Employer contributions to 401K plans shrinking

The banks remain clueless as to why Americans are upset with them but if they opened their eyes and saw beyond the pampered lifestyle average people have allowed them to maintain, they might see stories like this. So besides having their retirement plans blown to bits by the recession Wall Street created, people are also suffering by getting even less into their retirement plans. At least Americans are fortunate enough to have those clever brains of Wall Street living the high life. That gives people great satisfaction to know that others are doing so well when the rest are suffering.

A quarter of U.S. employers have eliminated matching contributions to employee 401(k) retirement plans since September to save money amid the economy's downturn, according to research released on Monday.

A quarter of U.S. employers also have instituted limited enrollment rather than open the savings plans to all employees, according to the study conducted for Charles Schwab Corp. by CFO Research Services.

Although the study showed 23 percent of companies have eliminated 401(k) matching contributions, most see the move as temporary, said Steve Anderson, who heads Retirement Plan Services at Charles Schwab, a financial services provider.

Let's see how temporary it is. It might be slightly slower than the rapid bounce back in Wall Street pay. Read More......

Jennifer Chrisler and the Family Equality Council sell out the gays again

UPDATE: I missed the part of the NYT story (but Pam saw it) that reports that the White House is allegedly spinning their Stonewall Anniversary party as a kind of "Cinco de Mayo or St. Patrick party," where I presume everyone gets stone drunk and wears silly costumes. This is how this White House sees our civil rights, this what they think Stonewall was all about? An ethnic beer party?
_________________

When the White House needs a token homosexual to give them political cover for stabbing gay Americans in the back, there's one name apparently at the top of their list. Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of the Family Equality Council.

Ms. Chrisler has confirmed to the New York Times that she is proudly going to the hastily arranged White House cocktail bash next week, organized after the community uproar over Obama's Justice Department comparing us to incest and pedophilia.

Ironically, and rather hypocritically,

But none of that got Chrisler and the Family Equality Council down. She showed up in the White House last Wednesday to sell our community out and give the president gay cover. And now Chrisler is doing it again.

I'm sure Chisler, as she sips her champagne and eats her fancy French hors d'oeuvres to commemorate the gays and lesbian who rioted for her civil rights 40 years ago, will do her best to hold the president's feet to the fire.

Please.

These people are pathetic. You should see her quotes in the article, how she wasn't satisfied by the "limited benefits" provided for in the memo the president signed last Wednesday. Yeah, real unsatisfied - that's why she stood over him clapping like a giddy schoolkid, providing him the political cover he needed at a time that our community needed her.

I seriously hope someone looks into who the donors are for this apologist organization. No gay person should ever give a dime to the Family Equality Council again. Ever. And the same goes for any other organization that dares to give this White House political cover when the president refuses to even apologize, to even distance himself from that hideous brief.

Note to the Family Equality Council: Last time I checked, shrimp and champagne were not on the gay agenda. Read More......

Huff Post: Conrad Moves Closer To Public Health Care After Negotiations

More good news. I'm still skeptical as to what all of this means. Lots of things can happen at the last minute when you're working on legislation - things you won't find out until it's too late. Still, it's the first good Health Care Reform news we've had in a while. From Ryan Grim at Huff Post:

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) moved sharply toward public health care Monday, saying that he could "absolutely" support major parts of Sen. Chuck Schumer's compromise proposal for a public option after closed-door negotiations.

Conrad has backed a health care co-op proposal that advocates of a public option have thoroughly rejected. Schumer (D-N.Y.) took their side on Sunday in comments made to the Associated Press. "I don't think I could say with a straight face that this [co-op proposal] is at all close to a nationwide public option," Schumer said. "Right now, this co-op idea doesn't come close to satisfying anyone who wants a public plan."

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White House gay call participant: "What a waste of time. They took 3 questions, two of which were uncritical."

Well that didn't go so well. You'll recall that the White House Deputy Chief of Staff and political director held a call earlier today with the DNC's gay caucus, in the hopes of... well, it's not quite clear what the White House was hoping. Judging by the report I got from someone who was on the call, things went pretty much how the White House wanted them to go:

"What a waste of time. They took 3 questions, two of which were uncritical."

So, there you have it. The White House said nothing new, and only one of the dozen or so DNC gay caucus members spoke up for us.

Not to mention, three questions? Three lousy questions is all we get? Or worse, maybe they were permitted to ask more questions, but only three of our caucus members were even interested in asking anything about this entire controversy? And two of the three questions were uncritical?

Maybe you have some questions for the members of the DNC gay caucus. Post them in the comments, I'll be publishing the best ones. And rest assured, we'll be printing more than three. Read More......

The (Banking) Empire Strikes Back

It was all just a big mistake and then doggone it, it became politicized! Golly, the decades of special tax rates - yes, many bankers pay a fraction of the taxes of everyone else because they're so special - and preferred status was not political at all. Nope. Those hundreds of millions in lobbyist cash to Congress had nothing to do with politics at all. The unregulated Wild West casino atmosphere had nothing to do with politics at all. None! But those damned populists who don't have Wall Street lobbyist money who dared talk about transparency and fairness, they're all trouble makers. Bastards, really. The whole lot of them.

What's great about this Empire Strikes Back moment is how you can really appreciate the pain and suffering of the bankers. Life was good for them until the full force of the government brought them down and instituted severe rules and restrictions. I also really like the grass roots effort of the bankers who are reaching out to other regular folks who have been abused by those terrible politicians who originally wrote the easy laws and stripped regulations from the industry. I think I'm starting to cry a little for bankers. Hang tough guys. Hang tough. Those bullies will leave you alone eventually once those tear-jerking stories like this reach the dirty, huddled masses. They will understand.

The experience has reminded business leaders why the government is considered a rescuer of last resort. As they repay TARP money, executives at stable institutions are vowing they will never again be tethered to a fickle Washington and a vindictive Congress. In normal times, that would merely be a sign of the free market's healthy skepticism toward government. But these aren't normal times -- the Obama administration needs the private sector to pitch in: healthy banks to lend more than they might otherwise; prospective investors to buy the illiquid assets weighing down lenders. And what happens if "there's another crisis and the private sector doesn't trust the government. What will we do?" asks a former top bank regulator. The bad blood runs deep.

Four months after signing Paulson's term sheets, CEOs from the same nine banks were hauled before a House committee to be derided by one lawmaker as "captains of the universe" and told by another that "no one trusts you anymore." Within days financial institutions that were encouraged to accept taxpayer money under one set of rules issued by the Treasury would be subjected to a new set of rules issued by Congress. They were shamed into canceling corporate events -- "employee recognition" outings in their minds but "lavish junkets" in the language of posturing politicians. (Who got hurt the most? Probably workers in the travel and hotel industries.) Customers called their bankers, angry that the institutions had been "bailed out" and demanding their own bailout from burdensome mortgages and credit cards. "There was this belief that this was free money," says Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf. "But it was not a bailout, and we never asked for it."

Executives now refer to the "reputational risk" of participating in government-funded programs, while Treasury Secretary Geithner worries that the "stigma" associated with TARP funds is preventing needed capital from getting into the lending pipeline. According to a study by the investment bank Piper Jaffray, shares of those banks that accepted TARP funds suffered compared with those that did not. "Public, investor, and government perception toward recipients has turned negative," the study concluded. Among stable banks there is a "recognition that participating in a government program with a subsidy is not necessarily a good choice," says former Sen. John Sununu, a member of the congressional panel overseeing TARP.

There are some good points raised in this CNNMoney article but again, this industry was teetering on the edge and the healthy and unhealthy alike were at risk regardless of how they want to spin it today. With the speed of the collapse last year, the market was not asking too many questions as they walloped that industry. Even today, the banks need proper incentives and disincentives related to the tax code. If they want to hold the money, that's fine but make them pay a heavy price for it. Nobody is asking them to extend the stupid credit that they dished out leading up to the crisis - which was on their own thanks to lobbying - but they need to keep the market moving. They need to understand that hording is not an option.

The banks can howl as much as they want but they would never have been in this place had they not been so effective with previous lobbying efforts. They received what they wanted to receive and then became upset when it didn't work out. OK, maybe it's even fair to say that it's a difficult climate and that the rules have changed but honestly, nobody really cares about these excuses. If they want to get back in the good graces of the public, knock off the expensive PR campaigns like this and start doing something to earn the respect and appreciation of the public. Read More......

Roubini: interest rates plus oil increases could force another drop

It's true that in my business, I see an increasingly engaged market. People who did not want to talk months ago are at least talking, and often moving, on corporate investments. What a great change from late last year, but it still feels unsure, as if it could all go away with another hit to the market. Looking at the US, it's annoying to see that the same banks who created the recession and who were saved from failure are now getting greedy and pushing the economy down yet again. Obama is really going to need to quit playing Mr Nice Guy and take a firm position one of these days. Pick an industry or pick a subject, but sitting back like a rudderless ship is not leadership. CNBC:

The price of oil, which is rising too fast, and long-term interest rates that are beginning to creep up are likely to suppress a budding recovery, famous economist Nouriel Roubini, also dubbed "Dr. Doom," told CNBC Monday.

"I see even the risk of a double-dip, W-shaped recession… towards of the end of next year," Roubini told "Squawk Box Europe."

"Oil could be closer to $100 a barrel towards the end of this year, this could be a negative shock to the economy," he said, adding that other dangers come from long-term interest rates and big budget deficits.

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While White House holds secret gay outreach call, while Gibbs suggests White House still stands by anti-gay DOMA brief that invoked incest

One hand giveth...

We reported earlier that the White House held a conference call at 2pm Eastern today with the members of the DNC's gay caucus. We had a report that one of the caucus members asked the White House Deputy Chief of staff and political director:

"What are we going to do about the blogs?"

Perhaps you should be more concerned about what you're going to do with a White House that is actively doing harm to your community, discharging two gay service members a day, and filing court briefs in support of DOMA, comparing us to pedophiles and incest.

Along those lines, at the same time the White House was privately schmoozing the gay members of the DNC leadership, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was out in front of reporters, yet again standing by that DOMA brief that he refused to repudiate the other day. Gibbs, today, was asked specifically about an incident that happened this weekend when a lower-level White House staffer seemed to show remorse for the administration's anti-gay brief.

Q Robert, on the issue of the DOMA brief, one of your colleagues over the weekend, Lisa Brown, said that she didn't think some of the language that was in that brief should have been in there. Can you clarify from last week whether that brief was clear here at the White House, whether it represents the White House's view?

MR. GIBBS: Lisa is the Staff Secretary. You didn't ask her?

Q It wasn't a press conference; it was a panel discussion. But can you clarify whether it was cleared --

MR. GIBBS: I don't know the answer to that.

Q And do you know if there is any discussion underway about maybe modifying it or changing it?

MR. GIBBS: Not that I'm aware of.

The reporter asks some good questions. Isn't it time that someone in the administration publicly apologized and explained what the hell happened that this brief was permitted to be filed? I'm surprised that none of our organizations, or our allies in Congress, seem very interested in getting some basic answers to some obvious questions:

1. How high up in Justice and the White House was this brief cleared? Who was the highest political appointee in Justice to see the brief, or be informed of the brief, before it was filed, and who was the highest political appointee in the White House?

2. Is it true that the Obama administration actually used a rehashed version, with some deletions, of an earlier Bush administration brief on DOMA?

3. Is the White House going to defend DOMA again in the upcoming brief due in only 7 days? Will the White House let DOJ reiterate the pedophilia and incest comparison? Will the White House have DOJ remove any of the other offensive language from the brief, such as the suggestion that DOMA wasn't motivated by anti-gay animus (directly contradicting the president's own words as candidate), that DOMA doesn't discriminate against gays because gays can marry straights, that Loving v. Virginia doesn't apply to gay marriage, that DOMA is constitutional? And that's just for starters.

As a reader of ours wrote the other day, if President Obama truly didn't stand by this brief's incredibly offensive content, then why didn't he simply repudiate it the moment it went public? A simple "I had no choice" would have sufficed (at least until we uncovered that in fact he did have a choice).

For all the public contortions the administration is going through in their deflections and non-responses to this rupture with the community, why are they avoiding two simple words: We're sorry. Read More......

Two DC Metro trains collide

Sounds rather nasty.
Screen capture from local DC TV:
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Conservative South Carolina governor Mark Sanford is missing

While wife and his office are now claiming all is well, without telling anyone where he really is, things got so bad that the authorities got a trace on his cell phone and last located it in the Atlanta area (and sources say that, in fact, the governor's office could not get a hold of him when they tried). If all were well with the governor, the cops wouldn't get a warrant to trace the location of his cell phone - we are talking about the governor here, it's not like they'd just trace his personal cell without a pretty compelling reason. Something is very fishy about this entire thing, and if it's not foul play, then the mind races to other politically damaging possibilities the governor and his wife and office would want to hide, like drug rehab or some other unmentionable. Read More......

SLDN to join protesters outside DNC gay fundraiser Thursday

I just got the following from the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, the lead gay rights group in charge of taking on the military's anti-gay ban:

Statement by SLDN Executive Director Aubrey Sarvis on DNC Event

SLDN will be outside boycotting the Democratic National Committee (DNC) LGBT event in Washington this Thursday. SLDN will be calling upon the President to end his silence on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." We will be wearing and handing out buttons with the number 265, representing the number of service members who will have been discharged this week since President Obama was sworn in. We do not, nor would we want to, dictate how members of our board or our Military Advisory Council make their political views known. However, I understand that two board members are attending the DNC event. I also understand they will be making their own spirited and creative statements once inside the room

How's that effort going to co-opt the mainstream groups? Not so well apparently. Read More......

AP: Democrats may go it alone on gov't insurance plan

Good, if true. And an important point hidden in the first few paragraphs of this story:

Democrats generally are standing behind their position that a health care system overhaul must include a government-sponsored plan that would be available to middle-class workers and their families.

A key Democrat, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, said this option now seems even more of a necessity in view of unsuccessful behind-the-scenes attempts to get a deal with Republicans on nonprofit co-ops as an alternative to a public plan.

Note that the Republicans weren't even interested in having an honest negotiation over the Democrats' sell-out plan, the co-ops. Important lesson to be learned: Selling out our principles doesn't make Republicans more amenable to progress. They simply smell blood, and then want more. It's what Obama witnessed on the stimulus plan, when a whopping 3 Republicans in both houses voted for the plan. It's what we've witnessed in Washington for years under Bush and the GOP Congress.

The Republicans aren't here to meet us in the middle in order to make America a better place. Their sole goal is to win back their congressional majority and the White House, and they've decided that the best way to do that is to stymie any progress whatsoever.

At some point, Democrats need to take their majority, and their recent electoral victory, and actually charge ahead with the agenda on which they were elected - to hell with the Republicans and the 20% of the country they represent. The alternative is doing nothing. Or worse, failing in their efforts to make good on important promises like health care reform, dooming us to yet another 16 years of a crappy health care system until a future Democratic president again promises to make things better, only to again not have the backbone to just do it.

This is why I get so worked up about the recent gay rights debacle involving this president and the Democrats in Congress. Our leaders don't have the chutzpah of the Republicans. They fear confrontation. They'd do almost anything, sell out nearly any constituency, to avoid a fight. It's part of the reason, I think, that the Republicans are so effective at branding the Democrats as weak on defense. We're not exactly known for being tough on anything. And perhaps it's time we started. Read More......

The White House prepares to talk to the gay caucus of the DNC, and meet with our lead groups

The White House deputy chief of staff, and the political director, have a 2pm conference call scheduled with the members of the gay caucus of the DNC. The administration has also scheduled a meeting this week with the top non-profit gay rights groups.

Privately, I also wrote to four White House contacts on Friday night and asked that they also schedule talks with the top gay rights leaders with constituencies online - the top leaders involved in the uproar over the past week - including, if those leaders are interested, Pam Spaulding, Andrew Sullivan, Joe Jervis, Dan Savage, and Andy Towle (I suggested those names as a starting point, not exclusively), and of course Joe Sudbay and me as well. I received no response.

Joe and I have been talking about this, and we've been fascinated how the White House's response to gay issues has been very 1990s. Thinking that the gays are the third rail of politics, when in fact the polls are pretty darn great on our issues (even with Republicans, conservatives and churchgoers, when it comes to DADT). Thinking that the major issues confronting the community are hospital visits and changing the names on our passports, instead of growing community anger over Don't Ask Don't Tell and marriage. It's as if the White House is stuck in 1993.

Then we started thinking about the White House's last-minute effort to reach out to the gay groups for cover (holding the hastily-arrange benefits memo signing last week, and now holding conference calls and meetings with the DNC's gay caucus and the traditional non-profit gay rights groups. It's all very 1990s in that the White House fails to recognize the importance of the online community overall, but also to this particularly uproar.

Back in the early 90s, if you had HRC on board, you could pretty much write your own ticket as a politician trying to woo the gay community. Towards the middle 90s, you had new groups like Service Members Legal Defense Network (SLDN), and established groups like GLAAD coming into their own. You also had NGLTF, and others of course. Zoom ahead to 2009. Not only is it not a certainty that having any one of the top gay groups on board is enough to win over the community, but it's no longer clear that even having most of them on board is enough.

Why? Because of the Internet.

Traditional gay organizations are, in a sense, the 6 o'clock news of civil rights. They were excellent at what they did, and were all we had - so not only were they good, but there was no choice to go elsewhere. Then cable TV and the Internet opened up the competition for news, so now, if you want to know the latest on the Iran crisis, you no longer have to go to watch ABC's World News, you can watch the BBC on your cable TV, get Al Jazeera's take online, see what bloggers Steve Clemons or Nico Pitney have to say, or just read Twitter.

My point isn't that the traditional news is bad. There are simply more options that are just as good.

Now back to the Obama administration and the gays. In an effort to quell the online uproar, the administration and the Democratic party are reaching out to the offline leaders of the community. Or to continue the analogy, it's two in the afternoon in gay-land but the White House is still relying on last night's 6 o'clock newscast for the latest on the DOMA crisis.

Which takes us back to an interesting fact that most of the media missed during the presidential campaign. Team Obama likes to go it alone. I've written about their "political autarky" before. The Obama campaign tried to defund many of the traditional advocacy organizations on the left, and succeeded in shutting down the key 527 that Democrats had hoped to use to support the Democratic nominee. They weren't interested in reaching out to specific constituencies, like gays. The campaign also restricted its online outreach mostly to networks it created and controlled. Meaning, while the campaign had some blog outreach, it wasn't that great until the final few months of the campaign - and instead, the campaign preferred to build their own blog network on my.barackobama.com.

In other words, these aren't people who play nicely with others - or even play at all. They believe they can accomplish great things on their own, without your help, thank you very much. And the problem that arises, certainly with the recent DOMA uproar, is that Team Obama is dealing with a crisis fueled by an online leadership and constituency that they were never very interested in wooing. So now when they have to deal with this crisis, they're reaching out to the offline leadership of the movement to deal with a very online problem.

I'm not saying the old groups are irrelevant. Hardly. They have many devoted followers, among whom I consider myself (I've often been criticized for my defense of HRC, for example). But the offline groups no longer have the monopoly on leadership. There are new gay leaders, online, who are equal in caliber and import to many of the offline groups: Andrew Sullivan; Pam Spaulding, Dan Savage; Andy Towle; Joe Jervis, to name a few. And I simply don't believe you can get a consensus in the community by embracing the old and ignoring the new - especially when the new are the ones taking the lead on the current crisis.

In the end, the White House and the Democratic party seem interested in doing an end-run around the gay community and its concerns. If they can get enough A-list gays and A-list traditional gay groups to attend enough White House cocktail parties and signing ceremonies, they think they can buy off our leaders and quell the community's anger.

The former is definitely a possibility. The latter won't happen until the White House actually does something real to keep its core promises to our community. Read More......

FOX viewers send FOX host Shep Smith hate mail

Shep Smith is the Log Cabin Republicans of FOX hosts. I'd make a joke about being a member of a party that doesn't even have respect for your basic human righs, but then again... Read More......

Sotomayor not proving to be the lightning rod conservatives had hoped for

DKos:

Don't you hate it when you can't gin up enough fake outrage to raise money off of your base over a Supreme Court nominee that everyone knows will be confirmed?

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Iranian police use force to break up protest

The latest. Read More......

Ahmadinejad hits YouTube (satire)

Our friend Andy Cobb has a bit of fun with the leader of the country that has no gays.

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Protest at second DNC fundraiser, this time in Boston

It seems that the protest of this week's DNC gay fundraiser is gaining steam and now spreading to other cities. Boston is now organizing a protest of a DNC fundraiser hosted by VP Biden in that city. June 23, Fenway Park. More from the protest organizers via Pam:

One of the many responses taken has been to boycott an LGBT fundraiser for the DNC on June 25th in Washington, D.C. as well as the threat of protest the day of. The number of gay donors who say they will skip the fundraiser is rising as the president remains silent about the brief that has troubled the LGBT community.

...The tactic of protesting DNC fundraisers is now spreading. Another DNC fundraiser will be held in Boston on June 23rd at Fenway Park starting at 5pm. Join The Impact MA and local activists plan to protest in front of the entrance from 4:30pm till 5pm to bring awareness to the lack of Congressional and Presidential action on LGBT rights and particularly to the egregious DOMA legal brief.

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Krugman to Senate's "centrist" Dems.: This isn't 1993 and you're not the center. You're "way out in right field"

Once again, Paul Krugman proves he's the best spokesperson for health care reform -- and he does it by exposing the flawed thinking of some Senate Democrats:

The real risk is that health care reform will be undermined by “centrist” Democratic senators who either prevent the passage of a bill or insist on watering down key elements of reform. I use scare quotes around “centrist,” by the way, because if the center means the position held by most Americans, the self-proclaimed centrists are in fact way out in right field.

What the balking Democrats seem most determined to do is to kill the public option, either by eliminating it or by carrying out a bait-and-switch, replacing a true public option with something meaningless. For the record, neither regional health cooperatives nor state-level public plans, both of which have been proposed as alternatives, would have the financial stability and bargaining power needed to bring down health care costs.

Whatever may be motivating these Democrats, they don’t seem able to explain their reasons in public.

Krugman deconstructs the blather coming from Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Kent Conrad (D-ND), concluding:

Honestly, I don’t know what these Democrats are trying to achieve. Yes, some of the balking senators receive large campaign contributions from the medical-industrial complex — but who in politics doesn’t? If I had to guess, I’d say that what’s really going on is that relatively conservative Democrats still cling to the old dream of becoming kingmakers, of recreating the bipartisan center that used to run America.

But this fantasy can’t be allowed to stand in the way of giving America the health care reform it needs. This time, the alleged center must not hold.

Something happens on Capitol Hill that makes people lose all sense of reality. As Chris noted yesterday, the latest NY Times/CBS poll showed "72% support" for the public option. That's very significant. But, Democratic Senators, like Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad, Max Baucus, Joe Lieberman and Mary Landrieu, would rather make friends with Republicans than provide the American people a decent system for health insurance. That's despicable -- and they're going to undermine a key piece of the Democratic agenda. The American people actually expect elected officials to deliver on campaign promises. Read More......

Monday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Over the weekend, President Obama made a statement about the violence in Iran, which included this passage:

Martin Luther King once said - "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I believe that.

I believe that, too. And, anyone who can bend that arc, should do it.

The LGBT caucus of the DNC has its conference call with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina and White House Political Director Patrick Gaspard at 2 PM today. Those LGBT members of the DNC better demand action on DADT and DOMA. The White House must be pressured. And, gays have to stop being cheap dates for Democrats. We'll have more on this meeting in a bit.

Let's get this week rolling... Read More......

Mousavi defies supreme leader, calls for more protests

Better still, others are in agreement and are speaking out as well. Reports this morning are that there is a ban in mosques today for mourning Neda, the young woman shot in the heart and killed yesterday during a peaceful protest.

Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and a popular reformist former president are boldly defying the country's supreme leader by supporting continued protests of a disputed presidential election, but it was unclear Monday whether protesters would dare to continue massive demonstrations after a bloody crackdown.

''The country belongs to you ... protesting lies and fraud is your right,'' Mousavi, who claims hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won re-election through fraud, said in a statement on his Web site.

The statement flies in the face of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds ultimate power in Iran and who last week said the claimed landslide victory of Ahmadinejad was valid.

Echoing Mousavi, former president Mohammad Khatami said in a statement that ''protest in a civil manner and avoiding disturbances in the definite right of the people and all must respect that.''

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ECB chief against any more stimulus programs

Good luck with that strategy as the EU economy starts to suffer. There is definitely a time lag between the US (and UK) declines and Europe so while it sounds good to order restraint today, it may be too late to promote economic movement later. As it stands today, the European economy is moving but it remains delicate and could change very quickly so preemptively ruling out options does not make sense. The banking crisis which has ravaged the US economy has still yet to unravel in Europe. When that happens the EU member states will have wished they launched these plans much earlier.

He said any new stimulus packages would only drive governments deeper into debt that would saddle future generations.

Stimulus packages already in place "are completely extraordinary. In our analysis, this is sufficient," he said.

"There is a moment where you cannot spend more and accumulate more debts. We are at that moment," he said.

That reflects the position held by many European governments even as the U.S. government has pumped money into projects aimed at pulling the economy out of recession.

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UK closer to public Iraq war inquiry

It has yet to be decided whether Tony Blair will be placed under oath though for the inquiry. British politicians have been arguing whether to make this a private or public inquiry, using the Falklands review as the model. After the Falklands War, the Conservatives managed to keep the inquiry a private matter but those were the Thatcher years. This time, they are screaming for a public event with the Liberal Democrats calling Blair to be under oath. Both requests seem perfectly normal and acceptable and it makes me wonder when the US will get serious about an inquiry. Is starting a war really so inconsequential? Is it really so hard to organize? Maybe this time Bush can even come alone and testify under oath.

The government has given its strongest indication yet that it may back down over plans to hold the forthcoming Iraq inquiry in secret.

Ministerial sources indicated that Gordon Brown is preparing to accept parts of a Conservative motion to be debated on Wednesday that the inquiry "should be wherever possible be held in public".

Jack Straw, the justice secretary, said yesterday that he would be prepared to give most of his evidence to the inquiry in public.

The prime minister announced last week that the inquiry would be held in private but was later forced to open up the terms of the inquiry after pressure from a broad coalition of former generals, former prime minister John Major and peers from all parties.

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Talk about timing

What are the odds?

Dutch twin brothers who mugged a teenager in the northern town of Groningen were arrested after being caught on camera by a car gathering images for Google's online photo map service, police said.

The pair stole the 14-year-old boy's mobile phone and 165 euros ($230) in cash last September.

"The picture was taken just a moment before the crime," a police spokesman said.

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