http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/on-nbc-the-missing-story-about-parent-company-general-electric/2011/03/29/AFpRYJyB_story.html?wpisrc=nl_most
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Why Is the Media Not Challenging Trump on His Obama Lies? #p2 #tcot
http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12547
DEE EVANS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
I have had it with the likes of Donald Trump maligning President Obama's reputation on a weekly basis and the likes of shows like The View, Good Morning America and Morning Joe constantly letting him get away with it!
If Donald Trump is supposed to be a serious candidate for President of the United States, then why isn't he being treated as such? Why is no one asking him questions about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or about balancing the U.S. budget or about immigration reform, healthcare, education, financial reform or any of a number of "serious" questions that someone seeking to be the leader of this country should be asked?
Instead so-called "professional" journalists allow Trump to go off on these libelous rants against the President with already debunked lies and no one even tries to challenge him on it or to offer any follow up questions to any of his off the wall statements!
For example, during his recent interview on The View, Trump continued to shout (literally) that President Obama has not presented a birth certificate and how no one knew him or had any photos of him from when he was young. Not one of the women sitting on that couch saw fit to challenge these lies with the facts that the State of Hawaii has released Obama's official birth certificate ...
...and that there are numerous photos of Barack Obama from his youth including a well known photo of him on his high school basketball team in Hawaii.
My main question is when will someone...ANYONE ask Trump any serious Presidential candidate questions - and make him answer them? I have a few that should have been asked already:
1) If you are such a successful businessman, as you say, then can you explain why you had to file bankruptcy 3 times?
2) As a so-called "family values guy", how do you explain being married three times?
3) You have claimed to be a staunch Conservative yet you recently contributed $50,000 to President Obama's former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel for his mayoral campaign in Chicago? If the Obama Administration has made such terrible decisions, as you say, then how do you explain giving thousands of dollars to one of the main people who had a hand in crafting most of those decisions?
4) You claimed to have "screwed" (his word) Muammar Gaddafi on a land use deal some time ago in New York City in which you say he paid you an unusually high amount of money for use of some land for a tent. You stated that you took his money but then still did not let him use it. First of all, if that did happen, would that be considered illegal? Secondly, many celebrities have recently given away money that they have received from Gaddafi, where did the money you received from him go? If it went to charity, which one?
5) By law, all Presidential candidates must complete a Financial Disclosure Form before officially running for President. You no doubt have a lot of financial dealings all over the world. If you are serious about being President as you claim, when do you plan to complete your form and disclose information about many of these dealings?
6) You claim that President Obama needs to show his birth certificate (which he has already done along with the State of Hawaii) so might I ask when do you plan to show voters your "original" birth certificate?
If Trump is the serious Presidential candidate that he claims to be, then he should have no problems answering these questions.
The media needs to do their job! American voters expect the media to ask serious questions of these "serious" Presidential candidates and not allow them to demean the President of the United States just for shock value and ratings! If they have criticisms of President Obama's policies and want to question things he's done while in office, that's fair game; but to allow the likes of Donald Trump to use a mainstream media forum to spout unchallenged lies is something that should not stand.
Sources on questions for Trump:
1- http://www.mademan.com/mm/how-many-times-has-donald-trump-filed-bankruptcy.html
http://answers.bloglines.com/Home/how_many_times_has_donald_trump_filed_bankruptcy
http://www.legalzoom.com/legal-headlines/celebrity-lawsuits/how-does-trump-repeatedly-file
2- http://www.mademan.com/mm/how-many-times-has-donald-trump-been-married.html
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_wifes_does_Donald_Trump_have
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_ex-wives_does_Donald_Trump_have
http://www.chicagonewscoop.org/trump-spielberg-jobs-among-emanuels-big-donors/
4- http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51653.html
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/donald-trump-tells-fox-and-friends-i-screwed-gaddafi/
http://gawker.com/#!5783999/donald-trump-i-screwed-muammar-qaddafi
5- http://www.fec.gov/ans/answers_candidate.shtml
http://www.opensecrets.org/glossary.php?id=45
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/e612.htm
6- http://theview.abc.go.com/video/donald-trump-talks-about-birthers
Why Did the Federal Reserve Provide Billions of Dollars in Loans to Gaddhafi? Bernie Sanders Wants to Know #p2
http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12554
A BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT NEWS ALERT
In a March 31st statement, Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont-I) questioned why the Federal Reserve provided more than $26 billion in credit to an Arab intermediary for the Central Bank of Libya.
The total includes at least $3.2 billion in loans that the Fed was forced to make public today in addition to earlier revelations under a Sanders provision in the Wall Street reform law.
Sanders also asked why the Libyan-owned bank and two of its branches in New York, N.Y., were exempted from sanctions that the United States this month slapped on other Libyan businesses to pressure Col. Moammar Gadhafi's government.
"It is incomprehensible to me that while creditworthy small businesses in Vermont and throughout the country could not receive affordable loans, the Federal Reserve was providing tens of billions of dollars in credit to a bank that is substantially owned by the Central Bank of Libya," Sanders said.
In a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and others, Sanders asked why the central bank made at least 46 emergency, low-interest loans to the Arab Banking Corp., in which the Central Bank of Libya owns a 59 percent stake.
In the same letter, Sanders asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner why the Treasury Department on March 4 let the Libya-controlled bank skirt the economic sanctions against Libya.
The senator also questioned why the Bahrain-based Arab Banking Corp. is even allowed to operate branches inside United States. "Why would the U.S. government allow a bank that is predominantly owned by the Central Bank of Libya - an institution on which the U.S. has imposed strict economic sanctions -to operate two banking branches within our own borders?" Sanders asked.
The Fed transactions were made public earlier this year as a result of a Sanders provision in the Wall Street reform law that forced the U.S. central bank to reveal which financial institutions it bailed out during the financial crisis from 2007 to 2010.
In another dubious twist, the Fed loans, at interest rates as low as 0.25 percent, relied on U.S. Treasury securities as collateral. In other words, at the same time that the Arab Banking Corp. was borrowing money at almost zero interest from one arm of the government, the Fed, it was lending money at a higher interest rate to another arm of the U.S. government, the Treasury Department.
Indonesia arrests 3 in death of Citibank customer
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/04/01/general-as-indonesia-citibank-death_8386034.html
AKARTA, Indonesia -- Indonesian police say they have arrested three debt collectors hired by Citibank in the death of a customer at one of the bank's branches.
AKARTA, Indonesia -- Indonesian police say they have arrested three debt collectors hired by Citibank in the death of a customer at one of the bank's branches.
Police say Irzen Octa, the head of a small political party, was found dead Tuesday in the Citibank branch in southern Jakarta after he protested that his credit card bill had soared from $7,825 to $11,500.
South Jakarta police chief Col. Gatot Edy Pramono said Friday the suspects met with Octa in a small room and interrogated him roughly because they were angry about his protest. He said an autopsy found a ruptured blood vessel in his head and wounds on his nose.
Citibank said it has a strict code of conduct in debt collection and will cooperate with police to see if any of its employees failed to comply.
==============================================================
Lawmaker Urges Bank Indonesia Take Action Against Violent Debt Collectors
The deputy head of the House of Representatives Commission XI overseeing financial affairs, Harry Azhar Azis, urged the Bank Indonesia (BI) to take action against violent debt collecting practices to protect customers.
"Debt collectors being used as agents of the bank is fine, but when they resort to violence, Bank Indonesia must be proactive. It's about time for BI to issue a strict regulation on debt collectors," Harry said.
Harry's comment was related to the death of the National Unifying Party (PPB) secretary general Irzen Okta, who died in a private room of a Citibank office at Menara Jamsostek on Jalan Gatot Subroto on Tuesday, supposedly after a dispute regarding his credit card debt.
According to Harry, if BI did not take any actions against violent debt collectors, House Commission XI would.
"Commission XI will make it part of our agenda unless BI takes immediate action," he said, adding that the governor of Bank Indonesia must also take some of the blame for Okta's death.
"It shows their is no such thing as customers protection," he said
Meanwhile, Okta's colleague, PPB treasurer Tubagus, said the victim came to Citibank to settle his credit card bill.
"He came to Citibank to negotiate settling the debt," Tubagus was quoted as saying by news portal Detik.com.
"He was a responsible person, that's why he came to the bank," Tubagus said.
Okta came to the bank on Tuesday morning to ask the bank about his soaring credit card bill. He had said that his initial bill was only Rp 48 million ($5,520), but the bank said it was Rp 100 million.
Okta was then escorted to a private room where he was questioned by the three bank employees, including two debt collectors. The three were in the room at the time of Okta's death, according to South Jakarta Police chief of detectives Comr. Budi Irawan.
An autopsy later showed that Okta had died from a brain hemorrhage.
@citibank Citibank debt collectors allegedly kill client
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/04/01/citibank-debt-collectors-allegedly-kill-client.html
An employee of Citibank and two debt collectors hired by the major international bank allegedly killed a customer who complained about his ballooning credit card bill.
Citibank customer Irzen Octa, who was also the secretary-general for the National Unity Party (PPB), was allegedly killed by the three suspects after complaining that his credit card bill was inflated from Rp 48 million (US$5,300) to Rp 100 million at the bank's branch office in Jamsostek Tower in Central Jakarta.
"The motive for the murder was debt and the inconsistent figures on the credit card bill," South Jakarta Police chief detective Sr. Comr. Budi Irawan.
Budi said the victim came to the bank branch to complain about his credit card bill, which showed a total of Rp 100 million, significantly higher than the Rp 48 million he expected.
Unable to handle the complaint, a Citibank employee and two debt-collectors, none of whom were named by police, took Irzen to the fifth floor of the building where they killed him.
"We found traces of blood on the curtains and walls," Budi said, adding that Irzen's body was found early Tuesday on the fifth floor.
An autopsy performed on Irzen showed he suffered damage to his brain.
The three Citibank employees were named suspects in the murder case and could be charged with the Criminal Code on battery, which carries a maximum jail sentence of five-and-a-half years.
Police said they would also question Citibank officials.
Citibank official Ditta Amahorseya declined to comment on the ongoing police investigation when approached by The Jakarta Post, but maintained that Citibank had and obeyed a strict code of ethics in regards to debt collection.
"All agencies' employees representing us are obliged to obey [the code], including the obligation to deal with clients without using threats," she said in an email sent to the Post.
This is the second recent cri-minal case involving Citibank employees.
Earlier this week, the National Police announced the arrest of a senior manager of Citibank identified as Malinda Dee for stealing Rp 17 billion ($2 million) from her clients.
Police also seized a number of possessions from the suspect, including a Hummer SUV and a Mercedes-Benz sedan, estimated at Rp 3.4 billion, that were allegedly bought by the suspect with money she stole from her clients.
On Thursday, however, police said Malinda may have stolen more than the Rp 17 billion initially cited.
National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Anton Bachrul Alam said Malinda, who had worked at Citibank for 20 years, stole between Rp 1 billion and Rp 2 billion per transaction and that she could have stolen more than Rp 17 billion.
"[The Rp 17 billion] was only a preliminary finding from our audit," Anton said.
An employee of Citibank and two debt collectors hired by the major international bank allegedly killed a customer who complained about his ballooning credit card bill.
Citibank customer Irzen Octa, who was also the secretary-general for the National Unity Party (PPB), was allegedly killed by the three suspects after complaining that his credit card bill was inflated from Rp 48 million (US$5,300) to Rp 100 million at the bank's branch office in Jamsostek Tower in Central Jakarta.
"The motive for the murder was debt and the inconsistent figures on the credit card bill," South Jakarta Police chief detective Sr. Comr. Budi Irawan.
Budi said the victim came to the bank branch to complain about his credit card bill, which showed a total of Rp 100 million, significantly higher than the Rp 48 million he expected.
Unable to handle the complaint, a Citibank employee and two debt-collectors, none of whom were named by police, took Irzen to the fifth floor of the building where they killed him.
"We found traces of blood on the curtains and walls," Budi said, adding that Irzen's body was found early Tuesday on the fifth floor.
An autopsy performed on Irzen showed he suffered damage to his brain.
The three Citibank employees were named suspects in the murder case and could be charged with the Criminal Code on battery, which carries a maximum jail sentence of five-and-a-half years.
Police said they would also question Citibank officials.
Citibank official Ditta Amahorseya declined to comment on the ongoing police investigation when approached by The Jakarta Post, but maintained that Citibank had and obeyed a strict code of ethics in regards to debt collection.
"All agencies' employees representing us are obliged to obey [the code], including the obligation to deal with clients without using threats," she said in an email sent to the Post.
This is the second recent cri-minal case involving Citibank employees.
Earlier this week, the National Police announced the arrest of a senior manager of Citibank identified as Malinda Dee for stealing Rp 17 billion ($2 million) from her clients.
Police also seized a number of possessions from the suspect, including a Hummer SUV and a Mercedes-Benz sedan, estimated at Rp 3.4 billion, that were allegedly bought by the suspect with money she stole from her clients.
On Thursday, however, police said Malinda may have stolen more than the Rp 17 billion initially cited.
National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Anton Bachrul Alam said Malinda, who had worked at Citibank for 20 years, stole between Rp 1 billion and Rp 2 billion per transaction and that she could have stolen more than Rp 17 billion.
"[The Rp 17 billion] was only a preliminary finding from our audit," Anton said.
The Bank Run We Knew So Little About #p2 #tcot
from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/business/03gret.html?_r=3
IN August 2007, as world financial markets were seizing up, domestic and foreign banks began lining up for cash from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
That Aug. 20, Commerzbank of Germany borrowed $350 million at the Fed's discount window. Two days later, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and the Wachovia Corporation each received $500 million. As collateral for all these loans, the banks put up a total of $213 billion in asset-backed securities, commercial loans and residential mortgages, including second liens.
Thus began the bank run that set off the financial crisis of 2008. But unlike other bank runs, this one was invisible to most Americans.
Until last week, that is, when the Fed pulled back the curtain. Responding to a court ruling, it made public thousands of pages of confidential lending documents from the crisis.
The data dump arose from a lawsuit initiated by Mark Pittman, a reporter at Bloomberg News, who died in November 2009. Upon receiving his request for details on the central bank's lending, the Fed argued that the public had no right to know. The courts disagreed.
The Fed documents, like much of the information about the crisis that has been pried out of reluctant government agencies, reveal what was going on behind the scenes as the financial storm gathered. For instance, they show how dire the banking crisis was becoming during the summer of 2007. Washington policy makers, meanwhile, were saying that the subprime crisis would subside with little impact on the broad economy and that world markets were highly liquid.
For example, on July 23, 2007, Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary at the time, said the housing slump appeared to be "at or near the bottom." Two days later, Timothy F. Geithner, then the president of the New York Fed, declared in a speech before the Forum on Global Leadership in Washington: "Financial markets outside the United States are now deeper and more liquid than they used to be, making it easier for companies to raise capital domestically at reasonable cost."
Within about a month's time, however, foreign banks began thronging to the Fed's discount window — its mechanism for short-term lending to banks. Over four days in late August and early September, foreign institutions, through their New York branches, received a total of almost $1.7 billion in Fed loans.
As the global run progressed, banks increased their borrowings, the documents show. For example, on Sept. 12, 2007, Citibank drove up to the New York Fed's window. It extracted $3.375 billion of cash in exchange for $23 billion worth of assets, including commercial mortgage-backed securities, residential mortgages and commercial loans.
THAT transaction seemed to get the Fed's attention. At 1:30 that afternoon, Mr. Geithner spent half an hour on the phone with Gary L. Crittenden, Citi's chief financial officer at the time, Mr. Geithner's calendar shows. A few weeks later, Citigroup announced that it was writing off $5.9 billion in the third quarter, causing its profit to drop 60 percent from a year earlier — and that was only the beginning.
Perhaps the biggest revelation in the Fed documents is the extent to which the central bank was willing to lend to foreign institutions. On Nov. 8, 2007, Deutsche Bank took out a $2.4 billion overnight loan secured by $4 billion in collateral. And on Dec. 5, 2007, Calyon of France borrowed $2 billion, providing $16 billion in collateral.
When the crisis was full-on in 2008, foreign institutions became even bigger beneficiaries of the Fed's credit programs. On Nov. 4 of that year, the Fed extended $133 billion through various facilities. Two foreign institutions — the German-Irish bank Depfa and Dexia Credit of Belgium — received 39 percent of the money that day.
"The striking thing was the large amount of borrowing that the New York Fed accepted during the crisis from European banks that had only a minimal presence in the U.S. and arguably posed no threat to the U.S. payment system," said Walker F. Todd, a research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research and a former assistant general counsel and research officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Such a thing would never have occurred 20 years ago, he added.
All of the discount-window borrowings extended to institutions during the debacle have been repaid. But the precedent was set: The Fed was the financial backstop to the world.
Since 2000 or so, the mind-set at the Fed in New York and Washington has been that the central bank must step in when there is a global crisis, Mr. Todd said, even if it appears to exceed its mandate.
Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman, seemed to foreshadow this view early in the crisis. Addressing the Fed's annual symposium at Jackson Hole, Wyo., on Aug. 17, 2007, Mr. Bernanke said: "It is not the responsibility of the Federal Reserve — nor would it be appropriate — to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their financial decisions. But developments in financial markets can have broad economic effects felt by many outside the markets, and the Federal Reserve must take those effects into account when determining policy."
Protecting global lenders and investors from the effects of their financial decisions was exactly what the Fed decided it had to do. Bankers and investors on the receiving end of this largess have long known the extent to which the Fed rescued them in their time of need. Now, thanks to these Fed documents, the rest of us can see it, too.
Friday, April 1, 2011
.@GOP ers Demand Sean Duffy Salary Tape Be Pulled From The Internet (VIDEO) #p2 #tcot
First the Republican Party in Polk County, Wisconsin, pulled the tape of Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) fretting about making ends meet on his $174,000 a year salary from its own website. Now they want it gone from the whole Internet.
For a couple hours, the local county GOP was successful. But we've put an excerpt of the video back up.
A day after TPM posted the video we obtained of Duffy talking about his salary at a Polk County town hall meeting earlier this year, the Polk County GOP contacted the video provider we used to host the video, Blip.tv, and demanded the video be taken down.
The tape caused a stir for Duffy, a first-term conservative best known for his past as a reality TV show star on MTV's The Real World. Democrats flagged the comments about his taxpayer-funded salary (which is nearly three times the median income in Wisconsin) and criticisms began to flow Duffy's way.
In the clip, Duffy is asked whether he'd support cutting his own salary. Duffy says he would, but only as part of a plan where all public employees' salaries would be cut. He then said that the $174,000 in salary (not including benefits) he receives is a squeeze for his family of seven to live on:
I can guarantee you, or most of you, I guarantee that I have more debt than all of you. With 6 kids, I still pay off my student loans. I still pay my mortgage. I drive a used minivan. If you think I'm living high on the hog, I've got one paycheck. So I struggle to meet my bills right now. Would it be easier for me if I get more paychecks? Maybe, but at this point I'm not living high on the hog.
Duffy's office said any Democratic criticism of his response was "a misleading attack." For more on Duffy's finances, see this post.
The county GOP took down the video from its blog after the Washington Post posted a short clip of it yesterday morning.
An official with the Polk County GOP, which posted many other clips of the town hall on its YouTube channel, told TPM yesterday that the video was taken down because it was "was being republished without our consent."
Kirk Anderson, who manages the county GOP website filed the complaint with Blip.tv, claiming that posting the video was a copyright infringement and demanding that the video be taken down. You can view that request here.
County party Chair Sandy Fretwell did not respond to a request for comment. Duffy's office did not respond to a request either.
Here's a one-minute clip, excerpted from roughly 45 minutes of video of the public Duffy townhall, that the Polk County GOP doesn't want anyone to see:
IRS Commissioner Says Shutdown Scenarios Under Discussion
from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-31/irs-commissioner-criticizes-tax-code-complexity-proposed-cuts.html
Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman said the Obama administration has not decided whether the IRS would process tax returns and issue refunds if Congress cannot agree to a plan to avert a halt of government spending authority on April 8.
Under previous plans developed for potential government shutdowns near the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year, the IRS would deposit checks though it would not process tax returns or issue refunds.
"We've never had a government shutdown in the middle of the filing season before," Shulman said in testimony before a House Ways and Means subcommittee today in Washington. "The closer we get to April 15, the more consideration and factors are at play."
Shulman did not provide further details about discussions he is having with the Office of Management and Budget as to how the IRS would operate during a government shutdown. Individual tax returns this year are due April 18, rather than April 15, because of a weekend and Emancipation Day in the District of Columbia.
Congressional lawmakers are negotiating over spending plans that would cover the remainder of the fiscal year in an attempt to allow federal agencies to continue operating.
Tax Complexity
Also in his testimony today, Shulman said that the complexity of the U.S. tax code hurts the public and makes the tax system tougher to administer.
"The tax code is incredibly complex, and unfortunately it's been going in the wrong direction over the last decade," he said. "Anything you can do to simplify the code would help our agency."
Representative Charles Boustany, who heads the Ways and Means oversight panel, told Shulman that he wanted to work with the IRS in overhauling the tax code to make the system simpler.
"As we go through that process, clearly with a mind on how to simplify things for the taxpayer, we also need to keep in mind the burden it places on your agency as well," said Boustany, a Louisiana Republican.
The IRS has processed 73.3 million individual income tax returns through mid-March, up 3.4 percent from last year, according to a Government Accountability Office report released today. The percentage of returns that are electronically filed is 89 percent, up from 85.7 percent last year.
Electronic Filing
Electronic filing is important, Shulman told the panel, because it costs the IRS just 17 cents to process an electronic return compared with $3.66 to process a paper return.
Shulman reiterated his opposition to House Republicans' spending proposals for the remainder of fiscal 2011.
He said a proposed cut of about $600 million to the IRS budget would have "potentially devastating effects to the nation's tax system" and cost the government $4 billion in forgone revenue.
To contact the reporters on this story: Richard Rubin in Washington at rrubin12@bloomberg.net Steven Sloan in Washington at ssloan7@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net
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