Elizabeth Warren on Bill Maher
Broadcatching, Elizabeth Warren
Recession
Wall Street's Bailout Hustle
Goldman Sachs, Wall Street
Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren’t just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy – they’re re-creating the conditions for another crash
Posted Feb 17, 2010 5:57 AM
On January 21st, Lloyd Blankfein left a peculiar voicemail message on the work phones of his employees at Goldman Sachs. Fast becoming America’s pre-eminent Marvel Comics supervillain, the CEO used the call to deploy his secret weapon: a pair of giant, nuclear-powered testicles. In his message, Blankfein addressed his plan to pay out gigantic year-end bonuses amid widespread controversy over Goldman’s role in precipitating the global financial crisis.
The bank had already set aside a tidy $16.2 billion for salaries and bonuses — meaning that Goldman employees were each set to take home an average of $498,246, a number roughly commensurate with what they received during the bubble years. Still, the troops were worried: There were rumors that Dr. Ballsachs, bowing to political pressure, might be forced to scale the number back. After all, the country was broke, 14.8 million Americans were stranded on the unemployment line, and Barack Obama and the Democrats were trying to recover the populist high ground after their bitch-whipping in Massachusetts by calling for a “bailout tax” on banks. Maybe this wasn’t the right time for Goldman to be throwing its annual Roman bonus orgy.
Not to worry, Blankfein reassured employees. “In a year that proved to have no shortage of story lines,” he said, “I believe very strongly that performance is the ultimate narrative.”
Translation: We made a shitload of money last year because we’re so amazing at our jobs, so fuck all those people who want us to reduce our bonuses.
Who Are The U.C. Regents and Why Are They Billing Me 32 Per Cent More Than Last Year?
California, Public Education
Los Angeles, California (CNN) — Despite intense student protests, the California Board of Regents on Thursday approved a 32 percent undergraduate tuition increase over the next two years.
Hundreds of students marched and chanted outside UCLA, where university officials were meeting. School officials argued that a fee increase and deep cuts in school spending were necessary because of the state government’s ongoing budget crisis.
After the vote, students rushed the parking decks and staged a sit-in to block regents officials from leaving. Campus police and California Highway Patrol officers were nearby and on the ready clad in riot gear.
Students and others say the cuts will hurt the working and middle classes who benefit from state-funded education.
“We’re fired up. Can’t take it no more,” students chanted as they marched and waved signs. “Education only for the rich,” one sign read.
Dozens of students lined up early for seats inside the regents meeting, hoping for a chance at the microphone during the public comment time before the vote. Campus police with riot gear lined up between the loud but peaceful protesters and the entrance.
The University of California’s Board of Regents approved the plan a day after the regents’ finance committee approved the 32 percent increase.
Some faculty members and campus workers — worried about furloughs and layoffs to come — joined the protesting students.
“Stop cuts in education and research,” a sign carried by a teacher said.
Fourteen people were arrested Wednesday morning after they disrupted the regents’ meeting with chanting, police said. Other protests — including “tent cities” — were under way on other University of California campuses across the state.
About 26 percent of the $20 billion spent each year by the system comes from the state’s general fund and tuition and fees paid by students, according to a summary on the regent’s Web site.
The first tuition increase, which takes effect in January, will cost undergraduate students an additional $585 a semester. The second increase kicks in next fall, raising tuition another $1,344.
The fee increases would be balanced by a raise in “the level of financial assistance for needy low- and middle-income students,” according to a statement from the Board of Regents.
Stalled construction sites add to more blight in Brooklyn
New York Real EstateLeading the city in unfinished buildings: BROOKLYN….
BY Ben Chapman and Elizabeth Lazarowitz
NY DAILY NEWS
Thursday, November 12th 2009
The city’s count of stalled construction projects in the borough has surged 42% since it began tracking them this summer, according to the Department of Buildings’ latest statistics.
Brooklyn has the most stalled sites of any borough, with a total of 245. This makes up nearly half of the 527 buildings sitting unfinished citywide after the collapse of the housing market sent many developers packing.
“They went forward with all this stuff, and now we’re paying the price,” said community activist and Williamsburg resident Phil DePaolo, who said the metal frames and vacant lots strewn across his neighborhood are a magnet for drug addicts and homeless people.
“An area where you had factories and life, you [now] have emptiness and darkness, and it increases the fear factor in the community,” he said.
Stalled sites in Manhattan have jumped 40% to 80, and have risen 38% to 25 in the Bronx. In Staten Island, the unfinished projects more than doubled to 33, and in Queens, they’ve risen 6% to 144.
Greenpoint and Williamsburg, the hottest areas for development just a few years ago, have seen 80 sites stall, the most of any area in the borough. Brooklyn’s closest runnerup is Borough Park, with 18.
Tenth-grader Kimberly, 15, who lives near a partly finished building on S. Fourth St., said she often sees raucous teens partying there, adding: “I get nervous walking by at night.”
Earlier this year, the DOB sent investigators to monitor stalled sites and issue violations or work with the developer to fix emergency problems.
Last month, the City Council passed a bill giving developers incentives to keep up their properties, allowing them to renew permits at stalled sites for up to four years if they keep up with safety requirements.
“We’re worried about the impact that it’s having on neighborhoods,” said Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has also devised a plan that would allow developers to turn stalled sites into affordable housing. While the city may consider stronger measures to get developers to push ahead, many simply don’t have the funds to do so, Quinn said.
But DePaolo said the city’s current efforts aren’t enough, adding: “It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a shotgun wound.”
Abandoned Horses Are On The Rise
Economy, Horses, Livestock, Poverty, Working Poor
Jack Noble was pretty sure what he would see when he arrived to check out reports of horses abandoned on a rural road in Oregon’s Willamette Valley in September.Noble, field operations manager for the state’s Department of Agriculture, found 11 filthy, sickly and starving horses. “They were just let loose, and they were severely malnourished,” he said.
Horse abandonment is on the rise across the USA, livestock and agricultural officials say. As the economy worsens and the cost of feeding and caring for horses rises, more people are abandoning their animals into the wild, where many starve and die.
No national numbers are available, but there are “definitely thousands of them out there,” said Dave Duquette, an Oregon horse trainer and president of the United Horsemen’s Front.
“Folks have to decide whether to feed the kids or feed the horses,” said Dr. Kerry Rood, a veterinarian at Utah State University.
In Wyoming, there have been “huge increases” in the number of domestic horses abandoned, said Jim Schwartz, director of the Wyoming Livestock Board.
“It used to be six or eight per year. This year so far we’ve had at least 41,” said Lee Romsa, Wyoming’s brand commissioner. In Nevada, officials have found 63 abandoned horses in the northern part of the state alone in 2008 — an unprecedented situation, said Ed Foster, spokesman for the state Department of Agriculture.
The horses Noble found were sold at auction, surprising considering their condition, he said.
The responsibility for dealing with abandoned domestic horses generally falls to a state’s department of agriculture or a local animal control organization, Rood said. Private animal rescue organizations often become involved, he said.
The sale of horses is becoming “less and less” of an option, said Patricia Evans, equine specialist at Utah State. Auctioneers screening horses are turning them away if they don’t think they will bring enough money, she said.
Rood said another part of the abandonment problem is the closure of the USA’s last horse slaughterhouse last year in Illinois. Slaughtering provided owners with a final option, he said.
Bruce Friedrich of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said closure of American horse slaughterhouses was a necessary end to a “horrifically abusive” practice.
Many horse owners believe their animals, if released into the wild, will be adopted by wild herds. But “the wild horse herd will reject them in the most violent manner,” Foster said. “It ends up being a bad ending for that horse.”
DeLong reports for the Reno Gazette-Journal
Bank of England Cuts Rate to Year 1694 Levels
Bank of England, Britain, ECB, Gordon Brown, Housing Prices, Job Cuts, Monetary Policy Committee, Recession
Feb. 5 — The Bank of England lowered the benchmark interest rate to 1 percent, extending the most aggressive round of cuts in its three-century history as officials try to limit fallout from the deepening recession.
The nine-member Monetary Policy Committee, led by Governor Mervyn King, cut the bank rate to 1 percent from 1.5 percent. That’s the lowest since the central bank was founding in 1694 by William III to fund a war against France. The move matched the median estimate of 61 economists of a Bloomberg News survey.
The U.K. economy will shrink the most since 1946 this year and faster than any other industrialized country, International Monetary Fund forecasts show. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government has given the central bank powers to spend up to 50 billion pounds ($73 billion) on bonds and commercial paper as interest rates lose their potency to aid economic growth.
“The global economy is in the throes of a severe and synchronized downturn,” the central bank said in a statement. “Business and household sentiment in many countries has deteriorated. The supply of credit remains constrained.” In Britain, “credit conditions faced by companies and households have tightened further,” it said.
King will present the bank’s updated economic forecasts on Feb. 11. Minutes of this month’s meeting, showing how the members voted, will be published on Feb. 18.
The pound rose against the dollar and the euro, trading at $1.4635 and 87.36 pence per euro as of 3:10 p.m. in London.
Global Rate Cuts
The Bank of England has now lowered its rate by 4 percentage points since October. The U.S. Federal Reserve has reduced its key rate to a range between zero and 0.25 percent. The European Central Bank kept its rate at 2 percent today.
ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet, speaking to reporters in Frankfurt, said he “doesn’t exclude” a half-point interest- rate cut for the 16-country euro area in March.
Central banks in South Africa and the Czech Republic joined the U.K. in cutting interest rates today to fight the global slump. South Africa’s central bank cut its benchmark rate by 1 percentage point, the biggest reduction in more than five years, to 10.5 percent. The Czech central bank lowered the key rate for the third consecutive time, by half a point to 1.75 percent.
“We have a deep recession and a credit crunch,” said Michael Saunders, chief Western European economist at Citigroup Inc. in London. “Why wait? The debate is about how the economy can ever recover, and the Bank of England has the answer to that in its hands.”
Undershoot Risk
The bank said there is “a substantial risk” that inflation will fall too far below the 2 percent target even though rate cuts since October, a 20 billion-pound package of tax cuts, cheaper commodities and a sharp drop in the value of the pound are likely to provide “a considerable stimulus.”
“The key is the line that credit conditions have tightened further,” Brian Hilliard, chief U.K. economist at Societe Generale SA in London, said on Bloomberg Television. “That’s the key emphasis for the government and the bank. They’ve got to continue to do things about it. And the asset purchase facility is the next button to press.”
King’s next step may be to pump additional money into the financial system. He said Jan. 20 that the central bank will buy “high-quality” assets within “weeks and not months” to ease market strains, a policy in line with similar measures pursued by Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke.
Brown and King are trying to rescue an economy that will contract 2.8 percent in 2009, according to IMF forecasts. House prices fell an annual 16.4 percent in January, mortgage lender Halifax said today.
Job Cuts
Ford Motor Co. said today it plans to cut up to 850 jobs in the U.K. as demand for autos and commercial vans slumps. As many as 5,000 British companies may file for bankruptcy this year, a report by accounting and insolvency firm KPMG showed.
The downturn is cooling inflation. Consumer prices rose 3.1 percent from a year earlier in December, compared with 4.1 percent the previous month, the biggest drop in the annual rate since records began in 1997. The central bank’s target is to keep inflation at 2 percent.
Brown said yesterday that the world is suffering a “depression,” suggesting he may increase measures to stimulate the economy. The government has already pledged hundred of billions of pounds to prop up banks, and the pound has fallen 26 percent against the dollar and 16 percent against the euro in the past year, making British exports cheaper.
‘Stimulus Factors’
“There are many stimulus factors in place, cuts in interest rates, various fiscal packages will help,” said Nick Bate, an economist at Merrill Lynch & Co. in London and a former Treasury official. “But given that we’re in a world where many central banks are cutting severely, the ability to fine tune the economy has passed.”
The Federation of Small Businesses said yesterday that recent interest rate cuts aren’t helping companies because they cannot get access to loans. More than two-thirds of small businesses wanted the central bank to keep the rate unchanged, according to an FSB poll. The Building Societies Association, representing customer-owned lenders, also called for no change.
For now, the central bank may still have little choice but to keep cutting.
“The fundamentals are still weak and there is still some scope for orthodox policy easing,” said Ross Walker, an economist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London. “It’s preferable to nudge rates further now than to turn to the printing presses.”
The New York Herald Sun 