Thursday, January 29, 2009

Jan. 29, 2009

Jan. 29, 2009—Despite crippling losses, multi-billion dollar bailouts and the passing of some of the most prominent names in the business, employees at financial companies in New York, the now-diminished world capital of capital, collected an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for the year. NYT A1

--“I had on khakis and a buttoned-down shirt [on Saturday morning at the White House], and I had to stand by the door and get chewed out for about 15 minutes. [Bush] wouldn’t even let me cross the threshold.”—Dan Bartlett, counselor to GWB—NYT A14

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

god is dead

Russia and China blame crisis on debt binge
Wed Jan 28, 2009 3:57pm EST
By Guy Faulconbridge and Jason Subler

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - China and Russia blamed debt-fueled consumption on Wednesday for massive financial collapse and called for global cooperation to repair the world economy.

"The existing financial system has failed," Putin told business and political leaders holding their annual World Economic Forum in this Swiss ski resort.

Growth was based on greed where one center printed money without respite and consumed wealth, and another manufactured cheap goods and saved money, he said.

His clear swipe at the United States was echoed by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who said the bad macroeconomic policies and unsustainable growth models of some countries "characterized by prolonged low savings and high consumption" were primary reasons for the crisis.

Wen also blamed the "blind pursuit of profit."

Despite the criticism of Western policies, both China and Russia pledged their support for open markets, refuted protectionism and called for the Group of 20 major economies to work swiftly toward a global regulatory system that would put world markets and financial institutions on a safer footing.

Certainly government solutions are in the driver's seat at meetings of business leaders and politicians in the Swiss mountain resort, a reversal from the usual gathering where Wall Street tycoons rule.

Jan. 28, 2009

Jan. 28, 2009 --Nine dissident scientists at the Food and Drug Administration who say they were forced to approve high-risk medical devices sent a letter to President Obama on Monday stating that agency officials might have made them the targets of a criminal investigation into their complaints.
“It has been brought to our attention that F.D.A. management may have just recently ordered the F.D.A. Office of Criminal Investigations (O.C.I.) to investigate us rather than the managers who have engaged in wrongdoing!” states the letter, which was provided to The New York Times. “It is an outrage that our own agency would step up the retaliation to such a level because we have reported their wrongdoing to the United States Congress.” NYT A15

--I would have committed suicide had I not found Kierkegaard.—Updike on his college days

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Jan. 27, 2009

Jan. 27, 2009—“In recent days persons in a Western country have said ‘China is manipulating the yuan exchange rate,’” said People’s Bank of China Vice Governor Su Ning... “These remarks are not only inconsistent with the facts, tut they are misleading about the reasons for the financial crisis.” –WSJ A8

--Halliburton to pay $559 Million to Settle Bribery investigation. It is unclear whether the proposed settlement will affect KBR’s ability to land future government contracts. –WSJ B3

—The British government announced Monday that it had launched an investigation into four members of the [House of Lords] after they allegedly told undercover journalists they would be willing to influence legislation in return for money. SBT A4

--Republican lawmakers opposed to expanding the children’s health program insurance program argued that broadening the plan would force 2.4 million children into government sponsored insurance. “We’re going to replace a lot of private insurance with government insurance” Arizona Se. Jon Kyl said. SBT A4

--The truth, of course, is that the country is hemorrhaging jobs and Americans are heading to the poorhouse by the millions. The stock markets and the value of the family home have collapsed, and there is virtual across-the-board agreement that the country is caught up in the worst economic disaster since at least World War II. The Republican answer to this turmoil?
Tax cuts. They need to go into rehab. The question that I would like answered is why anyone listens to this crowd anymore. G.O.P. policies have been an absolute backbreaker for the middle class. (Forget the poor. Nobody talks about them anymore, not even the Democrats.) The G.O.P. has successfully engineered a wholesale redistribution of wealth to those already at the top of the income ladder and then, in a remarkable display of chutzpah, dared anyone to talk about class warfare. A stark example of this unholy collaboration between the G.O.P. and the very wealthy was on display in the pages of this newspaper on Jan. 18. The Times’s Mike McIntire wrote an article about the first wave of federal bailout money for the financial industry, which was handed over by the Bush administration with hardly any strings attached. (Congress, under the control of the Democrats, should never have allowed this to happen, but the Democrats are as committed to fecklessness as the Republicans are to tax cuts.) The public was told that the money would be used to loosen the frozen credit markets and thus help revive the economy. But as the article pointed out, there were bankers with other ideas. John C. Hope III, the chairman of the Whitney National Bank in New Orleans, in an address to Wall Street fat cats gathered at the Palm Beach Ritz-Carlton, said: “Make more loans? We’re not going to change our business model or our credit policies to accommodate the needs of the public sector as they see it to have us make more loans.” How’s that for arrogance and contempt for the public interest? Mr. Hope’s bank received $300 million in taxpayer bailout money. Bob Herbert, NYT A29

--The New Life Church, a nationally known evangelical institution that fired its founding pastor, Ted Haggard, in 2006 over accusations that he had had sex with a male prostitute, made payments starting in 2007 to a young male church member who had a relationship with Mr. Haggard before the dismissal, the church’s pastor told worshipers on Sunday.—NYT A17

--A federal judge has ordered that copies of documents related to the investigation into the 2006 firings of nine US attorneys must be made and stored at the White House for use by the incoming Obama administration...NLJ, 1-19-09, p. 3

Monday, January 26, 2009

socialism or barbarism

--Jan. 26, 2009—Lending drops at Big US banks. Top beneficiaries of federal cash saw outstanding loans decline 1.% last quarter. WSJ A1.

--Nationalization [of banks] gets a new, serious look. NYT A1

--“The capitalist myth is lovely and youthful. It kicked off the industrial revolution, but maybe we need a new one,” said Richard Olivier ... [who] will give a dinner talk on business leadership at Davos...WSJ A6

Friday, January 23, 2009

almost like waterboarding, which, of course, is NOT torture

--Jan. 23, 2009—Some Bush aides found the Inaugural Address ungracious. ... Mr. Emmanuel mocked Bush advisors for bristling at the message of the Inaugural address. “If they didn’t know that was the judgment of people, then their subscription to newspapers were canceled over the last three years,” he said. NYT A18

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Day One

--Jan. 21, 2009—Shares of the biggest names in American banking plunged Tuesday as some investors

feared that the government would need to nationalize the most deeply wounded financial institutions, wiping out stockholders. WSJ A1

--Saudi Prince Alwaleed reports losing $7.9 billion—WSJ A11

--Irish tycoon is found dead. WSJ A12

--But let us take the one thing Truman was known for before he became FDR’s vice president: rooting out waste and fraud in defense contracts as World War II got under way. Under the Bush administration, on the other hand, contracting waste was apparently so robust, so spectacular, that we might well think of it as an official element of administration policy: waste in New Orleans, waste in Iraq, waste in Homeland Security.—Thomas Frank WSJ A15

--In Russia and France, notably, there have been high-level calls that Mr. Obama accept that America’s days as the dominant superpower are over, especially in the face of the retreat from the free-market capitalism the United States has championed. ... “America has to recognize the reality of a ‘post-American’ world,” [wrote Russia’s foreign minister, and French President Sarkozy:] “But let us make things clear: in the 21st century there is no longer one nation that can tell what must be done or what one must think” NYT P26

--Jan. 18, 2009--At the Palm Beach Ritz-Carlton last November, John C. Hope III, the chairman of Whitney National Bank in New Orleans, stood before a ballroom full of Wall Street analysts and explained how his bank intended to use its $300 million in federal bailout money. “Make more loans?” Mr. Hope said. “We’re not going to change our business model or our credit policies to accommodate the needs of the public sector as they see it to have us make more loans.” NYT A1

Friday, January 16, 2009

1-16-09

Jan. 16, 2009—Rapid and widespread privatization in several former states of the Soviet Union and former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s contributed to rising mortality rates, particularly in Russia, according to a study published Thursday. NYT A6

--Last fall, as Federal Reserve and Treasury Department officials rode to the rescue of one financial institution after another, they took great pains to avoid doing anything that smacked of nationalizing banks. They may no longer have that luxury. NYT B1

--Out-of-network doctors and hospitals are typically reimbursed “usual and customary” charges, determined by what insurers calculate is the going rate in a given area. But the charges arrived at are often below what the doctor or hospital actually bills, leaving patients to pay the difference. Mr. Cuomo said his investigation revealed those rates were often 10% to 28% ;ess than actual charges. WSJ B3

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Jan. 14, 2009

Jan. 14, 2009—“as long as I’m here, adherents of Mao’s Little Red Book need not apply.... I just want to make sure we don’t start confining ourselves to, you know, Politburo members because they happen to be a member of some, you know, psychopathic left-wing organizations designed to overthrow the government.”—Brad Schlozman NYT A14

--A judge issued a warrant on Tuesday for Marcus Schrenker, the Indiana investment banker who the authorities say parachuted out of his airplane on Alabama on Sunday trying to fake his death.—NYT A16

--Artists are unreliable; whereas death never lets you down. You would buy shares in death if they were available. –Julian Barnes NYT C8

--American Power is On the Wane—Paul Kennedy—WSJ A13


Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Jan. 12, 2009

Jan. 12, 2009—“You’ve got to watch those Harvard guys, they’ll get you every time.”-- Barack Obama. NYT A14

Sunday, January 11, 2009

last transition to a Democratic Pres...

Dec. 10, 1992—AG William Barr today rejected Congressional demands for an independent prosecutor to investigate whether the Government had committed a crime in a bank fraud case involving loans to Iraq. NYT A1—

--For the Pentagon, actuely conscious of its vulnerability to post-cold-war budget cutters, the landing of US troops at Mogadishu was the ultimate photo opportunity. NYT A1

--A federal grand jury found Clair E. George, once a top CIA official, guilty on two felony counts of lying to Congress about his knowledge of the Iran-Contra scandal. NYTA1

--Frail Social Compact is Broken in Bombay.—NYTA1

Friday, January 9, 2009

1-9-09

Remembering too, that the Jefferson party were formed upon their supposed superior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior, and then assuming that the so-called [Democrats] of to-day, are the Jefferson, and their opponents, the anti-Jefferson parties, it will be equally interesting to note how completely the two have changed hands as to the principles upon which thy were originally supposed to be divided.

The [Democrats] of today hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man’s right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar. Lincoln, April 6, 1859

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Jan. 8, 2009

Jan. 8, 2009—Chairman of [Indian] outsourcing giant resigns, saying he concocted financial results. WSJ A1

--China losing taste for debt from the US NYT A1

--The Army said Wednesday that it had mistakenly sent 7000 letters with the salutation “Dear John Doe” to family members of soldiers who have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army said that the mistake was the fault of a subcontractor... but that the service bore ultimate responsibility...NYT, A19

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

casualting like it's 1929

Jan. 7, 2009—German billionaire in “railway” accident

--Chicago real-estate CEO self-inflicted gunshot wound

--found, body of M. de la Villehuchet, in NYC office (lost $1.5 to Madoff)

--Swiss Bank Julius Baer CEO Alex Widmer

--Kirk Septehnson, COO Olivant (sucked into Lehman) “railway accient”

WSJ A9

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

epiphany

Jan. 6, 2009-Mr. Obama said he would nominate ... Dawn E. Johnsen, an Indiana University law professor, as head of the Office of Legal Counsel. ... Ms. Johnsen, who would provide legal interpretations to the entire Obama administration, did not try to hide her disdain for recent counterterrorism initiatives in a law review article last year titled: “What’s a President to Do: Interpreting the Constitution in the Wake of the Bush Administration’s Abuses.” She criticized the “unnecessary unilateralism of the Bush years” in programs like the National Security Agency’s program of wiretapping without warrants and the administration’s approval of simulated drowning, or waterboarding, in the questioning of suspected Al Qaeda operatives. NYT A16

Monday, January 5, 2009

Jan. 5, 2008

Jan. 5, 2009—Madoff’s firm was examined at least 8 times in 16 years by various agencies, who never came close to uncovering his alleged scheme. WSJ A1

Sunday, January 4, 2009

it's gonna be a GREAT year...

Jan. 3-4, 2009—Football fans watching this year’s college bowl games may have noticed that some of the biggest sponsors were also recipients of federal bailout money... WSJ A2

--18 months into the most spectacular man-made financial calamity in modern experience, nothing has been done to change that, or any other of the bad incentives that led us here in the first place. Say what you will about our government’s approach to the financial crisis, you cannot accuse it of wasting its energy being consistent or trying to win over the masses. In the past year there have been at least seven different bailouts, and six different strategies. And none of them seem to have pleased anyone except a handful of financiers. NYT WK 9

Friday, January 2, 2009

Happy New Year

Jan. 1, 2009—The EPA failed to follow its own guidelines and made a basic error in evaluating how a toxic contaminant in rocket fuel harms human health, according to a report by the agency’s inspector general... Perchlorate can occur naturally, but high concentrations have been found near military installations where it was used in testing rockets and missiles. NYT A15