Gop will gain more power without that messy voting thing.
You Won't Believe These Suez Canal Conspiracies
3 years ago
Friday, December 31, 2010
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010
Show Me Progress:: How Claire McCaskill's enables GOP "zombie" ideas
Show Me Progress:: How Claire McCaskill's enables GOP "zombie" ideas
click link above. Claire McCaskill, keep this up and Missouri will soon have another Gop senator
click link above. Claire McCaskill, keep this up and Missouri will soon have another Gop senator
Stark, Herger vow to reintroduce Medicare fraud bill next year - The Hill's Healthwatch
Stark, Herger vow to reintroduce Medicare fraud bill next year - The Hill's Healthwatch
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click link above for article.
I do not like Stark, nor do I trust him; but this is a good idea. Rewarding Medicare fraud is insane
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click link above for article.
I do not like Stark, nor do I trust him; but this is a good idea. Rewarding Medicare fraud is insane
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Obama style--some not happy
seems some union folks not timid on 'Obama style'. This snip from today's countdown.
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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Friday, December 3, 2010
Ron Paul--Fed bailout of foreign banks
Rarely do I agree with Ron Paul, but he is right on this one.
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SPREADTHISINFO2 | December 02, 2010 | 13 likes, 0 dislikes
One may be forgiven to believe that via its FX liquidity swap lines the Fed only bailed out foreign Central Banks, which in turn took the money and funded their own banks. It turns out that is only half the story: we now know the Fed also acted in a secondary bail out capacity, providing over $350 billion in short term funding exclusively to 35 foreign banks, of which the biggest beneficiaries were UBS, Dexia and BNP. Since the funding provided was in the form of ultra-short maturity commercial paper it was essentially equivalent to cash funding. In other words, between October 27, 2008 and August 6, 2009, the Fed spent $350 billion in taxpayer funds to save 35 foreign banks. And here people are wondering if the Fed will ever allow stocks to drop: it is now more than obvious that with all banks leveraging the equity exposure to the point where a market decline would likely start a Lehman-type domino, there is no way that the Brian Sack-led team of traders will allow stocks to drop ever... Until such time nature reasserts itself, the market collapses without GETCO or the PPT being able to catch it, and the Fed is finally wiped out in one way or another.
The 35 companies in question:
UBS
Dexia SA
BNP Paribas
Barclays PLC
Royal Bank of Scotland Group
Commerzbank AG
Danske Bank A/S
ING Groep NV
WestLB
Handelsbanken
Deutsche Post AG
Erste Group Bank AG
NordLB
Free State of Bavaria
KBC
HSH Nordbank AG
Unicredit
HSBC Holdings PLC
DZ Bank AG
Republic of Korea
Rabobank
Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation
Banco Espirito Santo SA
Bank of Nova Scotia
Mizuho Corporate Bank, Ltd.
Syngenta AG
Mitsui & Co Ltd
Bank of Montreal
Caixa Geral de Depósitos
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group
Shinhan Financial Group Co Ltd
Mitsubishi Corp
Aegon NV
Royal Bank of Canada
Sumitomo Corp
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defaul...
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SPREADTHISINFO2 | December 02, 2010 | 13 likes, 0 dislikes
One may be forgiven to believe that via its FX liquidity swap lines the Fed only bailed out foreign Central Banks, which in turn took the money and funded their own banks. It turns out that is only half the story: we now know the Fed also acted in a secondary bail out capacity, providing over $350 billion in short term funding exclusively to 35 foreign banks, of which the biggest beneficiaries were UBS, Dexia and BNP. Since the funding provided was in the form of ultra-short maturity commercial paper it was essentially equivalent to cash funding. In other words, between October 27, 2008 and August 6, 2009, the Fed spent $350 billion in taxpayer funds to save 35 foreign banks. And here people are wondering if the Fed will ever allow stocks to drop: it is now more than obvious that with all banks leveraging the equity exposure to the point where a market decline would likely start a Lehman-type domino, there is no way that the Brian Sack-led team of traders will allow stocks to drop ever... Until such time nature reasserts itself, the market collapses without GETCO or the PPT being able to catch it, and the Fed is finally wiped out in one way or another.
The 35 companies in question:
UBS
Dexia SA
BNP Paribas
Barclays PLC
Royal Bank of Scotland Group
Commerzbank AG
Danske Bank A/S
ING Groep NV
WestLB
Handelsbanken
Deutsche Post AG
Erste Group Bank AG
NordLB
Free State of Bavaria
KBC
HSH Nordbank AG
Unicredit
HSBC Holdings PLC
DZ Bank AG
Republic of Korea
Rabobank
Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation
Banco Espirito Santo SA
Bank of Nova Scotia
Mizuho Corporate Bank, Ltd.
Syngenta AG
Mitsui & Co Ltd
Bank of Montreal
Caixa Geral de Depósitos
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group
Shinhan Financial Group Co Ltd
Mitsubishi Corp
Aegon NV
Royal Bank of Canada
Sumitomo Corp
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defaul...
Fed Bank Documents Revealed --shame
amazing facts in this short. Thanks to Senator Sanders whose work made this disclosure possible.
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TheYoungTurks | December 01, 2010 | http://www.theyoungturks.com WASHINGTON — As financial markets shuddered and...
WASHINGTON — As financial markets shuddered and then nearly imploded in 2008, the Federal Reserve opened its vault to the world on a scope much wider and deeper than previously disclosed.
Citigroup, struggling to stay afloat, sought help from the Fed at least 174 times during one remarkable 13-month period. Barclays, the British bank, at one point owed nearly $48 billion to the Fed. Even better-off banks like Goldman Sachs took advantage of Fed loans offered at rock-bottom rates.
The Fed's efforts to stave off a financial crisis reached far beyond Wall Street, touching manufacturers like General Electric, the Detroit automakers and Harley-Davidson, central banks from Britain to Japan and insurers and pension funds in Sweden and South Korea.
Under orders from Congress, the Fed on Wednesday released details of more than 21,000 transactions under the array of emergency lending programs and other arrangements it conjured up in response to the crisis.
The disclosures, which the Fed had resisted, offer the most detailed portrait of a panicky period in which the Fed lent money to banks, brokers, businesses and investors to keep the financial system functioning.
The documents show that some of the biggest names in American business were either coming to the Fed in need of a bailout, or trying to make money at a time when the Fed was trying to entice investors back into the markets. Among the latter were prominent investors and entrepreneurs like John A. Paulson and Michael S. Dell, and the pension funds of the Philadelphia Teamsters and Omaha's teachers, who were betting they could profit if the rescue worked.
At its peak at the end of 2008, the Fed had about $1.5 trillion in outstanding credit on its books. The central bank, in essence, pumped liquidity, the lifeblood of credit markets, into the circulatory system of an economy that was experiencing a potentially fatal heart attack.
"I think our actions prevented an even more disastrous outcome," said Donald L. Kohn, who was the Fed's vice chairman during the crisis. Without the Fed's help, he said, "liquidity would have dried up even more than it did, asset prices would have fallen even more than they did, and economic activity and employment would have fallen further and faster then they did."
But Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, who wrote a provision in the law requiring the disclosures by Dec. 1, reached a different conclusion.
"After years of stonewalling by the Fed, the American people are finally learning the incredible and jaw-dropping details of the Fed's multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America," he said. "Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out foreign private banks and corporations."
Mr. Sanders said the Fed should have forced banks to restrict executive pay and reduce the financial burdens on mortgage borrowers as a condition of its aid.
The Fed, already reeling from attacks from both the right and the left over its latest effort to spur the economy, a plan to buy $600 billion in Treasury securities, braced itself for another moment in the spotlight.
In a statement accompanying the disclosure, the Fed said it had fully protected taxpayers. "The Federal Reserve followed sound risk-management practices in administering all of these programs, incurred no credit losses on programs that have been wound down, and expects to incur no credit losses on the few remaining programs," it said.
The 21,000 transactions span the period from December 2007 to last July.
Even as investors began poring over the disclosures, details emerged from the trove of new data.
From December 2007 to October 2008, the Fed opened swap lines with foreign central banks, allowing them to temporarily trade their currencies for dollars to relieve pressures in their financial markets.
The European Central Bank drew the most heavily on these currency arrangements, the records show, but nine other central banks also made use of them: Australia, Denmark, England, Japan, Mexico, Norway, South Korea, Sweden and Switzerland.
At home, from March 2008 to May 2009, the Fed extended a cumulative total of nearly $9 trillion in short-term loans to 18 financial institutions under a credit program.
Previously, the Fed had only revealed that four financial firms had tapped the special lending program, and did not reveal their identities or the loan amounts.
The data appeared to confirm that Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley were under severe strain after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. All three tapped the program on more than 100 occasions.
The American subsidiaries of several foreign banks also benefited substantially from the program. Those institutions included UBS of Switzerland; Mizuho Securities of Japan; and BNP Paribas of France.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/bus...
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TheYoungTurks | December 01, 2010 | http://www.theyoungturks.com WASHINGTON — As financial markets shuddered and...
WASHINGTON — As financial markets shuddered and then nearly imploded in 2008, the Federal Reserve opened its vault to the world on a scope much wider and deeper than previously disclosed.
Citigroup, struggling to stay afloat, sought help from the Fed at least 174 times during one remarkable 13-month period. Barclays, the British bank, at one point owed nearly $48 billion to the Fed. Even better-off banks like Goldman Sachs took advantage of Fed loans offered at rock-bottom rates.
The Fed's efforts to stave off a financial crisis reached far beyond Wall Street, touching manufacturers like General Electric, the Detroit automakers and Harley-Davidson, central banks from Britain to Japan and insurers and pension funds in Sweden and South Korea.
Under orders from Congress, the Fed on Wednesday released details of more than 21,000 transactions under the array of emergency lending programs and other arrangements it conjured up in response to the crisis.
The disclosures, which the Fed had resisted, offer the most detailed portrait of a panicky period in which the Fed lent money to banks, brokers, businesses and investors to keep the financial system functioning.
The documents show that some of the biggest names in American business were either coming to the Fed in need of a bailout, or trying to make money at a time when the Fed was trying to entice investors back into the markets. Among the latter were prominent investors and entrepreneurs like John A. Paulson and Michael S. Dell, and the pension funds of the Philadelphia Teamsters and Omaha's teachers, who were betting they could profit if the rescue worked.
At its peak at the end of 2008, the Fed had about $1.5 trillion in outstanding credit on its books. The central bank, in essence, pumped liquidity, the lifeblood of credit markets, into the circulatory system of an economy that was experiencing a potentially fatal heart attack.
"I think our actions prevented an even more disastrous outcome," said Donald L. Kohn, who was the Fed's vice chairman during the crisis. Without the Fed's help, he said, "liquidity would have dried up even more than it did, asset prices would have fallen even more than they did, and economic activity and employment would have fallen further and faster then they did."
But Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, who wrote a provision in the law requiring the disclosures by Dec. 1, reached a different conclusion.
"After years of stonewalling by the Fed, the American people are finally learning the incredible and jaw-dropping details of the Fed's multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America," he said. "Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out foreign private banks and corporations."
Mr. Sanders said the Fed should have forced banks to restrict executive pay and reduce the financial burdens on mortgage borrowers as a condition of its aid.
The Fed, already reeling from attacks from both the right and the left over its latest effort to spur the economy, a plan to buy $600 billion in Treasury securities, braced itself for another moment in the spotlight.
In a statement accompanying the disclosure, the Fed said it had fully protected taxpayers. "The Federal Reserve followed sound risk-management practices in administering all of these programs, incurred no credit losses on programs that have been wound down, and expects to incur no credit losses on the few remaining programs," it said.
The 21,000 transactions span the period from December 2007 to last July.
Even as investors began poring over the disclosures, details emerged from the trove of new data.
From December 2007 to October 2008, the Fed opened swap lines with foreign central banks, allowing them to temporarily trade their currencies for dollars to relieve pressures in their financial markets.
The European Central Bank drew the most heavily on these currency arrangements, the records show, but nine other central banks also made use of them: Australia, Denmark, England, Japan, Mexico, Norway, South Korea, Sweden and Switzerland.
At home, from March 2008 to May 2009, the Fed extended a cumulative total of nearly $9 trillion in short-term loans to 18 financial institutions under a credit program.
Previously, the Fed had only revealed that four financial firms had tapped the special lending program, and did not reveal their identities or the loan amounts.
The data appeared to confirm that Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley were under severe strain after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. All three tapped the program on more than 100 occasions.
The American subsidiaries of several foreign banks also benefited substantially from the program. Those institutions included UBS of Switzerland; Mizuho Securities of Japan; and BNP Paribas of France.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/bus...
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Chairman Skelton's Farewell Address -bye Ike
another dem hits the dust
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On October 8, 2009, Skelton, after addressing fellow Missouri Congressman Todd Akin, a Republican, on the House floor, said to Akin, "stick it up your ass." The comment was picked up by the microphone and could be heard on the C-SPAN broadcast. Skelton's spokeswoman, Jennifer Kohl, said the comment was not intended to be broadcast and was "said out of frustration in the heat of debate." Akin's spokesman, Steve Taylor, said the remark was "shocking and not characteristic of Skelton's behavior."
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Fiscal issues
Skelton voted against the 2001 Bush Tax cuts. In 1981, he voted against Reagan's tax cuts. He is supportive of labor. The League of Conservation Voters recently rated Skelton at 53 percent on environmental issues. He was one of the few Congressional Democrats to vote in favor of CAFTA and mostly supports free trade deals. He is a supporter of TRiO programs.
[edit] Social issues
Skelton is fairly conservative on social issues. He opposes abortion and gun control, and helped craft the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ike_Skelton
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On October 8, 2009, Skelton, after addressing fellow Missouri Congressman Todd Akin, a Republican, on the House floor, said to Akin, "stick it up your ass." The comment was picked up by the microphone and could be heard on the C-SPAN broadcast. Skelton's spokeswoman, Jennifer Kohl, said the comment was not intended to be broadcast and was "said out of frustration in the heat of debate." Akin's spokesman, Steve Taylor, said the remark was "shocking and not characteristic of Skelton's behavior."
-----
Fiscal issues
Skelton voted against the 2001 Bush Tax cuts. In 1981, he voted against Reagan's tax cuts. He is supportive of labor. The League of Conservation Voters recently rated Skelton at 53 percent on environmental issues. He was one of the few Congressional Democrats to vote in favor of CAFTA and mostly supports free trade deals. He is a supporter of TRiO programs.
[edit] Social issues
Skelton is fairly conservative on social issues. He opposes abortion and gun control, and helped craft the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ike_Skelton
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Jan Schakowsky--remarks today--cat food commision
go Jan, go. Other dems, where are u?
c-span today---
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---countdown today Msnbc
c-span today---
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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
---countdown today Msnbc
go go Janice Schakowsky
I suggest all catch her remarks today about catfood committee. true democrat
AmericasFuture | November 30, 2010 | http://ourfuture.org interviews Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., on the last-minute internal jockeying in advance of the White House deficit commission's release of its budget recommendations on December 1. Schakowsky is a leading liberal member of the commission and has issued her own deficit reduction plan. Many of its elements are included in the report of Citizens' Commission on Jobs, Deficits and America's Economic Future, online at ourfuture.org/citizenscommission.
AmericasFuture | November 30, 2010 | http://ourfuture.org interviews Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., on the last-minute internal jockeying in advance of the White House deficit commission's release of its budget recommendations on December 1. Schakowsky is a leading liberal member of the commission and has issued her own deficit reduction plan. Many of its elements are included in the report of Citizens' Commission on Jobs, Deficits and America's Economic Future, online at ourfuture.org/citizenscommission.
The Debt Crisis Is a Scam - WNYC
The Debt Crisis Is a Scam - WNYC
click link
snip:
Brace yourself: the phony debate about the government’s deficit and debt “crisis” will kick into overdrive this week as we hit the December 1 deadline for the federal deficit commission's final recommendations. We’re being told it’s time to tighten our belts because the government is spending too much money. But the debate is an illusion and false: there is no government deficit or debt “crisis.”
We have plenty of money, or access to money, and any money issues we have are all quite manageable. This is still the richest nation in the history of the planet. One day, the debt/deficit “crisis” will assume its ranks among fairy tales such as Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and trickle-down economics.
The question before us is simple: what are our priorities as a country, how should we spend our great wealth and who should pay to advance those priorities?
In my new book, It’s Not Raining, We're Getting Peed On: The Scam of the Deficit Crisis, I look at the foolish statements made about the phony “crisis." In 1946, for example, the country’s debt-to-gross domestic product ratio—meaning, how much we owed compared to how much we produced—was 108.6 percent. In other words, the adults living right after World War II were handed the greatest debt the country had ever had, but that generation experienced the greatest prosperity in the country’s history—and maybe even in the history of humans. Today, the debt-to-GDP ratio isn’t even close to that.
click link
snip:
Brace yourself: the phony debate about the government’s deficit and debt “crisis” will kick into overdrive this week as we hit the December 1 deadline for the federal deficit commission's final recommendations. We’re being told it’s time to tighten our belts because the government is spending too much money. But the debate is an illusion and false: there is no government deficit or debt “crisis.”
We have plenty of money, or access to money, and any money issues we have are all quite manageable. This is still the richest nation in the history of the planet. One day, the debt/deficit “crisis” will assume its ranks among fairy tales such as Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and trickle-down economics.
The question before us is simple: what are our priorities as a country, how should we spend our great wealth and who should pay to advance those priorities?
In my new book, It’s Not Raining, We're Getting Peed On: The Scam of the Deficit Crisis, I look at the foolish statements made about the phony “crisis." In 1946, for example, the country’s debt-to-gross domestic product ratio—meaning, how much we owed compared to how much we produced—was 108.6 percent. In other words, the adults living right after World War II were handed the greatest debt the country had ever had, but that generation experienced the greatest prosperity in the country’s history—and maybe even in the history of humans. Today, the debt-to-GDP ratio isn’t even close to that.
jobless
from Afl-cio
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From the AFL-CIO’s James Parks, Nov 22, 2010 “Dec. 7: Show Your Solidarity with Long-Term Jobless Workers on Facebook, Twitter”
But here is the meat of the militant actions the AFL-CIO leadership are proposing that you “Mark your calendar for a Dec. 7 day of online solidarity with America’s long-term jobless workers.”
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