From ctmock at gmail.com Sat May 3 04:19:35 2008 From: ctmock at gmail.com (Carlos Mock) Date: Sat, 03 May 2008 05:19:35 -0500 Subject: [News] If I Were A Terrorist... Newsletter - May 3, 2008 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: If I Were A Terrorist... ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1EXKLVgEx0 Intenational Herald Tribune Editorial - Notes from the war on terrorism. Copyright by The International Herald Tribune. Published: May 2, 2008. For more than a year, President George W. Bsh has refused to honor legitimate requests from the Democratic majority in ongress for legal documents that he used to justify ordering the abuse, humiiation and torture of prisoners. This week, the Justice Department finallyagreed to show some papers to members of the House and Senate. Sounds lik good news? Not so much. For starters, it is not yet clear whether the Whie House will turn over the complete and unredacted opinions of the governmnt lawyers that claimed the president could ignore the law and the Geneva onventions. And even if the documents are not censored, Bush continues to usea bogus claim of secrecy to keep documents on torture from the public. Appaling as this stonewalling is, it this is nt the only disturbing news from the war on terror. This week, Mark Mazzetti reported in The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune that the Justice Department stillclaims that intelligence agents can legally use interrogation methods prohbited under American and international law. In 2006, after Congress put restictions on the military's interrogation methods, Bush formally exempted he CIA. He issued secret rules that are believed to allow harsh and abusive ethods, some of which amount to torture by pretty much any definition. htt://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/international-herald-ti bune-editorial_03.html International Herald Tribune Editorial - Lying or the commander in chief. Copyright by The International Herald Tribune. ublished: April 28, 2008. As they prepared to invade Iraq five years ago, te Bush administration called up retired military officers to help sell thewar. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his propaganda team courted s many as 75 retired military officers who could best market the Pentagon lin, particularly on television. All administrations try to spin, or even maniulate, the news media, but this White House has taken that to a new low. The ush administration has hired actors to pose as journalists. It has prodced mock news bulletins to promote its view of the Iraq war. At least oe conservative commentator was paid $240,000 to go on television to promote resident George W. Bush's education policies. Now, based on thousands of-mail messages and other documents, David Barstow of The New York Times has outlined how the Pentagon used a "Trojan horse" of former military officers to parrot falsey positive messages (IHT, April 21). Bush's national security team - nd many Pentagon officers - continue to labor under the tragic delusion tat negative coverage, rather than the bad news itself, undermined public suport for the war in Vietnam. So the propaganda experts created the instantcommentariat of decorated retired generals and admirals who could seem to be trong and independent voices. Too many were not independent at all. One exampe: a retired Marine colonel and Fox News analyst asked his Pentagon contactto "please let me know if you have any specific points you want covered or hat you would prefer to downplay." http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspt.com/2008/04/international-herald-tri bune-editorial_29.html Letter draws egal outline for CIA tactics. Copyright by The New York Times. 8:37 PM CD, April 26, 2008. WASHINGTON ? The Justice Department has told Congress thatU.S. intelligence operatives attempting to thwart terrorist attacks can legaly use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under nternational law. The legal interpretation, outlined in recent letters, shes new light on the still-secret rules for interrogations by the CIA. It shws that the administration is arging that the boundaries for interrogations should be subject to some latitude, even under an executive order issued last summer that President Bush said meant that theCIA would comply with international strictures against harsh treatment o detainees. While the Geneva Conventions prohibit "outrages upon person dignity," a letter sent by the Justice Department to Congress on March 5 mkes clear that the administration has not drawn a precise line in deciding whch interrogation methods would violate that standard, and is reserving th right to make case-by-case judgments. http://iretiredfromnewsletter.blogspot.com/2008/04/letter-draws-legal-outli ne-for-cia.html Krugman: Bushmade permanent By Paul Krugman. Copyright by The International Herald Tribun. Published: April 28, 2008. PRINCETON, New Jersey: Bush made permanen As the designated political heir of a deeply unpopular president - accordig to Gallup, President George W. Bush has the highest disapproval rating recrded in 70 years of polling - John McCain should have little hope of winnng in November. In fact, however, current polls show him roughly tied witheither Democrat. In part this may reflect the Democrats' problems. For th most part, however, it probably reflects the perception, eagerly propagate by McCain's many admirers in the news media, that he's very different fro Bush - a responsible guy, a straight talker. Is this perception at all rue? During the 2000 campaign people said much the same thing about Bush; those of us who looked hard at his policy proposals, especially on taxes, saw the shape of thngs to come./Hail to the chef By Walter Scheib. Copyright by The Iternational Herald Tribune. Published: April 29, 2008. GREAT FALLS, Virgnia: The long association between first ladies - or those aspiring to te role - and recipes was thrust into the headlines recently when it ws discovered that recipes attributed to Cindy McCain on her husband's campign Web site were lifted, verbatim, from the Food Network. (A campaign sokesman attributed this seeming act of plagiarism to an intern.) I ougt to be the last person to question this preoccupation with first families' dning habits, since it helped propel me to a certain kind of prominence when illary Clinton hired me to be White House chef in 1994. But I confess tat I have often wondered why we are fascinated not just with what our presidnts and their families eat, but what they cook. Let's make one thing clear First families don't get to the White House because of their cooking. True, n one episode of the TV show "The West Wing," there's a federal government hutdown, the chefs are not at work ad the first lady cooks dinner. But that's, well, television. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/krugman-bush-made-perman ent.html Your Lack of Money Investors pul out of mutual funds By Deborah Brewster in New York. Copyright The Financal Times Limited 2008. Published: April 27 2008 22:26 | Last updated: April 7 2008 22:26. All but one of the 25 largest US mutual fund managers aw their long-term assets fall in the first quarter, as returns dived nd investors pulled out of funds. In the worst start to a year for more thana decade, most money managers had retail outflows, and even stalwarts suchas American Funds and Vanguard suffered a drop in assets, of 6.6 per cent ad 4.3 per cent respectively. Pimco, the bond manager, was the only one to sow a rise in retail assets, according to Financial Research Corporation ad industry estimates. Pimco?s Total Return fund had an inflow of $9bn in te three months to March. The trend is likely to worry economists, becauseit suggests the credit turmoil is hurting the confidence of mainstreamvestors. That, in turn, could dampen activity among consumers in the monthsahead, since falling investment sentiment is often associated with muted houehold spending levels. However, the fall also marks a fresh blow for the fiancial industry, because mutual fund managers typically make money by chargin a percentage of assets ? meaning that profits in the industry fall when asets decline. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/investors-pll-out-of-mu tual-funds.html Consumer confidence index at 5-year low -The Conference Board's measure fals in April amid concerns about employment and business activity. By Catherine Clifford. Copyright by CNNMoney.com. Last Updated: April 29, 2008: 11:31 AM EDT. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A key measure of consumer confidence slipped in April to the lowest level in fie years, as Americans worry about their jobs and the level of business activity. The New York-based Conference Board said Tuesday that its Consumer Confidence Index dropped to 62.3, the lowest level since March 2003, from a revised 65.9 in March. Analysts had expected the index to decline to 61, according to a consensus compiled by Briefing.com. The index has now declned for four months in a row. Consumers who feel that business condition are "bad" increased to 26.7% from 25.5%, while those claiming business conditions are "good" eased to 153% from 15.6% last month. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/0/consumer-confidence-inde x-at-5-year-low.html US manufacturing contracts for third month By Chris Bryant in Washington. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 1 2008 14:33 | Last updated: May 1 2008 16:01. The US manufacturing sector contracted for a third consecutive month in April as waning domestic demand acted as a drag on factory output even as exports continued to provide a source of strength. A separate report showed US construction spending dropped much more than expected last month while the bulk of a reported increase in consumer spending was taken up by higher costs for food and energy. The economic headwinds facing consumers were also reflected in the latest report on the US labour market which registered the highest number of Americans on unemployment benefits in four years, a potentially worrying signal ahead of Friday?s closely-watched jobs report. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/us-manufacturing-contrac ts-for-third.html US economy avoids outright contraction By Chris Bryant in Washington. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: April 30 2008 14:25 | Last updated: April 30 2008 16:29. The US economy almost stalled in the first three months of this year, saved only by an increase in business inventories and exports, as the labour market weakened, the real estate market slumped and consumers cut back on spending. The first government estimate of the total value of all goods and services produced in the US economy increased only 0.6 per cent in the first quarter, a fraction better than economists? expectations and the same rate of growth achieved in the last three months of 2007. That period in turn represented a sharp contraction from the third quarter of last year, when the economy expanded by 4.9 per cent. The dismal growth estimate may prompt the Federal Reserve officials to cut interest rates by another quarter point when their policy meeting concludes later on Wednesday. The Fed has already slashed interest rates by three percentage points since last September in an attempt to prevent the credit squeeze and housing slump tipping the US economy into a deep recession. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/us-economy-avoids-outrig ht-contraction.html US jobs figures better than expected By Chris Bryant in Washington. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 2 2008 14:00 | Last updated: May 2 2008 16:22. US employers laid off workers for a fourth consecutive month in April as businesses cut back on spending in the face of economic headwinds but overall job losses were far less severe than most economists had feared. Investors were also cheered on Friday by stronger-than expected increase in March factory orders. Nonfarm payrolls fell by 20,000, significantly better than consensus expectations for around 75,000 job cuts and following a revised 81,000 jobs losses in March. The unemployment rate dipped from 5.1 per cent to 5 per cent, having jumped by 0.3 percentage points last time round. Economists had forecast the jobless rate to edge higher to 5.2 per cent. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/us-jobs-figures-better-t han-expected.html ExxonMobil boosted by record oil prices By Sheila McNulty in Houston. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 1 2008 14:55 | Last updated: May 1 2008 14:55. ExxonMobil?s first-quarter results on Thursday reinforced the emphasis the world?s biggest listed oil company places on oil and gas, which continues to provide record earnings, even as high-profile shareholders call for increased diversification into alternatives. Net income was a record $10.9bn, up 17 per cent from the first quarter of last year, on higher crude oil and natural gas prices. The results, equivalent to earnings of $2.03 a share, up 25 per cent from last year, came despite lower refining and chemical margins, lower production volumes and higher operating costs. Exxon shares fell $3.62 or nearly 4 per cent at the open to $89.45 after the results failed to meet earnings expectations of $2.11 a share, according to Reuters Estimates. The Rockefeller family, the longest continuing shareholder of Exxon, publicly called this week for Exxon to stop relying on decisions made years ago to invest in the oil and gas projects from which it is still reaping high profits, and diversify to prepare for the future. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/exxonmobil-boosted-by-re cord-oil-prices.html Shell and BP profits soar to $14bn By Ed Crooks. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: April 29 2008 07:47 | Last updated: April 29 2008 15:23. Royal Dutch Shell and BP, Europe?s two biggest oil companies, have delivered better than expected results as the price of oil soared. While BP?s profit growth was much faster than Shell?s, both companies comfortably exceeded analysts? expectations, and shares in both rose sharply. UK Daily View: BP and Shell post big profits Ed Crooks on the oil giants? results that comfortably beat analysts? expectations Shares in both groups were up by 5 per cent in afternoon London trading, with BP rising 30p to 608?p and Shell gaining 97p at ?20.38. However, BP warned that its results had been flattered by unusual factors contributing about $1bn of profit in the quarter. It cautioned that the results should not be taken as evidence that Tony Hayward, the new chief executive, had yet succeeded in his attempts to turn the company round. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/shell-and-bp-profits-soa r-to-14bn.html GM posts big loss as U.S. sales hurt - Weakness at GMAC, American Axle strike also hurts results, but overseas vehicle sales help company top analysts' forecasts. GM posted a large loss in the first quarter, as U.S. auto sales were hurt by high fuel costs and the economic downturn. By David Goldman. Copyright by CNNMoney.com. Last Updated: April 30, 2008: 11:19 AM EDT. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- General Motors Corp. reported a large first-quarter loss Wednesday, due in large part to struggles at its former finance wing GMAC, a strike at American Axle and slumping U.S. car sales. But the loss was narrower than expected and sales topped forecasts, helping to lift shares of GM (GM, Fortune 500) 9% to $23.15. GM, the nation's largest automaker, posted a net loss of $3.3 billion, or $5.74 per share. That was much wider than the $42 million, or 7 cents a share, loss from continuing operations it reported in the same period last year. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/gm-posts-big-loss-as-us- sales-hurt.html Deutsche falls to first loss in five years By James Wilson in Frankfurt. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: April 29 2008 07:56 | Last updated: April 29 2008 15:20. Deutsche Bank on Tuesday reported its first quarterly loss in five years and revealed the drastic impact of the credit crisis on its profitable investment banking activities. Reporting a net loss of ?141m ($220m, ?110m) for the first three months of 2008, Germany?s largest bank said the short-term outlook remained highly uncertain. Deutsche took ?2.7bn of write-downs ? more than expected ? in markets that Josef Ackermann, chief executive, said were ?the most difficult in recent memory?. Net revenues more than halved, from ?9.6bn in the first quarter of 2007 to ?4.6bn, as some of Deutsche?s business lines shrank as a result of the credit crisis. The corporate and investment bank ? including Deutsche?s most lucrative trading operations ? saw net revenues plunge from ?6.7bn to ?1.5bn. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/deutsche-falls-to-first- loss-in-five.html Mars and Buffett agree $23bn Wrigley purchase By Jenny Wiggins. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: April 28 2008 09:32 | Last updated: April 28 2008 15:19. Mars, the privately held US confectionery group, on Monday moved to create the world?s biggest confectionery company as it announced the agreed all-cash acquisition of gum group Wrigley for around $23bn (?11.5bn, ?14.7bn). Mars is offering $80 a share for Wrigley, a 28 per cent premium to the gum maker?s closing share price on Friday of $62.45 and a 34 per cent premium to the three-month weighted average price of $59.88. The deal is pitched at a multiple of 4.3 times 2007 sales and more than 35 times earnings per share. The merged company would have around 14.4 per cent of the global confectionery market, according to Bernstein Research, annual sales of more than $27bn and more than 64,000 employees worldwide. Warren Buffett, the legendary investor, is helping to finance the transaction through his Berkshire Hathaway investment company, which is contributing $4.4bn of subordinated debt. Further financing is being provided by Goldman Sachs, which is putting up $5.7bn of senior debt. The deal will also see Berkshire take a minority equity investment in Wrigley valued at $2.1bn, purchased at a discount to the share price being paid to Wrigley shareholders. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/mars-and-buffett-agree-2 3bn-wrigley.html Linens 'n Things files Chapter 11, to close 4 Chicago area stores. Copyright 2008 Associated Press. 11:08 AM CDT, May 2, 2008. Bedding- and home-furnishing retailer Linens 'n Things on Friday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the latest major retailer to succumb to the difficult consumer environment. It also said it will close 120 stores, almost a quarter of them in California. It plans to close four Illinois stores: on North Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Palatine, Skokie and Schaumburg. The company's parent, Linens Holding Co., filed a petition in bankruptcy court in Delaware. The company named Michael Gries of the restructuring firm Conway Del Genio Gries & Co. as chief restructuring officer and interim chief executive. Current CEO Robert DiNicola will become executive chairman. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/linens-n-things-files-ch apter-11-to.html Gold and Commodities Oil $116.32 Silver Bullion $16.41 Gold Bullion $857 Platinum Bullion $ $1905 Euro $1.54.06 Opec says oil could hit $200 By Carola Hoyos in London. Published: April 28 2008 13:56. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Last updated: April 28 2008 13:56. Opec?s president on Monday warned that oil prices could hit $200 a barrel and there would be little the cartel could do to help. The comments made by Chakib Khelil, Algeria?s energy minister, came as oil prices continued to hover near $120 a barrel, putting pressure on the already struggling US economy. His comments suggest Algeria wants the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to continue to resist calls by US and European leaders for the cartel to pump more oil. Some US Democratic senators have even threatened to cut off defence supplies to Opec members if the 13-member group failed to reverse its position. But Mr Khelil blamed record oil prices on the weakness in the dollar and global political insecurity. He told El Moudjahid, Algeria?s government newspaper: ?I don?t think that an increase in production would help lower prices, because there is a balance between supply and demand and the stocks of gasoline in the United States have recorded a surplus and are at their highest level for five years.? http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/opec-says-oil-could-hit- 200.html Oil and gold claw back some losses By Neil Dennis. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 2 2008 11:22 | Last updated: May 2 2008 11:22. Oil prices clawed back some ground on Friday as speculators positioned themselves for weak, dollar negative US employment data later in the session. Nymex West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark crude contract, reached a record peak of $119.93 a barrel on Monday, but has since fallen back to $113.34 ? a drop of 5.5 per cent. Meanwhile, gold ticked 0.4 per cent higher to $855 an ounce, but remained 3.4 per cent lower on the week as the broader commodity market was hit by a strengthening dollar. James Steel, precious metals analyst at HSBC said that recent price declines may be part of an overall commodity correction. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/oil-and-gold-claw-back-s ome-losses.html Dollar climbs as Fed shifts to neutral By Neil Dennis. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 1 2008 11:36 | Last updated: May 1 2008 11:36. The dollar climbed to its highest level in a month against the euro and hit a two-month high against the yen on Thursday after the Federal Reserve signalled it may hold US rates at 2 per cent. Following a quarter-point cut in the Fed funds rate on Wednesday, the US central bank said the outlook for inflation remained uncertain, but it was less bearish on the outlook for the economy. ?The Fed shifted to a neutral bias, removing the phrase indicating that ?downside risks to growth remain?,? said David Woo at Barclays Capital. He added: ?These changes signal that the Fed expects to keep rates unchanged for the foreseeable future, although developments in the economy and financial markets will determine what it does next.? In contrast, economists were increasingly of the opinion that eurozone growth has slowed to the point where the European Central Bank may have to act, or risk stunting economic growth. Recent eurozone data have been disappointing. German business sentiment, measured by Ifo, recorded its biggest monthly fall since September, 2001, while eurozone purchasing managers? indexes have also fallen in the last month. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/dollar-climbs-as-fed-shi fts-to-neutral.html Dollar jumps after US employment report By Peter Garnham. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 2 2008 11:57 | Last updated: May 2 2008 13:45. The dollar jumped on Friday after monthly US employment figures backed up the Federal Reserve?s less-bearish view about the country?s economy. With a fall of just 20,000 in monthly payrolls, the US labour market proved surprisingly resilient, confounding expectations that more than 75,000 jobs would be lost in April. Having rallied sharply on Thursday after investors reacted to signals from the Federal Reserve that it was set for a pause in its interest rate cutting cycle, the dollar set off again on an upward trajectory. ?The data plays very strongly to the pre-existing grain of the market, namely to buy dollar?s and buy risk,? said Alan Ruskin at RBS Greewich Capital. Shortly after the data, the greenback was up 0.6 per cent to $1.5383. Meanwhile, analysts said deteriorating eurozone economic data was weighing on the euro, feeding the notion that the single currency?s uptrend against the dollar might have peaked. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/dollar-jumps-after-us-em ployment-report.html Housing Illinois Average Rates 5/2/08 - 10:46 PM 30 Yr Fixed 5.72% 15 Yr Fixed 5.29% 30 Yr Fixed Jumbo 7.04% Taking a ride through the land of lost homes - Emotions set aside as real estate agents bus potential buyers ready to capitalize on other's misfortune By Susan Chandler Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. April 28, 2008. The yellow-and-orange bus would stand out anywhere even without the giant letters proclaiming its purpose: RepoHomeTourChica go.com. A handful of buyers have showed up to board the 12-seat shuttle parked at Woodfield mall amid the drizzle on a recent Saturday morning. As they take their seats, the home shoppers are handed a slick binder listing the repossessed properties they will see in the next two-and-a-half hours. "Welcome to Chicagoland's Premier Foreclosure Tour," it says. "Today we visit Hoffman Estates and Schaumburg." A few minutes after 11 a.m., the bus pulls onto Golf Road, and they're off. Not long ago, many people viewed shopping for a foreclosed home as a distasteful act, a form of benefiting from someone else's misfortune and misery. As thousands of distressed properties have glutted the market nationwide, driving down home prices for the first time in generations, that stigma appears to have greatly lessened, or maybe disappeared. Local real estate broker Bill Diehl is hoping the demand for bargain homes is as strong here as it is in such places as California and Florida, where foreclosure auctions and bus tours have drawn eager crowds. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/taking-ride-through-land -of-lost-homes.html Fall in US house prices accelerates By Chris Bryant in Washington. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: April 29 2008 14:27 | Last updated: April 29 2008 15:55. US house prices continue to plunge by a record amount, a new report showed on Tuesday, adding to pressure on consumers and threatening to prolong a domestic economic slowdown. Meanwhile, confidence among US consumers fell to its lowest level in five years as shoppers reacted to the impact of the housing slump, tighter credit conditions and a weakening labour market. The Standard & Poors/Case Shiller 10-city index of single-family house prices contracted by 13.6 per cent year-on-year in February, the most since records began in 1987. The broader 20-city index fell 12.7 per cent compared with a year earlier, the biggest drop since the index?s inception in 2001. Monthly price declines have accelerated, with repeat sale prices in the 20-city index falling by 2.6 per cent in February, compared with 2.4 per cent in January and 2.1 per cent in December. The worst affected cities were Las Vegas and Miami where home values have respectively fallen 22.8 per cent and 21.7 per cent in the past 12 months. In San Francisco house prices fell 5 per cent in just one month between January and February. ?Prices of single family homes continue to drop across the nation,? said David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P. ?There is no sign of a bottom in the numbers.? http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/fall-in-us-house-prices- accelerates.html Fed leads fresh move to ease credit strains By Krishna Guha in Washington and Michael Mackenzie in New York. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 2 2008 14:06 | Last updated: May 2 2008 14:06. US and European central banks on Friday launched a fresh co-ordinated assault on dollar money market strains on both sides of the Atlantic. The Federal Reserve announced that it was increasing the size of its credit auction facility ? the Term Auction Facility, which offers one-month loans to banks ? by 50 per cent to $150bn. Meanwhile the Fed, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank said they were increasing the size of dollar currency swaps by almost 50 per cent to $50bn and $20bn, respectively. This money will be used to increase the supply of dollars offshore in Europe. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/fed-leads-fresh-move-to- ease-credit.html Financial Times Editorial Comment: No quick end to the credit squeeze. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 1 2008 18:49 | Last updated: May 1 2008 18:49. ?While there remain downside risks, the most likely path ahead is that confidence and risk appetite will return gradually in the coming months.? That is the view of John Gieve, deputy governor of the Bank of England, on what will now happen in credit markets. But while the Bank?s Financial Stability Report may be right not to expect further spectacular crashes and liquidity crises ? in that sense the worst may be over ? it does not follow that markets will soon return to normal. The Bank observes that bond prices imply unprecedented levels of default on subprime mortgages and unprecedentedly low levels of recovery from seizing properties and auctioning them off. It argues that predictions of ultimate losses from the credit squeeze based on these prices ? such as the $945bn estimate by the International Monetary Fund ? are therefore overstated. One implication is that, if markets recover, some banks that have aggressively written down assets may be able to write them back. This argument works but, as the Bank recognises, only to an extent. Some securities probably are trading below their ?fair value? because of uncertainty and illiquidity. Unless uncertainty and illiquidity are ended, however ? and it is hard to see what can do that ? investors are likely to carry on demanding risk premiums to hold asset-backed bonds. Just as the price of credit risk remained implausibly low for a long period, it can remain implausibly high for a long time as well. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/financial-times-editoria l-comment-no.html Countrywide plunges to $893m loss By Ben White in New York. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: April 29 2008 13:46 | Last updated: April 29 2008 13:46. Countrywide Financial, the giant mortgage lender being acquired by Bank of America, said on Tuesday it lost $893m in the first quarter as conditions in the US housing market worsened. Countrywide, a significant player in the subprime mortgage market, agreed to a $4bn takeover offer from BofA last year after teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. BofA, which long coveted Countrywide?s lending platform, expects to close the deal in the third quarter. It has said Countrywide will no longer offer loans to high-risk subprime borrowers. Countrywide said it lost $893m, or $1.60 a share, in the quarter, compared with a profit of $434m, or 72 cents, in the first quarter last year. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/countrywide-plunges-to-8 93m-loss.html International Chicago Tribune Editorial - Hunger and hope. Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. May 1, 2008. Food prices are soaring around the world?up 83 percent in the last three years, according to the World Bank. The cost of rice, a staple for billions, has skyrocketed in just weeks to $1,000 per ton from $400. Chicagoans grumble because food inflation adds a couple of bucks to their weekly bill at the grocery store, but it's a matter of life and death in parts of the globe far from America's abundance. Food riots have erupted in Haiti, Bangladesh and Ethiopia. Afghanistan, North Korea and large swaths of Africa could face famine. India, Egypt, Argentina and Ukraine banned some food exports to soften food price hikes. World Bank President Robert Zoellick estimates that increasing food prices have pushed 100 million people into poverty, undoing a decade of economic growth in some countries. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon on Tuesday set up a top-level task force on the food crisis, warning that it could hurt trade prospects, hinder social progress and threaten political security. There is no one cause for this calamity, but there are identifiable culprits?and there are workable solutions. A multiyear drought in Australia has contributed to high food prices. The weather can't be controlled, but Zoellick correctly noted, "This is not a natural disaster." It is the unintended, though inevitable, consequence of increasing prosperity in the developing world and continued arrogant market manipulation via trade policies, tariffs, subsidies and biofuel mandates in the developed world. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/chicago-tribune-editoria l-hunger-and.html Tsvangirai wins Zimbabwe election ? Reuters Limited. May 2, 2008. Zimbabwe?s opposition leader defeated President Robert Mugabe in the presidential election but faces a run-off vote after he failed to win an outright majority, the electoral body said. Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai won 47.9 per cent of the vote on March 29 and Mugabe took 43.2 per cent, said chief elections officer Lovemore Sekeramayi. The result was announced after a verification process by the candidates to check the result, but an opposition MDC spokesman said the announcement was scandalous and described it as ?daylight robbery?. He said the party executive would decide on the next move. Earlier, it had rejected the figure. Its initial projections showed Mr Tsvangirai had won 50.3 per cent of the vote and it said it had ended the rule of Mr Mugabe, 84, who has led Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980. A month-long delay to results had raised fears of widespread bloodshed in a country suffering economic ruin. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/tsvangirai-wins-zimbabwe -election.html Pakistan strikes deal on restoring judges - Move could give lift to new government By Kim Barker. Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. 10:45 PM CDT, May 2, 2008. ISLAMABAD, Pakistan ? Pakistan's ruling parties apparently have agreed how to restore the judges fired by President Pervez Musharraf last fall, potentially resolving the most contentious issue facing the fledgling government and preventing the fragile coalition from collapsing. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, leader of the second-largest party in the coalition, said at a news conference Friday evening in Lahore that parliament would vote on a resolution to restore the judges May 12. Sharif, overthrown by Musharraf when he seized power while army chief in a 1999 coup, also said the president could be sacked because of the restoration of more than 60 judges. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/pakistan-strikes-deal-on -restoring.html Cuba puts first computers on sale to the public By WILL WEISSERT. Copyright 2008 Associated Press. 1:37 AM CDT, May 3, 2008. HAVANA - Cubans are getting wired. The island's communist government put desktop computers on sale to the public for the first time Friday, ending a ban on PC sales as another despised restriction on daily life fell away under new President Raul Castro. A tower-style QTECH PC and monitor costs nearly US$780 (euro505). While few Cubans can afford that, dozens still gawked outside a tiny Havana electronics store, crowding every inch of its large glass windows and leaving finger and nose prints behind. Inside, four clerks tore open boxes, hastily assembling display computers. By the time a sign went up listing the PCs specifications, more than a dozen shoppers were lined up to get in. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/cuba-puts-first-computer s-on-sale-to.html Mess-o-potamia Iraq: U.S. has no claim to oil boom - 'America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq,' Baghdad official says By Liz Sly. Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. 12:42 AM CDT, May 1, 2008. BAGHDAD ? As Congress gears up to debate the Bush administration's latest request for an additional $108 billion in war funding for Iraq and Afghanistan, Iraqis are fuming at suggestions being floated by lawmakers that Baghdad should start paying a share of the war's costs by providing cheap fuel to the U.S. military. "America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq," said Abdul Basit, the head of Iraq's Supreme Board of Audit, an independent body that oversees Iraqi government spending. "This is an immoral request because we didn't ask them to come to Iraq, and before they came in 2003 we didn't have all these needs." The issue of Baghdad's contribution to the costs of the war jumped to the forefront early in April during testimony to Congress of the Iraq war commander, Gen. David Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker. Noting that the soaring price of oil is likely to give Iraq a revenue bonanza this year of up to $70 billion, senators quizzed the two on why Iraq isn't using its rising oil income to pay more of the costs of reconstruction. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/iraq-us-has-no-claim-to- oil-boom.html Shiite extremists lobbed more rockets or mortar shells at the U.S. protected Green Zone By SELCAN HACAOGLU . Copyright 2008 Associated Press. 7:55 AM CDT, April 28, 2008 BAGHDAD - Shiite extremists lobbed more rockets or mortar shells at the U.S. protected Green Zone on Monday as American and Iraqi troops engaged militants in the most violent clashes in weeks in Baghdad. Abrams tanks were used to repel attacks on two army checkpoints, killing 22 militants in one clash late Sunday, the U.S. military said on Monday. Sixteen other militants were killed Sunday in separate firefights. The militants apparently were taking advantage of a sandstorm that blanketed the capital on Sunday, which enabled them to shell the Green Zone that houses the U.S. Embassy and much of the Iraqi government on the west side of the Tigris River. Alarms could be heard again on Monday as loudspeakers warned residents to take cover and stay away from windows. The U.S. Embassy on Monday confirmed the area was hit by indirect fire, the military's term for rocket or mortar attacks, and said there were "no reports of serious injury or deaths at this time." http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/shiite-extremists-lobbed -more-rockets.html Bombs kill 35 in wedding convoy - U.S., Iraqi forces fight militia in Sadr City By Sholnn Freeman. Copyright by The Washington Post. 11:58 PM CDT, May 1, 2008. BAGHDAD ? Two suicide bombers attacked a wedding convoy as it passed through a busy market area in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, killing at least 35 people and wounding at least 65, police said. As police and rescue crews rushed to the site after the first explosion in the town of Balad Ruz, the second bomb was detonated, police said. They said one of the attackers was a woman. The double bombing was the latest in a series of high-profile attacks in Diyala, a largely Sunni area. The attackers appear to be targeting members of the Awakening movement, mainly Sunnis who have joined with U.S. forces to fight the Sunni insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq. In central Baghdad, meanwhile, a car bomb targeting a U.S. military convoy killed an American soldier, the military said. Three suspects were detained and tested positive for explosive compounds, it said. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/bombs-kill-35-in-wedding -convoy-us.html Afghan president safe after fleeing gunfire at Kabul event By AMIR SHAH. Copyright 2008 Associated Press. 7:48 AM CDT, April 27, 2008 KABUL, Afghanistan - Suspected Taliban militants attacked a ceremony attended by the Afghan president on Sunday, unleashing automatic weapons fire that sent foreign dignitaries and senior members of the government fleeing for cover. Three people, including a lawmaker, were killed and eight were wounded. President Hamid Karzai, Cabinet ministers and ambassadors escaped unharmed, the presidential palace said. Karzai later appeared on television saying several suspects in the attack had been arrested. He said that "the enemy of Afghanistan" tried to disrupt the ceremony but were thwarted by security forces. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it had deployed six militants with suicide vests and guns to target the president. Spokesman Zabiullah Mujaheed said three had died. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/afghan-president-safe-af ter-fleeing.html National Top court's unfair play against fair play By Clarence Page. Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. April 27, 2008. Lilly Ledbetter worked in a Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden, Ala., for 19 years before she received a valuable tip from an anonymous source: She was making $6,500 less than the lowest-paid guy who had her job. She did what anybody might do. She sued. She was in for a surprise. So were a lot of civil rights experts. If any cases were intended to be covered by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, they thought, it was cases like hers. Indeed, even the women I know who are hesitant feminists, the middle-of-the-road womenfolk who insist, "I'm not a feminist, but . . ." usually tend to follow that "but" with, "I believe that women should receive equal pay for equal work." But after Ledbetter's case made it all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court last year, the high court ruled 5-4 that the law did not apply to her. She was too late. She should have filed her complaint years earlier when the original discrimination occurred. Indeed? As a legal matter, the decision was defensible, but as a practical matter it was inexcusable. One might even call it judicial activism, tilting a law intended to protect workers against discrimination into one that gives a big edge to employers who discriminate. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/top-courts-unfair-play-a gainst-fair.html A better way to fight crime By Steve Chapman. Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. May 1, 2008. In June 2006, a minor brawl erupted at Ye Olde Six Bells pub in Horley, England. In the aftermath, police arrested Mark Dixie, a chef at the pub, who surprised them by breaking into tears. He had good reason. As a standard practice in arrests, a DNA swab was taken from him. What the authorities didn't suspect, but he did, is that his DNA would match that of the man who raped and murdered an 18-year-old woman nine months earlier. Dixie was eventually sentenced to life in prison. This is just one of many cases that have vindicated the use of DNA in cracking crimes. Britain, which now has the world's biggest collection of such profiles, has found it abundantly useful as a law enforcement tool. In a typical month, police get 3,500 matches between samples recovered at crime scenes and DNA profiles in the database. Now the U.S. government is set to expand its own database to include anyone arrested by federal agents, as well as many foreigners who are detained for one reason or another. It will add more than 1 million samples each year, greatly increasing the chances of getting "cold hits" from crime scenes. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/better-way-to-fight-crim e.html Hispanics lead pace in diverse nation By Howard Witt. Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. 12:02 AM CDT, May 1, 2008. HOUSTON?The United States grew steadily more diverse last year, with Hispanics holding on to their rank as the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group?a trend with far-reaching implications for American politics and Immigration policies. Newly released figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show that the nation's Hispanic population grew by 1.4 million in 2007 to reach 45.5 million people, or 15.1 percent of the total U.S. population of 301.6 million. Non-Hispanic blacks ranked as the second-largest minority group, at 37 million people. Overall, the nation's 102.5 million minorities accounted for 34 percent of the U.S. population, a new milepost on America's inexorable journey toward greater diversity and a harbinger of the growing political clout of non-whites. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/hispanics-lead-pace-in-d iverse-nation.html Indecision 2008 McCain's Birth Abroad Stirs Legal Debate - His Eligibility for Presidency Is Questioned By Michael Dobbs. Copyright by The Washington Post. Friday, May 2, 2008; Page A06 The Senate has unanimously declared John McCain a natural-born citizen, eligible to be president of the United States. That is the good news for the presumptive Republican nominee, who was born nearly 72 years ago in a military hospital in the Panama Canal Zone, then under U.S. jurisdiction. The bad news is that the nonbinding Senate resolution passed Wednesday night is simply an opinion that has little bearing on an arcane constitutional debate that has preoccupied legal scholars for many weeks. Article II of the Constitution states that "no person except a natural born citizen . . . shall be eligible to the office of president." The problem is that the Founding Fathers never defined exactly what they meant by "natural born citizen," and the matter has never been fully tested in court. At least three pending cases are challenging McCain's right to be sworn in as president. Jurists on both sides of the political divide, consulted by the McCain campaign, insist that the issue is clear-cut. They argue that McCain is a natural-born citizen because the United States held sovereignty over the Panama Canal Zone at the time of his birth, on Aug. 29, 1936; because he was born on a U.S. military base; and because his parents were U.S. citizens. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/mccains-birth-abroad-sti rs-legal-debate.html The Democratic Race in Seven Minutes http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid988327350/bclid1037705321/bcti d1531283112 The Obama Video http://www.dipdive.com/dip-politics/wato/ Obama denounces his former pastor By Edward Luce in Washington. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: April 29 2008 19:53 | Last updated: April 30 2008 00:33. A visibly angry Barack Obama on Tuesday all but disowned Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor, whose ever more provocative comments are believed to have dented the Illinois senator?s hopes of securing the Democratic party?s presidential nomination. Mr Obama, whom opinion polls show to be level with his rival Hillary Clinton in Indiana, which holds what some have billed a ?tiebreaker? primary vote on Tuesday, said he was ?outraged and saddened? by the Reverend Wright?s most recent comments. ?Rev Wright does not speak for me ? he does not speak for our campaign,? said Mr Obama. ?I cannot prevent him from continuing to make these outrageous remarks. But I do want him to be clear that [his remarks] contradict...who I am and everything that I am about.? Mr Wright, who is reported to have ignored the pleading of senior Obama supporters to cancel his appearance on Monday in front of the national media in Washington, reiterated his most incendiary comments ? including the charge that the US government had created HIV/Aids to kill African-Americans. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/obama-denounces-his-form er-pastor.html Obama keeps his cool over TV attack By Edward Luce in Washington. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: April 27 2008 19:59 | Last updated: April 27 2008 19:59. Barack Obama on Sunday said that Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor, was a ?legitimate [campaign] issue?, surprising those calling on the Republican party to withdraw an advertisement that shows Mr Wright?s face morphing into that of Mr Obama. The Republican advertisement shows a clip of Mr Wright saying ?God Damn America? and then switches to a clip of Mr Obama and a burning American flag. In an appearance that could prolong the controversy, Mr Wright will on Monday address the National Press Club in Washington. Many believe that the one-minute commercial, which is being aired in North Carolina, where Mr Obama will square off next week against Hillary Clinton in a presidential primary, is a foretaste of what Mr Obama would face in a general election were he to become the Democratic nominee. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/obama-keeps-his-cool-ove r-tv-attack.html International Herald Tribune Editorial - Senator Obama and Reverend Wright. Copyright by The International Herald Tribune. Published: May 1, 2008. It took more time than it should have, but on Tuesday Barack Obama firmly rejected the racism and paranoia of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., and made it clear that the preacher does not represent him, his politics or his campaign. Obama has had to struggle to explain this relationship ever since a video surfaced of Wright damning the United States from his pulpit. Last month, Obama delivered a speech in which he said he disapproved of Wright's racially charged comments but said that the pastor still played an important role in his spiritual life. It was a distinction we were not sure would sit well with many voters. But what mattered more was the speech's powerful commentary on the state of race relations in this country. We hoped it would open the door to a serious, healthy and much-needed discussion on race. Wright has not let that happen. In the last few days, in a series of shocking appearances, he embraced the Rev. Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitism. He said the government manufactured the AIDS virus to kill blacks. He suggested that America was guilty of "terrorism" and so had brought the 9/11 attacks on itself. This required a powerful, unambiguous denunciation, and Obama gave it. He said his former pastor's "rants" were "appalling." "They offend me," he said. "They rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced. And that's what I'm doing very clearly and unequivocally here today." http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/international-herald-tri bune-editorial.html Views: Race, religion and politics in the 21st century by Rev. Deborah Lake. Copyright by The Windy City Times. 2008-04-30. During the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., we remember the ongoing struggle to end race based oppression in America. In our communities and our religious institutions we celebrate King's life, mourn his death, and we vow to continue the struggle. Meanwhile, Rev. Jeremiah Wright's comments, and our reactions to them, are part of the backdrop. Let us examine Wright's comments and our reactions to them with more than a simplified black/white understanding. As we remember the change brought about through the civil rights movement, let us look at the position of the Black church in the lives of many today with more than a bottom line good/evil lens. We can use this time of social unrest and political disagreement to develop broader understandings of what it means to be American, what it means to be oppressed, and what it means to hold ourselves, our government, and our institutions accountable. The unapologetic, racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-American comments of Wright opens a window to American history that many hoped had been closed through the work and sacrifices of activists over the decades. In addition, our reactions to these comments reveal how we tend to look for simplified explanations for the complex challenges that we face today. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/views-race-religion-and- politics-in.html Religion drags race to the fore in US election By Edward Luce in Chicago. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 2 2008 21:02 | Last updated: May 2 2008 21:02. The receptionist at Jeremiah Wright?s Trinity United Church of Christ makes a joking pretence of punching the latest visitor. ?We are not supposed to entertain media inquiries,? she declares. This Sunday, as on the preceding six, the media will lay siege to Barack Obama?s local church on Chicago?s south side for fear of missing what might be the latest twist in the affair surrounding its pastor. Surrounded by housing projects and boarded-up shops, Mr Wright?s church is 20 minutes drive from downtown Chicago but a world apart. Known for its work among the homeless, single-parent families and HIV-Aids sufferers, Mr Wright has irrevocably associated his church with a series of notorious comments that could badly damage Mr Obama?s prospects of reaching the White House. Rather than scolding their pastor for the damage he might have wrought, Trinity?s 8,500-strong congregation has closed ranks behind him. On Wednesday, Mr Obama, in effect, disowned Mr Wright after the pastor reiterated that the US had brought the 11 September terrorist attacks upon itself and vigorously defended the militant Nation of Islam, whose bodyguards were flanking him. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/religion-drags-race-to-f ore-in-us.html Chicagoland Chicago Tribune Editorial - Let voters decide on recall. Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. May 1, 2008. Whatever it takes. We urge the members of the Illinois House to do whatever it takes by Sunday's deadline to put a recall amendment on the Nov. 4 ballot. If they have to work the weekend, blame the defenders of Gov. Rod Blagojevich in the Illinois Senate. But if they do whatever it takes, they will give voters a chance to fire inept public officials who can't, or won't, earn their fat pay. First, of course, the Senate needs to pass its new proposal for a recall amendment and send it to the House. If the Senate fails, or if it doesn't do that soon enough to let the House vote, then Democratic senators will spend a very long time explaining how their inaction killed the recall. Public demands for a vote on a recall amendment aren't occurring in a vacuum. There's rising talk of moving to impeach the current governor if a recall mechanism isn't created. But that's a discussion for another week. This week, discussion has to focus on getting House and Senate approval on the recall amendment by May 4. That's the deadline to place it on the Nov. 4 ballot, when voters would have the final say. There's reason to be suspicious of the maneuvering by Senate Democratic leaders. The House approved a recall amendment three weeks ago, but the Senate leaders refused to call it for a vote. Then on Tuesday, they grabbed a straightforward, bipartisan Senate proposal and gummed it up with changes that were designed to make it more difficult for the House to accept. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/chicago-tribune-editoria l-let-voters.html Impeachment dust kicked up by recall talk By Eric Zorn. Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. May 1, 2008. Sentiment is growing that it's high time we got rid of Gov. Rod Blagojevich. His leadership has been so poisonously inept that we've made almost no progress toward reform in such bedeviling areas as education, pensions, health care, capital spending and transit. Contributing to this paralysis is a darkening cloud of scandal hovering over his administration. I share that sentiment. Illinois can't and shouldn't have to endure another 33 months of Cirque du Blago. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/impeachment-dust-kicked- up-by-recall.html City scraps troubled blue bag program - Oft-criticized system will give way to bins used in pilot program By Laurie Cohen and Kristen Kridel. Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. 11:43 PM CDT, May 2, 2008. Mayor Richard Daley's controversial blue bag recycling program will end this summer, and the city will expand suburban-style recycling across the city by 2011. City Hall slowly has been moving toward replacing the blue bag program, which has been marked by cronyism and lack of participation, and has been a continuing embarrassment for Daley, who prides himself on being one of the country's greenest mayors. Environmentalists said the blue bag program, which began in 1995, was so bad that they aren't concerned that its demise leaves the city without another system fully in place for the next few years. "The blue bag program was so ineffective it's a minimal loss," said Julie Dick, president of the Chicago Recycling Coalition, which has long pushed the city to adopt suburban-style recycling. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/city-scraps-troubled-blu e-bag-program.html Children's Museum lowers its profile in new Grant Park design proposal By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah. Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. 10:30 AM CDT, May 2, 2008. To circumvent long-standing restrictions barring buildings in Grant Park, the Chicago Children's Museum has once again changed its designs for a proposed location in the northeast end of the park. To lower the project's physical profile, the museum, which is seeking to move from Navy Pier to Grant Park, has ditched the 16-foot skylight structures it was planning to build in the park and has relocated a glassy entry pavilion onto a nearby sidewalk area so that it is no longer on park property, said Grant Park Conservancy President Bob O'Neill. "It's a considerable reduction in profile," O'Neill said. "It's going to be very difficult legally to challenge this now." Since 2005, the museum has wanted to move from its current location in Navy Pier into Grant Park directly off Randolph Street. It hopes to replace an existing fieldhouse with a $100 million museum building. The museum also plans to build a $15 million fieldhouse for the Chicago Park District. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/childrens-museum-lowers- its-profile-in.html GLBT In modern Christianity, who is out of step on gays? By Leonard Pitts. Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. April 29, 2008. James Lawson is out of step with modern Christianity. Take gay marriage. Speaking in support of a proposed state constitutional ban on same sex unions, one Rev. Hayes Wicker of First Baptist Church in Naples, Fla., was recently quoted by the Naples Daily News as saying, "This is a tremendous social crisis, greater even than the issue of slavery." As asinine as that remark is, it is perfectly in step with much of modern Christianity, which has spent years demonizing gay men and lesbians. And then there's Rev. Lawson, who spoke last weekend at the 10th anniversary conference of Soulforce, a group that fights church-based homophobia. Few things could be more "out" of step. Lawson, you may know, is an icon of the civil rights movement; it was he who invited Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis to support the striking sanitation workers. He sees his longtime involvement with Soulforce as part of the same struggle. "The human rights issue is not a single issue," he told me recently. "It is about all humankind. And all humankind has been endowed with certain inalienable rights." http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/in-modern-christianity-w ho-is-out-of.html Chicago Sun-Times Editorial - School no place for anti-gay shirt. Copyright by The Chicago Sun-Times. April 28, 2008. Being gay in high school must be hard enough without having to walk past a guy in the hall wearing a T-shirt that says, "Be Happy, Not Gay." We would call that crude and intolerant -- the sort of message we all have to live with on a T-shirt spotted at, say, State and Madison, where free speech is free speech. But not in a public high school. Too bad the U.S. Court of Appeals can't see that. The court on Wednesday lifted a ban against a sophomore boy wearing just such a T-shirt at Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville. The ban remains in effect pending the outcome of a civil rights suit the boy and his parents have filed against the school. Judge Richard Posner, writing for the court, got it right when he argued that the Constitution allows for reasonable limits on free speech in schools. "High school students are not adults," he wrote, "schools are not public meeting halls, children are in school to be taught by adults rather than to practice attacking each other with wounding words." But Posner got it wrong when he concluded that "Be Happy, Not Gay" is only "tepidly negative" and should not be forbidden by the school. Unless, that is, Posner and the Court of Appeals take the increasingly scientifically bankrupt view that homosexuality is nothing but a lifestyle choice -- not a matter of nature and biology. "Be Happy, Not Gay," to our way of thinking, makes about as much sense as "Be Happy, Not Black." http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/chicago-sun-times-editor ial-school-no.html Schools, LGBT parents and the need to be involved (Extended for the Online Edition) by Amy Wooten. Copyright by The Windy City Times. 2008-04-30. Given the fact that LGBT parents and their children are often mistreated in a school setting, how do LGBT families go about choosing a school with a proven track record, or make the most out of the school their child currently attends? Many LGBT parents don't know where to start when it comes to finding a school or working to make their child's school a better place for the entire family. Knowing where to begin and what resources are available to both parents and students is crucial given the light a recent study has shed on the issue. A report released by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network ( GLSEN ) , Family Equality Council and COLAGE in February found that although LGBT parents are more involved in their children's education ( more likely to attend parent-teacher conferences and volunteer ) , they are also more likely to feel excluded and ignored because the school community doesn't accept them. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/schools-lgbt-parents-and -need-to-be.html Buying a Business - Avoiding the Pitfalls By Roger McCaffrey-Boss. Copyright by Gay Chicago Magazine and Roger McCaffrey-Boss. April 29, 2008. Q: A friend of mine is planing on retiring and wants to sell me and my lover his restaurant. What are the potential problems I face in buying an ongoing business? A: Your lawyer should first assist you in the preparation of the contract for the purchase of the business. That contract will cover essential issues, such as the price and payment terms, is it to be a cash deal or will the seller finance part of the sale? The contract should also include a list of the equipment to be sold and what documents the seller should provide to establish that there are no liens against the equipment or judgments against the seller which could prevent the seller from transferring good title to the equipment and business assets. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/buying-business-avoiding -pitfalls.html Health Care WALKING OFF THE ANGER - Rage between cars, bikes is a vicious wheel By Kevin Williams. Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. April 27, 2008. We're mad as hell, and it's all because of the wheel. Cyclists are dropping, and the whole bike-versus-car showdown has become a tinderbox. This should make any sane person slow down and think. Instead, it inspires invective. Just look at Internet message boards, like the Tribune's, for proof: Those bikers had it coming. They don't obey traffic laws," says a motorist. "SUV-driving pigs hog the road and waste resources as they try to kill me," says a cyclist. But here's the thing: When I am in my car, cyclists vex the mess out of me. On my bicycle, cyclists and motorists vex the mess out of me. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/walking-off-anger-rage-b etween-cars.html Men of the cloth - When it comes to keeping women pregnant and in their place, polygamous Mormons and the pope have a lot in common. But the pope does it on a wider scale. By Katha Pollitt. Copyright by The Nation Magazine. April 29, 2008. Child abuse. Sexual abuse. Women raised to be baby machines controlled by powerful older men in the name of God. These shockers?and many more?are flagrantly on offer in the spectacle unfolding around the 139 women and 437 children removed by Texas authorities from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado. The YFZ is an outpost of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway Mormon cult presided over by Warren Jeffs, convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape and awaiting trial in Arizona for incest and conspiracy. The visuals are riveting: women in pastel prairie dresses and identical pompadour-cum-French-braid hairstyles weeping for their children in state custody; skinny-necked middle-age men insisting they had no idea it was illegal to marry and impregnate multiple 15-year-olds. There's a feminist angle, a child-protection angle and a civil liberties angle?it isn't clear that the children were in immediate danger, and this drastic and clumsy sweep might well cause cultists to isolate themselves even more. The original impetus for the raid?a desperate phone call from someone claiming to be a 16-year-old girl raped and abused by her 50-year-old "spiritual husband"?is looking more and more like a hoax. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/men-of-cloth-when-it-com es-to-keeping.html Technology Apple in downloads deal with big studios By Kevin Allison in San Francisco and Matthew Garrahan in Los Angeles. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 1 2008 20:16 | Last updated: May 1 2008 21:07. Apple has struck a deal with Warner Brothers and other big film studios to sell film downloads through iTunes on the same day that titles are released on DVD. The move marks the latest step in a revamp of Apple?s film download strategy. This year the company said it would begin offering film rentals over iTunes after Steve Jobs, chief executive, admitted its paid download strategy had not worked as well as had been hoped. The inclusion of Warner, which has the biggest film library in Hollywood, significantly bolsters the video content available to buy on iTunes. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/apple-in-downloads-deal- with-big.html Immigration Financial Times Editorial Comment: The shameful dividends of immigrant bashing. Copyright by The Financial Times. Published: May 2, 2008. For Americans, what is happening each night in the French channel port of Calais is poignantly and shamefully familiar. As Caroline Brothers reported on Wednesday in The International Herald Tribune, clusters of poor people wait for darkness and a high-risk chance to crawl inside or beneath a truck to cross to a country that needs and welcomes their labor but refuses to legally recognize their presence. The United States has engaged in this labor-market hypocrisy for decades. Border crossers are mainly Mexican and Central American. Western Europe's come from North and Central Africa, the Middle East and former east bloc countries not yet in the European Union. Just about everywhere, they are distrusted by the local population and vilified by demagogic politicians. In the rush to blame foreigners for real and imagined social ills, Europe's anemic birth rates, aging population and hard-to-fill jobs are forgotten. Without large infusions of foreign workers, the tourist industries that many European countries depend on would be understaffed and the cost of construction would soar. None of this has stopped Europe's politicians from stoking fears of immigrant crime, welfare burdens and foreign ways. That should also sound familiar to Americans. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/financial-times-editoria l-comment.html Chicago Sun-Times Editorial - Get off fence on immigration. Copyright by The Chicago Sun-Times. May 1, 2008. Tens of thousands of people are expected to march in Chicago today, May Day, also known as International Worker's Day. They are demanding immigrant rights and legalization for the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. It's not just a Mexican issue but one that will rally Poles, Indians, Koreans and Filipinos, who also have sizable undocumented populations in Illinois, as well as legal immigrants and U.S. citizens. An estimated 450,000 to 550,000 undocumented immigrants live in Illinois. Today's march is expected to be smaller than the 400,000 who came out in 2006 and the 150,000 in 2007. But resolving America's immigration debate remains a burning issue. It has fallen off the political radar as the media focus on such lesser and ephemeral matters as the views of Barack Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and how Hillary Clinton exaggerated the danger of landing in Bosnia. It's time our political leaders get back to working on issues that matter, and that includes immigration reform. But nothing is likely to happen until we elect a new president, so allow us to take this occasion to remind you where the candidates stand on immigration. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/chicago-sun-times-editor ial-get-off.html Tables turned in immigration flap - Neighbors say Mexico is guilty of a double standard when it comes to treatment of illegal migrants By Oscar Avila . Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. 12:21 AM CDT, May 2, 2008. MEXICO CITY ? While Mexican immigrants led the charge in Chicago and other cities Thursday to push the U.S. government to treat illegal immigrants more humanely, the same demands for immigrant rights are festering in Mexico, which is facing mounting criticism for how it treats Latin American migrants. In April, diplomats from El Salvador and Honduras protested after dozens of their citizens accused Mexican authorities of brutality while they were detained. That same month, the top UN advocate for migrant rights toured the country and said that "the impunity with which Mexico victimizes Central American immigrants makes it the principal violator of human rights on the American continent." The outcry came as Mexican President Felipe Calderon, while at a North American summit in New Orleans last month, gave his most eloquent defense about the contributions that Mexican immigrants make to the U.S. That led conservative U.S. lawmakers to accuse Mexico of hypocrisy, and even Mexican lawmakers say the gap between their country's rhetoric and actions has become a problem in pushing Immigration reform. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/tables-turned-in-immigra tion-flap.html The illegal immigrants you never read about - 'I WAS ASHAMED' | Hungarian kept a secret from all as she studied, worked and, finally, gained citizenship By TERESA PUENTE. Copyright by the Chicago Sun-Times. April 28, 2008. Rita Gondocs was 11 when she came to the United States from Budapest with her mother and twin sister. She remembers the shock of humidity that washed over her that summer of 1988. They soon moved into a studio apartment in Edgewater, and her mother worked days as a cleaning woman and nights at a Hungarian restaurant to pay for her daughters to attend a Catholic school. But they kept a secret for the next 10 years; they were undocumented immigrants. "Nobody knew at school. I didn't tell any of my friends. I was ashamed," recalled Gondocs, now 31 and a high school teacher on the South Side. Gondocs is one of countless immigrants who were once undocumented but through family sponsors, assistance from an employer or the 1986 amnesty have become legal immigrants or U.S. citizens. We rarely hear their stories. In this column, I plan to feature one of their stories each month for the next six months. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/illegal-immigrants-you-n ever-read-about.html Other Planes and purgatory: A day at the airport By Garrison Keillor. Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. April 30, 2008. A cabdriver picked me up outside the Waffle House in Little Rock last Sunday and said so sweetly, "I hope you enjoyed your breakfast" and I said yes, but honestly, I don't really associate breakfast with enjoyment. It's a standardized meal meant to fortify you for the day's maneuvers. In my parents' home we sat down to our Cheerios and toast and ate it and conversed in small declarative sentence fragments and jumped up and out the door, and I still do, and that's why I don't intend to retire: What do you do after breakfast? Do you have to hang out for hours with other geezers and geezerettes and reminisce about the days when it was fun to fly from place to place?remember? When you walked through the airport and out the door onto the tarmac and up the stairs to the plane, just like Ingrid Bergman in "Casablanca"? I don't care to. Although when I went through airport security in Minneapolis on Monday, it was an object lesson in something?a line of a hundred people twisted around in the cattle chute, 16 men and women in the white Transportation Security Administration shirts with the epaulets, an obese young woman shouting at us to take our laptops out of our cases in a voice she learned from a prison camp movie; one metal detector in operation, two closed, and the guardian of this narrow gate was a man who carefully read each boarding pass as if proofreading it for misspellings. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/planes-and-purgatory-day -at-airport.html Humor Bipartisanship http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/bipartisanship.html New! Carlos now has an online store. Order your books directly from Carlos and have them signed and dedicated. http://www.carlostmock.com/catalog/ In Pride (orgullo), Carlos T. Mock, MD Www.carlostmock.com Author: Borrowing Time: A Latino Sexual Odyssey - Floricanto Press 2003. Nominated for a Stonewall Award by the American Library Association GLBT Round Table. Author: The Mosaic Virus ? Floricanto Press 2007. Nominated for a Stonewall Award by the American Library Association GLBT Round Table, and a Lammie from The Lambda Literary Foundation Author: Author: Papi Chulo ? Floricanto Press 2007. Nominated for a Stonewall Award by the American Library Association GLBT Round Table, and a Lammie from The Lambda Literary Foundation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ctmock at gmail.com Sat May 10 13:16:48 2008 From: ctmock at gmail.com (Carlos Mock) Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 14:16:48 -0500 Subject: [News] The Hope Newsletter - May 10, 2008 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ?Pessimism never won any batte.? Dwight David Eisenhower Let?s hope there is enough Hope in Mr. Obam?s heart to deal with the deck he will inherit. Your Lack of Money Misleading growth statistics giv false comfort By Martin Feldstein. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 7 2008 18:54 | Last updated: May 7 2008 18:54. Prepositions matter. Th recent government report that US gross domestic product increased 0.6 per cet in the first quarter was very misleading. It implied that economic activty was rising in January, February and March. But the increase actually reers to the rise from the average level in the fourth quarter of 2007 to he average level in the first quarter. Monthly data since January indicatethat economic activity and GDP have been declining since the start of thisyear. Private sector payroll employment peaked last November and has falle five months in a row, shedding more than 300,000 jobs. Industrial prodction was lower in March than in December and January. Real personal income et of taxes and transfers is also lower than in January. Real retail sales hae fallen since the start of the year. Private housing starts are down 13 per ent in just the two months since January and 36 per cent from a year ago. Alhough the government does not provide monthly estimates of GDP, Macroeconomc Advisers, a private forecaster, constructs them using the same conceptual aproach as the government uses for its quarterly estimates. The companyestimates real GDP based on the price level of the year 2000. Its mot recent estimates (revised figures to be published this month) show that real GDP rose from an annual $11,649bn last October to $11,701bn in December and $11,777bn in Januar but fell to $11,686bn in March, a decline of about $100bn in two months. Alhough GDP declined during the first quarter, the average of the monhly figures in the first quarter ($11,711bn) is higher than the average of he monthly figures for the final quarter of 2007 ($11,675bn). http://iretredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/misleading-growth-statis tics-givefalse.html More US businesses file for bankruptcy By James Politi in Washigton. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 6 2008 22:2 | Last updated: May 6 2008 22:22. Corporate bankruptcy filings in the S last month rose more than 50 per cent over the previous year?s figure as the economy weakens and an increasing number of businesses fail. Accoring to Jupiter eSources, a research group in Oklahoma that tracks data fro US courts, 5,173 companies filed for bankruptcy protection in April. he number of commercial bankruptcy filings has been steadily rising over he past few months, with readings of 3,808 in December and 4,236 in February. Several high-profile companies have been forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy recently, includi Tropicana, the casino company, and Linens N Things, the retailer that wa taken private by Apollo Management, the US private equity group, two yearsago. The US economy has been growing at a sluggish annual rate of 0.6 per ent for the past six months. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/008/05/more-us-businesses-file- for-bankruptcy.html Wall Street fall as oil hits new highs By Anuj Gangahar in New York. Copyright The Financal Times Limited 2008. Published: May 9 2008 13:24 | Last updated: May 92008 15:17. US stocks fell at the open on Friday as steep losses at insure American International Group fuelled credit concerns and the soaring rice of oil raised inflation worries Shortly after the market opened in New ork, the S&P 500 index was 0.8 per cent lower at 1,387.25 while the Nsdaq composite was 0.7 per cent lower at 2,434.13. The Dow Jones IndustrialAverage was down 0.7 per cent at 2.434.13. The crisis at AIG deepened on Tursday after $15bn in credit-related writedowns plunged the US insurer ino a record quarterly loss, reported after the market closed, and prompted t to raise $12.5bn to bolster its weakened balance sheet. AIG?s poor first uarter results and capital raising plans will increase pressure on Martin Sllivan, chief executive, and dispel investor hopes that turbulence in the credit markets has subsided. AIG shares were down 5.8 per cent to $41.53. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/008/05/wall-street-falls-as-oil -hits-new-highs.html Citigroup considrs $400bn asset sales By Francesco Guerrera in New York. Copyright The Financal Times Limited 2008. Published: May 9 2008 00:41 | Last updated: Ma 9 2008 14:51. Citigroup on Friday confirmed that at least $400bn in noncore assets could be sold as part of plans to reduce costs and restore profitgrowth to double-digit rates. At a long-awaited meeting with Wall Street anaysts, Vikram Pandit, Citi?s chief executive, also plans to confirm his pledge first disclosed in the Financial Times, to cut Citi?s cost base of more tan $60bn by about 20 per cent. Despite his desire to prune Citi?s balance heet aggressively, Mr Pandit will use the meeting to rebuff calls for a breakup of the company, say sources familiar with his thinking. They say he wil defend Citi?s ?universal banking model? combining consumer and wholesale anking. Mr Pandit is likely to say that about 20 per cent of Citi?s $2,000b-plus balance sheet consists of ?legacy? assets ? entire businesses or tradin positions outside its core businesses in commercial, consumer and invesment banking. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/citigroup-onsiders-400b n-asset-sales.html UBS to shed a further 2,600 bankers By Hig Simonian in Zurich. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. ublished: May 6 2008 08:14 | Last updated: May 6 2008 13:53. UBS is to cutanother 2,600 jobs from its investment bank in a further reaction to lsses caused by the US subprime crisis, the Swiss group said on Tuesday. The latest job cuts ? part of a package to reduce the group?s total wororce by about 5,500 by the middle of next year ? follow the initial 1,50 investment banking jobs shed as the Swiss group emerged as the biggest European casualty of the turmoil in credit markets in recent months. The bank, which posted a SFr11.54bn ($11n, ?7.1bn) pre-tax loss for the first quarter, said that while most of te investment banking cuts would be involuntary, it hoped the job losses i other parts of the group could come through attrition and internal rdeployments. The losses, prompted by about $19bn of further write-down on troubled holdings, were in line with the figures indicated by the bank onApril 1. However, UBS on Tuesday added a more positive forecast for its emaining US positions, which have been sharply reduced, along with a goomy profits outlook for the full year. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.bogspot.com/2008/05/ubs-to-shed-further-2600 -bankers.html US shoppers stic to the bargain basement By Daniel Pimlott in New York. Copyright The Finacial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 8 2008 17:47 | Last updated: May 2008 20:27. US shoppers continued to veer towards cheaper stores and essetial goods and away from discretionary items in April but brought some relef for retailers after a poor start to the year. Same-store sales, a ey retail measure of sales in stores open at least a year, rose by 3.3 per cnt against expectations of a 1.1 per cent rise according to Retail Metric, which analyses shopping trends. The rise suggested a better period for shops after weaker sales over the past few months, but still pointed to a consumer who is contending with record oi bills and falling home prices. Wal-Mart, the world?s largest retailer,and Costco, the warehouse club, in particular benefited from the upturn in sles, in a sign that cost-conscious consumers are turning increasingly t discount retailers and bulk buying as the US economy slows. Teen appare retailers bucked the trend among clothes retailers to receive a boost frm warmer April weather. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/u-shoppers-stick-to-bar gain-basement.html U.S. aims to rein in 'unfair' creit cards By Becky Yerak. Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. May 3, 2008. Addressing "unfair" and "deceptive" practices in the credit card business, he Federal Reserve on Friday proposed sweeping new rules to reform an ndustry that wields ever-increasing power. The Fed, which has been criticzed for reacting too slowly to the mortgage crisis, along with the Office ofThrift Supervision and the National Credit Union Administration, want to, mong other things, give consumers enough time to make their payments and sop credit card companies from charging punishing interest rates on outstaning balances. "This is the first time in many years that so many new rule involving the credit card industry have been proposed at one time, said Judith Rinearson, a partner with law firm Bryan Cave LLP in New York nd a former group counsel for the American Express Global Travelers Cheque."In this economic environment, such regulation is probably inevitable." ne rule would ensure that statements are mailed or delivered at least 21 days before the payment due date. Another would prohibit credit card companies from applyig partial payments to only the balances on the credit card with the lowest nterest rates, forcing them to apply at least some of the payment to higher-ate balances. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/us-aims-t-rein-in-unfai r-credit-cards.html Gold and Commodities Oil $126.2 Siler Bullion $16.81 Gold Bullion $885 Platinum Bullion $ $2094 Euro 1.5467 Financial Times Editorial Comment: Living in a world of $200 oil. opyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 9 2008 19:50 | Lat updated: May 9 2008 19:50. It is about 125 years since shipping oilin wooden barrels became obsolete. An oil price above $125 a barrel, however,and speculation that the price could hit $200 are reminders that we hav become ever more dependent on the black stuff. Oil is unlikely to hit $200 nd remain above it any time soon ? but economies would suffer if it di. The underlying reason for oil?s tenfold price rise in less than 10 years i that demand, not least from China and India, has risen rapidly while supplyhas not kept pace. That dynamic is diffrent to the supply shocks of the 1970s, but because truck drivers and commuters cannot easily stop travelling, even a small deficit in supply can cause large moves the oil price. Tight supply and demand have made markets volatile. The spo price of oil for immediate delivery remains above the price for delivery i future months. This suggests particular fear about short-term supplies, hile there is some evidence that speculation and worried buyers laying in stoks have pushed up prices. Spot prices could surge or plunge in the short-erm, but seem unlikely to return to levels that are low and stable for some tme. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/financial-times-editria l-comment_10.html Oil and corn hit record high By Javier Blas in London. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 9 2008 08:41 | Lst updated: May 9 2008 18:49. Crude oil and corn prices surged to reord highs on Friday asthe world?s hunger for fuels continued to convulse the energy and agriculture markets. The rise in oil prices to a record of $126.2 a barrel ? double the level of a yea ago ? was the culmination of a stunning week in which prices jumped by 10, stoking fears of higher inflation in spite of lower economic growth. A year that began with people asking whether oil prices would finally each $100 a barrel is seeing some traders already betting on when it will ht $200. The increase in energy costs is putting fresh pressure on the Orgaisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the oil producers? cartel, toincrease levels of production. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/208/05/oil-and-corn-hit-record- high.html Financial Times Editorial Commet: The dollar danger is not over yet. Copyright The Financial Times Liited 2008. Published: May 8 2008 19:35 | Last updated: May 8 2008 19:3 When a currency rises after government officials say that it should, you larn one thing: that the fundamentals were pushing it up anyway. It makessense for senior US and European officials to talk up the dollar against he euro ? as they did this week in the Financial Times ? especially nowthat optimism about the US economy makes theirarguments plausible. In the long run, however, the real risk of a dollar crisis is against the managed currencies of Asia and the Middle East. Early March was time of danger for the dollar. There were forecasts of a deep depression, liqidity fears around some of the mightiest banks on Wall Street, and the dollr?s decline against the euro, already rapid, began to accelerate. Tha decline could have become self-sustaining if investors had begun to dum US assets, but the decisive rescue of Bear Stearns by the Federal Reserve shfted expectations about future US interest rates and restored confidence. Through good judgment, as well as a little good luck, policymakers have so ar avoided turning a credit crisis into a currency crisis. Without a run f fresh bad news on the US economy there is little reason for the dollar to all further. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/financial-tmes-editoria l-comment_09.html Housing Illinois Average Rates 5/10/0 - 10:46 PM 30 Yr Fixed 5.74% 15 Yr Fixed 5.33% 30 Yr Fixed Jumbo 6.95% Mood swings against US homes rescue By James Politi and Krishna Guha in Washington. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: M 8 2008 22:30 | Last updated: May 9 2008 00:00. A senior White House offial set out two conditions on Thursday that would have to be met if the adinistration is to reach agreement with Democrats on a housing finance pan. Keith Hennessey, director of the National Economic Council, told th Financial Times that a proposal to allow the Federal Housing Administrtion to refinance up to $300bn (?195bn, ?152bn) of mortgages should be modfied to make the programme self-financing and strengthen its underwriting tandards. Buoyed by better-than-expected economic news, the administrationhardened its negotiating stance this week, making clear that the president wold not accept the plan in its present form. ?It clearly is way too expensiv and it looks way too much like a bail-out,? Mr Hennessey said, adding tha now the question was whether a compromise could be worked out that ould still involve an expansion of the role of the FHA, but without any cot to taxpayers and fewer concerns about ?moral hazard?. http://iretiredromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/mood-swings-against-us-h omes-rescu.html Fannie Mae to raise $6bn new capital By Michael Mackenzi in New York. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 6 2008 13:45 | Last updated: May 6 2008 14:38. Fannie Mae, the largest buyer of mortgages in the US, on Tuesday eported a first-quarter loss of $2.2bn, posted credit loss provisions of $31bn and said it would seek $6bn in new capital as the deteriorating housig market extracted a heavy toll. Fannie, a government sponsored enterprise(GSE), swung to a loss of $2.57 a share as home delinquencies and foreclosurs rose. This was in sharp contrast with a $961m or 85 cents a share profit fo the first quarter a year ago. Credit losses were $249m a year ago. The comany warned that housing faced ?severe weakness? and that house prices would all by 7-9 per cent in 2008, raising the prospect of further mortgage defauts and home foreclosures. Fannie said an estimate of its fair value of netassets was $12.2bn at the end of the first quarter. This was 66 per cent lwer than the value of $35.8bn assigned at the end of December. The fairvalue estimate is an off-balance-sheet measure that Fannie uses to report mar-to-market losses. The capital raising will consist of selling common stock,convertible and non-convertible preferred stock, and Fannie will also cut itsquarterly dividend to 25 cents a share from 35 cents beginning in the tird quarter. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/fanniemae-to-raise-6bn- new-capital.html US banks continue to tighten lending By rishna Guha in Washington. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. blished: May 6 2008 02:43 | Last updated: May 6 2008 02:43. US banks tighteed lending standards in the early months of this year in near-record nubers, a Federal Reserve report indicated on Monday, suggesting that the crdit squeeze in the economy continued to intensify. The senior loan officers?survey reported that the fraction of banks tightening lending standards was ?lose to or above historical highs for nearly all loan categories? ? including corporate loans, commercial real estate, mortgages, credit cards and other consumer loans. Meanwhile,Ben Bernanke, Fed chairman, called on lenders andolicymakers to help homeowners with negative equity to restructure their debts and avoid foreclosure. In a speech, he said in cases when the value of ahome has fallen far below the value of the mortgage, ?the best solution ma be a write-down of principal ... perhaps combined with a refinancing by te Federal Housing Administration or other lender?. http://iretiredfromnewsltters.blogspot.com/2008/05/us-banks-continue-to-tig hten-lending.html U.S. ending home sales drop to new low in March By J.W. ELPHINSTONE. Copyright 008 Associated Press. May 7, 2008. NEW YORK - An industry group said Wedesday that pending U.S. home sales dropped to a new low in March, signaling he housing slump has yet to bottom out even as the spring sell season gets nder way. The National Association of Realtors' seasonally adjsted index of pending sales for existing homes fell to 83.0 from a downwadly revised February reading of 83.8, the index's previous low. The index tood at 103.9 in March 2007. Wall Street economists polled by Thomson/IF had predicted the index would slip to a readin of 83.8. A reading of 100 is equal to the average level of sales activity in 2001, when the index started. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/us-pendinghome-sales-dr op-to-new-low.html Fed auctions $75 billion to banks to give redit relief By Jeannine Aversa. Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. 9:15 AM DT, May 6, 2008. Battling to relieve stressed credit markets, the FederalReserve said Tuesday it has provided a total of $435 billion in short-term oans to squeezed banks since December to help them overcome credit problems. The central bank announced the results of its most recent auction -- another$75 billion in short-term loans -- the 11th such auction since the programstarted in December. It's part of an ongoing effort by the Fed to help eae the credit crunch, which erupted last August, intensified in December ad January and took another turn for the worst in March, when Bear Stears -- the nation's fifth-largest investment house -- edged closer to the brik of bankruptcy. The housing, credit and financial crises have weakeed the economy and threaten to push it into recession. In the latest action, commercial banks paid an interest rate of 2.220 percent for the loans. There were 71 bidders for the slice of the $75 billion in 28-day loans. The ed received bids for $96.62 billion worth of the lans. The auction was conducted on Monday with the results released Tuesday. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/fed-auctions-75-billion- to-banks-to.html Illinois home sales dro 27% in first quarter - Median home price down 4.3% in state By James P. Miller. Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. 97 AM CDT, May 9, 2008 Home sales in Illinois tumbled 27 percent in the first quarter, a real estate trade group reported Friday, hurt by "theongoing credit crunch and a softening economy." The Illinois Association of Realtors said total home sales, including condominiums and single-family homes, plunged to 21,576 from the year-ago quarter's 29,553 sales. Statewide, the median home price was $187,500 in the first quarter, down 4.3 percent from the year-earlier period's $196,000 median price. Kay Wirth, presdent of the Illinois association, said sales activity has been dampened i part by "extreme winter weather on top of shaky consumer confidence to rising gas and food prices and th uncertain economy." http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/illnois-home-sales-drop -27-in-first.html US trade deficit narrowed in March By James Politi in Washington. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 9 2008 14:49 | Last updated: May 9 2008 14:49. The US trade deficit narrowed by 5.7 per cent to $58.2bn in March, as weak demand for imported goods due to the economic downturn offset a shrinking of US export volume that was ascribed to a fall in aircraft shipments. The data, released on Friday, was significantly better than the $61bn trade deficit expected by most economists. Several reacted by saying that US gross domestic product for the first quarter, which was initially estimated to have grown at an annual rate of 0.6 per cent, could now be revised higher. Goldman Sachs and Citigroup economists both said that the improvement in the trade balance could lead the Commerce Department to add half a percentage point to US GDP in the first quarter. Imports fell by $6.1bn to $206.7bn, the most since the September 11 terrorist attacks, in a clear sign that the weak dollar and US economic woes are affecting the appetite of American consumers and business for purchases of imports, particularly cars. The US trade deficit with China fell to $16.1bn - its lowest level in two years. However, deficits with Japan, the European Union and Mexico expanded. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/us-trade-deficit-narrowe d-in-march.html International International Herald Tribune Editorial - Medvedev's first crisis. Copyright by The international Herald Tribune. Published: May 7, 2008. Russia is playing a game of cat-and-mouse with Georgia that could quickly turn deadly. The Kremlin has never been happy with Georgia's pro-Western preferences and was infuriated by its push for membership in NATO. Because of Moscow's fierce objections, the Atlantic alliance decided last month to postpone membership talks with Georgia. Moscow saw that as confirmation that its bullying and threats work - and decided to bully and threaten even more. First, Russia announced plans to strengthen ties with two pro-Russian breakaway regions in Georgia - Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Last week, it sent hundreds of extra "peacekeepers" to Abkhazia. Russian officials said the troops are needed to protect the province from a Georgian invasion, and it insisted that the contingent would remain within the 3,000-troop limit allowed under a 1994 UN-brokered cease-fire. The deployment almost certainly violated the peacekeeping mandate because it was done without Georgia's approval. Russia's new president, Dmitri Medvedev, who was sworn in on Wednesday, needs to move quickly to calm things down. There are questions about whether Medvedev will be his own man or just a creature of President Vladimir Putin, and this would be a way to prove his independence. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/international-herald-tri bune-editorial_9514.html Is it Time to Invade Burma? By ROMESH RATNESAR. Copyright by CNN.com News. Saturday, May. 10, 2008. The disaster in Burma presents the world with perhaps its most serious humanitarian crisis since the 2004 Asian tsunami. By most reliable estimates, close to 100,000 people are dead. Delays in delivering relief to the victims, the inaccessibility of the stricken areas and the poor state of Burma's infrastructure and health systems mean that number is sure to rise. With as many as 1 million people still at risk, it is conceivable that the death toll will, within days, approach that of the entire number of civilians killed in the genocide in Darfur./Burma defies calls to let aid workers in By Amy Kazmin in Bangkok, Harvey Morris at the United Nations and James Blitz in London. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 9 2008 09:05 | Last updated: May 9 2008 23:12. Burma?s ruling junta was on Friday night locked in a stand-off with the international community after flatly refusing to allow foreign aid workers into the country to tackle the impact of the recent cyclone disaster. Amid clear indications that between 60,000 and 100,000 people are now dead or missing in the region, the Burmese junta said it was prepared to receive offers of aid from foreign sources, including the US. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/burma-defies-calls-to-le t-aid-workers.html International Herald Tribune Editorial - Burma's twin disasters: A cyclone and the generals. Copyright by The International Herald Tribune. Published: May 6, 2008. By all accounts, Cyclone Nargis has devastated Burma - a 12-foot wall of water swept away entire villages, leaving the coastal plain under water, thousands dead, missing or homeless, and much of the capital city of Rangoon without electricity or water. It is the sort of disaster that brings the world together in a single-minded and unconditional desire to help, and the reaction of national governments, the United Nations and international humanitarian organizations has been swift and noble. There is no time to waste. We wish we could also say that this is no time for politics, but that would not be true. Burma - or Myanmar, as its junta wants it called - has been under the dictatorial rule of the military for 46 years, increasingly isolated from the rest of the world and struggling under economic sanctions by the United States and Europe. Last September, the world was forcibly reminded of the junta's brutality when it crushed peaceful protest marches by Buddhist monks./Financial Times Editorial: Burma?s tragedy. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008 Published: May 8 2008 19:23 | Last updated: May 8 2008 19:23. The full extent of the cataclysmic cyclone that has devastated southern Burma has taken time to become so horribly apparent. That was time during which the paranoid and isolated military junta led by Than Shwe should have been straining every muscle and mobilising every resource ? in and outside the country ? to come to the rescue of its stricken countrymen in the heavily populated Irrawaddy delta. But this army, so adept at crushing any challenge to its authority and monopoly of scarce resources, and deployed purely to safeguard the privileges and power of the generals, has done nothing of the sort. The regime?s reaction is breathtaking in its cynicism. Far from responding to a national emergency, the junta is going ahead with a constitutional referendum ? part of its so-called roadmap to democracy ? and holding up the entry of urgently needed foreign aid. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/international-herald-tri bune-editorial_7185.html IMF warns on global inflation. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008 By Krishna Guha in Washington, Javier Blas and Chris Giles in London and Ralph Atkins in Athens. Published: May 8 2008 21:44 | Last updated: May 8 2008 21:44. Global inflation has re-emerged as a major threat to the world economy, the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday in a stark warning that marked an abrupt change of tone from its emphasis on the risks to growth. John Lipsky, IMF deputy managing director, said ?inflation concerns have resurfaced after years of quiescence? due to soaring energy and food prices. Mr Lipsky said global growth was slowing but headline inflation was ?accelerating?. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/imf-warns-on-global-infl ation.html Cuba may end dual currency - Bank advises gradual shift, fewer subsidies. Copyright by The Associated Press. May 10, 2008. HAVANA ? Cuba's central bank is urging the government to gradually unify the island's two parallel currencies and cut back on "indiscriminate" subsidies, according to an internal report obtained by The Associated Press on Friday. The document, which was distributed to Communist Party members, says a single, strong peso would boost productivity and morale in Cuba. The island now has two separate currencies: one for locals, and one designed principally for foreigners. Party members were instructed to discuss the bank's recommendations between April and June. One of those members provided a copy of the document to a local journalist. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/cuba-may-end-dual-curren cy-bank-advises.html Mess-o-potamia Financial Times Editorial Comment: Beirut on fire. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 9 2008 19:43 | Last updated: May 9 2008 19:43. The stand-off in Beirut between the shaky, western-backed government and an opposition spearheaded by Hizbollah, the Shia Islamist group backed by Iran, has taken an alarming turn. Lebanon may finally be committing suicide as a nation. Hizbollah overran west Beirut on Friday in a devastating show of force that left the Sunni-led coalition of Fuad Siniora reeling. There seem to be no limits to the depths into which Lebanon?s politicians can dig a country they treat as booty or an arena for proxy war. Their struggle for power is now fatally tied to the visceral contest between Sunni and Shia Muslims that was uncorked across the region by the US-led invasion of Iraq. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/financial-times-editoria l-comment_5854.html Hizbollah seizes Muslim west Beirut By Roula Khalaf, Middle East Editor. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 9 2008 21:42 | Last updated: May 9 2008 23:46. It took Lebanon?s Hizbollah group just a few hours on Friday to seize control of Muslim west Beirut and bring the country?s western-backed government to its knees. Amid scenes reminiscent of the 1975-90 civil war, the country?s most heavily armed and disciplined force deployed its gunmen around al-Mustaqbal newspaper ? owned by Saad Hariri, the leading Sunni in the pro-western governing coalition ? at about 7am, setting the fourth floor of the building ablaze. The Lebanese national army, no match for the Shia militant group and eager to stay out of the domestic battle, quickly arrived. But instead of confronting the gunmen, it turned into the negotiator, asking staff to evacuate and thus avert a storming of the building./Hizbollah seizes large parts of Beirut By Roula Khalaf, Middle East Editor. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 8 2008 18:56 | Last updated: May 9 2008 09:16. Gunmen loyal to the Shia militant group Hizbollah seized control of several Beirut neighbourhoods on Friday, and shut down a pro-government newspaper and television station as opposition forces tightened their grip on the Lebanese capital. About 11 people were killed in clashes as gun fire echoed around the city, amid growing fears that the violence threatened to degenerate into a broader Sunni-Shia conflict and wider regional conflict. Forces loyal to the weak US-backed government appeared unable to match the better armed and organised Hizbollah gunmen, who were supported by fighters loyal to Amal, another Shia opposition movement. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/hizbollah-seizes-large-p arts-of-beirut.html Financial Times Editorial Comment: Mideast mediation needs new dynamic. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 4 2008 20:05 | Last updated: May 4 2008 20:05. Yet another meeting of would-be Middle East peacemakers ? the Quartet made up of the US, United Nations, European Union and Russia ? has yielded yet more pious exhortations to Israelis and Palestinians to agree the terms of a future Palestinian state. Nobody is holding his breath, and no wonder. Since last November?s conference in Annapolis, when the two direct parties to the conflict undertook to negotiate a resolution to it by the end of this year, prospects for peace have gone sharply backwards. The increasingly vicious conflict in Gaza, where Hamas rains primitive rockets on neighbouring Israeli towns and dozens of Palestinian civilians are dying in Israel?s reprisals and targeted assassinations, has turned into a siege. The occupied West Bank, cut into slices by some 560 Israeli checkpoints, is being further colonised by the expansion of Jewish settlements, announced within days of Annapolis. That has led to much international handwringing, but nothing to stop Israel?s creeping annexation of the West Bank, which not only defies international law but undermines Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and the US and Israel?s preferred interlocutor. Israel, meanwhile, spurns a ceasefire offer from Hamas, claiming that would delegitimise Mr Abbas. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/financial-times-editoria l-comment_05.html Iraqi alleges Abu Ghraib torture, sues US contractors By GREG RISLING. Copyright 2008 Associated Press. 4:40 AM CDT, May 6, 2008. LOS ANGELES - An Iraqi man sued two U.S. military contractors, claiming he was repeatedly tortured while being held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison for more than 10 months. Emad al-Janabi's federal lawsuit, filed Monday in Los Angeles, claims that employees of CACI International Inc. and L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. punched him, slammed him into walls, hung him from a bed frame and kept him naked and handcuffed in his cell beginning in September 2003. Also named as a defendant is CACI interrogator Steven Stefanowicz, known as "Big Steve." The suit claims he directed some of the torture tactics. Phone messages left for Arlington, Va.-based CACI and New York City-based L-3 Communications, formerly Titan Corp., were not immediately returned Monday. There was no phone number listed for Stefanowicz at his Los Angeles address. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles because Stefanowicz lives there, seeks unspecified monetary damages. The firms provided interrogators or interpreters to assist U.S. military guards at Abu Ghraib, which became notorious when photos made public in early 2004 showing U.S. soldiers abusing and humiliating detainees. Military investigators later concluded that much of the abuse happened in late 2003 -- when CACI and Titan's interrogators were at the prison. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/iraqi-alleges-abu-ghraib -torture-sues.html Bomber was in Guantanamo - Former U.S. detainee named in Iraq attack By Ben Fox. Copyright by The Associated Press. 11:37 PM CDT, May 7, 2008. SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico ? A Kuwaiti freed from Guantanamo Bay carried out a suicide car bombing recently in Iraq, the U.S. military said Wednesday, confirming what is believed to be the first such attack by a former detainee at the U.S. military detention center in Cuba. Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi took part in one of three suicide bomb attacks last month that targeted Iraqi security forces in the northern city of Mosul, said U.S. Navy Cmdr. Scott Rye, a military spokesman in Baghdad. At least seven people were killed in the attacks. Ajmi's American lawyer said incarceration at Guantanamo may have turned the Kuwaiti into a terrorist. But the U.S. military says he was already an enemy combatant when he was brought to Guantanamo in 2002 after being captured in Afghanistan. As many as 36 former Guantanamo detainees have taken up hostilities against the U.S., including some who have been taken back into custody or killed, the Pentagon says. Ajmi is apparently the first to have become a suicide bomber, said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/bomber-was-in-guantanamo -former-us.html National CAPITAL PUNISHMENT - Cruel and unusual history By Gilbert King. Copyright by The International Herald Tribune. Published: May 5, 2008. The U.S. Supreme Court has concluded, in a 7-2 ruling, that Kentucky's three-drug method of execution by lethal injection does not violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. In writing his opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts cited a Supreme Court principle from a ruling in 1890 that defines cruelty as limited to punishments that "involve torture or a lingering death." But the court was wrong in the 19th century, an error that has infected its jurisprudence for more than 100 years. In America's landmark capital punishment cases, the resultant executions were anything but free from torture and prolonged deaths. The first of those landmark cases, the 1879 case of Wilkerson v. Utah, was cited by Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion in the Kentucky case. The court "had no difficulty concluding that death by firing squad" did not amount to cruel and unusual punishment, Thomas wrote. Wallace Wilkerson might have begged to differ. Once the Supreme Court affirmed Utah's right to eradicate him by rifle, Wilkerson was let into a jailyard where he declined to be blindfolded. A sheriff gave the command to fire and Wilkerson braced for the barrage. He moved just enough for the bullets to strike his arm and torso but not his heart. "My God!" Wilkerson shrieked. "My God! They have missed!" http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/capital-punishment-cruel -and-unusual.html 6 fraternities suspended in drug probe at San Diego State U. By ALLISON HOFFMAN. Copyright 2008 Associated Press. 8:56 AM CDT, May 7, 2008. SAN DIEGO - San Diego State University has suspended six fraternities after a sweeping drug investigation that landed dozens of students in jail on suspicion of openly dealing drugs on campus. The probe -- prompted by the cocaine overdose death last year of a freshman sorority member -- led to the arrests of 96 people, 75 of them San Diego State students. A second drug death occurred during the investigation. Twenty-nine people were arrested early Tuesday in raids at nine locations including the Theta Chi fraternity, where agents found cocaine, Ecstasy and three guns, authorities said. Eighteen of those arrested were wanted on warrants for selling to undercover agents. Theta Chi and five other fraternities have been suspended pending a hearing on evidence gathered during the investigation, dubbed Operation Sudden Fall. All of the arrested students have been suspended and will be barred from attending classes or taking final exams until their cases are reviewed, San Diego State President Stephen Weber said in a statement. Those who live in university-owned housing were evicted, he added. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/6-fraternities-suspended -in-drug-probe.html On the pot-holed highway to hell By John Gapper. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 7 2008 19:37 | Last updated: May 7 2008 19:37. If anyone doubts the problems of US infrastructure, I suggest he or she take a flight to John F. Kennedy airport (braving the landing delay), ride a taxi on the pot-holed and congested Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and try to make a mobile phone call en route. That should settle it, particularly for those who have experienced smooth flights, train rides and road travel, and speedy communications networks in, say, Beijing, Paris or Abu Dhabi recently. The gulf in public and private infrastructure is, to put it mildly, alarming for US competitiveness. You might have expected that investing in US infrastructure would be a hot political topic this year. Well, no. Hillary Clinton spent the final week of her Indiana campaign standing on the back of a pick-up truck arguing for a temporary suspension of the ?gas tax?, the fuel duty that pays for highways. You read correctly. Faced with the emptying of the Highway Trust Fund, established in 1956 as the US entered a period of growth and prosperity, Mrs Clinton suggested cutting its source of funds (which she claimed could be made up by a tax on oil companies). It was more important to give Americans a summer break from $4-per-gallon petrol. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/on-pot-holed-highway-to- hell.html Bush Whacking A prison of shame. Copyright by The International Herald Tribune By Nicholas D. Kristof. Published: May 4, 2008. My New York Times colleague Barry Bearak was imprisoned by the brutal regime in Zimbabwe last month. Barry was not beaten, but he was infected with scabies while in a bug-infested jail. He was finally brought before a court after four nights in jail and then released. Alas, we don't treat our own inmates in Guant?namo with even that much respect for law. On Thursday, America released Sami al-Hajj, a cameraman for Al-Jazeera who had been held without charges for more than six years. Hajj has credibly alleged that he was beaten, and that he was punished for a hunger strike by having feeding tubes forcibly inserted in his nose and throat without lubricant, so as to rub tissue raw. "Conditions in Guant?namo are very, very bad," Hajj said in a televised interview from his hospital bed in Sudan, adding, "In Guant?namo, you have animals that are called iguanas . . . that are treated with more humanity." Al-Jazeera's director general, Wadah Khanfar, said by telephone from the hospital that Hajj was so frail when he arrived that he had to be carried off the plane and into an ambulance. Guant?namo inmates are not allowed to see their families, so that evening Hajj met his 7-year-old son, whom he had last seen as a baby. Reliable information is still scarce about Guant?namo, but increasingly we're gaining glimpses of life there - and they are painful to read. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/prison-of-shame.html A lack of patience - Containment worked before. Why not again? By Steve Chapman. Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. May 8, 2008. When it comes to the war in Iraq and other foreign policy issues, Republicans like to hearken back to the stalwart presidents of the Cold War. John McCain has invoked Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan as kindred spirits, and so has George W. Bush. Which raises the question: Why do they embrace those leaders while rejecting their policy? The centerpiece of the U.S. approach to the Soviet Union was captured in a famous 1947 essay by American diplomat George Kennan, who rejected either war or retreat in favor of "a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies." Some conservatives, regarding this as appeasement, advocated "rollback" to liberate captive nations from oppression. But even resolute anti-communists like Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon saw the risks and costs were too high. They kept troops to guard Western Europe, built a robust nuclear deterrent and employed prudent measures to block Soviet expansion. That was containment. But in the months before the Iraq war, it became a dirty word. "Containment is not possible," President Bush insisted, "when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies." The only remedy for such regimes lay in preemptive war. McCain agreed, saying the only option in Iraq was "disarmament by regime change." http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/lack-of-patience-contain ment-worked.html International Herald Tribune Editorial - Big oil's friends in the U.S. Senate. Copyright by The International Herald Tribune. Published: May 5, 2008. Listen to almost any politician, President George W. Bush included, and you'll hear that the fight against global warming cannot be won without cleaner technologies that will ease dependence on fossil fuels. Yet these same politicians are on the verge of allowing modest but vital tax credits to expire that are crucial to the future of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. These credits are necessary to attract investment in renewable sources until they become competitive with cheaper, dirtier fuels like coal. When the credits disappear, investments shrivel. The production tax credit for wind energy has been allowed to expire three times. In each case, new investment dropped by more than 70 percent. The credits for wind and solar expire at the end of this year, so action now is important. Though there is plenty of blame to go around, Bush and Senate Republicans bear a heavy burden. The House approved, as part of last year's energy bill, a multiyear extension of the credits, while insisting - under its pay-as-you-go rules - that they be offset by rescinding an equivalent amount in tax credits for the oil companies. The oil companies screamed, Bush lofted veto threats, and the Senate, by a one-vote margin, refused to go along. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/international-herald-tri bune-editorial_05.html Ex-Halliburton unit in bribery probe By Michael Peel in London and?Matthew Green in Lagos. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 9 2008 20:21 | Last updated: May 9 2008 20:21. US anti-bribery investigators are targeting a former Halliburton subsidiary over its work on a key Royal Dutch Shell project in Nigeria, widening a corruption probe into the country?s troubled oil industry. The US investigation into Halliburton?s Nigerian operations ? which covers a period when it was headed by Dick Cheney, US vice-president ? has uncovered evidence of bribery and is now looking at a range of payments made in a number of countries over the past 20 years, according to the company. The developments highlight the growing problems the investigation is creating for Halliburton and the western multinationals it has worked for in a nation whose oil industry is plagued by production disruptions and is the focus of increasing competition from Chinese companies. The US authorities say they have evidence that an agent used by Halliburton?s former KBR subsidiary made payments to Nigerian officials in connection with the Shell project, according to a filing made by Halliburton to the US Securities and Exchange Commission at the end of last month. Halliburton and KBR have suspended the agent and another agent who had worked for KBR on ?several current projects and on numerous older projects going back to the early 1980s?, the filing says. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/ex-halliburton-unit-in-b ribery-probe.html Indecision 2008 International Herald Tribune Editorial - It's about the White House. Copyright by The International Herald Tribune. Published: May 7, 2008. Like many Americans, we have been intrigued and often exasperated by the long-running Democratic primary and the ever smaller-bore spats between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. So we are thankful to Senator John McCain for reminding us what this year's presidential race really is about. While Democrats voted in North Carolina and Indiana, McCain spoke about his judicial philosophy. He is determined to move a far too conservative and far too activist Supreme Court and federal judiciary even further and more actively to the right. McCain predictably criticized liberal judges, vowed strict adherence to the founders' views and promised to appoint more judges in the mold of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. That is just what the United States does not need. Since President George W. Bush chose Roberts and Alito, the court has ordered Seattle and Louisville, Kentucky, to scrap voluntary school integration, protected employers who illegally mistreat their workers and constrained women's right to choose and citizens' right to vote. McCain did not mention, of course, how the Roberts-led court blithely overruled Congress by nullifying an important part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. He did wax nostalgic about what "the basic right of property" has meant "since the founding of America." (He did not mention that in 1789, many women could not own property and black people were property, but he did criticize the idea that values evolve over time.) http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/international-herald-tri bune-editorial_08.html McCain's justice - Conservative activism gone wild By Geoffrey R. Stone. Copyright ? 2008, Chicago Tribune. May 7, 2008. Sen. John McCain's speech on Tuesday on the role of judges in our constitutional system might very well qualify as one of the most ignorant statements ever made by a presidential candidate on this important subject. McCain complained that sitting judges and justices systematically "abuse" the federal judicial power by issuing "rulings and opinions on policy questions that should be decided democratically." McCain, seeking the Republican nomination for president, is apparently blissfully unaware that the vast majority of current federal judges were appointed by Republican presidents and that seven of the nine sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices and 12 of the last 14 Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republicans. As Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." McCain also seems stunningly unaware that the justices he simplistically lauds as "judicial passivists" are nothing of the sort. William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, and more recently John Roberts and Samuel Alito, have consistently voted to invalidate laws at a record clip, most notably holding unconstitutional a broad range of laws regulating commercial advertising, limiting corporate campaign expenditures and authorizing affirmative action programs to enhance educational diversity?to say nothing of Bush vs. Gore. This is not strict construction and it is not judicial restraint. It is conservative activism gone wild?in judicial robes. McCain just doesn't understand. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/mccains-justice-conserva tive-activism.html Why McCain?s big idea is a bad idea By Gideon Rachman. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 5 2008 19:32 | Last updated: May 5 2008 19:32. American presidents are meant to have big ideas about the world: a ?new frontier?, an ?alliance for progress?, a ?war on terror?. Unfortunately for the Democratic party the big idea that most animates their two would-be presidents ? Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton ? seems to be mutually assured destruction. That has left the field open to Senator John McCain. The Republican is currently the only presidential candidate to champion a striking new idea about America?s role in the world. The world should pay attention, since the?chances of Mr McCain winning the presidency are going up by the day. Mr McCain?s big idea is for the formation of a ?league of democracies? with America at its heart. In a recent speech in Los Angeles, he outlined a plan to ?harness the vast power of more than 100 democracies?. This was not just a vague notion tossed out to fill a speech. Mr McCain has been banging on about the league of democracies ? in public and in private ? for more than a year. In another speech at the Hoover Institution last year, Mr McCain gave some concrete examples of what such a league might do. Essentially, it seems to be a means to get around the United Nations. The league could sponsor intervention in Darfur or ?bring concerted pressure to bear on tyrants in Burma or Zimbabwe, with or without Moscow and Beijing?s approval?. Alternatively, ?it could unite to impose sanctions on Iran?. He promised that he would call a summit of democracies in his first year in the White House ? and likened the formation of the new democratic league to the foundation of Nato. Mr McCain?s support for a league of democracies means that it has quickly been labelled a rightwing idea. But variants of the idea have also attracted support from liberals. The Princeton Project on National Security ? supported by many liberal academics ? has promoted the idea of a ?concert of democracies?. Ivo Daalder, an adviser to Mr Obama, has also pushed the idea. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/why-mccains-big-idea-is- bad-idea.html Yes Comparisons! Two Points... http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/05/09/countdown-the-pulpit-bullies/ DESERT DEAL - McCain Pushed Land Swap That Benefits Backer By Matthew Mosk. Copyright by The Washington Post. Friday, May 9, 2008; Page A01. PRESCOTT, Ariz. -- Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers]. Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain's 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks. When McCain's legislation passed in November 2005, the ranch owner gave the job of building as many as 12,000 homes to SunCor Development, a firm in Tempe, Ariz., run by Steven A. Betts, a longtime McCain supporter who has raised more than $100,000 for the presumptive Republican nominee. Betts said he and McCain never discussed the deal. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/desert-deal-mccain-pushe d-land-swap.html International Herald Tribune Editorial - The tax trickery spreads. Copyright by The International Herald Tribune. Published: May 8, 2008. It was bad enough when Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain decided to engage in some petty pandering by calling for a suspension of the federal gas tax over the summer. What they suggested would reduce needed tax revenues and hamper efforts to combat global warming. And it would fail to deliver lower prices while giving oil companies more money. But neither senator is actually running the country, so it might be tempting to chalk it all up to campaign pandering. Unfortunately, their demagoguery is growing into a real problem, setting off a chain reaction of "me too" proposals across the country to suspend state gasoline taxes, which tend to be much larger than the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal levy. If the pandering spreads, it would go a long way in setting the nation's energy strategy in precisely the wrong direction. http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2008/05/international-herald-tri bune-editorial_09.html A hardened idealist: Obama?s toughest fight By Edward Luce. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008. Published: May 8 2008 20:02 | Last updated: May 8 2008 20:02. At Washington?s annual Gridiron dinner with the media two years ago, Barack Obama converted a recent falling-out with fellow senator John McCain into material for a humorous speech. The older senator had publicly scolded the freshman