Bill Clinton and Tony Blair to join hedge fund business

Apparently neither of them has cashed in enough from their public service so will make every effort to do so now. Some politicians retire and try to make the world a better place and then there are the Bill Clinton's and Blair's of the world who will take the cash over an ounce of dignity. You might think that after ushering in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression there might be some interest in righting that wrong but no, that might mean only being worth $100 million. Huffington Post:

Former President Bill Clinton is teaming up with a top aide, a former State Department envoy, and Tony Blair to start a hedge fund and global consulting company.

Declan Kelly, a former top State Department envoy and major donor to the secretary of state's 2008 presidential campaign, has left government service to launch Teneo Capital, hiring Bill Clinton and the former U.K. prime minister as advisers for an undisclosed sum. Kelly's partner in the venture is Douglas Band, a longtime Clinton aide who set up the Clinton Global Initiative and remains the former president's right-hand man.

Bill Clinton earlier faced questions about whether his business ties would create conflicts for his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and vowed to let the State Department sign off on his ventures. Kelly told HuffPost that State has approved Clinton's involvement in Teneo Capital.

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Video: Dallas police push Occupy protester off ledge, on purpose, for no apparent reason

The police are claiming that the protester "assaulted" the cop first.  Really?  As always, there's video, and as always it tells another story.  Funny how being shoved off of a wall and crashed to the ground makes you the assaulter. Click through and make your own judgement by watching the video. Read the rest of this post...

Herman Cain pulls a Rick Perry, can’t answer basic question about Libya

This is painful.  For a second there it looked like Cain would have preferred a question about sexual harassment. Read the rest of this post...

Advertisers moving away from toxic Penn State

As a college football fan, this scandal is about as bad as it gets. The previously pristine reputation of Joe Paterno and Penn State has been shattered and it's unlikely to be cleaned up for years due to ongoing legal action. Besides a major hit to the reputation of Penn State, the university is going to take a financial hit as well. The lawsuits will be very expensive, donors will surely stay away and now, even the advertisers are pulling back.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that no less than six advertisers have pulled their commercials from upcoming Penn State football broadcasts on ESPN.

"I have multiple advertisers pulling ads from the ESPN broadcast," one media buyer told the Journal. "I am advising my clients to move out of games for the short term," another buyer added.

The Journal's report followed an announcement on Friday that Cars.com would pull its commercials from the school's upcoming games.

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Super Committee might agree to spending cuts now, discuss tax increases later

Su-ckah.

Yes, I would gladly raise taxes tomorrow if you decimate Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security today.

Sure.  From Robert Pear at the NYT:

With a little over a week left to reach a deal, members of the Congressional deficit reduction panel are looking for an escape hatch that would let them strike an accord on revenue levels but delay until next year tough decisions about exactly how to raise taxes.

In addition to the fact that they'll never do the tax increases if they agree to the spending cuts first, guess who would be in charge of negotiating the tax increases for our side: Max Baucus. You'll all recall the great job he did trying to appease the GOP for months on end during the health care reform debacle.

But here's the real gem buried in Pear's piece:

Some lawmakers have become so worried that the committee may deadlock that they have been talking about legislation that would stop the automatic cuts to the military.

And there's the rub.

I never thought they'd touch defense spending. Somehow they'd find a way to exempt it, just offer another bill saying "fund our troops" and 99 out of 100 Senators would vote for it.

There are no indications that our economy is going to be in any better shape in 2013 than it is heading into 2012. In fact, far too many experts are talking about a lost decade heading our way. The last thing we should be doing is cutting spending and raising taxes, both of which suck demand out of the economy. But that's where we're headed because no one with an election certificate is willing to say the truth. Read the rest of this post...

Elizabeth Warren releases her first Senate campaign ad

Via Sam Stein, Elizabeth Warren has released her first tv ad in her campaign against Scott Brown for the US Senate in Massachusetts. You can view the ad here. Read the rest of this post...

CBS more than a few minutes short in 60 Minutes hit piece on Pelosi

From Ryan Grim at HuffPost:

[T]he knock on Pelosi (D-Calif.) leaves out critical details. "60 Minutes" charges Pelosi with purchasing 5,000 shares of Visa stock as part of an exclusive initial public offering and implies that her financial connection to the credit card industry had something to do with the halting of credit card industry reform.

"Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband have participated in at least eight IPOs. One of those came in 2008, from Visa, just as a troublesome piece of legislation that would have hurt credit card companies began making its way through the House. Undisturbed by a potential conflict of interest, the Pelosis purchased 5,000 shares of Visa at the initial price of 44 dollars. Two days later it was trading at $64. The credit card legislation never made it to the floor of the House," CBS reports.

But CBS leaves out that fact that the bill passed out of committee at the very end of the legislative session, as Congress was dealing with the Wall Street implosion and bailout, and that the chamber then adjourned until the election. More importantly, Democrats didn't have the votes for it in the Senate and the notion that President Bush would have signed it if they did is far-fetched.

CBS goes on to report: "Congresswoman Pelosi pointed out that the tough credit card legislation eventually passed, but it was two years later and was initiated in the Senate."

The implication is, apparently, that the Senate forced Pelosi's hand. Throughout 2009 and 2010, the House consistently passed stronger and more progressive legislation than the Senate, but in the scenario laid down by CBS, it was the other way around when it came to credit card reform. But in 2008, before the stock transaction, the House had already passed the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights over the objections of industry lobbyists.

What's particularly weird is that 60 Minutes appears to have based their story on a hit-book by a right wing activist affiliated with Breitbart. Read the rest of this post...

APEC world leaders get Occupied by Hawaiian singer

Wow, that took some guts. Good for him.

A change in the programmed entertainment at last night's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) gala left a few world leaders slack-jawed, though most seemed not to notice that anything was amiss.

During the gala dinner, renowned Hawaiian guitarist Makana, who performed at the White House in 2009, opened his suit jacket to reveal a home-made “Occupy with Aloha” T-shirt. Then, instead of playing the expected instrumental background music, he spent almost 45 minutes repeatedly singing his protest ballad released earlier that day. The ballad, called “We Are the Many,” includes lines such as “The lobbyists at Washington do gnaw.... And until they are purged, we won't withdraw,” and ends with the refrain: “We'll occupy the streets, we'll occupy the courts, we'll occupy the offices of you, till you do the bidding of the many, not the few.”

Those who could hear Makana’s message included Presidents Barack Obama of the United States of America, Hu Jintao of China, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia, Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada, and over a dozen other heads of state.

“At first, I was worried about playing ‘We Are The Many,’” said Makana. “But I found it odd that I was afraid to sing a song I’d written, especially since I'd written it with these people in mind.”

See the video of Makana and some photos here. Read the rest of this post...

Banks still adding new fees to customers

There was a lot of rightful celebration when Bank of America and other major banks were forced to drop planned debit card fees following major protests from the Occupy Wall Street movement and other community groups. But, not shockingly, the major banks are still finding ways to squeeze money out of customers. The New York Times has a report at the more subtle ways banks are using to extract more wealth from the 99%. Citing the need to make up billions of dollars in lost overdraft penalties and swipe fees that were eliminated by Congress, banks are trying to make up the difference in other areas.

For consumers, the result is a quiet creep of new charges and higher fees for everything from cash withdrawals at ATMs to wire payments, paper statements and in some cases, even the overdraft charges that lawmakers hoped to ratchet down. What is more, banks are raising minimum account balances and adding other new requirements so that it is harder for customers to qualify for fee waivers.

Even the much-maligned debit usage charges have effectively been bundled into higher monthly fees on checking accounts. Bank of America abandoned its $5 a month debit card usage fee in late October amid a firestorm of criticism. Yet, it more quietly raised the cost of its basic MyAccess checking account by more than $3 a month earlier this year. Monthly maintenance fees now run $12 a month, up from $8.95.

The Times' report notes that Senators Dick Durbin and Jack Reed are pushing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to have banks "adopt a more consumer-friendly disclosure form, akin to the nutrition label on food packaging, for all the fees attached to a checking account." This is a pretty good idea, in that it would make decision making by consumers easier. But the whole problem consumers are facing today is that they already have accounts with banks and the banks are changing the fee structure on them. While the Move Your Money campaign is a great start, it's also clear that a complete banking shift isn't the same thing as switching from Frosted Flakes to Cheerios.

Most importantly, what's clear is that when you fight the big banks, you can win, but no win is final. Stopping the $5 debit card fee was a great victory for the Occupy movement and consumer advocates, but it's hardly the whole war. Banks will keep trying to extract every penny possible from consumers in the absence of regulation which prevents them from doing it and regulators committed to enforcing the regulations. Consumers need to stay wary and consumer advocates have to keep fighting back against bank greed. As the banks continue to find new and innovative ways to screw their customers, credit unions will keep gaining customers as people stand up and say, "Enough!" To put it differently, the more banks abuse their customers, the more the market will speak and tell them that this is not a behavior consumers are interested in supporting. Read the rest of this post...

Will Jon Corzine ever be indicted?

I've said for a while that the Occupy Movement is a revolution that ultimately seeks, among its goals, return to the rule of law. Return to the rule of law is revolutionary at this point in our history — if you're high enough in the top 1% (the Top 0.1% will do it), the law won't touch you.

(As Matt Taibbi points out, Occupy is also a revolution against our sick twisted money-worshiping peasant-minded culture, but that's another story.)

Now comes Jon Corzine. He went from lowly bond trader to CEO of Goldman Sachs, to U.S. senator, to governor of New Jersey, to CEO of MF Global, a brokerage and investment shop (that is, it was a broker house with brokerage customers, and also an investment outfit that traded for its own account).

Corzine made almost a half a billion dollars the day Goldman went public and is widely assumed (at least until recently) to be seriously wealthy. He has that "Top 0.1%" smell all over him.

That's all the background you need to understand the unfolding MF Global scandal. I'll give you some links to follow the details of that scandal — like the Penn State story, there's new news every day — so I can get to my main point.

The short strokes are these.

■ MF Global was a "sleepy brokerage firm" that Jon Corzine turned into a combo brokerage-and-investment shop.

Soon after joining the firm in 2010, Mr. Corzine moved to transform the sleepy brokerage firm into a full-service investment bank in the mold of his former employer, Goldman. He aggressively bought up the bonds of troubled economies like Italy, Ireland and Spain, betting that the Continent would not let the countries default on their loans.

■ As noted above, MF Global thus held both customer money and its own money, which it invested for its own account (think hedge fund).

■ They bet heavily on European sovereign debt and lost big:

The firm declared bankruptcy at the end of October after a number of bets on derivatives contracts went wrong amid the European financial crisis. It was the biggest collapse of a financial firm since Lehman Brothers went bust in 2008.

■ They couldn't find all the customer money (about three quarters of a billion dollars).

■ They still can't.

Did Corzine use customer money to cover his Europe bets? Matt Taibbi and ZeroHedge think yes:

How about that Jon Corzine, eh? It seems New Jersey’s finest self-bought ex-Senator (and governor) bet heavily on European debt, got walloped by a cavalcade of AIG-style collateral calls streaming in from outraged creditors, and tried to stave off the inevitable by commingling client cash with his own account.

If he did, that's got to be a crime. Customer money is customer money; it's not yours to use except as directed (by customers). A broker needs power of attorney to trade with customer money without permission.

But will Corzine ever be indicted? I suspect the odds are against it. First, he's a top Obama fundraiser.

But beyond that: No one in the Top 0.1% goes to jail for financial crime. No one who isn't named Madoff, that is. Or for most other crime as well.

And that's my point. The Constitution is not just what's written; it's also what's practiced. Bipartisan agreement — for example, agreement to torture and not to punish torture — works like an interpretation, and that gets folded in. Bush wasn't indicted; Cheney wasn't indicted; bankers weren't indicted; CEOs aren't indicted; Murdoch won't be indicted (in the U.S.). Gonzales was Bush's made man. Holder is acting like Obama's.

By those lights, the current U.S. Constitution allows the Top 0.1% to act like a criminal enterprise. For them, the rule of law does not apply. (Obama has unilaterally ordered the execution of an American citizen. Is that constitutional? It is now.)

Will Jon Corzine ever be indicted, so that the evidence against him can be presented to a jury?

He's Top 0.1% in spades: a Goldman CEO, a senator, a governor, and a major Dem fundraiser in an election year.

If he does see a jail or a courtroom, it will be revolutionary.

GP Read the rest of this post...

I’m a Christian, and the Catholic church doesn’t speak for me

I'm getting increasingly fed up with the Catholic church following the lead of the religious right in claiming that a) they're oppressed, and b) they speak for all Christianity.  No you're not, and no you don't.

I'll get to the first part later, but let's start with this notion that the Catholic church speaks for all Christians.  I am not a Catholic, yet still, I'm a Christian.  Magic!  No, not really.  Lots of us are Christians and not Catholic, and that's okay.  And lots of us are Americans and not Christians, and even that is okay.  Of course, the Catholic church often doesn't even speak for Catholics, certainly not American Catholics (and I suspect the church leadership's soft spot for enabling pedophiles isn't much appreciated by most of the non-American Catholics either).

What has the Catholic church in such an uproar of late is America's slow but steady march towards civil rights and liberty for all.  You see, the Catholic church, like the evangelical far right, believes that common decency is a zero sum game.  They actually believe that recognizing the civil rights of all Americans somehow takes something away from the Catholic church - no, strike that, they claim that America's civil rights laws somehow oppress the religious liberty of Christians, not Catholics, but Christians.

This, in spite of the fact that the Catholic church is exempt from new civil rights laws covering gays, for example, so the church is free to practice as much bigotry and discrimination as it wishes to in the name of Christ.  But that's not enough.  The Catholic church thinks that it's not entirely free unless you're not entirely free.  It's not enough for them to demand their own followers practice bigotry, they, like the Mormon leadership, or the evangelical far right, aren't content unless they're forcing everyone, even those of other faiths or no faith, to live under their rules.

So now the Catholic church is throwing a hissy fit over gay marriages (even though, again, they're exempt) and state laws governing contraceptives.  You see, the Catholic church is happy to feed at the government teat by accepting over $2.8 billion a year from the government at all levels.  Yes, you read that right.  Sixty-seven percent of Catholic Charities' $4.27 billion in annual revenue comes from the government.

Understandably, the Catholic church would prefer that American taxpayers fund them to the tune of over two billion dollars a year and not attach any strings, such as not permitting Catholic Charities to discriminate in their charity work against those very Americans who are paying 67% of Catholic Charities' bills.  Heck, I'd love two billion a year with no strings attached, who wouldn't?  That's why Catholic Charities stopped helping the most vulnerable segment of the poor and disadvantaged in Washington, DC and in Illinois - in both states they're no longer providing foster care and adoption services to needy children - because Catholic Charities couldn't stand the fact that local laws required them to use state tax dollars in a non-discriminatory manner.  So rather than treat all Americans fairly, equally and with common decency - rather than help children in need - Catholic Charities decided to just pull the plug and let them rot.

Oh, and a quick aside: It's interesting that Catholic Charities is trying to claim that it's still the Catholic Church, so civil rights laws shouldn't apply to it.  Really?  The American taxpayer is funding the Catholic Church's proselytizing to the tune of $2.8 billion a year?  Really?  I'm a bit confused about that one.  I didn't think our government funded any faith.  If the Catholic Church is getting nearly $3bn a year to practice its faith, then I hope reform Judaism and the nice Protestants are each getting $3bn as well.  Are they?  I doubt it.  So how is it that the Catholic church is now claiming that its charity work is somehow its faith, when we'd never fund such proselytizing in the first place?

What's really going on is that the Catholic Church deems its anti-gay animus more important than the needs of children. (Then again, the Catholic Church doesn't exactly have a stellar record of late when it comes to giving a lick about the needs of children.)

And now the Catholic Church is becoming increasingly hysterical, screaming about how America is quickly becoming unfriendly territory for Christians (which certainly begs the question of when America will finally have a Christian president, or elect a Christian to Congress).  Ironic aside: Remember when John F. Kennedy was running for President in 1960 and the Catholic Church fervently promised the nation that it wasn't try to impose its view by political fiat on all Americans?

Maybe, just maybe, this debate isn't about religion at all.  After all, it doesn't quite make sense, all this talk about America - which is run and ruled by Christians for the most part, and has been for over two hundred years, and whose government regularly nods towards Christianity far more than most modern democracies - becoming "anti-Christian."  So what's really going on?

Maybe, just maybe, the Catholic Church is more worried about the $2.8 billion it gets every year from the American government (at all levels) than it is about some nonsensical notion of religious freedom when the Catholic church is exempt from every civil rights law it's complaining about.  Maybe, just maybe, this is all about money, and not about religious freedom at all.

PS I've asked it before and I'll ask it again: What are bigots like this doing on the board of the supposedly progressive Coalition on Human Needs?  You have to wonder if CHN would have racist or anti-Semitic organizations on its board.  No, you don't wonder - we all know they wouldn't.  But somehow when the prejudice is against gays and lesbians, some of our top "liberal" organizations find it in their hearts to look the other way. Read the rest of this post...

UK jobs market looks ugly

Austerity somehow sounds attractive to some at the beginning, but unfortunately this is most often the end result. If there were examples of austerity working, you know they would all be talking about it but even the pro-austerity crowd struggles to find a good example, so they don't. The Guardian:

The jobs market is facing a "slow, painful contraction", with firms scaling back decisions on whether to recruit more staff against a background of global economic "turmoil", a report has warned.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) predicted that the employment situation would get worse for the rest of the year – while it says medium-term prospects are no better.

It said the private sector would grow at a slower pace in the next three months. The number of firms planning to relocate jobs abroad and recruit overseas workers had also fallen, it added.

The quarterly survey of 1,000 employers also found confidence in the public sector remained low for the next three months and would get worse next year.

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Austrian student takes on Facebook for violating EU privacy laws

Rightly so. Facebook has been overreaching since the start and somehow believe that your private data is theirs. France24:

Austrian law student Max Schrems may be just one of about 800 million Facebook users, but that hasn't stopped him tackling the US giant behind the social networking website over its privacy policy.

The 24-year-old wasn't sure what to expect when he requested Facebook provide him with a record of the personal data it holds on him, but he certainly wasn't ready for the 1,222 pages of information he received.

This included photos, messages and postings on his Facebook page dating back years, some of which he thought he had deleted, the times he had clicked "like" on an item, "pokes" of fellow users, and reams of other information.

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