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The New York Times & Log In: Nov 23, 1:06pm (1 review) business, politics, the-meltdown http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/busine...; Senior management sang itself to sleep with happy-faced sophistry and now we discover why the Deregulation Panacea, The New World Order, Globalization, Free Trade, and so on, might be in the wrong hands to ever succeed together.

The extent conflicts of interest reigned now seem glaring and obvious but to the participants it was business as usual? More of this we don't need - but doubtless more is on the way.

From the page:

"Normally, a big bank would never allow the word of just one executive to carry so much weight. Instead, it would have its risk managers aggressively look over any shoulder and guard against trading or lending excesses.

But many Citigroup insiders say the bank's risk managers never investigated deeply enough. Because of longstanding ties that clouded their judgment, the very people charged with overseeing deal makers eager to increase short-term earnings -- and executives' multimillion-dollar bonuses -- failed to rein them in, these insiders say.

Today, Citigroup, once the nation's largest and mightiest financial institution, has been brought to its knees by more than $65 billion in losses, write-downs for troubled assets and charges to account for future losses. More than half of that amount stems from mortgage-related securities created by Mr. Maheras's team -- the same products Mr. Prince was briefed on during that 2007 meeting.

Citigroup's stock has plummeted to its lowest price in more than a decade, closing Friday at $3.77. At that price the company is worth just $20.5 billion, down from $244 billion two years ago. Waves of layoffs have accompanied that slide, with about 75,000 jobs already gone or set to disappear from a work force that numbered about 375,000 a year ago."

FT Alphaville & Blog Archive & Kemp: &8220;The United States is now,...: Oct 13, 1:02am (1 review) business, politics, fubar, financial-meltdown http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2008/10/...; Bankrupt?

You mean heading for a mild recession, right?

Thank heavens only the Financial Times believes this might be the case.

Oh... Wait... They know stuff.

From the page:

"First take a deep breath, and recall President Franklin Roosevelt's wise advice that there is nothing to fear but fear itself.

Then let's admit something painful: The United States is bankrupt, in the sense that it's assets (housing stock, corporations and cash flow, plant and machinery) are now worth much less than its liabilities (in the form of mortgage-backed securities, other debt and loan instruments). In particular, large parts of the housing stock are now worth much less than the owners paid for them, and less than the outstanding value of the mortgages, or the collateralised bonds that have been issued against them."

Asia Times Online :: Central Asian News and current affairs, Russia,...: Oct 10, 6:45pm (1 review) business, geopolitics, politics, oil, political-signals http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asi...; This is a two page article dense with the geopolitics of rivalry over oil.

The underlying theme is bungling of international relations. Even former Republican Secretaries of State, Kissinger and Schulz are alarmed at how easily the entire Caucasus region and its vast resources now could be lost. Thus amplifying Russia's growing wealth and power.

Beijing too will be weighing its international options differently as the US juggernaut gyrates and staggers.

The neo-cons have succeeded in wiping out pension plans, killing investment, killing any hope of socialized medicine, killing retirement plans, the housing market and so on - but what has been done even more carelessly is to chase oil hegemony militarily - and fail

From the page:

"Evidently, Washington is barely keeping pace with the Russian diplomacy. To make matters worse, the financial crisis at home has eroded US credibility. An entire ideology of economic development that US diplomats propagated in the region stands discredited.

There is huge political symbolism when Iceland expresses "disappointment" with the Western world and turns to Moscow for a 4 billion euro (US$5.5 billion) loan to salvage its economy from imminent bankruptcy. Such images make a lasting impression on the Central Asian steppes. "

Forum - brazil argentina abandon us dollar - Planet Netopia: Oct 8, 6:48pm (1 review) business, politics, the-meltdown, the-dollar http://www.planetnetopia.com/forum/posts...; This is not good news. If the oil exporting countries decide to do the same what will be the desired currency, the Euro? And if India and China want more for their products too?

Good luck! We';ll be living in yurts, real soon.

From the page:

"Brazil and Argentina have launched a new payment system in their bilateral trade, doing away with the US dollar as a medium of exchange.

The two Latin American nations started the Payment System on Local Currency (SML) on Monday following a last month agreement inked by their presidents to use local currencies in a bid to end transaction in dollars.

On Thursday, Argentine Central Bank President Martin Redrado and his Brazilian counterpart Henrique de Campos Meirelles signed the enforcement of the agreement for the SML, under which exports and imports between the two countries will take place with the Brazilian real (BRL) and the Argentine peso (ARS).

The new monetary system mainly favors small and medium industries in both countries because it will save them bank charges when averting their local currencies to dollars."

Q& E-voting security results awful, says Ohio secretary of state: Oct 8, 4:15pm (8 reviews) politics, fraud, evoting http://www.computerworld.com/action/arti...; Does anyone seriously still believe that electronic voting is anything but an invitation to electoral fraud? Ohio's Secretary of State claims the results of e-voting made her ill.

Why not consider the obvious medicine to purge the problem - stop farting about with testing to see how many ways the game can be rigged and ban e-voting right now.

End of problem. End of voter mistrust.

From the page:

"Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner will be under the national spotlight next month, overseeing what's expected to be the state's largest-ever turnout for a presidential election. It will also be her first as the state's chief election official.

The stakes will be just as high as they were for her Republican predecessor, J. Kenneth Blackwell, four years ago, when the narrowly decided state election was marred by charges of questionable results and complaints that some residents, largely in minority areas, were forced to wait hours to cast their votes."

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 10/07/2008 | In U.S. setback, judge orders...: Oct 7, 12:51pm (1 review) law, guantanamo, detentions-reversed http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/535...; Here's a sane precedent.

A federal judge decided that in order to incarcerate someone they need to have done something illegal first.

From the page:

"WASHINGTON "In a dramatic setback for the Bush administration, a federal judge ordered the U.S. government Tuesday to immediately transfer to the U.S. and release 17 Chinese-born Muslims detained for seven years at Guantanamo.

Reading his decision from the bench, Judge Ricardo Urbina declared the continued detention of the group from the ethnic Uighur minority to be "unlawful" and ordered the government to transfer the detainees to the U.S. by Friday.

The decision marked the first time a court has ordered the release of Guantanamo detainees into the U.S."

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China lung disease to kill 83m: Oct 6, 2:57pm (4 reviews) asia, pollution, china, fubar http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/...; An alarming study but even so apparently lacking in depth. The study projects cancer rates rising to an astronomical number of deaths from burning cooking fuels indoors and smoking - a double whammy.

Where are the rest of the whammies? Such as industrial toxins in the air, water, food supply. They don't count?

If household cooking and cigarettes can wipe out 80 million people without including vast industrial pollution, what would that add to the total? The economic miracle looks a lot more like wholesale economic cleansing.

From the page:

"A US study has suggested that more than 80 million people in China will die in the next 25 years as a result of lung disease.

The research says the vast majority of those premature deaths are preventable."

The Career Politician Virus | iCitizenForum: Oct 3, 10:18pm (3 reviews) politics, conflict-of-interest http://www.icitizenforum.com/discussion-...; They knew this in 1780?

From the page:

"In the 1780s, Alexander Tyler, a University of Edinburgh professor, stated that democracy was a transitory form of government - "[Democracy]] can only exist until voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship."

World news Feed Article | World news | guardian.co.uk: Oct 3, 7:00pm (1 review) business, china, politics, regulation, deregulation http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarti...; On other sites I've seen it argued that the farmers were poor and their standards must have been remiss.

They avoided the key question of consumer safety standards and their enforcement. Now that question is being answered as yet another disaster from deregulation and dereliction takes its toll.

From the page:

"BEIJING (AP) - More than a dozen additional Chinese dairy companies were named as violators after new tests on their milk powder products, further broadening a scandal affecting products ranging from baby formula to chocolate, authorities said.

The contamination has been blamed for the deaths of four children and kidney ailments among 54,000 others. More than 13,000 children have been hospitalized and 27 people arrested in connection with the tainting. An additional 31 batches of Chinese milk powder were found tainted with the industrial chemical melamine, according to data seen on the food safety administration's Web site Wednesday.

Out of the 20 companies on the list, 15 have not been named in previous tests."

Bethany McLean: Enron was the pit canary, but its death went unheeded...: Oct 3, 6:38pm (2 reviews) business, politics, the-collapse, fubar-uber-alles http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...; One of the Milo Minderbinder lessons of "Catch-22" was that only corruption can make Barking Mad Insanity look reasonable.

Perhaps Joseph Heller's classic anticipated the carnal embrace of Wall Street, The Corporate Swamp, The Auditors, and a Government most anxious to make things infinitely worse. I doubt it.

But after reading this page by Bethany McLean, contributing editor at Vanity Fair and co-author of the ENRON Video - "The Smartest Guys in the Room" you'll have a better understanding of how stupidity and corruption have fused.

From the page:

"As for the lessons we've forgotten, how about this one: financial statements aren't supposed to be fairytales.

. . . . . . . .

Said in another way, now financial services firms may be allowed to deceive investors about their status, with the regulators blessing that deceit. (An aside here. Those who say mark-to-market should be abolished argue that because there is no market, firms are being forced to value these securities at artificially low levels. But there is no market precisely because firms aren't willing to sell at a price at which a reasonable investor would buy.)"