Click here to view this media A conservative website claimed Thursday that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has promised to investigate President Barack Obama’s eligibility to run for re-election. According to WorldNetDaily , about 325 so-called birthers gathered Wednesday night to sign a petition alleging that Obama planned to use a fake birth certificate to run for office in 2012. Jerome Corsi, author of, Where’s the Birth Certificate? reportedly presented Arpaio with the petition during a one-hour meeting Thursday. “Arpaio told the tea party leaders the complaint is within his jurisdiction, and he will be forced to investigate,” WND wrote. “He said he expects political pressure, but he pointed out that as the chief law enforcement officer of Maricopa County, he’s taken an oath to respond to citizens who approach him about enforcing the law.” But in a statement Friday, Arpaio had a slightly different version of events. “What I have agreed to do, contrary to some published media reports, is simply look at the evidence these people have assembled and examine whether it is within my jurisdiction to investigate the document’s authenticity,” Arpaio said.
Continue reading …Bozell: Christine O’Donnell’s Reaction to Piers Morgan Was ‘Downright Bizarre’
August 19, 2011 No Comment
Editor's Note: The following commentary by NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell was posted late this afternoon on CNN.com . It's time to weigh in on the Christine O'Donnell v. Piers Morgan dust-up Wednesday. In short, O'Donnell's behavior was beyond indefensible. It was downright bizarre. The questions Piers Morgan put forward may have been trite, even seemingly silly, but given to whom they were being posed, they were not inappropriate. He asked if in her heart O'Donnell has committed lust. He asked her views on gay marriage. He asked her views on witchcraft and on masturbation. Titillating questions? Sure, but O'Donnell has staked out public opinions on all these fronts and it is those public statements she's made that invite questions like his. She had to know she'd be asked these things when she accepted the interview invitation. If she didn't then she's living in a parallel universe. Moreover, Morgan was neither Chris Matthews rude nor Keith Olbermann offensive. He simply asked the questions. O'Donnell had no right to reject the questions. Even worse, in declaring them inappropriate she made an ass of herself. She answered the gay marriage question by declaring, over and over, that the answer could be found in her book, which book she was there to promote, except she refused to discuss her position on gay marriage, which was in the book. She declared she was there to “talk about the issues I chose to talk about in the book,” and when asked by Morgan, “Do you answer that question in the book?” she answered, “I talk about my religious beliefs, yes. I absolutely do.” But she wouldn't answer his question about gay marriage, and instead accused him of being rude to her. Nonsensical is too kind. She is a buffoon. O'Donnell had no right to walk off the set. But in a sense I'm glad she did — if it means she'll never come back. Conservatives do themselves no favors by defending this woman and she is doing conservatives no favors by going on national television programs to talk about — God only knows what she'll talk about, or not talk about, next. Please, Christine O'Donnell, call it a day.
Continue reading …Bozell: Christine O’Donnell’s Reaction to Piers Morgan Was ‘Downright Bizarre’
August 19, 2011 No Comment
Editor's Note: The following commentary by NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell was posted late this afternoon on CNN.com . It's time to weigh in on the Christine O'Donnell v. Piers Morgan dust-up Wednesday. In short, O'Donnell's behavior was beyond indefensible. It was downright bizarre. The questions Piers Morgan put forward may have been trite, even seemingly silly, but given to whom they were being posed, they were not inappropriate. He asked if in her heart O'Donnell has committed lust. He asked her views on gay marriage. He asked her views on witchcraft and on masturbation. Titillating questions? Sure, but O'Donnell has staked out public opinions on all these fronts and it is those public statements she's made that invite questions like his. She had to know she'd be asked these things when she accepted the interview invitation. If she didn't then she's living in a parallel universe. Moreover, Morgan was neither Chris Matthews rude nor Keith Olbermann offensive. He simply asked the questions. O'Donnell had no right to reject the questions. Even worse, in declaring them inappropriate she made an ass of herself. She answered the gay marriage question by declaring, over and over, that the answer could be found in her book, which book she was there to promote, except she refused to discuss her position on gay marriage, which was in the book. She declared she was there to “talk about the issues I chose to talk about in the book,” and when asked by Morgan, “Do you answer that question in the book?” she answered, “I talk about my religious beliefs, yes. I absolutely do.” But she wouldn't answer his question about gay marriage, and instead accused him of being rude to her. Nonsensical is too kind. She is a buffoon. O'Donnell had no right to walk off the set. But in a sense I'm glad she did — if it means she'll never come back. Conservatives do themselves no favors by defending this woman and she is doing conservatives no favors by going on national television programs to talk about — God only knows what she'll talk about, or not talk about, next. Please, Christine O'Donnell, call it a day.
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Kazuma Obara became the first photojournalist to gain unauthorised access to the power plant Christine Oliver Mark Rice-Oxley
Continue reading …Kazuma Obara became the first photojournalist to gain unauthorised access to the power plant Christine Oliver Mark Rice-Oxley
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Communities secretary labels proposals for tax on expensive property – championed by Lib Dems – a ‘very big mistake’ Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, has highlighted a rift in the government’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition by describing proposals for a so-called “mansion tax” on expensive property as “a very big mistake”. He said that the idea, which is being actively championed by Liberal Democrats, would hit “many ordinary middle-class families” because of the high property prices in some areas of the country. “We as a government have got to understand middle-class families put a lot into this country and don’t take a lot out. It would be a very big mistake to start imposing taxation on the back of changes in property values, particularly with big regional variations,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “People will suddenly find themselves in a mansion and they hadn’t realised it was a mansion. If it is only going to be mansions, the kind of thing you and I would regard as a mansion, it ain’t going to raise very much.” Before the election the Lib Dems proposed a so-called “mansion tax” worth 1% on homes worth more than £2m. The proposal did not make it into the coalition agreement. But it has not been forgotten and in his speech to the Lib Dem conference last year, Vince Cable, the business secretary, said that, given the difficulty of raising taxes on income in a world of mobile labour, “a progressive alternative is to shift the tax base to property and land”. In his budget in March George Osborne, the chancellor, said the government would be be “redoubling our efforts to find ways of ensuring that owners of high-value property cannot avoid paying their fair share”. Conservative ministers played down the significance of this announcement, but Lib Dems have presented this as evidence that a “mansion tax” of some kind is still on the agenda. Some Tories are in favour too. In an article in the Guardian this week, Tim Montgomerie, editor of the ConservativeHome website, backed the proposal. Liberal-Conservative coalition Tax and spending Eric Pickles Liberal Democrats Tax Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Communities secretary labels proposals for tax on expensive property – championed by Lib Dems – a ‘very big mistake’ Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, has highlighted a rift in the government’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition by describing proposals for a so-called “mansion tax” on expensive property as “a very big mistake”. He said that the idea, which is being actively championed by Liberal Democrats, would hit “many ordinary middle-class families” because of the high property prices in some areas of the country. “We as a government have got to understand middle-class families put a lot into this country and don’t take a lot out. It would be a very big mistake to start imposing taxation on the back of changes in property values, particularly with big regional variations,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “People will suddenly find themselves in a mansion and they hadn’t realised it was a mansion. If it is only going to be mansions, the kind of thing you and I would regard as a mansion, it ain’t going to raise very much.” Before the election the Lib Dems proposed a so-called “mansion tax” worth 1% on homes worth more than £2m. The proposal did not make it into the coalition agreement. But it has not been forgotten and in his speech to the Lib Dem conference last year, Vince Cable, the business secretary, said that, given the difficulty of raising taxes on income in a world of mobile labour, “a progressive alternative is to shift the tax base to property and land”. In his budget in March George Osborne, the chancellor, said the government would be be “redoubling our efforts to find ways of ensuring that owners of high-value property cannot avoid paying their fair share”. Conservative ministers played down the significance of this announcement, but Lib Dems have presented this as evidence that a “mansion tax” of some kind is still on the agenda. Some Tories are in favour too. In an article in the Guardian this week, Tim Montgomerie, editor of the ConservativeHome website, backed the proposal. Liberal-Conservative coalition Tax and spending Eric Pickles Liberal Democrats Tax Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Taibbi: The SEC Has Been Destroying Investigation Records For Two Decades – Even Though They’re Supposed To Be Archived
August 19, 2011 No CommentI can think of few things that have been more toxic to our democracy than the realization that no laws apply to Wall Street, and they will never, ever, ever have to face actual consequences for their crimes. Matt Taibbi on how the SEC covered up criminal acts on Wall St.: Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time the cops fail to make a case. No more Lifetime channel specials where the murderer is unveiled after police stumble upon past intrigues in some old file – “Hey, chief, didja know this guy had two wives die falling down the stairs?” No more burglary sprees cracked when some sharp cop sees the same name pop up in one too many witness statements. This is a different world, one far friendlier to lawbreakers, where even the suspicion of wrongdoing gets wiped from the record. That, it now appears, is exactly how the Securities and Exchange Commission has been treating the Wall Street criminals who cratered the global economy a few years back. For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed. By whitewashing the files of some of the nation’s worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG. With a few strokes of the keyboard, the evidence gathered during thousands of investigations – “18,000 … including Madoff,” as one high-ranking SEC official put it during a panicked meeting about the destruction – have apparently disappeared forever into the wormhole of history. Under a deal the SEC worked out with the National Archives and Records Administration, all of the agency’s records – “including case files relating to preliminary investigations” – are supposed to be maintained for at least 25 years . But the SEC, using history-altering practices that for once actually deserve the overused and usually hysterical term “Orwellian,” devised an elaborate and possibly illegal system under which staffers were directed to dispose of the documents from any preliminary inquiry that did not receive approval from senior staff to become a full-blown, formal investigation . Amazingly, the wholesale destruction of the cases – known as MUIs, or “Matters Under Inquiry” – was not something done on the sly, in secret. The enforcement division of the SEC even spelled out the procedure in writing, on the commission’s internal website. “After you have closed a MUI that has not become an investigation,” the site advised staffers, “you should dispose of any documents obtained in connection with the MUI.” Many of the destroyed files involved companies and individuals who would later play prominent roles in the economic meltdown of 2008. Two MUIs involving con artist Bernie Madoff vanished. So did a 2002 inquiry into financial fraud at Lehman Brothers, as well as a 2005 case of insider trading at the same soon-to-be-bankrupt bank. A 2009 preliminary investigation of insider trading by Goldman Sachs was deleted, along with records for at least three cases involving the infamous hedge fund SAC Capital. Go read the details — if your stomach can take it.
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Jittery traders focus on ‘safe haven’ investments as collapsing shares fuel panic at the exchanges Fresh turmoil on the world’s financial markets on Friday saw gold rise to record levels, the dollar sink to its lowest-ever level against the Japanese yen, and share prices gyrate wildly in Europe and North America. A day of rumours and extreme nervousness saw shares in Britain’s biggest companies lose all the gains in the market seen since the FTSE 100 index bottomed out on 11 August. Despite an afternoon rally, prompted by speculation that the US Federal Reserve was about to hold an emergency meeting to tackle the growing sense of market panic, the FTSE closed 51.47 points down at 5040.76, a decline of 1%. The Dow Jones industrial average also lost confidence later in the day as no announcement from the Fed was forthcoming and closed down 172.93 at 10,817.65, a fall of 1.6%. Earlier, London shares had collapsed after Thursday’s heavy selling on Wall Street prompted steep falls on Asian bourses. Fears that the global economy was heading for a double-dip recession, and signs that Europe’s bailout of Greece could collapse, saw the FTSE lose more than 3% of its value at one stage, sending it well below the 5000 mark. The steadier start to trading on Wall Street helped calm nerves in the City at the end of another frenetic week that saw markets once again focus on their two major concerns: growth and the fragility of Europe’s single currency. “This week has seen a continuation of the trend of weaker than expected data and political reaction to the European problems which pretty much amounts to ‘let’s have a get-together a couple of times a year’,” said Gary Jenkins, an analyst at Evolution Securities. The jittery atmosphere sent investors heading once again to the safe havens of the Swiss franc, the Japanese yen and gold. Bullion rose as high as $1,881 an ounce, with some dealers expecting it to test the $2,000 an ounce level over the coming weeks. On the foreign exchanges, the dollar dropped to just under ¥76 against the Japanese currency and was also down against the Swiss franc and the pound. The dollar’s fall helped underpin oil prices, with a barrel of Brent crude trading almost $2 higher at just under $109 a barrel. Switzerland’s two biggest banks, UBS and Credit Suisse, have denied that they made use of the Federal Reserve’s swap facility via the Swiss National Bank, insisting they have no liquidity problems. There had been speculation that a Swiss bank had accessed the US liquidity facility via a $200m repurchase transaction with the SNB last week. Evangelos Venizelos, Greece’s finance minister, said his country’s €109bn bail-out was not in doubt, despite the fissures within Europe being laid bare by the demands of five countries for collateral in exchange for paying into a rescue fund for the weaker countries in the monetary union. Venizelos also said the recession in his financially troubled country could be deeper than originally predicted for this year, with output potentially shrinking by more than 4.5%. His comments came a day after the Netherlands, Slovenia, Austria and Slovakia said on Thursday they wanted hundreds of millions of euros in collateral, in the same vein as Finland, which struck a deal with the Greek government earlier in the week to receive cash as security for its part of the bailout. Brussels sought to ease fears by stressing that Olli Rehn, Europe’s economic and monetary affairs commissioner, was looking at a plan for common European bonds, seen as a step towards closer financial integration among the 17 single-currency nations. European banking shares fell to near two-and-a-half-year lows, dragged down by rumours about banks’ potential losses on bonds issued by heavily indebted governments. Earlier, Asian shares took a beating, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 index dropping 2.5% to 8719.24 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng down 3.1% to 19,399.92. Concerns that weak growth in Europe and the US would hit China’s exports affected sentiment in Shanghai, where the stock market’s composite index ended 1% lower at 2534.6 after dipping almost 2% earlier in the day. Some strategists said it was a good time to pick up stocks cheaply. Nick Bubb, retail analyst at Arden Partners, said: “If you want to buy when there’s blood on the streets, and on the screens, then today is a good day to pick up good quality, high-yielding general retail defensives like Marks & Spencer and WH Smith, as well as undervalued global retailers like Inchcape and Kingfisher. And in the food retailers, we wouldn’t want to be short of Wm Morrison, ahead of its interims on 8 September.” Investors continued to swap risky investments for those viewed as safe. The yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury bill rose, but only slightly, to 2.10%, after hitting a record low of just below 2% on Thursday. Bond yields fall as their prices rise in line with demand. Stock markets European debt crisis European banks Economic growth (GDP) Economics US economic growth and recession Global recession Global economy Commodities Bonds Currencies Financial crisis Banking Larry Elliott Julia Kollewe guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Jittery traders focus on ‘safe haven’ investments as collapsing shares fuel panic at the exchanges Fresh turmoil on the world’s financial markets on Friday saw gold rise to record levels, the dollar sink to its lowest-ever level against the Japanese yen, and share prices gyrate wildly in Europe and North America. A day of rumours and extreme nervousness saw shares in Britain’s biggest companies lose all the gains in the market seen since the FTSE 100 index bottomed out on 11 August. Despite an afternoon rally, prompted by speculation that the US Federal Reserve was about to hold an emergency meeting to tackle the growing sense of market panic, the FTSE closed 51.47 points down at 5040.76, a decline of 1%. The Dow Jones industrial average also lost confidence later in the day as no announcement from the Fed was forthcoming and closed down 172.93 at 10,817.65, a fall of 1.6%. Earlier, London shares had collapsed after Thursday’s heavy selling on Wall Street prompted steep falls on Asian bourses. Fears that the global economy was heading for a double-dip recession, and signs that Europe’s bailout of Greece could collapse, saw the FTSE lose more than 3% of its value at one stage, sending it well below the 5000 mark. The steadier start to trading on Wall Street helped calm nerves in the City at the end of another frenetic week that saw markets once again focus on their two major concerns: growth and the fragility of Europe’s single currency. “This week has seen a continuation of the trend of weaker than expected data and political reaction to the European problems which pretty much amounts to ‘let’s have a get-together a couple of times a year’,” said Gary Jenkins, an analyst at Evolution Securities. The jittery atmosphere sent investors heading once again to the safe havens of the Swiss franc, the Japanese yen and gold. Bullion rose as high as $1,881 an ounce, with some dealers expecting it to test the $2,000 an ounce level over the coming weeks. On the foreign exchanges, the dollar dropped to just under ¥76 against the Japanese currency and was also down against the Swiss franc and the pound. The dollar’s fall helped underpin oil prices, with a barrel of Brent crude trading almost $2 higher at just under $109 a barrel. Switzerland’s two biggest banks, UBS and Credit Suisse, have denied that they made use of the Federal Reserve’s swap facility via the Swiss National Bank, insisting they have no liquidity problems. There had been speculation that a Swiss bank had accessed the US liquidity facility via a $200m repurchase transaction with the SNB last week. Evangelos Venizelos, Greece’s finance minister, said his country’s €109bn bail-out was not in doubt, despite the fissures within Europe being laid bare by the demands of five countries for collateral in exchange for paying into a rescue fund for the weaker countries in the monetary union. Venizelos also said the recession in his financially troubled country could be deeper than originally predicted for this year, with output potentially shrinking by more than 4.5%. His comments came a day after the Netherlands, Slovenia, Austria and Slovakia said on Thursday they wanted hundreds of millions of euros in collateral, in the same vein as Finland, which struck a deal with the Greek government earlier in the week to receive cash as security for its part of the bailout. Brussels sought to ease fears by stressing that Olli Rehn, Europe’s economic and monetary affairs commissioner, was looking at a plan for common European bonds, seen as a step towards closer financial integration among the 17 single-currency nations. European banking shares fell to near two-and-a-half-year lows, dragged down by rumours about banks’ potential losses on bonds issued by heavily indebted governments. Earlier, Asian shares took a beating, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 index dropping 2.5% to 8719.24 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng down 3.1% to 19,399.92. Concerns that weak growth in Europe and the US would hit China’s exports affected sentiment in Shanghai, where the stock market’s composite index ended 1% lower at 2534.6 after dipping almost 2% earlier in the day. Some strategists said it was a good time to pick up stocks cheaply. Nick Bubb, retail analyst at Arden Partners, said: “If you want to buy when there’s blood on the streets, and on the screens, then today is a good day to pick up good quality, high-yielding general retail defensives like Marks & Spencer and WH Smith, as well as undervalued global retailers like Inchcape and Kingfisher. And in the food retailers, we wouldn’t want to be short of Wm Morrison, ahead of its interims on 8 September.” Investors continued to swap risky investments for those viewed as safe. The yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury bill rose, but only slightly, to 2.10%, after hitting a record low of just below 2% on Thursday. Bond yields fall as their prices rise in line with demand. Stock markets European debt crisis European banks Economic growth (GDP) Economics US economic growth and recession Global recession Global economy Commodities Bonds Currencies Financial crisis Banking Larry Elliott Julia Kollewe guardian.co.uk
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