11 February 2010

Bank bailout watchdog warns of commercial real estate crisis

Corbett B. Daly
Reuters US Online Report Politics News

Feb 11, 2010 00:07 EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The commercial real estate market has fallen more than 40 percent from early 2007 and a wave of loan failures in the next few years could threaten the economy just as it struggles back to its feet, a report from the panel overseeing the $700 billion bank bailout said.

"A significant wave of commercial mortgage defaults would trigger economic damage that could touch the lives of nearly every American," said the report, released on Thursday.

Can the FBI Secretly Track Your Cell Phone?

Michael Isikoff

The Justice Department is poised this week to publicly defend a little-known law-enforcement practice that critics say may be the "sleeper" privacy issue of the 21st century: the collection of cell-phone "tracking" records that identify the physical locations where the phones have been.

It may come as a surprise to most of the owners of the country's 277 million cell phones, but their cell-phone company retains records of where their device has been at all times—either because the phones have tiny GPS devices embedded inside or because each phone call is routed through towers that can be used to pinpoint the phones' location to within areas as small as a few hundred feet.

One in ten House Republicans calling it quits

By Daniel Tencer
Thursday, February 11th, 2010 -- 1:05 pm

With Thursday's announcement that Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL) will not seek re-election in his Miami-area district, the number of Republicans not running for re-election to the House now amounts to more than 10 percent of the House Republican caucus, compared to less than five percent for Democrats.

Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post notes that the total number of House Republicans set to retire or seek other office is now 18, or slightly more than 10 percent of the 178 seats the GOP holds in the House.

To Fix America

by: Ian Welsh

Wed Feb 10, 2010 at 23:53

Don Peck at the Atlantic has noticed that employment is unlikely to recover to pre-great recession levels (let alone Clintonian levels) for a long, long time. This was totally predictable, and predicted. He also notes that even people like Paul Krugman really have no idea how to fix it.

Yes. Employment as a percentage of the workforce will not recover for a generation. And my bet is that median real income won’t either.

Andrew Breitbart and the Vince Foster conspiracists

February 04, 2010 5:21 pm ET

If there's anything more bizarre than an Andrew Breitbart conspiracy theory, it's the decision of so many mainstream reporters to handle him with kid gloves. Breitbart is waging war on the establishment media, and they respond with friendly profiles that whitewash his dishonesty and sleaziness -- apparently not realizing that by legitimizing Breitbart, they hasten their own downfall.

If Breitbart has one defining characteristic, it is his flagrant dishonesty -- a dishonesty that is apparent not only in his willingness to traffic in bogus attacks, but in his rejection of basic standards of proof and logic and reason and consistency. And yet the typical profile of Breitbart portrays him simply as an eccentric but brilliant entrepreneur waging a valiant and impressively successful struggle against craven and corrupt elites -- while his dishonesty goes unmentioned and his critics go unquoted.

Right-wing media narrative on Christmas Day plot falling apart

February 09, 2010 7:50 pm ET

The right-wing media narrative that the Obama administration endangered security by giving Miranda rights to alleged attempted Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is falling apart. Contrary to claims based on unnamed sources in the right-wing media, Obama administration officials agree that Abdulmutallab gave valuable intelligence during his first interrogation and that Abdulmutallab has begun divulging intelligence again.

False framing: Why is the NY Times spreading "half-truths" about global warming?

February 10, 2010 5:11 pm ET by Jeremy Schulman

The New York Times' Elisabeth Rosenthal framed a front-page article around a series of attacks on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its chairman, Rajendra K. Pachauri. But after suggesting in its original headline that these attacks somehow undercut the IPCC's "credibility," the Times waited until much later in the article to acknowledge that they are actually based on a series of "half-truths" and that "mainstream scientists" agree that they don't undermine the IPCC's conclusions that humans are warming the planet.

Time to Tax Financial Speculation

For those of us who want the financial industry to serve people and the planet rather than dominate them, this is the most exciting reform under serious consideration on the world stage.

by Sarah Anderson

For decades, international activists have been pushing the idea of a tax on financial transactions. Such a tax would give us a twofer: a drop in short-term speculation that serves no productive purpose and leads to dangerous bubbles, and 2) loads of money that could be used for good things, like health, climate, and jobs programs.

Today, we’re closer to achieving this two-for-one deal than we’ll probably ever be in our lifetimes. Reeling from the worst financial crisis in 80 years, policymakers are not only desperate for new sources of revenue, they’re more open to rethinking the role of Wall Street and making sure it serves real economic needs.

Book review: 'Bomb Power' by Garry Wills

Gary Wills begins his provocative account of the atomic bomb's impact on the republic with a high-detonation assertion. "The Bomb," he writes, "altered our subsequent history down to its deepest constitutional roots," redefining the presidency in ways that the Constitution does not intend.

Biblical Capitalism - The Sacralizing of Political and Economic Issues

By Rachel Tabachnick Wed Feb 10, 2010 at 10:36:56 PM EST

Welcome to readers from PA Progress 2010! Keystone Progress held their first conference in Harrisburg Pennsylvania on January 29 and 30. I was honored and excited to be able to participate in this successful event which drew over 500 progressive activists from across Pennsylvania. My presentation was titled "The Sacralizing of Political and Economic Issues" and included a PowerPoint presentation in which I tracked the history and activism related to "biblical capitalism." The presentation is not anti-religious, anti-bible, nor anti-capitalist, but addresses the ideology that unregulated capitalism is dictated by biblical law. In other words, biblical capitalism is the belief that government intervention in the marketplace is against God's will.

As progressives, we are well aware of the role of the Religious Right in issues such as gay rights and women's rights. However, the Religious Right's war on progressive economic policy, regulation, progressive tax structures, and labor unions is often overlooked. Radical free market ideology is being taught to students and adults as a biblical mandate and those in opposition are being literally demonized. Revisionist textbooks rewriting science and social sciences to align with literal biblical interpretations, are widely used in homeschooling, some private schools, and also by "family values" organizations and adult seminars.

Rachel Maddow Exposes GOP Welfare Queens Who Attacked Obama's Stimulus, Yet Enjoyed Billions in Benefits

By , AlterNet
Posted on February 11, 2010, Printed on February 11, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145629/

Editor's note: The following is a transcript from the Rachel Maddow Show.

At the top of the show today, we talked about the myth of bipartisanship, the futility of Democrats, including the president, wasting time trying to persuade Republicans to go along with them on policies that are good for the country.

It totally makes sense in the abstract if people can agree on what needs to be done to solve the country‘s problems than those policies, even if they‘re big policies, should get votes from everyone who‘s in agreement.

In the abstract that‘s how it works. In Washington, that is not at all how it works. Republicans proposed a deficit commission. President Obama endorsed the idea so then Republicans decided they‘re against it.

Home Underwater? Walk Away from Geithner's Perverse 'Homeowner Relief' Plan

By Zach Carter, AlterNet

Posted on February 10, 2010, Printed on February 11, 2010

The homeowner relief plan adopted by President Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has not been working for a full year now. What's worse, as the program is currently structured, its chief benefits accrue directly to the nation's largest banks, leaving troubled borrowers to twist in the wind. But despite the administration's indifference, underwater borrowers can still take matters into their own hands. If you owe more than your house is worth, just walk away.

"The rational thing for these people to do is to send the keys to the bank and say, 'Good luck,'" says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy and Research. "Every month that you keep that person in their home paying that mortgage, that's a gift to the bank. So if you could keep a lot of people from sending their keys to the bank, and keep sending their checks instead, that helps the banks directly."

10 February 2010

Haiti, Forgive Us

By Amy Goodman

The tragedy of the Haitian earthquake continues to unfold, with slow delivery of aid, the horrific number of amputations performed out of desperate medical necessity, more than a million homeless, perhaps 240,000 dead, hunger, dehydration, the emergence of infections and waterborne diseases, and the approach of the rainy season, which will be followed by the hurricane season. Haiti has suffered a massive blow, an earthquake for which its infrastructure was not prepared, after decades—no, centuries—of military and economic manipulation by foreign governments, most notably the United States and France.

Haiti was a slave plantation controlled by France. In 1804, inspired by Toussaint L’Ouverture (after whom the now barely functioning airport in Port-au-Prince is named), the slaves rebelled, founding the world’s first black republic. Under military threat from France in 1825, Haiti agreed to pay reparations to France for lost “property,” including slaves that French owners lost in the rebellion. It was either agree to pay the reparations or have France invade Haiti and reimpose slavery. Many Haitians believe that original debt, which Haiti dutifully paid through World War II, committed Haiti to a future of poverty that it has never been able to escape. (While France, as part of the deal, recognized Haiti’s sovereignty, slave-owning politicians in the United States, like Thomas Jefferson, refused to recognize the black republic, afraid it would inspire a slave revolt here. The U.S. withheld formal recognition until 1862.)

How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America How should we characterize the economic period we have now entered? After nearly two brutal years, the Gr

How should we characterize the economic period we have now entered? After nearly two brutal years, the Great Recession appears to be over, at least technically. Yet a return to normalcy seems far off. By some measures, each recession since the 1980s has retreated more slowly than the one before it. In one sense, we never fully recovered from the last one, in 2001: the share of the civilian population with a job never returned to its previous peak before this downturn began, and incomes were stagnant throughout the decade. Still, the weakness that lingered through much of the 2000s shouldn’t be confused with the trauma of the past two years, a trauma that will remain heavy for quite some time.

The unemployment rate hit 10 percent in October, and there are good reasons to believe that by 2011, 2012, even 2014, it will have declined only a little. Late last year, the average duration of unemployment surpassed six months, the first time that has happened since 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking that number. As of this writing, for every open job in the U.S., six people are actively looking for work.

09 February 2010

My Tea-Stained Weekend

February 09, 2010 5:49 pm ET by Melinda Warner

An evangelical conservative turned progressive goes to the Tea Party Convention

The Tea Party movement, with its loud crowds and explicit signage, has been an intriguing force for months. Their rallies, protests, and townhall appearances have created a storm seldom seen in American history.

Those outside the movement have had a difficult time understanding the motivation behind the passion. The ideals of small government and lower taxes are clearly evident - but why are those goals manifesting themselves in this way?

Understanding the people behind the Tea Party is what drove my employer, Media Matters, to send me to the first Tea Party Convention. Instead of attending as a member of the media, I was to experience the convention as a member, a Tea Partier, a conservative.

It was fascinating.

Jingoism and the Budget Deficit: Using Any Tactic to Advance the Budget Cutting Agenda

The deficit hawks apparently believe that their case is so weak that they must resort to crass jingoism to push their agenda. NBC apparently intends to run a piece on the evening news on Tuesday that talks about the portion of the government debt that is owned foreigners, highlighting the role of China.

This is incredibly dishonest. The extent to which foreigners hold U.S. assets is determined by the trade deficit, not the budget deficit. (Actually, the causation largely goes the other way. The decision of foreign governments and/or investors to buy dollar assets raises the value of the dollar, leading to a larger trade deficit.)

Revised Baseline Scenario: February 9, 2010

Caution: this is a long post (about 3,000 words). The main points are in the first few hundred words and the remainder is supportive detail. This material was the basis of testimony to the Senate Budget Committee today by Simon Johnson.

A. Main Points

1) In recent months, the US economy entered a recovery phase following the severe credit crisis-induced recession of 2008-09. While slower than it should have been based on previous experience, growth has surprised on the upside in the past quarter. This will boost headline year-on-year growth above the current consensus for 2010. We estimate the global economy will grow over 4 percent, as measured by the IMF’s year-on-year headline number (their latest published forecast is for 3.9 percent), with US growth in the 3-4 percent range – calculated on the same basis.

2) But thinking in terms of these headline numbers masks a much more worrying dynamic. A major sovereign debt crisis is gathering steam in Europe, focused for now on the weaker countries in the eurozone, but with the potential to spillover also to the United Kingdom. These further financial market disruptions will not only slow the European economies – we estimate growth in the euro area will fall to around 0.5 percent Q4 on Q4 (the IMF puts this at 1.1 percent, but the January World Economic Outlook update was prepared before the Greek crisis broke in earnest) – it will also cause the euro to weaken and lower growth around the world.

Goldman link to Greek financial crisis?



Is it really surprising any more? What happens in 10 or 15 years when this "complex financial product" unravels? Where will the highly paid financial consultants be? You have to wonder if Goldman will always remain above the law or if they will continue to call the shots since they make the law.

The Right-Wing, Pro-Business Advocacy Ad That Went Unnoticed During The Super Bowl

While people were focused on the fact that CBS allowed a pro-life advocacy ad by Focus on the Family to play during the Super Bowl, another one by a right-wing group slipped in unnoticed: a “Defeat the Debt” ad showing schoolchildren pledging allegiance “to America’s debt, and to the Chinese government that lends us money.”

White House press secretary writes grocery list on hand, mocks Palin

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, in a nod to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, wrote a faux shopping list on his hand in dark pen Tuesday in response to reports over the weekend that Palin had written notes to herself during the Tea Party Convention this past weekend.

Battle begins over who'll get lucrative Haiti cleanup contracts

It's unclear at this point who will be awarding the cleanup contracts, but there is big money to be made in the rubble of some 225,000 collapsed homes and at least 25,000 government and office buildings. At least two politically connected U.S. firms have enlisted powerful local allies in Haiti to help compete for the high-stakes business.

Hal Lindsey Implies the Need for Arab Detention Camps

By wilkyjr
Mon Feb 08, 2010 at 09:22:25 AM EST

The Feb. 6, 2010 Hal Lindsey Report had its usual hard right slant to current events. It is quickly noted that Lindsey is not a friend of the current administration in the nation. He has a long history of attacking President Obama and often complains that the President has a secret agenda to harm the Christian faith.

On Saturday Hal Lindsey caught us up on our history lessons. He reminded us that after Pearl Harbor in 1941, the government set up detention camps for American Japanese citizens. Lindsey politely excused imself, then insinuated we ought to consider doing the same things with the followers of Islam in the nation. He reminded us that in the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan targeted miliitary settlements. In 9/11, the terrorists attacked citizens, thus they were committing an even graver assault on America.

Globalization Is Killing the Globe: Return to Local Economies

by Thom Hartmann

Globalization is killing Europe, just as it's already wiped out much of the American middle class.

Spain and Greece are facing immediate crises that many other European nations see on the near horizon: aging boomer workers are retiring with healthy benefit packages, but the younger workers who are paying for those benefits aren't making anything close to the income (or, therefore, paying the taxes) that their parents did.

Globalists/corporatists/conservative "free market" and "flat earth" advocates say this is a great opportunity to cut benefits for the old folks (and for the young folks in the future), thus bringing the countries budgets back into balance, and this story is the main corporate media storyline.

The Worst of the Pain

There is a great tendency in this country to refuse to see what is right in front of everybody’s eyes.

While there is now, finally, a great deal of talk among the politicians and in the news media about unemployment, there is still almost a willful refusal to focus on just who is suffering the most from joblessness and underemployment.

When it comes to employment, there are roughly three broad categories in the United States. The folks in the upper-income group are not suffering much, if at all, from the profound reversals in employment brought about by the Great Recession. Those in the middle have been hit hard. The job losses there have been severe and long-lasting. But for those in the lower-income groups, the scale of the employment crisis has been mind-boggling.

False Profits: We Will Be Suffering from Greenspan and Bernanke's Ineptitude for a Long Time

By Dean Baker, PoliPoint Press
Posted on February 9, 2010, Printed on February 9, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145248/

The following is an excerpt from Dean Baker's new book: False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy (PoliPointPress, 2010).

As the nation struggles to recover from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the people who got us here are desperately working to rewrite history. The basic story of this economic collapse is very simple. The Federal Reserve Board, guided by its revered chairman, Alan Green span, allowed an $8 trillion housing bubble to grow unchecked.

Arguably, the Fed even fostered the bubble's growth, seeing it as the only source of dynamism in an economy that was suffering from the aftershocks of the collapse of a $10 trillion stock bubble. Greenspan repeatedly insisted that the housing market was just fine, even as a small group of economists and analysts raised concerns about the unprecedented run-up in house prices. He also dismissed concerns about the questionable mortgages the banks were issuing on a massive scale during the bubble years. In fact, he even encouraged people to take out adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) at a time when fixed-rate mortgages were near a 50-year low.

Our Democracy No Longer Works and the Problem Is Congress

By Lawrence Lessig, The Nation
Posted on February 9, 2010, Printed on February 9, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145595/

We should remember what it felt like one year ago, as the ability to recall it emotionally will pass and it is an emotional memory as much as anything else. It was a moment rare in a democracy's history. The feeling was palpable--to supporters and opponents alike--that something important had happened. America had elected, the young candidate promised, a transformational president. And wrapped in a campaign that had produced the biggest influx of new voters and small-dollar contributions in a generation, the claim seemed credible, almost intoxicating, and just in time.

Yet a year into the presidency of Barack Obama, it is already clear that this administration is an opportunity missed. Not because it is too conservative. Not because it is too liberal. But because it is too conventional. Obama has given up the rhetoric of his early campaign--a campaign that promised to "challenge the broken system in Washington" and to "fundamentally change the way Washington works." Indeed, "fundamental change" is no longer even a hint.

Blind spots to the right

By Julian Delasantellis

Can you believe that there are still silly people who deny that in the pages of the great classics of the past can be found invaluable lessons for today? Take this passage from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1806 masterpiece Faust:
This senseless, juggling witchcraft I detest!
Dost promise that in this foul nest
Of madness, I shall be restored?
It should be obvious to all that, today, this is the internal monologue of a respectable journalist wrestling with his conscience over a lucrative job offer from Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News.

08 February 2010

Bank Securitization Woes Only Beginning

We remarked last week that the FDIC had put forward a proposal for fixing the securitization market. To be a bit more precise, it was the FDIC’s plan, put forward for public comment, of the rules it wanted to have in place for banks to get “safe harbor”, meaning off balance sheet treatment, for their securitizations.

As anyone who had even slight contact with the business press no doubt knows, a whole raft of credit bubble era securitizations, particularly real estate and credit cards, have suffered losses far in excess of what banks and investors anticipated. The result, with real estate securitizations, is that almost all of the market ex government guaranteed paper is in a deep freeze. Worse, servicers, who were never set up to do loan mods (and by happenstance also make more by not doing mods) are operating to the disadvantage of investors and communities (as we have mentioned on previous posts, vulture investor Wilbur Ross, the antithesis of a bleeding heart, has demonstrated that deep principal reductions work and for viable borrowers produce better results for the investors than foreclosures). For credit card conduits, rather than let them flounder (banks desperately need to keep that pipeline open) banks have intervened to shore them up, raising serious questions about their off balance sheet treatment.

Apostles of Nihilism

Republicans are winning the war of political rhetoric. Here's how the president needs to fight back.

The sense of hope that swept in with President Obama has been supplanted by existential doubt: Can the nation ever address its critical structural crises in health care, financial services, energy, and education?

Governmental gridlock has frozen us while many of our competitors—most notably the BRIC nations—eat our lunch. The notion is gaining traction that our system of government cannot confront tough issues and that other, more autocratic nations will be better-suited to the nimble shifts in policy that are needed to maintain a competitive position in the world. As Tom Friedman has said, "We need to be China for a day." Who's to blame for this mess? One theory that has some merit and current appeal is that legislatures—which by their very nature and structure are designed to protect the status quo—are responsible. Legislators get re-elected in their gerrymandered districts by appealing to the current establishment. Transformative policies do not have a broad enough base of appeal to sweep away local ossifying forces.

Paul Krugman: America Is Not Yet Lost

We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic.

What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we’re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland.

A brief history lesson: In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting “I do not allow!” This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century.

Today, the U.S. Senate seems determined to make the Sejm look good by comparison.

Pentagon’s Black Budget Tops $56 Billion

By Noah Shachtman | February 1, 2010 | 3:57 pm

The Defense Department just released its king-sized, $708 billion budget for the next fiscal year. Much of the proposed spending is fairly detailed — noting exactly how many helicopters the Pentagon plans to buy and how many troops it plans on playing. But about $56 billion goes simply to “classified programs,” or to projects known only by their code names, like “Chalk Eagle” and “Link Plumeria.” That’s the Pentagon’s black budget.

In a Message to Democrats, Wall St. Sends Cash to G.O.P.

WASHINGTON — If the Democratic Party has a stronghold on Wall Street, it is JPMorgan Chase.

Its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, is a friend of President Obama’s from Chicago, a frequent White House guest and a big Democratic donor. Its vice chairman, William M. Daley, a former Clinton administration cabinet official and Obama transition adviser, comes from Chicago’s Democratic dynasty.

But this year Chase’s political action committee is sending the Democrats a pointed message. While it has contributed to some individual Democrats and state organizations, it has rebuffed solicitations from the national Democratic House and Senate campaign committees. Instead, it gave $30,000 to their Republican counterparts.

The shift reflects the hard political edge to the industry’s campaign to thwart Mr. Obama’s proposals for tighter financial regulations.

07 February 2010

James O'Keefe and the white supremacists: As Breitbart runs screaming for cover, bigger questions loom

-- by Dave

James O'Keefe and his boss, Andrew Breitbart, already are having trouble keeping their stories straight on O'Keefe's illegal attempts to access Sen. Mary Landrieu's phone system.

And now that Max Blumenthal has ripped off the facade from O'Keefe's background as a race-baiting right-wing dirty trickster the other day, they're having even more trouble.

Blumenthal reported in Salon that O'Keefe was actively involved in helping promote a white-nationalist conference in 2006:
Now an activist organization that monitors hate groups has produced a photo of O'Keefe at a 2006 conference on "Race and Conservatism" that featured leading white nationalists. The photo, first published Jan. 30 on the Web site of the anti-racism group One People's Project, shows O’Keefe at the gathering, which was so controversial even the ultra-right Leadership Institute, which employed O'Keefe at the time, withdrew its backing. But O'Keefe and fellow young conservative provocateur Marcus Epstein soldiered on to give anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism an opportunity to share their grievances and plans to make inroads in the GOP.

Digby: Squids And Showdogs Working Together

The NY Times published an interesting article today about Goldman and AIG that doesn't really break any new ground, but puts the narrative together nicely, charts and graphs included. If you haven't been following the saga of the thick and plodding AIG getting squeezed by the Vampire Squid, this is as good a place to catch up as any.

The question of whether or not Goldman did anything illegal or was just doing what any dominant capitalistic predator would do remains unknown. But I was actually more interested in the questions raised at Naked Capitalism about what was missing from the piece rather than what was in it:
Doubts about the monolines were becoming serious in the first acute phase of the credit crisis, September-October 2007. They were a daily focus in the business press in January-February 2008. Bear went under and was rescued because its failure would have rocked the CDS market.

GOP talking about cutting Social Security again, when the real budget problem is health care

by Steve Kyle (NY) on 2/07/2010 07:01:00 PM

Two Republicans, Alan Greenspan and Hank Paulson, sat on Meet the Press this morning and told us that there is no way out of our fiscal mess that doesn't involve cutting entitlements. And first on their list is Social Security.

First, why should anyone believe what these two guys have to say? They presided over the monetary policy and the fiscal policy that got us into our current economic mess.

Second, why on earth does the supposedly he-said/she-said addicted mainstream press have only discredited Republicans to talk about economics? Aren't there no Democrats available?

Frank Rich: Smoke the Bigots Out of the Closet

A funny thing happened after Adm. Mike Mullen called for gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military: A curious silence befell much of the right. If this were a Sherlock Holmes story, it would be the case of the attack dogs that did not bark.

John McCain, commandeering the spotlight as usual, did fulminate against the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But the press focus on McCain, the crazy man in Washington’s attic, was misleading. His yapping was an exception, not the rule.

Many of his Republican colleagues said little or nothing. The right’s noise machine was on mute. The Fox News report on Mullen’s testimony was fair and balanced — and brief. The network dropped the subject entirely in the Hannity-O’Reilly hothouse of prime time that night. Only ratings-desperate CNN gave a fleeting platform to the old homophobic clichés. Michael O’Hanlon, an “expert” from the Brookings Institution, speculated that “18-year-old, old-fashioned, testosterone-laden” soldiers who are “tough guys” might object to those practicing “alternative forms of lifestyle,” which he apparently views as weak and testosterone-deficient. His only prominent ally was the Family Research Council, which issued an inevitable “action alert” demanding a stop to “the sexualization of our military.”

UK economy 'faces crisis' warns former IMF economist

Britain should be seen in the same category of countries as Greece and Spain, who are facing severe debt problems, a leading economist has said.

Ex-IMF chief economist Simon Johnson, also described the G7 group of leading economies as "fundamentally useless".

His comments to the BBC came as G7 finance ministers discussed the growing crisis in some Eurozone nations.