#2
SAGRA, Russia — When Sergei the Gypsy wanted to show who was boss in this tiny settlement on the edge of the Ural Mountains, he gathered a posse of armed men and drove down a narrow road through the night, illuminating the forest with his headlights.
“They are coming to kill us,” one of the villagers shouted, and Viktor Gorodilov, who was in his bathhouse, threw on some clothes and joined a small group of men with shotguns, pitchforks, chains and knives to guard the road. “We just had three guns, including me,” said Mr. Gorodilov, 56. “But they didn’t expect any resistance, and we had them in our hands.”
His son Andrei threw a pine cone and shouted, “Grenade!” Women hiding behind trees screamed curses and abuse.
One of the raiders was killed, and the convoy fled, shooting to cover its retreat. “It was like ‘The Magnificent Seven’!” the younger Mr. Gorodilov said, recalling a movie in which a small band holds off an armed attack.
The encounter a month ago was the culmination of a feud between villagers in this hamlet of just 130 people and an interloper — real name: Sergei Lebedev — who they believed had taken up residence here to operate a base for the drug trade.
Since then, Sagra has become a catchword for a spate of violence around the country in which people have banded together to defend themselves in the absence of police protection. “What’s going on in this country is that the government isn’t protecting anyone,” Mr. Gorodilov said.
For nearly five minutes, by her count, a resident named Tatyana Gordeyeva tried to persuade a police dispatcher on the telephone to connect her to a station. When help finally came, she said, the battle had been over for two hours.
“The police are corrupt or lazy or politicized, and it’s the same all across the country,” said Konstantin M. Kiseyov, academic secretary of the Institute of Philosophy and Law in Yekaterinburg, which is 25 miles from the village. “So people must protect themselves. They can’t count on the government or its structures. That is why the country is turning into one big Sagra.”
#3
See also WAFF > [SpaceWar] RUSSIA GIVES [sovereign] TERRITORY TO CHINA (ARE RUSSIANS AFRAID?), in formal transfer to end long-standing riverine border dispute.
and
* SAME > 9-11 INSIDE JOB "IMPOSSIBLE TO CONCEAL", SAYS VALDIMIR PUTIN, ergo its nonsensible to argue or believe that US INTEL Agencies are directly involved in the 9-11 attack agz thier own Country.
Mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae said it would ask for an additional $5.1 billion from taxpayers as it continues to suffer losses on loans made prior to 2009.
The largest U.S. residential mortgage funds provider on Friday also reported a second-quarter net loss attributable to common shareholders of $5.2 billion, or 90 cents per share.
Including the latest funding request, Fannie Mae has needed $104 billion in government capital injections since the U.S. Treasury seized control of it in 2008 during the financial crisis. Fannie Mae has paid back $14.7 billion in dividends.
Fannie said in a statement that its second-quarter loss "reflects the continued weakness in the housing and mortgage markets, which remain under pressure from high levels of unemployment, underemployment and the prolonged decline in home prices since their peak in the third quarter of 2006."
It said expenses related to mortgage modifications also contributed to its loss in the quarter. "Fannie Mae expects its credit-related expenses to remain elevated in 2011 due to these factors," the company added.
The $5.2 billion loss attributable to shareholders follows a loss of $8.7 billion in the first quarter and compared with a loss of $3.125 billion in the second quarter of 2010.
Loans made in the past two years have been more profitable for Fannie Mae than loans made during the housing boom in preceding years. I can't say anything about this as I would be sinktrapped.
Go after all of the 'managers' that have bailed over the last 5 years, and pull back their golden parachutes.
Should be about the amount needed (SWAG) and would be just.
Then wind down this monster.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
08/05/2011 12:29 Comments ||
Top||
#2
One of the very few things I agree with in the Dodd-Frank bill is that banks should have skin in this game. If the banks had been required to keep 5 or 10 percent of the sub-prime mortgages they were making, they would have made sure Fannie, Freddie, the rating agencies and the investing community knew about the quality of the loans.
As it is Fannie and Freddie had every incentive (and their board members doubly so with their bonuses) to pretend that all those sub-prime loans were high-grade as they were rolled into mortgage-backed securities, the rating agencies pretended that the tranches of MBS's were all AAA, and the investment banks and brokerages could pretend that they were selling high-grade paper to the pension funds and small investors.
Until it all went kaboom.
Fannie and Freddie should indeed be rolled up. Having a quasi-government agency buy up and repackage mortgages is a great idea -- if everyone from the borrower to the banker to the packager to the rater to the broker to the investor is honest.
Human nature tells me that it's just another socialist utopian scheme.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/05/2011 13:53 Comments ||
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#3
Dodd-Frank? They were thick as thieves in creating this economic mess we are in.
#4
I guess Fannie Mae execs think we have forgotten how they helped create the subprime mess that took down the economy. Now they want to hold the taxpayers up for $5.1? What gall! This ought to be illegal. Thought Fannie Mae was in the equivalent of Chapter 11. Should have let Fannie fail.
#5
Please tell me why these fraudsters who ran these quasi-governmental agencies into the ground and plundered them aren't in jail and the salaries/bonuses they looted haven't been reclaimed? That this hasn't been done tells us everything we need to know about our "governing elite". Oh that's right, our "governing elite" has decided it wasn't illegal to do what they did. Plundering taxpayer funds is legal. Why worry, it's just funny money anyway.
#8
I think we should ding Chuckie Shumer and Barney Fwank half their pay to cover Fannie Mae's losses. All in favor say "Aye".
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
08/05/2011 16:25 Comments ||
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#9
No one here seems to get it.
"Through multiple community development investment funds, Fannie Mae works to tear down barriers, lower costs and increase opportunities for homeownership and affordable rental housing for all Americans."
Fannie Mae is now a big player in the "spread the wealth" Obama scheme. Working as Obama designed it to.
* PEOPLE'S DAILY FORUM > [US SecDef]PANETTA: USDOD CUTS MORE THAN US$350.0BILYUHN [oer ten years] WOULD BE DANGEROUS.
Moreso given ...
PEOPLE'S DAILY FORUM > US GERAS UP TO FIGHT "HOMEGROWN JIHADIS". More specifically - ALL FORMS OR VARIANTS OF BROAD-BASED DOMESTIC RADICALISM = EXTREMISM, NOT NECESSARILY JUST ISLAMIST TERRORISM.
* YAHOO FINANCE > [USA] THE GOVT. CANNOT SAVE ECONOMY THIS TIME, even wid any new "QE3".
ARTIC > Things are maxed out = at the minimal/par operat levels already, + US Public = Mainstream won't stand for any new Bailouts [espec ones that that don't work?].
* RENSE > [CNBC] MARKETS CRASH: [Mark] FABER: BRACE FOR A GLOBAL "REBOOT" + A WAR.
ARTIC > FABER = any new "QE3" [+ follow-on?]is merely deferring a US Deficit, Econ crisis that will continue to expand + ultimately result in a War + TOTE ECON, SYSTEM COLLAPSE???
Hmmmmmm...I wasn't aware that aviation had been shut down.
A White House official says President Barack Obama has signed a bill to end a two-week partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration and allow thousands of employees to return to work. And, yet, plenty of planes have flown over my house in the last two weeks. And none of them have crashed...
Lawmakers reached a bipartisan compromise Thursday to extend the FAA's operating authority through mid-September. The Senate passed the measure Friday, using a "unanimous consent" procedure so lawmakers didn't have to return to Washington from their vacations recess. Okay, let's vote. Willie, the Capital cop.
"Aye"
Jose, the Capital janitor.
"Aye"
Okay. Motion passes...
The shutdown has cost the government about $400 million in uncollected airline ticket taxes and idled thousands of construction workers. Ah, now I get it...
#1
Yeah, I'm one of the engineers that got furloughed.
The tax is kinda like a sales tax, if you fly a lot you help pay for the airports and all the support systems. If you fly a little or not at all you don't have to contribute to the infrastructure. We in my division of the FAA are mostly engineers and architects, and are funded through this usage tax, not through general fund tax dollars, those that use the aviation industry pay for its continual repair and research into its future direction, but it does result in problems like this. Political issues played the major role in the problem here, 16 million in rural airport subsidies and sneaky anti union blurb that Rep. Mica tried to sneak in there caused the loss of $400 million in money to maintain the nation's airway infrastructure. But hey, when you've received $620,000 in campaign contributions from the major airlines, you gotta at least try to hook them up.
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Friday that the media has the responsibility to not give equal time or credence to the Tea Party's views:
SEN. JOHN KERRY: "And I have to tell you, I say this to you politely. The media in America has a bigger responsibility than it's exercising today. The media has got to begin to not give equal time or equal balance to an absolutely absurd notion just because somebody asserts it or simply because somebody says something which everybody knows is not factual."
"It doesn't deserve the same credit as a legitimate idea about what you do. And the problem is everything is put into this tit-for-tat equal battle and America is losing any sense of what's real, of who's accountable, of who is not accountable, of who's real, who isn't, who's serious, who isn't?"
"I don't think the media should cover points of view that I don't agree with. Keep that in mind the next time that a mass media company wants to come to Capitol Hill for a tax break."
A dictatorial monster who would blow his nose on the Constitution he once swore to defend.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
08/05/2011 17:26 Comments ||
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#6
Actually Jawn threw someone else's metals over the fence.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/05/2011 20:30 Comments ||
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#11
You know, I hear a lot of crap on TV etc. which I do not agree with, such as this new narrative that money is government's until said otherwise, but I have never, never thought that shit should be banned.
Its quite telling, a mere person given the responsibility and oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, to blow off the 1st Ammendment. The 1st Ammendment.
This living breathing document stuff is crap. I cannot go to the bank and change my loan contract with them, and they cannot change it either. There is a process for the Constitution to live and breath as they say it, but the lords of congress avoid Ammendments altogether yet claim certain rights. Health insurance a right, just like freedom of speech, hokey dokey lets get it ratified. No? Then shut the fuck up - a suggestion, no goon squads to make you.
WASHINGTON--President Obama celebrated his 50th birthday Thursday night with a celebrity-filled bash, as entertainer Chris Rock reported on his Twitter feed: "Just left the Presidents birthday party at the White House. Herbie Hancock played, Stevie Wonder sang and yes they did the electric slide. A great night."
Daughter Malia, 13 just arrived home from summer camp in time for the Rose Garden party as she was joined by her sister, Sasha, 10, First Lady Michelle, grandmother Marian Robinson and their godmother, Eleanor "Mama Kaye, Wilson," who flew to Washington from Chicago on Air Force One with Obama when he returned from his Thursday fund-raiser back home.
Obama's party--paid for, the White House said, by the First Couple--was closed press and not on his official schedule. Obama's team was not eager for pictures of the bash, coming as the stock market was plunging and a new jobless report comes out Friday morning. As beltway insiders would say, "that's not good optics."
Eddie Gehman Kohan, who presides over Obama Foodorama, the website of record about entertaining in the Obama White House, put together a detailed report about the five-hour barbeque, based on interviews of people who were there. Read her entire article here.
UPDATE
Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama's former Chief of Staff, was also at the party. END UPDATE
From Kohan's article: "Stevie Wonder gave a "surprise" performance during the celebration; his hit "You and I" was the President and First Lady Obama's wedding song. Revelers included Jay Z; Tom Hanks; Chris Rock; hoops legends Charles Barkley and Grant Hill; Whoopi Goldberg; Dallas Cowboys Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith; and actor Hill Harper. He's one of the President's closest chums from Harvard law school, and star of CSI: NY. Jazz great Herbie Hancock and his ensemble played; R & B singer Ledisi dazzled the crowd.
"The night was balmy, and when dinner was done, a DJ spun dance tunes--"like at a Bar Mitzvah," said one guest. The twenty tables for ten in the Rose Garden were pushed aside so guests could dance, led by the President and Mrs. Obama.
"...Also on hand to mark the Presidential milestone were former governors Bill Richardson and Tim Kaine, and Mr. Obama's staunchest allies in the debt battle--Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Senior White House staff also celebrated: Chief of Staff Bill Daley, Cecelia Munoz, John Brennan, and Valerie Jarrett. Mrs. Obama's former Chief of Staff, Susan Sher, flew in from Chicago, as did two of the President's closest pals: Dr. Eric Whitaker, University of Chicago Hospital Vice-President, and The Parking Spot President and CEO Marty Nesbitt. Campaign fundraiser Andy Spahn was spotted, too."
Vice President Joseph Biden is on his way to China, Mongolia, and Japan later this month, his office announced today.
In Beijing, Biden will meet with Vice President Xi Jinping, who is expected to replace Hu Jintao as president next year.
"He will visit China at the invitation of Vice President Xi Jinping - the first of the planned reciprocal visits between the Vice Presidents announced during President Hu Jintao's state visit to Washington earlier this year," the White House said in a release.
Biden will do the diplomatic trifecta, meeting with Hu in Beijing, as well as Chinese premier Wen Jiabao. After Beijing, Biden will go to the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu, then to the Mongolian capitol of Ulaanbaatar, and then Tokyo. The Office of the Vice President did not release the dates or specifics of meetings for the Mongolia or Japan legs of Biden's trip.
The China visit comes only three months before President Barack Obama travels to Asia in November. Obama will lead a huge U.S. delegation as the host of the 2011 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which is being held in the city of his birth, Honolulu.
He will then go to Bali to lead America's first-ever delegation as an official member of the East Asia Summit (EAS). EAS is a regional security focused organization that the administration joined as part of an increased commitment to strengthen U.S. relations with Asia.
Pierce O'Donnell has agreed to serve six months in federal prison, pay a $20,000 fine and do 200 hours of community service for masking contributions to John Edwards in 2004. In a plea agreement with prosecutors, O'Donnell admitted to asking 10 people to each make donations of $2,000, which he then reimbursed.
O'Donnell, 64, who was a lead plaintiff's attorney for Katrina flood victims suing the U.S. government, previously pleaded no contest in 2006 to charges of using a false name in making political contributions in the 2001 mayoral campaign of James K. Hahn.
[Emirates 24/7] President Barack B.O. Obama on Wednesday sought to revive the energy of his last presidential campaign after a damaging debt showdown as he returned to his hometown Chicago for a 50th birthday bash.
The base is so angry that they're accusing Bambi of starting his negotiations to the right of 'reasonable Republicans', not that they'd know of any...
Obama paid a lightning evening visit back to the Midwestern metropolis one day before he hits the half-century mark, seeking solace with some of his staunchest supporters from online activists to high-rolling fund-raisers.
Inside a packed and sweaty downtown theater, Obama read off a list of accomplishments dear to his base such as expanding health care coverage, allowing gays to serve openly in the military to winding down the war in Iraq.
"I didn't say change we can believe in tomorrow. I didn't say change we can believe in next week," he said, echoing his campaign slogan. "We've got to make our case."
The 2012 election "in some ways may be more important than the last one," Obama said in an Internet conference with more than 1,100 support groups around the country, one of three back-to-back campaign events in Chicago.
"You saw this week how tough some of these battles are going to be. It's absolutely critical that all of you stay involved," he told the online supporters, including a group that sang him, "Happy Birthday."
I was just at the receiving end of a phone survey clearly seeking to gin up numbers to support Democratic contentions about ignorant, hateful, conservative Christian tea baggers. I'm afraid I indulged myself by explaining exactly how the questions ought to have been structured and why.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/05/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
During that same speech, he was quoted as saying he wasn't even halfway done yet.
let's hope his math is AFU. otherwise we are.
#5
I am soooo gonna enjoy watching his and the First Wookie's final departure from the White House lawn in January 2013
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/05/2011 9:55 Comments ||
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#6
Big Labor savaged Obama's reluctance to comment on the Wisonson bruhaha earlier this year. Cowinkeedink, Obama's whistle-stop ends in Oshkosh right before the re-call elections. You can bet this time he has his Old Tymee Union Barn-burner already in the hopper.
#7
At this point it would not bother me if the ONE's base were on life support. He and his base have just about picked this country's bones clean and now they are working on the bones.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae said it would ask for an additional $5.1 billion from taxpayers as it continues to suffer losses on loans made prior to 2009.
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Friday that the media has the responsibility to not give equal time or credence to the Tea Party's views:
WASHINGTON--President Obama celebrated his 50th birthday Thursday night with a celebrity-filled bash, as entertainer Chris Rock reported on his Twitter feed: "Just left the Presidents birthday party at the White House. Herbie Hancock played, Stevie Wonder sang and yes they did the electric slide. A great night."
Pierce O'Donnell has agreed to serve six months in federal prison, pay a $20,000 fine and do 200 hours of community service for masking contributions to John Edwards in 2004. In a plea agreement with prosecutors, O'Donnell admitted to asking 10 people to each make donations of $2,000, which he then reimbursed.
President 
