Obama at the Correspondents' Dinner

I know Joe doesn't like the dinner, but I still get a kick out of it. Here's Obama's monologue:



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Feinstein, Specter Compromises Pave the Way For Passage of Employee Free Choice Act

From Jane Hamsher:

New compromise measures from Diane Feinstein and Arlen Specter may pave the way for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

With 900,000 union members in the state of Pennsylvania, the Arlen Specter firewall appears to be crumbling. He knows he can't win a Democratic primary in Pennsylvania without labor, and they have made it clear that their support is contingent on his vote on Employee Free Choice.

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Fed to be finance "supercop"

Good grief, we're doomed if these people are in charge. Who really trusts bankers overseeing bankers? Geithner's NY Fed wasn't able to muster any criticism for Wall Street during the meltdown so why should we expect anything more from this banker-friendly bunch? The system is rotten to the core so handing over even more power to this particular group looks like yet another poor policy initiative led by Geithner.

The Federal Reserve could become the supercop for "too big to fail" companies capable of causing another financial meltdown under a proposal being seriously considered by the White House.

The Obama administration told industry officials on Friday that it was leaning toward making such a recommendation, according to officials who attended a private one-hour meeting between President Barack Obama's economic advisers and representatives from about a dozen banks, hedge funds and other financial groups.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and other officials made it clear they were not inclined to divide the job among various regulators as has been suggested by industry and some federal regulators. Geithner told the group that one organization needs to be held responsible for monitoring systemwide risk.

What else would we expect from a team who can't find time to crack down on an industry that has bled the country of over a trillion dollars? Read More......

Anti-Semite Bill Donohue compares Obama to David Duke

It's sad that the traditional media continues to put Bill Donohue on the air as some kind of Catholic leader. While it's true that the Vatican does coddle anti-Semites (along with pedophiles), if you've read anything Donohue has ever said, its clear that he's not quite playing with a full eucharist. He's the Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter of religious leaders - an entertainer who simply tries to be as outrageous as possible to keep his name in the news. But he's also made some terribly anti-Semitic comments in the past - it's not clear why the TV networks and AP continue to coddle him. Read More......

Banks raise $12 billion

Surely this means we're all saved since they now only need an additional $63 billion to meet the minimum demands of the Geithner stress test plan. You only have to take the next leap of faith and assume that the stress test were accurate unlike every other test run since this crisis started. Call me skeptical, but...

Relief in the wake of the government's stress tests fueled a "meltup" in the banking sector Friday, helping some of the nation's largest lenders raise more than $12 billion in new equity capital.

Wells Fargo said late Friday that it raised $8.6 billion selling 392.15 million shares of new common stock.

Morgan Stanley said it raised roughly $4 billion selling 167.9 million shares of new common stock for $24 each. The investment bank also issued new debt without government guarantees, bring total capital raised to $8 billion.

Executives at both banks said there was strong demand for their offerings.

Strong demand for distortion and bonuses but beyond that, it remains debatable. What happens when this newest round of euphoria is over? Read More......

Stress tests are "wimpy" and part of "big lie"

Should this assessment turn out to be correct, Obama and Geithner are going to have serious problems. Nobody likes being lied to repeatedly and there appears to be more in favor of this reality as opposed to the Geithner "all is well" reality. Look at the recent banking history and look at the latest cash injection into UK banks and tell me we're not going to see more problems ahead. Geither (and Obama) put a lot of skin into this continuation of Lord Paulson's pro-Wall Street plan. Seems like a risky approach but we'll know more in a few months time. Yahaoo! TechTicker:

"It's in the interest of the financial community to send this propaganda out," Black says. "It's remarkable not that they do it but that it still works."

In other words, this isn't the first time we've been told "the crisis is over" and that "banks are well capitalized" - and probably won't be the last.

The professor and former financial regulator foresees another wave of foreclosures and future bank losses of more than $2.5 trillion vs. the government's $599 billion estimate.

The video is inside the link and goes into much more detail including examples of much more difficult stress tests such as AIG's last year. That too turned out to be a complete, pathetic joke. It sounds doubtful that the American public will tolerate one more lie of this sort but if Geithner wants to bank his future on the banks telling the truth, go for it. Read More......

Obama again talks of "changing," not "repealing," Don't Ask Don't Tell

I'm a lawyer. He's a lawyer. Words have meaning to lawyers. Especially when the lawyers are President of the United States. They don't write things without knowing exactly what they are writing. With that in mind, President Obama wrote a handwritten note to a US service member recently discharged for being gay. In the note, Obama said that he remains "committed to changing our current policy." Sounds nice. Putting aside the fact that letters are nice, but actions are better, notice that Obama didn't say he remains committed to "repealing" the Don't Ask Don't Tell Policy - a word he always used before. Now he's for "changing" it.

Just a fluke? Am I being too picky? I might be, if we didn't just have a big blow up a week ago over the White House changing their official language on repealing DADT to "changing" DADT in a sensible manner. After a day of protests from gay rights groups and gay Obama supporters, the language changed back to "repeal."

Perhaps Obama's word change in the letter means nothing. Then again, the word change on the White House Web site was awfully suspicious. And having Obama now use the same awfully suspicious language in the same week is, well, awfully suspicious.

I don't doubt that President Obama will try to do something on Don't Ask Don't Tell in his first term. I worry that there won't be adequate preparation for whatever it is he does do, and worse, I worry that some are advising him to "change" DADT and not to "repeal" it. And if that happens, I think President Obama is going to have some serious problems with the gay community and our allies. Read More......

Obama's weekly address: On the country's finances, which means yours, too:

Okay, I agree with this:

Americans know that they have a responsibility to live within their means and pay what they owe. But they also have a right to not get ripped off by the sudden rate hikes, unfair penalties, and hidden fees that have become all-too common in our credit card industry.

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Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The poem of the week is "Alone" by Edgar Allan Poe. The guy was quite the character back in his day. Baltimore venerates him. Also, I learned in my friend Matt Goodman's book, "The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth Century New York" that Poe was quite a hoaxster back in the 1830s -- and a bit unstable.

Well, that's a lot of literary talk for an early Saturday morning...

Let's get the weekend started... Read More......

Because the Night

One day I prefer Patti Smith's version and the next, Bruce's version. It was a joint venture writing the song so they both play it well. Today it's Patti Smith and the full Annie Hall/1970's look.

On an unrelated subject, we're going to see Star Trek tonight and can't wait. The reviews all sound great and we have tickets in hand for 7PM. I can't think of the last time I wanted to see a new movie so early on so we hope it's fun. Read More......

Texas charging rape victims

This is sick. What is the matter with the people running that state? Read More......

UK injects $75 billion more to banks

Will there ever be an end to the bailouts? Despite the media reports from the US banks who are going to round up another $75 billion (a questionable number itself) from private investors, it still strikes me as overly optimistic. Remember that it was the UK who kicked off this ugly cycle when Northern Rock collapsed so they could be ahead of the US in this newest round of trouble. The Guardian:

Richard Lambert, director general of the CBI, said: "The fact is that for all the injections of taxpayers' money, the credit markets are still not working properly."

Bank of England officials are concerned that big banks now supported by the taxpayer, such as Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group, are struggling to increase lending volumes, as they had promised in return for help from the government.

The governor, Mervyn King, and several other members of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee are said to be unconvinced by talk of green shoots that has helped propel the FTSE 100 share index up by more than 20% over the last month.

This also comes back to the continuation of banking practices despite a once-in-a-lifetime failure. You would expect to see some kind of change in terms of how these people are treated but no, hardly a hint of real change. This is great news for bankers but not so much for everyone else. Read More......

Greedy hedge fund group quits Chrysler lawsuit

I only wish they could have spent millions of their own money and then lose badly in court but this is still good. Hopefully they considered themselves lucky to get a penny but somehow I doubt it. At least their fake outrage is over.

The dissolution of the group—at least on an official basis—clears away the largest obstacle standing in the way of Chrysler's plans to sell the bulk of its assets of Italy's Fiat Group SpA and could pave the way for the quick exit from bankruptcy protection that the automaker and the federal government desire.

Geoffrey Gwin, principal of the Group G Capital Partners LLC hedge funds, said that after weighing the obstacles ahead and along with the opposition they had faced before, the group's five remaining members realized that they couldn't mount an effective legal challenge.

Of course they're still going to whine a bit more but it's all posturing at this point to try and save face with the rest of the bullies on Wall Street. Read More......