SEC Said to Examine More Ponzi Schemes After Madoff

By David Scheer

Jan. 2 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. regulators working to untangle Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme are probing other money managers suspected of using similar tactics, two people with knowledge of the inquiries said.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is pursuing at least one case in which investors may have been cheated out of as much as $1 billion, according to a person, who declined to name the manager and asked not to be identified because the probe isn’t public.

Bursting Obama’s Balloons

Just a few reasons why the president-elect needs to lower expectations.

Howard Fineman
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jan 2, 2009 | Updated: 5:35 p.m. ET Jan 2, 2009

I understand why Barack Obama was lingering over the shave ice in Hawaii. Once he hits the ground here in Washington, his famous aloha spirit is going to be tested even before he is inaugurated.

No one has come to Washington draped in loftier expectations—or facing a more challenging and ever-growing to-do list. Obama and his aides are determined to send a jolt of electricity through the city, but the realities get more immobilizing by the minute.

In Washington, Republicans don't want to be viewed as obstructionists, but don't want to be patsies, either. And globally, the drift of events is not necessarily in the president-elect's direction.

Economic woes expected to worsen early this year

By Jack Chang | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The economy will get worse before it gets better this year as housing prices continue to fall, unemployment rates rise and the gross domestic product contracts.

That's what economists across the political spectrum are forecasting as Americans start the new year amid the worst economic crisis in at least two decades.

Commentary: A growing health threat, ignored

By John Carlin | Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

For two years my colleagues at the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production and I poured over volumes of data on what the Food and Drug Administration calls on its Web site "a growing threat," and what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has termed "among its top concerns" – the phenomenon of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

What we found in our research was that overuse of antibiotics, especially in the production of food animals, is one of the primary culprits. We released our findings in April of this year with the recommendation that the FDA phase out the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animal production, meaning quite simply, preserve these drugs to treat sick animals, not healthy ones, and don't use them simply to stimulate weight gain.

Pres-elect Coming to Casa Blanca for POTUS-Palooza

January 02, 2009 12:12 PM
ABC NEWS' JENNIFER DUCK REPORTS

President-elect Barack Obama will meet with President George W. Bush and former Presidents Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Jimmy Carter at the White House Wednesday.

The leaders will be photographed briefly in the Rose Garden before meeting privately in the Oval Office Private Dining Room for lunch.

End of the Year Brings A Burst of Settlements With Justice Department

The title should read "End of Bush administration Brings A Burst of Settlements With Justice Department"--Dictynna

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 2, 2009; A03

The Justice Department has reached more than a dozen business-related settlements since the presidential election, with more in the pipeline for January, prompting lawyers and interest groups to assert that companies are seeking more favorable terms before the new administration arrives.

The climate for business settlements could grow more harsh when Obama appointees seize the reins at the Justice Department, corporate lawyers say. They point to statements by Attorney General-designate Eric H. Holder Jr., who told an audience last month that he would expand the focus of federal prosecutors into corporate suites.

Source: Harvard dean mulled as solicitor general

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jan 2, 9:09 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan is the leading candidate to be President-elect Barack Obama's representative at the Supreme Court, a person who had been briefed on the process said Friday.

Kagan could become Obama's solicitor general, who represents the United States before the Supreme Court, the person said.

Obama’s View on Power Over Detainees Will Be Tested Early

By ADAM LIPTAK

WASHINGTON — Just a month after President-elect Barack Obama takes office, he must tell the Supreme Court where he stands on one of the most aggressive legal claims made by the Bush administration — that the president may order the military to seize legal residents of the United States and hold them indefinitely without charging them with a crime.

The new administration’s brief, which is due Feb. 20, has the potential to hearten or infuriate Mr. Obama’s supporters, many of whom are looking to him for stark disavowals of the Bush administration’s legal positions on the detention and interrogation of so-called enemy combatants held at Navy facilities on the American mainland or at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

"The Depression: A Long-Term View"

The depression has started. Journalists are still coyly enquiring of economists whether or not we may be entering a mere recession. Don't believe it for a minute. We are already at the beginning of a full-blown worldwide depression with extensive unemployment almost everywhere. It may take the form of a classic nominal deflation, with all its negative consequences for ordinary people. Or it might take the form, a bit less likely, of a runaway inflation, which is simply another way in which values deflate, and which is even worse for ordinary people.

Of course everyone is asking what has triggered this depression. Is it the derivatives, which Warren Buffett called "financial weapons of mass destruction"? Or is it the subprime mortgages? Or is it oil speculators? This is a blame game, and of no real importance. This is to concentrate on the dust, as Fernand Braudel called it, of short-term events. If we want to understand what is going on, we need to look at two other temporalities, which are far more revealing. One is that of medium-term cyclical swings. And one is that of the long-term structural trends.

The Great Depression, Part I

Hale "Bonddad" Stewart
Posted December 31, 2008 | 07:34 AM (EST)

This article is the first in a series on the Great Depression. I am writing this with the help of New Deal Democrat (who blogs over at Economic Populist). The purpose of this series is simply to talk about the Great Depression. The reason for writing this article is the emergence of the "FDR made the Depression worse" talking point from the Right Wing Noise Machine -- econ division. While none of the stories using this line have any facts to back them up -- no charts, no graphs no data -- they continue to spew this talking point. So, let's get some data -- as in facts -- to see that actually happened.

"I have no fears for the future of our country. It is bright with hope." - Herber Hoover's Inaugural Address, March 4, 1929.

Let me begin with an excerpt from Milton Friendman's Monetary History of the United States (page 299):

The contraction from 1929 to 1933 was by far the most severe business-cycle contraction during the near-century of US history we cover and it may well have been the most severe in the whole of US history. Though sharper and more prolonged in the US than in most other countries, it was worldwide in scope and rates as the most severe and widely diffused international contraction of modern times.

Pause for a moment and consider the above statement. It wasn't just bad, or slightly bad -- it was the worst economic calamity in US history, bar none:

Michael Kinsley: Eight Years Later

"We will reopen Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House." --THE 2000 REPUBLICAN PLATFORM

But they never did. eight years later, the barricades remain. It was a phony issue, of course--just another stick with which to beat Bill Clinton, who closed the road at the insistence of the Secret Service. In an interview with PBS a month after Sept. 11, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney stated the obvious: "Pennsylvania Avenue ought to stay closed because, as a fact, if somebody were to detonate a truck bomb in front of the White House, it would probably level the White House, and that is unacceptable."

Sept. 11 is the excuse for many of the Bush Administration's failures and disappointments. It is also the basis for the one great claim made on George W. Bush's behalf: At least he has protected us from terrorism. In the seven years since that day, there has not been another foreign-terrorist attack on the American homeland. The trouble is that there were no foreign-terrorist attacks on the American homeland in the seven years before 9/11 either. The risk of another terrorist attack didn't increase on 9/11--only our awareness of the risk. The Bush Administration took office mocking the concern that someone might blow up the White House but soon enough was echoing that concern. (See pictures of the White House.)

The Ultimate Bubble?

At a lavish conference in Monaco, the game was guessing which big private-equity firm will be first to go bust. But the smoke and mirrors that wrecked the global economy might actually save the likes of K.K.R. and Blackstone.

by Michael Wolff
February 2009

Here’s a parlor game, played best by the people who are in it: Which private-equity firm’s going bust first? Carlyle? Fortress? K.K.R.? Cerberus? Apollo? Could it even be mighty Blackstone, with its vast real-estate holdings? Which of these one-word-branded enterprises (the word should emphasize strength, opacity, and preferably be culled from mythology—though no one in private equity, rest assured, reads his Bulfinch’s) that make up what’s been called the world’s “shadow banking system” will collapse and, in the domino pattern of this financial crisis, take the other firms with it?

There’s an urgency to this question because no big firm has actually gone bust—yet. All of the behemoth investment groups that sit on top of trillions of dollars of the largest capital accumulation outside the public markets remain suspended over the global economy like awfully big shoes waiting to drop. The wait increases both the suspense and the bitchiness of the game: somehow every private-equity guy (private-equity guys have been among the most unpopular figures of the great bubble) feels he’s been more prudent and responsible than all the others. Given the credit crunch, no private-equity deals are getting done now—chances are that what you’re doing with your idle hours as a P.E. man is trying to figure out who deserves to crash and burn before you.

Paul Krugman: Bigger Than Bush

As the new Democratic majority prepares to take power, Republicans have become, as Phil Gramm might put it, a party of whiners.

Some of the whining almost defies belief. Did Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general, really say, “I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror”? Did Rush Limbaugh really suggest that the financial crisis was the result of a conspiracy, masterminded by that evil genius Chuck Schumer?

But most of the whining takes the form of claims that the Bush administration’s failure was simply a matter of bad luck — either the bad luck of President Bush himself, who just happened to have disasters happen on his watch, or the bad luck of the G.O.P., which just happened to send the wrong man to the White House.

2009 Brings Hard Choices Over the Future of Capitalism

Either a large part of humankind has to be excluded from the happy benefits of growth or our way of life has to change

by Timothy Garton Ash

Happy new year? You must be joking. 2009 will begin with a wail, and then get worse. Millions of people have already been put out of work, across the world, by this first truly globalized crisis of capitalism. Tens of millions more will be made jobless soon. Those of us lucky enough still to have work will feel poorer and less secure. To celebrate his Nobel prize in economics, Paul Krugman promises us months of "economic hell". Thank you, Paul, and a happy new year to you too.

Economic troubles will exacerbate political tensions. But rumours of the death of capitalism have been exaggerated. I don't think 2009 will be to capitalism what 1989 was to communism. Maybe on 1 January 2010 I'll have to eat these words. Prediction is a mug's game. (In the Economist's predictive almanac, The World in 2009, the editor has a brave and amusing little column titled "About 2008: Sorry".) But as this year begins I don't see any serious systemic competitor on the horizon - in the way there appeared to be in the days of Soviet communism before 1989. The Hugo Chávez model of socialism depends on capitalists buying his oil, and if you fancy the North Korean model you need to see a doctor.

Wall Street's Final '08 Toll: $6.9 Trillion Wiped Out

Racked by Crisis, Markets End Year on Slight Upswing

By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 1, 2009; A01

After months of tortuous trading, Wall Street rang out its worst year since the Great Depression yesterday, leaving shareholders $6.9 trillion the poorer.

It hardly mattered that the market finished the last day of the year with a modest gain.

The losses in 2008 were so broad and deep that every sector in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index took a double-digit hit, and the financial sector lost more than half of its value. The Dow Jones industrial average, an index of 30 blue-chip stocks, and the S&P, a broader index watched by market professionals, were down 34 percent and 38 percent, respectively, their deepest losses since the 1930s. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index was down 41 percent, its worst year since the exchange was created in 1971.

Glenn Greenwald: Another brutal year for liberty

The good news is that it's clear what the Obama administration must do to end the decade-long war on the Constitution.

Jan. 1, 2009 | Befitting an administration that has spent eight years obliterating America's core political values, its final year in power -- 2008 -- was yet another grim one for civil liberties and constitutional protections. Unlike the early years of the administration, when liberty-abridging policies were conceived of in secret and unilaterally implemented by the executive branch, many of the erosions of 2008 were the dirty work of the U.S. Congress, fueled by the passive fear or active complicity of the Democratic Party that controlled it. The one silver lining is that the last 12 months have been brightly clarifying: It is clearer than ever what the Obama administration can and must do in order to arrest and reverse the decade-long war on the Constitution waged by our own government.

Rick Warren's Connections to Joel's Army

by dogemperor
Wed Dec 31, 2008 at 01:55:31 PM PST

Nearly two and a half years to the day, I wrote an early article detailing Rick Warren's connections with Paul Yonggi Cho nee David Yonggi Cho--a figure who is practically at Ground Zero regarding the continued perpetuation and promotion of what has been termed "Latter Rain", evolved into "Joel's Army", and is known now as the "New Apostolic Reformation".

This early post has gained sudden relevance now with Rick Warren now being chosen as the pastor to give the inauguration prayer on 20 January.

This is also rather unfortunate, as it turns out that Rick Warren's connections to "Elijah's Army" go farther than trading tips with Cho on megachurch growth...far deeper.

Political winners and losers of 2008

Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, January 1, 2009

(12-31) 15:19 PST -- The past year of political news will long be remembered for its characters, dramas and the revolutionary changes it ushered. But given the culture's constant tumult - and the 24-hour news cycle that needs to be fed - 2009 could bring changing fortunes for 2008's political winners and losers.

The winners

Barack Obama: The first African American elected president ran a nearly flawless campaign, turned out new constituencies, reshaped the political map and revolutionized campaigning. His reward: two wars, a foundering economy, growing unemployment, record home foreclosures and a short window to produce change before the 2010 midterm election campaigns start.

Community organizers: They were ridiculed at the GOP convention, but Obama won because his campaigners knew how to meld old-school grassroots organizing with online organizing and fundraising tools like Facebook and other new media technology. Their next challenge: keeping the coalition together to support Obama through his presidency.

Insurance for fire, flood -- why not recession?

Tue Dec 30, 2008 6:42am EST

By Emily Kaiser - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mortgage lenders often require homeowners in flood-prone areas to carry special insurance. Should banks make companies buy recession insurance from governments before they can borrow?

That is one idea proposed by the International Monetary Fund on Monday as a way to help situations like the current one where economic uncertainty is so high that companies and consumers put off spending, deepening the downturn.

How we got into this mess

By Felix G. Rohatyn

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

New leadership is coming to the United States and it is none too soon.

When President Clinton sent me to France as his ambassador at the end of 1997, our economy was booming, the stock market was at an all-time high, our budgets were in surplus, the dollar was strong and our debt was shrinking.

Today, all that has been turned upside down. The United States, the richest nation in the world, has been nearly ruined. Our economy is not providing work for all Americans who need it; jobs continue to go abroad by the millions, and we are running huge deficits that grow exponentially day by day. The financial crisis in our markets has caused the credibility of our economic system to be challenged. Our currency has been devalued and we have taken on a staggering $10 trillion of debt.

What went wrong?

Shining light on shadowy mercenaries

By Jim Chiavelli | December 29, 2008

Near the US Embassy in Kabul was the headquarters of a private security company. The right contact could get you in to drink dollar beers and play high-stakes blackjack, while loud rock music blared and muscled young men exchanged raucous insults. A fraternity house, it seemed - and then days later, one of those men was bellowing at you on the street, leveling an automatic weapon, and ordering all comers to move aside so his vehicle could speed through traffic.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, these companies of mercenaries - author Steve Fainaru doesn't stint at the word - are a symbol of US occupation policy. They're paid top rates to fight and die and thus mask the true human cost of the war. "No one and no thing could move around Iraq without them," Fainaru writes. And they're not bound by US or Iraqi law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or the Geneva Convention - nothing but the "Big Boy Rules" of Fainaru's title, one of which is, "What happens in Iraq stays in Iraq." And what stays in Iraq, most often, is the blood of innocents and mercenaries alike.

The Big Bailout Lessons

By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, December 31, 2008; Page A15

Two things we learned about our politics and our economy in 2008:

Lesson One: If it's big and you don't regulate it, you end up nationalizing it.

One of the major lessons of the year is that unregulated and underregulated capitalism ends up confronting democratic governments with a subprime choice: Either let a major institution go down and watch as chaos follows (the Lehman option) or funnel gobs of the public's money into such institutions to avoid such Lehman-like chaos.

The Top 10 Rightblogger Stories of 2008

Posted by Roy Edroso at 2:51 AM, December 29, 2008

Excited (not to say deranged) by the long Presidential campaign, conservative bloggers -- rightbloggers, in our affectionate parlance -- were in top form this year, and outstripped the sleepy Main Stream Media in every way. If mainstream Republicans were content to call Obama a socialist, rightbloggers insisted that he killed his grandmother. If the GOP lashed out at Al Gore, rightbloggers denounced his cartoon avatar Wall-E. Rightbloggers turned even the dullest political fodder into comedy gold, and we honor their achievements with a year-end top ten.

Iceland After the Fall

Down With the Man! Up With the Potato!

By Nathan Heller
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2008, at 11:52 AM ET

When people talk about Iceland, they talk about numbers, distance, and the awesome lack of human imprint on the landscape. The Vikings settled the harbor. It is 2,600 miles from New York. The island's footprint is 103,000 square kilometers, an area larger than South Carolina but smaller than Virginia, and 79 percent of the terrain is what the U.S. government calls "wasteland." Nine-tenths of the country's heat is geothermally produced. Renewable sources provide all electricity. The population has grown to 313,000—this is slightly less than the residency of Manhattan's Upper West Side, up to 155^th Street—and the temperature of the Blue Lagoon, because I know you were wondering, averages 100 degrees, even in winter. What else? Iceland's culture today is a model of North European savoir-vivre. Almost two-thirds of its university students are women; the literacy rate has been estimated at 99.9 percent; and the annual publishing output is, per capita, the largest in the world.

Data like these are trotted out whenever Iceland appears in the news—which, until this fall, was rarely—not because literacy rates are inherently telling but because they capture a vaguer sense of what the country signifies to outsiders. Iceland is, for many of us, the waist of the hourglass: the narrowest point in the flow of culture and commerce that buoys modern life, a place where the First World is winnowed and exposed. This is why we call its financial collapse a "crisis." It's the reason some of us with no clear stake are keen to learn what happened. And it's why, one afternoon not long ago, I stood in Austurvöllur Square in Reykjavík and watched a group of Icelanders rally against their government.

Thomas Frank: The 'Market' Isn't So Wise After All

This year saw the end of an illusion.

By THOMAS FRANK

As I read the last tranche of disastrous news stories from this catastrophic year, I found myself thinking back to the old days when it all seemed to work, when everyone agreed what made an economy go and the stock market raced and the commentators and economists and politicians of the world stood as one under the boldly soaring banner of laissez-faire.

In particular, I remembered that quintessential work of market triumphalism, "The Lexus and the Olive Tree," by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. It was published in the glorious year 1999, and in those days, it seemed, every cliché was made of gold: the brokerage advertisements were pithy, the small investors were mighty, and the deregulated way was irresistibly becoming the global way.

Revealed: The cement that eats carbon dioxide

Alok Jha, green technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 31 December 2008 14.59 GMT

Cement, a vast source of planet-warming carbon dioxide, could be transformed into a means of stripping the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, thanks to an innovation from British engineers.

The new environmentally formulation means the cement industry could change from being a "significant emitter to a significant absorber of CO2," says Nikolaos Vlasopoulos, chief scientist at London-based Novacem, whose invention has garnered support and funding from industry and environmentalists.

Children of the Revolution

House Republicans, now even more conservative.

Eve Fairbanks, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, December 31, 2008

"[T]hey saw in the New Deal only revolution or anarchy; ... they fought it in bitterness and in vain."--Henry Steele Commager, on the congressional conservatives under FDR, 1959

You would not expect House conservatives, dwindled in numbers and without even the consoling possibility of filibusters, to be relishing the prospect of 2009. But purist right-wingers in the House are oddly happy these days. That's because they, like many outcast peoples, have discovered in their folklore their own Little Bighorn, a tale of resistance that gives them pride and hope.

The legend was born last August 1. Throughout the $4-per-gallon-gasoline summer, House conservatives had been pestering their Democratic overlords to scrap Congress's moratorium on offshore oil drilling; but, by the end of July, Speaker Nancy Pelosi had tired of the squabbling and dismissed the House for vacation. But one faction of representatives was too impatient to go. Insulted by Pelosi's brush-off and sensing a hot opportunity, Representative Mike Pence of Indiana rallied a troupe of conservatives in the abandoned chamber. There, as the Capitol staff milled about turning off lights, microphones, and cameras, Pence's gang announced that they were launching a hostile occupation of the House floor until Pelosi returned.

Glenn Greenwald: David Gregory Shows Why He's The Perfect Replacement for Tim Russert

by Glenn Greenwald

Several months before he was named as moderator of Meet the Press, David Gregory went on MSNBC to categorically reject Scott McClellan's accusations that the American media failed to scrutinize the Bush administration's pre-war claims. Gregory vigorously praised the job which he and his "journalistic" colleagues did in the run-up to the Iraq War -- the period which Salon's Gary Kamiya called "one of the greatest collapses in the history of the American media." Proclaimed Gregory, with a straight face: "Questions were asked. I think we pushed. I think we prodded. I think we challenged the President. Not only those of us in the White House Press Corps did that, but others in the media landscape did that." Most revealingly of all, Gregory said:

I think there are a lot of critics who think that . . . . if we did not stand up and say this is bogus, and you're a liar, and why are you doing this, that we didn't do our job. I respectfully disagree. It's not our role.

Indeed. Perish the thought that a reporter should point out when government officials are making "bogus" claims and are lying a country into a war.

Brilliant New Book Teaches You How to Evaluate Sustainable Energy Claims

by JohnnyRook
Mon Dec 29, 2008 at 09:54:34 AM PST

Everybody who is paying attention knows that Climaticide is the most pressing problem that we face. They also know that in order to avoid climate catastrophe we have to find a way to ween ourselves from our dependence on fossil fuels. Unfortunately, that is about as far as the consensus goes.

When it comes to deciding how we will replace fossil fuels and with what, the disagreements are serious and the debates passionate and, all too often, vitriolic. We meet proponents of wind (onshore and offshore), of solar (and its various subcategories), of nuclear (and its various subcategories), of geothermal, of wave, of carbon capture and storage for coal, etc.

Thermostats, Tissues, Light Bulbs, and Power Strips

The Green Lantern presents a superefficient, four-in-one economy answer pack!

By Jacob Leibenluft
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2008, at 8:05 AM ET

---

In an effort to do a little New Year's cleaning, here are some quick answers to a few popular (though not so consequential) questions that keep showing up in the Lantern's inbox:

I've heard that my appliances waste energy even when I'm not using them, so long as they're still plugged in. Can I save that "vampire power" by plugging everything into a power strip? Or will the surge protector suck its own vampire power?

It's not hard to see why this brainteaser is so popular among the Lantern's readers. This column thrives on tricky lifestyle questions with unexpected answers. It may be interesting to ask whether polystyrene coffee cups are really worse than a dish-washed mug or whether a CSA is still environmentally friendly if its members waste a lot of food. But there's a risk to trying to be too clever about these things. Yes, according to data from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, some types of power strips do waste a tiny bit of electricity even when switched off. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't use them whenever possible to cut down on vampire power waste.

The Beautiful Machine

Greed on Wall Street and blindness in Washington certainly helped cause the financial system's crash. But a deeper explanation begins 20 years ago with a bold experiment to master the variable that has defeated so many visionaries: Risk.

By Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Brady Dennis
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, December 29, 2008; A01

First of three parts

Howard Sosin and Randy Rackson conceived their financial revolution as they walked along the Manhattan waterfront during lunchtime outings. They refined their ideas at late-night dinners and during breaks in their busy days as traders at the junk-bond firm of Drexel Burnham Lambert.

Sosin, a 35-year-old reserved finance scholar who had honed his theories at the famed Bell Labs, projected an aura of brilliance and fierce determination. Rackson, a 30-year-old soft-spoken computer wizard and art lover, arrived on Wall Street with a Wharton School pedigree and a desire to create something memorable.

They combined forces with Barry Goldman, a Drexel colleague with a PhD in economics and a genius for constructing complex financial transactions. "Imagine what we could do," Sosin would tell Rackson and Goldman as they brainstormed in the spring of 1986.

8 Things That Must Happen Now to Salvage the Economy -- and the Country

By Jeff Madrick, The Nation
Posted on December 30, 2008, Printed on December 30, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/115764/

Every time I read about a solution to the economic crisis these days, I invariably find an underlying assumption that once we are past all this, America will be just fine again. If we get the banks spending, if we stop the mortgage defaults, if we stimulate enough and if we reregulate the errant, greedy financial community, prosperity is sure to follow.

The economic emergency, however, is not simply the consequence of mindless, ideological deregulation and investment bubbles gone bust. It is the result of a narrowly conceived economic model and the failure of Washington's social contract with America, whose weaknesses were essentially disguised by ever more debt. To save America, that social contract has to change, and the economic model on which it is based has to be modified.

Farewell to All That: An Oral History of the Bush White House

The threat of 9/11 ignored. The threat of Iraq hyped and manipulated. Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. Hurricane Katrina. The shredding of civil liberties. The rise of Iran. Global warming. Economic disaster. How did one two-term presidency go so wrong? A sweeping draft of history—distilled from scores of interviews—offers fresh insight into the roles of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and other key players.

by Cullen Murphy and Todd S. Purdum February 2009

With assistance from Philippe Sands.

January 20, 2001 After a disputed election and bitter recount battle in Florida whose outcome is effectively decided by the Supreme Court, George W. Bush is sworn in as the 43rd president of the United States. In foreign affairs he promises an approach that will depart from the perceived adventurism of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, in places such as Kosovo and Somalia. (“I think the United States must be humble,” Bush said in a debate with his opponent, Al Gore.) In domestic affairs Bush pledges to cut taxes and improve education. He promises to govern as a “compassionate conservative” and to be “a uniter, not a divider.” He comes into office with a $237 billion budget surplus.

On the day of the inauguration the White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, declares a moratorium on the Clinton administration’s last-minute regulations on the environment, food safety, and health. This action is followed in the coming months by disengagement from the International Criminal Court and other international efforts. Nonetheless, the early presumption is that the administration’s affairs are in steady hands, though some disquieting signs are noted.

Lawsuit Targets Banks With Novel Tactic

Advocacy Group Takes Grievances to Housing Court

By Mary Kane 12/29/08 3:11 AM

Some Cleveland neighborhoods have a message for banks that abandon their foreclosed houses or unload them at fire sale prices to speculators: Stop dumping your trash on us.

Using a novel legal technique that could be copied elsewhere, the Cleveland Housing Renewal Project Inc., a private, non-profit housing advocacy group, is asking Cleveland housing court to declare the business practices of Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo in violation of local public nuisance laws. The suit seeks to force the banks to either fix up their foreclosed houses before selling them or to demolish them entirely - instead of dumping them back on the market at Basement Bob-style real estate prices.

A housing court judge on Dec. 15 granted a restraining order preventing the two banks from selling 36 foreclosed houses for at least two weeks. A ruling on whether to make the order permanent was scheduled for Monday, but the banks over the weekend had the case moved to federal court in Cleveland, Wells Fargo said in a statement.

Henry Kissinger: Eminence Noire

By Robert Parry
December 28, 2008 (A Special Report)

The recent release of 40-year-old tape recordings of President Lyndon Johnson complaining about “treason” by Richard Nixon’s campaign for sabotaging Vietnam peace talks in 1968 also reflects darkly on one of Washington’s enduring Wise Men, a person whose views are still sought and respected: former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

It was Kissinger, who – while serving as a peace-talk adviser to the Johnson administration – made obstruction of the peace talks possible by secretly contacting people working for Nixon, according to Seymour Hersh’s 1983 book, The Price of Power.

"It is certain," Hersh wrote, "that the Nixon campaign, alerted by Kissinger to the impending success of the peace talks, was able to get a series of messages to the Thieu government [in Saigon] making it clear that a Nixon presidency would have different views on the peace negotiations."

In Transition | FCC

Friday, December 26, 2008; A21

How is the transition likely to affect the Federal Communications Commission?

What it does: The FCC was created by the Communications Act of 1934. It regulates communications by radio, telephone, television, wire, satellite and cable. The growth of the Internet and wireless technology has expanded the agency's profile, as it also oversees consumer prices and contracts, mergers among communications and media companies, and access to communications services during natural disasters. That has brought people such as Google co-founder Larry Page and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to lobby in the past year.

The FCC also oversees auctions of government spectrum, such as an auction earlier this year of broadcast television airwaves that will be freed by digital television conversion on Feb. 17. And it reviews mergers by considering whether the transfer of communications licenses benefit the public.

Bush steps out of world picture in which U.S. is no longer the star

Decline in U.S. influence partly a result of aversion to his policies

By Paul Richter
Washington Bureau
2:03 AM CST, December 28, 2008

WASHINGTON — As President George W. Bush's term comes to a close, the United States has the world's dominant economy and its most powerful military. Yet its global influence is in decline.

The United States emerged from the Cold War a solitary superpower whose political and economic leverage often enabled it to impose its will on other nations. Now America usually needs to build coalitions of nations to get its way—and often finds other world powers aren't willing to go along.

The Republican War on Science Isn't Going Anywhere

By Jeremy Adam Smith, Greater Good
Posted on December 29, 2008, Printed on December 29, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/104037/

Americans' trust in the media, their government and each other has declined over the past four decades. And yet, according to many national surveys, such as the Harris and Gallup polls, trust in science and scientists remains high. In one Harris poll, for example, 68 percent of respondents said they trust scientists to tell the truth -- more than the number who trusted the president.

In recent years, however, several areas of scientific research -- from global warming to stem cell research to evolution -- have become highly politicized, in ways that threaten the credibility of prominent scientists and their findings.

Was the 'Credit Crunch' a Myth Used to Sell a Trillion-Dollar Scam?

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on December 29, 2008, Printed on December 29, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/115768/

There is something approaching a consensus that the Paulson Plan -- also known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP -- was a boondoggle of an intervention that's flailed from one approach to the next, with little oversight and less effect on the financial meltdown.

But perhaps even more troubling than the ad hoc nature of its implementation is the suspicion that has recently emerged that TARP -- hundreds of billions of dollars worth so far -- was sold to Congress and the public based on a Big Lie.

Was 2008 the beginning of another Great Depression?

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — It wasn't 1929, but like that infamous year, 2008 is sure to be remembered by economic historians as one unlike any other.

"We had a much simpler financial system back then. The number of wild and crazy things that happened this year is completely without precedent in world history," said Alan Blinder, a Princeton University economics professor and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve.

'Little Rock Nine' prepare to celebrate day of victory

The president-elect has invited as inauguration guests the nine black people who as children defied racist mobs in Arkansas over 50 years ago

Joanna Walters in New York
The Observer, Sunday 28 December 2008

When Barack Obama is inaugurated next month, thousands of African Americans who risked their lives in the civil rights movement will flock to Washington to witness the moment.

Among the vast crowds, none will feel more proud than a small group of black pioneers who faced down violent mobs more than 50 years ago when they struggled to end racial segregation in schools.

Beaten, kicked, spat at, threatened with death and abused daily for months after enrolling in a white high school in Arkansas, the "Little Rock Nine" have been invited as honoured guests to perhaps the most eagerly awaited inauguration in American history.

The Noose Tightens

Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and other top Bush officials could soon face legal jeopardy.

By Jonathan Tepperman | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Dec 19, 2008

The United States, like many countries, has a bad habit of committing wartime excesses and an even worse record of accounting for them afterward. But a remarkable string of recent events suggests that may finally be changing—and that top Bush administration officials could soon face legal jeopardy for prisoner abuse committed under their watch in the war on terror.

In early December, in a highly unusual move, a federal court in New York agreed to rehear a lawsuit against former Attorney General John Ashcroft brought by a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar. (Arar was a victim of the administration's extraordinary rendition program: he was seized by U.S. officials in 2002 while in transit through Kennedy Airport and deported to Syria, where he was tortured.)

Frank Rich: You’re Likable Enough, Gay People

IN his first press conference after his re-election in 2004, President Bush memorably declared, “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.” We all know how that turned out.

Barack Obama has little in common with George W. Bush, thank God, his obsessive workouts and message control notwithstanding. At a time when very few Americans feel very good about very much, Obama is generating huge hopes even before he takes office. So much so that his name and face, affixed to any product, may be the last commodity left in the marketplace that can still move Americans to shop.

I share these high hopes. But for the first time a faint tinge of Bush crept into my Obama reveries this month.