Nothing Happens by Serendipity

Still wondering why the unions had to give up so much ground before GM gets sold cheap? They're the bad guys, right? Yeah. They led the banks down the primrose path. Or so you'd think.

Shanghai car-maker SAIC makes approach for Vauxhall The Chinese car manufacturer that owns the rump of MG Rover will this week begin considering a potential investment in a new European company that will house Britain's Vauxhall By Mark Kleinman 11 Apr 2009 Shanghai-based SAIC has requested a sale document from General Motors (GM), the stricken US car-maker, which has warned that it may file for bankruptcy in an effort to ensure its survival. Commerzbank, the German banking group, is orchestrating the sale process on behalf of GM, which is to establish a new subsidiary comprising Vauxhall and Opel, the German car manufacturer. A new investor would be invited to acquire a controlling stake in the company, with GM potentially retaining a minority interest. Vauxhall employs about 5,000 people in Britain at its plants in Luton, Beds, and Ellesmere Port on Merseyside. Efforts to sell a stake in the new Opel-Vauxhall company will be complicated by separate negotiations taking place with a number of European governments, including in Britain, about State guarantees worth up to €3.3bn. SAIC's interest will prompt questions from union officials about the security of jobs at Vauxhall. The Chinese car-maker acquired the assets of MG Rover, which collapsed four years ago, when it merged with a domestic rival. Geely Automotive, the Chinese company which owns a stake in Manganese Bronze, the maker of London's black cabs, has also requested the information from Commerzbank.

The sale will exclude Saab, which GM is attempting to sell separately, and the European sales operations of Chevrolet. Other interested parties include at least one consortium of private equity firms, although many financial buyers have lost their appetite for investing in the industry because of the travails of Chrysler, the Detroit car-maker which is owned by Cerberus. GM declined to comment on the process. The auction of a controlling stake in the European arm of GM comes amid the biggest shake-up in the history of the automotive industry. Ford Motor is auctioning Volvo, while Daimler last month sold a small stake to an Abu Dhabi-based investor.

•TI Automotive, the Oxford-based car parts supplier which employs about 1000 people in Britain, has lined up the restructuring specialists Zolfo Cooper to provide advice amid growing concern about its future.

It's a good thing that none of this was orchestrated (like maybe to increase the power of those at the top of this stinkin' heap), as the coming explosion of rage already will be quite loud. Suzan _________________

They Rule (You Don't)

It's now common knowledge that since no U.S. taxpayers (of note, at least) have really complained about mortgaging their great-grandchildren's futures to keep the financial industry rolling along (after the bailouts), that no serious changes need to be made accompanying the huge blocks of cash that will fuel the recovery of those we now understand really deserved those retention bonuses. I mean, if you contemplate the whole business (like they have all along), they must be retained in order to continue explaining how they are necessary to the continued success of the "funny money" economy. Or are they? On CNBC's Squawk Box this morning, the head McGraw of McGraw-Hill tells us that "spring has sprung" and it's morning in America again. (Never mind those over-the-cliff unemployment numbers and the over-the-ravine housing market. He's not unemployed or houseless.) Reagan Rules! And my financial guruess, Abby Joseph Cohen, then appeared and comforted one and all with the news that two-years out (or more?), never-mind-the-U.S.-unemployment-and-housing news, long-term investors will see some nice growth in their investments in third- and fourth-world economies! (Emphasis marks added for emphasis - Ed.)

That March 23 gathering, the details of which have gone largely unreported until now, was just a minor flare-up in a larger battle for the future — one that may already be lost. With the financial markets seeming to stabilize in recent weeks, major Wall Street players are digging in against fundamental changes. And while it clearly wants to install serious supervision, the Obama administration — along with other key authorities like the New York Fed — appears willing to stand back while Wall Street resurrects much of the ultracomplex global trading system that helped lead to the worst financial collapse since the Depression. At issue is whether trading in credit default swaps and other derivatives — and the giant, too-big-to-fail firms that traded them — will be allowed to dominate the financial landscape again once the crisis passes. As things look now, that is likely to happen. And the firms may soon be recapitalized and have a lot more sway in Washington — all of it courtesy of their supporters in the Obama administration. With its Public-Private Investment Program set to bid up and buy toxic assets, the administration is handing these companies another giant federal subsidy. But this time the money will come through the back door, bypassing Congress, mainly via FDIC loans. No one is quite sure how the program will work yet, but it's very likely going to make a lot of the same Wall Street houses much richer at taxpayer expense. Meanwhile, the big banks that still need help will almost certainly get another large infusion once the stress tests are completed by the end of the month.

Is the common (woe)man (that's the taxpayer versus the bailout receiver) represented in these complex negotiations at all?

Not long ago, a group of skeptical Democratic senators met at the White House with President Obama, his chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. The six senators — most of them centrists, joined by one left-leaning independent, Vermont's Bernie Sanders — said that while they supported Obama, they were worried. The financial reform policies the president was pursuing were not going far enough, they told him, and the people Obama was choosing as his regulators were not going to change things fundamentally enough. His appointed officials and nominees were products of the very system that brought us all this economic grief; they would tinker with the system but in the end leave Wall Street, and its practices, mostly intact, the senators suggested politely. In addition to Sanders, the senators at the meeting were Maria Cantwell, Byron Dorgan, Dianne Feinstein, Carl Levin and Jim Webb. . . . The financial industry isn't leaving anything to chance, however. One sign of a newly assertive Wall Street emerged recently when a bevy of bailed-out firms, including Citigroup, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, formed a new lobby calling itself the Coalition for Business Finance Reform. Its goal: to stand against heavy regulation of "over-the-counter" derivatives, in other words customized contracts that are traded off an exchange. Companies like these kinds of contracts, which are agreed to privately between firms, because they allow them to tailor a hedge perfectly against a firm-specific risk for a certain time period. But in order to preserve its right to negotiate these cheaper private contracts, Wall Street is apparently willing to argue for the same lack of public transparency and to permit the systemic risk that led to the crash. Geithner's financial regulation plan, announced April 2, does address some of these concerns. The Treasury chief wants all standardized over-the-counter trading of derivatives to go through an industry clearinghouse, which will give the government more oversight. Geithner said he wants to require "systemically important" firms to reserve more capital. He also wants to rein in "customized" derivatives contracts — those agreed to privately between firms. Whereas once these trades went totally unregulated, Geithner would require that they be "reported to trade repositories and be subject to robust standards" for documenting and collateralizing, among other new rules. But it's unlikely this will do much to change Wall Street. Geithner's new rules would allow the over-the-counter market to boom again, orchestrated by global giants that will continue to be "too big to fail" (they may have to be rescued again someday, in other words). And most of it will still occur largely out of sight of regulated exchanges. The response favored by the administration, the Federal Reserve and even many in Congress is to create a new all-knowing "systemic risk regulator" with as-yet-undetermined powers. Is such a person sitting at 30,000 feet really going to be able to keep up with all this onrushing complexity, especially as over-the-counter trading resumes in quiet places around the world? It is a triumph of hope over experience to think so. Meanwhile, up in Manhattan, the New York Fed has been conducting meetings on future regulation with a group of major Street insiders and their traditional regulators. At the most recent meeting, on April 1, they agreed on creating central clearinghouses for trading and "trade-information warehouses" that will track market data far better than before. But they have resisted anything more dramatic, like requiring all trading to occur on publicly recognized exchanges. Geithner has also put his stock in clearinghouses; he says he only wants to "encourage greater use of exchange-traded instruments." That has placed Geithner at odds with another Democratic senator, Tom Harkin of Iowa, chair of the agriculture committee, who wants all futures contracts traded on exchange. "The senator feels that what he's offering in his bill does include more integrity and transparency than the current Geithner plan," a Harkin spokesman told me. Officials at the firms who took part in the New York Fed meeting and at the Fed maintain that there is little difference between clearinghouses and formal exchanges; both are regulated and both are industry-run, they say. But that misses a major point, says Michael Greenberger, a former top official at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission who has been a critic of the administration's reform efforts. Exchange trading gives the government authority over fraud and manipulation and emergency powers to stop trading, he says, and it creates the kind of public transparency that isn't possible in a privately run clearinghouse. . . . the old culture is reasserting itself with a vengeance. All of which runs up against the advice now being dispensed by many of the experts who were most prescient about the crash and its causes — the outsiders, in other words, as opposed to the insiders who are still running the show. Among the outsiders is Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the trader and professor who wrote The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Taleb wrote in the Financial Times this week that a fundamental new approach is needed. Not only should firms be prevented from growing too big to fail, "complex derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it," he said. Yet even as we are still picking up the debris, we seem to be ready to embrace that world once again.

So don't hold your breath waiting for that "change." Suzan P.S. Isn't it nice that Goldman Sachs is already healed enough to "give back" the TARP money (and lose the overseers ASAP), yet they don't mention giving back the money they got under the table from AIG that covered their losses that forced them to change their business model? Maybe they think the taxpayer has forgotten about what happened last October in today's market madness? __________________________

Criminals, Felons, Liars Arise Anew - Taxpayers Await Your Latest Orders! ($12.8 Trillion to Wall Street - So Far)

How did it get so easy for thugs and criminals like our friendly banksters (and perhaps even the solid citizens behind the Madoff scam) to put another ripoff into play whereby the taxpayers fund their latest schemes on top of the older and now boring ones (which no one even wanted to explain until forced to by the holding back of the rest of the bailout moolah)? (Please note the essay I published on April 6, 2009, for background on the latest one: Larry Summers' part-time lover gig.)

The Associated Press this week reports that “companies that spent hundreds of millions lobbying successfully for a tax break enacted in 2004 got a 22,000-percent return on that investment” — $100 billion in all.

David Sirota has the facts secreted away within this humorous essay. (Emphasis marks the spot that's hot.)

The Best Investment Money Can Buy! By David Sirota Feeling sorry for yourself? Struggling to get by? Wondering how you can get a bailout? Well, stop moping, because it’s not too late! I may not have Suze Orman’s verve or Billy Mays’ voice. But I’ve discovered a revolutionary risk-free investment plan straight from those who brought us the economic meltdown. So in this column-fomercial, I won’t waste your time with Ginsu knives or cash-for-timeshare schemes — I’m going to help make you rich beyond your wildest dreams! Look, we’ve all heard about Wall Street’s losses. But you probably didn’t hear about Corporate America’s newest sure thing: a path to financial freedom far more reliable than any decent-paying job. It’s something so old-fashioned that even amateur investors can understand it! It’s called graft — a surefire wealth creator that takes your investments, modifies laws, and delivers returns that the best stock trader could never dream of! This is the ShamWow of strategies, the Flowbee of economics, the Ronco of investing. Just look at the profits it generates! In the last decade, the financial industry’s $5 billion investment in campaign contributions and lobbyists resulted in deregulation, which delivered trillions to executives. And when the bubble burst, there was another boatload of free money! By Bloomberg News’ account, $12.8 trillion worth of taxpayer loans, grants and guarantees — all to Wall Street! But wait . . . there’s more! The Associated Press this week reports that “companies that spent hundreds of millions lobbying successfully for a tax break enacted in 2004 got a 22,000-percent return on that investment” — $100 billion in all. That could be you! Of course, the secret is investing heavily in specific political stocks. For example, the banking industry recently paid Rahm Emanuel $16 million for about two years of work. That investment was recently paid back when, as President Obama’s chief of staff, Emanuel led the January campaign to release another $350 billion in bank bailout funds. Turning a $16 million down payment into a $350 billion payout—that’s huge! Likewise, Goldman Sachs hired former Senate aide Mark Patterson as one of its lobbyists — an investment that proved a huge winner when Patterson became the Treasury Department’s chief of staff and the agency subsequently killed proposals to limit executive compensation at bailed-out banks. Cha-ching! And the hedge fund industry paid economist Larry Summers $5.2 million in 2008 for part-time work — an investment that hit pay dirt when Summers became Obama’s top economic aide and the administration resisted tough international hedge fund regulations that some G-20 countries wanted. Show me the money! That’s right, the surest way to make big cash is not to invest in people with proven business experience or in valuable entrepreneurial ventures, but in blue-chip members of Permanent Washington — career politicos and bureaucrats who inevitably get back into positions of power and payback! Now I know you think that I sound like the guy in the question-mark suit and that my plan seems like a scam. But it’s perfectly legal! So how much would you pay for this kind of opportunity? $100 trillion? $50 trillion? What if I said you could get all this for just a few billion in pocket change? Because that’s all it takes to start no-risk investing! It’s THAT easy! Why let the corporate guys make all the money off government? Why waste time working for companies that make stuff when you can buy the one company that simply prints cash? Order now and try my product! It’s not available in stores, but if you call within the next 15 minutes, we’ll throw in free congressional and White House phone directories valued at $49.95! Operators are standing by!

Sounds like a winner. Again. Suzan ________________________

Bill Moyers - Bill Black: "Intentional Fraud and a Moral Crisis" - CALL THE COPS!

Summary: The financial industry brought the economy to its knees, but how did they get away with it? With the nation wondering how to hold the bankers accountable, Bill Moyers sits down with William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980's. Black offers his analysis of what went wrong and his critique of the bailout. William K. Black is Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri.

Are the US and EU governments now creating money out of thin air to save the banks that own the Federal Reserve? Right. None of these are owned by taxpayers: big banksters allowed only. Or that this fraud probably originated in the BIS*, which is the central bank of all central banks like the FED, and that our international hero, Henry Kissinger made Obama one of his first job offers after Harvard and that Timothy Geithner is Kissinger-trained, thus explaining his ingenuous inaction at the New York Fed where instead of being in charge of regulation (which he was), he claims he was never a regulator? (See Moyers-Black interview for specifics.) Surprise! I couldn't believe that the networks allowed Bill Moyers to use their airwaves to run his program last Friday night where he exposed every fraud of the financial chicanerists involved in the bailout/greatest financial disaster ever. I'm guessing that everyone's given up on an informed public who will be outraged enough to take some serious action. *The BIS is the most obscure arm of the Bretton-Woods International Financial architecture but its role is central. John Maynard Keynes wanted it closed down as it was used to launder money for the Nazis in World War II. Run by an inner elite representing the world's major central banks it controls most of the transferable money in the world. It uses that money to draw national governments into debt for the IMF. Or watch the unforgettable, fabulous William Black here. And don't miss the end of Bill's show where he interviews Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman. Delicious! - - - - - - - - - - - - (Excerpted transcript - emphasis marks inserted - Ed.) April 3, 2009 William K. Black suspects that it was more than greed and incompetence that brought down the U.S. financial sector and plunged the economy in recession — it was fraud. And he would know. When it comes to financial shenanigans, William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, has seen pretty much everything. William K. Black tells Bill Moyers on the JOURNAL that the tool at the very center of mortgage collapse, creating triple-A rated bonds out of "liars' loans" — loans issued without verifying income, assets or employment — was a fraud, and the banks knew it. And while there is no law against liars' loans, Black points out that there are, "many laws against fraud, and liars' loans are fraudulent. [...] They involve deceit, which is the essence of fraud." Only the scale of the scandal is new. A single bank, IndyMac, lost more money than the entire Savings and Loan Crisis. The difference between now and then, explains Black, is a drastic reduction in regulation and oversight, "We now know what happens when you destroy regulation. You get the biggest financial calamity of anybody under the age of 80." Biography William K. Black, author of The Best Way To Rob a Bank is to Own One, teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri — Kansas City (UMKC). He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-2007. He has taught previously at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and at Santa Clara University, where he was also the distinguished scholar in residence for insurance law and a visiting scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Black was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and general counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and senior deputy chief counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement. Black developed the concept of "control fraud" — frauds in which the CEO or head of state uses the entity as a "weapon." Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined. He recently helped the World Bank develop anti-corruption initiatives and served as an expert for OFHEO in its enforcement action against Fannie Mae's former senior management. - - - - - - - - - - - - BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal. For months now, revelations of the wholesale greed and blatant transgressions of Wall Street have reminded us that "The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One." In fact, the man you're about to meet wrote a book with just that title. It was based upon his experience as a tough regulator during one of the darkest chapters in our financial history: the savings and loan scandal in the late 1980s. WILLIAM K. BLACK: These numbers as large as they are, vastly understate the problem of fraud. BILL MOYERS: Bill Black was in New York this week for a conference at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice where scholars and journalists gathered to ask the question, "How do they get away with it?" Well, no one has asked that question more often than Bill Black. The former Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention now teaches Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. During the savings and loan crisis, it was Black who accused then-house speaker Jim Wright and five US Senators, including John Glenn and John McCain, of doing favors for the S&L's in exchange for contributions and other perks. The senators got off with a slap on the wrist, but so enraged was one of those bankers, Charles Keating — after whom the senate's so-called "Keating Five" were named — he sent a memo that read, in part, "get Black — kill him dead." Metaphorically, of course. Of course. Now Black is focused on an even greater scandal, and he spares no one — not even the President he worked hard to elect, Barack Obama. But his main targets are the Wall Street barons, heirs of an earlier generation whose scandalous rip-offs of wealth back in the 1930s earned them comparison to Al Capone and the mob, and the nickname "banksters." Bill Black, welcome to the Journal. WILLIAM K. BLACK: Thank you. BILL MOYERS: I was taken with your candor at the conference here in New York to hear you say that this crisis we're going through, this economic and financial meltdown is driven by fraud. What's your definition of fraud? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Fraud is deceit. And the essence of fraud is, "I create trust in you, and then I betray that trust, and get you to give me something of value." And as a result, there's no more effective acid against trust than fraud, especially fraud by top elites, and that's what we have. BILL MOYERS: In your book, you make it clear that calculated dishonesty by people in charge is at the heart of most large corporate failures and scandals, including, of course, the S&L, but is that true? Is that what you're saying here, that it was in the boardrooms and the CEO offices where this fraud began? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely. BILL MOYERS: How did they do it? What do you mean? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, the way that you do it is to make really bad loans, because they pay better. Then you grow extremely rapidly, in other words, you're a Ponzi-like scheme. And the third thing you do is we call it leverage. That just means borrowing a lot of money, and the combination creates a situation where you have guaranteed record profits in the early years. That makes you rich, through the bonuses that modern executive compensation has produced. It also makes it inevitable that there's going to be a disaster down the road. BILL MOYERS: So you're suggesting, saying that CEOs of some of these banks and mortgage firms in order to increase their own personal income, deliberately set out to make bad loans? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes. BILL MOYERS: How do they get away with it? I mean, what about their own checks and balances in the company? What about their accounting divisions? WILLIAM K. BLACK: All of those checks and balances report to the CEO, so if the CEO goes bad, all of the checks and balances are easily overcome. And the art form is not simply to defeat those internal controls, but to suborn them, to turn them into your greatest allies. And the bonus programs are exactly how you do that. BILL MOYERS: If I wanted to go looking for the parties to this, with a good bird dog, where would you send me? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, that's exactly what hasn't happened. We haven't looked, all right? The Bush Administration essentially got rid of regulation, so if nobody was looking, you were able to do this with impunity and that's exactly what happened. Where would you look? You'd look at the specialty lenders. The lenders that did almost all of their work in the sub-prime and what's called Alt-A, liars' loans. BILL MOYERS: Yeah. Liars' loans-- WILLIAM K. BLACK: Liars' loans. BILL MOYERS: Why did they call them liars' loans? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Because they were liars' loans. BILL MOYERS: And they knew it? WILLIAM K. BLACK: They knew it. They knew that they were frauds. WILLIAM K. BLACK: Liars' loans mean that we don't check. You tell us what your income is. You tell us what your job is. You tell us what your assets are, and we agree to believe you. We won't check on any of those things. And by the way, you get a better deal if you inflate your income and your job history and your assets. BILL MOYERS: You think they really said that to borrowers? WILLIAM K. BLACK: We know that they said that to borrowers. In fact, they were also called, in the trade, ninja loans. BILL MOYERS: Ninja? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yeah, because no income verification, no job verification, no asset verification. BILL MOYERS: You're talking about significant American companies. WILLIAM K. BLACK: Huge! One company produced as many losses as the entire Savings and Loan debacle. BILL MOYERS: Which company? WILLIAM K. BLACK: IndyMac specialized in making liars' loans. In 2006 alone, it sold $80 billion dollars of liars' loans to other companies. $80 billion. BILL MOYERS: And was this happening exclusively in this sub-prime mortgage business? WILLIAM K. BLACK: No, and that's a big part of the story as well. Even prime loans began to have non-verification. Even Ronald Reagan, you know, said, "Trust, but verify." They just gutted the verification process. We know that will produce enormous fraud, under economic theory, criminology theory, and two thousand years of life experience. BILL MOYERS: Is it possible that these complex instruments were deliberately created so swindlers could exploit them? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Oh, absolutely. This stuff, the exotic stuff that you're talking about was created out of things like liars' loans, that were known to be extraordinarily bad. And now it was getting triple-A ratings. Now a triple-A rating is supposed to mean there is zero credit risk. So you take something that not only has significant, it has crushing risk. That's why it's toxic. And you create this fiction that it has zero risk. That itself, of course, is a fraudulent exercise. And again, there was nobody looking, during the Bush years. So finally, only a year ago, we started to have a Congressional investigation of some of these rating agencies, and it's scandalous what came out. What we know now is that the rating agencies never looked at a single loan file. When they finally did look, after the markets had completely collapsed, they found, and I'm quoting Fitch, the smallest of the rating agencies, "the results were disconcerting, in that there was the appearance of fraud in nearly every file we examined." BILL MOYERS: So if your assumption is correct, your evidence is sound, the bank, the lending company, created a fraud. And the ratings agency that is supposed to test the value of these assets knowingly entered into the fraud. Both parties are committing fraud by intention. WILLIAM K. BLACK: Right, and the investment banker that — we call it pooling — puts together these bad mortgages, these liars' loans, and creates the toxic waste of these derivatives. All of them do that. And then they sell it to the world and the world just thinks because it has a triple-A rating it must actually be safe. Well, instead, there are 60 and 80 percent losses on these things, because of course they, in reality, are toxic waste. BILL MOYERS: You're describing what Bernie Madoff did to a limited number of people. But you're saying it's systemic, a systemic Ponzi scheme. WILLIAM K. BLACK: Oh, Bernie was a piker. He doesn't even get into the front ranks of a Ponzi scheme... BILL MOYERS: But you're saying our system became a Ponzi scheme. WILLIAM K. BLACK: Our system... BILL MOYERS: Our financial system... WILLIAM K. BLACK: Became a Ponzi scheme. Everybody was buying a pig in the poke. But they were buying a pig in the poke with a pretty pink ribbon, and the pink ribbon said, "Triple-A." BILL MOYERS: Is there a law against liars' loans? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Not directly, but there, of course, many laws against fraud, and liars' loans are fraudulent. BILL MOYERS: Because . . . WILLIAM K. BLACK: Because they're not going to be repaid and because they had false representations. They involve deceit, which is the essence of fraud. BILL MOYERS: Why is it so hard to prosecute? Why hasn't anyone been brought to justice over this? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Because they didn't even begin to investigate the major lenders until the market had actually collapsed, which is completely contrary to what we did successfully in the Savings and Loan crisis, right? Even while the institutions were reporting they were the most profitable savings and loan in America, we knew they were frauds. And we were moving to close them down. Here, the Justice Department, even though it very appropriately warned, in 2004, that there was an epidemic . . . BILL MOYERS: Who did? WILLIAM K. BLACK: The FBI publicly warned, in September 2004 that there was an epidemic of mortgage fraud, that if it was allowed to continue it would produce a crisis at least as large as the Savings and Loan debacle. And that they were going to make sure that they didn't let that happen. So what goes wrong? After 9/11, the attacks, the Justice Department transfers 500 white-collar specialists in the FBI to national terrorism. Well, we can all understand that. But then, the Bush administration refused to replace the missing 500 agents. So even today, again, as you say, this crisis is 1000 times worse, perhaps, certainly 100 times worse, than the Savings and Loan crisis. There are one-fifth as many FBI agents as worked the Savings and Loan crisis. BILL MOYERS: You talk about the Bush administration. Of course, there's that famous photograph of some of the regulators in 2003, who come to a press conference with a chainsaw suggesting that they're going to slash, cut business loose from regulation, right? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, they succeeded. And in that picture, by the way, the other — three of the other guys with pruning shears are the... BILL MOYERS: That's right. WILLIAM K. BLACK: They're the trade representatives. They're the lobbyists for the bankers. And everybody's grinning. The government's working together with the industry to destroy regulation. Well, we now know what happens when you destroy regulation. You get the biggest financial calamity of anybody under the age of 80. BILL MOYERS: But I can point you to statements by Larry Summers, who was then Bill Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury, or the other Clinton Secretary of the Treasury, Rubin. I can point you to suspects in both parties, right? WILLIAM K. BLACK: There were two really big things, under the Clinton administration. One, they got rid of the law that came out of the real-world disasters of the Great Depression. We learned a lot of things in the Great Depression. And one is we had to separate what's called commercial banking from investment banking. That's the Glass-Steagall law. But we thought we were much smarter, supposedly. So we got rid of that law, and that was bipartisan. And the other thing is we passed a law, because there was a very good regulator, Brooksley Born, that everybody should know about and probably doesn't. She tried to do the right thing to regulate one of these exotic derivatives that you're talking about. We call them C.D.F.S. And Summers, Rubin, and Phil Gramm came together to say not only will we block this particular regulation. We will pass a law that says you can't regulate. And it's this type of derivative that is most involved in the AIG scandal. AIG all by itself, cost the same as the entire Savings and Loan debacle. BILL MOYERS: What did AIG contribute? What did they do wrong? WILLIAM K. BLACK: They made bad loans. Their type of loan was to sell a guarantee, right? And they charged a lot of fees up front. So, they booked a lot of income. Paid enormous bonuses. The bonuses we're thinking about now, they're much smaller than these bonuses that were also the product of accounting fraud. And they got very, very rich. But, of course, then they had guaranteed this toxic waste. These liars' loans. Well, we've just gone through why those toxic waste, those liars' loans, are going to have enormous losses. And so, you have to pay the guarantee on those enormous losses. And you go bankrupt. Except that you don't in the modern world, because you've come to the United States, and the taxpayers play the fool. Under Secretary Geithner and under Secretary Paulson before him . . . we took $5 billion dollars, for example, in U.S. taxpayer money. And sent it to a huge Swiss Bank called UBS. At the same time that that bank was defrauding the taxpayers of America. And we were bringing a criminal case against them. We eventually get them to pay a $780 million fine, but wait, we gave them $5 billion. So, the taxpayers of America paid the fine of a Swiss Bank. And why are we bailing out somebody who that is defrauding us? BILL MOYERS: And why... WILLIAM K. BLACK: How mad is this? BILL MOYERS: What is your explanation for why the bankers who created this mess are still calling the shots? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, that, especially after what's just happened at G.M., that's... it's scandalous. BILL MOYERS: Why are they firing the president of G.M. and not firing the head of all these banks that are involved? WILLIAM K. BLACK: There are two reasons. One, they're much closer to the bankers. These are people from the banking industry. And they have a lot more sympathy. In fact, they're outright hostile to autoworkers, as you can see. They want to bash all of their contracts. But when they get to banking, they say, â€کcontracts, sacred.' But the other element of your question is we don't want to change the bankers, because if we do, if we put honest people in, who didn't cause the problem, their first job would be to find the scope of the problem. And that would destroy the cover up. BILL MOYERS: The cover up? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Sure. The cover up. BILL MOYERS: That's a serious charge. WILLIAM K. BLACK: Of course. BILL MOYERS: Who's covering up? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Geithner is charging, is covering up. Just like Paulson did before him. Geithner is publicly saying that it's going to take $2 trillion — a trillion is a thousand billion — $2 trillion taxpayer dollars to deal with this problem. But they're allowing all the banks to report that they're not only solvent, but fully capitalized. Both statements can't be true. It can't be that they need $2 trillion, because they have masses losses, and that they're fine. These are all people who have failed. Paulson failed, Geithner failed. They were all promoted because they failed, not because . . . BILL MOYERS: What do you mean? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, Geithner has, was one of our nation's top regulators, during the entire subprime scandal, that I just described. He took absolutely no effective action. He gave no warning. He did nothing in response to the FBI warning that there was an epidemic of fraud. All this pig in the poke stuff happened under him. So, in his phrase about legacy assets. Well he's a failed legacy regulator. BILL MOYERS: But he denies that he was a regulator. Let me show you some of his testimony before Congress. Take a look at this. TIMOTHY GEITHNER: I've never been a regulator, for better or worse. And I think you're right to say that we have to be very skeptical that regulation can solve all of these problems. We have parts of our system that are overwhelmed by regulation. Overwhelmed by regulation! It wasn't the absence of regulation that was the problem, it was despite the presence of regulation you've got huge risks that build up. WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, he may be right that he never regulated, but his job was to regulate. That was his mission statement. BILL MOYERS: As? WILLIAM K. BLACK: As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which is responsible for regulating most of the largest bank holding companies in America. And he's completely wrong that we had too much regulation in some of these areas. I mean, he gives no details, obviously. But that's just plain wrong. BILL MOYERS: How is this happening? I mean why is it happening? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Until you get the facts, it's harder to blow all this up. And, of course, the entire strategy is to keep people from getting the facts. BILL MOYERS: What facts? WILLIAM K. BLACK: The facts about how bad the condition of the banks is. So, as long as I keep the old CEO who caused the problems, is he going to go vigorously around finding the problems? Finding the frauds? BILL MOYERS: You - WILLIAM K. BLACK: Taking away people's bonuses? BILL MOYERS: To hear you say this is unusual because you supported Barack Obama, during the campaign. But you're seeming disillusioned now. WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, certainly in the financial sphere, I am. I think, first, the policies are substantively bad. Second, I think they completely lack integrity. Third, they violate the rule of law. This is being done just like Secretary Paulson did it. In violation of the law. We adopted a law after the Savings and Loan crisis, called the Prompt Corrective Action Law. And it requires them to close these institutions. And they're refusing to obey the law. BILL MOYERS: In other words, they could have closed these banks without nationalizing them? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, you do a receivership. No one -- Ronald Reagan did receiverships. Nobody called it nationalization. BILL MOYERS: And that's a law? WILLIAM K. BLACK: That's the law. BILL MOYERS: So, Paulson could have done this? Geithner could do this? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Not could. Was mandated-- BILL MOYERS: By the law. WILLIAM K. BLACK: By the law. BILL MOYERS: This law, you're talking about. WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes. BILL MOYERS: What the reason they give for not doing it? WILLIAM K. BLACK: They ignore it. And nobody calls them on it. BILL MOYERS: Well, where's Congress? Where's the press? Where-- WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, where's the Pecora investigation? BILL MOYERS: The what? WILLIAM K. BLACK: The Pecora investigation. The Great Depression, we said, "Hey, we have to learn the facts. What caused this disaster, so that we can take steps, like pass the Glass-Steagall law, that will prevent future disasters?" Where's our investigation? What would happen if after a plane crashes, we said, "Oh, we don't want to look in the past. We want to be forward looking. Many people might have been, you know, we don't want to pass blame. No. We have a nonpartisan, skilled inquiry. We spend lots of money on, get really bright people. And we find out, to the best of our ability, what caused every single major plane crash in America. And because of that, aviation has an extraordinarily good safety record. We ought to follow the same policies in the financial sphere. We have to find out what caused the disasters, or we will keep reliving them. And here, we've got a double tragedy. It isn't just that we are failing to learn from the mistakes of the past. We're failing to learn from the successes of the past. BILL MOYERS: What do you mean? WILLIAM K. BLACK: In the Savings and Loan debacle, we developed excellent ways for dealing with the frauds, and for dealing with the failed institutions. And for 15 years after the Savings and Loan crisis, didn't matter which party was in power, the U.S. Treasury Secretary would fly over to Tokyo and tell the Japanese, "You ought to do things the way we did in the Savings and Loan crisis, because it worked really well. Instead you're covering up the bank losses, because you know, you say you need confidence. And so, we have to lie to the people to create confidence. And it doesn't work. You will cause your recession to continue and continue." And the Japanese call it the lost decade. That was the result. So, now we get in trouble, and what do we do? We adopt the Japanese approach of lying about the assets. And you know what? It's working just as well as it did in Japan. BILL MOYERS: Yeah. Are you saying that Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely. BILL MOYERS: You are. WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely, because they are scared to death. All right? They're scared to death of a collapse. They're afraid that if they admit the truth, that many of the large banks are insolvent. They think Americans are a bunch of cowards, and that we'll run screaming to the exits. And we won't rely on deposit insurance. And, by the way, you can rely on deposit insurance. And it's foolishness. All right? Now, it may be worse than that. You can impute more cynical motives. But I think they are sincerely just panicked about, "We just can't let the big banks fail." That's wrong. BILL MOYERS: But what might happen, at this point, if in fact they keep from us the true health of the banks? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, then the banks will, as they did in Japan, either stay enormously weak, or Treasury will be forced to increasingly absurd giveaways of taxpayer money. We've seen how horrific AIG - and remember, they kept secrets from everyone. BILL MOYERS: A.I.G. did? WILLIAM K. BLACK: What we're doing with - no, Treasury and both administrations. The Bush administration and now the Obama administration kept secret from us what was being done with AIG. AIG was being used secretly to bail out favored banks like UBS and like Goldman Sachs. Secretary Paulson's firm, that he had come from being CEO. It got the largest amount of money. $12.9 billion. And they didn't want us to know that. And it was only Congressional pressure, and not Congressional pressure, by the way, on Geithner, but Congressional pressure on AIG. Where Congress said, "We will not give you a single penny more unless we know who received the money." And, you know, when he was Treasury Secretary, Paulson created a recommendation group to tell Treasury what they ought to do with AIG. And he put Goldman Sachs on it. BILL MOYERS: Even though Goldman Sachs had a big vested stake. WILLIAM K. BLACK: Massive stake. And even though he had just been CEO of Goldman Sachs before becoming Treasury Secretary. Now, in most stages in American history, that would be a scandal of such proportions that he wouldn't be allowed in civilized society. BILL MOYERS: Yeah, like a conflict of interest, it seems. WILLIAM K. BLACK: Massive conflict of interests. BILL MOYERS: So, how did he get away with it? WILLIAM K. BLACK: I don't know whether we've lost our capability of outrage. Or whether the cover up has been so successful that people just don't have the facts to react to it. BILL MOYERS: Who's going to get the facts? WILLIAM K. BLACK: We need some chairmen or chairwomen - BILL MOYERS: In Congress. WILLIAM K. BLACK: - in Congress, to hold the necessary hearings. And we can blast this out. But if you leave the failed CEOs in place, it isn't just that they're terrible business people, though they are. It isn't just that they lack integrity, though they do. Because they were engaged in these frauds. But they're not going to disclose the truth about the assets. BILL MOYERS: And we have to know that, in order to know what? WILLIAM K. BLACK: To know everything. To know who committed the frauds. Whose bonuses we should recover. How much the assets are worth. How much they should be sold for. Is the bank insolvent, such that we should resolve it in this way? It's the predicate, right? You need to know the facts to make intelligent decisions. And they're deliberately leaving in place the people that caused the problem, because they don't want the facts. And this is not new. The Reagan Administration's central priority, at all times, during the Savings and Loan crisis, was covering up the losses. BILL MOYERS: So, you're saying that people in power, political power, and financial power, act in concert when their own behinds are in the ringer, right? WILLIAM K. BLACK: That's right. And it's particularly a crisis that brings this out, because then the class of the banker says, "You've got to keep the information away from the public or everything will collapse. If they understand how bad it is, they'll run for the exits." BILL MOYERS: Yeah, and this week in New York, at this conference, you described this as more than a financial crisis. You called it a moral crisis. WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes. BILL MOYERS: Why? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Because it is a fundamental lack of integrity. But also because, if you look back at crises, an economist who is also a presidential appointee, as a regulator in the Savings and Loan industry, right here in New York, Larry White, wrote a book about the Savings and Loan crisis. And he said, you know, one of the most interesting questions is why so few people engaged in fraud? Because objectively, you could have gotten away with it. But only about ten percent of the CEOs, engaged in fraud. So, 90 percent of them were restrained by ethics and integrity. So, far more than law or by F.B.I. agents, it's our integrity that often prevents the greatest abuses. And what we had in this crisis, instead of the Savings and Loan, is the most elite institutions in America engaging or facilitating fraud. BILL MOYERS: This wound that you say has been inflicted on American life. The loss of worker's income. And security and pensions and future happened, because of the misconduct of a relatively few, very well-heeled people, in very well-decorated corporate suites, right? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Right. BILL MOYERS: It was relatively a handful of people. WILLIAM K. BLACK: And their ideologies, which swept away regulation. So, in the example, regulation means that cheaters don't prosper. So, instead of being bad for capitalism, it's what saves capitalism. "Honest purveyors prosper" is what we want. And you need regulation and law enforcement to be able to do this. The tragedy of this crisis is it didn't need to happen at all. BILL MOYERS: When you wake in the middle of the night, thinking about your work, what do you make of that? What do you tell yourself? WILLIAM K. BLACK: There's a saying that we took great comfort in. It's actually by the Dutch, who were fighting this impossible war for independence against what was then the most powerful nation in the world, Spain. And their motto was, "It is not necessary to hope in order to persevere." Now, going forward, get rid of the people that have caused the problems. That's a pretty straightforward thing, as well. Why would we keep CEOs and CFOs and other senior officers, that caused the problems? That's facially nuts. That's our current system. So stop that current system. We're hiding the losses, instead of trying to find out the real losses. Stop that, because you need good information to make good decisions, right? Follow what works instead of what's failed. Start appointing people who have records of success, instead of records of failure. That would be another nice place to start. There are lots of things we can do. Even today, as late as it is. Even though they've had a terrible start to the administration. They could change, and they could change within weeks. And by the way, the folks who are the better regulators, they paid their taxes. So, you can get them through the vetting process a lot quicker. BILL MOYERS: William Black, thank you very much for being with me on the Journal. WILLIAM K. BLACK: Thank you so much.

And even as of today we have Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute, Economics Professor, Columbia University, saying that "The Geithner-Summers Plan is Even Worse Than We Thought" - with facts and statistics for your viewing pleasure. Still think Timmy and Larry and Bobby are charming and persuasive?

Two weeks ago, I posted an article showing how the Geithner-Summers banking plan could potentially and unnecessarily transfer hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth from taxpayers to banks. The same basic arithmetic was later described by Joseph Stiglitz in the New York Times (April 1) and by Peyton Young in the Financial Times (April 1). In fact, the situation is even potentially more disastrous than we wrote. Insiders can easily game the system created by Geithner and Summers to cost up to a trillion dollars or more to the taxpayers. Here's how. Consider a toxic asset held by Citibank with a face value of $1 million, but with zero probability of any payout and therefore with a zero market value. An outside bidder would not pay anything for such an asset. All of the previous articles consider the case of true outside bidders. Suppose, however, that Citibank itself sets up a Citibank Public-Private Investment Fund (CPPIF) under the Geithner-Summers plan. The CPPIF will bid the full face value of $1 million for the worthless asset, because it can borrow $850K from the FDIC, and get $75K from the Treasury, to make the purchase! Citibank will only have to put in $75K of the total. Citibank thereby receives $1 million for the worthless asset, while the CPPIF ends up with an utterly worthless asset against $850K in debt to the FDIC. The CPPIF therefore quietly declares bankruptcy, while Citibank walks away with a cool $1 million. Citibank's net profit on the transaction is $925K (remember that the bank invested $75K in the CPPIF) and the taxpayers lose $925K. Since the total of toxic assets in the banking system exceeds $1 trillion, and perhaps reaches $2-3 trillion, the amount of potential rip-off in the Geithner-Summers plan is unconscionably large. The earlier criticisms of the Geithner-Summers plan showed that even outside bidders generally have the incentive to bid far too much for the toxic assets, since they too get a free ride from the government loans. But once we acknowledge the insider-bidding route, the potential to game the plan at the cost of the taxpayers becomes extraordinary. And the gaming of the system doesn't have to be as crude as Citibank setting up its own CPPIF. There are lots of ways that it can do this indirectly, for example, buying assets of other banks which in turn buy Citi's assets. Or other stakeholders in Citi, such as groups of bondholders and shareholders, could do the same. The sad part of all this is that there are now several much better ideas circulating among experts, but none of these seems to get the time of day from the Treasury. The best ideas are forms of corporate reorganization, in which a bank weighed down with toxic assets is divided into two banks - a "good bank" and a "bad bank" - with the bad bank left holding the toxic assets and the long-term debts, while owning the equity of the good bank. If the bad assets pay off better than is now feared, the bondholders get repaid and the current bank shares keep their value. If the bad assets in fact default heavily as is now expected, the bondholders and shareholders lose their investments. The key point of the good bank-bad bank plans is an orderly process to restore healthy banking functions (in the good bank) while divvying up the losses in a fair way among the banks' existing claimants. The taxpayer is not needed for that, except to cover the insured part of the banks' existing liabilities, specifically the banks' deposits and perhaps other short-term liabilities that are key to financial market liquidity.

And if there are better plans like the above, why not have a real press conference (instead a make-believe one with insiders like Bob Schieffer on Meet the Press), and let them explain themselves.

Let them explain the hidden and not-so-hidden risks to the American taxpayer of the plan that they have put forward. Let them explain why they are so intent on saving the banks' bondholders, even the long-term unsecured creditors who clearly knew they were taking market risks in buying Citibank bonds. Let them work with their critics to fashion a less risky and less costly plan. So far Geithner and Summers tell us that their plan is the only option, but without a word of further explanation as to why

Read it all here (and weep anew). Suzan Just in - On cue the Associated Press reports that "The chief executive of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. on Tuesday called for new standards on how Wall Street executives are compensated and new regulation of large hedge funds and private equity funds." Another surprise. __________________________

Summers Drew Millions from Shaw Group and Geithner's Investors Will Make Billions

Robert Reich reminds us today why we should have pursued that hedge fund job out of college (no, they weren't hiring when I got out of college - hence the humor) (emphasis marks added to increase the yuks):

. . . these are exactly the sort of investors Tim Geithner is trying to lure in to buy troubled assets from banks, with an extraordinary offer financed by you and me and other taxpayers. If it turns out the troubled assets are worth more than these guys pay for them, they could make a fortune. If if it turns out the assets are worth less, these guys won't lose a thing because we taxpayers will bail them out. Plus, they get to pick only the highest-rated of the big banks' bad assets and can review them carefully before buying. What a deal. Why can't you and I get in on this bonanza? Because we're too small. The government will designate only about five big investor funds - run or owned by the richest of the rich - as potential buyers. Hedge funds fit the bill perfectly. There's a beautiful symmetry here. The hedge fund managers who raked in billions last year wouldn't have done nearly as well had taxpayers not bailed out Wall Street to begin with. According to John Taylor, a hedge fund manager who tied for ninth on Alpha's list, many funds would have gone belly-up had the government not acted. "Thank god for the government, because if they hadn't intervened, we wouldn't have had anybody to trade with," he told the Times. So you and I and other taxpayers have kept these hedge-fund honchos flush enough to be able to reap the bonanza that Geithner now wants to bestow on them for cleaning up the mess they and others on Wall Street made - a bonanza to be financed by you and me and other taxpayers, who are taking on all the risk.

There were "25 hedge-fund managers" who "reaped a total of $11.6 billion during the same interval, according to Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - including $2.5 billion for James Simons of Renaissance Technologies and $2 billion for John Paulson. (To be included on the list, you had to take home more than $75 million.)" Their tax rate, you'll be pleased to note is only 15 percent because the Congress last year was strong-armed into passing the bill that continued to treat these as capital gains, so while you pay 28 percent or 33 percent or whatever you can work out with the tax man, their deal is already solid.

I read this morning that Larry Summers earned nearly $5.2 million in the last two years working one day a week for D.E. Shaw, one of the largest hedge funds of all. I can't help admire Larry for sacrificing all the money he could be making now had he not chosen to work for the government.

Professor Reich continues by asking if Tim Geithner could have really meant what he said on Sunday's Face the Nation (with insider-connected Bob Schieffer, who makes sure that the nation is never actually faced there) when he stated that he will decapitate (er, I meant "fire") the "heads of big banks that depend on financing from the federal government, just as it summarily deposed Rick Wagoner, the former CEO of General Motors - and before Wagoner, the heads of AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac," and, if we take him at his word, what "criterion" would "he be using?"

If precipitous loss of shareholder value is enough to "require a change in management and the board," presumably every CEO and director of every big bank now being bailed out should be fired, starting with Ken Lewis of Bank of America. If the criterion is diversion of taxpayer money to uses other than Congress intended when it first authorized the $700 billion bailout, the list of soon-to-be-fired CEOs is a bit shorter but still large. Surely it includes all the bailed-out banks that continue to fly their executives around the world in company jets, award them extraordinary pay packages, and run junkets at fancy resorts. Citigroup's Vikram Pandit (who collected $38.2 million for his taxpayer-subsidized services in 2008) comes immediately to mind. Why stop there? Perhaps Geithner intends to fire executives and directors of any company that's dependent on taxpayers and is now losing money. Just think of the corporate house-cleaning this will mean. Hundreds of agribusiness executives are now at risk as are scores of military contractors. Hell, the whole pharmaceutical industry depends on taxpayer support (research subsidized by National Institutes of Health, sales subsidized through Medicare and Medicaid), and it's doing badly, so their executives and directors will be gone soon, too. All told, about one out of every five large American companies depends on government contracts, and a majority of these firms are losing money right now. So . . . off with their heads.

And, oh yes, the March unemployment numbers indicate that it is a Depression - Greater or otherwise.

The March employment numbers, out this morning, are bleak: 8.5 percent of Americans officially unemployed, 663,000 more jobs lost. But if you include people who are out of work and have given up trying to find a job, the real unemployment rate is 9 percent. And if you include people working part time who'd rather be working full time, it's now up to 15.6 percent. One in every six workers in America is now either unemployed or underemployed. Every lost job has a multiplier effect throughout the economy. For every person who no longer has a job and can't find another, or is trying to enter the job market and can't find one, there are at least three job holders who become more anxious that they may lose their job. Almost every American right now is within two degrees of separation of someone who is out of work. This broader anxiety expresses itself as less willingness to spend money on anything other than necessities. And this reluctance to spend further contracts the economy, leading to more job losses. Capital markets may or may not unfreeze under the combined heat of the Treasury and the Fed, but what happens to Wall Street is becoming less and less relevant to Main Street. Anxious Americans will not borrow even if credit is available to them. And ever fewer Americans are good credit risks anyway. All this means that the real economy will need a larger stimulus than the $787 billion already enacted. To be sure, only a small fraction of the $787 billion has been turned into new jobs so far. The money is still moving out the door. But today's bleak jobs report shows that the economy is so far below its productive capacity that much more money will be needed. . . . We should stop worrying about Wall Street. Worry about American workers. Use money to build up Main Street, and the future capacities of our workforce.

Can we get a plebiscite on this? Well? How about this?

Energy independence and a non-carbon economy should be the equivalent of a war mobilization. Hire Americans to weatherize and insulate homes across the land. Don't encourage General Motors or any other auto company to shrink. Use the auto makers' spare capacity to make busses, new wind turbines, and electric cars (why let the Chinese best us on this?). Enlarge public transit systems. Meanwhile, extend our educational infrastructure. So many young people are out of work that they should be using this time to improve their skills and capacities. Expand community colleges. Enlarge Pell Grants. Extend job-training opportunities to the unemployed, so they can learn new skills while they're collecting unemployment benefits. Finally, accelerate universal health care.

Hear! Hear! Suzan

. . . Obama's plan to limit itemized deductions for the richest 1.2 percent of taxpayers (including the top 1.9 percent of small business owners) to 28 percent, starting in 2011, is also in trouble on the Hill. Wealthy contributors and friends of congressional leaders involved in setting tax policy have balked. So Congress is telling the White House to look elsewhere for the $320 billion it needs over ten years to finance half of the tab for health care reform. Congressional leaders have also informed the White House that they don't have the votes to pass Obama's proposal for treating the earnings of hedge-fund and private-equity managers as income rather than capital gains. Angry populism thrives on stories about the rich and privileged who use their influence to get cushy deals for themselves at the expense of the rest of us. AIG's bonuses provide a perfect example. It's too bad the same populist outrage doesn't extend to issues involving far more money, affecting many more people, and entailing far more insidious abuses of power. Congress's potemkin populism over AIG's bonuses disguises business as usual when it comes to the really big stuff.

___________________________

Amazon Terminates North American Associates' Program

I just received the love note below from Amazon about the termination of the Associates program in North America: essentially due to the economic climate, they have pulled the plug on fees paid to associates. So much for being part of the new business paradigm. Having reaped the initial financial benefits from their close past association with and donations to Rethuglicans who sold this business model as the new entrepreneurial path to riches, and running so many independent booksellers out of business as they cheapened the landscape with promises of enriching those who enabled them to succeed, they are now bidding their "partners" in North America adieu.

As of May 1, 2009, web retail giant Amazon will cease paying referral fees to Associates that use pay-per-click programs on search engines to send traffic to amazon.com, amazon.ca or endless.com. . . . According to Amazon, the decision was made after an overall review of how the company invests its advertising resources. Only Associates Programs in North America will be affected. Crucially, access by North American Associates to the Amazon Associates Web Service and the Amazon data feed will be terminated unless users notify Amazon directly.

Read the whole article here. So much for progress.

Dear Amazon Associate: We’re writing to let you know about a change to the Amazon Associates Program. After careful review of how we are investing our advertising resources, we have made the decision to no longer pay referral fees to Associates who send users to www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca, or www.endless.com through keyword bidding and other paid search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines, and their extended search networks. If you're not sure if this change affects you, please visit this page for FAQs. As of May 1, 2009, Associates will not be paid referral fees for paid search traffic. Also, in connection with this change, as of May 1, 2009, Amazon will no longer make data feeds available to Associates for the purpose of sending users to the Amazon websites in the US or Canada via paid search. This change applies only to the Associates programs in North America. If you are conducting paid search activities in connection with one of Amazon’s Associates Programs outside of the US and Canada, please refer to the applicable country’s Associates Program Operating Agreement for relevant terms and conditions. We appreciate your continued support and participation in this advertising Program. If you have questions or concerns, please write to us by using the Contact Us form available on Associates Central. Sincerely, The Amazon Associates Program

Nice touch there, Amazon. Suzan GO TAR HEELS GO!!!! _____________________

As the World Slides - "Preserving the Financial Oligarchy"

As Danny Schechter so wisely comments in Summits Come and Summits Go, As the Economy Continues Its Slide (emphasis marks added to heighten your enjoyment):

The eyes of the world have been on the Economic Summit in London, but the ideas of the world were mostly conspicuous by their absence. Here we have a global crisis. The house is on fire. Unemployment is climbing. The real estate contagion is now claiming condos and even shopping malls. It's bad and, by most accounts, getting worse. And, all the "leaders" of the world can do is devote ONE DAY to a forum that must have cost millions to stage.

Our media and politicians love spectacles and political celebrities. The spin was on what Michelle was wearing, not on what Barack was thinking when he was so unwilling to agree to an international regime of regulation which is so clearly needed in a globalized world economy. The New York Times was properly critical of the Summit for falling "short," mostly focusing on the failure to commit to a larger stimulus package - what the US wanted but didn't get. They went lightly on their criticisms on the regulatory issue. The Times wrote: "The group also agreed to crack down on tax havens and, on a country-by-country basis, impose stricter financial regulations on hedge funds and rating agencies - necessary though insufficient steps to avoid a repeat of the current disaster." They never asked nor did they fully report on why Obama is "fiercely resistant to the idea of a global regulator."

(Bob Jackson of Arizona offered one plausible explanation: "The one smart thing the President did in London was to establish that the U.S. would not be regulated by global politicians. Our own politicians are corrupt and incompetent enough, without overt collusion of the politicians from the rest of the world.")

Here's another thoughtful comment from one onlooker:

"The lack of deep understanding of economics on the part of American journalists seems to be one explanation for the cheerleading of fiscal stimulus. It is the only solution that has been offered to them by people they trust. The reason this solution has been offered is that it is the only one that is seen to be able to preserve the financial oligarchy, which both Republicans and Democrats hold so dear." - Jacob Olsson

And Kevin from Georgia writes that:

"The Europeans were not going to agree to larger stimulus packages for one very good reason. They do not need to have very large stimulus packages. Most G20 European countries have robust safety nets that already take care of their citizens when the economy falters. They also do not have the crumbling infrastructure that America has with regards to transportation, especially mass transit and technological infrastructure."

So there. But Michelle looked gooooooooooood. Suzan ____________________

Ho-hum – The Collapse of the Dollar (Very Serious Business But Can It Happen?)

Robert Reich speaks out on the truth about the Geithner plan's (slick Timmy's) lack of transparency that ensures taxpayer contributions forever to a bailout of the acknowledged (whether they admit it or not) felons.

Meanwhile, the Treasury has been readying yet another big multibillion-dollar payout to AIG on top of the $170 billion already provided the company, because AIG has been hemorrhaging red ink. The company's balance sheets have been deteriorating far more quickly than the Treasury had anticipated. But there's been no clear exit strategy for stopping the flow of taxpayer money. What’s particularly embarrassing for the current administration is that it had promised to undertake the Wall Street bailout far more transparently and effectively than the way the Bush administration went about it. The Obama administration had assured the public that, among other things, taxpayer money would no longer be used to backstop Wall Street bonuses. (It’s worth noting, in this regard, that the related plan put forward by the Obama Treasury to limit executive pay in Wall Street firms that received bailouts turned out to be riddled with holes.) We've also learned that much of the $170 billion has been used by AIG to pay off AIG's putative obligations to other Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs. Goldman has maintained that it got no bailout money from the Treasury. But in fact it received some $13 billion through AIG. More troubling is that the original plan to bail out AIG was concocted at a meeting held last fall, run by then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson who, before becoming treasury secretary, had been CEO of Goldman Sachs. Also attending the meeting was Lloyd Blankenfein, the current CEO of Goldman Sachs. Also at the meeting: Tim Geithner, then head of the New York Fed. None of this would be nearly as awful if the Wall Street bailout were working. But here we are six months after it began and it’s still the case that almost no loans are being made to Main Street.

Like I said before, "It's Time for Him To Go!" (h/t Al Gore) Don't ask me why the following essay appeals to me. It should be obvious. The most interesting part of it is written by one of the grand voices of the ages, the olden times, back when people believed solemnly that the guaranteed democracy inherent in the stock market was a working concept which anyone could use to better themselves by buying stocks as an investment (so that would be at least 30 years ago), or at least that's what they advertised on Wall Street. I hope you enjoy it, and you can take a gander at the Dogs of the DOW here, and what that means, if you are so inclined. This world, by the way, is the one that is kaput now thanks to the greedsters on financial row. Who knows? This might even make you begin to question why your taxes are paying off Goldman Sachs, et al., who made these bad bets on AIG, et al.

A Few Thoughts from Richard Russell . . . well over 400 guests will honor Richard Russell this weekend for 50 years of writing the incomparable Dow Theory Letters. A lot of people ask him how can they succeed as writers. He recently made some comments which I thought I would pass on, because they are so right. Also, he gives us a few fascinating moments, looking back over his career. "I've been in this business a l-o-o-o-n-g time, and I've known a lot of great people, mostly through their subscriptions. Stanley Kubrick, the genius movie producer and director, was a subscriber for many years. Stan was a gold man, and we used to correspond. Stanley would tear off a piece of yellow paper and write notes to me. He invited me to visit his studio, 30 miles outside of London. When I visited England years ago, damn it, I completely forgot to visit him, a mistake I've always regretted. "Marlon Brando's dad was a subscriber for years. I had met his Marlon while he was shooting On the Waterfront. I exchanged services with the great Hamilton Bolton, genius writer for The Bank Credit Analyst. Marty Zweig is a good friend of mine, and when Marty retired I took over his advisory - this was years ago, and I still have many of Marty's subscribers on the books. I knew Garfield Drew, the original interpreter of the odd lots. I also knew E. George Schaefer, who authored his famous Dow Theory Trader advisory during the 1940's through the '70s. . . . "John Magee was a friend of mine. John had a sign posted on his wall. It said, 'Don't tell me what to buy, tell me WHEN to buy it.' Bob Bleiberg, the brilliant editor of Barron's, was my friend and mentor. Bob was responsible for popularizing technical analysis of stock trends. General Marion Cooper was a subscriber. Coop invented the concept of King Kong and he produced the original movie. Coop was also adjutant general to Claire Chennault of the famous Flying Tigers, in Asia. The Tigers, with their outdated P-40s (painted like sharks), played hell with the Japanese off China. "I'm very friendly with that fabulous pair, the gifted Aden sisters. I count Jim Grant (Interest Rate Observer) as a good friend (Jim is probably the best writer in the business). Then there's Robert Prechter of Elliott Wave fame (I originally urged Bob to go into business, and he's built up a wide following since). A few years ago, I took over Julian Snyder's business when Julie wanted to retire. I still talk with my old buddy Joey Granville. Other old-timers I keep in touch with are Jim Dines and Mister International - the one and only Sir Harry Schultz. "I guess my strangest subscriber was a priest who worked in a leper colony in West Africa. I never could figure out why he was interested in the stock market. The Bank of China was a subscriber; I don't know whether they still are. Many Arab organizations are subscribers. I used to say that I was the only Jew who the Arab big-wigs really listened to. Paul Penner, CEO of Agnico-Eagle, was a good friend of mine. Paul devoted his life to that gold mine, which is now one of the leading gold mines in Canada. "The tireless, peripatetic John Mauldin is a good friend, and how John gets it all done (he has a million readers for his famous column) is a mystery to me. "And it goes on and on. I did find that the stock market and finance was a totally democratic business. On Wall Street they don't give a damn who you are or what color or religion you are - they only care about whether you know anything, which I believe is one of the best things about the money business. How to Succeed at Writing "I've been asked a thousand times, 'What's the secret of success in the advisory business?' (1) You've got to be an obsessive nut to start with. (2) You have to be able to write in a way that people understand and like to read. (3) You can't come across as a phony who knows it all. Readers know that nobody knows it all. (4) It helps if you have a long life and don't want to retire. (5) You need a wife who can put up with a husband whose head is full of the markets 24 hours, day and night. (6) Woody Allen said the 90% of success in life is just showing up. If you can show up for the markets 250 days a year, you're ready to start an advisory service (but I wouldn't wish this business on my worst enemy - it's the closest thing to absolute madness. No wonder nobody else has lasted in the business 50 years). (7) This is a lonely business. So be prepared. Need a friend? Get a dog. Need two friends? Get two dogs. (8) One last thing - you must have thick skin, because no matter what you write, some subscriber will send an e-mail calling you a moron or brain-damaged, and the scary thing is, that makes you think, because they may be right."

Joseph Farah says that The Collapse of the Dollar is being met with a "Ho-Hum" response by you. Although you may believe that it's only the old-line Republicans who are questioning the bailout spending and increasing valuelessness of the dollar, you may be surprised at the coalition forming to stop this mindless donation of your future earnings to the greedsters. (Emphasis marks were inserted to highlight the funny (but extremely serious) explication to which you are supposedly not paying attention - Ed.)

April 03, 2009 WorldNetDaily - One of the interesting things about the Internet news business is how you get to see which stories attract interest, attention and readership. Sometimes, you just never know what people will go for until you see the reports with your own eyes. Recently, the news has been rife with reports of the imminent collapse of the dollar. Now, I would have guessed that this story would be of inordinate interest – especially to Americans. What it means, fundamentally, is that their dollars are going to be worth less – or maybe even worthless. Yet, according to the readership reports I see on WND, these stories have been met with a collective yawn. I don't know if that means Americans just aren't taking these warnings seriously or whether they just don't want to read bad news. Maybe Americans believe if they don't read the reports, they won't come true. But this is serious business. Since World War II, the U.S. dollar has been the standard for currency throughout the world. That is changing because of the weakness of the dollar – because of how much debt the U.S. has accumulated and because of how many dollars have been flooded into the system to keep the economy from collapsing. The response by the U.S. government to the imminent collapse of the dollar internationally has been to do more of the same – to vastly increase debt and currency. Very seldom in life is the cure for an affliction higher and faster doses of the poison that caused the affliction. But that is what the Barack Obama administration, the U.S. Congress and the Federal Reserve are trying as a last resort to jumpstart the economy. Arm yourself with information, like a great new book by Jerry Robinson called The Bankruptcy of Our Nation. It's a great primer on the subject – and very current. Unfortunately, even if it works in the short-term, which I sincerely doubt, it will mean even more long-lasting pain later. The current debt-spend economy of the United States is simply not sustainable. And the cure is not more debt and more spending. This formula has been tried many times by empires of the past. It has failed every single time – no exceptions. Do Americans really believe they live such a charmed life that the laws of economics and the laws of the universe do not apply to them? Do Americans really believe their leaders are so much smarter and gifted than the leaders of the past that they can somehow outwit the laws of economics and the laws of the universe? Do Americans really have such blind faith in their government that they are willing to keep their heads in the sand even when they see their economy failing all around them? I hope not. I pray not. In fact, I am very encouraged by the grass-roots "tea-party" rebellion springing up all across America. But will it be enough? Is it too little too late? I believe unless this activity is greatly stepped up in the coming months, government will continue to believe it has license to continue the failed policies of the past – ending all hopes of a reversal and real, long-lasting recovery. Government and the central bank are pushing all the wrong buttons. The death of the dollar is near. If you want to avoid a total catastrophe in this country – one that will affect not only you but your children and grandchildren – it's time to get out in the streets and stop the madness. Yes, participate in those tea parties. Help organize more. And let your elected officials know you are on to them. Tell them, "No more bailouts. No more economic stimulus bills. No more printing money. No more tax increases." Let the free-enterprise system work. Stop the counterproductive and destructive government meddling. We can do this. The time is now!

Or is it? Have a nice weekend. GO TARHEELS GO!* Suzan * The first complete sentence my baby daughter uttered. ____________________________

Epic Crimes Committed in Your Name (Bank of No America You've Ever Known)

First off, from Vanity Fair, where it disturbs me to see this type of serious article on an uninteresting but well-recompensed fool, we learn that:

(Rush)’d become, second only to the fortunes of the new president, the biggest political story going, one loved equally by right and left. By the right because he so infuriated the left, and by the left because he so discomfited Republican moderates. He was the perfect political lightning rod, polarizing but entertaining too. The most elemental fact about the Limbaugh career might be that, outside of seriously corrupt dictatorships, nobody has made as much money from politics as Rush Limbaugh. Since this Top 40 D.J. and local talker in Sacramento went national, in 1988, as a right-wing voice, he has made hundreds of millions of dollars in salary, bonuses, participation in advertising revenue, and the sale of his show to the Sam Zell–controlled Jacor radio production company (Zell, a real-estate entrepreneur, now controls the Chicago Tribune), which was then sold to Clear Channel. His new contract, signed last summer, is worth a reported $400 million over eight years. There are, too, his newsletter, his paid Internet site with its voluminous traffic, his blockbuster best-sellers, his speaking fees, his half-dozen cars, including a Maybach 57S, his Gulfstream G550, and his Palm Beach estate with five houses. Rush’s business plan seriously impacts on the future of the Republican Party. Indeed, the extraordinary thing Rush has done, something arguably never before accomplished in the history of the co-dependent relationship of media and politics, is manage to keep his media day job while assuming something rather close to direct political power. Every other entertainer who has discovered a political mission—from Ronald Reagan to Sonny Bono to Al Franken—has had to quit show business and run for office. Not Rush. Rather, one hand ably washes the other.

Which is not a tribute to anything concerning his importance or his ability to sell himself and his sordid wares to the ignorant of this world, but a knock on what passes for knowledgeable conversation today to the glow-worm TV-ites of Knownothingism political sensibility. Speaking of Knownothingism which is about to be cured (again, although to what eventual good is yet to be known), Matt Renner tells us that (and if this doesn't make the public begin to collect names and addresses then nothing will - and I still LURVE Dennis the Giant Killer!):

Anger over the bonuses at A.I.G. blew back onto members of the Obama administration as it was revealed that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and others had been aware of the bonus payments but failed to halt them and did not express "outrage," until the bonus checks were already cashed. Further revelations of backroom dealings and million-dollar bonuses threaten to make any kind of assistance to financial institutions politically impossible for Congress. A larger and potentially far more explosive powder keg of bonus payments - this time to top executives at now defunct Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. - may be about to blow. Ongoing investigations at the New York attorney general's office and at the office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) into this previously revealed, but mostly ignored, story may add new details about who in the Bush administration, in the financial sector and at the Federal Reserve knew about these much larger bonuses and the suspicious circumstances surrounding them. In its last days as an independent company, Merrill gave performance-based bonuses exclusively to employees earning $300,000 a year or more and holding a rank of vice president or higher, according to their financial statements. $3.62 billion was handed out to these executives - a sum equal to 36.2 percent of the $10 billion in taxpayer funds that were allocated to Merrill as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) before the bonuses were paid. The company had been failing as a result of misadventures in the now infamous mortgaged-backed securities market which began crumbling with the decline of home values as the bubble burst. The performance bonuses were determined by Merrill's compensation committee on December 8, 2008, before Merrill revealed that it lost $15 billion in the final three months of 2008, unusual timing according to court documents filed by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo in an ongoing suit against Merrill's former CEO. In prior years, Merrill paid performance bonuses of this type after the end of the year, in January or February of the next year. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), the chairman of the House Domestic Policy Subcommittee under the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, signaled interest in investigating the bonus payments in a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Neel Kashkari, an interim Bush hold-over at the Treasury Department, who has been in charge of the TARP program since the beginning. The letter states that Merrill was not in "a sustainable financial position to award such bonuses without the considerable amount of US taxpayer funds ... TARP funds therefore could have had a decisive effect in funding the bonuses ..." The letter pointed out that the bonuses at Merrill "were not locked in by preexisting contract and were performance bonuses, as opposed to retention bonuses." During the A.I.G. bonus scandal, it was pointed out that the A.I.G. bonuses were locked in by contract and were thus more difficult to revoke. The A.I.G. bonuses were also structured as "retention bonuses," or money to keep people who were essential to the company's wind-down operation. While A.I.G.'s excuses fell short for critics, Merrill doesn't even seem to be able to make the same argument. Kucinich requested "all documents" relating to communications between the Federal Reserve, Treasury department and Bank of America. Bank of America bought what was left of Merrill after a shotgun marriage was arranged by Bernanke and then Treasury Chairman Henry Paulson. Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis also received a letter of inquiry from Kucinich. The questionable timing and the amounts of these bonuses were not revealed to Bank of America shareholders when they voted to acquire Merrill. These facts raise questions about what government officials knew about the bonuses and when they knew it, according to Kucinich's letter. "If ordinary [Bank of America] shareholders were ignorant of the details of the Merrill bonus arrangement, was the US government as well?" the letter asked, after pointing out that the US government owned 800,000 shares of preferred stock in Bank of America and federal officials met with both banks on a regular basis. The letter said that Paulson and Bernanke met with Lewis in mid December 2008 on several occasions to keep Bank of America on board in the deal to buy Merrill. Bank of America subsequently received an additional $20 billion (for a total of $45 billion) in government funds and a $118 billion guarantee against potential losses in risky investments - a huge pillar of support from the government. It is yet to be established by any investigation whether executives at Merrill and Bank of America looted while the company crumbled at the expense of taxpayers and shareholders.

As the "audit will not be released before the Obama administration's new bank rescue plan goes into effect. . . the plan would use billions more taxpayer dollars to back private capital from the financial sector and buy risky mortgages from the drowning banks." Pitchforks anyone? (H/t to Ornery Bastard and many others for the suggestion.) I guess it's pretty clear by now why the financial restructuring has not been done by Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz or Dean Baker (to mention a few of the stellar but really non-candidates previously available to the Obamaniacs). And no, we can't entertain comforting dreams anymore - it's over (we're over - kaput - out of there) - except for the shouting. As someone else said so wisely "Lynch Merrill!" Finally (and you should read the whole essay), our best insider friend, John Pilger, is spot on about the "Fake Faith and Epic Crimes" being committed in our names. We should commit ourselves anew to the cause of U.S. legal responsibility for its actions. (Emphasis marks the spot - Ed.)

These are extraordinary times. With the United States and Britain on the verge of bankruptcy and committing to an endless colonial war, pressure is building for their crimes to be prosecuted at a tribunal similar to that which tried the Nazis at Nuremberg. This defined rapacious invasion as "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." International law would be mere farce, said the chief US chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson, "if, in future, we do not apply its principles to ourselves." That is now happening. Spain, Germany, Belgium, France and Britain have long had "universal jurisdiction" statutes, which allow their national courts to pursue and prosecute prima facie war criminals. What has changed is an unspoken rule never to use international law against "ourselves," or "our" allies or clients. In 1998, Spain, supported by France, Switzerland and Belgium, indicted the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, client and executioner of the West, and sought his extradition from Britain, where he happened to be at the time. Had he been sent for trial he almost certainly would have implicated at least one British prime minister and two US presidents in crimes against humanity. Home Secretary Jack Straw let him escape back to Chile. The Pinochet case was the ignition. On 19 January last, the George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley compared the status of George W. Bush with that of Pinochet. "Outside [the United States] there is not the ambiguity about what to do about a war crime," he said. "So if you try to travel, most people abroad are going to view you not as ‘former President George Bush’ [but] as a current war criminal." For this reason, Bush’s former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who demanded an invasion of Iraq in 2001 and personally approved torture techniques in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, no longer travels. Rumsfeld has twice been indicted for war crimes in Germany. On 26 January, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, said, "We have clear evidence that Mr. Rumsfeld knew what he was doing but nevertheless he ordered torture." The Spanish high court is currently investigating a former Israeli defence minister and six other top Israeli officials for their role in the killing of civilians, mostly children, in Gaza. Henry Kissinger, who was largely responsible for bombing to death 600,000 peasants in Cambodia in 1969-73, is wanted for questioning in France, Chile and Argentina. Yet, on 8 February, as if demonstrating the continuity of American power, President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, James Jones, said, "I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger." Like them, Tony Blair may soon be a fugitive. The International Criminal Court, to which Britain is a signatory, has received a record number of petitions related to Blair’s wars. Spain’s celebrated Judge Baltasar Garzon, who indicted Pinochet and the leaders of the Argentinian military junta, has called for George W. Bush, Blair and former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar to be prosecuted for the invasion of Iraq — "one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history: a devastating attack on the rule of law" that had left the UN "in tatters." He said, "There is enough of an argument in 650,000 deaths for this investigation to start without delay." This is not to say Blair is about to be collared and marched to The Hague, where Serbs and Sudanese dictators are far more likely to face a political court set up by the West. However, an international agenda is forming and a process has begun which is as much about legitimacy as the letter of the law, and a reminder from history that the powerful lose wars and empires when legitimacy evaporates. This can happen quickly, as in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of apartheid South Africa — the latter a spectre for apartheid Israel. Today, the unreported "good news" is that a worldwide movement is challenging the once sacrosanct notion that imperial politicians can destroy countless lives in the cause of an ancient piracy, often at (a) remove in distance and culture, and retain their respectability and immunity from justice. In his masterly Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, R.L. Stevenson writes in the character of Jekyll:

Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter . . . . I could thus plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability, and, in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete.

Read all here. And brace yourself for the Amero. Suzan __________________