Glenn Greenwald: Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Wall Street's Ownership of Government

White House officials yesterday released their personal financial disclosure forms, and included in the millions of dollars which top Obama economics adviser Larry Summers made from Wall Street in 2008 is this detail:

Lawrence H. Summers, one of President Obama's top economic advisers, collected roughly $5.2 million in compensation from hedge fund D.E. Shaw over the past year and was paid more than $2.7 million in speaking fees by several troubled Wall Street firms and other organizations. . . .

Financial institutions including JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch paid Summers for speaking appearances in 2008. Fees ranged from $45,000 for a Nov. 12 Merrill Lynch appearance to $135,000 for an April 16 visit to Goldman Sachs, according to his disclosure form.

That's $135,000 paid by Goldman Sachs to Summers -- for a one-day visit.

Behind The Numbers: Workforce Dropouts

By Charles McMillion

Created 04/03/2009 - 4:01pm

Home Feature Box:

March Unemployment: The Rest Of The Story

Friday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report on unemployment and jobs in March confirms that the economy continues to spiral downward. But the news reports only tell a small part of the story. The other part of the story is who is counted and who is not counted in the unemployment figure.

The unemployment rate in March only tells a small part of the story. The other part of the story is who is counted and who is not counted in the unemployment figure.

Today’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report on unemployment and jobs in March confirms that the economy continues to spiral downward as deeply stressed households face worsening employment and financial conditions.

Bill Moyers Interviews William K. Black

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal.

For months now, revelations of the wholesale greed and blatant transgressions of Wall Street have reminded us that "The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One." In fact, the man you're about to meet wrote a book with just that title. It was based upon his experience as a tough regulator during one of the darkest chapters in our financial history: the savings and loan scandal in the late 1980s.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: These numbers as large as they are, vastly understate the problem of fraud.

BILL MOYERS: Bill Black was in New York this week for a conference at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice where scholars and journalists gathered to ask the question, "How do they get away with it?" Well, no one has asked that question more often than Bill Black.

The former Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention now teaches Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. During the savings and loan crisis, it was Black who accused then-house speaker Jim Wright and five US Senators, including John Glenn and John McCain, of doing favors for the S&L's in exchange for contributions and other perks. The senators got off with a slap on the wrist, but so enraged was one of those bankers, Charles Keating — after whom the senate's so-called "Keating Five" were named — he sent a memo that read, in part, "get Black — kill him dead." Metaphorically, of course. Of course.

Now Black is focused on an even greater scandal, and he spares no one — not even the President he worked hard to elect, Barack Obama. But his main targets are the Wall Street barons, heirs of an earlier generation whose scandalous rip-offs of wealth back in the 1930s earned them comparison to Al Capone and the mob, and the nickname "banksters."

The Mark-to-Market Myth

Today the Financial Accounting Standards Board voted - by one vote - to relax accounting standards for certain types of securities, giving banks greater discretion in determining what price to carry them at on their balance sheets. The new rules were sought by the American Bankers Association, and not surprisingly will allow banks to increase their reported profits and strengthen their balance sheets by allowing them to increase the reported values of their toxic assets.

This makes no sense, for three reasons.

Defense Contractors Angered by Gates Budget Strategy

Defense Secretary Keeps Details Close to Chest Before Delivery to White House

By Spencer Ackerman 4/3/09 12:15 PM

On Monday, an Iraq veteran named John Guardiano took to the right-leaning op-ed page of The Washington Examiner, a free daily paper in the district, to inveigh against the “Secret Defense Budget Tribunals” of Pentagon chief Bob Gates. Guardiano, troubled by the unusual steps taken by Gates to hold the details of his fiscal-2010 budget close to the vest, compared Gates’ efforts to the ill-fated efforts of then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to construct a universal health-care regime in secret that ended in 1994. Needless to say, he disapproved. “Democracy can be messy and untidy, noisy and boisterous,” he wrote, “it can disrupt the work of the ruling class, who think they know better than we the people.” After all, Guardiano reminded, “America is not the Soviet Union or China.”

Guardiano’s bio for the paper quickly noted that his views “do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. military or his employer, a defense contractor.” The paper didn’t see fit to name the contractor.

The Return of Statecraft

How Obama proved his mettle at the G20 summit.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, April 2, 2009, at 6:49 PM ET

---

Vast multinational conferences, like the G20 summit in London, are useful mainly for the "bilaterals"—the one-on-one side-room conversations—and, in these forums, President Barack Obama is living up to high expectations.

Which is to say, the United States seems to be returning to diplomatic basics—a development that in the wake of the last eight years is practically revolutionary.

Paul Krugman: China’s Dollar Trap

Back in the early stages of the financial crisis, wags joked that our trade with China had turned out to be fair and balanced after all: They sold us poison toys and tainted seafood; we sold them fraudulent securities.

But these days, both sides of that deal are breaking down. On one side, the world’s appetite for Chinese goods has fallen off sharply. China’s exports have plunged in recent months and are now down 26 percent from a year ago. On the other side, the Chinese are evidently getting anxious about those securities.

But China still seems to have unrealistic expectations. And that’s a problem for all of us.

Count the problems in the NYT's article on Obama's G-20 trip

Published Fri, Apr 3, 2009 8:57am ET by Eric Boehlert

Just really dreadful journalism by Helene Cooper, who already embarrassed herself on the trip by whining on the Times blog that Obama was trying to "muzzle" the press, because at a joint appearance with the British PM, Obama took three questions from the press, while the PM took four.

Here's news: G-20 summit actually achieved something

By Kevin G. Hall and Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers

LONDON — The leaders of the world's major industrialized nations accomplished something at their G-20 summit here Thursday that rarely happens at such gatherings of heads of state.

They produced large achievements.

They pledged the first-ever global regulation of hedge funds and private-equity firms, big players in global finance that have enjoyed operating under the regulatory radar. They agreed to a require banks to set aside more capital in good times to help them function in bad times. They vowed to crack down on tax haven nations that allow the wealthy to escape taxation. And they pledged $1.1 trillion to the International Monetary Fund and related institutions to help revive the global economy.

Media Tries to Sabotage Obamas With Pseudo Stories on Faux Gaffes But No One Buys It

By Leslie Savan, The Nation
Posted on April 3, 2009, Printed on April 3, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/134832/

The real question about how Barack and Michelle Obama are being received on their Rolling-G-20-Summit/Euro-Tour '09 has nothing to do with how the Europeans treat them, but all about the American mainstream media itself: What infinitesimal nit will they find to pick about the new president's conduct abroad that can be blown up into a two- to three-day pseudo-international incident?

You know the sort of story I mean. We're not talking about serious systemic issues, such as the different perspective a country like Germany (with universal health care, generous unemployment benefits, and a highly unionized work force) might have on the need for a global stimulus when compared to the U.S., where the party Obama just turned out of office has proposed effectively privatizing Medicare. That would be too much like journalism, and way too MEGO.

Globocop versus the TermiNATO

By Pepe Escobar

The people of Strasbourg have voted in their apartment balconies for the French-German co-production of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 60th birthday this Saturday. Thousands of "No to NATO" banners, alongside "Peace" banners, sprung up all around town until forcibly removed by French police.

Prime "liberal democracy" repression tactics were inevitably on show - just as in the much-hyped "we had 275 minutes to save the world and all we could come up with was half-a-trillion dollars for the International Monetary Fund" Group of 20 summit in London. Protesters were tear-gassed as terrorists. Downtown was cordoned off. Residents were forced to wear badges. Demonstrations got banished to the suburbs.

New storage system design brings hydrogen cars closer to reality

Researchers have developed a critical part of a hydrogen storage system for cars that makes it possible to fill up a vehicle's fuel tank within five minutes with enough hydrogen to drive 300 miles.

Fooling With Disaster?

Startling new evidence about Three Mile Island disaster raises doubts over nuclear plant safety

Thirty years ago this week, Randall and Joy Thompson were hired to monitor radiation releases after the Three Mile Island reactor meltdown. What they saw didn't match what officials say happened -- but, fearing for their lives, they gave up trying to tell their story. Now, Facing South shares their account -- and their warning about the dangers of a nuclear revival.

by Sue Sturgis
Facing South
April 2, 2009

It was April Fool's Day,1979 -- 30 years ago this week -- when Randall Thompson first set foot inside the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pa. Just four days earlier, in the early morning hours of March 28, a relatively minor problem in the plant's Unit 2 reactor sparked a series of mishaps that led to the meltdown of almost half the uranium fuel and uncontrolled releases of radiation into the air and surrounding Susquehanna River.

Conservative crusader against health care reform has a shady past (even his allies are worried)

by Joe Sudbay (DC) on 4/02/2009 10:18:00 AM

A couple weeks ago, I did a post on Rick Scott, the face of a right wing group fighting health care reform. I linked to an excellent piece, "Healthcare Enemy No. 1" in The Nation by Chris Hayes, which exposed Scott's shady background noting:

Having Scott lead the charge against healthcare reform is like tapping Bernie Madoff to campaign against tighter securities regulation. You see, the for-profit hospital chain Scott helped found--the one he ran and built his entire reputation on--was discovered to be in the habit of defrauding the government out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Myths and falsehoods relating to President Obama's budget proposal

Summary: Following the release of President Obama's proposal for the fiscal year 2010 budget, media figures and outlets have promoted a number of myths and falsehoods related to the proposal.

Following the release of President Obama's proposal for the fiscal year 2010 budget, media figures and outlets have promoted a number of myths and falsehoods about the proposal. These myths and falsehoods include the suggestion that Obama's proposal would increase taxes on a large percentage of small businesses and the suggestion that using reconciliation to pass major policy goals would represent an unusual or unprecedented tactic.

Rule change intended to ease bank crisis could make it worse

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The little-known Financial Accounting Standards Board is poised to deliver Thursday a change in accounting rules that proponents say will save the banking system — and opponents warn could bring even more ruin to the U.S. economy.

The FASB board is expected to relax the rules on how banks value assets that investors no longer are willing to purchase.

Obama's Blackwater?

By Jeremy Scahill, AlterNet
Posted on April 2, 2009, Printed on April 2, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/134594/

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama's advisers said he "can't rule out [and] won't rule out" using mercenary forces, like Blackwater. Now, it appears that the Obama administration has decided on its hired guns of choice: Triple Canopy, a Chicago company now based in Virginia. It may not have Blackwater's thuggish reputation, but Triple Canopy has its own bloody history in Iraq and a record of hiring mercenaries from countries with atrocious human rights records. What's more, Obama is not just using the company in Iraq, but also as a U.S.-government funded private security force in Israel/Palestine, operating out of Jerusalem.

Beginning May 7th, Triple Canopy will officially take over Xe/Blackwater's mega-contract with the U.S. State Department for guarding occupation officials in Iraq. It's sure to be a lucrative deal: Obama's Iraq plan will inevitably rely on an increased use of private contractors, including an army of mercenaries to protect his surge of diplomats operating out of the monstrous U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

Geithner's dirty little secret

By F William Engdahl

US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, in unveiling his long-awaited plan to put the US banking system back in order, has refused to tell the dirty little secret of the present financial crisis. By refusing to do so, he is trying to save de facto bankrupt US banks that threaten to bring the entire global system down in a new more devastating phase of wealth destruction.

The Geithner proposal, his so-called Public-Private Partnership Investment Program, or PPPIP, is not designed to restore a healthy lending system that would funnel credit to business and consumers. Rather it is yet another intricate scheme to pour even more hundreds of billions of dollars directly to the leading banks and Wall Street firms responsible for the current mess in world credit markets, without demanding they change their business model.

Resembling I.F. Stone

I.F. Stone’s Son on the Izzy Awards, Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald

by Jeremy Stone

This is adapted from comments made at Tuesday's inaugural ceremony of the Izzy Awards for independent media - named after legendary journalist I.F. "Izzy" Stone. Blogger Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! shared the award presented by Ithaca College's Park Center for Independent Media.

When I first heard about an award for people who most "resembled" Izzy, I had high hopes that I might finally win a prize. Unfortunately, the selection committee appears to have been concerned with behavior.

Resembling Izzy in behavioral terms does not lead to an easy life. His capacity for thinking independently, and acting on principle, isolated him from just about everyone.

The Regulatory Charade

Washington had the power to regulate misbehaving banks. It just refused to use it.

By Eliot Spitzer
Posted Wednesday, April 1, 2009, at 7:10 AM ET

---

Does it strike you as odd that the American government has invested $115 billion in TARP money alone in Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America, fully 70 percent of their market cap ($164.5 billion, as of March 30), yet we have virtually no say in the management or behavior of these banks? Does it seem even odder that these banks are getting along extremely well with the government regulators who should be picking them apart for having destroyed the economy and financial system?

There is a grand, implicit bargain being struck in our multitrillion-dollar bailout of the financial-services sector. Those in power in D.C. and New York are pretending the bargain is: You give us trillions, and in return, we fix this industry so the economy recovers and this never happens again. In fact, the bargain is much more alarming: Trillions of dollars of taxpayer money will be invested to rescue the banks, without the new owners—taxpayers—being allowed to make any of the necessary changes in structure, senior management, or corporate behavior. In return, the still-private banks will help the D.C. regulators perpetuate the myth that regulators didn't have enough power to prevent the meltdown. In sum, banks get bailed out with virtually no obligations imposed; regulators get more power and a pass on their past failures. The symbiosis of the past decade continues.

Thomas Frank: Lock 'Em Up

Jailing kids is a proud American tradition.

By THOMAS FRANK

At first glance, the news from Luzerne County, in northeastern Pennsylvania, is not good. In what is known locally as the "kids for cash" scandal, two judges have pleaded guilty to accepting $2.6 million in kickbacks from a for-profit juvenile correctional facility -- a privately owned jail for kids, essentially.

And here is what the judges delivered, according to the charges of the U.S. Attorney overseeing the case: In 2003 one of them, Judge Michael Conahan, who had authority over such expenses, defunded the county-owned detention center, channeling kids sentenced to detention to the private jail -- along with the public's money.

Watchdogs: Treasury won't disclose bank bailout details

By Chris Adams | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The massive programs designed to rescue the nation's financial sector are operating without adequate oversight, with vague goals and limited disclosure of their details to the taxpayers who are paying for them, government watchdogs told a Senate panel Tuesday.

The Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, was launched in the midst of last fall's collapse of the nation's banking system and is designed to get loans flowing to businesses and individuals.

Obama’s Ersatz Capitalism

By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

THE Obama administration’s $500 billion or more proposal to deal with America’s ailing banks has been described by some in the financial markets as a win-win-win proposal. Actually, it is a win-win-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win — and taxpayers lose.

Treasury hopes to get us out of the mess by replicating the flawed system that the private sector used to bring the world crashing down, with a proposal marked by overleveraging in the public sector, excessive complexity, poor incentives and a lack of transparency.

We're Still Getting Screwed: Geithner Plan Will Make the Rich Richer!

By Dean Baker, AlterNet
Posted on April 1, 2009, Printed on April 1, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/134432/

The new consensus among the experts who missed the housing bubble (EMHB) is that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's plan to subsidize the purchase of junk mortgages and their derivatives will help alleviate the stress on the banking system. That's good news.

These geniuses have devised a plan that for $1 trillion (approximately equal to 300 million kid-years of SCHIP, the State Child Health Insurance Program) can alleviate the stress on the banking system. Note that no one claims that $1 trillion spent on the Geithner plan will actually clean up the banking system - that would be asking too much. The EMHB only assure us that this $1 trillion (more than enough to have energy conserving retrofits for every building in the country) will make things better. Isn't that enough?

Seymour Hersh: Secret U.S. Forces Carried Out Assassinations in 'a Lot of' Countries, Including in Latin America

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Posted on March 31, 2009, Printed on April 1, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/134347/

Amy Goodman: Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh created a stir last month when he said the Bush administration ran an executive assassination ring that reported directly to Vice President Dick Cheney. Hersh made the comment during a speech at the University of Minnesota on March 10th.

Seymour Hersh: Congress has no oversight of it. It's an executive assassination wing, essentially. And it's been going on and on and on. And just today in the Times there was a story saying that its leader, a three-star admiral named McRaven, ordered a stop to certain activities because there were so many collateral deaths. It's been going in -- under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or to the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving.

The secrets of Obama's surge

By Pepe Escobar

Is United States President Barack Obama telling it like it is as far as his new strategy for the Afghanistan and Pakistan war theater - AfPak, in Pentagonspeak - is concerned? There are reasons to believe otherwise.

Obama's relentless media blitzkrieg stressed the new strategy is refocusing on al-Qaeda. Washington, we got a problem. Why deploy 17,000 troops against "the Taliban" in the poppy-growing province of Helmand, not in the east near the Pakistani tribal areas, where "al-Qaeda" is holed up, plus 4,000 advisers to train the Afghan Army, when Washington actually wants to fight no more than 200 or 300 al-Qaeda jihadis roaming in Afghanistan, plus another 400 maximum in the Pakistani tribal areas? And by the way they are not Afghans - they are overwhelmingly Arabs, with a few Uzbeks, Chechens and Uyghurs thrown in.

Obama’s Nobel Headache

Paul Krugman has emerged as Obama's toughest liberal critic. He's deeply skeptical of the bank bailout and pessimistic about the economy. Why the establishment worries he may be right.

Evan Thomas

NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Apr 6, 2009

Traditionally, punditry in Washington has been a cozy business. To get the inside scoop, big-time columnists sometimes befriend top policymakers and offer informal advice over lunch or drinks. Naturally, lines can blur. The most noted pundit of mid-20th-century Washington, Walter Lippmann, was known to help a president write a speech—and then to write a newspaper column praising the speech.

Paul Krugman has all the credentials of a ranking member of the East Coast liberal establishment: a column in The New York Times, a professorship at Princeton, a Nobel Prize in economics. He is the type you might expect to find holding forth at a Georgetown cocktail party or chumming around in the White House Mess of a Democratic administration. But in his published opinions, and perhaps in his very being, he is anti-establishment. Though he was a scourge of the Bush administration, he has been critical, if not hostile, to the Obama White House.

Banks Starting to Walk Away on Foreclosures

By SUSAN SAULNY

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Mercy James thought she had lost her rental property here to foreclosure. A date for a sheriff’s sale had been set, and notices about the foreclosure process were piling up in her mailbox.

Ms. James had the tenants move out, and soon her white house at the corner of Thomas and Maple Streets fell into the hands of looters and vandals, and then, into disrepair. Dejected and broke, Ms. James said she salvaged but a lesson from her loss.

So imagine her surprise when the City of South Bend contacted her recently, demanding that she resume maintenance on the property. The sheriff’s sale had been canceled at the last minute, leaving the property title — and a world of trouble — in her name.

A Scary Corporate Coup Is Under Way -- We've Got to Stop It

By William Greider, TheNation.com
Posted on March 31, 2009, Printed on March 31, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/134217/

Editor's Note: Click here to join the protest!

The Rip Off Must Be Stopped!

Big bankers ruined our economy and now they are gaming the political system so they can profit even more off the crisis they caused. They must be stopped.

On April 11th, 2009, the public will come out in cities across the country to express their frustration and disapproval with how our elected officials have handled the economic crisis. No one has been left unscathed; this protest is yours.

Asia's savers not the culprit

Commentary and weekly watch by Doug Noland

"The extraordinary risk-management discipline that developed out of the writings of the University of Chicago's Harry Markowitz in the 1950s produced insights that won several Nobel prizes in economics. It was widely embraced not only by academia but also by a large majority of financial professionals and global regulators. But in August 2007, the risk-management structure cracked. All the sophisticated mathematics and computer wizardry essentially rested on one central premise: that the enlightened self-interest of owners and managers of financial institutions would lead them to maintain a sufficient buffer against insolvency by actively monitoring their firms' capital and risk positions." Alan Greenspan, March 27, 2009, Financial Times

Former US Federal Reserve chairman Greenspan remains the master of cleverly obfuscating key facets of some of the most critical analysis of our time. The fact is that "the sophisticated mathematics and computer wizardry" fundamental to contemporary derivatives and risk management essentially rested on one central premise: that the Federal Reserve (and, more generally speaking, global policymakers) was there to backstop marketplace liquidity in the event of market tumult.

Obama, Change And China, Part 3: The New Deal dollar and the Obama dollar

By Henry C K Liu
This report is the third in a series.
Part 1: The song stays the same
Part 2: A dangerous balance

Much talk has been floating around comparing United States President Barack Obama with president Franklin D Roosevelt and the yet-to-be-fully-developed - or revealed - Obama recovery plan with the New Deal. So far, the differences between the two leaders in crisis are more visible than the similarities.

Obama's US$787 billion stimulus package is viewed by many economists as too small for the task and too diffused to tackle the immediate need of halting layoffs and promoting new job creation. The $275 billion home mortgage refinancing plan managed by newly installed Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is beset with complexity that few seem to fully understand or know how to navigate.

Nitrate stimulates greenhouse gas production in small streams

A study conducted at the University of Notre Dame revealed that nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, is frequently produced in the sediments of small streams and that production rates were best explained by stream water nitrate concentrations. These concentrations are often the result of runoff from agricultural soils, where it is well established that a high presence of nitrates can stimulate nitrous oxide production.

Pension insurer shifted to stocks

Concern increases as losses mount; Failing plans could overwhelm agency

By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff | March 30, 2009

WASHINGTON - Just months before the start of last year's stock market collapse, the federal agency that insures the retirement funds of 44 million Americans departed from its conservative investment strategy and decided to put much of its $64 billion insurance fund into stocks.

Switching from a heavy reliance on bonds, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation decided to pour billions of dollars into speculative investments such as stocks in emerging foreign markets, real estate, and private equity funds.

Credit Union Collapse Signals Depth of Financial Crisis

Geithner's Toxic Asset Plan Not Specifically Designed for Credit Unions

By Mary Kane 3/26/09 3:09 PM

In a sign of how widespread the nation’s financial crisis has become, even the credit unions are getting creamed.

Problems in the credit union system, once considered a largely mom-and-pop operation immune to turmoil, came to light last week, when their regulator seized two of the nation’s largest credit unions, U.S. Central Credit Union in Lenexa, Kanss, and Western Corp. Federal Credit Union in San Dimas, Calif. The two, with combined assets of $57 billion, are in trouble over the same investments in toxic mortgage backed securities that have felled global banks and led to the credit crunch.

Courage Award Honors Two Women Who Warned Us

There has been much hand-wringing, not to mention finger-pointing, regarding who knew what, and when, about the financial calamities that have recently come to pass. However, Brooksley Born and Sheila Bair won’t be counted among the willfully or accidentally ignorant: They’ve been named this year’s winners of the JFK Profile in Courage Award for sounding the alarm far ahead of time.

Obstruction of Justice

By Chris Hedges

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema is scheduled to issue a ruling in the Eastern District of Virginia at the end of April in a case that will send a signal to the Muslim world and beyond whether the American judicial system has regained its independence after eight years of flagrant manipulation and intimidation by the Bush administration. Brinkema will decide whether the Palestinian activist Dr. Sami Amin Al-Arian, held for over six years in prison and under house arrest in Virginia since Sept 2, is guilty or innocent of two counts of criminal contempt.

Brinkema’s ruling will have ramifications that will extend far beyond Virginia and the United States. The trial of Al-Arian is a cause célèbre in the Muslim world. A documentary film was made about the case in Europe. He has become the poster child for judicial abuse and persecution of Muslims in the United States by the Bush administration. The facts surrounding the trial and imprisonment of the former university professor have severely tarnished the integrity of the American judicial system and made the government’s vaunted campaign against terrorism look capricious, inept and overtly racist.

Feds declare GM, Chrysler not viable, refuse more aid

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Monday will reject requests for almost $22 billion in new taxpayer bailout money for General Motors Corp. and Chrysler, saying the car makers have failed to take steps to ensure their viability.

The government sought the departure of GM chief Rick Wagoner and said the company needed to be widely restructured if it had any hope of survival. It said it would provide the company with 60 days operating capital to give it time to undertake reforms.

Microbes turn electricity directly to methane without hydrogen generation

A tiny microbe can take electricity and directly convert carbon dioxide and water to methane, producing a portable energy source with a potentially neutral carbon footprint, according to a team of Penn State engineers.

"We were studying making hydrogen in microbial electrolysis cells and we kept getting all this methane," said Bruce E. Logan, Kappe Professor of Environmental Engineering, Penn State. "We may now understand why."

Paul Krugman: America The Tarnished

Ten years ago the cover of Time magazine featured Robert Rubin, then Treasury secretary, Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Lawrence Summers, then deputy Treasury secretary. Time dubbed the three “the committee to save the world,” crediting them with leading the global financial system through a crisis that seemed terrifying at the time, although it was a small blip compared with what we’re going through now.

All the men on that cover were Americans, but nobody considered that odd. After all, in 1999 the United States was the unquestioned leader of the global crisis response. That leadership role was only partly based on American wealth; it also, to an important degree, reflected America’s stature as a role model. The United States, everyone thought, was the country that knew how to do finance right.

Digby: Compromise

Fred Clarkson, doing his usual superlative job of tracking the religious right, has noticed a new approach to framing the abortion issue by some Catholic groups. It illustrates once again just how sophisticated the anti-abortion industry has become in shifting its marketing tactics to fit changing political circumstances. They operate strategically in both the long term and the short term, constantly reevaluating their tactics and tweaking them as necessary. (American business could learn something from them at this point.)

Spanish Court Weighs Inquiry on Torture for 6 Bush-Era Officials

By MARLISE SIMONS

LONDON — A Spanish court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation into allegations that six former high-level Bush administration officials violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an official close to the case said.

The case, against former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and others, was sent to the prosecutor’s office for review by Baltasar Garzón, the crusading investigative judge who ordered the arrest of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. The official said that it was “highly probable” that the case would go forward and that it could lead to arrest warrants.

Frank Partnoy: Derivative Dangers

Fresh Air from WHYY, March 25, 2009 · Years before the current economic crisis, law professor and former Wall Street trader Frank Partnoy was warning about the dangers of risky financial practices.

In his 1997 book FIASCO: Blood in the Water on Wall Street, Partnoy detailed how derivatives — financial instruments whose value is determined by another security — were being used and abused by big financial firms. Partnoy used his experiences as a derivatives trader at Morgan Stanley to give the book an insider's perspective.

Max Baucus and the "Public Plan"

For the new issue of dead-tree TIME, I have written this short profile of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a most unlikely figure to have emerged as the point man for health care reform in the Senate. (The print version also has a chart detailing the highlights of Baucus' own health reform proposal, which you can read about in detail in the White Paper that he produced last November.)

What didn't make the print edition story was a part of the interview in which I asked Baucus about one of the most controversial elements of both his plan and President Obama's--the so-called "public plan," a option in which people would have a chance to enroll in a Medicare-like publicly financed health system. The insurance companies hate this idea, saying it is would be unfair for them to be forced to compete with the government. Many health care experts, however, argue that this provision is crucial, as a means of holding down health care costs. (The idea being that the government would use its muscle--much as it does in the Medicare and Veterans Administration programs--to negotiate lower reimbursement rates.) Conservatives oppose it as well, because they see it as a first step toward a Canadian-style single-payer system.

No-one rules the world

US economic power is crumbling, but China is not yet ready to take over the reins. Martin Jacques reflects on the potential impact of the G20 ahead of world leaders arriving in London. Part of the NS's unrivalled coverage of the global crisis

Will Europe embrace President Obama like candidate Obama?

By Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — They gave him their hearts when he visited last summer. Now, the question hanging over Europe is how much more they'll give Barack Obama as he returns for the first time as president of the United States. Obama leaves on Tuesday on a whirlwind eight-day tour. He remains enormously popular in Europe, and the throngs that greeted him last summer as a candidate are likely to grow.

Un-Bottled Water Hits the U.S.

By Jennifer Berry, Earth911

posted: 28 March 2009 11:14 am ET

If you're an eco-conscious consumer and feel that small pang of guilt each time you purchase a new bottle of water, don't despair - a new solution is rolling out. Plant It Water™ recently launched its new "un-bottled" spring water, with packaging made from more than 60 percent renewable materials. The company is one of the first in the U.S. to offer water in a recyclable carton.

Unlike plastic water bottles, Plant It Water packaging uses materials from sources like plant fibers. Tetra Pak, the maker of the package, is considered one of the most sustainable liquid food packages on the market and won the presidential medal for sustainable development in 1996 by former Vice President Al Gore.

Krugman: the left's new anti-Obama

By: Mike Allen
March 28, 2009 11:02 AM EST

A stark image of Paul Krugman, the bearded New York Times op-ed columnist and Princeton economist, appears on the cover of next week’s Newsweek, with the headline “OBAMA IS WRONG: The Loyal Opposition of Paul Krugman.”

Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize in economics last fall, has been arguing that Obama is doing too little to respond to threats to the nation’s banking and economic system, and he has contended that the $787 billion stimulus bill should have been bigger.