carapace – Not your father's america

Housing Bubble Smackdown: Bigger Crash Ahead Huge “shadow inventory”

By Mike Whitney
Global Research, April 21, 2009

Due to the lifting of the foreclosure moratorium at the end of March, the downward slide in housing is gaining speed. The moratorium was initiated in January to give Obama’s anti-foreclosure program—which is a combination of mortgage modifications and refinancing—a chance to succeed. The goal of the plan was to keep up to 9 million struggling homeowners in their homes, but it’s clear now that the program will fall well-short of its objective.

In March, housing prices accelerated on the downside indicating bigger adjustments dead-ahead. Trend-lines are steeper now than ever before–nearly perpendicular. Housing prices are not falling, they’re crashing and crashing hard. Now that the foreclosure moratorium has ended, Notices of Default (NOD) have spiked to an all-time high. These Notices will turn into foreclosures in 4 to 5 months time creating another cascade of foreclosures. Market analysts predict there will be 5 MILLION MORE FORECLOSURES BETWEEN NOW AND 2011. It’s a disaster bigger than Katrina. Soaring unemployment and rising foreclosures ensure that hundreds of banks and financial institutions will be forced into bankruptcy. 40 percent of delinquent homeowners have already vacated their homes. There’s nothing Obama can do to make them stay. Worse still, only 30 percent of foreclosures have been relisted for sale suggesting more hanky-panky at the banks. Where have the houses gone? Have they simply vanished?

600,000 “DISAPPEARED HOMES?”

Here’s a excerpt from the SF Gate explaining the mystery:

“Lenders nationwide are sitting on hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes that they have not resold or listed for sale, according to numerous data sources. And foreclosures, which banks unload at fire-sale prices, are a major factor driving home values down.

“We believe there are in the neighborhood of 600,000 properties nationwide that banks have repossessed but not put on the market,” said Rick Sharga, vice president of RealtyTrac, which compiles nationwide statistics on foreclosures. “California probably represents 80,000 of those homes. It could be disastrous if the banks suddenly flooded the market with those distressed properties. You’d have further depreciation and carnage.”

In a recent study, RealtyTrac compared its database of bank-repossessed homes to MLS listings of for-sale homes in four states, including California. It found a significant disparity – only 30 percent of the foreclosures were listed for sale in the Multiple Listing Service. The remainder is known in the industry as “shadow inventory.” (“Banks aren’t Selling Many Foreclosed Homes” SF Gate)

If regulators were deployed to the banks that are keeping foreclosed homes off the market, they would probably find that the banks are actually servicing the mortgages on a monthly basis to conceal the extent of their losses. They’d also find that the banks are trying to keep housing prices artificially high to avoid heftier losses that would put them out of business. One thing is certain, 600,000 “disappeared” homes means that housing prices have a lot farther to fall and that an even larger segment of the banking system is underwater.

Here is more on the story from Mr. Mortgage “California Foreclosures About to Soar…Again”

“Are you ready to see the future? Ten’s of thousands of foreclosures are only 1-5 months away from hitting that will take total foreclosure counts back to all-time highs. This will flood an already beaten-bloody real estate market with even more supply just in time for the Spring/Summer home selling season…Foreclosure start (NOD) and Trustee Sale (NTS) notices are going out at levels not seen since mid 2008. Once an NTS goes out, the property is taken to the courthouse and auctioned within 21-45 days….The bottom line is that there is a massive wave of actual foreclosures that will hit beginning in April that can’t be stopped without a national moratorium.”

JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Fannie Mae have all stepped up their foreclosure activity in recent weeks. Delinquencies have skyrocketed foreshadowing more price-slashing into the foreseeable future. According to the Wall Street Journal:

“Ronald Temple, co-director of research at Lazard Asset Management, expects home prices to fall 22% to 27% from their January levels. More than 2.1 million homes will be lost this year because borrowers can’t meet their loan payments, up from about 1.7 million in 2008.” (Ruth Simon, “The housing crisis is about to take center stage once again” Wall Street Journal)

Another 20 percent carved off the aggregate value of US housing means another $4 trillion loss to homeowners. That means smaller retirement savings, less discretionary spending, and lower living standards. The next leg down in housing will be excruciating; every sector will feel the pain. Obama’s $75 billion mortgage rescue plan is a mere pittance; it won’t reduce the principle on mortgages and it won’t stop the bleeding. Policymakers have decided they’ve done enough and are refusing to help. They don’t see the tsunami looming in front of them plain as day. The housing market is going under and it’s going to drag a good part of the broader economy along with it. Stocks, too.

From:

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13283

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Special IG – Troubled Asset Relief Program – Report to Congress

The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, April 21, 2009 – Quarterly Report to Congress: “The Troubled Asset Relief Program (“TARP”) now includes 12 separate, but often interrelated, programs involving Government and private funds of up to almost $3 trillion — roughly the equivalent of last year’s entire Federal budget. From programs involving large capital infusions into hundreds of banks and other financial institutions, to a mortgage modification program designed to modify millions of mortgages, to public private partnerships purchasing “toxic” assets from banks using tremendous leverage provided by Government loans or guarantees, TARP has evolved into a program of unprecedented scope, scale, and complexity. Before the American people and their representatives in Congress can meaningfully evaluate the effectiveness of this historic program, that scope and scale must be placed into proper context, and the complexity must be made understandable. That is what this report attempts to do.

In this report, the Offi ce of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (“SIGTARP”) endeavors to (i) explain the various TARP programs and how the Department of the Treasury (“Treasury”) has used those programs through March 31, 2009, (ii) describe what SIGTARP has done since its Initial Report to Congress, dated February 6, 2009 (the “Initial Report”), to oversee this historic program with respect to both audits and investigations,

http://tinyurl.com/dj5ztf (www.sigtarp.gov)

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Book Review: Irrational Exuberance

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/books/review/Uchitelle-t.html?sq=Berkeley&st=nyt&scp=4&pagewanted=print
By Louis Uchitelle
Louis Uchitelle is an economics writer for The Times

April 19, 2009

Animal Spirits

How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism
By George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller
230 pp. Princeton University Press. $24.95

Look around you, GEORGE A. AKERLOF and Robert J. Shiller say. The second coming of the Great Depression is, like the original, a direct result of animal spirits. If only we had factored those turbulent emotions into economic theory, we might not be repeating the earlier tragedy.

Akerlof, a Nobel laureate, and Shiller, a good bet to become one, are prominent mainstream economists. They don’t deviate easily from orthodox theory, with its allegiance to the proposition that people are essentially rational, well informed and unemotional in the numerous transactions that shape the economy. But in “Animal Spirits,” they have deviated — and they have done so just as mainstream theory self-destructs….

Both men are old hands at prodding their fellow economists into recognizing exceptions to mainstream theory. AKERLOF, A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, shared a Nobel Prize in 2001 for his work on “asymmetric information,” which means that some parties to a transaction know more about the deal than others, like the used-car salesman who knows more about the shortcomings of the vehicle he is trying to sell than the customer he is pitching. Lemon laws, protecting consumers, grew out of such findings. Akerlof has long believed that in most market situations a government role can improve the outcome. “Animal Spirits” brings that view to a high boil….

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Security Weekly : Disruption vs. Prosecution and the Manchester Plot

April 22, 2009
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

On April 8, British authorities mounted a series of raids in Merseyside, Manchester and Lancashire that resulted in the arrest of 12 men suspected of being involved in a plot to conduct attacks over the Easter holiday weekend. In a press conference the following day, Prime Minister Gordon Brown noted that the men arrested were allegedly involved in “a very big terrorist plot.” British authorities have alleged that those arrested sought to conduct suicide bombing attacks against a list of soft targets that included shopping centers, a train station and a nightclub.

The searches and arrests targeting the suspects purportedly involved in the plot, which was dubbed Operation Pathway, had to be accelerated after Bob Quick, the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in charge of terrorism investigations, inadvertently allowed reporters to see a classified document pertaining to the operation as he was entering 10 Downing Street to brief Brown and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith on April 8. An embarrassed Quick resigned April 9 over the gaffe.

In spite of the leak, the British authorities were successful in detaining all of the targeted suspects, though the authorities have reportedly not been able to recover explosive material or other bomb-making evidence they were seeking. British authorities arrested 12 suspects, 11 of whom were Pakistani citizens. Smith told British Parliament on April 20 that all 11 of the Pakistani nationals entered the United Kingdom on student visas. The youngest of the Pakistani suspects, who is reportedly still a teenager, was remanded to the custody of British immigration authorities to face deportation proceedings April 9. The rest of the 11 suspects were released by British authorities April 21, though ten reportedly were placed in the custody of immigration officials.

Many of the specific details of the plot have not yet come out, and due to the sensitive nature of the intelligence sources and methods involved in these types of investigations, more details may never be fully divulged now that there will be no criminal trial. However, when viewed in the historical and tactical context of other terror plots and attacks (in the United Kingdom and elsewhere), there are some very interesting conclusions that can be drawn from this series of events and the few facts that have been released to the public so far.

This case also highlights the tension that exists within the counterterrorism community between advocates of strategies to disrupt terrorist attacks and those who want to ensure that terror suspects can be convicted in a court of law.

Targets

Among of the most significant things that have come to light so far regarding the thwarted plot are the alleged targets. According to press reports, the British MI5 surveillance teams assigned to monitor the activities of the purported plotters observed some of them videotaping themselves outside of the Arndale and Trafford shopping centers in Manchester, as well as at St. Ann’s Square, which lies in the center of Manchester’s main shopping district. Other reports suggest that the plotters had also conducted surveillance of Manchester’s Piccadilly train station, an intercity train station that is one of the busiest in the United Kingdom outside London, and Manchester’s Birdcage nightclub.

These targets are significant for several reasons. First, they are all soft targets — that is, targets with very little security. As STRATFOR has pointed out for several years now, since counterterrorism efforts have been stepped up in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and as the tactical capability of groups like al Qaeda has been degraded, jihadist operatives have had less success targeting hardened targets and have turned instead to striking soft targets.

While authorities have moved to protect high-value targets, there simply are far too many potential targets to protect them all. Governments are stretched thin just trying to protect important government buildings, bridges, dams, nuclear power plants, airports and mass-transit systems in their jurisdiction. The reality on the ground is that there are not nearly enough resources to protect them all, much less every potential location where people concentrate in large groups — like shopping centers and nightclubs. This means that some targets are unprotected and are therefore, by definition, soft.

The selection of soft targets in this case indicates that the alleged Manchester plotters did not possess the operational capability to strike more strategic, high-value targets. While attacks against soft targets can be tragic and quite bloody, they will not have the same effect as a successful attack on high-value targets such as Parliament, the London Stock Exchange or a nuclear power station.

It is also very interesting that the plotters were purportedly looking to hit soft targets in Manchester and not soft targets in London. London, as the capital and a city that has been the center of several plots and attacks, is generally on a higher alert than the rest of the country and therefore would likely be seen as more difficult to target. Additionally, many of the suspects lived in the Manchester area, and as we have previously discussed, grassroots operatives, who are not as well-trained as their transnational brethren, tend to “think globally and act locally,” meaning that they tend to plan their attacks in familiar places where they are comfortable operating, rather than in strange and potentially more hostile environment.

In addition to targeting locations like shopping centers and the train station, where there were expected to be large crowds over the holiday weekend, the alleged plotters also apparently looked at the Birdcage nightclub, an establishment that is famous for its “flamboyant and spectacular” shows featuring female impersonators. This is a location the alleged plotters likely considered a symbol of Western decadence (like establishments that serve alcohol in Muslim countries).

Flawed Tradecraft

As noted above, the alleged plotters had been under surveillance by MI5. This indicates that their operational security had been compromised, either via human or technical means. Furthermore, the suspects did not appear to possess any surveillance detection capability — or even much situational awareness — as they went out into Manchester to conduct pre-operational surveillance of potential targets while under government surveillance themselves. Furthermore, the suspects’ surveillance techniques appear to have been very rudimentary in that they lacked both cover for action and cover for status while conducting their surveillance operations.

This aspect of the investigation reinforces two very important points that STRATFOR has been making for some time now. First, most militant groups do not provide very good surveillance training and as a result, poor surveillance tradecraft has long proven to be an Achilles’ heel for militants. Second, because of this weakness, countersurveillance operations can be very effective at catching militant operatives when they are most vulnerable — during the surveillance phase of the terrorist attack cycle.

Media reports indicated that during Operation Pathway, British authorities intercepted a series of Internet exchanges between the suspects suggested a terror strike was imminent. Furthermore, among the locations raided April 8 was the Cyber Net Cafe in Cheetham Hill, an establishment where British authorities observed the suspects using computers to communicate. Not only is this electronic surveillance significant in that it allowed the authorities to surmise the approximate timing of the attack, but perhaps just as important, this ability to monitor the suspects’ communications will allow the authorities to identify other militants in the United Kingdom and beyond.

Indeed, in several previous cases related to the United Kingdom, such as the investigations involving the U.S. arrest of Mohammed Junaid Babar and the U.K. arrest of Younis Tsouli, authorities were able to use communications from militant suspects to identify and roll up militant cells in other countries. Therefore, we will not be at all surprised to hear at some point in the future that British authorities were be able use the communications of the recently arrested suspects to tip off authorities in the United States, Canada, other European countries or elsewhere about the militant activities of people the suspects were in contact with.

Links to Pakistan

And speaking of elsewhere, as noted above, 11 of the arrested suspects were Pakistani nationals who entered the U.K. on student visas. At this point it is not exactly clear if the British believe the 11 suspects were radical militants specifically sent to the United Kingdom to conduct attacks or if they arrived without malicious intent and were then radicalized in the Petri dish of Islamist extremism that so rapidly replicates inside the British Muslim community — what we have come to refer to as Londonistan.

Many British lawmakers and media reports have made a huge issue out of the fact that 11 of the alleged plotters entered the United Kingdom on student visas, but even if the suspects were radicals who used student visas as a way to enter the United Kingdom, this is by no means a new tactic as some are reporting. STRATFOR has long discussed the use of student visas, bogus political asylum claims and other forms of immigration fraud that have commonly been used by militants. In fact, there have been numerous prior examples of jihadist operatives using student visas, such as the following:

While Sept. 11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi initially entered the United States on tourist visas, they were approved for M-1 student visas shortly before carrying out their attacks.
Youssef Samir Megahed, who was arrested in possession of an improvised explosive device (IED) in August 2007 and later sentenced to a 15-year prison sentence, was a Kuwaiti engineering student who entered the United States on a student visa.
Mohammed Aatique, a convicted member of the “Virginia Jihad Network” who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for conspiracy and weapons violations, also entered the United States from Pakistan as an engineering student.

In some ways, connections between the alleged plotters and militant groups in Pakistan such as al Qaeda or the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) would be more analytically significant than if they turn out to be grassroots operatives. The operational security, skills and terrorist tradecraft exhibited by the plotters are about what one would expect to see in a grassroots militant organization. This level of sophistication is, however, far less than one would expect from a transnational organization. Therefore, if this was an al Qaeda operation, it shows how far the group has fallen in the past eight years. If it was the TTP, it means that our previous estimate of their operational ability outside of Pakistan was fairly accurate.

Lack of Evidence

To date, the British authorities have not been able to find the explosive material and IED components they were expecting to find. This might mean that the materials may still be hidden somewhere and could be used in a future attack. It is also quite possible, and perhaps more likely, that this lack of evidence is an indication that the plot was not quite as far along as the British authorities believed. Perhaps the references the suspects allegedly made to launching the attack on a bank holiday pertained to a holiday later in the year.

While the plot as described by the British authorities would not have been a significant, strategic threat to the United Kingdom, it could have been quite deadly and could very well have surpassed the July 7, 2005, attacks in terms of final body count. Because of this potential destruction, it is quite possible that the British government decided to err on the side of disruption rather than on the side of prosecution. This is something we have seen in the investigation of several other plots in recent years in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, perhaps most notably in the August 2006 Heathrow plot, in which a cell of operatives was preparing to bomb a series of trans-Atlantic airline flights using liquid explosives.

It is much more difficult to obtain a conviction for a conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism than it is to obtain a conviction for an attack that was successfully conducted. Once the attack is executed, there is no longer much room to wrangle in court over things such as intent or capability. Governments also frequently know things via intelligence they cannot prove to the standards required for a conviction in a court of law.

This was seen in the Heathrow case, where only three of the eight suspects were convicted of the main charges during that trial, which ended in September 2008. (The other five suspects had pled guilty to lesser charges.) During that case there was reportedly some tension between the U.S. and British authorities over when to wrap up the Heathrow plotters — some of the British apparently wanted to wait a while longer to secure more damning evidence, while the Americans were reportedly more interested in ensuring that the plot was disrupted than they were in obtaining convictions. It is likely the same dynamic was at play during the investigation of the Manchester case.

Although Quick’s disclosure did hasten the launch of Operation Pathway by a few hours, it did not significantly alter the timing of the investigation — the British authorities were preparing to execute an array of searches and arrests. From an ethical standpoint (and, not insignificantly in this day and age, a political aspect) it is deemed better by many to disrupt a plot early and risk the terror suspects being acquitted than it is to accidentally allow them to conduct an attack while waiting to gather the evidence required for an ironclad court case. Disruption can have an impact on the success of prosecutions, but in the eyes of a growing number of policymakers, that impact is offset by the lives it saves.

This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to www.stratfor.com

Please feel free to distribute this Intelligence Report to friends or repost to your Web site linking to www.stratfor.com .

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Prospects for U.S.-Russian Security Cooperation.

Edited by Dr. Stephen J. Blank.

http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=892

Brief Synopsis

Russia, despite claims made for and against its importance, remains, by any objective standard, a key player in world affairs. Russia is an important barometer of trends in world politics, e.g., the course of democratization in the world. Furthermore, Russia, if it were so disposed, could be the abettor and/or supporter of a host of negative trends in the world today. Even so, if U.S. policymakers and analysts see Russia more as a spoiler than as a constructive partner (whether rightly or wrongly), the fact remains that during the Cold War the Soviet Union was an active supporter of threats to world order such as international terrorism, and carried on a global arms race with the West. We negotiated productively with it on issues like arms control and proliferation. Today, no matter how bad Russo-American or East-West relations may be, no such threats are present or immediately discernible on the horizon. But ultimately, given Russia’s power, standing, and nuclear capability, dialogue and cooperation will be resumed at some point in the future. Therefore, an analysis of the prospects for and conditions favoring such cooperation is an urgent and important task that cries out for clarification precisely because current U.S.-Russian relations are so difficult.

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Fox News runs with dubious claim that KSM’s interrogation thwarted L.A. plot

Fox News hosts and contributors have advanced the assertion that the use of harsh interrogation techniques on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed “stopped an attack on the Library Tower in Los Angeles.” But the Bush administration said that the attack was thwarted in February 2002 — more than a year before Mohammed was captured.

Read More

http://mediamatters.org/items/200904220032?lid=1013912&rid=26370662

Jon Stewart

“Apparently everyone’s not upset about the fact that we torture. They’re upset about the fact that we know about it.”

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EIA, the Nation’s clearinghouse for energy statistics – This Week in Petroleum (TWIP)

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

This Week in Petroleum (TWIP) has been updated to the EIA website:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip.asp

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The latest news from Iraq Oil Report Thursday, April 23, 2009

Barzani to Obama: support KRG oil policies

http://www.iraqoilreport.com/the-biz/barzani-to-obama-support-krg-oil-policies/

Letter to Obama week before inauguration congratulates, says Kurdistan Regional
Government backs U.S. in Iraq, and “I seek your support, Mr. President, for
our policies.”

Model contract delay, but other activity increases

http://www.iraqoilreport.com/the-biz/model-contract-delay-but-other-activity-increases/

Iraqi model contract is delayed, while the Syria pipeline is retendered and
service companies start to return.

KRG oil exports, reserves ready to grow

http://www.iraqoilreport.com/the-biz/krg-oil-exports-reserves-ready-to-grow/

Regional oil minister is bullish on prospects of 250K barrels daily exported by
next year; 4 billion in reserves and counting.

KRG oil minister slams national counterpart

http://www.iraqoilreport.com/the-biz/krg-oil-minister-slams-national-counterpart/

Ashti Hawrami blames Hussain al-Shahristani for preventing 100K bpd in oil
exports and calls Ministry of Oil’s dealings with international oil companies
“illegal.”

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And now for the important news ….

By Argus Hamilton

Susan Boyle became a superstar singing on Britain’s Got Talent. She showed the world if you have talent, decency and values, then looks aren’t important. The next day Beverly Hills plastic surgeons were offering talent, decency, and values implants.

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

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three thousand words

(click here to view)

Ed Gamble Florida Times Union Apr 23, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

Jeff Danziger: Texas Secession, Rick Perry
(danzigercartoons.com)

Mike Peters: … could you teach my puppy a trick?
(www.grimmy.com)

The Ultimate Reaping of What One Sows: Right-Wing Edition

by Glenn Greenwald

Right-wing polemicists today are shrieking in self-pitying protest over a new report from the Department of Homeland Security sent to local police forces which warns of growing “right-wing extremist activity.” The report (.pdf) identifies attributes of these right-wing extremists, warning that a growing domestic threat of violence and terrorism “may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration” and “groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.”

Conservatives have responded to this disclosure as though they’re on the train to FEMA camps. The Right’s leading political philosopher and intellectual historian, Jonah Goldberg, invokes fellow right-wing giant Ronald Reagan and says: “Here we go Again,” protesting that “this seems so nakedly ideological.” Michelle Malkin, who spent the last eight years cheering on every domestic surveillance and police state program she could find, announces that it’s “Confirmed: The Obama DHS hit job on conservatives is real!” Lead-War-on-Terror-cheerleader Glenn Reynolds warns that DHS – as a result of this report (but not, apparently, anything that happened over the last eight years) – now considers the Constitution to be a “subversive manifesto.” Super Tough Guy Civilization-Warrior Mark Steyn has already concocted an elaborate, detailed martyr fantasy in which his house is surrounded by Obama-dispatched, bomb-wielding federal agents. Malkin’s Hot Air stomps its feet about all “the smears listed in the new DHS warning about ‘right-wing extremism.’”

It’s certainly true that federal police efforts directed at domestic political movements – even ones with a history of inspiring violence in both the distant and recent past – require real vigilance and oversight, and it’s also true that the DHS description of these groups seems excessively broad with the potential for mischief. But the political faction screeching about the dangers of the DHS is the same one that spent the last eight years vastly expanding the domestic Surveillance State and federal police powers in every area. DHS – and the still-creepy phrase “homeland security” – became George Bush’s calling card. The Republicans won the 2002 election by demonizing those who opposed its creation. All of the enabling legislation underlying this Surveillance State – from the Patriot Act to the Military Commissions Act, from the various FISA “reforms” to massive increases in domestic “counter-Terrorism” programs – are the spawns of the very right-wing movement that today is petrified that this is all being directed at them.

Read the rest of the article

http://www.salon.com/src/pass/sitepass/spon/sitepass_website.html

April 21, 2009

Glenn Greenwald is the author of A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency and How Would a Patriot Act? See his blog Unclaimed Territory.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/greenwald/greenwald36.html

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Robert Scheer on Grand Theft Treasury

“Thievery Under the TARP” — We are being robbed big-time, but you can’t say we haven’t been warned. Not after the release Tuesday of a scathing report by the Treasury Department’s special inspector general, who charged that the aptly named Troubled Asset Relief Fund bailout program is rife with mismanagement and potential for fraud.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090422_thievery_under_the_tarp/

Thievery Under the TARP

Apr 22, 2009
By Robert Scheer

We are being robbed big-time, but you can’t say we haven’t been warned. Not after the release Tuesday of a scathing report by the Treasury Department’s special inspector general, who charged that the aptly named Troubled Asset Relief Fund bailout program is rife with mismanagement and potential for fraud. The IG’s office already has opened 20 criminal fraud investigations into the $700 billion program, which is now well on its way to a $3 trillion obligation, and the IG predicts many more are coming.

Special Inspector General Neil M. Barofsky charged that the TARP program from its inception was designed to trust the Wall Street recipients of the bailout funds to act responsibly on their own, without accountability to the government that gave them the money.

He pointed to the example of AIG, which has acted as a conduit of funds to the banks it had insured without being required to tell the government what it is doing: “Failure to impose this requirement with respect to the injection of yet another $30 billion into AIG would not only be a failure of oversight, but could call into question the credibility of the government’s efforts.”

AIG is just one example in a bailout that has left the financial conglomerates unsupervised as they spend taxpayer money in what the report termed a government program of “unprecedented scope, scale and complexity,” putting the public and the Treasury Department in the dark as to how the money is being used by the very tycoons who got us into this mess. “The American people have a right to know how their tax dollars are being used,” Barofsky wrote in the report, which sharply criticized the government for failing to hold financial institutions accountable.

For all of its criticism of the original program, designed by the Bush administration, the report was equally severe in denouncing the Obama administration’s plan to partner with hedge funds and other private capital groups to buy up the “toxic” holdings of the banks. Charging that the plan carries “significant fraud risks,” the inspector general’s report pointed out that almost all of the risk in this new trillion-dollar plan is being borne by the taxpayers. The so-called private investors would be able to put up money they borrowed from the Fed through “nonrecourse” loans, meaning if the toxic assets purchased prove too toxic and the scheme failed, the private investors could just walk away without repaying the Fed for those loans.

The reason those loans may prove even more toxic than expected and the price paid by this government-underwritten partnership far too high is that the government is purchasing the most suspect of the banks’ mortgage packages. In addition, the plan is to accept at face value the evaluation of those packages by the very same credit-rating firms whose absurdly wrong estimates of the dollar worth of these securities helped create the problem that now haunts the world’s economy. “Arguably, the wholesale failure of the credit rating agencies to rate adequately such securities is at the heart of the securitization market collapse, if not the primary cause of the current credit crisis,” the report found.

As with the entire banking bailout, the new plan of Obama’s treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, is likely to enrich the very folks who impoverished the rest of us, as the report notes: “The significant government-financed leverage presents a great incentive for collusion between the buyer and seller of the asset, or the buyer and other buyers, whereby, once again, the taxpayer takes a significant loss while others profit.”

At the heart of this potentially massive fraud was the original decision of Henry Paulson, President Bush’s treasury secretary and a former Goldman Sachs chairman, to not require the recipients of the bailout, such as his old firm, to account for how the money was spent. Unfortunately, President Obama’s administration continued that practice.

The only difference is that the amount of public money being put at risk is now far greater, and the hedge funds, which are totally unregulated, have been brought in as the central players. One of the largest of those hedge funds, D.E. Shaw, carried Obama’s top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, on its payroll to the tune of $5.2 million last year. He may have reason to trust these secretive enterprises that operate beyond the law, but the public does not.

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[Dallas Fed] Houston Economic Update

Tuesday, April 21, 2009 2:44 PM

Houston Economic Update
April 2009
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

http://dallasfed.org/research/update-hou/2009/0902.cfm

U.S. and global recessions have merged with weak energy prices to end Houston’s long expansion. Job growth fell at a 3.2 percent annual rate over the first quarter of this year, while the unemployment rate was up a full percentage point over six months to 6.8 percent. So far, oil-related layoffs have played only a modest role in employment reductions, but continued weakness in natural gas prices may quickly change the pattern for the worse.

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USGAO – 2008 Lobbying Disclosure: Observations on Lobbyists’ Compliance with Disclosure Requirements.

GAO-09-487, April 1.

http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-09-487

Highlights – http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d09487high.pdf

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OCC News Release: OCC Enforcement Actions

Friday, April 17, 2009

OCC Enforcement Actions

WASHINGTON — The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) today released new enforcement actions taken against national banks and individuals currently and formerly affiliated with national banks.

Copies of the final actions are available for download by viewing the searchable database of all public enforcement actions taken since August 1989 at

http://apps.occ.gov/EnforcementActions/ .

You may also submit a request electronically to obtain copies through the OCC’s online FOIA site, https://appsec.occ.gov/publicaccesslink/ .

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The Age of the Unthinkable

By: Joshua Cooper Ramo

“As much as we might wish it, our world is not becoming more stable or easier to comprehend. We are entering, in short, a revolutionary age,” writes Managing Director at Kissinger Associates, Joshua Cooper Ramo, in his brilliant and worldview altering book The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It. The author takes the reader on a globe trotting adventure, from the turbulent Middle East to the world of Wall Street high finance, where generally accepted ideas of how the world works are shattered forever.
…

http://tinyurl.com/c6rc5v (blogbusinessworld.blogspot.com)

Also see: http://joshuaramo.com/

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NBC report on NY Times’ five Pulitzers ignores military analysts report

Brian Williams reported that “The New York Times led the way with five [Pulitzer Prizes], including awards for breaking news and international reporting” but did not note that the Times’ David Barstow won for his reporting on the connection between numerous media military analysts and the Pentagon and defense industries.

Read More

http://mediamatters.org/items/200904210002?lid=1011352&rid=26312958

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FOX NEWS’ UNHINGED, IRRATIONAL OBAMA ATTACKS STIR UP VIOLENT RIGHT-WING MILITANTS

By Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America

Paranoid anti-government radicals used to have to rely on crude, inefficient methods of communication. Now they have Fox News.

http://tinyurl.com/cducdj (www.alternet.org)

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And now for the important news ….

By Argus Hamilton

Governor Rick Perry told a tea party in Texas Wednesday that Texas can legally secede from the United States. Picture the possibilities. The people in the Cayman Islands would finally have a place to send their money so they can avoid paying taxes.

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

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three thousand words

(click here to view)

Matt Davies Journal News Apr 22, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

Cartoon du Jour – By Khalil: … right to bear arms …
(www.bendib.com)

Tom the Dancing Bug: toxic asset
(imgsrv.gocomics.com)

Solutions for the Pirate Problem

by Karen Kwiatkowski

The latest Foreign Policy web-only exclusive, written by neoconservative J. Peter Pham, is an analysis of the Somali piracy problem, something Pham has been assessing for some time. The subtitle of the article “Why the U.S. Navy Can’t Win this Fight” is appealing in its prescience.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4817

But what the author really means to say is that the U.S. Navy can only win the fight with the help of other navies, UN and US-led nation-building in Somalia (both in Puntland and presumably Somaliland which have functioning self-government, as well as in the southern Ethiopian-occupied Somalia, which does not).

Rather than being liberals mugged by reality, neo-conservatives can be likened to muggers promised redemption for a few public good works. Their souls chained by a sense of limit on every good thing, eager to appease and please their gangbosses, and with an unshakeable faith in the use of force on the weak – neoconservatives persist in the halls of government and throughout the government-dependent media.

Hoodlums in suits they truly are, although it’s possible some of them mean well. But high-minded muggers cannot imagine real solutions to the problems of sea piracy. Instead, they put forth more state-on-individual intervention, more national and international bureaucracy. Like other criminals, they suppose the rest of us will pay for it, in blood and honor, and be grateful we were spared our very skins.

The history of private security is not glorious, inevitably souring with its proximity to government contracts and politicians. Nonetheless, it met – and meets – a need for commercial security that offers a decentralized way to think about the problem of robbers, whether they be Robin Hoods, out-of-work fishermen, teenage boys – or the global money launderers than make this aspect of the world go round.

Popular movies like The Thomas Crown Affair, and the American love affair with our individualistic, independent and armed forbearers tell one side of the story. The notoriety and faithlessness of the global defense contractors working with – and against – governments for cash and ideology – as seen in this season’s 24 – tells the other side.

Every clue is available to government decision-makers – yet the obvious solutions to piracy and indiscriminate hostage-taking escape the Obamites and congressional Republicrats. To solve the problem of cargo and crew seizure for ransom, decentralized decision-making and decentralize actions will work best, at minimal cost, with minimal destruction and violence.

Insurance rates in the Gulf of Aden have risen tenfold. This recent spate of news coverage belies the fact that sea piracy has been around for centuries – and indeed we already know something about how to reduce it. In the Straits of Malacca, South China Sea and Indonesian waters, insurance rates have increased drastically, routes altered, and some freight companies have hired onboard security guards. A 2004 study explains

“These guards … are being deployed discreetly, because the legal status of armed guards on board commercial vessels is not clear under international law. …If the guards use deadly force, they and their employers may be criminally liable. Yet the policy is pursued because it is working; numerous, potentially deadly piracy attacks are being thwarted on a daily basis by the mere presence of armed guards, who, working in groups of four to eight per ship, often do not have to fire even a single shot in order to keep the pirates at bay. Ship owners also favor hiring armed private security guards because the practice may help them negotiate better insurance premiums.

It goes on: “The deterrence effect can also be achieved when pirates know or expect that the ships’ crews themselves carry firearms. Pirates deliberately avoid Russian- and U.S.-flagged ships, for example, because they believe that many of them carry small arsenals for protection.” Incidentally, the crew of the US-flagged Alabama was not armed – and yet was still able to get the better of the four Kalashnikov-armed hijackers. This heroism is individual and team based, autonomous. Unlike the famously overplayed stories of a Flight 93 passenger uprising – where no after-action interviews may be conducted – we will be subjected to far more noise today about the heroism of Naval commanders and Navy snipers hidden on the fantail of the USS Bainbridge.

A business-oriented, personal responsibility-friendly, insurance rate-enhancing approach will never be recommended, suggested, or condoned by “state sovereignty” types. American missions must be justified, sunk cost in a global police force rationalized. Obamites and their neoconservative allies, around the world and regardless of their political coats, prefer war, prefaced by political and economic intervention of those perceived to be weaker or less worthy than ourselves.

Perhaps one of the companies formerly known as Blackwater will see new opportunities in private commerce protection. Of course, they’d need plenty of subsidies and guaranteed long-term contracts. No need to advocate decentralized market-based solutions just yet – let’s wait for more state-sanctioned war, more justification for American hostility and use of force around the world, more generalized fear here at home. Then, perhaps Xe or a subsidiary will jump in the game, complete with congressional blessings and taxpayer cash.

Whether the drug war, the poverty war, the war on terror, or the war on piracy – for our government, it’s always first things first. Establish the moral high ground of the state, centralize decision-making, bureaucratize and internationalize the legitimate policy discussion, drum fear and uncertainty into the hearts of markets and populations, demonize the “enemy” and smear as co-conspirators any individual actors offering non-state solutions, and make the erstwhile victims as helpless as possible.

We could lighten up on sovereign–greed oriented regulation on shipping companies and freighter captains, and let the real producers of wealth decide how to proceed. We could take a look at where some of this ransom money is being laundered, and with no additional bureaucracy, easily shut down some of our white-collar friends. Instead, Washington is alive with possibility – tut-tutting excitedly about international or sub-regional coast guards, invasion of Somalia for its own good, academic study of the pirate tactics of 17-year-old boys, and the barbarous behavior of others.

April 15, 2009

LRC columnist Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. , a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, has written on defense issues with a libertarian perspective for MilitaryWeek.com, hosted the call-in radio show American Forum, and blogs occasionally for Huffingtonpost.com and Liberty and Power.

From:

http://tinyurl.com/cx8w27 (www.lewrockwell.com)

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Congressman Paul’s Texas Straight Talk: Responses to Piracy

Monday, April 20, 2009

Responses to Piracy

“The recent episode with the Somali pirates has brought to the forefront many questions about maritime security. What is the best way to deal with a gang of criminals, not acting on behalf of any country, when they attack private vessels? Under whose jurisdiction are these types of criminals to be prosecuted? Most importantly, how do we deter such attacks in the future?”

Click here to read the full article

http://www.house.gov/paul/index.shtml

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Torture and the U.S. Intelligence Failure

April 20, 2009
By George Friedman

The Obama administration published a series of memoranda on torture issued under the Bush administration. The memoranda, most of which dated from the period after 9/11, authorized measures including depriving prisoners of solid food, having them stand shackled and in uncomfortable positions, leaving them in cold cells with inadequate clothing, slapping their heads and/or abdomens, and telling them that their families might be harmed if they didn’t cooperate with their interrogators.

On the scale of human cruelty, these actions do not rise anywhere near the top. At the same time, anyone who thinks that being placed without food in a freezing cell subject to random mild beatings — all while being told that your family might be joining you — isn’t agonizing clearly lacks imagination. The treatment of detainees could have been worse. It was terrible nonetheless.

Torture and the Intelligence Gap

But torture is meant to be terrible, and we must judge the torturer in the context of his own desperation. In the wake of 9/11, anyone who wasn’t terrified was not in touch with reality. We know several people who now are quite blasé about 9/11. Unfortunately for them, we knew them in the months after, and they were not nearly as composed then as they are now.

Sept. 11 was terrifying for one main reason: We had little idea about al Qaeda’s capabilities. It was a very reasonable assumption that other al Qaeda cells were operating in the United States and that any day might bring follow-on attacks. (Especially given the group’s reputation for one-two attacks.) We still remember our first flight after 9/11, looking at our fellow passengers, planning what we would do if one of them moved. Every time a passenger visited the lavatory, one could see the tensions soar.

And while Sept. 11 was frightening enough, there were ample fears that al Qaeda had secured a “suitcase bomb” and that a nuclear attack on a major U.S. city could come at any moment. For individuals, such an attack was simply another possibility. We remember staying at a hotel in Washington close to the White House and realizing that we were at ground zero — and imagining what the next moment might be like. For the government, however, the problem was having scraps of intelligence indicating that al Qaeda might have a nuclear weapon, but not having any way of telling whether those scraps had any value. The president and vice president accordingly were continually kept at different locations, and not for any frivolous reason.

This lack of intelligence led directly to the most extreme fears, which in turn led to extreme measures. Washington simply did not know very much about al Qaeda and its capabilities and intentions in the United States. A lack of knowledge forces people to think of worst-case scenarios. In the absence of intelligence to the contrary after 9/11, the only reasonable assumption was that al Qaeda was planning more — and perhaps worse — attacks.

Collecting intelligence rapidly became the highest national priority. Given the genuine and reasonable fears, no action in pursuit of intelligence was out of the question, so long as it promised quick answers. This led to the authorization of torture, among other things. Torture offered a rapid means to accumulate intelligence, or at least — given the time lag on other means — it was something that had to be tried.

Torture and the Moral Question

And this raises the moral question. The United States is a moral project: its Declaration of Independence and Constitution state that. The president takes an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. The Constitution does not speak to the question of torture of non-citizens, but it implies an abhorrence of rights violations (at least for citizens). But the Declaration of Independence contains the phrase, “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.” This indicates that world opinion matters.

At the same time, the president is sworn to protect the Constitution. In practical terms, this means protecting the physical security of the United States “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Protecting the principles of the declaration and the Constitution are meaningless without regime preservation and defending the nation.

While this all makes for an interesting seminar in political philosophy, presidents — and others who have taken the same oath — do not have the luxury of the contemplative life. They must act on their oaths, and inaction is an action. Former U.S. President George W. Bush knew that he did not know the threat, and that in order to carry out his oath, he needed very rapidly to find out the threat. He could not know that torture would work, but he clearly did not feel that he had the right to avoid it.

Consider this example. Assume you knew that a certain individual knew the location of a nuclear device planted in an American city. The device would kill hundreds of thousands of Americans, but he individual refused to divulge the information. Would anyone who had sworn the oath have the right not to torture the individual? Torture might or might not work, but either way, would it be moral to protect the individual’s rights while allowing hundreds of thousands to die? It would seem that in this case, torture is a moral imperative; the rights of the one with the information cannot transcend the life of a city.

Torture in the Real World

But here is the problem: You would not find yourself in this situation. Knowing a bomb had been planted, knowing who knew that the bomb had been planted, and needing only to apply torture to extract this information is not how the real world works. Post-9/11, the United States knew much less about the extent of the threat from al Qaeda. This hypothetical sort of torture was not the issue.

Discrete information was not needed, but situational awareness. The United States did not know what it needed to know, it did not know who was of value and who wasn’t, and it did not know how much time it had. Torture thus was not a precise solution to a specific problem: It became an intelligence-gathering technique. The nature of the problem the United States faced forced it into indiscriminate intelligence gathering. When you don’t know what you need to know, you cast a wide net. And when torture is included in the mix, it is cast wide as well. In such a case, you know you will be following many false leads — and when you carry torture with you, you will be torturing people with little to tell you. Moreover, torture applied by anyone other than well-trained, experienced personnel (who are in exceptionally short supply) will only compound these problems, and make the practice less productive.

Defenders of torture frequently seem to believe that the person in custody is known to have valuable information, and that this information must be forced out of him. His possession of the information is proof of his guilt. The problem is that unless you have excellent intelligence to begin with, you will become engaged in developing baseline intelligence, and the person you are torturing may well know nothing at all. Torture thus becomes not only a waste of time and a violation of decency, it actually undermines good intelligence. After a while, scooping up suspects in a dragnet and trying to extract intelligence becomes a substitute for competent intelligence techniques — and can potentially blind the intelligence service. This is especially true as people will tell you what they think you want to hear to make torture stop.

Critics of torture, on the other hand, seem to assume the torture was brutality for the sake of brutality instead of a desperate attempt to get some clarity on what might well have been a catastrophic outcome. The critics also cannot know the extent to which the use of torture actually prevented follow-on attacks. They assume that to the extent that torture was useful, it was not essential; that there were other ways to find out what was needed. In the long run, they might have been correct. But neither they, nor anyone else, had the right to assume in late 2001 that there was a long run. One of the things that wasn’t known was how much time there was.

The U.S. Intelligence Failure

The endless argument over torture, the posturing of both critics and defenders, misses the crucial point. The United States turned to torture because it has experienced a massive intelligence failure reaching back a decade. The U.S. intelligence community simply failed to gather sufficient information on al Qaeda’s intentions, capability, organization and personnel. The use of torture was not part of a competent intelligence effort, but a response to a massive intelligence failure.

That failure was rooted in a range of miscalculations over time. There was the public belief that the end of the Cold War meant the United States didn’t need a major intelligence effort, a point made by the late Sen. Daniel Moynihan. There were the intelligence people who regarded Afghanistan as old news. There was the Torricelli amendment that made recruiting people with ties to terrorist groups illegal without special approval. There were the Middle East experts who could not understand that al Qaeda was fundamentally different from anything seen before. The list of the guilty is endless, and ultimately includes the American people, who always seem to believe that the view of the world as a dangerous place is something made up by contractors and bureaucrats.

Bush was handed an impossible situation on Sept. 11, after just nine months in office. The country demanded protection, and given the intelligence shambles he inherited, he reacted about as well or badly as anyone else might have in the situation. He used the tools he had, and hoped they were good enough.

The problem with torture — as with other exceptional measures — is that it is useful, at best, in extraordinary situations. The problem with all such techniques in the hands of bureaucracies is that the extraordinary in due course becomes the routine, and torture as a desperate stopgap measure becomes a routine part of the intelligence interrogator’s tool kit.

At a certain point, the emergency was over. U.S. intelligence had focused itself and had developed an increasingly coherent picture of al Qaeda, with the aid of allied Muslim intelligence agencies, and was able to start taking a toll on al Qaeda. The war had become routinized, and extraordinary measures were no longer essential. But the routinization of the extraordinary is the built-in danger of bureaucracy, and what began as a response to unprecedented dangers became part of the process. Bush had an opportunity to move beyond the emergency. He didn’t.

If you know that an individual is loaded with information, torture can be a useful tool. But if you have so much intelligence that you already know enough to identify the individual is loaded with information, then you have come pretty close to winning the intelligence war. That’s not when you use torture. That’s when you simply point out to the prisoner that, “for you the war is over.” You lay out all you already know and how much you know about him. That is as demoralizing as freezing in a cell — and helps your interrogators keep their balance.

U.S. President Barack Obama has handled this issue in the style to which we have become accustomed, and which is as practical a solution as possible. He has published the memos authorizing torture to make this entirely a Bush administration problem while refusing to prosecute anyone associated with torture, keeping the issue from becoming overly divisive. Good politics perhaps, but not something that deals with the fundamental question.

The fundamental question remains unanswered, and may remain unanswered. When a president takes an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” what are the limits on his obligation? We take the oath for granted. But it should be considered carefully by anyone entering this debate, particularly for presidents.

This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to www.stratfor.com

Please feel free to distribute this Intelligence Report to friends or repost to your Web site linking to www.stratfor.com .

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Putting Finance Capitalism ‘Back in Its Box’

Political Views
By Stephen Lendman
Monday, 20 April 2009

So writes Philip Augar in an April 13 Financial Times (FT) op-ed. He’s a former UK investment banker/broker and author of The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism, The Greed Merchants, and most recently Chasing Alpha: How Reckless Growth and Unchecked Ambition Ruined the City’s Golden Decade.

More on his newest book below.

CONTINUE…

http://tinyurl.com/d2ytgx (mwcnews.net)

Stephen Lendman, a contributing editor to MWC News, is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen[at]sbcglobal.net.

Also listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday through Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

Other articless by this auhor:

http://mwcnews.net/StephenLendman

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OCC Publishes Newsletter Highlighting Financial Literacy

April 20, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) today published Community Developments Investments, its on-line newsletter, which describes financial literacy initiatives that banks and their community partners are operating across the country.

“Financial literacy is the first step toward financial success for our kids and for many older consumers. These programs spread the word that financial knowledge can help them protect, manage, and invest their money better,” said Comptroller of the Currency John C. Dugan. “For banks that means increased opportunities to expand their customer base and deposits, increase customer loyalty and satisfaction, and target initiatives to low- and moderate-income communities to earn positive CRA consideration.”

This edition coincides with National Financial Literacy Month and highlights roles that banks can play in promoting financial stability through local partnership efforts. Its articles describe four programs that help banks and their community partners reach out to consumers to encourage better money management through savings and checking products: Bank on Cities, Operation Hope, America Saves, and the Department of the Treasury’s Community Financial Access Pilot. It also includes a number of OCC on-line resources for bankers interested in expanding their financial literacy programs, including the Financial Literacy Update and the Financial Literacy Web Resource Directory.

Community Developments Investments can be accessed on the OCC’s Web site at

http://tinyurl.com/coopua (www.occ.gov)

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EIA, the Nation’s clearinghouse for energy statistics – Today’s Gasoline Prices

Monday, April 20, 2009

RETAIL GASOLINE: (Self Service Prices per Gallon, Including axes) This report contains price estimates for gasoline sold in zone non-attainment areas which require the sale of reformulated gasoline (RFG) as designated by the Environmental Protection Agency, and Conventional areas which includes both attainment areas and carbon monoxide non-attainment areas.

Mogas web site url

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/fwd/wrgp.html

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FRB Richmond – National Economic Indicators: Updated 04/20/2009

Monday, April 20, 2009

National Economic Indicators

The latest data on the national economy, updated twice a month.

http://tinyurl.com/cta9j5 (www.richmondfed.org)

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Limbaugh falsely claimed that “left-wing blogger” was NYT’s source on waterboarding use

Rush Limbaugh falsely claimed that a “left-wing blogger” was The New York Times’ source for an article about waterboarding use. In fact, the Times reported that the information came from an OLC memo and that bloggers discovered the information in the memo.

Read More

http://mediamatters.org/items/200904200030?lid=1008664&rid=26240606

Following is another excerpt from the book “The Big Switch” by Nicholas Carr

“The more that people converse or otherwise share information with other people who hold similar views, the more extreme their views become. When like-minded people cluster, they often aggravate their biases, spreading falsehoods. They end up in a more extreme position in line with their tendencies before deliberation began. This phenomenon may in the worst cases plant the roots of extremism and even fanaticism and terrorism. Given how easy it is to find like-minded people and sympathetic ideas on the Internet and given our innate tendency to form homogeneous groups, we can see that ideological amplification is likely to be persuasive online.”

“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups “

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Borowitz Report – Incredible Money-Making Opportunity

April 21, 2009

Obama Opens Chevy Dealership on White House Lawn
Slashes Prices on Malibus, Cobalts

In a move signaling his most direct involvement in the U.S. auto industry to date, President Barack Obama announced today that he was opening a Chevrolet dealership on the White House lawn.

As car-carriers dumped hundreds of unsold 2009 Malibus, Silverados and Cobalts onto the grass in front of the President’s historic residence, workmen draped a banner in front of the White House portico reading “Buy a Chevrolet from the USA.”

Another crew of workers were busy erecting a new sign in front of the White House reading “Barry’s Auto City,” the name of Mr. Obama’s dealership.

In a new TV ad broadcast nationwide, the president was seen wearing an Uncle Sam costume and telling the American people, “We are slashing prices on 2009 Chevys to make room for the 2010s, if there still are Chevys by then.”

Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said that all Cabinet members were taking turns running the dealership, and that Vice-President Joe Biden was manning the customer service hotline.

Customers calling the hotline complained that wait times were as long as thirty minutes and that Mr. Biden was overly chatty, but Mr. Emanuel stressed that the customer service department was “a work in progress.”

He added that once President’s Chevy dealership is up and running, Mr. Obama will open a Chrysler dealership next to it.

“This will be your last chance to get a low, low price on a Chrysler before it turns into a Fiat,” he said.

THE COOLEST VIDEO CLIP EVER is at www.oliviagentile.com

Upcoming Events

April 30, 2009 at 8:00PM

Andy’s Only NY Show!
Andy reviews Obama’s first 100 days with special guests Hendrik Hertzberg (The New Yorker), Jonathan Alter (Newsweek, MSNBC) and comedian Judy Gold

Location:
The 92nd Street Y, Lexington and 92nd Street
For tickets go to 92y.org

May 23, 2009 at 2:00PM

Andy in Cleveland – Free Show!
Andy performs a free stand-up show in his hometown. Meet Andy and his wife Olivia Gentile; Olivia will read from her new book, LIFE LIST, and both will sign their books afterward.

Location:
Joseph-Beth Bookstore, 24519 Cedar Road, Lyndhurst

http://www.borowitzreport.com/

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three thousand words

(click here to view)

Phil Hands Wisconsin State Journal Apr 21, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

RJ Matson: IT’S BETTER IN SOMALIA

David Horsey: a toast to them …

Finding the right scapegoat

By Ed Quillen
04/19/2009

http://www.denverpost.com/quillen/ci_12159733

My phone rang early the other morning, so early that I hadn’t fed our house cats yet and they kept meowing through the conversation. It was my favorite inside source, Ananias Ziegler, communications director for the Committee That Really Runs America.

After he asked about the cat sounds, he explained that “I wanted to warn you that your patriotism is in question because you failed to attend your local Tax Day Tea Bag rally.”

“How would you know that I was doing some yard work before going indoors to poison my mind with liberal propaganda from Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow?” I asked.

“We have our ways,” he explained. “And I understand you filed everything on time this year. What kind of American would do that?”

“A self-employed American,” I replied, “one who is more scared of the IRS than of the Taliban, the Mexican drug cartels and Somali pirates, all put together.”

“So you should have joined the protest,” Ziegler said.

“But I write for the evil Mainstream Media,” I objected. “And rumor has it that we have orders to ignore the rally, although I haven’t seen anything official from the Biased Liberal Media Directorate, nor from the Amalgamation of Drive-by Media. Besides, if Fox News is the ratings champ it claims to be, doesn’t that make Fox a mainstream outlet? And Fox certainly didn’t ignore the tea parties.”

“You’ve got a problem with logic,” Ziegler growled. “You’re using it, and this isn’t about logic.”

“So what is it about?” I asked.

“Indignation,” Ziegler said.

“We should be indignant,” I said. “Here we are shoveling billions of our tax dollars into Citigroup, so that Citi can turn around and lend it back to Americans at 17 percent or more on credit cards.”

“That’s not what you’re supposed to be indignant about,” Ziegler replied. “You’re supposed to be indignant about those people who bought houses by taking out mortgages that they couldn’t repay.”

“Look, I didn’t make those dumb loans.”

Ziegler sighed. “Don’t you realize that the federal government forced them to make these loans under the Community Reinvestment Act?”

“That law started in 1977,” I replied. “If it was so bad, why did it take three decades to cause problems?”

He grunted. “It was changed over the years to encourage more bad loans.”

“I read that at least half the bad subprime loans were made by lenders that weren’t covered by the CRA,” I argued. “Who was holding a gun to their heads?”

Ziegler waited until I could push the noisy cat off my lap. “You just don’t understand modern banking. And you really don’t understand modern scapegoating.”

“I guess I don’t,” I agreed. “It’s just really hard for me to imagine how a bunch of people too poor to make their house payments could bring down the world financial system.”

Ziegler changed the subject. “But aren’t you worried about these big federal deficits?”

“Of course I am. But just a decade ago, the federal budget was running a surplus and the Congressional Budget Office predicted the national debt would be paid off by now. Of course, that was before the Bush tax cuts and the invasion of Iraq. Where were the Teabaggers five years ago if they’re so worried about deficits?”

Ziegler explained, “Your problem is that you’re expecting people to be consistent and logical. You need to get with the program by getting indignant about one of our approved targets – you know, illegal immigrants, gays in the military, mortgage defaulters, gay marriage. Otherwise, you have no right to be indignant.”

Ed Quillen (ed@cozine.com) of Salida is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to The Post.

==========

Squelching Innovation — Good or Bad?

Market Movers
by Ryan Avent

Apr 17 2009

Ben Bernanke gave a speech today on the need to be careful in crafting financial regulations. An appropriate balance must be struck, he said, between consumer protections and the freedom to innovate.

I don’t think anyone wants to go back to the 1970s. Financial innovation has improved access to credit, reduced costs, and increased choice. We should not attempt to impose restrictions on credit providers so onerous that they prevent the development of new products and services in the future.

That said, the recent experience has shown some ways in which financial innovation can misfire. Regulation should not prevent innovation, rather it should ensure that innovations are sufficiently transparent and understandable to allow consumer choice to drive good market outcomes. We should be wary of complexity whose principal effect is to make the product or service more difficult to understand by its intended audience. Other questions about proposed innovations should be raised: For instance, how will the innovative product or practice perform under stressed financial conditions? What effects will the innovation have on the ability and willingness of the lender to make loans that are well underwritten and serve the needs of the borrower? These questions about innovation are relevant for safety-and-soundness supervision as well as for consumer protection.

In sum, the challenge faced by regulators is to strike the right balance: to strive for the highest standards of consumer protection without eliminating the beneficial effects of responsible innovation on consumer choice and access to credit. Our goal should be a financial system in which innovation leads to higher levels of economic welfare for people and communities at all income levels.

Bernanke focused on consumer-oriented innovations rather than obscure structured financial products, which should have made the defense of recent financial innovation a little easier. No dice. According to Bernanke, no one, “wants to go back to the 1970s,” but neither could Bernanke point to a truly helpful piece of financial innovation developed after that decade. His examples of successful financial products? Credit cards, for one, which date from the 1950s. Policies facilitating the flow of credit to lower income borrowers was another, for which he credited the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. And, of course, securitization and the secondary mortgage markets developed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in…the 1970s.

To be fair, he does mention one innovation dating from after the great wave of financial deregulation:

[I]n the early 1990s, automated underwriting systems helped open new opportunities for underserved consumers to obtain traditional forms of mortgage credit. This innovation was followed by an expansion of lending to borrowers perceived to have high credit risk, which became known as the subprime market. Lenders developed new techniques for using credit information to determine underwriting standards, set interest rates, and manage their risks. As I have already mentioned, the ongoing growth and development of the secondary mortgage market reinforced the effect of these innovations, giving mortgage lenders greater access to the capital markets, lowering transaction costs, and spreading risk more broadly. Subprime lending rose dramatically from 5 percent of total mortgage originations in 1994 to about 20 percent in 2005 and 2006.

That’s right. Tasked with defending deregulation as a source of financial innovation, Bernanke reached for subprime lending. The Fed chairman either has no desire to prevent a wave of new and tight regulations from constraining financial institutions, or he is completely and utterly tone deaf.

At the moment, the public is not at all inclined to believe that financial wizardry has positively contributed to economic growth or social welfare. I can’t imagine how Bernanke thinks he’s going to convince them otherwise using speeches like this.

From:

http://tinyurl.com/dmcuvy (www.portfolio.com)

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Obama’s Cockeyed Optimism: “We are starting to see glimmers of hope across the economy.”

By Mike Whitney
Global Research, April 18, 2009

Retail sales fell in March as soaring job losses and tighter credit conditions forced consumers to cut back sharply on discretionary spending. Nearly every sector saw declines including electronics, restaurants, furniture, sporting goods and building materials. Auto sales continued their historic nosedive despite aggressive promotions on new vehicles and $13 billion of aid from the federal government. The crash in housing, which began in July 2006, accelerated on the downside in March, falling 19 percent year-over-year, signaling more pain ahead. Mortgage defaults are rising and foreclosures in 2009 are estimated to be in the 2.1 million range, an uptick of 400,000 from 2008. Consumer spending is down, housing is in a shambles, and industrial output dropped at an annual rate of 20 percent, the largest quarterly decrease since VE Day. The systemwide contraction continues unabated with with no sign of letting up.

Conditions in the broader economy are now vastly different than those on Wall Street, where the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrials have rallied for 5 weeks straight regaining more than 25 percent of earlier losses. Fed chief Ben Bernanke’s $13 trillion in monetary stimulus has triggered a rebound in the stock market while Main Street continues to languish on life-support waiting for Obama’s $787 billion fiscal stimulus to kick in and compensate for falling demand and rising unemployment. The rally on Wall Street indicates that Bernanke’s flood of liquidity is creating a bubble in stocks since present values do not reflect underlying conditions in the economy. The fundamentals haven’t been this bad since the 1930s.

The financial media is abuzz with talk of a recovery as equities inch their way higher every week. CNBC’s Jim Cramer, the hyperventilating ringleader of “Fast Money”, announced last week, “I am pronouncing the depression is over.” Cramer and his clatter of media cheerleaders ignore the fact that every sector of the financial system is now propped up with Fed loans and T-Bills without which the fictive free market would collapse in a heap. For 19 months, Bernanke has kept a steady stream of liquidity flowing from the vault at the US Treasury to the NYSE in downtown Manhattan. The Fed has recapitalized financial institutions via its low interest rates, its multi-trillion dollar lending facilities, and its direct purchase of US sovereign debt and Fannie Mae mortgage-backed securities. (Monetization) The Fed’s balance sheet has become a dumping ground for all manner of toxic waste and putrid debt-instruments for which there is no active market. When foreign central banks and investors realize that US currency is backed by dodgy subprime collateral; there will be a run on the dollar followed by a stampede out of US equities. Even so, Bernanke assures his critics that “the foundations of our economy are strong”.

As for the recovery, market analyst Edward Harrison sums it up like this:

“This is a fake recovery because the underlying systemic issues in the financial sector are being papered over through various mechanisms designed to surreptitiously recapitalize banks while monetary and fiscal stimulus induces a rebound before many banks’ inherent insolvency becomes a problem. This means the banking system will remain weak even after recovery takes hold. The likely result of the weak system will be a relapse into a depression-like circumstances once the temporary salve of stimulus has worn off. Note that this does not preclude stocks from large rallies or a new bull market from forming because as unsustainable as the recovery may be, it will be a recovery nonetheless.” (Edward Harrison, “The Fake Recovery”, Credit Writedowns)

The rally in the stock market will not fix the banking system, slow the crash in housing, patch-together tattered household balance sheets, repair failing industries or reverse the precipitous decline in consumer confidence. The rising stock market merely indicates that profit-driven speculators are back in business taking advantage of the Fed’s lavish capital injections which are propelling equities into the stratosphere. Meanwhile, the unemployment lines continue to swell, the food banks continue to run dry and the homeless shelters continue to burst at the seams. So far, $12 trillion has been pumped into the financial system while less than $450 billion fiscal stimulus has gone to the “real” economy where workers are struggling just to keep food on the table. The Fed’s priorities are directed at the investor class not the average working Joe. Bernanke is trying to keep Wall Street happy by goosing asset values with cheap capital, but the increases to the money supply are putting more downward pressure on the dollar. The Fed chief has also begun purchasing US Treasuries, which is the equivalent of writing a check to oneself to cover an overdraft in one’s own account. This is the kind of gibberish that passes as sound economic policy. The Fed is incapable if fixing the problem because the Fed is the problem.

Last week, the market shot up on news that Wells Fargo’s first quarter net income rose 50 percent to $3 billion pushing the stock up 30 percent in one session. The financial media celebrated the triumph in typical manner by congratulating everyone on set and announcing that a market “bottom” had been reached . The news on Wells Fargo was repeated ad nauseam for two days even though everyone knows that the big banks are holding hundreds of billions in mortgage-backed assets which are marked way above their true value and that gigantic losses are forthcoming. Naturally, the skeptics were kept off-camera or lambasted by toothy anchors as doomsayers and Cassandras. Regretably, creative accounting and media spin can only work for so long. Eventually the banks will have to write down their losses and raise more capital. Wells Fargo slipped the noose this time, but next time might not be so lucky. Here’s how Bloomberg sums up wells situation:

“Wells Fargo & Co., the second biggest U.S. home lender, may need $50 billion to pay back the federal government and cover loan losses as the economic slump deepens, according to KBW Inc.’s Frederick Cannon.

KBW expects $120 billion of “stress” losses at Wells Fargo, assuming the recession continues through the first quarter of 2010 and unemployment reaches 12 percent, Cannon wrote today in a report. The San Francisco-based bank may need to raise $25 billion on top of the $25 billion it owes the U.S. Treasury for the industry bailout plan, he wrote.

“Details were scarce and we believe that much of the positive news in the preliminary results had to do with merger accounting, revised accounting standards and mortgage default moratoriums, rather than underlying trends,” wrote Cannon, who downgraded the shares to “underperform” from “market perform.” “We expect earnings and capital to be under pressure due to continued economic weakness.”

What happened to all those nonperforming loans and garbage MBS? Did they simply vanish into the New York ether? Could Wells sudden good fortune have something to do with the recent FASB changes to accounting guidelines on “mark to market” which allow banks greater flexibility in assigning a value to their assets? Also, Judging by the charts on the Internet, Wells appears to have the smallest “ratio of loan loss reserves” of the four biggest banks. That’s hardly reassuring.

http://tinyurl.com/ckxogl (www.housingwire.com)

Paul Krugman takes an equally skeptical view of the Wells report:

“About those great numbers from Wells Fargo….remember, reported profits aren’t a hard number; they involve a lot of assumptions. And at least some analysts are saying that the Wells assumptions about loan losses look, um, odd. Maybe, maybe not; but you do have to say that it would be awfully convenient for banks to sound the all clear right now, just when the question of how tough the Obama administration will really get is hanging in the balance.”

The banks are all playing the same game of hide-n-seek, trying to hoodwink the public into thinking they are in a stronger capital position than they really are. It’s just more Wall Street chicanery papered over with vapid media propaganda. The giant brokerage houses and the financial media are two spokes on the same wheel gliding along in perfect harmony. Unfortunately, media fanfare and massaging the numbers won’t pull the economy out of its downward spiral or bring about a long-term recovery. That will take fiscal policy, jobs programs, debt relief, mortgage writedowns and a progressive plan to rebuild the nation’s economy on a solid foundation of productivity and regular wage increases. So far, the Obama administration has focused all its attention and resources on the financial system rather than working people. That won’t fix the problem.

Deflation has latched on to the economy like a pitbull on a porkchop. Food and fuel prices fell in March by 0.1 percent while unemployment continued its slide towards 10 percent. Wholesale prices fell by the most in the last 12 months since 1950. According to MarketWatch, “Industrial production is down 13.3% since the recession began in December 2007, the largest percentage decline since the end of World War II”….The capacity utilization rate for total industry fell further to 69.3 percent, a historical low for this series, which begins in 1967.” (Federal Reserve) The persistent fall in housing prices (30 percent) and losses in home equity only add to deflationary pressures. The wind is exiting the humongous credit bubble in one great gust.

Obama’s $787 billion stimulus is too small to take up the slack in a $14 trillion per year economy where manufacturing and industrial capacity have slipped to record lows and unemployment is rising at 650,000 per month. High unemployment is lethal to an economy where consumer spending is 72 percent of GDP. Without debt relief and mortgage cram-downs, consumption will sputter and corporate profits will continue to shrink. S&P 500 companies have already seen a 37 percent drop in corporate profits. Unless the underlying issues of debt relief and wages are dealt with, the present trends will persist. Growth is impossible when workers are broke and can’t afford to buy the things the make.

The stimulus must be increased to a size where it can do boost economic activity and create enough jobs to get over the hump. Yale economics professor Robert Schiller makes the case for more stimulus in his Bloomberg commentary on Tuesday:

“In the Great Depression … the U.S. government had a great deal of trouble maintaining its commitment to economic stimulus. ‘Pump- priming’ was talked about and tried, but not consistently. The Depression could have been mostly prevented, but wasn’t…. In the face of a similar Depression-era psychology today, we are in need of massive pump-priming again.

It would be a shame if we are so overwhelmed by anger at the unfairness of it all that we do not take the positive measures needed to restore us to full employment. That would not just be unfair to the U.S. taxpayer. That would be unfair to those who are living in Hoovervilles…; it would be unfair to those who are being evicted from their homes, and can’t find new ones because they can’t find jobs. That would be unfair to those who have to drop out of school because they, or their parents, can’t find jobs.

It is time to face up to what needs to be done. The sticker shock involved will be large, but the costs in terms of lost output of not meeting either the credit target or the aggregate demand target will be yet larger.” (Robert Schiller, Depression Lurks unless there’s more Stimulus, Bloomberg)

Even though industrial production, manufacturing, retail and housing are in freefall, the talk on Wall Street still focuses on the elusive recovery. The S&P 500 touched bottom at 666 on March 6 and has since retraced its steps to 852. Clearly, Bernanke’s market-distorting capital injections have played a major role in the turnabout. Former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and economics professor at University of Cal. Berekley, Robert Reich, explains it like this on his blog-site:

“All of these pieces of upbeat news are connected by one fact: the flood of money the Fed has been releasing into the economy. … So much money is sloshing around the economy that its price is bound to drop. And cheap money is bound to induce some borrowing. The real question is whether this means an economic turnaround. The answer is it doesn’t.

Cheap money, you may remember, got us into this mess. Six years ago, the Fed (Alan Greenspan et al) lowered interest rates to 1 percent…. The large lenders did exactly what they could be expected to do with free money — get as much of it as possible and then lent it out to anyone who could stand up straight (and many who couldn’t). With no regulators looking over their shoulders, they got away with the financial equivalent of murder.

The only economic fundamental that’s changed since then is that so many people got so badly burned that the trust necessary for consumers, investors, and businesses to repeat what they did then has vanished…. yes, some consumers will refinance and use the extra money they extract from their homes to spend again. But most will use the extra money to pay off debt and start saving again, as they did years ago….

I admire cockeyed optimism, and I understand why Wall Street and its spokespeople want to see a return of the bull market. Hell, everyone with a stock portfolio wants to see it grow again. But wishing for something is different from getting it. And cockeyed optimism can wreak enormous damage on an economy. Haven’t we already learned this? (Robert Reich’s Blog, “Why We’re Not at the Beginning of the End, and Probably Not Even At the End of the Beginning”)

If the purpose of Bernanke’s grand economics experiment was to create uneven inflation in the equities markets and, thus, widen the chasm between the financials and the real economy; he seems to have succeeded. But for how long? How long will it be before foreign banks and investors realize that the Fed’s innocuous-sounding “lending facilities” have released a wave of low interest speculative liquidity into the capital markets? How else does one explain soaring stocks when industrial capacity, manufacturing, exports, corporate profits, retail and every other sector have been pounded into rubble? Liquidity is never inert. It navigates the financial system like mercury in water darting elusively to the area which offers the greatest opportunity for profit. That’s why the surge popped up first in the stock market. (so far) When it spills into commodities–and oil and food prices rise–Bernanke will realize his plan has backfired..

Bernanke’s financial rescue plan is a disaster. He should have spent a little less time with Milton Friedman and a little more with Karl Marx. It was Marx who uncovered the root of all financial crises. He summed it up like this:

“The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as opposed to the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as though only the absolute consuming power of society constituted their limit.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 3, New York International publishers, 1967; Thanks to Monthly Review, John Bellamy Foster)

Bingo. Message to Bernanke: Workers need debt-relief and a raise in pay not bigger bailouts for chiseling fatcat banksters.

From: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13236

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Economic Gangsters by Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel

Economic Gangsters is a fascinating exploration into the dark side of economic development… Subjected to their genius, seemingly inconsequential events (like New York City parking tickets and Suharto catching a cold) become potent tools in understanding how the world really works. Rarely has a book on economics been this fun and this important.

— Steven D. Levitt, coauthor of Freakonomics

http://www.economicgangsters.com/

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Iraq to cancel Shell gas deal

Terry Macalister, Baghdad
April 20, 2009 – 12:00AM

EXPECTATIONS that foreign companies will cash in on Iraqi oil riches have been called into question after a key parliamentary body in Baghdad pledged to “push Shell out” and halt a forthcoming licensing round.

The warning from Jabir Khalifa Jabir, secretary of the Iraqi parliament’s oil and gas committee, was seen by financial analysts as a serious threat to Western investment opportunities in a country that holds the world’s second-largest oil reserves.

Shell has been considered a frontrunner in the race to seize control of the Iraqi energy sector after signing a deal to process and market gas from the south of the country and ship it, possibly to Britain, as liquefied natural gas.

But the preliminary agreement — and a subsequent one with China National Petroleum Corporation — were unconstitutional and detrimental to Iraq’s economic interests, said Mr Jabir.

“We are going to do everything we can to revoke this deal and to push Shell out,” Mr Jabir said.

“Both these deals are illegal because they didn’t go through parliament. The companies and their lawyers knew the old Iraqi oil law very well,” he added, saying that any new deals Baghdad signs in bidding rounds under way with BP and others would also be subject to revocation.

The Oil Ministry has said it does not need parliament’s approval to sign new deals, but Mr Jabir argues Iraqi law 97 clearly states all arrangements of this nature must be passed by parliament.

The committee had studied the preliminary Shell deal for the past six months and all members had concluded that it is illegal, he said.

The arrangement with Shell and the wider oil-licensing round have been highly controversial already because many critics believed they were unduly influenced by the US and British, who occupied the country after toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Critics saw the invasion as a “war for oil” and believed it would open the way for US and British oil companies to regain assets seized from them through nationalisation.

Analysts at IHS Global Insight, the economic forecasting group, said the latest developments were alarming, especially as Shell was expected to formalise its southern gas deal within the next few weeks.

“The Shell deal looks increasingly like a litmus test for progress on all Iraq’s oil and gas projects, with any potential failure likely to remove most of the political legitimacy from the Oil Ministry’s interpretation of Iraq’s constitution and oil law,” they argued.

Shell declined to comment on Mr Jabir’s remarks, with a spokesman at the company’s head office in the Hague saying they were a “matter for the Ministry of Oil” in Baghdad.

But he added: “We believe our experience in large-scale integrated gas projects and knowledge of Iraq has contributed to the decision to work with Shell.”

This story was found at:

http://tinyurl.com/dlr9k3 (www.businessday.com.au)

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International Petroleum Monthly – March 2009 (04/13/2009):

This report contains world petroleum production data through January 2009; and OECD country petroleum demand, imports, and stocks data through December 2008, the Fourth Quarter of 2008 and the Year 2008. Also included are international oil balance data for 2004-2008 and annual petroleum data series for 1970-2008. Please see What’s New in the International Petroleum Monthly for details of an important revision in this month’s report – a revised OPEC aggregate that excludes Indonesia. (Note: Archive copies of Excel format tables from the October 2002-Current Editions of the International Petroleum Monthly are available at:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/IPMbackissues.html)

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IS THERE ANY WONDER SOME PEOPLE SNAP LIKE IN BINGHAMTON AND AT COLUMBINE?

By David Sirota, Creators Syndicate

Our entire way of life — from our exploitative economy to our foreign policy — is violent.

http://tinyurl.com/cks8xp (www.alternet.org)

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Cavuto continues Fox paranoia about DHS report

Neil Cavuto repeatedly advanced the claim that the DHS report detailing potential increases in right-wing extremism targets conservatives simply for holding beliefs contrary to the Obama administration’s policies and proposals. In fact, the report does not target conservatives for their beliefs, and Shepard Smith had debunked such claims on Fox News the previous day.

Read More

http://mediamatters.org/items/200904170005?lid=1005527&rid=26139705

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And now for the important news ….

By Argus Hamilton

The Justice Department flew the captured Somali pirate from last week’s hostage drama to New York Friday. He’s in for a big disappointment. All those investment banking firms which recruited him for high-paying jobs last fall are out of business now

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

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three thousand words

(click here to view)

Steve Artley Freelance Apr 20, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

Jack Ohman: … I do see other signs

Peter Broelman: somewhere off Somalia …

Putting a Spyglass on the Fed

Volume XIV No. 16- April 17, 2009

With the recent U.S. Navy actions off the Somali coast, the public has been understandably interested in pirates. But they missed a sighting in the financial sector. While much of the recent focus has been on Treasury and the congressionally-approved bailout package, the Federal Reserve has quietly shipped out a pirate’s chest worth of booty. But with the insular and arcane world of the Fed, the public knows little about how decisions are made or even what the potential costs are.

To put it in perspective, the balance sheet of the nation’s bank has ballooned from $825 billion before the financial crisis began to more than $2 trillion today. And that doesn’t capture many of the other activities that could risk trillions more. As recently noted by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, the Fed has “been creative deploying [its] balance sheet” by establishing a multiplicity of new programs and acronyms. You would almost think the Fed has a staffer dedicated to name creation. There is the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility, Money Market Investor Funding Facility, and Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, just to name a few. The Fed is now involved in far-flung activities like backing car, credit card, and mortgage lending—having recently purchased more than $1 trillion in mortgage-backed securities.

One of the real risks lurks below the water’s surface. But with so much money on the street and interest rates near zero, a major concern is that when the economy starts to recover, inflation will run rampant and be difficult to control without an over-correction that double dips the economy into another recession.

The most concerning actions, both to the Fed and taxpayers as a whole has been the direct Federal Reserve interventions in the market. These include easing the acquisition of investment bank Bear Stearns by J.P. Morgan Chase in early 2008, multiple investments into American Insurance Group to ensure its survival, and investments in two of the world’s largest banks Citigroup and Bank of America. These actions bear the greatest risk – AIG is now 80 percent owned by the U.S. government – and the furthest extension of the Fed’s “emergency” powers.

But in each of these cases, the public – and more importantly Congress – was briefed on the actions after the decision was made. And in many cases the “briefing” was pretty brief.

To be fair, the Fed has seen some limits to its powers and also seems to be pursuing more openness of late. The Fed would not step in to save the Big Three automakers, stating that was a Treasury and Congressional decision. Public appearances and discussions about Fed strategy have increased. And the Federal Reserve has put more information about its programs on its web site.

Most notably, next week the Fed will describe the factors included in its recently announced “stress test” initiative, undertaken to determine the financial health of banks. It remains to be seen how much we will learn, and many analysts see the initiative as laying the groundwork to justify hundreds of billions of additional dollars for bailouts. But at the least, this is a small step in the direction of transparency.

Considering that taxpayers are going to have to walk the fiscal plank if these efforts fail, it is all the more critical for the Fed to be transparent about its decisions and their associated risks. To date, the Fed has largely made its decisions behind closed doors, making the opaque bailout decision-making at Treasury look like a paragon of transparency.

Let us know what you think.

Going on at Taxpayer.net This Week

Keep Earmarks Out of the Emergency Spending Bill

UPDATE — Database of 2010 Earmark Requests

TCS Releases Space Security Database

Bailout Bank Bios

TCS Staff are compiling profiles of all financial institutions receiving funds under the 2008 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. See all completed bios here.

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

“I want to look at the stress test itself. I want to make sure it’s not a 2 mph walk on a treadmill.”

–Elizabeth Warren, head of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

weekly wastebasket at www.taxpayer.net

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EIA, API figures show recession’s impact on US industry in 1Q

Nick Snow
OGJ Washington Editor

WASHINGTON, DC, Apr. 17 — Government and industry statistics show that the US oil and gas industry was hit hard as the economic recession deepened during this year’s first quarter.

US oil and gas drilling plunged to levels not seen since 2004, ending 6 consecutive years of year-to-year growth for the period, said the American Petroleum Institute on Apr. 15. US petroleum product deliveries dropped 3.4% year-to-year to an average 19.2 million b/d, their lowest first-quarter level since 1998, it said in a separate report Apr. 15.

A day earlier, the US Energy Information Administration said in its latest short-term energy outlook that it expects reduced demand from a weaker economy to offset any demand increases resulting from lower product prices this summer driving season. EIA said it anticipates US motor gasoline demand will rise 1% year-to-year to 9.1 million b/d from levels that were depressed last summer because of dramatically higher retail prices.

It expects retail gasoline prices, which averaged $3.81/gal nationwide last summer, to average $2.23/gal during the 2009 period. EIA forecasts diesel fuel prices, which averaged $4.37/gal nationwide last summer, will average $2.27/gal this driving season.

“My leading petroleum indicator for how the general economy is doing is diesel fuel,” API Chief Economist John C. Felmy told OGJ on Apr. 16. “Demand for low-sulfur diesel was down about 6% during the first quarter. Until I see that change, it tells me that economic activity is slowing down.”

Smaller US share

In its March monthly statistical report, API said the 19.2 million b/d of average US product deliveries, which is how it measures demand, during 2009′s first quarter contrasted with a first-quarter peak of 20.8 million b/d in 2005.

“The substantial, 4-year decline means that the US share of world oil consumption fell from nearly 25% in the first quarter of 2005 to under 23% in early 2009, based on International Energy Agency estimates,” API said. Paris-based IEA on Apr. 13 also slashed its forecast for worldwide oil demand (OGJ Online, Apr. 13, 2009).

API’s latest quarterly well completion report showed that an estimated 11,071 oil wells, gas wells, and dry holes were completed in the US during 2009′s first 3 months—22% less than in 2008′s first quarter and 35% lower than the total for 2008′s final quarter. The estimated number of new exploratory wells fell 11% from 2008′s first quarter, while the estimated number of deep wells—those 15,000 ft or deeper—and shallow gas wells slipped 13% and 36%, respectively, year-to-year, it indicated.

A resurgence of oil well completions, which began earlier in the decade, subsided this past quarter as the total fell 23% from a year earlier to 4,060 wells, API said. Overall, the share of estimated oil well completions was 36% of total drilling activity in the past 3 months, down from 40% a year earlier, it added.

Gas continued to be the primary domestic drilling target, with an estimated 5,735 wells completed during 2009′s first quarter, according to API. This was still 23% lower than the total for the comparable 2008 period and represented the most several quarterly declines for gas plays this decade.

API, which does not track gas production, said domestic crude oil and condensate production increased 4.7% year-to-year in the first quarter to average 5.3 million b/d.

EIA said it expects US crude production to increase by 440,000 b/d to an average 5.4 million b/d this year, largely due to a larger Gulf of Mexico contribution as Thunder Horse and Tahiti platforms go into operation. It forecast a 0.3% drop in US gas production for the year.

Different paths

“Natural gas and oil are taking different paths,” said Frederick Lawrence, vice-president of economics and international affairs at the Independent Petroleum Association of America. “Oil prices have gone up since Jan. 1, but natural gas has not,” he said on Apr. 16. “So if a company’s operations are gas-directed, it’s going to be hit harder, especially if it’s full of more-expensive gas plays.”

Some producers may have become victims of their own success with the stunning growth of deep shale gas production, Lawrence told OGJ. “It improves the country’s energy security, but its economics aren’t favorable for producers right now,” he said. “Producers with marginal wells face similar problems. Higher prices probably will return with demand, but it’s not clear when that will happen. They need to keep operating in the meantime.”

Felmy noted that gas prices have dropped sharply year-to-year. “The slower economy depressed demand, but there also was robust production last year, which could set a record. Combine that with strong inventories and gas producers face depressed prices right now,” he said. EIA noted that Henry Hub spot prices began April below $4/Mcf, adding that it expects them to stay around that level until seasonal space heating demand revives next fall.

Producers also are responding to lower prices and demand by reducing their activity. “Several capital budgets have been revised downward after starting the year lower than they were in 2008,” said Lawrence. “It’s a combination of lower oil and gas prices and, for smaller firms, much tighter credit,” said Felmy.

That apparently led to workforce reductions during the first quarter. Although they represented only part of the US oil and gas industry, the latest US Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly employment figures showed that there were an estimated 167,600 domestic oil and gas extraction jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis in March, down 0.2% from 167,900 in February and 1.1% from 169,400 in December 2008.

Producers face other forces beyond operating costs and low commodity prices, Lawrence said. “They realize that a host of political and general economic issues could affect them. We know that for a lot of companies, the Obama tax proposals could add a lot more pressure on their bottom lines at a particularly bad time,” he said.

Summer outlook

EIA said the estimated 217 million bbl of gasoline stocks as of Apr. 1 appear to be ample heading into the summer driving season. It expects diesel and other distillate inventories to be a record 142 million bbl at the same time because overseas demand, which was strong a year ago despite record-high prices, is much lower this year because of the worldwide recession.

“The expected continuing decline in diesel fuel consumption in the United States this year as well as the growing weakness in distillate fuel usage outside the US are projected to result in lower refining margins for distillate throughout the forecast period. Because of the global weakness in industrial output and the onset of a recovery in motor gasoline consumption, domestic diesel prices could fall below gasoline prices this summer,” EIA said in its latest monthly forecast.

It suggested that US refiners probably will emphasize gasoline production this summer because its average wholesale margins will be higher at 39¢/gal than diesel’s (31¢/gal, compared with 80¢/gal in summer 2008).

Lower demand led US refiners to reduce inputs to crude distillation units 2.6% to an average 14.5 million b/d this past quarter from 14.9 million b/d in 2008′s first 3 months, according to API’s monthly statistical report. Utilization fell somewhat year-to-year to 82.3% from 84.6% although operable capacity rose 0.3% to 17.63 million b/d from 17.59 million b/d.

Felmy said inventories looked good at the end of the first quarter, “but we still need to get through the switch from the summer to winter blend. We’ll have to monitor that on a week-to-week basis. The report for May 1 will provide the best indication.”

Contact Nick Snow at nicks@pennwell.com.

From: http://tinyurl.com/dgw4by (www.ogj.com)

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OPINION: The Ethanol Bubble Pops in Iowa More evidence the fuel makes little economic sense.

By MAX SCHULZ
Dyersville, Iowa
APRIL 18, 2009

In September, ethanol giant VeraSun Energy opened a refinery on the outskirts of this eastern Iowa community. Among the largest biofuels facilities in the country, the Dyersville plant could process 39 million bushels of corn and produce 110 million gallons of ethanol annually. VeraSun boasted the plant could run 24 hours a day, seven days a week to meet the demand for home-grown energy.

But the only thing happening 24-7 at the Dyersville plant these days is nothing at all. Its doors are shut and corn deliveries are turned away. Touring the facility recently, I saw dozens of rail cars sitting idle. They’ve been there through the long, bleak winter. Two months after Dyersville opened, VeraSun filed for bankruptcy, closing many of its 14 plants and laying off hundreds of employees. VeraSun lost $476 million in the third quarter last year.

A town of 4,000, Dyersville is best known as the location of the 1989 film “Field of Dreams.” In the film, a voice urges Kevin Costner to create a baseball diamond in a cornfield and the ghosts of baseball past emerge from the ether to play ball. Audiences suspended disbelief as they were charmed by a story that blurred the lines between fantasy and reality.

That’s pretty much the story of ethanol. Consumers were asked to suspend disbelief as policy makers blurred the lines between economic reality and a business model built on fantasies of a better environment and energy independence through ethanol. Notwithstanding federal subsidies and mandates that force-feed the biofuel to the driving public, ethanol is proving to be a bust.

In the fourth quarter of 2008, Aventine Renewable Energy, a large ethanol producer, lost $37 million despite selling a company record 278 million gallons of the biofuel. Last week it filed for bankruptcy. California’s Pacific Ethanol lost $146 million last year and has defaulted on $250 million in loans. It recently told regulators that it will likely run out of cash by April 30.

How could this be? The federal government gives ethanol producers a generous 51-cent-a-gallon tax credit and mandates that a massive amount of their fuel be blended into the nation’s gasoline supplies. And those mandates increase every year. This year the mandate is 11 billion gallons and is on its way to 36 billion gallons in 2022.

To meet this political demand, VeraSun, Pacific Ethanol, Aventine Renewable Energy and others rushed to build ethanol mills. The industry produced just four billion gallons of ethanol in 2005, so it had to add a lot of capacity in a short period of time.

Three years ago, ethanol producers made $2.30 per gallon. But with the global economic slowdown, along with a glut of ethanol on the market, by the end of 2008 ethanol producers were making a mere 25 cents per gallon. That drop forced Dyersville and other facilities to be shuttered. The industry cut more than 20% of its capacity in a few months last year.

What’s more, as ethanol producers sucked in a vast amount of corn, prices of milk, eggs and other foods soared. The price of corn shot up, as did the price of products from animals — chickens and cows — that eat feed corn.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry reacted by standing with the cattlemen in his state to ask the Environmental Protection Agency last year to suspend part of the ethanol mandates (which it has the power to do under the 2007 energy bill). The EPA turned him down flat. The Consumer Price Index later revealed that retail food prices in 2008 were up 10% over 2006. In Mexico, rising prices led to riots over the cost of tortillas in 2007. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization and other international organizations issued reports last year criticizing biofuels for a spike in food prices.

Ethanol is also bad for the environment. Science magazine published an article last year by Timothy Searchinger of Princeton University, among others, that concluded that biofuels cause deforestation, which speeds climate change. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration noted in July 2007 that the ethanol boom rapidly increased the amount of fertilizer polluting the Mississippi River. And this week, University of Minnesota researchers Yi-Wen Chiu, Sangwon Suh and Brian Walseth released a study showing that in California — a state with a water shortage — it can take more than 1,000 gallons of water to make one gallon of ethanol. They warned that “energy security is being secured at the expense of water security.”

For all the pain ethanol has caused, it displaced a mere 3% of our oil usage last year. Even if we plowed under all other crops and dedicated the country’s 300 million acres of cropland to ethanol, James Jordan and James Powell of the Polytechnic University of New York estimate we would displace just 15% of our oil demand with biofuels.

But President Barack Obama, an ethanol fan, is leaving current policy in place and has set $6 billion aside in his stimulus package for federal loan guarantees for companies developing innovative energy technologies, including biofuels. It’s part of his push to create “green jobs.” Archer Daniels Midland and oil refiner Valero are already scavenging the husks of shuttered ethanol plants, looking for facilities on the cheap. One such facility may be the plant in Dyersville, which is for sale. Before we’re through, we’ll likely see another ethanol bubble.

Mr. Schulz is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

http://tinyurl.com/dm5tgo (online.wsj.com)

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Technology Achieves Breakthrough Efficiency for Ethanol Engines – Current flex-fuel engines pay a fuel economy penalty of about 30 percent compared to gasoline when operated on ethanol blends such as E85.

Ecnmag.com – February 06, 2009

Technology Achieves Breakthrough Efficiency for Ethanol Engines

VAN BUREN TWP., Mich., Feb. 6 /PRNewswire/ — Ricardo today revealed the development of technology that optimizes ethanol-fueled engines to a level of performance that exceeds gasoline engine efficiency and approaches levels previously reached only by diesel engines.

The technology, called Ethanol Boosted Direct Injection or EBDI, takes full advantage of ethanol’s best properties – higher octane and higher heat of vaporization – to create a truly renewable fuel scenario that is independent of the cost of oil.

“Developing renewable energy applications that can lead to energy independence is a top priority at Ricardo,” said Ricardo President Dean Harlow. “We’ve moved past theoretical discussion and are busy applying renewable energy technology to the real world. The EBDI engine project is a great example because it turns the gasoline-ethanol equation upside down. It has the performance of diesel, at the cost of ethanol, and runs on ethanol, gasoline, or a blend of both.”

EBDI solves many of the challenges faced by flex-fuel engines because it is optimized for both alternative fuels and gasoline. Current flex-fuel engines pay a fuel economy penalty of about 30 percent compared to gasoline when operated on ethanol blends such as E85. The EBDI engine substantially improves ethanol’s efficiency, and performs at a level comparable to a diesel engine.

“In real-world terms, these efficiencies mean that EBDI can reduce the actual cost of transportation when compared to fossil fuels, and it does it with a renewable resource – ethanol,” said Rod Beazley, director of Ricardo’s Gasoline Product Group. “The combination of technologies we’re applying to the EBDI engine make the most of ethanol’s advantages over other fuels, which include a higher octane rating and a higher heat of vaporization. Without getting too technical, this means we can use a high level of turbocharging to achieve the high cylinder pressures that ethanol enables. Add in some other advanced technologies such as direct injection, variable valve timing, optimized ignition and advanced exhaust gas recirculation, and we’re squeezing out more power than is possible with gasoline.”

The prototype EBDI is a 3.2-liter V6 engine that ultimately could serve as a replacement for a large gasoline or turbo-diesel engine in a large SUV. The first firing of the engine & initial development is currently taking place and will be installed into a dual-wheel pick-up truck demonstration vehicle later this year.

Beazley emphasized that the technology is very scalable. Applications could reach far beyond the automotive and light-truck industry. “Imagine agricultural equipment that, in effect, burns what it harvests – corn, sugar cane or some other renewable substance. It could mean tremendous cost savings across many industries.”

This project represents a technical collaboration with Behr, Bosch, Delphi, Federal-Mogul, GW Castings and Honeywell, to further the advancement and commercialization of the EBDI project.

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EIA Special Requested Report

Friday, April 17, 2009

SPECIAL REPORT RELEASE

An Updated Annual Energy Outlook 2009 Reference Case

This report updates the Reference Case presented in the Annual Energy Outlook 2009 based on recently enacted legislation and the changing macroeconomic environment.

See the full report at:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/stimulus/pdf/sroiaf(2009)03.pdf

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John DiNardo and David Lee “Economic Impacts of New Unionization on Private Sector Employers: 1984-2001.” 2004 paper

“The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.”
—Samuel Gompers, founder, American Federation of Labor

The most prominent fear employers voice regarding unionization is that it will drive them out of business. But is that fear well-founded? This brief summarizes recent research showing that unionization simply does not cause firm failure: firms that become unionized are no more likely to fail than comparable firms that remain nonunion.

This finding may surprise some readers. Because unions clearly do aim to give workers a larger share of the benefits of economic growth, the possibility does exist that if they succeed in transferring income to workers and away from profits, then a firm’s solvency could conceivably be threatened. However, it is also possible that even unions that successfully redistribute income from profits to wages can coexist with firms that remain viable over the long run. Only the most simple-minded and unrealistic economic models argue that there is an inexorable link between any such redistribution and a firm’s death.

Recent research has been able to make convincing claims about the causal impact of unions winning recognition through an election certified by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on the subsequent survival of the newly unionized firms. This research provides evidence that this causal effect of union recognition is zero and has been zero since at least the 1960s, which is how far back we can go with the available data. In short, the biggest fear voiced by employer groups regarding unionization—that it will inevitably drive them out of business—hasno evidentiary basis.

Link to summary of the work:

http://epi.3cdn.net/86c7a36112348f4103_dgm6bhgpf.pdf

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Too Big To Fail The Hazards of Bank Bailouts

Gary H. Stern, Ron J. Feldman and Foreword by Paul A. Volcker, eds.,
Brookings Institution Press 2004 c. 240pp.

The potential failure of a large bank presents vexing questions for policymakers. It poses significant risks to other financial institutions, to the financial system as a whole, and possibly to the economic and social order. Because of such fears, policymakers in many countries — developed and less developed, democratic and autocratic — respond by protecting bank creditors from all or some of the losses they otherwise would face. Failing banks are labeled “too big to fail” (or TBTF). This important new book examines the issues surrounding TBTF, explaining why it is a problem and discussing ways of dealing with it more effectively. Gary Stern and Ron Feldman, officers with the Federal Reserve, warn that not enough has been done to reduce creditors’ expectations of TBTF protection. Many of the existing pledges and policies meant to convince creditors that they will bear market losses when large banks fail are not credible, resulting in significant net costs to the economy. The authors recommend that policymakers enact a series of reforms to reduce expectations of bailouts when large banks fail.

http://www.brookings.edu/press/Books/2004/toobigtofail.aspx

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On Hannity, North falsely claimed DHS says right-wing extremism is “number one threat to American safety”

Oliver North falsely claimed that a recent DHS report concluded that “right-wing extremism is the number one threat to American safety and security.” In fact, the report does not make any conclusions about what is the biggest threat to “American safety and security” overall.

Read More

http://mediamatters.org/items/200904170012?lid=1005533&rid=26139705

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Borowitz Report – Ugly Singer Shocker

April 18, 2009

Talented Ugly Person Baffles World
Networks Lift Restrictions on Unsightly

The success of singer Susan Boyle on the reality show “Britain’s Got Talent” has caused both television networks and their viewers to reconsider the intrinsic value of ugly people, media experts say.

In living rooms around the world as well as in the executive suites of media giants, those exposed to the Susan Boyle phenomenon are grappling with the paradox – thought impossible up until now – that an ugly person could be talented.

In New York, NBC chief Jeff Zucker confirmed that his network was “seriously considering” lifting its official ban against featuring unattractive people on the air.

“For years, the letters NBC have stood for ‘No Butt-ugly Characters,’” Mr. Zucker said. “We’re beginning to re-think that.”

Jenifer Genterson, a news anchor from Abilene, Texas, is just one of a chorus of beautiful TV talking heads who have been startled and inspired by the surprising presence of talent in an ugly person.

“In the TV business, we’re told that beauty is everything,” Ms. Genterson said. “But Susan Boyle has shown us that ugly people have the right to live, too.”

But Professor Logsdon, who studies the rare occurrences of ugly people in the media at the University of Minnesota’s School of Communications, warns that the isolated example of Ms. Boyle may give ugly people around the world too much hope.

“The fact is, only one in a million ugly people will ever get on TV,” said Professor Logsdon. “Most of them will wind up in academia.”

Elsewhere, one day after lifting travel restrictions on Cuba, President Obama said he would send Vice President Joe Biden there for the next four years.

THE COOLEST CLIP ON THE INTERNET is at www.oliviagentile.com

Upcoming Events

April 30, 2009 at 8:00PM

Andy’s Only NY Show!
Andy reviews Obama’s first 100 days with special guests Hendrik Hertzberg (The New Yorker), Jonathan Alter (Newsweek, MSNBC) and comedian Judy Gold

Location:
The 92nd Street Y, Lexington and 92nd Street
For tickets go to 92y.org

May 23, 2009 at 2:00PM

Andy in Cleveland – Free Show!
Andy performs a free stand-up show in his hometown. Meet Andy and his wife Olivia Gentile; Olivia will read from her new book, LIFE LIST, and both will sign their books afterward.

Location:
Joseph-Beth Bookstore, 24519 Cedar Road, Lyndhurst

http://www.borowitzreport.com/

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three thousand words

(click here to view)

Jeff Darcy The Plain Dealer Apr 19, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

David Horsey: we’re being taxed to death!

Tom Toles: Tea is the new Koolaid

Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “Jesus Christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

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YOUNG AND GAY IN THE BIBLE BELT: “MY MOM CAME AT ME WITH A BUTCHER KNIFE!”

By Bernadette C. Barton, AlterNet

For many Bible Belt gays, “home” is not a haven from the outside world. Home may be more dangerous than the streets.

http://tinyurl.com/dyksbc (www.alternet.org)

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Beck falsely claimed Iowa marriage ruling “is actually about going into churches”

Glenn Beck falsely asserted that the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision striking down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage “is actually about going into churches … and saying you can’t teach anything else.” In fact, the ruling does not affect religious institutions’ definitions of marriage.

Read More

http://mediamatters.org/items/200904140002?lid=996577&rid=25866101

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Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris

Letter to A Christian NationNew York Times Best Seller

In response to The End of Faith, Sam Harris received thousands of letters from Christians excoriating him for not believing in God. Letter to A Christian Nation is his reply. Using rational argument, Harris offers a measured refutation of the beliefs that form the core of fundamentalist Christianity. In the course of his argument, he addresses current topics ranging from intelligent design and stem-cell research to the connections between religion and violence. In Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris boldly challenges the influence that faith has on public life in the United States.

http://www.samharris.org/

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AU @ctivist :: Grassroots Training in San Antonio

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

** UPCOMING EVENT **

Saturday, May 2

You are cordially invited to attend a grassroots training in San Antonio!

Don’t Agonize, Organize!
Effectively Defending Church-State Separation in Challenging Times

May 2, 2009
Holiday Inn Express
1309 East Commerce
San Antonio, TX 78205
9 AM Registration and Sign In
9:30 AM – 4: 30 PM Training

Please join us for an activist training on Saturday, May 2nd from 9:30 AM – 4:30 PM. A staffer from the Americans United national office and a guest trainer will lead participants through workshops on “The Nuts and Bolts of Grassroots Organizing” and “Leadership Development and Transitioning.” Updates and information from the national office will also be provided.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn new skills and to network with other church-state activists.

The guest trainer will be:

Yvette DeLaCruz, Consultant, Public Services International

To RSVP for this training, please contact Allendra Letsome (letsome@au.org or 1-800-875-3707 x202) with the following information:

Name:
Phone Number:
E-mail Address:
Chapter Affiliation (if any):
Dietary Restrictions (if any):

There is no charge for the training and lunch will be provided. Space is limited and we need to have an accurate lunch count, so please RSVP today.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization, founded in 1947 by a broad coalition of religious, educational and civic leaders

http://www.au.org/

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THE VATICAN’S PERVERTED SENSE OF JUSTICE: PEDOPHILES STAY IN THE CHURCH, WHILE PRIESTS WHO ORDAIN WOMEN ARE EXCOMMUNICATED

By Bill Frogameni, Ms. Magazine

A priest who dared to ordain a woman was told he had 30 days to renounce his actions or face excommunication.

http://tinyurl.com/clys8v (www.alternet.org)

Defrocked priest, convicted sex offender, arrested

Examiner.com – USA

A former Geneva, Illinois priest and registered sex offender is back behind bars for a second parole violation in less than a year. …

http://tinyurl.com/dbe5ec (www.examiner.com)

Ex-priest convicted of abuse back in prison

Rockford Register Star – Rockford,IL,USA

By Chris Green

Mark Campobello, a former Catholic priest with Rockford ties who served four years for sexual abuse of two teenage girls, is back in prison. …

http://tinyurl.com/dcuhgy (www.rrstar.com)

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What is God’s name?

A blonde got into heaven, and when she arrived at the Golden Gates, she was asked one question: “What is God’s name?” She replied, “Andy.”

“Andy? Why Andy?”, she was asked.

She replied, “Oh, you know, ‘Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me, Andy tells me I am his own.’

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three thousand words

(click here to view)

Chan Lowe Sun-Sentinel Apr 15, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

Crazy vs. Religion (blacksunjournal.com)

THEIR TEMPLE IS TALLER AND SLIGHTLY MORE ORNATE THAN OURS … WE MUST UPGRADE IF WE EXPECT OUR GOD TO WIN