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Good Morning!
June, 2012. Photo credit: joanneleon
“As for marigolds, poppies, hollyhocks, and valorous sunflowers, we shall never have a garden without them, both for their own sake, and for the sake of old-fashioned folks, who used to love them.”
~ Henry Ward Beecher
News
Orwellian: NSA Can't Say If It Spies On You Because It Would Violate Your Privacy
BlueMountain Said to Help Unwind JPMorgan’s Whale Trades
A hedge fund run by a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) executive who helped create the credit- derivatives market is aiding the lender as it unwinds trades in an index at the heart of a loss of more than $2 billion.
BlueMountain Capital Management LLC, co-founded by Andrew Feldstein, has been compiling trades in recent weeks that would offset JPMorgan’s risk in Series 9 of the Markit CDX North America Investment Grade Index, then selling the positions to the bank, according to three people outside the firms who are familiar with the strategy. That allowed the bank, which is said to have amassed as much as $100 billion in bets on the index, to unwind trades outside the traditional web of dealers.
“They used BlueMountain to disguise what they were doing,” Peter Tchir, founder of New York-based macro advisory firm TF Market Advisors, said in a telephone interview. “It all gets a little bizarre and shows how screwy this whole market is.”
He's baaack.
Bowles-Gregg; Or, Morgan Stanley-Goldman Sachs
I guess Alan Simpson and his recurring set of bad manners has become too much of a liability to those intrepid grand bargaineers. So he’s been pulled for a reliever. Enter Judd Gregg, himself just out of the Senate.
[ ... ]
Here’s the thing on Judd Gregg, who pushed for the original catfood commission as the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, when it was Conrad-Gregg (that was the panel that President Obama endorsed, prompting a bunch of Republicans to immediately vote against it, leading to the establishment of Bowles-Simpson): his first job out of the Senate, as a young senior looking to make it on his own, was with Goldman Sachs, as a “strategic advisor.”
So now, the two men working to influence a deficit reduction plan in Washington work for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. [ ... ]
HIGHLIGHTS-Bernanke news conference on Fed policy
(Reuters) - Below are highlights from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's news conference following the Fed's policy meeting on Wednesday. > For a story on Fed's policy statement, see > TABLE-Federal Reserve economic forecasts > FOMC statement from June 19-20 meeting > Instant view on Fed policy statement > Take a look on Fed policy
Loan Modifications During Foreclosure Crisis Provide Only Temporary Relief
The other day, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced a $60 million program for housing counseling and legal services for borrowers threatened with foreclosure. This will enable them to fight their evictions and get the support they need for working with banks for modifications.
[ ... ]But a new report out from TransUnion tells a very cautionary tale for those who get the kinds of loan modifications that are likely to come out of counseling and negotiation with the banks. [ ... ]
That’s not a very encouraging silver lining. And what this shows I think more than anything, especially because of the data on auto loans and credit cards, is that the types of loan modifications being granted are fundamentally flawed, and simply not designed to keep borrowers in homes over the long or even the medium term. We know that precious few principal reductions have been handed out over this period, with more modifications using interest-rate reductions or forbearance or other cosmetic changes that do little to help the borrower. As a result, you get a few more payments out of homeowners, and better payments on their auto loans and credit cards, before they re-default and slide into foreclosure.
#RioFail
Reproductive Rights Scrubbed From Rio+20 Text - Why That's Bad News for the Planet
In amongst the other mealy-mouthed text in the Rio+20 agreement text, this passed me by until a post in Climate Progress brought it to my attention: Language ensuring women's reproductive rights, which had been included in negotiating documents up until at least June 2, is absent from the final text.
Objecting to the language were the G77 nations and the Vatican, the latter of which has permanent non-member state status with the UN.
Third oil spill fuels calls for Alberta pipeline review
Environmental critics are calling for a major review of pipeline safety in Alberta after the province experienced a third large oil spill in a month.
About 230,000 litres of heavy crude oil spilled from a pumping station on an Enbridge Inc. pipeline onto farmland, Alberta’s oil and gas regulator, the Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB), said Tuesday.
The regulator said 1,450 barrels of oil spilled from a pumping station on Enbridge’s Athabasca pipeline, 24 kilometres from Elk Point, Alta., a small town roughly 200 kilometres northeast of Edmonton. That pipeline, briefly shut down but then restarted Tuesday, connects the oil sands with Hardisty, Canada’s most important crude oil hub. The spill comes while crews are still working to clean up two other large leaks in Alberta, nearly 800,000 litres of oil from a Pace Oil & Gas Ltd. well about 200 kilometres from the Northwest Territories border, and 160,000 to 480,000 litres from a Plains Midstream Canada pipeline that ruptured beneath the Red Deer River.
Strike! UK Doctors Take Day Off in Austerity Protest
Austerity attacks on pensions, retirement age
Thousands of doctors in Britain's state-funded National Health Service took industrial action for the first time in 37 years on Thursday in a dispute over austerity-driven changes to their pensions, cancelling thousands of patients' non-emergency appointments and operations. Thousands more doctors in Northern Ireland joined their counterparts in England and also went on strike.
[ ... ]
Doctors say the government has reneged on a pension deal agreed in 2008. The British Medical Association, which represents 104,000 UK doctors, says doctors will have to pay 14.5 percent of their pay into the pension fund by 2014, compared with 8.5 percent in March 2012.
They also claim the new deal would leave retired doctors worse off.
In Health Care, Give the People What They Want: Medicare for All
The nutty thing about the health care debate that will play a prominent role in the next election is that most Americans want pretty much the same outcome: to control costs without sacrificing quality. And that’s not what either major-party candidate is offering. Few think that Obamacare, a Romneycare descendant that contains the same kind of individual mandate the then-governor of Massachusetts signed into law, will get us to that desired goal. Nor would Mitt Romney, who has been reborn as a celebrant of the old, pre-Obama system with a few nips and tucks.
As the nation awaits a Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of the Obama health care approach, a new Associated Press-GfK poll suggests that the vast majority of Americans want Congress to come up with a better plan. They know that the current system is unsustainable. Only a third of those polled favored the law President Barack Obama signed, but according to the AP, “whatever people think of the law, they don’t want a Supreme Court ruling against it to be the last word on health care reform.” The article continued, “More than three-fourths of Americans want their political leaders to undertake a new effort, rather than leave the health care system alone if the court rules against the law, according to the poll.”
Oracle CEO Ellison to Buy Most of Hawaiian Island Lanai
Oracle Corp. (ORCL) Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison has agreed to buy 98 percent of the Hawaiian island of Lanai, according to the current landowner and the state’s governor.
“It is my understanding that Mr. Ellison has had a long- standing interest in Lanai,” Governor Neil Abercrombie said in a statement. “His passion for nature, particularly the ocean, is well known specifically in the realm of America’s Cup sailing.”
Lanai, Hawaii’s sixth-largest island with an area of 141 square miles (365 square kilometers), is owned and developed by billionaire David Murdock’s Castle & Cooke Inc. since 1985. Ellison’s software industry rival Bill Gates married his wife Melinda on the island in 1994.
Egypt delays runoff result as protests loom
Supporters of Muslim Brotherhood's presidenial candidate gather as confusion mounts over former leader Mubarak's health.
Officials have postponed declaring a winner in Egypt's disputed presidential election, sending political tensions soaring as the country awaits its first new leader in three decades.
[ ... ]
On Thursday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it held concerns over the military's commitment to hand over power to civilian rule.
"The generals' relentless expansion of their authority to detain and try civilians now goes far beyond their powers under Hosni Mubarak," Joe Stork, HRW Middle East director, said in a statement
"These decrees are the latest indication yet that there won't be a meaningful handover to civilian rule on June 30," Stork added.
Egyptians pack Tahrir to slam military 'coup'
Cairo's iconic square is again seething with anger as the nation nervously awaited the results of the presidential poll.
Thousands have packed Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square to denounce a power grab by the ruling military, as the nation nervously awaited the results of the first post-Mubarak presidential election.
Members and supporters of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood gathered in the square for the protest on Friday, which was to be joined later in the afternoon by several secular movements.
[ ... ]
Across town, in a luxury international hotel, former general Ahmed Shafik, who was Hosni Mubarak's prime minister when the army forced out the dictator to appease the Tahrir protesters, challenged Morsi's self-proclaimed victory and said he was sure he had won.
At a televised address to whooping and cheering supporters, Shafik said: "These protests in the squares, the campaigns of terror and the media manipulation are all attempts to force the election committee to announce a particular result."
Auditors: Spain bank bailout could cost up to $78B
MADRID (AP) — Spain's troubled banks could need as much as €62 billion ($78.6 billion) in new capital to protect themselves from economic shocks, according to independent auditors hired by the government to assess the country's struggling financial sector, officials said Thursday.
The Spanish government will use the auditors' report as the basis for their application for a bank bailout loan from the 17 countries that use the euro. With tensions rising over the future of the eurozone, Spain is expected to submit its specific request for outside assistance no later than Monday, said Jean-Claude Juncker, who chairs meetings of zone's finance ministers.
Are liberals national security hypocrites?
Many Obama supporters are mum about policies they hated under Bush. Here's why
The explanation is surely more complicated than rank partisanship or blind Obama worship. On one level, it makes sense: If you trust the man you voted for to do the right thing, you’re more likely to assume the things he does are the right thing, especially when his actions involve murky facts as well as murky questions of ethics. George Packer says as much in the New Yorker: “Often, foreign policy—which by definition is largely out of American control—is simply a matter of not doing the wrong thing, the unwise thing. On that count, I trust Obama more than any politician in my lifetime.”
It’s also possible liberals are getting more tough-minded when it comes to war, especially against a furtive enemy that isn’t a nation. Packer and Andrew Sullivan, not exactly a liberal but a loyal Obama supporter, defend the administration’s use of drones as causing fewer civilian casualties than traditional warfare and a necessary tool against shape-shifting enemies.
Britain, US May Offer Assad Clemency for Power Transition
Britain and America are willing to offer the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, safe passage – and even clemency – as part of a diplomatic push to convene a UN-sponsored conference in Geneva on political transition in Syria.
The initiative comes after David Cameron and Barack Obama received encouragement from Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in separate bilateral talks at the G20 in Mexico.
A senior British official said: “Those of us who had bilaterals thought there was just enough out of those meetings to make it worth pursuing the objective of negotiating a transitional process in Syria.”
[ ... ]
Obviously, allowing Assad, who has murdered at least 10,000 of his own people in the past year or so, to receive clemency would be a gut-wrenching outcome. If it ends the carnage, it could be seen as a positive step. However, I would look at the experience in Yemen, which is still wracked with violence despite what would be described as a “successful” transition. So the worst of both worlds emerges: no accountability at the top, and a continued struggle on the ground. But nothing has been offered yet, so we’ll have to see.
Blog Posts of Interest
The Evening Blues - 6-21-12 on DailyKos by joe shikspack