth Warren does great email. One payoff of my pittance of a contribution to her grass-roots funded campaign--I regret not contributing more--is that I am regularly alerted by the new Massachusetts senator to the favoritism of our Congress toward Wall Street. ... Read more

Wall Street Is Killing Dodd-Frank One Regulation at a Time
Truthdig | Thomas Hedges | 04/30/13

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a letter this month outlining the changes it would like to see made to the Dodd-Frank Act, whose full implementation has been delayed for almost three years now. The chamber's Fix, Add, Replace (FAR) agenda to alter Dodd-Frank insists that Congress' already compromised attempt to avoid another financial meltdown is too ambitious. The law is failing, the chamber says, because it aimed to tackle too much. ... Read more

Cash, Secrecy and Strongmen: 5 Unsavory Ways America Conducts Its Global War
AlterNet | Alex Kane | 05/10/13

The recent revelation that the Central Intelligence Agency has handed tens of millions of dollars over to the offices of the president of Afghanistan should come as no surprise. The CIA has a long history of this sort of activity. And most importantly, it's the latest reminder of how America's global "war on terror" has been forged through backroom deals, cold hard cash and the fostering of corruption.

From Yemen to Afghanistan to Somalia, America has prosecuted its perpetual war the usual way U.S. foreign policy is conducted: partnerships with unsavory leaders who are corrupt and commit abuses. Here are five striking examples of how the U.S. global war has been characterized by unsavory activity since 2001. ... Read more

New Orleans Shooting: Suspect Caught On Surveillance Video Of Mother's Day Parade Violence
HP | Chevel Johnson | 05/13/13

Video released early Monday by New Orleans police shows a possible suspect in the Mother's Day gunfire that wounded 19 people during a neighborhood parade.

Police believe more than one gun was fired in the burst of Sunday afternoon violence -- the latest to flare up around a celebration this year -- and they have vowed to swiftly track down those responsible. Detectives were conducting interviews, collecting any surveillance video they could find and gathering evidence from the scene. Cell phone video taken in the aftermath of the shooting shows victims lying on the ground, blood on the pavement and others bending over to comfort them. ... Read more

Who Can Stop the Koch Brothers From Buying the Tribune Papers? Unions Can, and Should
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 05/10/13

... We have another one of those situations brewing now, only it's a much bigger deal this time -- the much-talked-about, much-dreaded potential sale of the Tribune newspaper group to the odious Koch brothers. As first reported in the Times a few weeks ago, the Kochs, after years of working through the media with relentless lobbying and messaging, are exploring the idea of skipping the middleman and becoming media themselves, with the acquisition of one of the biggest media groups in the country. ... Read more

Who Can Take Republicans Seriously?
NYTimes | author | 05/12/13

It is time for President Obama to abandon his hopes of reaching a grand budget bargain with Republicans.

At every opportunity since they took over the House in 2011, Republicans have made it clear that they have no interest in reaching a compromise with the White House. For two years, they held sham negotiations with Democrats that only dragged down the economy with cuts; this year, they are refusing even to sit down at the table. ... Read more

Melting Ice Opens Fight Over Sea Routes for Arctic Debate
Bloomberg | Flavia Krause-Jackson | 05/12/13

... The countries that make up the Arctic Council -- Russia, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, the U.S. and Canada - - will sign a treaty on oil-spill preparedness and response, discuss their agenda for the next two years and possibly vote on adding to the roster of permanent observers, which includes Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the U.K. and Poland. ...

... This week's conference comes amid signs that greenhouse gases blamed for global warming are accumulating at rates mankind has never experienced. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported on May 10 that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per million, a threshold not seen for 3 million years. ... Read more

Navy $37 Billion Ships Seen Unsuitable Have 2-Year Window
Bloomberg | Tony Capaccio | 05/10/13

The U.S. Navy has two years to convince critics, from lawmakers to some in its own ranks, that its troubled $37 billion Littoral Combat Ship program is worth continuing beyond the 24 vessels already under contract.   The Navy must make its case by 2015 for 28 more of the ships if it's to continue the shipbuilding effort beyond the vessels it has already committed to buy from teams led by Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) and Austal Ltd. (ASB) ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Monday, May 13 [13:28]

*DN | Climate Tipping Point? Concentration of Carbon Dioxide Tops 400 ppm For First Time in Human History (05/13/13) [12:05]

*Bill Moyers | Marshall Ganz on Making Social Movements Matter. (05/10/13) [33:48]

*Bill Moyers | Rachel LaForest and Madeline Janis on Fighting for Fairness. (05/10/13) [18:56]

The Biggest Creator of Low-Wage Jobs? Uncle Sam
Bill Moyers | Theresa Riley | 05/09/13

A new study from Demos estimates that American taxpayers fund nearly 2 million low-wage jobs that pay workers less than $24,000 a year ($12 an hour or less). These private-sector jobs are generated by federal contracts, grants, loans and other programs. ... Read more
Click to zoom

Chris Hayes | GOP: Debt Ceiling, pay SS, then bond holders, not Medicare recipients. (05/10/13) [3:46]

Hospital Prices No Longer Secret As New Data Reveals Bewildering System, Staggering Cost Differences
HP | Jeffrey Young | 05/08/13

When a patient arrives at Bayonne Hospital Center in New Jersey requiring treatment for the respiratory ailment known as COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, she faces an official price tag of $99,690.

Less than 30 miles away in the Bronx, N.Y., the Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center charges only $7,044 for the same treatment, according to a massive federal database of national health care costs made public on Wednesday. ... Read more

7 Financial Facts That Will Blow Your Mind
AlterNet |Lynn Stuart Parramore | 05/08/13

Bernanke's Neofeudal Rentier Economy
ZeroHedge | author | 05/07/13

In essence, the Fed extends low-cost credit (i.e. "free money") to the financier class which then uses this free money to buy rentier assets, that is, assets that generate economic rents for the owners, who add no value and create no wealth.

This is of course the neofeudal model: the financial aristocracy in the manor house own the rentier assets and the debt-serfs toil away to pay the rents and taxes. The financier class (i.e. those that benefit from the financialization of the economy) are as unproductive as feudal lords; they skim the profits generated by the debt-serfs while adding no productive value to the economy. ... Read more

Paul Ryan: Progressivism Is 'Arrogant And Condescending'
HP | Preston Maddock | 05/09/13

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) belittled progressives during a speech at the conservative American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday.   "Progressivism is well-intentioned but it is also -- in my humble opinion -- arrogant and condescending," Ryan said, according to a transcript. "Instead of helping people make their own decisions, it makes those decisions for them. It makes Washington the center of power and politicians the center of attention." ... Read more

How Wall Street Defanged Dodd-Frank
TheNation | Gary Rivlin | 04/30/13

The mood was triumphant on the morning of July 21, 2010, when Barack Obama, not quite two years into his presidency, strode to a podium inside the Ronald Reagan Building, a few blocks from the White House. As he prepared to sign the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act -- the sweeping legislative package designed to prevent another spectacular financial collapse -- into law, the president first acknowledged the miracle of having a bill to sign at all. "Passing this…was no easy task," he told the crowd of hundreds. "We had to overcome the furious lobbying of an array of powerful interest groups and a partisan minority determined to block change."

Indeed, some 3,000 lobbyists had swarmed the Capitol in hopes of killing off pieces of the proposed bill -- nearly six lobbyists for every member of Congress. For Michael Barr, then an assistant secretary at the Treasury Department, the trench warfare spurred by Dodd-Frank left him shellshocked. ... Read more

Chomsky: The Boston Bombings Gave Americans a Taste of the Terrorism the U.S. Inflicts Abroad Every Day
AlterNet | Noam Chomsky | 05/02/13

There are few in Boston who were not touched in some way by the marathon bombings on April 15 and the tense week that followed. Several friends of mine were at the finish line when the bombs went off. Others live close to where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the second suspect, was captured. The young police officer Sean Collier was murdered right outside my office building.

It's rare for privileged Westerners to see, graphically, what many others experience daily - for example, in a remote village in Yemen, the same week as the marathon bombings.   On April 23, Yemeni activist and journalist Farea Al-Muslimi, who had studied at an American high school, testified before a US Senate committee that right after the marathon bombings, a drone strike in his home village in Yemen killed its target. ... Read more

Elizabeth Warren: Student Loans Should Have Same Rate Big Banks Get
HP | Ryan Grim | 05/08/13

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) unveiled her first bill Wednesday, designed to set student loan interest rates at the same level the Federal Reserve offers to big banks.

... "Every single day, this country invests in big banks by lending them money at near-zero rates," Warren told The Huffington Post. "We should make the same kind of investment lending money to students, who are trying to get an education." ... Read more

Air Force sidelines 17 ICBM launch officers; commander cites 'rot' within system
WashingtonPost | AP | 09/08/13

The Air Force stripped an unprecedented 17 officers of their authority to control -- and, if necessary, launch -- nuclear missiles after a string of unpublicized failings, including a remarkably dim review of their unit's launch skills. The group's deputy commander said it is suffering "rot" within its ranks.

"We are, in fact, in a crisis right now," the commander, Lt. Col. Jay Folds, wrote in an internal email obtained by The Associated Press and confirmed by the Air Force.   The tip-off to trouble was a March inspection of the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., which earned the equivalent of a "D" grade when tested on its mastery of Minuteman III missile launch operations. In other areas, the officers tested much better, but the group's overall fitness was deemed so tenuous that senior officers at Minot decided, after probing further, that an immediate crackdown was called for. ... Read more

*The Rich Have Gained $5.6 Trillion in the 'Recovery,' While the Rest of Us Have Lost $669 Billion
AlterNet | Les Leopold | 05/03/13

Oh, are we getting ripped off. And now we've got the data to prove it. From 2009 to 2011, the richest 8 million families (the top 7%) on average saw their wealth rise from $1.7 million to $2.5 million each. Meanwhile the rest of us -- the bottom 93% (that's 111 million families) -- suffered on average a decline of $6,000 each.

Do the math and you'll discover that the top 7% gained a whopping $5.6 trillion in net worth (assets minus liabilities) while the rest of lost $669 billion. Their wealth went up by 28% while ours went down by 4 percent.   It's as if the entire economic recovery is going into the pockets of the rich. And that's no accident. Here's why. ... Read more

*A Rise in Wealth for the Wealthy; Declines for the Lower 93%
Pew Research | Richard Fry | 04/23/13

During the first two years of the nation's economic recovery, the mean net worth of households in the upper 7% of the wealth distribution rose by an estimated 28%, while the mean net worth of households in the lower 93% dropped by 4%, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly released Census Bureau data.

From 2009 to 2011, the mean wealth of the 8 million households in the more affluent group rose to an estimated $3,173,895 from an estimated $2,476,244, while the mean wealth of the 111 million households in the less affluent group fell to an estimated $133,817 from an estimated $139,896.   These wide variances were driven by the fact that the stock and bond market rallied during the 2009 to 2011 period while the housing market remained flat. ... Read more

Elizabeth Warren: Trade talks could weaken bank oversight
Politico | Kate Davidson | 05/08/13

Sen. Elizabeth Warren raised concerns Tuesday that negotiations over new trade agreements could be used as a backdoor way to water down financial regulations.

Speaking at a Senate confirmation hearing for Export-Import Bank President Fred Hochberg, Warren (D-Mass.) said there are "troubling indications" that negotiations over trade deals with Asia and Europe could be seen as an opportunity for banks to quietly weaken oversight of the financial services industry. ... Read more

#OpUSA Hackers Plan 'Day To Remember' With May 7 Attacks On Banks, Government Agencies
HP | Gerry Smith | 05/06/13

A collective of hacker groups plans to attack the websites of major government agencies and banks on Tuesday to protest American foreign policy.

For weeks, the groups, which include Anonymous, have used social media to publicize their planned operation, dubbed "#OpUSA." In a post on the file-sharing site Pastebin, one member of Anonymous laid out an ambitious list of targets, including the websites of the White House, the Defense Department, the FBI, Bank of America and Chase Bank. ... Read more

The US Regulatory Vice Closes On Bitcoin
ZeroHedge | author | 05/06/13

Just six weeks after the US Treasury decided enough-was-enough with this upstart non-fiat, non-controlled-by-TPTB currency (and applied money-laundering reglations), US financial regulators are now looking for supervisory control over Bitcoin.

As The FT reports, CFTC's Bart Chilton notes "it's not monopoly money - real people have real risk in these instruments," and that regulating the controversial cyber-currency "is sure something [CFTC] needs to explore." Chilton's remit to regulate this "shadow currency" is predicated on it becoming a basis for derivative contracts as opposed to purely transactional. ... Read more

Bernanke's Neofeudal Rentier Economy
ZeroHedge | author | 05/07/13

Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke is a Reverse Robin Hood, robbing from the lower 95% and giving to the financier class. The Real Reverse Robin Hood: Ben Bernanke and his Merry Band of Thieves (August 31, 2012).   It's worth understanding the mechanisms of this wealth transfer: in essence, the Fed extends low-cost credit (i.e. "free money") to the financier class which then uses this free money to buy rentier assets, that is, assets that generate economic rents for the owners, who add no value and create no wealth.

This is of course the neofeudal model: the financial aristocracy in the manor house own the rentier assets and the debt-serfs toil away to pay the rents and taxes. The financier class (i.e. those that benefit from the financialization of the economy) are as unproductive as feudal lords; they skim the profits generated by the debt-serfs while adding no productive value to the economy. ... Read more

U.S. May Charge JPMorgan For Power Market Manipulation
Reuters & HP | Scott DiSavino | 05/03/13

The regulator of U.S. power markets appears likely to pursue manipulation charges against JPMorgan Chase & Co , analysts said, after a New York Times report on the agency's document that seemed to lay out its case.

The Times said on Friday it reviewed a confidential, 70-page government document that the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) sent to JPMorgan in March, which alleged the bank manipulated the power market in California and Michigan in 2010 and 2011. ... Read more

JPMorgan Activist Shareholders: JPMorgan 'Lindsay Lohan Of Banks'
HP | Eleazar David Melendez | 05/03/13

Two years ago, when CtW Investment Group began asking JPMorgan Chase & Co. to drop several members from its corporate board, Michael Pryce-Jones, a senior analyst at the activist shareholder, admits the effort was a thankless task. Pryce-Jones says other investors tended to meet his group's proposal with puzzlement, silence or scorn.

This year, the response to his campaign has been markedly different, Pryce-Jones said.   "People tell us they've actually taken time to look at this board's composition and they're dumbstruck," he said. "People have turned and said to us, 'We didn't know it was so bad,' or, 'We never realized the board was so inexperienced.' It's a regular thing we hear now." Read more

This Uber-Wealthy Venture Capitalist Gave A TED Talk Saying Rich People Don't Create Jobs -- And TED Is Refusing To Post It
Business Insider | Grace Wyler | 05/16/12

As the war over income inequality wages on, super-rich Seattle entrepreneur Nick Hanauer has been raising the hackles of his fellow 1-percenters, espousing the contrarian argument that rich people don't actually create jobs.

The position is controversial -- so much so that TED is refusing to post a talk that Hanauer gave on the subject. ... Read more

The Hollowing Out of Government
HP | Robert Reich | 05/05/13

OSHA and its state partners have a total of 2,200 inspectors charged with ensuring the safety of over more than 8 million workplaces employing 130 million workers. That comes to about one inspector for every 59,000 American workers.   There's no way it can do its job with so few resources, but OSHA has been systematically hollowed out for the years under Republican administrations and congresses that have despised the agency since its inception.

In effect, much of our nation's worker safety laws and rules have been quietly repealed because there aren't enough inspectors to enforce them. That's been the Republican strategy in general: When they can't directly repeal laws they don't like, they repeal them indirectly by hollowing them out -- denying funds to fully implement them, and reducing funds to enforce them. ... Read more

Cheapest Way to Rob Bank Seen in Cyber Attack Like Hustle
Bloomberg | Jordan Robertson | 05/06/13

... One attack was so fast that, within two hours, $9 million was withdrawn from automated teller machines in 46 cities, according to Francis deSouza, president of products and services for Symantec Corp (SYMC)., the Mountain View, California-based information security company that investigated the incidents. ...

... Tens of millions of dollars were stolen in the past year in two-pronged attacks that banks didn't notice until customers complained or investigators later uncovered the breaches, said Samir Kapuria, a Symantec vice president who led the research. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Monday, May 06 [10:38]

Original Slides to Nick Hanauer TED Talk.

13-Year-Old Florida Boy Shoots 6-Year-Old Sister In Chest
Sun Sentinel & HP | By Mike Clary | 05/06/13

Late Saturday afternoon, Justin Latourrette noticed that the two young children of his new neighbors were out in the driveway washing a family car.   "I thought it was strange," said Latourrette, 29. "They didn't seem to have any supervision."

What happened about an hour later was even stranger: "A loud boom," said Latourrette; police confirmed it was a gunshot.   According to the Broward Sheriff's Office, the 13-year-old boy shot his 6-year-old sister inside their residence in the 5900 block of Northeast Second Terrace just before 7 p.m. ... Read more

Let's Cut Through the Bitcoin Hype: A Hacker-Entrepreneur's Take
Wired Magazine | Dan Kaminsky | 05/03/13

I'm on neither "Team Bitcoin" nor "Team Global Financial System." I'm on "Team Lets Fix This Thing."

Bitcoin. Everybody's talking about it. What's true, and what's hype? Perhaps the only thing that's clear about Bitcoin is that it's not going away anytime soon. Who am I to say? I'm not an economist; I'm a hacker, who has spent his career exploring and repairing large networks. And networks may very well be how the world works -- financial, social, electronic, even physical ... Read more

Study links insecticide use to invertebrate die-offs
The Guardian | Damian Carrington | 05/01/13

The world's most widely used insecticide is devastating dragonflies, snails and other water-based species, a groundbreaking Dutch study has revealed.   On Monday, the insecticide and two others were banned for two years from use on some crops across the European Union, due to the risk posed to bees and other pollinators, on which many food crops rely. ... Read more

The "Price" Of Record High Markets: $10 Trillion In Seven Years

ZeroHedge | author | 05/02/13

By now everyone, even CNBC, admits that the only reason stocks are where they are is due to the G-7 central banks. What many may not know, however, is how we got here, and where we will be at the end of this year. ... Read more

Banks on the Run - Part 3
TheNation & Bill Moyers | Greg Kaufmann | 05/02/13

You can't talk about poverty without talking about the practices of the big banks, including their continuing refusal to stem the foreclosure crisis through mortgage principal reductions.   Consider this: Latinos lost 66 percent of their household wealth after the housing bubble burst, and African-American households lost 53 percent. Nearly 12 million families--disproportionately people of color--have either lost their homes or are currently in foreclosure, and another 16 million are underwater, owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.

Communities are decimated by boarded up houses and vacant lots, declining property values and the consequent loss of state and local revenues, and fewer opportunities to weather and recover from financial hardship. A new study from the Urban Institute indicates that white families now average six times the wealth of African-American and Latino families. ... Read more
Part 1, Part 2

*While Wronged Homeowners Got $300 Apiece in Foreclosure Settlement, Consultants Who Helped Protect Banks Got $2 Billion
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 04/26/13

The upshot of this story is that in advance of that notorious settlement, the government ordered banks to hire "independent" consultants to examine their loan files to see just exactly how corrupt they were.

Now it comes out that not only were these consultants not so independent, not only did they very likely skew the numbers seriously in favor of the banks, and not only were these few consultants paid over $2 billion (over 20 percent of the entire settlement amount) while the average homeowner only received $300 in the deal -- in addition to all of that, it appears that federal regulators will not turn over the evidence of impropriety they discovered during these reviews to homeowners who may want to sue the banks.

In other words, the government not only ordered the banks to hire consultants who may have gamed the foreclosure settlement in favor of the banks, but the regulators themselves are hiding the information from the public in order to shield the banks from further lawsuits. ... Read more

May Snow Storm Breaks Records; Dumps Over A Foot Across Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin
Hp & Reuters | author | 05/03/13

An unseasonable May storm system dropped more than a foot of snow across the central Plains and the upper Midwest on Thursday, closing roads and causing power outages in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.   The winter storm system has delivered about 18 inches (46 cm) of snow across parts of northwest Wisconsin and more than 15 inches in southern Minnesota, according to the National Weather Service.

"The northernmost areas have seen snow in May before, but not of this magnitude," said Jim Keeney, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service.   Temperatures fell close to 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 1 degree Celsius), making for a heavy, wet snow that downed trees and caused power outages and road closures. The snowfall will likely break seasonal records in portions of Wisconsin and Minnesota, Keeney said. ... Read more

*Too-Big-to-Fail Takes Another Body Blow
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 05/01/13

... Last week, on April 24th, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Louisiana Republican David Vitter introduced legislation called the "Terminating Bailouts for Taxpayer Fairness Act of 2013 Act," or the "Brown-Vitter TBTF Act" for short. The bill is a gun aimed directly at the head of the Too-Big-To-Fail beast. ... Read more

Pat Toomey: Background Checks Died Because GOP Didn't Want To Help Obama
HP | Amanda Terkel | 05/01/13

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) revealed that some members of his party opposed expanding background checks for gun sales recently because they didn't want to "be seen helping the president."

Two weeks ago, only three Republican senators voted for the bipartisan background checks amendment sponsored by Toomey and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), despite overwhelming popular support for such a measure. ... Read more

Flow of Tainted Water Is Latest Crisis at Japan Nuclear Plant

NYTimes | Martin Fackler | 04/29/13

Two years after a triple meltdown that grew into the world's second worst nuclear disaster, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is faced with a new crisis: a flood of highly radioactive wastewater that workers are struggling to contain.

Groundwater is pouring into the plant's ravaged reactor buildings at a rate of almost 75 gallons a minute. It becomes highly contaminated there, before being pumped out to keep from swamping a critical cooling system. A small army of workers has struggled to contain the continuous flow of radioactive wastewater, relying on hulking gray and silver storage tanks sprawling over 42 acres of parking lots and lawns. The tanks hold the equivalent of 112 Olympic-size pools ... Read more

Executive Pay Of Austerity Advocates Saves Companies More Than $1 Billion Via Tax Loophole
HP | Zach Carter | 05/02/13

... The four highest-paid executives at the firms received a total of $6.3 billion in pay over the period, according to the report. Federal tax law allows companies to deduct executive pay based on performance from the firm's tax bill as a business expense. This performance-based compensation includes stock options, stock awards and other types of incentive pay. These 90 companies qualified for tax perks totaling between $1 billion and $1.5 billion over the course of three years, depending on how many types of pay firms actually deducted ... Read more

How the CIA's Bags of Cash Undermined the Afghanistan War
Wired Magazine | Spencer Ackerman | 04/29/13

... Nearly every month since the war began in 2001, the CIA has sent a guy over to Afghan President Hamid Karzai with a bag -- sometimes a suitcase, sometimes a backpack, sometimes a shopping bag -- full of cash. His former chief of staff says they used to call it "ghost money," and it totals tens of millions of dollars, according to an eye-opening New York Times story. Quite the hypocritical twist from a sponsor country that so frequently hectors Karzai about corruption. "The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan," a U.S. official levels with the paper's Matthew Rosenberg, "was the United States." ... Read more

Banks Move Shareholders Meetings to Avoid Protests
Bill Moyers | Greg Kaufmann, The Nation | 05/02/13

You can't talk about poverty without talking about the practices of the big banks, including their continuing refusal to stem the foreclosure crisis through mortgage principal reductions.   Consider this: Latinos lost 66 percent of their household wealth after the housing bubble burst, and African-American households lost 53 percent. Nearly 12 million families -- disproportionately people of color -- have either lost their homes or are currently in foreclosure, and another 16 million are underwater, owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth Read more

5-Year-Old Get .22 Caliber Birthday Rifle, Shoots and Kills 2-Year-Old Sister
AlterNet | Steven Hsieh | 05/01/13

A 5-year-old-boy shot and killed his 2-year-old sister with a .22 caliber rifle he received for his birthday, said police in Cumberland County, Ohio, where the incident occurred. ... Read more

A Four-Year-Old Shoots and Kills Deputy's Wife at Weekend BBQ
Gawker | author | 04/08/13

Guns don't kill people--no, they do. One did this past Saturday, in the 26,000-person town of Lebanon, Tennessee, when it was left loaded on a bed, within grabbing distance of a toddler. ... Read more

Grand Theft Market: High-Frequency Frontrunning CME Edition
ZeroHedge | author | 05/01/13

One of the New Normal responses to allegations, first started here in 2009 and subsequently everywhere, that all HFT does is to frontrun traditional market players (among many other evils) now that its conventional and flawed defense that it "provides liquidity" lies dead and buried, is that "everyone does it" so you must acquit because how can you possibly prosecute a technology that accounts for over 60% of all market volume and where if you throw one person in jail you would throw everyone in jail. Today we learn that this indeed may be the case, and not only at the traditional locus of HFT frontrunning such as conventional exchanges for stocks such as the NYSE or even dark pools, but at the heart of the biggest futures exchange in the US, the CME where as the WSJ's Scott Patterson explains frontrunning by HFT algos is not only a way of life, but is perfectly accepted and even smiled upon. ... Read more

The reality of high-frequency trading
Politico | Charles M. Jones | 03/19/13

Is high-frequency trading a threat to our financial markets or an important innovation that benefits today's investors? Judging by the rhetoric coming from some in Washington and elsewhere, it's easy to perceive high-frequency trading as a one-sided battle pitting merciless, lightning-fast machines against earnest but doomed investors. One member of Congress went so far as to call high-frequency trading "a clear and present danger to the stability and safety of our markets." But does this view match reality? ... Read more

Fed holds steady on stimulus, worried by fiscal drag
Reuters | Pedro da Costa | 05/01/13

The U.S. Federal Reserve said on Wednesday it will continue buying $85 billion in bonds each month to keep interest rates low and spur growth, and added it would step up purchases if needed to protect the economy.

Read more