Goldman Sh--ty Deal Testifies Loud and Clear, Drug Company Pays $500 Billion Fine, How to Detect Liars - News Headlines 27 Apr 2010

From Denny: The Senate hearing today with Goldman Sachs squirming in front of grilling Senators sure was entertainment TV at its best: a rockin' reality show! The real question remains that is this only to remain a fond memory of great dramatic theater or will the Congress actually get serious about taking these financial scumbags to task and put them in prison?


Sen. Levin Calls Goldman Sachs Allegations 'Deeply Troubling' (ABC) Senator Demands to Know Why Goldman Sachs Pushed 'Sh**ty Deal' on Clients

In a testy exchange at today's Senate grilling of Goldman Sachs executives, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., confronted a former Goldman trader with an e-mail in which another former Goldman executive described a mortgage-backed deal as "sh**ty."

The transaction in question was Timberwolf Ltd., a $1 billion collateralized debt obligation holding pieces of other CDOs. In an e-mail to Daniel Sparks, then head of Goldman's mortgage desk, Thomas Montag, Goldman's former head of sales and trading, called a set of mortgage-linked investments sold by the firm as "one shi**y deal," according to an e-mail that Sen. Levin quoted. Within five months, Timberwolf lost 80 percent of its value.

"Do you think it was a sh**ty deal?" Levin asked Sparks, one of seven Goldman executives appearing today. Sparks said he did not recall the e-mail, and did not directly answer the question.

"If you can't give a clear answer to that one Mr. Sparks then we're not going to get any clear answers from you today," Levin said.

In his opening remarks, Levin called the allegations against the Wall Street firm "deeply troubling."

"The evidence shows that Goldman repeatedly put its own interests and profits ahead of the interests of its clients and our communities," Levin said. "Its misuse of exotic and complex financial structures helped spread toxic mortgages throughout the financial system. And when the system finally collapsed under the weight of those toxic mortgages, Goldman profited from the collapse."



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It sure is amazing how the GOP thinks this idiot strategy will work FOR them in the November elections when poll after poll keeps reminding them the public and former Republicans have pulled away from them in favor of the Democrats. Now if the Democrats can just not step on their tongues, keep their spines strong and straight, get serious about all kinds of reform - then they might actually get to stay in office and run the country for a few decades before they get lazy again, forget to take care of the middle class and get thrown out in favor of lobbyist puppets Republicans. Yeah, that's choice in American politics...


Stance Against Financial Bill Risky For GOP (NPR)

Republican senators are offering a united front to block a Democratic bill that would revamp the rules for Wall Street. But the GOP's hard stand against the bill is not without political peril, party strategists warn -- and it has the potential to hurt the party with voters this fall.

"I think most people believe that Wall Street got away with something," says Reed Galen, a Republican consultant who was deputy campaign manager for Sen. John McCain's presidential bid.

Republicans blocked the financial overhaul bill from moving to the Senate floor for debate. The vote was 57-41, three short of the 60 needed for Democrats to advance their measure. A third test vote is expected on Wednesday.

On Monday night, all 41 Senate Republicans -- plus one Democrat -- blocked the bill . But no matter what they think about the details of the bill, Republicans have to be careful of appearing to be the party of the "wealthy, detached elite," Galen says.

The GOP also should be wary of playing into the hands of Democrats, who are privately pleased that they have been handed much-needed fodder -- and a simple message -- for the fall midterm elections. Republicans expect to make significant
gains on Capitol Hill...





Yes, Mr. Vice President, this IS a "Big F--king Deal!" :)


Biden 'Absolutely Confident' On Economic Recovery (NPR)

Vice President Joe Biden is bullish on the Obama administration's efforts to mend the U.S. economy after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

"I'm absolutely confident that the policies that we put in place are sending the economy and the American public in the right direction," Biden told NPR's Robert Siegel on Tuesday.

Last week, Biden told a political fundraiser in Pittsburgh that the economy would create 100,000 to 200,000 jobs a month, adding that there will be some months in which as many as 250,000 to 500,000 jobs would be created. The comments prompted White House spokesman Robert Gibbs to quip: "He's an optimistic man, and that's why we like him."

Biden acknowledged Tuesday that those predictions were "a long way [from erasing] an 8-million-job deficit."

"What has to happen is there has to be continued forward progress," Biden said. "There's going to be ebbs and flows ... but it has to constantly be moving in the direction of job creation..."





And yet another huge Scumbag Alert...


AstraZeneca Paying $520 Million To Settle Seroquel Charges (NPR)


AstraZeneca became the latest drug giant to pay up for marketing an anti-psychotic medicine for uses the Food and Drug Administration had not approved.

Federal officials announced a $520 million settlement of civil charges stemming from the drug maker's promotion of Seroquel, an antipsychotic with sales of $4.9 billion worldwide last year.

AstraZeneca pushed doctors to write Seroquel prescriptions for a host of unapproved uses, including anger management, post-traumatic stress disorder and sleeplessness, the settlement alleges. The drug was improperly promoted for use in children and also the elderly.

In addition, the government claims the company curried doctors' favor with money. "AstraZeneca paid kickback to doctors as part of an illegal scheme to market the drug for unapproved uses," Health And Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said at a news conference about the settlement.





I like the way Wall Street says this is no big deal because they were expecting it. Yeah, I guess not when they are making billions every quarter off the derivatives market to this day going unregulated! No wonder they are not sweating the small stuff.


Stocks Plunge on Europe's Deepening Debt Woes (CBS/AP) Dow Jones Plummets 213 Points as Debt Problems in Greece and Portugal Threaten Global Economy

Investors are once again worried that debt problems in Greece and Portugal could threaten the global economic recovery.

Stocks plunged in the U.S. and Europe Tuesday after Standard & Poor's downgraded the debt of the two European countries. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 213 points, its worst loss in almost three months. All the major market indexes were down about 2 percent.

The ratings downgrades also sent the dollar up more than 1.1 percent against the euro, hitting its highest level in about a year. At the same time, gold and Treasury prices also rose as investors sought safer investments. The three often do not trade in the same direction.

"It was a knee-jerk reaction," said Brian Peardon, a wealth adviser at Harrison Financial Group in Citrus Heights, Calif. Peardon said the small size of Greece and Portugal's economies mean their debt struggles are not yet a major problem. But if they were to default on their debt, other countries that hold their bonds would also suffer...





Hmmm... if you want to learn how to spot a liar just hike on over to Liars News aka Fox News. Just watch their lips move and you will automatically know on the spot that they are lying about everything - even what they had for breakfast. Yes, it's that bad over there. Definitely Liars News has only two kinds of audience draw: weak minds that believe lies easily and those who enjoy mocking them. Yep, that about sums it up!


Dr. Phil: How to Sniff Out a Liar in Your Midst (CBS) Famed Talk Show Host Tells of Common Indicators that Someone is Lying to You

Can you spot a cheater?

Dr. Phil can.

Famed talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw, better known simply as Dr. Phil, appeared on "The Early Show" Tuesday to tell you how you know someone's lying...



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And for the laughing bizarre story of the day...


Police Say Man Wrapped In Toilet Paper Robs Store (CBS) Nebraska Police Say Man Who Concealed His Face With Toilet Paper Robbed A Convenience Store


LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - A man who concealed his face by wrapping his head with toilet paper robbed a Lincoln convenience store. Police said the man was armed with a knife when he robbed the store around 10:30 on Saturday night. He escaped on foot with an undisclosed amount of money from the safe.

Capt. David Beggs said Sunday that no one was injured.


And that's all she wrote...




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Prez Clinton Interviews, Slamming Wall Street, Tea Party Spat With Fox, Volcano Effect - News Headlines 19 Apr 2010

From Denny: President Clinton is remembering the toxic political rhetoric back when Timothy McVeigh made the decision to become a domestic terrorist 15 years ago. That vile man killed a lot of innocent people, including 19 children. He had no remorse. What kind of unhinged mind targets soft target civilians instead of military installations? Targeting the innocent and unarmed is not protesting the government. It's depraved indifference insanity.

The Republicans are beating the drums to create more domestic terrorism by whipping their base into a lather and a furor. At least the FBI has arrested many of the crazies issuing death threats. Many have cut natural gas lines to the houses of relatives of the politicians of their hate choice of the day.

The insanity won't stop until ALL the persons of conscience in this country stand up to be counted against this violence and domestic terrorism.



Prez Clinton interviews:

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Can it be? The Tea Party and Fox News now don't trust each other? Was it a political lovers' spat? :) (Who cares?) Well, Keith Olbermann had some fun with this so-called news story from the no news station, Fox:

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What's Next In The Goldman Sachs Case? (NPR)

the SEC announced on Friday:

The SEC is looking into mortgage deals packaged by other banks, the WSJ reports.

Deutsche Bank, UBS and Merrill Lynch (now owned by B of A) all put together mortgage-based investments that "soon went sour," the Journal says, but it isn't clear which deals the SEC is investigating. Several banks "helped market designed-to-fail investments on behalf of the hedge fund Magnetar, which was betting on that failure," Paul Krugman writes in his NYT column today. Krugman cites the reporting of Planet Money partner ProPublica; ProPublica's Web site has more on which banks were involved in these deals.

The leaders of the U.K. and Germany called for investigations of Goldman.

The biggest loser in the Goldman deal that's the focus of the SEC suit wound up being the Royal Bank of Scotland, which paid out roughly $841 million, according to the SEC's complaint. RBS was bailed out by the British government. The German bank IKB, which also received a bailout, lost nearly $150 million on the deal.

Goldman made several arguments to rebut the SEC charges.

In a statement, Goldman said the investors in the deal, who were "among the most sophisticated mortgage investors in the world," "were provided extensive information about the underlying mortgage securities." That allowed them to assess the risks those securities presented. Goldman denies the SEC's charge that it said Paulson & Co. was going to be a long investor in the deal. (Paulson took the short side of the deal.) And, Goldman says, it lost $90 million of its own money on the deal. Goldman is reporting its quarterly earnings tomorrow, by the way.

Politicians rushed to tie the Goldman case to finance reform.

If you Google "Goldman Sachs SEC," one of the ads that comes up is a headline that says "Help Change Wall Street." Click on it, and you're sent to barackobama.com, where you get a message about "accountability on Wall Street." The site is run by the Democratic National Committee, according to Politico, which wrote about the ad. We'll doubtless hear more about Goldman this week from the Senate, which is scheduled to debate the big finance-reform bill.





I was wondering how this Icelandic volcano was going to start impacting other parts of the world because of spewing so much ash into the air. Eventually, that ash has to land somewhere.

Icelandic Volcano Hurts Kenyan Flower Growers (NPR) Europe's volcano-related flight restrictions will start to ease up tomorrow...

The broader effects should be relatively mild, economists say, provided the slowdown doesn't go on for too long. That's largely due to the fact that almost all exports and imports travel by boat, rail or truck, rather than by air.

But some producers of time-sensitive goods have been hit hard. Take Kenya's horticulture business, which consists largely of selling fresh-cut flowers to European buyers. It's the country's biggest industry, accounting for 20% of exports, and it's been slammed.

More than 3,000 tons of flowers have already been thrown away because of the slowdown, the BBC reports. Exporters of flowers, fruits and vegetables are losing some $3 million per day.





In case you haven't heard already... looks like two more terrorists went to meet their Maker to explain their foolish lifestyle.


U.S. Confirms 2 Al-Qaida In Iraq Leaders Killed (NPR/AP)

The two top al-Qaida in Iraq figures have been killed in a joint operation by American and local forces, Iraq's prime minister and U.S. military officials said Monday.

The deaths were touted by America's top general in Iraq as possibly the most significant blow to the terror group since the beginning of the insurgency and a sign of the growing strength of Iraqi security forces.

But the news, which comes as U.S. forces prepare to end combat operations, belies the resiliency of Sunni terror groups that have shown their ability to change tactics and launch new and deadly attacks despite repeated strikes to their leadership.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced the killings of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri at a news conference in Baghdad and showed reporters photographs of their bloody corpses. The deaths were later confirmed by U.S. military officials in a statement.

The U.S. military said they were killed in a nighttime raid on their safe house Sunday near Tikrit, the hometown of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. An American helicopter crashed during the assault, killing one U.S. soldier, the military said...

Al-Masri was the shadowy national leader of al-Qaida from Iraq, which he took over after its Jordanian-born founder, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a June 2006 U.S. airstrike. Al-Masri's real name was Abdul-Monim al-Badawi, according to a 2009 al-Qaida statement describing the makeup of a new "War Cabinet."

Al-Baghdadi is the self-described leader of the al-Qaida linked Islamic State of Iraq, identified by U.S. military officials Monday as Hamid Dawud Muhammad Khalil al-Zawi. Past Iraqi claims to have captured or killed al-Baghdadi have turned out to be wrong, and the Islamic State of Iraq has issued at least two denials of his capture.

Al-Baghdadi was so elusive that at times U.S. officials also have questioned whether he was a real person or merely a composite of a terrorist that the ISI invented to bolster its threats. The U.S. military once even asserted that audio recordings in the name of a fictitious al-Baghdadi were in fact read by someone else.






Distrust Of Government Undermines Obama's Support (NPR)

For a Democratic administration that wants to do big things with government, the severe erosion of trust in government is a real problem -- and President Obama knows it.

"We have to recognize that we face more than a deficit of dollars right now," he said during this year's State of the Union address. "We face a deficit of trust -- deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years."

What the president calls a deficit of trust has been impossible for him to surmount -- and it's undermining support for him and his policies, says Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center that just completed a big survey looking at Americans' growing distrust of government.

"No other factor loomed as large in preventing Americans from embracing the proposals of the Congress and Barack Obama than views about government," Kohut says. "A president who wants to use government to solve problems when a public says, 'We don't trust the government; we want less government,' is a problem."

In Kohut's poll, 84 percent of those opposed to the president's new health care law said the reason was too much government. In November 2008, 43 percent said they wanted a smaller government with fewer services. That number has now grown to 50 percent...



This is a good story and you may want to click on the title link to see the rest. NPR is going to be running several stories about the history of mistrust of government in America. After all, it's what our country was founded upon: "throw the bums out!" And the British made a hasty exit... :)





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