Welcome! "What's Happenin'?" is a casual community diary (a daily series, 8:30 AM Eastern on weekdays, 10 AM on weekends and holidays) where we hang out and talk about the goings on here and everywhere.
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Good Morning!
Longwood Gardens, February, 2012, Photo credit: joanneleon
“Hold tight to your anger and don't fall to your fear.”
-- Bruce Springsteen ("The Wrecking Ball")
News
Bruce Springsteen: 'What was done to my country was un-American'
At a Paris press conference on Thursday night, Bruce Springsteen was asked whether he was advocating an armed uprising in America. He laughed at the idea, but that the question was even posed at all gives you some idea of the fury of his new album Wrecking Ball.
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Having previously backed Obama, Springsteen says he would prefer to stay on the sidelines this time. "I don't write for one side of the street … But the Bush years were so horrific you could not just sit around. It was such a blatant disaster. I campaigned for Kerry and Obama, and I am glad I did. But normally I would prefer to stay on the sidelines. The artist is supposed to be the canary in the cage."
Obama hasn't done bad, Springsteen says. "He kept General Motors alive, he got through healthcare – though not the public system I would have wanted – he killed Osama Bin Laden, and he brought sanity to the top level of government. But big business still has too much say in government and there has not been as many middle- or working-class voices in the administration as I expected. I thought Guantanamo would have been closed but now, but he got us out of Iraq and I guess we will soon be out of Afghanistan."
Programmer cleared of stealing code from Goldman Sachs
A former Goldman Sachs computer programmer has been freed from prison after a surprise ruling from a federal appeals court quashed his conviction for stealing computer code.
"Justice occasionally works," said Russian-born Sergey Aleynikov, who walked free after serving one year out of a sentence of eight years or more.
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Prosecutors accused him of taking trade secrets from Goldman Sachs in 2008 to help his new company gain an advantage with high-speed financial trading.
During a two-week trial, defence lawyer Kevin Marino told jurors that his client had merely tried to copy parts of the company's software that came from public software code anyway. He acknowledged that Aleynikov had violated the company's confidentiality agreements but argued that was a civil matter.
Children still not tested for mercury
Despite a court order, those exposed at a N.J. day-care center still are not being monitored for health issues.
Despite a judge's order more than a year ago, the children who inhaled toxic mercury vapors in the infamous former Kiddie Kollege day care still have not been monitored for potential medical problems.
The story attracted national attention in July 2006, after New Jersey inspectors discovered babies and children playing inside a heavily contaminated Gloucester County building that had once been a thermometer factory.
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As of March 2011, M. James Maley, who represents Franklin Township, had been paid more than $1.4 million in legal fees by the county's Environmental Joint Insurance Fund. The insurer wanted to rein in the costs and/or be reimbursed by the township because the judge found town officials knew of the contamination before they allowed the factory to be converted.
San Francisco Foreclosure Audit Elicits Predictable Responses from Securitization Mess Deniers
Given the existence of a large and still for the most part very well remunerated mortgage industrial complex, it is not surprising that a investigation done by a mere county that found errors in virtually all the loans in a small sample of foreclosures created a hue and cry.
While state attorney general Kamala Harris remarked that, “The allegations are deeply troubling and, sadly, no surprise to homeowners and law enforcement officials in California,” and Nancy Pelosi wrote to ask Eric Holder to take a look, the securitization problem deniers went to assault mode. Paul Jackson came close to having a heart attack on Twitter, apparently hoping that rapid burst ad hominem attacks would mask his lack of a substantive argument, and also distract from the fact that he had yanked a straight up the center account on the audit by one of his best reporters, Jon Prior.
Go back, Jack. Do it again.
Bonds Backed by Mortgages Regain Allure
Having reaped big gains during both of those turns, Greg Lippmann, a former star trader at Deutsche Bank, is now catching the next upswing: buying the same securities built from mortgages that he bet against before the financial crisis erupted.
Mr. Lippmann is joined by other big-money investors — mutual funds like Fidelity as well as hedge funds — in riding a wave of interest in the same complex loan pools that nearly washed away the financial system.
The attraction is the price. Some mortgage bonds are so cheap that even in the worst forecasts, with home prices falling as much as 10 percent and foreclosures rising, investors say they can still make money.
Things are speeding up in this situation. This headline is a little bit backward though, as the EU initiated this stoppage of oil imports at the urging of the U.S.
Iran stops selling oil to Britain and France
Tehran takes step four months ahead of EU import ban amid heightening political tensions over country's enriching of uranium
Iran announced on Sunday that it had stopped selling crude oil to British and French companies, in a move that may put further pressure on the price of oil amid heightening political tensions.
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The EU has already agreed to stop importing Iranian crude oil from 1 July in an effort to stop Iran enriching uranium.
But BP is among a number of major companies that have already stopped importing oil from Iran, triggering speculation that Sunday's announcement was just political sabre-rattling.