Olbermann broke the story of Phil Gramm was a lobbyist and vice-chairman for UBS, the Swiss bank embroiled in the problems of the subprime market.
Straight talk express, my ass!
Category: Corruption
Finally!!!! SEC Looks At Prime Enabler of the Big Sh%$pile!
The SEC is looking at how the ratings agencies do business:
The U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) is looking into the workings of the three main credit rating agencies, prompted by their handling of the subprime crisis and a report of computer errors at Moody’s
. “We sent letters to Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch asking for them to get back to us on aspects of their methodology,” said Erik Sirri, director of the SEC’s trading and markets division.
The basic problem, however, is that they are paid by the people that they rate, creating an inherent conflict of interest.
This is at the core of many of the problems that we are seeing now. The felons are running the prison.
If A Taser Can End Atrial Fibrillation, It Can Kill Too
We have the case of a belligerent patient in a Connecticut hospital, who was brought in with atrial fibrillation brought on from a jump into an ice covered lake.
When he would not control himself, security tasered him, and it corrected his irregular heartbeat.
This is what a medical defibrillator does, and it can kill people too, just like the taser, though the defibrillator has not been called an instrument of torture by the UN’s Committee Against Torture
The use of TaserX26 weapons, provoking extreme pain, constituted a form of torture, and that in certain cases it could also cause death, as shown by several reliable studies and by certain cases that had happened after practical use.
UBS Tells Private Bank Team Members Not To Go To US
Because they believe that there is a significant risk of arrest should they do so.
These are the people that John McCain’s economics guy, Phil “Mr. Personality” Gramm, lobbied for, and they know that they are crooks.
Goldman Sachs Calls It, ” Alice-in-Wonderland Accounting”
Goldman Sachs is saying that it will leave the Institute of International Finance because of its calls for relaxed financial standards.
When Goldman f$#@ing Sachs says that the accounting is too dicey for them, you know that something is seriously wrong.
Basically, it all comes down to “level 3 assets”, those for which there is no ready market. This is the stuff that Atrios calls the big sh%$pile.
In any case, the IIF wants to implement rules that, “would enable financial companies to cushion the blow of financial crises by valuing illiquid assets using historical, rather than market, prices“.
Meaning that they want to value this sh^% as it was valued a few years ago, when everyone thought that there had to be a pony somewhere.
Corruption at its finest.
Nope, No Bribery Here…..
So we now have $150,000 in cash going to olmert:
A Long Island fund-raiser and businessman testifying in a corruption investigation told an Israeli court on Tuesday that he gave $150,000, mostly in cash, to the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Pool photo by Uriel Sinai Morris Talansky, an American businessman, before testifying on Tuesday in Jerusalem.
It is no surprise therefore that Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, is calling for Ehud Olmerd to step down.
McClellan’s New Tell-All Actually Tells All
Or at least a lot more than you would expect from the guy who job was to Bush’s liar in chief*.
To be fair, at least from the excerpts on Politico, he does a lot more blaming of Bush’s staff than Bush himself, but still, the allegations are explosive:
- He accuses Bush of relying on propaganda to sell the war.
- Basically calls the press a bunch of lap dogs.
- Admits that the administration was clueless on Katrina
- That Rove, Libby, and possibly Cheney lied to him about l’affaire Plame.
I’m not going to buy the book, paying Republicans only creates more Republicans, but I’m definitely going to borrow it at some point.
*To be fair, this is the job description of every press secretary.
UN Climate Program Scammed by Big Oil
It appears that the UN’s clean development mechanism is being gamed by energy companies top the tune of billions of pounds.
Leading academics and watchdog groups allege that the UN’s main offset fund is being routinely abused by chemical, wind, gas and hydro companies who are claiming emission reduction credits for projects that should not qualify. The result is that no genuine pollution cuts are being made, undermining assurances by the UK government and others that carbon markets are dramatically reducing greenhouse gases, the researchers say.
The criticism centres on the UN’s clean development mechanism (CDM), an international system established by the Kyoto process that allows rich countries to meet emissions targets by funding clean energy projects in developing nations.
People love market based solutions on emissions because they claim that it forces money back into more energy saving technology.
It doesn’t. It pushes the actors toward cheating and market manipulation, both of which are cheaper. Taxes are easier to administer, and harder to cheat on.
The real reason that all these people favor carbon trading is because they people who drew up the regulations went to Harvard or Oxford or some other elite school, and a trading scheme allows people like them, who went to the same schools, to make money.
Really and truly, when you look at these schools, it raises a question, which is how much are they about education, and how much are they, as Maynard Handley says, “That the primary value of a Harvard undergrad education is perceived by most of the people involved to be networking — it’s how you get to meet the future great and good, and thus substantially increase your chances of being hired by Bill Gates when he starts his new company, or by some future president.”
It’s all about insiders dealing to insiders.
First Up Against the Wall When the Revolution Comes
It turns out that investment bankers in “the City”, London’s equivalent of Wall Street, received £13bn bonuses this year.
Obscene bonuses when they are losing their clients money hand over fist….Gotta love Anglo-Saxon klepto-capitalism.
Absurdity in IP, Hippo Birdie Two Ewes
I found this as an interesting followup to yesterday’s Dr. Who based, “Knitting Needles of Mass Destruction”, we have the lowdown on the “Happy Birthday” song:
Abstract:
“Happy Birthday to You” is the best-known and most frequently sung song in the world. Many – including Justice Breyer in his dissent in Eldred v. Ashcroft – have portrayed it as an unoriginal work that is hardly worthy of copyright protection, but nonetheless remains under copyright. Yet close historical scrutiny reveals both of those assumptions to be false. The song that became “Happy Birthday to You,” originally written with different lyrics as “Good Morning to All,” was the product of intense creative labor, undertaken with copyright protection in mind. However, it is almost certainly no longer under copyright, due to a lack of evidence about who wrote the words; defective copyright notice; and a failure to file a proper renewal application.
Original paper here.
30 Former Officials Became Corporate Monitors – NYTimes.com
Over the past few years, Bush and His Evil Minions™ have aggressively expanded a program called, “deferred prosecutions” where the companies avoid a court case by paying a fine and agreeing to supervision.
Well, it now appears that in addition to helping along one goal of the Bush adminsitration, slaps on the wrist for corporate law breakers, they have gotten a twofer by creating lucrative private contracts for former political allys, in the form of “corporate monitors”.
You may recall that John Ashcroft got a $52,000,000.00 contract to do this, for example.
5 Years In, the Pentagon Still Cannot Count
They just audited $8.2 billion in Iraq spending, and once again no oversight to the people paid.
Money quote:
those results meant that almost 95 percent of the payments had not been properly documented.
**sigh**
McCain Going to Extreme Lengths to Conceal Medical History
The campaign just made McCain’s medical records available:
- To a limited number of reporter.
- Does not include earlier records, which might detail the physical and psychological consequences of his captivity in Vietnam.
- It is being done on a Friday, and not just any Friday, but one before a 3 day weekend.
- The reporters get 3 hours to review 400+ pages.
- They are not allowed to make copies.
If I had something to conceal, and knew that I had to release something, this is how I would do it. If you have a problem, even seemingly innocuous records can show a red flag, but if you have non-medical political reporters who have about 90 seconds to review a page, those flags get missed.
The Financial Ratings Model is Broken, Just in Case You are Wondering
That commie pinko rag the Financial Times discovered that Moody’s improperly rated a complex entity called a constant proportion debt obligations (CDPO) giving them the much desired AAA rating, when it should have been 4 levels lower, Baa.
Moody’s was the second rater, in addition to S&P, which also rated them as AAA, though a number of other ratings agencies, Fitch Ratings and DBRS, disputed rating these securities so highly. (There is a graphic at the link that is rather byzantine, which is a sign to run the other way):
The results showed that early CPDOs might lose between 1.5 and 3.5 notches in the Moody’s Metric, an internal measure, which equals up to four ratings notches.
Some Moody’s analysts had concerns. With so many transactions from other banks in the rating pipeline, the code could not be left as it was. The bug was corrected.
At the same time, the documents record that Moody’s staff looked at how they could amend the methodology to help the rating.
Some of the most senior managing directors in Moody’s European structured finance division were involved in meetings to discuss the updating of the methodology for rating CPDO-like transactions in February.
The staff also looked at reducing assumptions about the future volatility of the credit markets so that Moody’s model only anticipated minor moves in credit indices over the next 10 years.
This had the effect of reducing the negative impact on the ratings of correcting the code error.
So, they goofed on a rating, but S&P thought that everything was just ducky, and their reaponse was how do we cover this up.
It’s no wonder then that the agencies are vehemently opposed to the idea of guaranteeing the quality of their ratings. Because it’s a fundamentally dishonest mindset in a business that appears increasingly dodgy.
As Tanta of calculated risk notes, it’s the last two paragraphs of the story (first link)that are scary:
The world’s other major credit agency, Standard and Poor’s, was the first to award triple A status to CPDOs but many investors require ratings from two agencies before they invest so the Moody’s involvement supplied that crucial second rating.
S&P stood by its ratings, saying: “Our model for rating CPDOs was developed independently and, like our other ratings models, was made widely available to the market. We continue to closely monitor the performance of these securities in light of the extreme volatility in CDS prices and may make further adjustments to our assumptions and rating opinions if we think that is appropriate.”
This implies a sort of mutual back scratching to generate fees that makes all of the ratings suspect.
House Judiciary Committee Subpoenas Karl Rove
The real question is what to do. Since Mukasey has been adamant about refusing to use the DoJ to enforce congressional subpoenas, the only real alternative is to take the sergeant at arms and have him detain Rove in the cell in the basement of the Capitol.
Won’t happen. Or to quote Nancy Pelosi:
NOT ON THE TABLE! NOT ON THE TABLE!
The Government’s Secret Detention List
I’m wondering if I am on that list.
My guess would be that if martial law were to be declared, it would be in mid to late November, following a Democratic victory,* because it would be to cover up their own wrongdoing.
Christopher Ketcham of Radar Magazine makes the case that the US government has a list of 8 million people that they will detain without process if martial law is declared. That’s just under 3% of the population.
He makes a convincing case that the entire scene with Ashcroft in the hospital being browbeaten to sign a document was in fact a surveillance program connected to a, “so-called Continuity of Government (COG) programs”, centered in FEMA‡, where it evades the oversight done on what is normally considered the state security apparatus (FBI, CIA, other TLAs, etc.).
I’m not sure which is more depressing to me, the fact that this might be the plan of Bush and His Evil Minions™, or the fact that I have so little faith in those career bureaucrats in the US state security apparatus to obey their vows to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
*And let’s be clear….At this point, that means Barack Obama. Even if all of FL and MI are seated. Unless he is caught with a live boy or a dead girl, he’s the nominee.†
†Not my preferred outcome, but I wanted Howard Dean in 2004 and Bill Bradley in 2000, so I’m used to it.
‡That’s right, the folks who f%$#ed up Katrina are responsible for the continued existence of a law based Democracy in the US.
Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Votes to Overrule EPA on California Waiver
It was a straignt party line vote on the EPA’s rejection of California air quality standards on C02 emissions, which the record now shows was a political and not a scientifically driven ruling.
If it hits the floor, it will doubtless be filibustered.
If it passes, it will doubtlessly be vetoed.
Top CIA Official Bribed with “Sexual Companionship”
A new indictment of a former top CIA official alleges that he received bribes in the form of “sexual companionship” in exchange for helping a friend get an edge in landing multimillion-dollar contracts from the agency.
…..
The new indictment also includes an allegation that Foggo received sexual companionship and “enrichment of a mistress,” though the allegations are not detailed in the indictment.
If you recall, he was appointed by Porter Goss as Executive Director (EXDIR) of the CIA, the number 3 post.
You may recall that Goss opposed investigating the Plame leak, saying, “Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I’ll have an investigation.”
Well, I’m not certain of the dress color, but we probably have the DNA.
Seriously, you cannot make up sh#@ like this. If I put it in a script, and sent it to Hollywood, it would get sent back as “not credible”.
More Proof of Cable Bandwidth Twiddling
I would appreciate some information on just how F%$#ed up the cable broadband providers networks are, because we now have the results of a study on BitTorrent blocking, and it’s only the cable providers doing it, and they (Comcast, Cox, and Starhub, a cable/internet provider in Singapore)are doing it regardless of network load, and they are the only ISPs to do this in the world.
A brief technical rundown why the cable network architectures providers’ suck is here.
Basically, the technology is not there, but instead of being open with their customers regarding limits, they are engaging in stealth filtering, and not particularly good stealth filtering at that.
I’m surprised, given the sterling reputation for customer service of the cable companies.
Looks Like We Won’t have Vito Fossella to Kick Around Any More
It appears that he will end his reelection bid.
If you recall, Fossella was busted for driving drunk. At the time he was driving from his home to his mistress’s, who had also born him a child.
I guess that we’ll be hearing a comment that he wants to spend more time with his families…..heh.