Boeings Challenges with the Israeli Missile Defense System

Interesting how things get around…

 

Last July (2009), Arab News in Saudi Arabia reported that:

 

A joint US-Israeli missile defense system meant to shield Israel from Iranian attack hit a snag when a series of tests were aborted because of malfunctions, defense officials said Thursday.

 

The project, said to be called “ The Arrow,” a joint project between Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. And Chicago-based  Boeing Company failed it’s tests, though the parties involved were said to play down the glitches and stated they expected in such a complicated multilayered missile-defense system, that those difficulties would not “affect the long-term development of the system.”

 

Arab news stated that a Pentagon Official who spoke “on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose details of the tests” said that “the mission was an interception test and also exercised the Arrow system’s interoperability with other elements of the US ballistic missile defense system.”   They further stated that the tests took place off the coast of California, and it was “the communication glitches between the missile and the radar which led US defense officials to abort the test before an intercepting missile could be fired.” 

 

The quote the Pentagon as further saying, “the target missile was dropped from a C-17 aircraft.  It said the radar system detected the target, but not all test conditions to launch the Arrow Interceptor were met, and it was not launched.” 

 

This is all a part of  a system Israel is developing to protect it from all forms of attack, Arab news reports, “ranging from short-range rocket fire from Lebanon and Gaza to long-range missiles from Iran.”

China Paid Lobbyists To Facilitate Taking American Jobs Away From Americans

 

Lobbyists Paid Off by China vs. 30,000 US Workers: Which Side Will Obama Choose?

Link:  http://www.truthout.org/081309G?n

 

Monday 10 August 2009

by: Mike Elk  |  Visit article original @ Campaign for America’s Future
A Chinese rubber company worker inspects tires at a factory. China is flooding the US market with tire imports. (Photo: Mark Ralston / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images)

    As the International Trade Commission considers comments on its recommendation to impose tariffs on Chinese tire imports, President Obama stands at a crossroads in the fight to rebuild the American economy.

    President Obama has made a commitment in the past to uphold previously signed trade agreements. China, however, is violating these agreements by flooding the market with a massive 300 percent increase in tire imports in an attempt to wipe out American tire manufacturers. In 2004, China sent 14 million tires to the U.S. valued at $453 million. By last year, that had increased to 46 million tires valued at $1.7 billion.

    The Chinese are shipping cheaply made tires in an effort that isn’t just killing American manufacturing, but also killing people. So far, two people have died as a result of the low quality of some of these Chinese import tires. The U.S. Government has launched a massive of recall of the tire in question, but so far the Chinese manufacturer has refused to cooperate fully with the recall.

    So far over 8,000 people have lost their jobs, and over 20,000 more jobs are at risk if the Chinese are allowed to continue with this strategy of not obeying trade laws.

    Next month Obama will be challenged to uphold his campaign pledge to enforce current trade laws when a decision on illegal Chinese tire imports came to his desk. Last month, a majority of the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) found that tariff relief was needed to urgently reduce tire imports because of market disruption. According to the United Steelworkers, between 2004 and the end of this year, more than 8,100 workers in the tire industry have lost or will lose their jobs and another 20,000 jobs are threatened.

    Speaking last week, USW President Leo Gerard said that this will “prove to be a test of enforcement of trade laws that China agreed to.” A ruling to enforce current U.S. trade laws would mark a clear break with Bush era economic policy. During the Bush Administration the United State International Trade Commission ruled four separate times that China had violated trade law and recommended measures to stop the flow. However, each time Bush refused to obey these recommendations.

    If President Obama follows the commission recommendations, it would send a stern message to China that the Obama administration, unlike the Bush administration, intends to enforce U.S. trade law. He is expected to decide on September 17, one week before the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh. If Obama chooses to enforce tariffs on illegal Chinese competition, that would send a message throughout the world that U.S. intends to enforce trade law.

    Unfortunately, corporate lobbyists paid for by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, like former Bush official and Ohio U.S. Senate candidate Robert Portman, are running an aggressive misinformation campaign in attempt to thwart U.S. trade law. These groups have been claiming that limiting tire imports would cost Americans jobs and raise the costs of tires for consumers. However, the United States Commission on Trade found that the total benefits exceed the costs by $884 million.

    Chinese importers, in conjunction with the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, have ironically formed a lobbying front group ironically named American Coalition for Free Trade in Tires. The coalition is run by Jochum, Shore & Trossevin, a Washington D.C. lobby firm run by former Bush trade officials who are cashing in on their years of U.S. government service to advise foreign competitors. The law firm has used its ties to power to advise Chinese manufacturers on how to get around loopholes in the law. As a result, eight members of Congress wrote a letter this past June calling on the Government Accountability Office to investigate.

    Congressman Michael Michaud of Maine said ” “Many of these individuals appear to be repaying the investment that the American taxpayers made in them with their hard-earned tax dollars by using the knowledge, expertise and contacts they gained while on the federal payroll in ways that are adverse to the interests of our workers and our producers.”

    Speaking last week at a factory in Indiana, President Obama said that rebuilding American manufacturing was the key to build a vibrant economy. As President Obama has said previously many times we can’t go back to an economy, where 45 percent of our profits come from the financial sector. As Dave Johnson pointed out last week we in his piece “Manufacture or Borrow (Until We Can’t)”:

    ”When it comes down to it you can’t have a healthy service sector unless you are manufacturing items to sell and trade because you can’t pay for the restaurant bill or insurance or hotel room or lawyer or even the doctor if you don’t make something to sell and trade. And mostly you can’t keep buying the things made elsewhere. You can only borrow for so long.”

    President Obama has announced bold new initiatives to invest billions of dollars into new green energy initiatives. However, if we don’t have to even enforce the current trade laws that we have, American manufacturing will be wiped out by low-wage Chinese manufacturing. As I highlighted previously, companies such as GE have already begun to move so-called green jobs to China already.

    The fight over whether to enforce trade laws against illegal Chinese tire imports will set a precedent that the U.S. will enforce previous trade agreements. President Obama has a choice of whether he will side with American workers or corporate lobbyists paid off by China.

Bank Secrecy is Alive and Well!

In the Age of Stealth Wealth – Bank Secrecy is Alive and Well!

Written by Shelley Stark author of: ‘Hidden Treuhand: How Corporations and Individuals Hide Assets and Money’ 

“Bank Secrecy Bites the Dust in Europe”- Newsweek. “Switzerland, Luxembourg, Austria Loosen Secrecy Rules” – Bloomberg. “Tax Havens Give in to EU Pressure” – Spiegel ONLINE.

Has banking secrecy finally come to an end? This is what newspapers are unanimously saying. Is it true or should these headlines be punctuated with a question mark? Well, once again Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and Belgium too are in the spotlight for their bank secrecy rules. There have been strong words emanating from the international community in the past and they produced little, or we would not be entertaining headlines such as these today. 

Changes to bank secrecy have come along way since the day of the anonymous savings book (‘Sparbuch’ in the German language). On January 1st 1994 some provisions concerning banking secrecy were partly amended in response to concerns of money laundering, but these provisions were largely undertaken on a voluntary basis by each bank. Up until this time, one could simply show up at the bank with $10 or $10 million dollars, and put it in anonymous savings account.  It was anonymous because you didn’t have to show any identification. The bank account was identified by a secret password, which the owner of the account assigned to the savings book and was subsequently registered in the bank. To get the money, you would have to show up at the bank with the savings book and give the secret password. This means in reality, to make a pay-off as seen in spy-thrillers, nobody needed to run around with suitcases of money. One could simply make a pay-off by handing over the savings book with the password and the recipient could visit his money at leisure. The new account holder could change the password to afford more security, but as longs as he had the savings book and the password, the money was safe and the old owner could not obtain these funds. Of course, this also meant if the savings book was lost or the password forgotten, then no one could access the money. The password account is much like its Swiss cousin the numbered account. The concept of the number and the password account originated when Hitler sought to stem the flow of money seeking a safe haven in Switzerland and in Austria. The capital exodus began due to inflation, but later due to Nazi persecution of Jewish citizens, it was feared that Hitler would try to force the Swiss to reveal Jewish accounts. By giving out numbers, the Swiss bank could claim not to know whom the account belonged to. In Austria, the practice became passwords. 

In 1995, Austria became a member of the European Union. Many of the earlier voluntary duties became law so that by November 1^st 2000 the ability to open anonymous accounts was finally ended and no payments or withdrawals could be made to existing accounts unless the bank identified the identity of the savings account holder and money laundering was finally rendered a criminal offence. Tax evasion on the other hand, the concealing of income and not falsifying any documents, is merely a civil offense, not unlike a traffic violation. In addition, as of January 1^st 2000 any cash transaction over €15,000 with a customer that didn’t have an ongoing relationship with the bank or was wired to the bank from offshore, needed to register their identity with the bank. These changes were brought about as the result of a European Council Directive to prevent the financial system from being used to launder money.  As a result of these amendments to the banking law, the European Commission withdrew its complaints against the Republic of Austria.                                           

The story regarding Switzerland and Liechtenstein is slightly rockier. German federal investigators paid €5 million to a former bank employee of the Liechtenstein Große Treuhand bank (LGT). The employee, Heinrich Kieber, is alleged to have removed the secret bank data from the LGT bank, thus kicking off a row over tax evasion in the EU. Before the dust settled, U.S. investigators charged Switzerland’s UBS bank for deliberately encouraging American citizens to engage in tax fraud activities. The Swiss have always attracted a certain limelight regarding chocolate, cheese, cuckoo clocks, and banking secrecy – a financial business model that attracts an estimated $1.84 trillion in assets of which about €450 billion belong to private customers. In Switzerland, the hoopla began when the bank was found to have offered tax evasion tactics to Americans that were invented by auditors at KPMG, who only managed to avoid criminal prosecution when they paid up $456 million in fines and penalties. The UBS bank was ordered to pay $780 million, and then they did the unthinkable, they handed over the names of 300 customers after the U.S. government produced strong evidence of tax evasion. The U.S. authorities are still seeking the names of an estimated 52,000 Americans with secretive UBS accounts.

According to mainstream press, these events are what have sparked the U.S., British, and German push for an ‘end’ of banking secrecy and prompted bankers from Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein to hoist their skirts and run for cover. Baa-humbug!

Firstly, tax evasion is not a criminal offense in any of these countries currently being hounded for their bank secrecy laws and for the most part bank secrecy is federal and constitutional law in these countries.

Basically the international community has pushed these European tax havens to accept Article 26 of the OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and Capital. Article 26 creates an obligation to exchange information, but the contracting state is not at liberty to engage on a “fishing expedition”. The contracting country must firstly show evidence of tax evasion, can only request information that is relevant to the tax affairs of a given taxpayer, must demonstrate the foreseeable relevance of the requested information, and prove to have pursued all domestic means to access such information. As of yet, it is unclear just how much tax evasion evidence even need be presented.

Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland were opposed to the current version of Article 26, last updated on July 17, 2008, but since March 2009 each of these countries has notified the OECD that they are withdrawing their reservation to Article 26. They now believe that bank secrecy is not incompatible with the requirements of Article 26. And with little wonder, because the particulars of Article 26 are easily circumvented with a legal phenomenon called ‘Hidden Treuhand’.

Hidden Treuhand is a customary practice in Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and even Germany. Due to globalization, it has transcended its national borders to impact industry, commerce, and banking worldwide. It is key to creating shell companies, foundations, and bank accounts where the real owner identity is hidden and cannot be exposed by any legal means. A Hidden Treuhand creates conditions where a lawyer conducts the duties required of him on behalf and in the interest of the client, but all business actions appear to be in the name of the lawyer. The real beneficial owner remains unknown. This construct can be liberally applied to stock in corporations, foundations, real estate, patent and copyrights, financial instruments such as derivatives and bonds, and of course, cash.

In 2000, some aspects of banking secrecy came to an end, but the Hidden Treuhand is frequently used to close the gap that those transparency laws were supposed to fill. In essence, the Hidden Treuhand is somewhat like a hidden trust, but legally it and the environment in which it functions, can achieve far more than is presently realized. Hidden Treuhand hides the beneficial owner of any asset and that includes bank accounts. Hidden Treuhand, when combined with banking secrecy, hides profits beyond the reach of tax investigations and governments. It’s like missile shield for money – nothing gets past this protective barrier.

Article 26 of the OECD MODEL TAX CONVENTION ON INCOME AND CAPITAL concerns the exchange of information between Contracting States. Hidden Treuhand is the creation of customary practice, but it is not regulated and there are no laws in existence that could be equated as regulatory. The following Hidden Treuhand provisions are quoted from law books referring to customary practice and illustrate how each of the OECD provisions is rendered mute. Compare the inherent capabilities of Hidden Treuhand with text of Article 26 where it states that none of the following provisions shall be construed so as to impose the obligation to:

OECD: to carry out administrative measures at variance with the laws and administrative practice of that or of the other Contracting State;

Hidden Treuhand: “What makes a Treuhand contract so special and unique under Austrian Law is that there is no special law regulating Treuhand contracts…there is no regulation of Treuhand contracts under Austrian Civil Law, and there are not any laws that could be equated as regulatory.” 

OECD: to supply information which is not obtainable under the laws or in the normal course of the administration of that or of the other Contracting State;

Hidden Treuhand: “It is not to be expressed that any direct legal relationship or connection exists between the businessmen and the lawyer. In fact, the lawyer would be guilty of misconduct should the lawyer reveal that a legal relationship (power of attorney) exists between himself and the client”.  

OECD: to supply information which would disclose any trade, business, industrial commercial or professional secret or trade process, or information the disclosure of which would be contrary to public policy (ordre public).

Hidden Treuhand: “When using a Hidden Treuhand, trustees are referred to as a Straw Man. A trustee functions like a Straw Man and acts in the name of the client who remains undeclared in the background. The relationship between the businessman and the lawyer is secret, which often includes even knowledge of a ‘power of attorney’ existing between the lawyer and the businessman”

When it comes to Hidden Treuhand, lawyers exploit attorney client privilege and claim it their legal duty to deny information and to keep all matters pertaining to their client confidential. No one, no court or authority, no government, can force an attorney to reveal any secrets concerning his client. And what of banking or bank accounts?  

The EU and international money laundering laws have striven to eliminate any criminal elements from the banking system, but Hidden Treuhand works within the law and in the banking system. Hidden Treuhand bank accounts are not made public because only the trustee is entitled to use the account, and there is no legal relationship between the client and the bank account. A lawyer lets the bank know that an account is a trust account, but does not have to disclose the name of the beneficiary. A Treuhand account means a banking relationship exists between the bank and the trustee and the bank is not entitled to know whom the lawyer represents anymore than anyone else.

“According to leading banks, designating an account as a Treuhand account alters nothing. The true account beneficiary remains a secret because only the trustee is authorized to use the account and there is no legal relationship between the client and the ‘special account’. The clients’ identity is not exposed when making bank transactions because it is the trustee’s responsibility to make money transfers from this ‘special lawyer trust account’ (Anderkonto)”.

As result of the crackdown against tax havens, more clients will have to resort to Hidden Treuhand and lawyers services. Already Liechtenstein has sold its Treuhand services to a separate company, quite possible even to itself via Hidden Treuhand. Their business model will no doubt resemble the Austrian one where the registration of foundations and Hidden Treuhand is separate from bank institutions. If foreign tax authorities manage the first hurdle and can provide strong evidence of tax evasion and seek further information regarding bank accounts they will firstly have to petition the cooperation of the Ministry of Finance. The ministry will ask the banks, but to what end? The bank cannot tell them what they do not know.  

So much for the grandiose announcement heralding the end of bank secrecy and tax havens!

Many large-cap US corporations have headquarters or subsidiaries based in tax havens. For example: McDonalds recently moved to Switzerland. Moreover, it is possible for a hedge fund to own an offshore bank. For example: the highly secretive hedge fund Cerberus owns Bawag, an Austrian bank, as well as a majority shareholder stake in Chrysler and GMAC. If questioned, would Bawag reveal information regarding any accounts held by a stakeholder of Cerberus?

Just how big is the offshore banking industry? The OECD estimates that assets held by the offshore banking industry might be as high as $11.5 trillion. Little wonder U.S. banks are having trouble lending money and no big surprise the European legal community claims to have no objection to Article 26.

Bank secrecy is alive and well! No question mark necessary. It just got a bit more expensive and devious. It is high time someone made the announcement: we have officially entered the ‘Age of Stealth Wealth’!

To learn more about Hidden Treuhand and what role it is playing in the financial crisis, bank secrecy, bailouts, globalization, the privatization of Iraq, and your financial security, please read: Hidden Treuhand: How Corporations and Individuals Hide Assets and Money

Available direct from publisher and Amazon and Barnes and Noble

Boeing Unsure of Timeline of 787 Fix and Flight

Boeing doesn’t know yet how long 787 fix will take
By Dominic Gates
Seattle Times aerospace reporter
When might the 787 Dreamliner fly and what’s the cost to fix it and get it in the air?
That was the big question dominating an early-morning earnings teleconference Wednesday between Boeing CEO Jim McNerney and Wall Street analysts, who expressed concern about the new jet program’s profitability.
McNerney said Boeing is still assessing how long it will take to fix the structural flaw that has grounded the jet. The company won’t have a new schedule or an estimate of the added costs until “later this quarter,” he said.
That extends the time frame for providing answers. A month ago, Boeing said it hoped to have a new schedule for first flight and delivery within “several weeks.”
“We are working through this matter as quickly as we can but will not sacrifice quality for expediency on such an important effort,” McNerney said.
The focus on the 787 meant that Boeing’s buoyant quarterly earnings got scant attention during the conference call.
Its second-quarter profit rose 17 percent to just shy of $1 billion on revenue of $17 billion.
Boeing has about $5 billion in cash on hand, and profit margins were healthy at about 10 percent in both the defense and commercial-airplane divisions. In the midst of a steep and broad economic downturn, it maintained its financial forecast for the year.
And despite more than 70 jet-order deferrals in the last three months, and the announced cut in 777 output next year, McNerney said he expects to hold 737 production steady in Renton.
But the good news was overshadowed by worries over the 787. McNerney offered what reassurance he could.
He said Boeing has identified and analyzed the structural problem at the wing-to-body join, duplicated it on a computer model and selected a preferred solution.
The hangup, he said, is that it’s difficult to implement the fix — especially on those planes already built — because of the inaccessibility of the place inside the wing where the modification has to be made.
In addition, he said, Boeing engineers are using “an abundance of caution” to ensure other stress issues are not created by the modification.
A Seattle Times story published Wednesday before the earnings release cited two engineers who identified the problem as delamination of the composite-plastic material at a stress point at the end of the long rods, called stringers, used to stiffen each wing.
The engineers estimated that the fix could delay first flight four to six months even if the fix works, potentially pushing first flight into 2010.
When asked directly about that prediction during the conference call, McNerney stuck to his answer that no new schedule is yet available.
The engineers cited in the Times story described the Boeing fix as a redesign at the wing-to-body join that involves only a handful of additional parts at the end of each stringer, but is nevertheless complex to implement.
McNerney emphasized that the problem is limited to the join and that the whole wing doesn’t need a redesign.
“There is nothing we have learned to lead us to believe that this is anything but a local issue, which can be addressed with a local fix,” McNerney said.
Boeing also punted on the financial impact of the new 787 delay, saying the answer cannot be known until the new plan is determined.
On the earnings call, Barclays Capital analyst Joe Campbell asked Chief Financial Officer James Bell the question in plain English:
“Are you sure that you’re not losing money on this thing?”
The concern is that Boeing, despite the huge order book for 850 Dreamliners, may not be able to make enough money on each plane to recover over time all the added costs piling up: the extra research and development needed to solve the current problems, the late penalties that will have to be paid to customers and suppliers, and the cost of holding all the expensive inventory for months longer without any income.
Bell disclosed that Boeing has in its inventory almost $8 billion worth of 787 structures work — completed and partially built airplanes — for which it can receive no income until the jets are delivered to customers. He said this 787 work-in-progress inventory is growing at a rate of $800 million per quarter.
In response to Campbell, Bell conceded that the new 787 delay “puts pressure on the profitability of this program.”
“We’ve always been concerned with the cumulative impact of the schedule delays and the pressure it puts on cost,” Bell said.
“We also have been concerned with the delays to our customers and how that converts to penalties or the settlements we have to work through with them.”
But Bell said Boeing expects to create efficiencies over the expected long production run of the 787 that will reduce costs and increase profit per plane to cover all the extra expenses.
“We still believe the program to be profitable,” Bell said.
In an interview later, Campbell said that in rough numbers, using the figures released Wednesday, Boeing will have spent up to $13 billion on inventory buildup by the time it starts delivering the 787s. It has maybe an additional $8 billion to $10 billion sunk into research and development, and it’s on the hook for a few billion dollars more in customer and supplier penalties.
Campbell estimates that the overrun on costs attributable to the delays up until now is around $6 billion.
But that doesn’t include the additional costs being incurred due to the wing-to-body flaw.
Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com

More Boeing Layoffs; most in Defense

Boeing hands out layoff notices, most of them in defense

Link to Seattle Post Intelligencer:  http://blog.seattlepi.com/aerospace/archives/173941.asp

Chicago-based The Boeing Co. on Friday plans to issue about 600 layoff notices to warn employees about job cuts effective Sept. 18.

The 600 notices include about 100 in Puget Sound area. Just 80 of the notices are in Boeing’s commercial airplanes division and most of those are in Puget Sound.

The numbers indicate that Boeing’s defense unit will be harder hit.

The layoffs are part of Boeing’s plan to eliminate 10,000 positions this year. Earlier this week, Boeing indicated that it would lay off 1,000 people in its defense unit. It’s still not clear whether those 1,000 are in addition to, or part of, the 10,000 previously announced cuts.

Boeing is in a legal “quiet period” in advance of its earnings announcement next Wednesday.

Previously:

• Pentagon budget cuts means Boeing to cut 1,000 defense jobs (memo)
• Boeing layoff round: 250 company-wide, 150 in Puget Sound

 

Posted by Andrea James at July 17, 2009 5:00 a.m.

Boeing and Lockheed Team Up on New Bomber

Here is another one someone sent me this evening.  I hear from many who are quite jaded about the integrity of defense contractors lately.   I suppose understanding what “capturing the best of industry” means, requires taking into account other stories posted here from the news media.  It appears to me that means they will team up to squelch competition and their competitors, and they will continue to buy up small companies, any that have a product or process that is new, original, and works, so the big two can continue to control the industry and reap the big bucks for any contracts that are awarded.  I believe they see themselves as middle-man contract administrators.

 -GFS

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G. Florence-

Capture the best of industry… legally?

 —————————————————————————————————————DarkGovernment

Boeing’s And Lockheed’s Bomber For 2018

 

August 24th, 2008 Posted in Technology

 2018 Bomber

 

The Boeing Company and Lockheed Martin have teamed to perform studies and system development efforts including collaborative research and development in pursuit of the anticipated U.S. Air Force 2018 Bomber program.

 

This collaborative effort for a long-range strike program (Possibly the B-3) will include work in advanced sensors and future electronic warfare solutions including advancements in network enabled battle management, command and control, and virtual warfare simulation and experimentation.

 

Boeing and Lockheed Martin are working closely at all levels to capture the best of industry to develop and provide an effective and affordable solution for the warfighter. The work performed by the Boeing/Lockheed Martin team is designed to help the Air Force establish capability-based roadmaps for technology maturation and date certain timelines for the 2018 Bomber program.

 http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/boeings-and-lockheeds-bomber-for-2018/

Local and Regional Newspapers: The Struggle to Continue to Exist

It seems like newspapers everywhere have been struggling to prevail lately, and some are stopping the presses and closing their doors.    Times like these create opportunity and motivation sometimes to cross some lines that should not be crossed.  Here are a couple of stories of interest, one from Washington State describing the struggles of these news organizations and what one state is doing to try to bail them out, and one from Washington, District of Columbia  describing the ethical and legal morass one paper (The Washington Post),  found itself in by crossing that line.   –GFS

 

————————————————————————————————

 

 

Newspapers in WA get tax break during bad times 

By RACHEL LA CORTE – 1 day ago

 

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — As newspapers across the country struggle through a brutal economic climate, papers in Washington State are getting a tax break.

A new law that gives newspaper printers and publishers a 40 percent cut in Washington’s main business tax took effect this week, providing some much-needed relief to the business after a year in which The Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed its final edition and other papers suffered drastic cutbacks.

“It’s not a bailout, because it’s not enough money,” said House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, the Democrat who sponsored the measure. “But it is our way of saying to the newspapers that we do believe you’re incredibly important to our state and our democracy.”

The Society of Professional Journalists and the National Conference of State Legislatures was not aware of any other state that has granted a similar tax break to the newspaper industry.

In Michigan, a bill that was introduced in May would exempt newspapers from paying that state’s main business tax, but the bill has not yet had a hearing. And several states, including Mississippi, Idaho and Colorado, have existing sales-tax exemptions for newspapers.

The Washington tax cut, which will cost the state about $1.3 million a year, was approved despite uneasiness in the industry about newspapers relying on the government they cover for help.

But there was also recognition that these are historic times for the industry.

Newspapers across the country have resorted to layoffs, pay cuts, furloughs and other cost cutting moves to deal with a wounded business model and a recession-fueled drop in advertising.

The Post-Intelligencer was converted to an Internet-only publication with a much-reduced staff, and The Seattle Times — the only mainstream daily left in the state’s largest city — has had severe financial troubles of its own and has cut 500 positions in the past year.

Gov. Chris Gregoire called the decision to stop printing the 146-year-old P-I a “huge historical loss.”

Gregoire said that while the tax break won’t cure all that ails newspapers, she felt the state needed to do something.

“The industry has to right itself, and government can’t and won’t be a part of it righting itself,” she said. “But I don’t want government to be part of the reason that this industry can’t make it.”

In May, the company that publishes The Columbian filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in an effort to resolve credit issues involving a building project.

Publisher Frank Blethen said things have improved slightly for his newspaper since earlier this year, when he testified in support of the tax break and said that “we’re hanging on by our fingertips.”

“We’re probably hanging on by our fingers now,” Blethen said. “The tangible result is with all the pressure on budgets and all the red ink right now, anything that helps dampen that means that there’s going to be fewer reporters laid off, and less content reduction. It’s not big enough to take a lot of pressure off, but it helps.”

The News Tribune of Tacoma publisher Dave Zeeck said that the approximate $100,000 a year in savings his newspaper will see is the equivalent of keeping two reporters on staff for a year.

“We are doing everything we can to preserve news content, and this certainly helps,” he said, noting that they are still paying about $150,000 in state business and occupation taxes even after the cut.

Washington state’s tax cut is to the state’s business and occupation tax, which is based on gross revenues instead of profit. Washington is one of just a handful of states that does not have a state income tax. The law provides newspapers the same discounted rate given to the aerospace industry, including Boeing Co., and the timber industry.

But media watchers are quick to point out that those other industries have a different relationship with the government than newspapers.

“It makes me a little nervous,” said Dave Aeikens, president of the Society for Professional Journalists. “There needs to be a clear separation between the government and the watchdog role of the press. If it looks like there’s any type of tie, then the public’s not going to trust the press.”

Publishers say that line is not in jeopardy.

“We’re very good at separating our opinions from our news coverage,” said Michael Shepard, publisher of the Yakima Herald-Republic. “We’ve been doing that for hundreds of years. It wasn’t our reporters and editors who were asking for this relief.”

Rufus Woods, publisher and editor of the family-owned Wenatchee World, said he didn’t personally push for the tax cut because he didn’t think it was enough to make a difference, and that with the state’s current financial troubles, “I didn’t think it was a good year to do it.”

“I don’t think it’s up to the government to make us survive,” he said. “We need to figure out how to make that happen. We’re like any other business. We need to find new ways to do things.”

 

 

 

Some Choice Words for “The Select Few”

Link:  http://www.truthout.org/071209A

Sunday 12 July 2009

by: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

 

    If you want to know what really matters in Washington, don’t go to Capitol Hill for one of those hearings, or pay attention to those staged White House “town meetings.” They’re just for show. What really happens – the serious business of Washington – happens in the shadows, out of sight, off the record. Only occasionally – and usually only because someone high up stumbles – do we get a glimpse of just how pervasive the corruption has become.

    Case in point: Katharine Weymouth, the publisher of The Washington Post – one of the most powerful people in DC – invited top officials from the White House, the Cabinet and Congress to her home for an intimate, off-the-record dinner to discuss health care reform with some of her reporters and editors covering the story.

    But CEOs and lobbyists from the health care industry were invited, too, provided they forked over $25,000 a head – or up to a quarter of a million if they want to sponsor a whole series of these cozy get-togethers. And what is the inducement offered? Nothing less, the invitation read, than “an exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will get it done.”

    The invitation reminds the CEO’s and lobbyists that they will be buying access to “those powerful few in business and policy making who are forwarding, legislating and reporting on the issues …

    ”Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No.” The invitation promises this private, intimate and off-the-record dinner is an extension “of The Washington Post brand of journalistic inquiry into the issues, a unique opportunity for stakeholders to hear and be heard.”

    Let that sink in. In this case, the “stakeholders” in health care reform do not include the rabble – the folks across the country who actually need quality health care but can’t afford it. If any of them showed up at the kitchen door on the night of this little soiree, the bouncer would drop kick them beyond the Beltway.

    No, before you can cross the threshold to reach “the select few who will actually get it done,” you must first cross the palm of some outstretched hand. The Washington Post dinner was canceled after a copy of the invite was leaked to the web site Politico.com, by a health care lobbyist, of all people. The paper said it was a misunderstanding – the document was a draft that had been mailed out prematurely by its marketing department. There’s noblesse oblige for you – blame it on the hired help.

    In any case, it was enough to give us a glimpse into how things really work in Washington – a clear insight into why there is such a great disconnect between democracy and government today, between Washington and the rest of the country.

    According to one poll after another, a majority of Americans not only want a public option in health care, they also think that growing inequality is bad for the country, that corporations have too much power over policy, that money in politics is the root of all evil, that working families and poor communities need and deserve public support if the market system fails to generate shared prosperity.

    But, when the insiders in Washington have finished tearing worthy intentions apart and devouring flesh from bone, none of these reforms happen. “Oh,” they say, “it’s all about compromise. All in the nature of the give-and-take-negotiating of a representative democracy.”

    That, people, is bull – the basic nutrient of Washington’s high and mighty.

    It’s not about compromise. It’s not about what the public wants. It’s about money – the golden ticket to “the select few who actually get it done.”

    When Congress passed the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act, “the select few” made sure it no longer contained the cramdown provision that would have allowed judges to readjust mortgages. The one provision that would have helped homeowners the most was removed in favor of an industry that pours hundreds of millions into political campaigns.

    So, too, with a bill designed to protect us from terrorist attacks on chemical plants. With “the select few” dictating marching orders, hundreds of factories are being exempted from measures that would make them spend money to prevent the release of toxic clouds that could kill hundreds of thousands.

    Everyone knows the credit ratings agencies were co-conspirators with Wall Street in the shameful wilding that brought on the financial meltdown. But when the Obama administration came up with new reforms to prevent another crisis, the credit ratings agencies were given a pass. They’d been excused by “the select few who actually get it done.”

    And by the time an energy bill emerged from the House of Representatives the other day, “the select few who actually get it done” had given away billions of dollars worth of emission permits and offsets. As The New York Times reported, while the legislation worked its way to the House floor, “It grew fat with compromises, carve-outs, concessions and out-and-out gifts,” expanding from 648 pages to 1,400 as it spread its largesse among big oil and gas, utility companies and agribusiness.

    This week, the public interest groups Common Cause and the Center for Responsive Politics reported that, “According to lobby disclosure reports, 34 energy companies registered in the first quarter of 2009 to lobby Congress around the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. This group of companies spent a total of $23.7 million – or $260,000 a day – lobbying members of Congress in January, February and March.

    ”Many of these same companies also made large contributions to the members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which has jurisdiction over the legislation and held a hearing this week on the proposed ‘cap and trade’ system energy companies are fighting. Data shows oil and gas companies, mining companies and electric utilities combined have given more than $2 million just to the 19 members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee since 2007, the start of the last full election cycle.”

    It’s happening to health care as well. Even the pro-business magazine The Economist says America has the worst system in the developed world, controlled by executives who are not held to account and investors whose primary goal is raising share price and increasing profit – while wasting $450 billion dollars in redundant administrative costs and leaving nearly 50 million uninsured.

    Enter “the select few who actually get it done.” Three out of four of the big health care firms lobbying on Capitol Hill have former members of Congress or government staff members on the payroll – more than 350 of them – and they’re all fighting hard to prevent a public option, at a rate in excess of $1.4 million a day.

    Health care policy has become insider heaven. Even Nancy-Ann DeParle, the White House health reform director, served on the boards of several major health care corporations.

    President Obama has pushed hard for a public option but many fear he’s wavering, and just this week his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel – the insider di tutti insiders – indicated that a public plan just might be negotiable, ready for reengineering, no doubt, by “the select few who actually get it done.”

    That’s how it works. And it works that way because we let it. The game goes on and the insiders keep dealing themselves winning hands. Nothing will change – nothing – until the moneylenders are tossed out of the temple, the ATM’s are wrested from the marble halls, and we tear down the sign they’ve placed on government – the one that reads, “For Sale.”

 

Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program, Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday nights on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.

FBI Finds Possible Link of Serial-Killings and Long-Haul Truckers

From Truthout.org:

This is very disturbing.  Anyone doubt why women traveling alone should be armed and well-trained? 

If  you are not currently able to protect yourself and you wish to arm yourself, you should contact the nearest gun range or weapons retailer and find out where you may take basic gun safety and self-defense with a weapon classes.  You will receive expert training in the class and in most cases, structured range time to learn how to physically fire and manage the weapons.  Some class locations allow you to try out a variety of firearms so you may decide on which type and model you wish to purchase.   It is not necessary in many cases to own a firearm before taking the initial class, nor is it required to purchase a gun at the class.  Look in the yellow pages, or online for locations of ranges, arms collectors groups,  and retail gun shops. 

-GFS

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FBI Database Links Long-Haul Truckers, Serial Killings

by: Scott Glover  |  Visit article original @ The Los Angeles Times

 The growing database includes more than 500 female victims, most of whom were killed and their bodies dumped at truck stops, motels and other spots along popular trucking routes crisscrossing the US.

    The FBI suspects that serial killers working as long-haul truckers are responsible for the slayings of hundreds of prostitutes, hitchhikers and stranded motorists whose bodies have been dumped near highways over the last three decades.

    Federal authorities first made the connection about five years ago while helping police link a trucker to a string of unsolved killings along Interstate 40 in Oklahoma and several other states. After that, the FBI launched the Highway Serial Killings Initiative to track suspicious slayings and suspect truckers.

    A computer database maintained by the FBI has grown to include information on more than 500 female crime victims, most of whom were killed and their bodies discarded at truck stops, motels and other locations along popular trucking routes crisscrossing the U.S.

    The database also has information on scores of truckers who’ve been charged with killings or rapes committed near highways or who are suspects in such crimes, officials said. Authorities said they do not have statistics on whether driving trucks ranks high on the list of occupations of known serial killers.

    But the pattern in roadside body dumps and other evidence has prompted many investigators to speculate that the mobility, lack of supervision and access to potential victims that come with the job make it a good cover for someone inclined to kill.

Red dots on map (supplied by the FBI) show locations of hundreds of bodies and human remains discovered along highways over three decades. (Map: FBI)

    ”You’ve got a mobile crime scene,” one investigator said. “You can pick a girl up on the East Coast, kill her two states away and then dump her three states after that.”

    Although some local police agencies have been briefed on the program, the FBI had not publicized its existence outside law enforcement until earlier this year, when officials agreed to show The Times the inner workings of the operation and share details of some of their cases.

    Housed in a nondescript brick building on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., FBI analysts pore over reports and computer entries looking for patterns in slayings from California to Connecticut.

    Since the program began, more than two dozen killings have been solved, authorities said.

    Michael Harrigan, who oversees the Highway Serial Killings Initiative, said the program helps local police “connect the dots” to slayings outside their jurisdictions. He said most of the victims led high-risk lifestyles that left them particularly vulnerable.

    ”We don’t want to scare the public and make it seem like every time you stop for gas you should look over your shoulder,” Harrigan said. “Many of these victims made poor choices, but that doesn’t mean they deserved to die.”

    Though most of the entries in the database pertain to unsolved slayings, cases that authorities consider “cleared,” or solved, remain in it so that investigators may potentially link additional crimes to a known perpetrator. There are also entries on sexual assaults and missing-person cases linked to highway locations. FBI officials declined to provide The Times with a more detailed breakdown of the database’s contents.

    The program’s success depends largely on local police departments’ voluntarily providing data on seemingly random killings, sexual assaults and other violent crimes to the FBI, where it is stored in a massive computer database. FBI analysts can query the computer to spot patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed.

    This was exactly the kind of help Terri Turner was looking for when she turned to the FBI in early 2004. Turner, a senior criminal intelligence analyst with the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation, was working on a string of seven slayings along I-40 in which the victims were truck-stop prostitutes who had been killed and left at roadside locations.

    Turner’s inquiry was given to an analyst with the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, which maintains the agency’s crime database. The analyst found that the database contained more than 250 cases of roadside female crime victims, many of them bearing enough similarities to suggest patterns in the violence. Subsequent searches and Internet research bumped the number to 350. As a result, bureau officials created a separate computer database to track such crimes and assigned an analyst to work full time on the serial killer program.

    Later that year, Turner’s suspected killer was identified as John Robert Williams, a 28-year-old trucker.

    Williams and his girlfriend had kidnapped a woman from a casino in Mississippi, killed her and dumped her body along a rural county road, authorities said. Concerned that they’d been seen leaving the casino with the victim, Williams’ girlfriend panicked and called police, telling them that she and Williams had found the body. Their story quickly unraveled, and the pair were arrested for murder.

    During subsequent interrogations, police said Williams confessed to more than a dozen slayings – including many of the cases Turner had been investigating. He had detailed knowledge of how the crimes had been committed, such as whether the women were killed by manual strangulation or with the use of a ligature, according to authorities. He explained how some had been sexually assaulted, in some cases after they were dead, they said.

    Williams knew, for example, that one victim, Buffie Rae Brawley, had the word “Ebony” tattooed on her right thigh, investigators said. And he knew that the truck-stop prostitute had deep lacerations on her head, which he said she suffered when he struck her with a “tire thumper,” a trucker’s tool used to bounce off truck tires to gauge their pressure.

    Police said Williams told them that Brawley solicited him for sex at a truck stop in Indianapolis.

    ”The second she tapped on my window, she was a dead woman,” one investigator quoted the trucker as saying.

    Williams has since recanted his confession, and there is no DNA linking him to any of the slayings. But Sgt. Larry Hallmark of the Grapevine, Texas, Police Department said he and other investigators do not believe that Williams’ confession was bogus.

    ”He actually bragged that we wouldn’t find any DNA because he didn’t have sex with them in the traditional sense,” said Hallmark, who interviewed Williams several times and has submitted a potential death penalty case to the district attorney in his county outside Dallas.

    Hallmark said investigators from other jurisdictions “are kind of waiting in line” to see what happens with his case.

    The investigator of Brawley’s death is among them.

    ”We’re about 10th in line,” said Capt. Clarke Fine of Hendricks County, Ind. “I figure if Texas fries him, we’re good.”

    Spotting Patterns

    For the most part, the FBI analysts assigned to the serial killer program have spent their time combing through crime data that is months or even years old for patterns that might link slayings to one another or to a suspect. But occasionally, they have spotted patterns as they were actually occurring. That was the case two years ago when authorities noticed that dead prostitutes who had been shot with a .22-caliber gun were being found along highways in Georgia and Tennessee.

    The body of one victim, Sara Hulbert, was found behind a truck stop in Nashville.

    Sgt. Pat Postiglione, a veteran homicide investigator with the Nashville Police Department, was assigned the case. He called the FBI and learned that Hulbert’s killing fit a pattern of recent slayings and might have been the work of serial killer, something he’d already suspected.

    With little to go on, he and another detective began reviewing videotape taken at the Truck Stops of America site in downtown Nashville where the victim had been found. It was mind-numbing stuff: big rigs pulling in and out of one of the busiest truck stops in the state, like planes taking off and landing at LAX.

    The only thing that caught Postiglione’s eye was a yellow 18-wheeler that seemed to come and go within about 30 minutes. The interval seemed short compared with that of other truckers, who spent at least an hour – or even several – as they fueled up, ate and maybe slept for a while.

    As leads go, it was pretty thin. But then the detective got lucky. As Postiglione approached the truck stop the morning after watching the tape, he said, he saw what he thought was the yellow rig heading toward a nearby area of East Nashville known for prostitution.

    Postiglione said he followed as the driver slowly wheeled his truck down streets lined with warehouses, budget motels and liquor stores. After a few minutes, the driver returned to the truck stop and parked, he said.

    His curiosity piqued, Postiglione approached the driver’s door and knocked. After a few seconds, a disheveled-looking man emerged from the cab, the detective said.

    His name was Bruce Mendenhall. He was of average height and build with a sort of pinched face. His shirt was unbuttoned and he wore no shoes. As Postiglione sized him up, he said he noticed a speck of blood on the man’s thumb and what he thought were several corresponding drops on the driver’s door of the truck.

    Though there could have been many reasonable explanations for the blood, Postiglione said, he was suspicious.

    ”Something – I don’t know if it was instinct or whatever – was telling me, ‘Don’t let this guy leave before I look in his truck,’ ” the detective recalled.

    According to Postiglione, Mendenhall calmly agreed to submit to a DNA swab and signed a consent form granting the detective permission to search the truck.

    The officer said he stepped up into the cavernous cab, large enough to stand up in and walk around. He took a couple of steps into the sleeper compartment and sat down on the bed. To his left, behind the driver’s seat, was a plastic bag. In it was some women’s clothing covered in blood, he said. Also recovered from the cab were a cellphone and an ATM card belonging to a young woman who had gone missing in Indianapolis just 12hours earlier, authorities said. She has not been heard from since and is presumed dead.

    By the time crime-scene technicians were finished with the cab, authorities have said, they had found blood or DNA linking Mendenhall to at least seven victims. He has since been charged with four slayings, officials said. Mendenhall has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial in Nashville.

    Postiglione said the timeline the FBI put together showed that the intervals between killings were getting shorter and shorter.

    ”He was spiraling out of control,” the detective said.

    Other Targets

    Not all the victims attributed to alleged serial killer truck drivers have been prostitutes whose work made them easy targets. About a month after Mendenhall’s arrest, another long-haul trucker, Adam Leroy Lane, parked his rig in a suburban Boston neighborhood and slipped through an unlocked door into the home of Kevin and Jeannie McDonough.

    The McDonoughs were lying in bed when they heard a whimper from the adjacent bedroom where their 15-year-old daughter, Shea, had been sleeping. They went to see what was wrong and found a masked figure holding a knife to their daughter’s throat. Kevin McDonough, a slight but muscular utility contractor, grabbed the intruder, applied a chokehold and wrestled him to the floor. His wife grabbed the knife.

    When police arrived, they discovered that Lane was armed with three knives, a length of wire and a martial arts throwing star. In the cab of his truck was a DVD titled “Hunting Humans,” about a serial killer.

    A Massachusetts state trooper who earlier that year had attended an FBI presentation in Reno about the serial killer program sent an e-mail to the bureau.

    ”I just want to make sure this guy is on your radar,” the trooper wrote.

    That message ultimately led to Lane’s being connected to slayings in two other states, for which he is awaiting trial. He pleaded guilty to the Massachusetts charges and was sentenced to 50 years in state prison.

    J. Patrick Barnes, a New Jersey prosecutor who charged Lane with one of the murders, said the FBI was instrumental in helping solve his case.

    ”We’re so busy looking at cases in our own towns, our own counties and our own regions that we sometimes miss what’s going on around us,” Barnes said.

    ”You can’t connect the dots if you don’t know what the dots are.”

    Access to a Database

    Hanging in a cubicle in the FBI office near Quantico, Va., is a map of the United States. It’s covered in red dots representing some of the 500-plus cases in the Highway Serial Killings Initiative database. For all the crimes they represent, FBI supervisory agent John Molnar said he thinks the number of such offenses has been “grossly underreported.”

    Molnar said he hopes that will change in the wake of a decision last year to make the database available to law enforcement officials online, allowing police with a password to submit case information and make their own queries.

    Though many of the dots on the map now appear connected to one another by similarities – such as the killers’ modes of operation – the vast majority are not connected to any known suspect.

    They are potential serial slayings waiting to be solved, the FBI says.

    One involves the 2005 discovery of a decomposing human leg by ATV riders roaring through the woods near Interstate 55 in central Illinois. Painted toenails suggested that the leg, and another discovered nearby, belonged to a woman. But with little else to go on, the case went cold.

    Three years later, an FBI analyst used a partial tattoo on one of the legs to help state police link the remains to Lindsay Harris, a 21-year-old call girl who had vanished from the Las Vegas Strip – some 1,400 miles away – about two weeks before the limbs were found.

    She was the third Las Vegas sex worker whose dismembered remains were found along a highway from 2003 to 2005, prompting authorities to speculate that a trucker or someone else who frequents the highways was responsible for the slayings.

    A fourth young woman who disappeared from the Strip and is presumed dead is also thought be part of the pattern. Her remains have not been recovered.

    Mike Jennings, the Illinois State Police special agent who worked with the FBI to identify Harris’ remains, said he plans to retire in a couple of years and that the case of the fourth woman will weigh heavily on his mind if it remains unsolved.

    ”My gut feeling,” Jeninngs said, “is that it’s a trucker.”

 

Spitzer and Molinski on AIG and the Bailout

Here is another set of articles  from Truthout with links to the originals.

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Opinion

The Real AIG Scandal

Tuesday 17 March 2009

by: Eliot Spitzer  |  Visit article original @ Slate Magazine

Former US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (pictured), then-New York Fed official Timothy Geithner, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke made the initial decision to bail out AIG. (Photo: Elizabeth Dalziel / AP)

    It’s not the bonuses. It’s that AIG’s counterparties are getting paid back in full.

    Everybody is rushing to condemn AIG’s bonuses, but this simple scandal is obscuring the real disgrace at the insurance giant: Why are AIG’s counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars?

    For the answer to this question, we need to go back to the very first decision to bail out AIG, made, we are told, by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, then-New York Fed official Timothy Geithner, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last fall. Post-Lehman’s collapse, they feared a systemic failure could be triggered by AIG’s inability to pay the counterparties to all the sophisticated instruments AIG had sold. And who were AIG’s trading partners? No shock here: Goldman, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and on it goes. So now we know for sure what we already surmised: The AIG bailout has been a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already.

Also see below:     
Hedge Funds May Be Getting a Bailout via AIG’s Payments    •

    It all appears, once again, to be the same insiders protecting themselves against sharing the pain and risk of their own bad adventure. The payments to AIG’s counterparties are justified with an appeal to the sanctity of contract. If AIG’s contracts turned out to be shaky, the theory goes, then the whole edifice of the financial system would collapse.

    But wait a moment, aren’t we in the midst of reopening contracts all over the place to share the burden of this crisis? From raising taxes – income taxes to sales taxes – to properly reopening labor contracts, we are all being asked to pitch in and carry our share of the burden. Workers around the country are being asked to take pay cuts and accept shorter work weeks so that colleagues won’t be laid off. Why can’t Wall Street royalty shoulder some of the burden? Why did Goldman have to get back 100 cents on the dollar? Didn’t we already give Goldman a $25 billion capital infusion, and aren’t they sitting on more than $100 billion in cash? Haven’t we been told recently that they are beginning to come back to fiscal stability? If that is so, couldn’t they have accepted a discount, and couldn’t they have agreed to certain conditions before the AIG dollars – that is, our dollars – flowed?

    The appearance that this was all an inside job is overwhelming. AIG was nothing more than a conduit for huge capital flows to the same old suspects, with no reason or explanation.

    So here are several questions that should be answered, in public, under oath, to clear the air:

·  What was the precise conversation among Bernanke, Geithner, Paulson, and Blankfein that preceded the initial $80 billion grant?

·  Was it already known who the counterparties were and what the exposure was for each of the counterparties?

·  What did Goldman, and all the other counterparties, know about AIG’s financial condition at the time they executed the swaps or other contracts? Had they done adequate due diligence to see whether they were buying real protection? And why shouldn’t they bear a percentage of the risk of failure of their own counterparty?

·  What is the deeper relationship between Goldman and AIG? Didn’t they almost merge a few years ago but did not because Goldman couldn’t get its arms around the black box that is AIG? If that is true, why should Goldman get bailed out? After all, they should have known as well as anybody that a big part of AIG’s business model was not to pay on insurance it had issued.

·  Why weren’t the counterparties immediately and fully disclosed?

    Failure to answer these questions will feed the populist rage that is metastasizing very quickly. And it will raise basic questions about the competence of those who are supposedly guiding this economic policy.

    ——–

    Eliot Spitzer is the former governor of the state of New York.

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Hedge Funds May Be Getting a Bailout via AIG’s Payments

Wednesday 18 March 2009

by: Dow Jones  |  Visit article original @ Dow Jones

    New York – The fact that some payments made by American International Group Inc. (AIG) to hedge funds are coming from government bailout money raises a question: Are hedge funds receiving a de facto bailout?

    If the answer is yes, it would signify the first taxpayer money yet to reach hedge funds since the financial crisis began back in late 2007. Hedge funds – investment pools made up primarily of high net worth individuals, pension funds and university endowments – have suffered like most during the crisis, but have pointed out with pride that as of yet their industry hasn’t requested any government handouts.

    Officially, of course, any payments made by AIG to hedge funds wouldn’t change that fact. It was AIG that requested the bailout, not the hedge funds. The insurance giant is now simply meeting its contractual obligations.

    In some cases, AIG has already paid out fairly hefty amounts to hedge funds with U.S. taxpayer funds. AIG said in a press release Sunday that it paid $200 million each in “public aid” to Citadel Investment Group and Paloma Securities. These payments were made to settle short-term trades last year in which the hedge funds loaned AIG cash in exchange for bonds.

    Also, as reported Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, AIG reportedly may be paying out many different hedge funds for bets in which the hedge funds waged that the housing market would crater against AIG’s bets that it would remain robust.

    It isn’t clear how much in total that hedge funds stand to gain through the AIG payments, but the payments call into question the government’s decision, whether out of haste or for any other reason, to allow the AIG bailout money to be dispersed to any counterparties, including hedge funds.

    ”Taxpayer money is being paid to hedge funds by a Treasury that could have limited the payments to domestic banks but decided not to risk letting anyone big fail,” said John Coffee, a professor of securities law at Columbia University. “In short, everyone of importance is being protected.”

    Not all observers see a problem.

    While Edward Altman, a professor of finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business, questions the use of taxpayer funds to pay huge bonuses to AIG executives (another controversy surrounding the AIG bailout), he doesn’t see a problem with the hedge-fund payments.

    ”The ‘bailout’ funds are doing exactly what they were intended to…pay off [ AIG's] bills on a timely basis so as not to cause any further harm to the system,” he said. “Otherwise, what’s the purpose of the bailout? It should have been clear that this involves [payments to] hedge funds.”

    ——–

    By Dan Molinski, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-2245.

 

 

Review: Boeing Stolen Laptops and ID Fraud Risks

 

Boeing Bombs On ID Fraud Prevention

John Stith
Staff Writer
2005-11-21

 

Every time you turn around, you hear another story on ID fraud. There’s another one today. Aircraft manufacturer Boeing happened to lose a laptop computer. A number of questions come up about why all those names would be on a laptop but then another question comes up. Doesn’t Boeing have some kind of government contract?

There are two issues here to consider. First is the obvious ID fraud problem. The laptop computer had 161,000 names of current and former employees stored on it, including social security numbers, birth dates, banking information and other useful data. Apparently, someone had taken the unsuspecting laptop off of Boeing’s property and elected not to pay enough attention to it.

Boeing did issue a statement on Friday discussing the incident. In the statement, they suggested someone was probably just after the laptop maybe to get $50 or so out of it.

While they maintain there was no “classified, supplier, customer, engineering or material financial information” on the disc, the point is companies like Boeing must be more careful and secure in not just protecting the data but also in allowing the data to be taken.

This problem has happened at multiple companies and none of them seem willing to take precautions to protect the data in-house. Multiple protection methods for the user don’t work if someone swipes a company computer with all the information needed to start a major phishing scam with access to all the information. The companies say it hasn’t really happened yet but they don’t have to tell you if it does in most states.

The worst part about Boeing is that they’re also a major government contractor. While they say nothing significant was taken they guarantee that. This company works for NASA, the U.S. military, and other nations’ military. Can they guarantee employee information theft won’t happen again? Doubtful.

Until companies start taking this thing entirely more seriously, this problem will continue to grow. Besides, if the don’t care enough about their employees to protect their records vigorously, how can a company like Boeing be trusted with the development of rockets and passenger jets. I wonder if Airbus has this problem.

 

Link to original:  http://www.securitypronews.com/news/securitynews/spn-45-20051121BoeingBombsOnIDFraudPrevention.html

 

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