Derivatives clearing group opts for secrecy over transparency

In other words, the shady folks who crushed the global economy with their bizarre Credit Default Swaps that were based on lies and stupidity think that it's better to keep it all a big secret. Why not get ahead of a problem instead of waiting for new regulation? What are they hiding? As with other sleazy actions on Wall Street, they do it because they can get away with it. Especially now that the GOP is coming to town.

The world’s largest clearinghouse for credit-default swaps, ICE Trust, has had second thoughts about registering with regulators, citing concerns over new rules devised to bring transparency to the $600 trillion derivatives market.

ICE Trust, a division of the Intercontinental Exchange, the big derivatives exchange, applied to be a derivatives clearing organization with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in November. Last week, the company quietly withdrew its application.

In a Thursday letter to the commission, which was released on Tuesday, a lawyer for ICE Trust said the company changed its mind because of “significant changes proposed to” regulations for clearing organizations.

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Apple sued for passing consumer details to advertisers via Apps

When is enough enough for Apple?

Apple Inc., making of the iPhone and iPad, was accused in a lawsuit of allowing applications for those devices to transmit users’ personal information to advertising networks without customers’ consent.

The complaint, which seeks class action, or group, status, was filed on Dec. 23 in federal court in San Jose, California. The suit claims Cupertino, California-based Apple’s iPhones and iPads are encoded with identifying devices that allow advertising networks to track what applications users download, how frequently they’re used and for how long.

“Some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks, including users’ location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation and political views,” according to the suit.

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Paris to test ban on gas guzzlers

Excellent. If only they could also ban drivers from the suburbs who panic and race through the city in fear it would be perfect. Other cities in France including Grenoble, Lyon and Aix-en-Provence will also test similar programs. As extensive and cheap as the Paris Metro system is, there's very little need for people to have a car of any kind outside of possible business uses.

Now, Paris may be the first city to experiment with such a policy. Next year, it will begin to test restrictions on vehicles that emit more than a certain amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) per kilometer--the measure of a car's contribution to greenhouse gases.

An official within the Parisian mayor's office, Denis Baupin, identified older diesel-engined cars and sport-utility vehicles as specific targets of the emissions limit.

"I'm sorry," Baupin said on RTL Radio, "but having a sport utility vehicle in a city makes no sense." He suggested that Parisian SUV owners replace their sport utilities with vehicles that are "compatible with city life."

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Foreclosures up, again

Just because the bankers are doing well doesn't mean the rest of the economy has moved forward. The housing problem continues to look bad and looking ahead isn't much better. Reuters:

The regulators said one reason for the increase in foreclosures is that banks have "exhausted" options for keeping many delinquent borrowers in their homes through programs such as loan modifications.

Newly initiated foreclosures increased to 382,000 in the third quarter, a 31.2 percent jump over the previous quarter and a 3.7 percent rise from a year ago, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision said in their quarterly mortgage report.

The number of foreclosures in process increased to 1.2 million, a 4.5 percent increase from the second quarter and a 10.1 percent increase from a year ago, according to the regulators.

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Man gets on US plane with bullet components, that go off on landing

How did he get on with them? Read the rest of this post...

US businesses continue to hire, but jobs are overseas

As I said the other day when Obama had his "CEO Summit", these CEOs care much more about their own bottom line than what is good for the US. It's naive to think otherwise, but that's what we have in Washington. The tax breaks are going for new jobs but don't expect to see many of them in the US for quite a while.

More than half of the 15,000 people that Caterpillar Inc. has hired this year were outside the U.S. UPS is also hiring at a faster clip overseas. For both companies, sales in international markets are growing at least twice as fast as domestically.

The trend helps explain why unemployment remains high in the United States, edging up to 9.8 percent last month, even though companies are performing well: All but 4 percent of the top 500 U.S. corporations reported profits this year, and the stock market is close to its highest point since the 2008 financial meltdown.

But the jobs are going elsewhere. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, says American companies have created 1.4 million jobs overseas this year, compared with less than 1 million in the U.S. The additional 1.4 million jobs would have lowered the U.S. unemployment rate to 8.9 percent, says Robert Scott, the institute's senior international economist.

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NYC sanitation workers destroy car during blizzard - caught on film

Did they really think smashing into a parked car over and over was really the best option? They obviously weren't counting on someone recording the event and posting it online either. Read the rest of this post...

Palin used 'refudiate' on TV before she 'mis-typed' it

Cenk catches something interesting. Sarah Palin claims she mis-typed "refudiate" and that's how she ended up tweeting it several months ago. Too bad Cenk Uygur uncovered another instance of Palin used the not-a-real-word on FOX television.

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Nigeria's deal to drop Cheney bribery charges 'illegal'

Sounds like more deal-making could be ahead in Nigeria.

In a letter to Nigeria’s anti-corruption watchdog, Osuagwu Ugochukwu, a prominent lawyer in Abuja, said the withdrawal of charges against Cheney was a breach of the law.

“We know as a point of law that once a criminal charge has been filed in a competent court, issue of penalty of fine is for the courts to impose and not parties,” he wrote. “Hence, we are shocked to hear that EFCC imposed a fine on an accused person. We also know as a point of law that criminal matters cannot be settled out of court as in civil matters in Nigeria.”

“The outcome of the deal with Halliburton tends to suggest a smart way of making quick money while leaving the culprits unpunished,” an editorial in Nigeria’s Daily Sun argues. “This method invariably has its own drawbacks that could encourage similar criminal acts in future.”

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Sotomayor 'an excellent pick for Obama'

From Glenn Greenwald via Twitter we're pointed to this article about Sonia Sotomayor. This is just a taste; there's much more in the article itself:

Justice Sotomayor has completely dispelled the fear on the left that her background as a prosecutor would align her with the court’s more conservative members on criminal justice issues. And she has displayed a quality — call it what you will — that is alert to the humanity of the people whose cases make their way to the Supreme Court.

So far this term, the court has issued [only] two signed decisions in argued cases. Both were unanimous, and both were insignificant.

But for anyone looking for insight into the justices, there was much more information to be gleaned from another genre of judicial writing. In the last three months, the court has turned down thousands of appeals, almost always without comment. On seven occasions, though, at least one justice had something to say about the court’s decision not to hear a case.

The article goes on to analyze those comments on cases pending appeal, and what they reveal about the court's ideological split, and Justice Sotomayor's role in the dynamics of the liberal minority. It's quite a revealing read.

The writer references comments by Mike Sacks, writing on his legal blog. Here Sacks contrasts Justices Roberts and Kagan, then Justices Alito and Sotomayor (my emphasis):

[Justices] Roberts and Kagan conduct themselves like suave assassins, devastating advocates without compromising their gentility. They apprenticed at the feet of the Court’s then arch-partisans–he, Justice Rehnquist; she, Justice Marshall–and now possess those two men’s collegiality without their more prickly public personas. Indeed, Roberts and Kagan, both bred for leadership at Harvard Law, are public creatures: the Chief and the Dean. Firm but polished, one can see these two in twenty years as gracefully grayed totems of conservative and liberal jurisprudence.

Alito and Sotomayor, on the other hand, are their sides’ enforcers. Appearing rough around the edges, they send clear, aggressive messages, often on behalf of their comrades, but sometimes alone on principle. In their self assurance that comes from years of practice in the lower courts, they seem not to have much interest in institutional niceties when the law is disobeyed or justice is disregarded. Both Princeton and Yale Law grads, they took active roles in their institutions’ internal battles over coeducation and affirmative action. Rather than skirt controversy and stay quiet to maintain squeaky clean public records, they took stands over the identity politics of their days that have continued into 21st century America. It is no wonder, then, that Alito and Sotomayor have had no hesitance going on record to dissent from denials of certiorari, even if such opinions were once seen as rare peeks behind the curtain saved only for a justice’s irrepressible outrage.

Glenn notes that Sonia Sotomayor is turning out to be "an excellent pick for Obama." Thank the local seasonal deity for that.

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Iowa and New Hampshire jockeying again for earlier and earlier primaries (caucuses)

Ugh. I seriously couldn't care less which state goes first.

As reported by the veteran political reporter John Distaso on Christmas Eve, New Hampshire’s secretary of state, Bill Gardner, has warned that the Republican primary may have to be moved up because the proposed Feb. 14 date would land only four days before Nevada’s Feb. 18 caucus — a violation of New Hampshire laws that require the primary to take place a week before a “similar election” is held elsewhere. (Except Iowa, of course.)

If New Hampshire moves, that could force Iowa — which has similar rules about putting some distance before another state’s voting — into January. That would break a gentleman’s agreement between the two parties to try to keep the official start of the 2012 voting in February, where it was for decades — before that, voting didn’t begin in Iowa and New Hampshire until March.

Welcome to the game of musical chairs that is the primary calendar.

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Wednesday morning open thread

I can't think of a better morning opener than Sam Seder talking climate change, in the way that only Sam can. (Sam was hosting Countdown.)

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Basel Committee calls for publication of bank payments to execs and risk takers

Yes, but is there really a need for common sense and transparency in the international banking industry? Secrets about excessive risk seems to have worked out well for the bankers and everyone knows that politicians are the biggest pushovers on the planet.

The Basel Committee wants banks to be made to publish the number and size of any bonuses or "golden hellos" and "parachutes". As such they go rather further than the Walker report, in which Sir David Walker proposed only the publication of bands of remuneration without very much more detail.

Mr Osborne has written to his European counterparts to gain agreement on a common framework for disclosure. That will almost certainly mean that little will be known about pay and bonuses during the next season, something that intensely irritates critics and the general public – Mr Cable has admitted that it is an explosive issue politically.

The Basel Committee proposes the following disclosures: on governance and committee structures, the link between remuneration and performance, and long-term performance measures and types of remuneration, ie cash or equity, and fixed or variable.

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2011 could be rough for weaker economies in Europe

And yet another forecast that suggests we are not close to being through this economic crisis. The larger and stronger economies may rumble through but the weaker states could be in serious trouble. The Independent:

There is also a blunt criticism of the EU's leaders: "Both European bondholders and policymakers face problems in 2011 because officials clung too long to the belief that government austerity plus bailout financing was sufficient to handle debt overhang in periphery countries.

"The recent reconsideration of that position by German Chancellor Merkel and the ECB has come too late to avoid draconian cutbacks, higher unemployment, and declining output in the periphery countries."

Most worryingly, there is also the suggestion that the current austerity packages may not work economically even if they find political acceptance: "Europe remains the weak link, not just because of its sovereign debtcrisis but also because even its fiscally stronger states – France, Germany and the UK – are tightening fiscal policy. With growth still below potential, this could push the region's more vulnerable economies into recession. Europe might still be able to muddle through, but an orderly restructuring of sovereign debt is looking more desirable as the damage from budget cuts mounts and as high-debt countries struggle to escape recession."

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The Washington 'revolving door' and defense contractors

Whether it's people like Peter Orszag or the countless generals who move out of government and into high paying defense contractor jobs, this is a problem. It also goes a long way into explaining the defense spending as well as the easy regulation of industry. As The Atlantic notes, these stories don't even resonate with The Washington Post, who are very much a part of the problem and the excuse-making. Maybe the Post sees this as good for the system but beyond the beltway it's not as clear.

Great article in the Boston Globe on the link between defense contractors and retiring generals. The money is obviously fantastic but what about their allegiance to the country or is selling to the highest bidder the only thing that matters? Isn't this what we would consider corruption if it happened elsewhere?

From 2004 through 2008, 80 percent of retiring three- and four-star officers went to work as consultants or defense executives, according to the Globe analysis. That compares with less than 50 percent who followed that path a decade earlier, from 1994 to 1998.

In some years, the move from general staff to industry is a virtual clean sweep. Thirty-four out of 39 three- and four-star generals and admirals who retired in 2007 are now working in defense roles — nearly 90 percent.

And in many cases there is nothing subtle about what the generals have to sell — Martin’s firm is called The Four Star Group, for example. The revolving-door culture of Capitol Hill — where former lawmakers and staffers commonly market their insider knowledge to lobbying firms — is now pervasive at the senior rungs of the military leadership.

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