The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged six former top executives of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) with securities fraud, alleging they knew and approved of misleading statements claiming the companies had minimal holdings of higher-risk mortgage loans, including subprime loans.
#3
Skidmark, are you saying they were Bush appointees or not? Wouldn't be surprised. This, IMHO, is one of the reasons why we now have the Tea Party. People couldn't understand why Republicans weren't screaming to have Fannie and Freddie shut down from the git go. Government tinkering with the housing market and you wonder why it all went to hell? Michelle Bachman was ripping Newt to shreds last night for his involvement with the "Government Sponsored Enterprises". His responses were not as convincing as I would have liked them to be. Government, IMHO, has no business sponsoring the likes of Fannie and Freddie.
#4
The SEC needs to go a little deeper. There are other former Fannie and Freddie execs. who should be charged for the debacle they brought us--a few Congressmen and Presidents too.
#10
Gorelick and Raines were not appointed by the Bush Administration but rather by Clinton. From Wikipedia:
Deputy Attorney General under Bill Clinton .... Gorelick was appointed Vice Chairman of Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) from 1997 to 2003. She served alongside former Clinton Administration official Franklin Raines.
Bush had no authority to remove her from her position at Fannie Mae and would have faced massive resistance if he had tried.
A Navy skipper who lost his command this summer was fired in part for making his Sailors work on a Sunday to help him host a family reunion at which he allowed his relatives to drive military vehicles and go for rides on a landing craft, according to a Navy investigation report. I'm speechless. In what universe is this OK?
Not in the DOD one, which is why he lost his command.
I read this and wondered how in the world Cmdr. Brown thought he'd get away with it. Even I know he can't do what he did.
Cmdr. Robert M. Brown, who had been the commanding officer of Beachmaster Unit 2 since May 2010, also allowed inappropriate purchases to be made on the taxpayers' dime and failed to put controls in place after the supply department approved expenses including a MacBook computer, high-end cellphones that weren't compatible with the Navy's computer network, and luggage, the investigation says.
Brown was removed from the beachmaster unit, located at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek, in August, soon after one of his Sailors reported the family reunion. Last week, Brown went to admiral's mast, where he was issued a punitive letter of reprimand, which could potentially end his career.
The first female commandant of the Armys school for drill sergeants at Fort Jackson, S.C., has been suspended from her position, according to an Army official. Command Sgt. Maj. Teresa L. King was placed on suspension pending further review and investigation, a spokesperson for Initial Military Training Center of Excellence said.
King, a 28-year Army veteran, gained notoriety when she took the helm at the Drill Sergeant School in September 2009. In 2010, King was named to Oprah Winfreys 20 women rocking the world power list and appeared in the October 2010 issue of Oprah Magazine, noted WIS-TV, a local television station that was first to report that King was suspended.
She is still the commandant of the school. She is not carrying out the duties as commandant, said Stephanie Slater, a spokesperson for the command. Slater would not elaborate on the circumstances behind Kings suspension, citing the ongoing investigation and Kings privacy.
King rose to become the first female first sergeant named to oversee the headquarters company of the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, N.C., a unit with 500 paratroopers, 22 sergeants major, 22 colonels and three general officers.
She has served in South Korea and Europe, and held jobs at NATO and the Pentagon, yet despite those accomplishments, she has not deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan through 10 years of war.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/16/2011 00:00 ||
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#13
I've had female superiors that I respected and would hire as my superior - if given the choice. It's the person, not the sex.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/16/2011 21:45 Comments ||
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#14
I echo that too - not the gender but the person. Anyone that has been through the last 10 years and hasn't deployed, well that's suspicious. Especially senior NCOs. I know people in the Guard that have been deployed 4 times. Its there, all she had to do was ask.
SANGRAMPUR, India: Bootleg liquor containing toxic methanol killed 143 people and sickened dozens more who drank the cheap, illicit brew bought at small shops in eastern India, officials said Thursday. Police arrested 10 suspected bootleggers.
Emergency medical teams rushed to the village outside Kolkata, and thousands of relatives, many of them wailing in grief, gathered outside the packed hospital. Inside, dead bodies lay on the floor covered in quilts, while the ill waited on staircases to be treated. Groups of men sat in the halls with saline drips running into their arms.
Illegal liquor operations flourish in the slums of urban India and among the rural poor who can't afford the alcohol at state-sanctioned shops. The hooch, often mixed with cheap chemicals to increase potency and profit, causes illness and death sometimes -- and occasionally mass carnage.
Many of the victims -- day laborers, street hawkers, rickshaw drivers -- had gathered along a road near a railway station after work to drink the illicit booze they bought for 10 rupees (20 cents) a half liter, less than a third the price of legal alcohol, district magistrate Naraya Swarup Nigam said.
They later began vomiting, suffering piercing headaches and frothing at the mouth, he said.
Angry villagers later ransacked booze shops around the village of Sangrampur, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Kolkata, the city formerly known as Calcutta.
Police arrested 10 people in connection with making and distributing the methanol-tainted booze and demolished 10 illicit liquor dens in the area, said Luxmi Narayan Meena, district superintendent of police.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/16/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
Isn't killing your customers generally a bad idea?
#3
Homemade hooch is available everywhere in India, and consumed by juggie wallas (slum dwellers) and closet alcoholics.
Alcohol (beer, wine & spirits) is only available from the government bottle shops and expensive. Even the domestically produced products are expensive for most Indians. That is why they drink the hooch...and die.
Thousands die every year, I wonder why this incident is considered news. If you are ever in India, by your booze from a reputable outlet, the life you save will be yours.
Posted by: Secret Asian Man ||
12/16/2011 12:55 Comments ||
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#4
Thousands die every year, I wonder why this incident is considered news. If you are ever in India, by your booze from a reputable outlet, the life you save will be yours.
Here's what I don't get. How does a factory screw up the process? I had thought this was some kind of backyard operation, but the article says it was a factory, distributing through illicit retail channels. Do these idiots in fact add methanol, or was its incorporation the result of incompetence?
#5
Here's what I don't get. How does a factory screw up the process? I had thought this was some kind of backyard operation, but the article says it was a factory, distributing through illicit retail channels. Do these idiots in fact add methanol, or was its incorporation the result of incompetence?
Corruption is pervasive in India, so is incompetence. Hell, you have to inspect even the bottled water you buy. Some parts are worse than others.
While the muzzies have Insh'Allah attitude, the Hindu's have something similar, there is a lot of fatalism...what will be, will be.
When I'm there, I'll drink the domestic wine and beer, but for spirits, I ALWAYS buy imported brands from the shops that cater to foreigners and diplomatic personnel.
Posted by: Secret Asian Man ||
12/16/2011 20:05 Comments ||
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[Emirates 24/7] A chimpanzee that kicked a smoking habit and used sign language to beg for candy has died at a Caliphornia animal refuge. Charlie the Smoking Chimp lived to age 52 in South Africa...
Martine Colette of the Wildlife WayStation says Booie (BOO'-ee) was being treated for a heart condition when he died Saturday at 44. The chimp had been living at the animal sanctuary near Los Angeles since 1995, after he retired from a research lab.
Colette says she turned Booie into a non-smoker but couldn't fix his sweet tooth. She says he would use his skill to panhandle by signing: "Booie see sweet in pocket."
Booie's death is a serious blow to the financially troubled refuge because he was one of its best fundraisers. Martine says he had fans around the world because of his TV appearances.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2011 00:00 ||
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#2
Booie's death is a serious blow to the financially troubled refuge because he was one of its best fundraisers. Martine says he had fans around the world because of his TV appearances.
I hear Harry and Nancy might be needing work in another year or so.
#5
My Dad smoked, he's dead at 54, My brother smoked, he's dead at 51, My other brother smoked(Quit recently) and my Mom who NEVER smoked Died at 95, I NEVER smoked, and I'm currently 64 and in relative good health.
You decide, Did they die from smoking?
Oe just wear out?
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
12/16/2011 10:36 Comments ||
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#6
I hope they let him use the patch and didn't make him participate in "group." Sure as shooting there would have been some bi-polar spider monkey blabbing on about her feelings the whole time making him feel like he wanted to give her the Gilligan's Island treatment with the coconut shell left over from the lunch buffet.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/16/2011 21:00 Comments ||
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#7
You decide, Did they die from smoking?
Oe just wear out?
Maybe they got tired of of people nagging them to quit?
#8
You decide, Did they die from smoking? Or just wear out? Posted by: Redneck Jim
I'm 65, and I smoked a pipe for about ten years. My dad smoked a pipe from the time he was 15 until he died at 79. My mom smoked cigarettes for about 40 years, and died at 80. My grandmother dipped snuff and lived to be 85. From what I've read recently, some genotypes are prone to cancer from cigarettes, others aren't. If being "worn out" were a criteria, I'd have died 20 years ago...
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
12/16/2011 23:19 Comments ||
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#1
Because his rationale for his crime was that she enrolled in college courses, I want to say that we should bring her to the US and enroll her in one of our colleges ... then I realize that she has been punished enough.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/16/2011 20:53 Comments ||
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It is understood that Armed Forces planners are looking at the possibility that a new global financial crash could undermine the defence forces of key British allies. The head of the Armed Forces warned that economic issues pose a "strategic risk" to Britain.
Senior British commanders and officials are concerned that US plans to cut defence spending will be followed by other allies in Europe and elsewhere. Reductions in allied military capabilities could put a greater burden on Britain's stretched forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere, it is feared.
Hasn't Britain been downsizing their military for a number of years now, even to reducing the number of bullets each member of the fighting units is issued? Something is most certainly coming home to roost...
The military planning work has come to light after The Daily Telegraph disclosed last month that British embassies in the eurozone have been told to prepare emergency plans for the demise of the euro and the possible civil disorder that could follow.
Perhaps it's time to move some of the more ambitious from the dole to the Queen's shilling?
Senior ministers are increasingly convinced that the break-up of the single currency is a real possibility. Economists suggest that the failure of the euro could cause EU economies, including Britain's, to shrink by up to eight per cent.
Gen Richards, the Chief of the Defence Staff, said economic issues present the biggest threat to Britain and its interests in the world.
"I am clear that the single biggest strategic risk facing the UK today is economic rather than military," he told the Royal United Services Institute. "Over time, a thriving economy must be the central ingredient in any UK Grand Strategy. This is why the eurozone crisis is of such huge importance not just to the City of London but rightly to the whole country and to military planners like me."
The Armed Forces are facing painful cuts and the loss of tens of thousands of personnel, but Gen Richards said that such austerity was necessary.
"The country's main effort must be the economy. No country can defend itself if bankrupt," he said.
He used his speech to raise questions about the ability of European economies to sustain their armed forces. He asked: "What impact will fiscal restraint and slow recovery have on European defence capabilities?''
Gen Richards also noted that America, which is facing deep defence cuts, has said it will switch the focus of its main military effort from the Atlantic to the Pacific and south-east Asia. That means "less emphasis on Europe and her problems," he said.
Gen Richards also accepted that Britain's defence cuts carry risks, but insisted those risks were acceptable.
"It will mean taking risk. But managing risk is ultimately what we do and none of us in the Armed Forces are discomforted by the challenge," he said. The Armed Forces will need to "combine realism with imagination", he said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/16/2011 00:00 ||
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h/t Instapundit
The New York Times Company today abruptly announced that its 61-year-old chief executive officer, Janet Robinson, will leave at the end of the year, with no permanent successor lined up.
An SEC filing says Ms. Robinson will get $4.5 million plus health insurance for a 12-month retirement and consulting agreement, including "two-year non-competition, non-solicitation and non-disparagement covenants, a three-year cooperation covenant and an indefinite confidentiality covenant."
The Times itself reported that Ms. Robinson's pay in 2009 was $4.9 million, so she'll earn almost as much as a retired consultant as as a full-time CEO.
The handy investment calculator on the Times corporate Web site shows that $10,000 invested in NYT stock the day Ms. Robinson took over as CEO, on December 27, 2004, would be worth $1,855.14 today, a decline of 81.45%. The price of the stock went from $40.59 when she took over to $7.53 today, and though some dividends were paid out early in her tenure as CEO, the dividend has since been suspended. It's good to be a member of the elite Or as they used to say, 'nice work if you can get it.'
h/t Instapundit
Some of the worlds most powerful investment banks were downgraded by ratings agency Fitch as Germanys cherished European fiscal compact appeared to be unraveling.
The banks that were downgraded last night include US banks Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, Barclays and Frances BNP Paribas. Switzerlands Credit Suisse and Germanys Deutsche Bank were also cut.
JEDDAH: The euro zone is facing a "bleak" winter, according to audit firm Ernst & Young says. A "mild" recession is likely in the first half of next year, leading to economic growth of just 0.1 percent for the whole of 2012, it predicted. Ernst & Young also said unemployment in the euro zone was unlikely to fall below 10 percent until 2015.
The prospect of a mild recession in the euro zone in the first half of 2012 is now looking increasingly likely according to Ernst & Youngs Eurozone Winter Forecast (EEF).
Despite the reforms announced on December 9, the details on how the agreement will be enforced remain unclear ensuring that volatility is likely to remain high in the near future, dampening growth prospects for the next six months at least. However, assuming that the December agreement is implemented, the forecast predicts weak growth in the euro zone should resume by the end of 2012. The forecast suggests a mere 0.1 percent GDP improvement in 2012, rising to 1.5 percent 2 percent in 2013-15.
Marie Diron, senior economic adviser to the Ernst & Young euro zone Forecast, says: The reforms agreed at the summit on 9 December were a step in the right direction and the response seems to have been mildly positive. Yet investors remain very concerned about the commitment and ability of euro zone governments to implement reforms quickly. Although this slow down is not currently comparable to the one experienced in 2008 there are still major worries regarding bank liquidity issues and unemployment for 2012.
Mark Otty, Ernst & Young Area managing partner for Europe, Middle East, India and Africa, says: The uncertainties hanging over the euro zone can only continue to dampen the enthusiasm for European companies to make long term investment and recruitment decisions. Fundamentally, the real challenge for Europe and the advanced economies is growth and whether mature economies can find ways to grow above their historical trend to pay off their debt and learn to live within their means going forward.
The EEF welcomes the recent decisions by the European Central Bank (ECB) to reverse its premature interest rate rises of earlier in 2011. It is likely that further easing will be required accompanied by more measures to supply liquidity to banks. In addition, ongoing doubts about the ability of some countries to implement necessary reforms will mean that the ECB will need to keep buying government bonds.
Many commentators including the EEF believe that a strong commitment by governments about fiscal reforms could allow the ECB to step up its bond purchase program. Although government bond yields in the euro zone have come down recently they remain high and very unpredictable.
Since reforms to the fiscal and economic structures take time, the ECB could well play a key role in the near term in ensuring that bond yields do not reach or stay at unsustainable levels. As Diron explains, With bond markets very volatile, weak growth prospects and high borrowing requirements in 2012, the ECB is likely to have to consider acting as a lender of last resort if even deeper problems perhaps even a split in the euro zone are to be avoided.
Unemployment has been rising fast in some euro zone countries since 2008 particularly in the periphery, but the EEF believes there is a strong possibility of a worsening situation spreading to some of the core. Given the outlook, the jobless total will remain high for a lengthy period EEF do not expect the unemployment rate in the euro zone to fall below 10 percent until 2015.
Banking sector liquidity is another major concern across the euro zone. Bank lending in the euro zone remains tight, as banks restructure their balance sheets and reduce exposure to riskier sectors and countries.
The ECB lending survey for Q4 2011 showed that lending standards tightened again, with surveys for individual countries suggesting tighter conditions throughout the euro zone. Among the key factors accounting for this are reduced access to capital markets and banks worsening perceptions of the general economic outlook.
These lending figures suggest an increasingly adverse impact on business investment and companies capacity to raise production heading into 2012.
The costs of a break-up of the Eurozone would undoubtedly be very high and have a long-lasting impact on the whole of Europe and the world economy. As a result, EEF believes that the authorities in the leading countries will strive to hold the single currency together. It seems likely that the cost of the ECB acting as a lender of last resort would be less than the medium-term costs of a break-up.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/16/2011 00:00 ||
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Posted by: no mo uro ||
12/16/2011 13:45 Comments ||
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#3
I was hoping the fine print would say "minus both trigger fingers and his penis" but maybe that is hoping for too much from the softies on the bench handing down the sentence.
I chased this clown all over Europe and we never could get close. He had supporters everywhere from the left who glamorized him as an urban warrior and a new age revolutionary. Sorta tells you how the left views everything..in a mirror backwards.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
12/16/2011 16:05 Comments ||
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[Dawn] Resignations by some experienced polio ...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set... eradication officers from the Polio Eradication Initiative of the WHO during past few months will adversely affect the efforts to end poliomyelitis in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), sources say.
"During past four months, seven polio officers have left the Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI). Of them four doctors resigned while services of three others were terminated for poor performance," a bigwig at the PEI told Dawn on condition of anonymity.
He said that the doctors left their jobs at a time when eliminating polio had become a challenge for the government and the UN agencies. He claimed that the officers left their jobs due to the `rough attitude` of the authorities.
The sources confirmed that polio eradiation officers in Nowshera, Kohat, Dera Ismail Khan ... the Pearl of Pashtunistan ... , Malakand and Beautiful Downtown Peshawar had quit their jobs since April this year.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2011 00:00 ||
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Celebrated journalist, writer and unshakeable secularist has died from complications of oesophageal cancer
The writer, journalist and contrarian Christopher Hitchens has died at the age of 62 after crossing the border into the "land of malady" on being diagnosed with an oesophageal cancer in June 2010. Vanity Fair, for which he had written since 1992 and was made contributing editor, marked his death in a memorial article posted late on Thursday night.
The reactions to Hitchens's illness from his intellectual opponents which ranged from undisguised glee to offers of prayers testified to his stature as one of the leading voices of secularism since the publication in 2007 of his anti-religious polemic God is Not Great. The reaction from the author himself, who after a lifetime of "burning the candle of both ends" described his illness as "something so predictable and banal that it bores even me", testified to the sharpness of his wit and the clarity of his thinking under fire, as he dissected the discourse of "struggle" that surrounds cancer, paid tribute to the medical staff who looked after him and resolved to "resist bodily as best I can, even if only passively, and to seek the most advanced advice".
#1
Smart guy but he seemed to have a massive blind spot when it came to the Israel/Palestinian issue. A spot so big and wrong it put a lot of his other positions into doubt in my mind.
Still he saw most of the islamofascists for what they were when most of his liberal friends would not. Rest in Peace Christopher.
#2
"The reactions to Hitchens's illness from his intellectual opponents -- which ranged from undisguised glee to offers of prayers..."
Importantly, the glee was from his fellow atheists who hated him for his sometimes non-leftist viewpoints; as well, he was rather moved, before he died, by the extraordinarily large number of well-wishes and prayers he received from (Christian) religious people.
His big split with the doctrinaire left happened when Khomeini issued his death fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and the left on the whole did not speak up against it.
From that point forward, he understood Islam as a repugnant and barbaric thing, and the overthrow of Muslim tyrants as a positive good in the world; which put him at loggerheads with many on the left.
This is why he fully supported the Iraq war, and he described war with Iran as inevitable.
#3
Always enjoyed his writing even when I didn't agree with him, which was often. Best compliment I can pay to a writer: he made me think. Rest in peace, sir.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/16/2011 12:17 Comments ||
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#4
Our generation's Ambrose Bierce. One of a kind - if he was an actor he would have been Richard Burton...imo
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
12/16/2011 16:22 Comments ||
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#8
He was always looking for a fight. No problem with that except that Hitch appeared to take majority positions that would enable him to lead a bully attack. Hence his moronic support for the Ground Zero mosque.
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.
SANGRAMPUR, India: Bootleg liquor containing toxic methanol killed 143 people and sickened dozens more who drank the cheap, illicit brew bought at small shops in eastern India, officials said Thursday. Police arrested 10 suspected bootleggers.
A chimpanzee that kicked a smoking habit and used sign language to beg for candy has died at a 
[Dawn] Resignations by some experienced 
