Leaked Oil Trading Documents Underscore Role of Speculators in Oil Price Spikes; Identities of Traders Should Be Public

WASHINGTON - August 19 - Note: The Wall Street Journal this week ran a story about confidential documents from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that named traders who held oil futures in 2008, when oil prices spiked to record highs.

The growing controversy over the leaking of trading documents naming 219 investors in oil futures positions during the 2008 oil price spike shows two things.

First, the data reveals that excessive speculation by banks and others is the driving force in oil markets, pushing prices beyond the supply-demand fundamentals. Who wins when prices rise? Wall Street traders that are engaged in speculating. Who loses? Every consumer who fills up at the pump.

Stealing the Redistricting Process

By Harry Taylor

Created 08/19/2011 - 2:30pm

Late last month [1], four men chosen by the Mecklenburg County Commissioners (North Carolina) to serve on a bi-partisan panel to study and recommend new voting district boundaries decided instead to undermine the process [1] of which they’d agreed to be a part.

Without notice to either the county commissioners or their fellow panel members they made a hasty trip to Raleigh to meet with the leadership of the North Carolina General Assembly. Within hours, a bill to bypass the public process already underway was brought to a vote in both houses and passed.

And just that quickly, the rights of the citizens of Mecklenburg, Buncombe, and Gilpin Counties were usurped, literally stolen from us for political gain. [2]

Whether you lean right, left or somewhere in the middle – where most of us surely are – this action was a direct attack on your democracy, promulgated for unabashed political gain and power. When questioned about the tactic a sitting commissioner responded, “It’s politics.”

How Washington Could Create Jobs Right Now

Saturday 20 August 2011

by: Michael Winship, Truthout | Op-Ed

I like to ask friends about the oddest summer job they ever had. One talks about how he used to don a rubber suit every morning at a Sylvania electronics plant in Syracuse, NY, and climb into a tank, where he dipped television tubes into some sort of mercury solution. He now moonlights as a thermometer.

Another spent a summer walking from floor to floor of a Manhattan skyscraper. His job was to take a long stick and un-jam the mail chute that ran alongside the elevator banks from the highest floor of the building to the bottom. When he reached the basement, he took the elevator back to the top and started all over again, a Sisyphean postman.

The Global Tax Dodgers: Why President Obama and Congress Lack Job Creation Plans

Thursday, 08/18/2011 - 12:49 pm by William Lazonick

In the latest installment of his “Breaking Through the Jobless Recovery” series, economist William Lazonick explores why American business leaders have taken a hike on the nation.

By now the story is familiar. For the last decade US-based business corporations have been engaged in the massive offshoring of good jobs to high-growth, low-wage areas of the world, especially China and India. In general, these companies have found offshoring to be immensely profitable. For working people in the United States to gain some benefit from this globalization process, US-based corporations must repatriate some of their foreign profits to invest in high value-added job opportunities back home.

Yet prevailing US tax law both encourages offshoring and discourages the repatriation of profits. In principle, US individuals and corporations are supposed to pay US taxes on their worldwide income. Through an overseas tax deferral law, however, a US company does not pay the 35 percent corporation tax on foreign earnings until it repatriates these profits to the United States. The tax law gives US corporations an added incentive not only to offshore employment but also to reinvest the earnings of offshored operations outside the United States.

It's Not Just News Corp: Is Comcast Spying on You Every Day?

When Guardian reporter, Nick Davies, broke the story that Rupert Murdoch's News of the World had been hacking British citizens' voicemail messages, including those of a murdered teenager, there was a public outcry. Unfortunately, this is the tip of a glacial iceberg that has the potential to bring down a lot more than the News of the World.

Last year, without due public debate and input, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Justice Department approved a merger between Comcast and NBC Universal that gave the Internet cable giant control over the programming of NBC news. At the same time, pursuant to the 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act, Comcast as well as all other telecommunication companies are required to cooperate with the Federal government in providing the facility for government to search through all electronic communications sent down their pipes.

3 Ways To Have Economic Success Without Greedy Corporations and Huge Wealth Disparities

By Jeffrey Hollender, AlterNet
Posted on August 11, 2011, Printed on August 20, 2011

We know there's something seriously wrong with our economy. Our system of economic rules and incentives was developed, and continues to be molded, by large multinational companies and implemented by politicians eager do whatever it takes to raise money and ensure that they never have to leave office.

This unholy symphony, orchestrated by the US Chamber of Commerce, working hand-in-hand with other trade associations, has ensured that the rich keep getting richer to the astounding point that America now ranks as a less equal country than Egypt and Tunisia. (According to the CIA's World Fact Book, which ranks countries in terms of how "equally" wealth is distributed, the US is the 42nd most unequal country in the world.) This system moves us ever closer to such severe inequality that social disruption is an increasing risk. (Consider the London riots against the fact that, in Great Britain, one million people from the ages of 16 to 24 are officially unemployed, the most since the deep recession of the mid-1980s.)

Yet, it doesn't have to be this way.

Economic Myths: We Separate Fact From Fiction

by Michael Grabell
ProPublica, Aug. 18, 2011, 3:44 p.m.

With the recent Iowa straw poll and President Obama's bus tour, Americans are hearing a cacophony of arguments about the wobbly economy. The federal stimulus package passed in 2009 was either a deficit-busting failure full of wasteful projects or an unparalleled rescue that would have been more successful if it had only been bigger. Taxes are either stifling or the lowest they've ever been. America needs to invest in infrastructure, or "infrastructure" is merely a euphemism for more government spending. So, here's our guide to the most prevalent economic myths.

A Single-Payer Health System Is the Answer to Our Debt Woes

Political news has been dominated in recent months by debate about a "debt crisis" in the United States. Two leading newspapers now say the solution to our debt issues is apparent and relatively simple. But do the American people, and our leaders, have the will to see it through?

The answer, says the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in an editorial dated August 10, is a single-payer health system. The Charleston Gazette, in the capital city of West Virginia, followed up with a similar editorial on August 16.

Our Handy Guide to the Best Coverage on Gov. Rick Perry and His Record

by Braden Goyette
ProPublica, Aug. 18, 2011, 10:58 a.m.

This is the first installment in a series of reading guides on 2012 presidential candidates.

Rick Perry has made plenty of headlines since he announced his presidential bid. But with the deluge of day-to-day coverage, it’s hard to get a sense of his actual record. We’ve selected some of the best reading on Perry to help you get oriented.

The basics:

If you want to go beyond the bio on Perry's campaign page, Texas Monthly reporter Paul Burka’s guide for Yankee journalists is a good place to start. It’s a list of eight insights gleaned from covering Perry since the 1980s, including the ways that Perry has reinvented the role of governor in Texas, and how his rural upbringing has shaped his politics.

Christian Zionist Agenda Exposed by NAR Apostle Don Finto at Rick Perry Event, and Few Noticed

Rachel Tabachnick
Tue Aug 16, 2011 at 03:26:47 PM EST

Apostle Don Finto, joined by Messianic Rabbi Marty Waldman, delivered the Israel prayer at Rick Perry's August 6 prayer rally; not John Hagee. Finto is a leading figure in an international effort to encourage evangelicals to support Messianics and their ministries to evangelize Jews. (Messianic is the term for Jews who convert to Christianity but retain their Jewish identity.) Finto did not change his message for Perry's religio-political event, but prayed for Jews of Israel and the world to convert. The belief that the conversion of Jews is the trigger that will bring about the return of Jesus is part of the end times narrative being popularized by the apostles of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).

Wall Street firms donated $11.2 million to members of debt ‘super committee’

By Eric W. Dolan
Thursday, August 18th, 2011 -- 8:39 pm

The bipartisan "super committee" created by the debt ceiling deal is comprised of lawmakers who have received big bucks from special interest groups, according to a report by MapLight.

The committee is tasked with finding at least $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts over ten years.

In total, the twelve members appointed to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction got nearly $64.5 million from special interests groups over the past decade, with legal firms donating about $31.5 million and Wall Street firms donating about $11.2 million.

Revealed: Fake Facebook Identity Used By Military Contractors Plotting To Hack Progressive Organizations

By Lee Fang on Aug 18, 2011 at 12:05 pm

Earlier this year, ThinkProgress obtained 75,000 private emails from the defense contractor HBGary Federal via the hacktivist group called Anonymous. The emails led to two shocking revelations. First, that an assortment of private military firms collectively called “Team Themis” had been tapped by Bank of America to conduct a cyber war against reporters sympathetically covering the Wikileaks revelations. And second, that late in 2010, the same set of firms began work separately for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a Republican-aligned corporate lobbying group, to develop a similar campaign of sabotage against progressive organizations, including the SEIU and ThinkProgress.

The Dangerous Reagan Cult

August 16, 2011

Exclusive: Ronald Reagan’s anti-government philosophy inspires Tea Party extremists to oppose any revenue increase, even from closing loopholes on corporate jets. Democrats try the spin that “even Reagan” showed flexibility on debt and taxes. But Robert Parry says it is the “Reagan cult” that is at the heart of America’s crisis.

By Robert Parry

In the debt-ceiling debate, both Republicans and Democrats wanted Ronald Reagan on their side. Republicans embraced the 40^th president’s disdain for government and fondness for tax cuts, while Democrats noted that “even Reagan” raised the debt limit many times and accepted some tax increases.

But Reagan – possibly more than any political leader – deserves the blame for the economic/political mess that the United States now finds itself in. He was the patriarch for virtually every major miscalculation that the country has made over the past three decades.

Paul Krugman: A Success Story as Big as Texas? Actually, That's a Myth

Thursday 18 August 2011

by: Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co. | Op-Ed

Texas has been adding jobs faster than the rest of the nation, a fact that has become especially notable in the past couple of years — I recently saw it referred to as the Texas “jobs juggernaut” — as overall job growth has been so poor.

But what’s the story here? Oddly, it’s rare to see anyone in this debate talking in terms of models — that is, the kind of stylized, simplified, but internally consistent stories (not necessarily mathematical) that are what economic analysis is all about. So let me try to fill that gap by offering three informal models of what might be going on in Texas.

In each of these stories, I imagine, to clarify things, an initial state in which America is divided into two identical regions; call them Texas and New York. Each of these regions has a labor force that lives in houses; I ignore other factors of production, except that I assume that building houses requires land, which is in limited supply. And we assume that initially everything is in equilibrium: wages and the cost of housing are the same in both regions.

Why Civilian Control of the US Military Is Deeply Threatened

By Conn Hallinan, AlterNet
Posted on August 18, 2011, Printed on August 19, 2011

For decades the U.S. military has waged clandestine war on virtually every continent on the globe, but, for the first time, high-ranking Special Operations Forces (SOF) officers are moving out of the shadows and into the command mainstream. Their emergence suggests the U.S. is embarking on a military sea change that will replace massive deployments, like Iraq and Afghanistan, with stealthy night raids, secret assassinations, and death-dealing drones. Its implications for civilian control of foreign policy promises to be profound.

Early this month, Vice Adm. Robert Harward—a former commander of the SEALs—the Navy's elite SOF that recently killed al-Qaeda leader Osma bin Laden—was appointed deputy commander of Central Command, the military region that embraces the Middle East and Central Asia. Another SEAL commander, Vice Adm. Joseph Kernan, took over the number two spot in Southern Command, which covers Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Tea Party's Circular Logic

Its revolt undermines the private sector more than it reins in "big government."

By Simon Johnson
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2011, at 6:52 AM ET

America's Tea Party has a simple fiscal message: The United States is broke. This is factually incorrect—U.S. government securities remain one of the safest investments in the world—but the claim serves the purpose of dramatizing the federal budget and creating a great deal of hysteria around America's current debt levels. This then produces the fervent belief that government spending must be cut radically—and now.

There are legitimate fiscal issues that demand serious discussion, including how to control growth in health care spending and how best to structure tax reform. But the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party cares more about small government than anything else. Its members insist, above all, that federal tax revenue never be permitted to exceed 18 percent of GDP. Their historical antecedent is America's anti-revenue Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, not the original anti-British, pro-representation Boston Tea Party in 1773.

Digby: Sweetening the Perry Beat

I am watching the DC press fall for Rick Perry's macho swagger right before my eyes. And Democrats won't do anything about it because it might offend someone who identifies with him, so it's likely to go on for a little while, especially if he solidifies as the front runner.

This piece is getting wide attention tonight among media types who are very impressed with its allegedly nuanced take on the new "it" boy. It's written by a reporter who's been covering the southwest for The Economist for four years, who feels that Perry has gotten a bum rap for being dumb and extreme. The dumbness may be true for all I know -- he wouldn't be the first pol to cover his intellect with a good ole boy persona.

Most U.S. docs face malpractice suits but few pay

By Agence France-Presse
Wednesday, August 17th, 2011 -- 8:12 pm

WASHINGTON — More than three in four US doctors will face a malpractice suit at some point in their careers, but cash is paid in only about 20 percent of cases, said a US study released Wednesday.

The analysis by researchers at several major US medical schools and the RAND Corporation, a nonrofit research group, was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Obama’s FDR Moment

Wednesday, 08/17/2011 - 2:30 pm by Eliot Spitzer

Americans are looking to the President for bold ideas. Here are two.

President Obama should heed the famous wisdom of FDR: “Above all, try something.” Being passive in the face of rising anxiety breeds discontent, doubt, and ultimately, contempt.

Interestingly, the president’s one grand moment to date — his embrace of the plan to capture Osama Bin Laden –emerged from a willingness to be bold, even when many of his advisers were counseling otherwise. He defied the more modulated approaches many military advisers recommended, and the payoff, both substantive and political, was huge. The president should take this lesson and apply it to his actions in the domestic arena.

Higher Retirement Age? Lower Benefits? The President Says You Won't "Notice"

By Richard Eskow

Created 08/17/2011 - 2:55am

Back in my corporate days I sat in a boardroom with one of the most powerful and fearsome CEOs in the country. He had called in the executives that designed his employee benefits program and asked them to propose changes to the corporation's retirement and health programs. But he scowled and shook his head as they presented one set of options after another. Finally I asked the question the others were afraid to ask: What do you want to accomplish by changing your employees' benefits?

"I want to give them less," he said, "and make them think it's more."

Can James Murdoch argue himself out of this corner?

After the release of shocking new phone-hacking documents, the News Corporation executive is surely too compromised to stay

Brian Cathcart, guardian.co.uk,
Tuesday 16 August 2011 15.00 BST

Tom Watson MP said the new material was devastating and he was not exaggerating. Difficult though it may be to believe, documents released by the Commons culture, media and sport select committee are at least as damaging to News International management as the revelation last month that Milly Dowler's voicemail had been hacked. That news prompted disgrace and resignations: now we are looking at possible criminal charges at senior levels.

Assuming that these documents hold up to scrutiny, a whole raft of executives – not journalists or editors, but well above that level – are surely likely to be questioned by police investigating the possibility of a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Arrests in some cases must be likely.

Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?

A whistleblower claims that over the past two decades, the agency has destroyed records of thousands of investigations, whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals.

by: Matt Taibbi

Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time the cops fail to make a case. No more Lifetime channel specials where the murderer is unveiled after police stumble upon past intrigues in some old file – "Hey, chief, didja know this guy had two wives die falling down the stairs?" No more burglary sprees cracked when some sharp cop sees the same name pop up in one too many witness statements. This is a different world, one far friendlier to lawbreakers, where even the suspicion of wrongdoing gets wiped from the record.

That, it now appears, is exactly how the Securities and Exchange Commission has been treating the Wall Street criminals who cratered the global economy a few years back. For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed. By whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG. With a few strokes of the keyboard, the evidence gathered during thousands of investigations – "18,000 ... including Madoff," as one high-ranking SEC official put it during a panicked meeting about the destruction – has apparently disappeared forever into the wormhole of history.

Special prosecutor named in Prosser/Bradley altercation

Allegations of chokehold in Wisconsin Supreme Court chambers to be investigated

By Patrick Marley of the Journal Sentinel

Madison - Sauk County District Attorney Patricia Barrett will serve as special prosecutor in the investigation of a physical altercation between two state Supreme Court justices.

Justice Ann Walsh Bradley has said Justice David Prosser put her in a "chokehold" during a June argument over a case in her chambers. Others have said Bradley came at Prosser with fists raised and he put up his hands to block her or push her back.

Long-term unemployment wreaks mental toll on jobless

By Daniel Lippman | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Lisa Banks feels hopeless. She's lost an essential part of her identity: Her status as a proud full-time employee is gone.

Ever since the 44-year-old Germantown, Md., resident was laid off from her job as an administrator for a federal contractor in May 2009, she's sent out hundreds of resumes, but only had four interviews. She says she's depressed enough to try to seek out psychological help. But no luck there either: She doesn't have insurance to pay for it.

Must-Reads: The Late, Great Molly Ivins on Rick Perry

—By Asawin Suebsaeng | Tue Aug. 16, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

As Texas Gov. Rick Perry embarks on his Obama-bashing, evangelical-courting, tea party-outdoing campaign for the presidency, we miss Molly Ivins more than ever.

The late and celebrated liberal columnist was known as a writer of sparkling political commentary infused with a trenchant wit and copious shots of zero-bullshit humor. She was the consummate Texan, a ferocious populist critic of the American right wing, and a sorely missed Mother Jones contributor.

Meet the Christian Dominionist 'Prayer Warriors' Who Have Chosen Rick Perry as Their Vehicle to Power

By Rachel Tabachnick, AlterNet
Posted on August 15, 2011, Printed on August 16, 2011

Since he announced his candidacy on Saturday, Texas Governor Rick Perry has been hailed as the great GOP hope of 2012. Perry's entry into the chaotic Republican primary race has excited the establishment in part because he does not have Michele Bachmann's reputation for religious zealotry, yet can likely count on the support of the Religious Right.

Another advantage for Perry is support from an extensive 50-state “prayer warrior” network, organized by the New Apostolic Reformation. A religious-political movement whose leaders call themselves apostles and prophets, NAR shares its agenda for control of society and government with other “dominionists,” but has a distinctly different theology than other groups in the Religious Right. They have their roots in Pentecostalism (though their theology has been denounced as a heresy by Pentecostal denominations in the past). The movement is controversial, even inside conservative evangelical circles. Nevertheless, Perry took the gamble that NAR could help him win the primaries, a testament to the power of the apostles’ 50-state prayer warrior network.

President Obama's re-election economic policy

President Obama has abandoned evidence-based economics to return the US to growth in favour of the politics of deficit-cutting

Dean Baker
guardian.co.uk, Monday 15 August 2011 15.00 BST

A front page story in Sunday's New York Times gave the country the bad news. President Obama is no longer paying attention to economists and economics in designing economic policy. Instead, he will do what his campaign people tell him will get him re-elected, presumably by getting lots of money from Wall Street.

The article said that President Obama intends to focus on reducing government spending and cutting programmes like social security and Medicare. This is in spite of the fact that: "A wide range of economists say the administration should call for a new round of stimulus spending, as prescribed by mainstream economic theory, to create jobs and promote growth."

In other words, President Obama intends to ignore the path for getting the economy back to full employment that most economists advocate. Instead, he is going to cut government spending – because his chief of staff and former JP Morgan vice president Bill Daley and his top campaign adviser David Plouffe both say this is a good idea.

ALEC: Facilitating Corporate Influence Behind Closed Doors

by Mary Bottari

Through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), corporations pay to bring state legislators to one place, sit them down for a sales pitch on policies that benefit the corporate bottom line, then push “model bills” for legislators to make law in their states. Corporations also vote behind closed doors alongside politicians on this wishlist legislation through ALEC task forces. Notably absent were the real people who would actually be affected by many of those bills and policies.

Why the New Healthcare Law Should Have Been Based on Medicare (And What Democrats Should Have Learned By Now)

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Two appellate judges in Atlanta — one appointed by President Bill Clinton and one by George H.W. Bush – have just decided the Constitution doesn’t allow the federal government to require individuals to buy health insurance.

The decision is a major defeat for the White House. The so-called “individual mandate” is a cornerstone of the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s 2010 health care reform law, scheduled to go into effect in 2014.

Paul Krugman: The Texas Unmiracle

As expected, Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, has announced that he is running for president. And we already know what his campaign will be about: faith in miracles.

Some of these miracles will involve things that you’re liable to read in the Bible. But if he wins the Republican nomination, his campaign will probably center on a more secular theme: the alleged economic miracle in Texas, which, it’s often asserted, sailed through the Great Recession almost unscathed thanks to conservative economic policies. And Mr. Perry will claim that he can restore prosperity to America by applying the same policies at a national level.

So what you need to know is that the Texas miracle is a myth, and more broadly that Texan experience offers no useful lessons on how to restore national full employment.

The Real U.S. Crisis Is Not the Debt Downgrade: Simon Johnson

By Simon Johnson Aug 14, 2011 8:00 PM ET

The U.S. has a fiscal crisis, but not the one that everyone is talking about. Standard and Poor’s proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the U.S. still has the world’s preeminent reserve currency. When shocks hit -- and investors have no idea who or what might be next in line for a downgrade -- they buy U.S. government securities.

Downgrades don’t usually have this effect. For example, if S&P or other rating companies downgraded France, that would set off a crisis within the euro region -- pushing up interest rates on French government debt, undermining euro-area banks, and perhaps putting pressure on the fabric of the European Union itself. With a one-notch downgrade of the U.S. government, on the other hand, S&P inadvertently managed to lower the U.S.’s borrowing costs, both at the federal level and for homeowners who refinanced their mortgages.

The Next Debtpocalypse: Fiscal Meltdowns in the States

Inside the plan to gut state budgets and keep corporate America happy.

—By Siddhartha Mahanta

Fri Aug. 12, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

With the dust settling after the debt ceiling fight, Republicans—along with a few Democrats—are moving on to their next agenda item: blocking states from collecting millions in much-needed tax revenue from corporations.

The Business Activity Tax Simplification Act, or BATSA, passed out of the House Judiciary Committee in early July and is set to be taken up by the full House when Congress returns from its August recess. The bill, which is sponsored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), would forbid state and local governments in the 44 states that collect corporate income taxes from taxing a sizable chunk of corporate profits.

Nouriel 'Dr. Doom' Roubini: ‘Karl Marx Was Right’

By Joseph Lazzaro, U.S. Editor | August 13, 2011 10:05 PM EDT

There's an old axiom that goes "wise is the person who appreciates candor almost as much as good news" and with that as a guide, place the forthcoming decidedly in the category of candor.

Economist Nouriel "Dr. Doom" Roubini, the New York University professor who four years ago accurately predicted the global financial crisis, said one of economist Karl Marx's critiques of capitalism is playing itself out in the current global financial crisis.

The 15 most sustainable U.S. cities

by Claire Thompson
16 Jul 2009 1:54 PM

Seattle is the most sustainable big city in the nation, according to a list compiled by Smarter Cities, an NRDC project that looks at the progress American cities are making toward going green. Not surprisingly, San Francisco and Portland are the runners-up.

Using data from the EPA and the U.S. Census Bureau, as well as some voluntary survey responses from city governments, the project identified the top 15 large, medium, and small cities according to 10 different environmental criteria, from air quality to recycling to transportation.

Rick Perry's Army of God

A little-known movement of radical Christians and self-proclaimed prophets wants to infiltrate government, and Rick Perry might be their man.

by Forrest Wilder

On September 28, 2009, at 1:40 p.m., God’s messengers visited Rick Perry.

On this day, the Lord’s messengers arrived in the form of two Texas pastors, Tom Schlueter of Arlington and Bob Long of San Marcos, who called on Perry in the governor’s office inside the state Capitol. Schlueter and Long both oversee small congregations, but they are more than just pastors. They consider themselves modern-day apostles and prophets, blessed with the same gifts as Old Testament prophets or New Testament apostles.

The pastors told Perry of God’s grand plan for Texas. A chain of powerful prophecies had proclaimed that Texas was “The Prophet State,” anointed by God to lead the United States into revival and Godly government. And the governor would have a special role.

Betting on the Blind Side

Michael Burry always saw the world differently—due, he believed, to the childhood loss of one eye. So when the 32-year-old investor spotted the huge bubble in the subprime-mortgage bond market, in 2004, then created a way to bet against it, he wasn’t surprised that no one understood what he was doing. In an excerpt from his new book, The Big Short, the author charts Burry’s oddball maneuvers, his almost comical dealings with Goldman Sachs and other banks as the market collapsed, and the true reason for his visionary obsession.

Excerpted from The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, by Michael Lewis, to be published this month by W. W. Norton; © 2010 by the author.

In early 2004 a 32-year-old stock-market investor and hedge-fund manager, Michael Burry, immersed himself for the first time in the bond market. He learned all he could about how money got borrowed and lent in America. He didn’t talk to anyone about what became his new obsession; he just sat alone in his office, in San Jose, California, and read books and articles and financial filings. He wanted to know, especially, how subprime-mortgage bonds worked. A giant number of individual loans got piled up into a tower. The top floors got their money back first and so got the highest ratings from Moody’s and S&P, and the lowest interest rate. The low floors got their money back last, suffered the first losses, and got the lowest ratings from Moody’s and S&P. Because they were taking on more risk, the investors in the bottom floors received a higher rate of interest than investors in the top floors. Investors who bought mortgage bonds had to decide in which floor of the tower they wanted to invest, but Michael Burry wasn’t thinking about buying mortgage bonds. He was wondering how he might short, or bet against, subprime-mortgage bonds.

Every mortgage bond came with its own mind-numbingly tedious 130-page prospectus. If you read the fine print, you saw that each bond was its own little corporation. Burry spent the end of 2004 and early 2005 scanning hundreds and actually reading dozens of the prospectuses, certain he was the only one apart from the lawyers who drafted them to do so—even though you could get them all for $100 a year from 10kWizard.com.

Downsizing Sprawlopolis: Flabby City, Fit City

Sunday 14 August 2011

by: Jeffery J. Smith, Truthout | Op-Ed

The obese American is not just a person; it's also most US cities. Most cities here sprawl over way too much land for their number of inhabitants. Compare that footprint to Old World cities that are much more compact.

While we say "footprint," the more accurate term would be "tire track."

Our cities take up so much land not for humans, but for automobiles. Cars like wide streets, parking lots, driveways, parking garages for rest, gas stations for sustenance, repair shops and parts stores for health, dealer lots to show off, junk yards for final repose, plus highway patrol stations, parcels zoned commercial for insurance offices etc. Add it all up, cars take up as much surface area as do people in American cities [4].