Another Golden Moment in the Obama Adminstration.
GENEVA--Secretary of State Hillary Clinton opened her first extended talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov by giving him a present meant to symbolize the Obama administration's vow to "press the reset button" on U.S.-Russia relations. She handed a palm-sized box wrapped with a bow. Lavrov opened it and pulled out the gift: a red button on a black base with a Russian word peregruzka printed on top. What's it mean? Surrender? No, but read on...
"We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?" Clinton asked. "You got it wrong," Lavrov said. Instead of "reset," Lavrov said the word on the box meant "overcharge." Oh, well. I'm sure there's no Russian language experts at the State Department...
Clinton and Lavrov laughed. Ha ha ha. Johnson, find out who did this. And have them killed.
Right away, Madame Secretary...
"We won't let you do that to us," she said. Trying to recover, Clinton said the new administration was serious about improving relations with Moscow. "We mean it, and we're looking forward to it." Humina humina humina...
Lavrov said he would put the button on his desk and he and Clinton pushed the button together, before sitting down for their meeting. How do you say "What kinda goofy shit is this" in Russian? Don't ask the guy at State who inscribed the gift ...
A State Department official said the misspelling on the button was being corrected, in time for the post-meeting news conference. They'll add that to the stimulus package...
ST. PAUL, Minn. The Minnesota Supreme Court on Friday blocked Democrat Al Franken's petition for an election certificate that would put him in the U.S. Senate without waiting for a lawsuit to run its course.
The decision means the seat will remain empty until the lawsuit and possible appeals in state court are complete. Republican Norm Coleman's lawsuit challenging Franken's recount lead is at the end of its sixth week, and both sides expect it to last at least a few more weeks.
After a state board certified recount results showing Franken 225 votes ahead, he sued to force Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie to sign an election certificate. Franken argued that federal law stipulates each state will have two senators when the Senate convenes, and that law trumped a state law that blocks such certificates while lawsuits are pending.
But the state Supreme Court disagreed. In their ruling Friday, the justices said states aren't required to issue such certificates by the date that Congress convenes. The justices wrote in their unsigned opinion that "if the Senate believes delay in seating the second Senator from Minnesota adversely affects the Senate, it has the authority to remedy the situation and needs no certificate of election from the Governor to do so."
Coleman's team hailed the ruling for giving the state courts space to sort out Coleman's lawsuit. "This wise ruling will ensure that Harry Reid, Al Franken and Chuck Schumer cannot short-circuit Minnesota law in their partisan power play," Coleman adviser Ben Ginsberg said, referring to two Democratic leaders in the Senate.
Franken's campaign had no immediate comment on the ruling.
The House on Thursday night turned back another call to investigate the PMA Group, a once-powerful lobbying firm whose offices were recently raided by the FBI and which has close ties to Pennsylvania Rep. John P. Murtha (D).
Twenty-one Democrats, including nine freshmen, voted to proceed with debate on the measure offered by Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake (R) calling for an investigation of the lobbying firm. Most of the Democrats represent fiscally conservative districts.
Republican Rep. Don Young of Alaska the focus of an unrelated federal corruption probe voted with the Democrats to table Flake's motion. He was joined by Republicans Walter Jones of North Carolina, Dana Rohrabacher of California and Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, whose district abuts Murtha's and who has been an outspoken supporter of his recently embattled neighbor.
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who recently returned from a Middle East trip that included stops in Damascus and Gaza, called yesterday for loosening sanctions on Syria, which he praised for opening a stock market and sending an ambassador to Iraq.
"Loosening certain sanctions in exchange for verifiable changes in behavior can actually benefit US businesses," Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told a packed auditorium at the Brookings Institution. "The sanctions can always be tightened again if Syria backtracks."
The Bush administration shunned Syria for more than four years, accusing the regime of fostering the insurgency in Iraq, meddling in Lebanon's affairs by assassinating its elected leaders, and supporting anti-Israeli militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas.
In other words, if your bank fails and the fund is broke, you loose all the money you have in your bank account... But that will NEVER be the Democrats that now control everything's fault. Now THAT is what you call CHANGE!
March 4 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said the fund it uses to protect customer deposits at U.S. banks could dry up amid a surge in bank failures, as she responded to an industry outcry against new fees approved by the agency.
"Without these assessments, the deposit insurance fund could become insolvent this year," Bair wrote in a March 2 letter to the industry. U.S. community banks plan to flood the FDIC with about 5,000 letters in protest of the fees, according to a trade group.
"A large number" of bank failures may occur through 2010 because of "rapidly deteriorating economic conditions," Bair said in the letter. "Without substantial amounts of additional assessment revenue in the near future, current projections indicate that the fund balance will approach zero or even become negative."
The FDIC last week approved a one-time "emergency" fee and other assessment increases on the industry to rebuild a fund to repay customers for deposits of as much as $250,000 when a bank fails. The fees, opposed by the industry, may generate $27 billion this year after the fund fell to $18.9 billion in the fourth quarter from $34.6 billion in the previous period, the FDIC said.
The fund, which lost $33.5 billion in 2008, was drained by 25 bank failures last year. Sixteen banks have failed so far this year, further straining the fund.
Smaller banks are outraged over the one-time fee, which could wipe out 50 percent to 100 percent of a bank's 2009 earnings, Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, said yesterday in a telephone interview.
#2
to rebuild a fund to repay customers for deposits of as much as $250,000
Anyone have a reference on a site with the distribution of how much we really do have in our accounts? Given that 250K just in annual salary would put you into the 2 or 3 percent mark, I would doubt many Americans, outside the usual suspects of those with 'special' connections [who got the coverage amount raised from 100K not too long ago], have that much. Stupid to have raised it in the first place and thus creating the situation we have now.
Smaller banks are outraged over the one-time fee, which could wipe out 50 percent to 100 percent of a bank's 2009 earnings,
That appears to be the real damage. The experts and those in charge who brought us to this point are now compounding the problem.
#3
I'm awaiting a cost sharing 'customer funded FDIC scheme' where one is taxed charged according to the amount deposited. Of course Obamabonds and CD's would be insurance exempt.
#4
The 2 to 3% limit doesn't apply here. We have a very, very large amount of foreign deposits by folks from other countries that trust American banks more than there own. FDIC being one reason.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
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#5
There are plenty of Americans with incomes well below the $250,000 annual income level who have been exceedingly frugal. My darling in-laws, for instance, always set aside 25% of my father's salary as a steel worker, using it to buy a little house, put two children through college at nearby state schools, and set aside substantial funds for their old age. This, despite the steel plant closing before my father-in-law hit the half century mark, throwing him into unplanned very early retirement; they have continued to set aside a portion of his pension payments toward their very old age, putting a substantial portion of their savings into CDs. I can easily imagine they had funds above the cut-off.
#6
If you think the crisis is bad now, just imagine the FDIC reneging on its pledge, even to small-potatoes savers like me. It would be March 1933 all over again, as depositors scrambled to convert their account balances into currency. That can't be done in a short period of time.
It seems inevitable that there will be a surge of bank failures, as the awareness of the true scope of bank insolvency spreads. Yup, it is truly time to institute National Health Insurance.
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.
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who recently returned from a Middle East trip that included stops in Damascus and Gaza, called yesterday for loosening sanctions on Syria, which he praised for opening a stock market and sending an ambassador to Iraq.
