Free Internet Press Newsletter - Thursday October 30 2008 - (813)

Thursday October 30 2008 edition
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U.S. Treasury, FDIC Eye Plan To Help 3 Million Homeowners 2008-10-29 23:47:28 Officials with the U.S. Treasury Dept. and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are nearing agreement on a plan under which the government would guarantee the mortgages of millions of homeowners now struggling to avoid foreclosure. According to three sources familiar with the discussions, the plan would cover up to three million homeowners. It would cost between $40 billion and $50 billion and cover as much as $600 billion in mortgage loans. Under the program being discussed, the lender would agree to reduce borrowers' monthly payments based on their ability to pay. The reductions could be achieved by lowering the interest rate, slashing the amount owed or extending the repayment period. These reconfigured loans would help homeowners avert foreclosure. In exchange, financial institutions that agree to participate in the program would receive a government guarantee for a portion of any losses occurring if borrowers default on the reconfigured loan. Read The Full Story U.S. Stocks Falter At End of Trading Day 2008-10-29 23:47:10 Stocks plunged more than 360 points in the final minutes of trading Tuesday, losing the momentum gained after the Federal Reserve's decision to cut a key interest rate to help alleviate fears of further economic deterioration. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 0.8 percent, with a loss of more than 74 points. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 fell 1.1 percent, or 10 points. The tech-heavy Nasdaq closed up nearly 8 points, a gain of about half a percent. Even after stocks' 11 percent run-up Tuesday - stocks' second-biggest point gain ever - stocks were fickle for most of the morning, seesawing between losses and gains. The market rallied just before the Fed's announcement, then pulled back when the central bank said it would cut the federal funds rate - the rate at which banks lend to each other - by a half-point to 1 percent, the lowest level in four years. The three major indexes then picked up steam again, with the Dow gaining more than 280 points. But in the last moments of the session, stocks swung quickly into the red, resuming the volatility that has come to characterize the last hour of trading. "This selling is just so indicative of the hair-trigger nervousness we're seeing in the market," said Richard Cripps, chief investment officer at Stifel Nicolaus in Baltimore, Maryland. Read The Full Story Commentary: John McCain In The Echo Chamber 2008-10-29 23:46:38 Intellpuke: This commentary was written by author and essayist Gore Vidal and appeared on the truthdig.com website edition for Monday, October 27, 2008. October proved to be the cruelest month, for that was the time that Senator McCain, he of the round, blank, Little Orphan Annie eyes, chose to try out a number of weird lies about Barack Obama ostensibly in the interest of a Republican Party long overdue for burial. It is a wonder that any viewer survived his furious October onslaught whose craziest lie was that Obama wished to become president in order to tax the poor in the interest of a Democratic Party in place, as he put it in his best 1936 voice, to spend and spend because that's what Democrats always do. This was pretty feeble lying, even in such an age as ours. But it was the only thing that had stuck with him from those halcyon years when Gov. Alfred M. Landon was the candidate of the Grand Old Party, which in those days was dedicated to erasing every policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose electoral success was due to, they thought, Harry Hopkins' chilling mantra, "we shall ... spend and spend and elect and elect." Arguably, the ignorant McCains of this world have no idea what any of this actually signifies; Hopkins' comment is a serious one, and serious matters seldom break through to cliché-ridden minds. Although I am no fan of the television of my native land, I thought that an election featuring two historic novelties - the first credible female candidate for president and the first black nominee - would be great historic television, yet I should have been suspicious whenever I looked at McCain's malicious little face, plainly bent on great mischief. Whenever Obama made a sensible point, McCain was ready to trump it with a gorgeous lie. When Obama said that only a small percentage of the middle class would suffer from income tax during his administration, McCain would start gabbling the 1936 Republican mantra that this actually meant that he would spend and spend and spend in order to spread the money around, a mild joke he has told for the benefit of a plumber who is looking forward to fiscal good fortune and so feared the tax man, using language very like that of long-dead socialists to reveal Obama's sinister games. Read The Full Story Pakistan Quake Toll Could Be As High As 600 2008-10-29 23:45:28 Terrifying aftershocks rattled southwest Pakistan Wednesday night after an earthquake killed scores of people and left thousands homeless, with the death toll expected to climb. Local officials in Baluchistan province said 170 people had been killed and 350 injured, but the Care International aid agency put the death toll at 500 to 600. Several villages were reduced to rubble. Local television showed lines of bodies, in white shrouds, laid out in the villages. The 6.5 magnitude quake struck in the early hours of yesterday, centred about 40 miles northeast of the provincial capital Quetta. Aftershocks rippled throughout the day, including a massive tremor of 6.2 magnitude at around 5:30 p.m. local time. "We went to a village, Wam, where we saw mass graves being dug," said Hasan Mazumdar, Care International's Pakistan director. "Bodies were still arriving. I estimate that 200 died in that village alone. "There was a big jolt while we were standing there. The mountains shook. Boulders came crashing down. The people were really scared. They never experienced anything like this. I spoke to a man in his early 30s, who had lost four daughters. He was just completely heartbroken." Read The Full Story Delta, Northwest Airlines Merge 2008-10-29 23:44:27 Delta and Northwest announced Tuesday evening that the two companies had officially merged, hours after the U.S. Department of Justice said the deal to create the world's largest airline did not raise antitrust concerns for the government. The combined airline will be called Delta and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. It will be the world's largest by several measures, including number of passengers flown, departures and destinations. Operations of the two carriers are expected to be combined over the next 14 to 16 months. In a statement, Delta chief executive Richard Anderson said the merger gave the new company "increased flexibility to adapt to the economic challenges ahead." Anderson will retain the chief executive role at the combined company. The outlook for U.S. airlines appears to be mixed over the next several months. Already, there are signs that the economic slowdown is leading to a pull back from air travel. Airlines, however, are benefiting from a dramatic drop in oil prices after peaks this summer led to talk of bankruptcies and wider industry consolidation. Read The Full Story Barack Obama To Appear On 30 Minute Infomercial Tonight 2008-10-29 19:19:57   Tonight at 8pm Eastern, US Presidential Candidate Barack Obama will be seen on a 30 minute infomercial providing information on various campaign topics including the US Economy.   Tune into NBC, CBS, MSNBC, Fox, Univision, BET or TV One to see what he has to say.   Read The Full Story U.S. Governors Call For Federal Rescue Package For States 2008-10-29 16:14:16 New York Governor David A. Paterson and New Jersey Governor Jon S. Corzine added their voices to the growing support for a second federal economic stimulus package,saying that state governments will face devastating cutbacks if they do not receive assistance soon. Appearing before separate congressional committees on Wednesday, Paterson and Corzine said their states, like many others, have already moved to address their budget deficits. Their actions alone would not be enough, they said. “We are cutting all we can,” Paterson told the House Ways and Means Committee. “Therefore, we feel that targeted, sensible actions by the federal government will provide relief for us now.” Speaking to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Corzine implored, “We need federal help to get through these tough times.” Their remarks increased the pressure on the federal government to include money for state governments in the next round of economic stimulus legislation, pointedly putting the requests of the executives of two of the nation’s most populous states on the record. Read The Full Story GMAC Seeks Bank Status To Access Bailout Money 2008-10-29 16:13:51 GMAC, the financing arm of General Motors, is in negotiations to become a bank holding company, a shift that would allow it to take advantage of the government's $700 billion financial rescue package, according to sources familiar with the matter. Over the past few weeks, GM has been talking about the possible change of status with the Federal Reserve, according to the sources, who were familiar with the effort but not authorized to speak about it on the record. Already facing a cash crunch, GM's position has been made even more problematic because of recent problems in global credit markets. Its own borrowing costs have risen, while its dealers and potential car buyers have found it more difficult to finance inventory and vehicle purchases. "We are exploring a number of avenues with government to find a solution to the problem of constrained access to funding," said GMAC spokeswoman Toni Simonetti. She declined to comment on GMAC seeking bank holding status. Read The Full Story Editorial: End Of The Road For Ted Stevens 2008-10-29 16:12:58 Intellpuke: This editorial appeared in the New York Times edition for Wednesday, October 29, 2008. One of life’s enduring mysteries is why powerful people risk substantial reputations and careers for relatively insubstantial sums of money. Perhaps the answer is power itself and the sense of entitlement and invulnerability it confers. Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska has now been convicted of seven felony counts of violating federal ethics laws. His career and reputation are in tatters. Mr. Stevens still insists he is innocent, and he is imploring Alaskans to re-elect him next week. Voters there should turn him out. If they do not, the Senate must expel him. The jury found Mr. Stevens guilty of failing to report tens of thousands of dollars in gifts and services from friends. These included an estimated $250,000 in renovations to his home in Alaska underwritten by the owner of an oil-services company and one of the state’s leading power brokers. In his four decades in the Senate, and especially in his former role as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Stevens dispensed untold millions of dollars worth of favors, especially to his home state. He clearly felt no compunction about accepting favors in return. Read The Full Story 170 Killed In Pakistan Earthquake 2008-10-29 16:12:24 A strong earthquake jolted southwestern Pakistan early Wednesday, killing at least 170 people, injuring hundreds of others and destroying houses and government buildings, Pakistani officials said. The tremors measuring as high as 6.5 on the Richter scale struck villages and small towns 45 miles north of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, beginning shortly after 4 a.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey. A second major tremor late in the day sent panicked citizens out of their buildings and into the cold evening air, but no additional casualties were reported. The epicenter of the early morning quake was about 400 miles southwest of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, with towns and villages in the Ziarat district apparently the worst-hit. The cities and towns struck by the tremor included Pishin, Qila Abdullah, Chaman, Loralai, Sibbi and Mastung, rural areas all lying close to Baluchistan's border with Afghanistan.  According to Pakistani news channels, the shocks from the quake were felt in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan as well. At least 16 aftershocks were felt in the quake-affected regions, averaging more than 4.0 on the Richter scale, according to Qamar-uz-Zaman, chief of Pakistan's Meteorological Office. Read The Full Story	Obama, The Infomercial: A 30-Minute Pitch To America 2008-10-29 23:47:19 Stumbling upon a half-hour-long infomercial on American television is usually a sign that you've stayed up too late, or clicked too far through the channels to the outer fringes of cable. But last night's 30-minute broadcast happened in peak time, on three of the main networks, and it wasn't a sales pitch for an innovative new bathroom tile-cleaning device. It was Barack Obama's final opportunity to ask a mass national audience for their votes, and he used it stirringly. The Democrat's 30-minute ad, costing $1 million per channel, wasn't without its hazards: it risked annoying viewers forced to miss their favorite shows, and a rumor, which proved unfounded, held that it might even delay the start of the World Series baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies, a surefire way to anger audiences. In the event, though, the Obama Show - a combination of treacly Hollywood movie and hard-edged documentary - seemed more likely to persuade than to repel. Beginning with images of cornfields, railways and picket-fence homes over soaring strings, it soon cut to a shot of Obama standing, besuited, before a wooden table and a large American flag: it wasn't the Oval Office, but the resemblance was no accident. "We've seen over the last eight years how decisions by a president can have a profound effect on the course of history, and on American lives," he said, before narrating the stories of four middle-class Americans, each struggling economically. They were chosen with an eye to demographics: a white married mother from Missouri, a black retired railroad worker from Ohio, a Hispanic widow, mother and teacher from Kentucky, and a white male Ford motor worker from New Mexico. They painted a grim picture. "The pressure is just to keep your head above water, so you don't feel like you're drowning all the time," said Juliana Sanchez, the Kentuckian. "You feel like you can't breathe." Five Democratic governors, two senators, and the chief executive of Google also all appeared to sing Obama's praises. Read The Full Story Commentary: Don't Look Now, There's A Huge Wave Of Inflation Coming Toward Us 2008-10-29 23:46:58 Intellpuke: This commentary was written by Kevin Phillips and appeared on the Huffington Post website edition for Wednesday, October 29, 2008. The time has come to review how back in 2005-2006 George W. Bush - now increasingly perceived as another Herbert Hoover - picked two top appointees who helped steer him towards his fateful 2008 rendezvous with a second Great Crash. One of them, a top level financier, insured that Washington's eventual rescue policies would concentrate on trying to bail-out Wall Street while ignoring the gnawing cancer of its warped ambitions and financial malpractices. The second, a professor, misapplied dogma about how to guard against severe downturns into a disastrous attempt to refight the onset of the 1930s depression - his academic specialty. He did not understand the very different context of our own era of cyber-spatial financial recklessness and gathering global inflation. Henry Paulson, Bush's pick as treasury secretary, was not your ordinary gray-flannel investment bank CEO. One 2006 Business Week article spotlighted the new secretary as a high-roller: "Think of Paulson as Mr. Risk. He's one of the key architects of a more daring Wall Street where securities firms are taking greater and greater chances in their pursuit of profits." That, the magazine added, "means taking on more debt ... it means placing big bets on all sorts of exotic derivatives and other securities." That means stuff like collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and credit default swaps (CDSs), innovations we now know to have spread toxicity, opacity and paralysis. Economics professor Ben Bernanke, before replacing Alan Greenspan as Federal Reserve Board chairman in early 2006, had served almost three years as the Chairman of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. There he had been a cheerleader for Bush economic policies, including upper-bracket tax cuts, Social Security privatization, "securitization" of assets and "safe" financial derivatives. On top of which, he was an academic and theoretical specialist in monetary policy and economic depressions - a man who boasted of understanding downturns' critical preventative. The Fed should pump up the money supply or liquidity which would overcome any credit crunch. As a card-carrying monetarist, he also insisted there was no meaningful inflation during the 2005-2007 period even though global commodity price indexes had been soaring. Read The Full Story Commentary: How These Gibbering Numbskulls Came To Dominate Washington 2008-10-29 23:46:03 Intellpuke: This commentary was written by British Prof. George Monbiot and appeared in the Guardian edition for Tuesday, October 28, 2008. "The degradation of intelligence and learning in American politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies." How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the U.S. come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind's closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama was a Muslim and a terrorist? Like most people on my side of the Atlantic, I have for many years been mystified by American politics. The U.S. has the world's best universities and attracts the world's finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage. There have been exceptions over the past century - Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton tempered their intellectualism with the common touch and survived - but Adlai Stevenson, Al Gore and John Kerry were successfully tarred by their opponents as members of a cerebral elite (as if this were not a qualification for the presidency). Perhaps the defining moment in the collapse of intelligent politics was Ronald Reagan's response to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 presidential debate. Carter - stumbling a little, using long words - carefully enumerated the benefits of national health insurance. Reagan smiled and said: "There you go again." His own health program would have appalled most Americans, had he explained it as carefully as Carter had done, but he had found a formula for avoiding tough political issues and making his opponents look like wonks. It wasn't always like this. The founding fathers of the republic - Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and others - were among the greatest thinkers of their age. They felt no need to make a secret of it. How did the project they launched degenerate into George W Bush and Sarah Palin? Read The Full Story Maryland, Virginia To Ditch Electronic Voting Machines 2008-10-29 23:45:11 Goodbye, electronic voting. Farewell, fancy touch screen. Maryland and Virginia are going old school after Tuesday's election. Maryland will scrap its $65 million electronic system and go back to paper ballots in time for the 2010 midterm elections - and will still be paying for the abandoned system until 2014. In Virginia, localities are moving to paper after the General Assembly voted last year to phase out electronic voting machines as they wear out. It was just a few years ago that electronic voting machines were heralded as a computerized panacea to the hanging chad, a state-of-the-art system immune to the kinds of hijinks and confusion that some say make paper ballots vulnerable. But now, after concern that the electronic voting machines could crash or be hacked, the two states are swinging away from the systems, saying paper ballots filled out by hand are more reliable, especially in a recount. The trend reflects a national movement away from electronic voting machines. About a third of all voters will use them Tuesday, down from a peak of almost 40 percent in 2006, according to Election Data Services, a Manassas-based consulting firm specializing in election administration. Every jurisdiction that has changed election systems since 2006 has gone to paper ballots read by optical scan machines, said Kimball Brace, the firm's president. And for the first time in the country's history, fewer jurisdictions will be using electronic machines than in the previous election, he said. "The battle for the hearts and minds of voters on whether electronic systems are good or bad has been lost," said  Brace. The academics and computer scientists who said they were unreliable "have won that battle." Read The Full Story Commentary: Campaign Misinformation 2008-10-29 19:45:00   Editor:   People hear rumors about all kinds of people.  Sometimes it's about your gay neighbor (who isn't really gay).    As a journalist, I like to listen to people, not argue their points, and then research as much as possible.   One educated individual had several reasons why he did not want Obama to be the next president of the United States.   One misconception was that Barack Obama is not an American citizen.  Simple logic on my part knew this couldn't be true, but a bit of research was required also.  My hunches are frequently right, but my hunches are not enough to report on as truth.   You can read supporting information here at Snopes.com and FactCheck.org.  He is an American citi! zen, born in Hawaii.  You can read more information on the two links above, or do your own research to find out more.  Beware, plenty of unresearched information is still floating around the Internet.   The second is the misinformation that Obama is a Muslim.  While it is perfectly acceptable for anyone in America to be of any faith, and there is a large Muslim community here in the United States, it simply isn't true.  Obama is a Christian.   You can read more about this misinformation at Snopes.com and FactCheck.org.   For the interest of equal time, there have been some rumors about John McCain.  The most popular that I've heard from people is that McCain does not use email.  This is a simple answer, but unfortunately I cannot find a good validation to link to, but I! saw an interview which clarified the subject.  McCain wa! s tortur ed for years in Vietnam, like many POWs.  From the torture and mistreatment, he doesn't have the same motor control of his hands that the average Joe does.  It's hard for him to do things like type, so his staff handles his emails for him.     Feel free to discuss these and other rumors in the comments area. Read The Full Story Fed Reserve Cuts Interest Rate To 1 Percent 2008-10-29 16:14:25 The Federal Reserve slashed a key interest rate to match its lowest level in decades Wednesday, as the central bank continued pulling out all possible stops to try to contain the economic fallout of the financial crisis. The Fed’s policy-making committee this afternoon cut the federal funds rate, at which banks lend to each other, to 1 percent, from 1.5 percent. The last time the rate was that low was in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s; the Fed’s target rate hasn’t been lower than 1 percent since the 1950s. The stock market, which had been up modestly before the announcement, fell immediately thereafter. At 2:35 p.m., the Dow Jones industrial average was down more than one percent or 119 points. The lower rate is meant to stimulate the economy and guard against a deep and long recession; it followed an emergency rate cut just two weeks ago. In normal times, Fed rate cuts make it cheaper for businesses to borrow money to expand and for consumers to get auto loans, home mortgages, and credit card debt. But in the current environment, with banks reluctant to lend, its impact is uncertain. “The pace of economic activity appears to have slowed markedly,” said the Federal Open Market Committee in a statement, “owing importantly to a decline in consumer expenditures.” It also noted that business spending is falling off and exports appear poised to weaken. “Moreover, the intensification of financial market turmoil is likely to exert additional restraint on spending, partly by further reducing the ability of households and businesses to obtain credit.” Read The Full Story Panel: FDA Ignored Scientific Evidence That BPA Is Harmful 2008-10-29 16:14:07 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ignored scientific evidence and used flawed methods when it determined that a chemical widely used in baby bottles and in the lining of cans is not harmful, a scientific advisory panel has found. In a highly critical report to be released Wednesday, the panel of scientists from government and academia said the FDA did not take into consideration scores of studies that have linked bisphenol A (BPA) to prostate cancer, diabetes and other health problems in animals when it completed a draft risk assessment of the chemical last month. The panel said the FDA didn't use enough infant formula samples and didn't adequately account for variations among the samples. Taking those studies into consideration, the panel concluded, the FDA's margin of safety is "inadequate". The panel is part of the Science Board, a committee of advisers to the FDA commissioner, and was set up to review the FDA's risk assessment of BPA. Many of the studies that the panel said the FDA ignored were reviewed by the National Toxicology Program, which concluded in September that it had "some concern" that BPA can affect brain and behavioral development in infants and small children. Read The Full Story Commentary: A Detroit Bankruptcy Beats A Bailout 2008-10-29 16:13:42 Intellpuke: This commentary was written by Washington Post Business Columnist Steven Pearlstein and appeared in the Post edition for Wednesday, October 29, 2008. Not content with $25 billion in government loans to retool factories for fuel-efficient cars, the auto industry is already back at the trough, this time angling for a taxpayer investment in the firm that would result from a merger of General Motors and Chrysler. You can just imagine the pitch from the populists of the Michigan congressional delegation: If the government is willing to invest $250 billion to bail out pinstriped bankers, then the least it could do is throw an extra $10 billion to rescue the domestic auto industry and the millions of workers and retirees who depend on it. There's only one difference: The government will make money on its bank investment, while the GM-Chrysler deal is a lemon. As reported by Reuters, GM and Chrysler would have the Treasury invest $3 billion directly in the newly merged automaker in exchange for preferred shares with warrants, as with the banks. The government would take over $3 billion of the company's pension obligation. To deal with the industry's short-term liquidity problem, the government would also commit to buying $4 billion in commercial paper issued by the new company. Read The Full Story 20,000 More U.S. Troops Sought For Afghanistan 2008-10-29 16:12:37 U.S. commanders in Afghanistan now believe they need about 20,000 additional troops to battle a growing Taliban insurgency, as demands mount for support forces such as helicopter units, intelligence teams and engineers that are critical to operating in the country's harsh terrain. The troop requests, made in recent weeks, reflect the broader struggles the U.S. military faces in the Afghan war. Fighting has intensified, particularly in the country's eastern region, where attacks are up and cross-border infiltration of insurgents from Pakistan is on the rise. U.S. troop deaths in 2008 are higher than in any other year since the conflict began in 2001. The Pentagon has approved the deployment of one additional combat battalion and one Army brigade, or about 4,000 troops, set to arrive in Afghanistan by January. Commanders have already requested three more combat brigades - 10,500 to 12,000 troops - but those reinforcements depend on further reductions from Iraq and are unlikely to arrive until spring or summer, according to senior defense officials. Now, U.S. commanders are asking the Pentagon for 5,000 to 10,000 additional support forces to help them tackle the country's unique geographic and logistical challenges. Afghanistan's rugged mountains, bitter winters and primitive infrastructure pose a major hurdle as the U.S. military seeks to build up its combat forces there. The conditions contrast with those in Iraq, where roads, runways and built-up urban areas helped absorb nearly 30,000 U.S. forces during the troop "surge" last year. Read The Full Story 5 Suicide Bomb Attacks Hit Somalia 2008-10-29 16:12:04 Five suicide car bomb attacks rocked a presidential palace, government security posts, United Nations offices and an Ethiopian consular unit in two regions of northern Somalia on Wednesday, killing or wounding dozens of people, according to officials and witnesses. Five suicide car bomb attackers struck within half an hour in the two regions, in Hargeisa, the capital of breakaway Somaliland, and in Bosasso, in Puntland, said Faisal Hayle, a security official in Mogadishu for the transitional government of Somalia. Several buildings were leveled by the attacks. According to officials, the bombers struck between 10 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., the first attacking in Hargeisa where they struck the presidential palace of Somaliland, an Ethiopian consulate office and a United Nations office in Hargeisa. In the port of Bosasso, two huge blasts rocked the city as suicide bombers attacked two offices of the Puntland security forces, killing a woman cleaner and injuring six soldiers, said residents and officials. Read The Full Story
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