And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming
Volume XIV No. 8 – February 20, 2009
Congress has been pretty busy recently. In the last six months, they have run for reelection and have spent at least $1.5 trillion attempting to reverse our nation’s economic decline. After they get back from this week’s recess, they are poised to finally finish a massive spending bill left over from last year.
Fresh off of passing one of the largest, most expensive bills in history, the House next week will take up a $410 billion omnibus spending bill. The legislation combines the nine remaining spending bills for fiscal 2009 that the Congress punted on before the election. These spending bills are necessary to keep the lights on and the government running through next year.
Before skipping town for the November elections, lawmakers had approved funding to run the Pentagon and the Departments of Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs. Now, they have to take care of the rest of the agencies.
Right now much of government is operating under temporary funding at last year’s levels. When lawmakers return Monday, they will have two weeks to pass the new spending before the temporary funding expires. Even though reports are that the bill is written, most lawmakers, and the public, have not seen it. We need to get back on the track of allowing everyone at least several days to read legislation before making lawmakers vote it up or down. And let’s face it, we’re already almost halfway through the fiscal year (started October 1st), so a few days here or there are not going to matter.
The omnibus will likely contain the thousands of earmarks that were stuffed into earlier drafts of spending bills – none of which ever made it to a floor vote in either chamber. Taxpayers for Common Sense staff spent a lot of time last year tracking the earmarks (click here for our earmark databases) in those 2009 spending bills. And the final bill will also likely contain hundreds if not thousands of new earmarks that almost no one has seen.
Just for example, some of the projects in the draft bills we expect to see retained in the final spending bill include $200,000 for streetscape improvement in Beaumont, Texas and $400,000 for construction of a recreation and fairgrounds area in Kotzebue, AK.
Now that Congress has gotten over the massive financial hump of passing the stimulus bill, the excuses to cut corners on transparency on these important pieces of legislation must end. A year ago, we stated that “The nation would be far better served if Congress slowed down and allowed the bill to be scrutinized, evaluated and vetted before moving forward.” Nothing has changed. Let’s spend the time to fully examine these spending bills. In fact, this could be the beginning of a new era: vet the FY09 spending bills, and consider, pass, and enact next year’s spending bills before the start of fiscal year 2010 in October.
We need to stop business as usual in Washington. Let’s start by putting the omnibus spending bill online. We agree with the calls to put legislation online as soon as possible, so taxpayers have time to review the legislation. As Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) declared, the public deserves “adequate time to read the measure and understand what is in it.”
That would be a good start.
Let us know what you think.
Going on at Taxpayer.net This Week
Headlines By TCS
Bailout Bank Bios
TCS Staff are compiling profiles of all financial institutions receiving funds under the 2008 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.
TCS in the News
TCS was cited in dozens of stories this past week Check them all out in the Headlines About TCS section of our redesigned website.
Notable Quote
“The American people are watching. They need this plan to work. They expect to see the money that they’ve earned, that they’ve worked so hard to earn, spent in its intended purposes without waste, without inefficiency, without fraud.”
–Pres. Barack Obama, speaking to the U.S. Conference of Mayors February 20, 2009.
weekly wastebasket at www.taxpayer.net
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Soros sees no bottom for world financial “collapse”
Sat Feb 21, 2009
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Renowned investor George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.
Soros said the turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression, comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union.
He said the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September marked a turning point in the functioning of the market system.
“We witnessed the collapse of the financial system,” Soros said at a Columbia University dinner. “It was placed on life support, and it’s still on life support. There’s no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom.”
His comments echoed those made earlier at the same conference by Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman who is now a top adviser to President Barack Obama.
Volcker said industrial production around the world was declining even more rapidly than in the United States, which is itself under severe strain.
“I don’t remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world,” Volcker said.
(Reporting by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa and Juan Lagorio; Editing by Gary Hill)
http://tinyurl.com/awnypy (www.reuters.com)
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Next Wave of Banking Crisis to come from Eastern Europe
By F. William Engdahl
Global Research, February 18, 2009
European banks face an entirely new wave of losses in coming months not yet calculated in any government bank rescue aid to date. Unlike the losses of US banks which derive initially from their exposures to low-quality sub-prime real estate and other securitized lending, the problems of western European banks, most especially in Austria , Sweden and perhaps Switzerland arise from the massive volumes of loans they made during the 2002-2007 period of extreme low international interest rates to clients in eastern European countries.
The problems in Eastern Europe which are just now emerging with full force are, if you will, an indirect consequence of the libertine monetary policies of the Greenspan Fed from 2002 until 2006, the period where Wall Street’s asset backed securitization Ponzi Scheme took off.
The riskiness of these eastern European loans is now coming to light as the global economic recession in both east and west Europe is forcing western banks to pull back, refusing to renew loans or ‘rollover’ the credits, leaving thousands of borrowers with unpayable loan debts. The dimension of the eastern European emerging loan crisis pales anything yet realized. It will force a radical new look at the entire question of bank nationalizations in coming weeks regardless what nice hopes politicians in any party entertain.
Moody’s Rating Service has just announced it ‘might’ downgrade a number of western European banks with large exposures to eastern Europe. On the report, the Euro fell to 2 and a half month lows against the dollar.
The Moodys report mentioned especially banks in eastern Europe owned by western European banks including specifically Raiffeisen Zenetralbank Oesterreich and Sweden ‘s Swedbank. The public Moody’s warning will now force western banks with subsidiaries in eastern Europe to dramatically tighten lending conditions in the east at just the time the opposite is needed to keep economic growth from collapsing and thereby setting off chair-reaction loan defaults. The western banks are caught in a devil’s circle.
According to my well-informed City of London sources, the new concerns over bank exposures to eastern Europe will define the next wave of the global financial crisis, one they believe could be even more devastating than the US sub-prime securitization collapse which triggered the entire crisis of confidence.
As a result of the Moody’s warning, west European banks will now likely be selective in supporting their subsidiaries. Moody’s report noted that ‘banks in countries that are associated with higher systemic risks might face reduced support.’ Western European governments may also establish rules to ensure banks receiving state support are forbidden to aid foreign subsidiaries. This is already the case with Greek banks and the Greek Government. The result is to make a bad situation far worse.
The size of risks are staggering
The amount of loans potentially at risk involve mostly Italian, Austrian, Swiss, Swedish and it is believed German banks. Once the countries of the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact declared independence in the early 1990′s west European banks rushed in to buy on the cheap the major banks in most of the newly independent east countries. As US interest rate cuts after the stock crisis in 2002 pushed interest rates around the world to new lows, easy credit led to higher risk lending across borders in foreign currencies. In countries such as Hungary Swiss and Austrian banks promoted home mortgage loans denominated in Swiss Franc where interest rates were significantly lower. The only risk at the time was if the Hungarian currency were to devalue, forcing homeowners in Hungary to repay sometimes double the monthly amount in Swiss Francs. That is what has happened over the past 18 months as western banks and funds have dramatically reduced their speculative investments in eastern countries to repatriate capital back home where the mother banks had serious problems caused by the US banking catastrophe. In the case of the Polish Zloty, the currency has dropped in recent months by 50%. The volume of mortgages existing in foreign currencies in Poland is not known but London estimates are that it could be huge.
In the case of Austrian banks, the country faces a rerun of the 1931 Vienna Creditanstalt crisis which in chain-reaction spread to the German banks and brought Continental Europe into the economic crisis of 1931-33. At the recent EU Finance Ministers’ meeting in Brussels , Austrian Finance Minister Josef Pröll reportedly pleaded with his colleagues to come up with aEuro150 billion rescue package for the banks in eastern Europe. Austrian banks alone have lentEuro230 billion there, equivalent to 70% of Austria ‘s GDP. Austria ‘s largest bank, Bank Austria , which in turn is owned by Italy ‘s Unicredito along with the German HypoVereinsbank, faces what the Vienna press calls a ‘monetary Stalingrad ‘ over its loan exposure in the east. In a botter historic irony, Bank Austria bought the Vienna Creditanstalt in recent years in its wave of mergers.
…
Complete article at:
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12339
F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (Pluto Press), and Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
( www.globalresearch.ca ). His new book, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order (Third Millenium Press) is due out at end of March. He may be contacted through his website: www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net .
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Commodities and Commodity Derivatives: Modelling and Pricing for Agriculturals, Metals and Energy – Helyette Geman
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O’Reilly falsely claimed Frank advocated that “poor people ought to be given mortgages ’cause everybody has a right to a house”
On The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly falsely claimed that prior to the housing crisis, Rep. Barney Frank had been “pumping it that poor people ought to be given mortgages ’cause everybody has a right to a house.” In fact, Frank has consistently taken the position that the government should focus on the expansion of affordable rental housing, rather than enac ting policies geared toward universal home ownership.
Read More
http://mediamatters.org/items/200902210001?lid=900902&rid=22055035
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[Dallas Fed] Energy Prices Decline Across the Board
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Quarterly Energy Update
First Quarter 2009
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
Prices Decline Across the Board
The global economic slowdown has led to a precipitous drop in energy prices. Oil prices have fallen from an all-time high of $147 in July to $40 in the first week of February. This decline–now over $100–is the most precipitous fall in recent history. Both natural gas and refined products prices have followed oil down.
Read more:
http://dallasfed.org/research/energy/en0901.cfm
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#1 of A Dozen Books For Americans from Book Review By Sherwood Ross
That Tell It Like It Is
If newspaper readership is plummeting, maybe it’s because readers have to turn elsewhere to catch a glimpse of the causes behind the official story. Recognizing this, some book publishers courageously are using their printing presses to get interpretive reporting to the reading public. Among those books that paint an unvarnished picture of how the U.S. government’s policies are causing widespread foreign and domestic suffering are:
“Legacy of Ashes: The History of The CIA”(Anchor) by New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winner Tim Weiner, contains some sweeping, but accurate, generalizations, such as this one: “By 1970, the CIA’s influence was felt in every nation in the Western Hemisphere, from the Texas border to Tierra del Fuego.” Weiner spotlights how the spy agency’s operatives exerted more influence than the State Department. “In Mexico, the president dealt exclusively with the station chief, not the ambassador, and he received a personal New Year’s Day briefing at his home from the director of central intelligence. In Honduras, two successive station chiefs had privately pledged the support of the United States to the military junta, in defiance of the ambassadors they served.” Weiner doesn’t mince words about how President Kennedy, who once said he was proud to be a liberal, “first approved a political-warfare program to subvert (Salvador Allende) more than two years before the September 1964 Chilean elections” when the Agency pumped $3 million into the pockets of his political opponent.
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National Security Archive – Stays the Course in Defense of Archive Suit About Lost Bush White House E-mail
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Archive Opposes Government Motion that Shows E-Mail Restoration Still Is Not Complete, Three Years After Independent Counsel Exposed Missing Cheney E-Mail
For more information:
Meredith Fuchs/Tom Blanton – 202/994-7000
Sheila L. Shadmand [Jones Day] – 202/879-3939
Washington, D.C., February 21, 2009 – The Justice Department this week missed the opportunity to bring transparency to the controversy over deleted White House e-mail from the Bush administration by allowing briefing to continue on a motion that had been developed by the Bush Administration.
The motion, filed by the Justice Department on January 21, just after the inauguration, sought to dismiss the White House e-mail litigation even while admitting that a secretive restoration process was still not finished. Today the Archive responded to that motion.
“We had hoped the new administration would give a hard look at whether to allow the defense of the Bush Administration’s loss of millions of White House e-mails to proceed on its current course,” commented Sheila Shadmand, a Jones Day partner and counsel for the Archive. “This second motion to dismiss is similar to the one the court already denied months ago — and it admits they have not even completed the restoration project they apparently have been conducting under wraps.”
The Archive’s Director, Tom Blanton, commented, “President Obama on Day One ordered the government to become more transparent, but the Justice Department apparently never got the message, and that same day tried to dismiss the very litigation that has brought some accountability to the White House e-mail system. Justice could have pulled back from that first misstep but they have not. The White House e-mail presents a high-level test of the new Obama openness policies, and so far, the grade is at best an incomplete.”
Visit the Web site of the National Security Archive for more information.
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UGLY: LIMBAUGH LIKENS DEMOCRATS TO MURDERERS, RAPISTS
By Sam Stein, Huffington Post
What is going on with all the lurid political analogies?
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/mediaculture/127930/
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And now for the important news ….
By Argus Hamilton
Abe Lincoln was honored by the U.S. Mint Wednesday with four new pennies showing depictions of events in his life. His legacy is twofold. His life put an end to owning slaves in America and his death put an end to heckling actors from the balcony.
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com
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three thousand words
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Elena Steier
Center for American Blogress Feb 22, 2009 |
Nick Anderson: Moderation
http://img.slate.com/media/77/090210_ed.gif
David Horsey: now on stage …
http://tinyurl.com/dazene (seattlepi.nwsource.com)
