The Northford News 02/05/2012 Free Local  Advertising
US News
CT News
Politics
Economy
Science
Mid-East
Iraq
Afghanistan
Pakistan
Asia
Africa
EU
Americas
Sources
Archives
About

 

Politics  
Treasury/Federal Reserve/Bailouts/SEC/IRS

Mortgage giant Freddie Mac bet against homeowners: report  US-owned mortgage giant Freddie Mac is holding billions of dollars in investments that only pay off if homeowners remain locked into high interest rates.

Fed says no rate hikes until at least late 2014

Fraud and Folly: The Untold Story of General Electric's Subprime Debacle What GE got in the bargain, former WMC employees say, was a place where erstwhile shoe salesmen, ex-strippers and even a former porn actress could sign on as sales reps and make big money pushing home loans. WMC's top salespeople earned a million dollars a year or more and lived fast, swigging $1,000 bottles of Cristal and wheeling around in $100,000 Ferraris and Bentleys. In pursuit of these riches and perks, several ex-employees claim, many WMC sales staffers embraced fraud as a tool for pushing through loans that borrowers couldn’t afford.

Records Shed Light On Fed's Emergency Loans At Height Of Crisis

GE Admits Ex-Traders Rigged Bids, Agrees To Pay Millions To Stop Probes

SEC Announced Latest Chump Change Settlement With GE Funding The Friday Before Christmas. Hmmm... If you blinked, you probably missed this. The SEC announced Friday that GE Funding would pay a mere $70.4 million (chump change to these people) to settle charges of bid-rigging.

THE BIG LIE: How Ideologues Smeared Fannie Mae But the S.E.C. complaint makes almost no mention of affordable housing mandates. Instead, it charges that the executives were motivated to begin buying subprime mortgages — belatedly, contrary to the Big Lie — because they were trying to reclaim lost market share, and thus maximize their bonuses.

U.S. Offers Banks Deal To Avoid Criminal Prosecution U.S. officials are offering 11 Swiss banks, among them Credit Suisse , a deal that allows them to avoid criminal prosecution in exchange for revealing full details of their U.S. offshore business to Washington, a paper reported on Sunday.

Corzine Grilled over MF Global Collapse After Witness Suggests Knowledge of Misused Funds

Six former Fannie, Freddie executives sued for securities fraud

BofA To Pay Record Sum To Settle Discriminatory Lending Claims Bank of America agreed to pay $335 million to resolve allegations that its Countrywide unit engaged in a widespread pattern of discrimination against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers on home loans.

Federal Judge Criticizes SEC For Being Too Soft In Another Settlement Shadowing last month's decision by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff to kibosh the agency's $258 million proposed settlement with Citibank, a federal judge in Milwaukee told the SEC that its proposed settlement with the Koss Corp. is too vague and asked the agency to provide more facts by January 24. In October the SEC charged Koss Corp., a headphone-manufacturer, with accounting fraud.

Judge Scolds SEC Again In Citi Case The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission got a fresh dressing-down from the judge who rejected its $285 million settlement with Citigroup Inc, as he said the regulator kept him out of the loop on its efforts to salvage the case.

Budget and Taxes

Over Two-Thirds Of Corporations Pay No Federal Corporate Income Tax

Obama

Obama: Millionaires should pay at least 30 percent in taxes.....Most Americans agree with "Buffett rule" concept, poll showsCurrently, most investment, or unearned, income from capital gains and dividends is typically taxed at a maximum rate of 15 percent rate. That's how Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney ended up paying a rate of about 14.5 percent on the $42.6 million he made over the past two years. Wage earners, by comparison, are taxed on a sliding scale that now tops out at 35 percent. However, 52 percent of Americans say that capital gains and dividends should be taxed at the same rate as income earned from work because the current policy increases the federal deficit and is unfair to people who don't have money to invest, according to the poll.

White House Rejects Oversight on Drone Killings

Obama's Union-Busting New Chief of Staff? Jacob Lew Helped Destroy Grad Students' Union at NYU

Daley Replacement Cashed In By Betting On Housing Crash President Barack Obama's choice to lead the White House budget office oversaw a Citigroup unit that profited off the housing collapse and financial crisis by investing in a hedge fund king who correctly predicted the eventual subprime meltdown and now finds himself involved in the center of the U.S. government's fraud case against Goldman Sachs.

Obama commits to universal birth control  The Obama administration announced Friday it would stand by a policy that requires virtually all insurance to cover family planning, including female contraceptives.

Administration rejects Keystone pipeline President Obama rejects a Canadian firm’s application for a permit to build and operate the pipeline, saying that a Feb. 21 deadline set by Congress had made it impossible to do an adequate review of the project.

GITMO/Bahgram/CIA-Blacksites

US Judge Nixes Lawsuit for Tortured Gitmo Detainee

Former Chief Prosecutor, Ex-Prisoner Call on Obama to Close Prison On the 10th anniversary of when the United States began detaining terror suspects at its Guantánamo Bay military base in Cuba, we speak with a former prisoner and the ex-chief U.S. prosecutor, who both call for the Obama administration to close the base. "People are locked up in isolation camps... People lost their hands, lost their eyes, lost their limbs," says Omar Deghayes, who was arrested in Pakistan as a terror suspect and held in U.S. custody from May 2002 until December 2007, most of that time at Guantánamo. "Some people were subjected to sleep deprivation. They weren’t allowed to sleep... And they had to live under those conditions for six years ... without being convicted of any crime, which is the most unacceptable thing

Senate Passes Insider-Trading Ban The new reporting requirements would not apply to transactions involving investments in mutual funds with “widely diversified” assets. The bill would prohibit members of Congress from trading stocks and other securities on the basis of confidential information they receive as lawmakers. It says explicitly that they are not exempt from the federal law and regulations that ban such insider trading.

Gingrich’s Tax Plan Would Give Millionaires A $600,000 Tax Cut

Anti-gay GOP pol. gives sperm to lesbians  The wife of a Republican former Alabama gubernatorial candidate says she was shocked to find out her husband, who had campaigned against same sex marriage, has donated sperm to several lesbian women.

Indiana GOP Secretary of State guilty of voter fraud

Though President Ronald Reagan called the right to vote the “crown jewel of American liberties,” many Republicans around the country have begun demanding increased voting restrictions in the name of fighting “voter fraud.” Though actual cases of voting fraud are so rare that a voter is much more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit fraud at the polls, one Republican official in Indiana has proved that lightning can strike himself. Yesterday, a jury found Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White (R) guilty on six felony counts of voter fraud, theft, and perjury. The conviction cost White his job, though he plans to ask the judge to reduce the charges to misdemeanors and hopes to perhaps regain the position.  Though actual cases of voting fraud are so rare that a voter is much more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit fraud at the polls, one Republican official in Indiana has proved that lightning can strike himself.

Major Romney Bundler Is Agent Of Foreign Government

By Josh Israel on Feb 2, 2012 at 4:30 pm

Ignacio E. Sanchez (credit: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)
Ignacio E. Sanchez is a lobbyist at DLA Piper, an influential global law firm and a major bundler for the Mitt Romney campaign. A ThinkProgress review of public records reveals Sanchez is also a registered foreign agent representing the interests of the United Arab Emirates and of a former president of the Dominican Republic.

Florida Republican Stripped Of Senate Chairmanship For Opposing Prison Privatization Scheme

Google Sponsors Tea Party Gathering Google, whose chairman has been an Obama adviser, is a sponsor of this month’s CPAC

Paul bills taxpayers $50K for air fare  Ron Paul has campaigned on cutting the size and cost of government, but it turns out the Texas Republican is a big spender when it comes to air fare

As recently as 2004, Ron Paul condemned the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

A reformed Jack Abramoff? The notorious lobbyist talks about how he justified his own crimes and whether D.C. can be saved from corruption

Billionaire gives $5 million to pro-Gingrich group A Las Vegas billionaire with ties to Newt Gingrich has given $5 million to an independent group backing the former House Speaker's presidential bid. A person familiar with the situation said casino mogul Sheldon Adelson made the contribution Friday to Winning Our Future, a pro-Gingrich super PAC. The person said Adelson would spend heavily to assist whichever candidate wins the Republican nomination.  

Romney says he pays US taxes _ about 15 percent His wealth and taxes suddenly a campaign focus, Mitt Romney said Tuesday he pays an effective federal tax rate of about 15 percent. That's far less than if his earnings were wages rather than gains from investments and dividends, and the disclosure under pressure triggered a sharp response from the Democratic White House as well as one of his GOP presidential rivals. Romney told reporters he also received money from speechmaking before he announced his presidential candidacy early last year "but not very much." He provided no details, but in his financial disclosure statement, released last August, he reported being paid $374,327.62 for such appearances for the 12 months ending last February. 

 

Ron Paul Opposed Government Aid For Asian Tsunami Victims

Friends: Ron Paul OK'd Racist Newsletters

GOP Presidential Candidates Tell Florida Uninsured Woman: You’re On Your Own

Bloomberg to Give $250,000 to Planned Parenthood After a breast cancer advocacy group decided to pull screening funds from Planned Parenthood, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said he would make up a large part of the missing money

House Republicans Order Journalist Arrested At Hearing

Colo. pol. claimed immunity in DUI stop   Colorado state Rep. Laura Bradford (R) was pulled over last week in Denver on the suspicion that she was driving under the influence.

Defense Spending

F-35 story shows why it's so hard to cut a federal program

Democratic Sen. McCaskill finds House defense bill riddled with earmarks

SERIOUSLY? Pentagon Finds No Fault In Its Ties To TV Analysts Pentagon public relations program that sought to transform high-profile military analysts into “surrogates” and “message force multipliers” for the Bush administration complied with Defense Department regulations and directives, the Pentagon’s inspector general has concluded after a two-year investigation.

U.S. makes $30B arms deal with Saudis

U.S., UAE reach deal for missile-defense system

Official in botched ‘Fast and Furious’ gun program refuses to testify

Goldman Ties Enrich Public and Private Life for Romney Goldman Sachs, which manages Mitt Romney’s family’s fortune, is also his largest source of campaign contributions.