German students back obama

AIG Executives - Stealing Taxpayers Bailout Funds

Daniel from APO, AE — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 06:27:15 EDT

AIG Executives' $165M In Bonus Money Draws Ire

by Robert Smith, National Public Radio / NPR

All Things Considered, March 15, 2009 · When word got out that insurance powerhouse AIG was going ahead with massive bonuses to some executives, despite the company's acceptance of federal bailout money, the reaction from the White House and Congress was immediate.

"There are a lot of terrible things that have happened in the last 18 months, but what's happened at AIG is the most outrageous," said Larry Summers, President Obama's chief economic adviser, speaking on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

AIG will pay bonuses totaling $165 million. The money comes from taxpayers, funneled through the multibillion dollar bailout plan, but the president's top advisers and congressional leaders say they can't do anything about it.

AIG executives made trillions of dollars of bets that subprime mortgages could never go bad. When they tanked, the government felt compelled to prop up the company with $170 billion in taxpayers' funds. Even with the money, AIG recently posted a loss of nearly $62 billion — the largest corporate loss in history.

Summers, however, can't blame the owners of AIG: After the bailout, taxpayers now control 80 percent of the company. And Summers says those bonuses must be given to the people who ran the company into the ground — because they signed contracts before the company crashed.

"We are a country of law. There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts. Every legal step possible to limit those bonuses is being taken by [Treasury] Secretary [Timothy] Geithner," Summers said.

Geithner reportedly had some stern words with the company's chairman this week.

Edward Liddy, who was chosen by the government to run AIG, wrote in a letter Saturday that he, too, thought the bonuses were distasteful, but that his hands were tied.

And, Liddy added, AIG needs to retain the best and brightest talent if it's ever going to pay back the American taxpayers.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill aren't buying that argument. Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, also speaking on ABC's This Week, raised the idea that perhaps the bonuses could be rescinded if there were some sort fraud involved.

"Did they enter into these contracts knowing full well that, as a practical matter, the taxpayers of the United States were going to be reimbursing their employees? Particularly employees who got them into this mess in the first place," McConnell said.

Democratic Rep. Barney Frank agreed that the government has to do everything to try to recover the bonuses. Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Frank said if the government can't get the money back, it should at least get the people responsible.

"Who said, and at what point, 'We're going to give those bonuses no matter what'? And I do think it's inappropriate to let those people stay in power at that company."

Should some executives at AIG lose their jobs over the bonuses, at least they'll have a cushion to fall back on. According to The New York Times, the highest bonus guaranteed under the contract is $6.5 million. Seven executives in the very same unit that brought down the company will get more than $3 million each.

Congress speech and reactions

Unknown user — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:31:06 EST

Hey folks,

I gathered serveral videos about the speech to congress. Have a look Obama congress videos (opens in a new window)

regards

SHAMELESS GREED of INVESTMENT BANKERS

Daniel from APO, AE — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 07:31:55 EST

02/20/2009 02:50 PMSHAMELESS GREEDGlobal Rage at Bankers' Bonus Excesses

By SPIEGEL Staff

Banks around the world may have made huge losses and be reliant on state bailouts to survive, but they're still paying out huge bonuses to their top staff. The popular outcry against the greed is growing -- but few bankers are willing to go without the cash.

Investment banker Stefan Jentzsch was far away, recovering from the exertions of the previous year on a yacht somewhere in the Caribbean, when the banks almost collapsed -- and his world fell apart.

The past has since caught up with him back at home, where his name is in the papers almost every day. Jentzsch, 48, has suddenly gained notoriety as the man who was still raking in millions after his bank had lost billions, and as the man who is responsible for bonus payments that amounted to €400 million ($520 million) -- costs that German taxpayers will now have to bear.

Jentzsch was the head of Dresdner Kleinwort, an investment bank that was never terribly successful and, in fact, did particularly poorly last year. For the first nine months of 2008, it registered a loss of €2.2 billion ($2.86 billion). The bank's loss for the entire year will be significantly higher, because the decline only accelerated in the fourth quarter. Dresdner Bank, Kleinwort's parent company, ran into financial difficulties and was acquired by rival Commerzbank, which had its own problems and had to be bailed out twice by the government.

By that time, Jentzsch had already said his goodbyes and had taken with him a severance payment of about €8 million ($10.4 million), a golden handshake that was completely legal and to which he was entitled. He is also entitled to a bonus worth an unknown amount. But now that he has become a household name, Jentzsch claims that he no longer wants the bonus.

When Jentzsch was still at the helm of Dresdner Kleinwort, he made sure that its then-owner, insurance giant Allianz, guaranteed its investment bankers bonus payments for 2008 totaling €400 million ($520 million).

The bonuses are now due, even though the government has since acquired 25 percent of Commerzbank and has had to spend €18.2 billion ($23.7 billion) bailing out the bank, an amount that could still end up not being enough.

Jentzsch has become the face of public outrage over bankers who destroyed billions and ruined the economy, all the while taking steps to ensure that they were sitting pretty -- bankers who have unloaded the disastrous results of their actions on the public's doorsteps but are doing nothing to help alleviate the problems. In fact, some are even reaching into the government's pockets.

There are many people like Jentzsch nowadays, all over the world. Every country has its own Jentzsch, and citizens everywhere have been overcome with anger and helpless fury. The bonus payments are an especially sore point. Though small compared with the total extent of the damage caused by investment bankers, which numbers in the trillions, they exemplify the greed and shamelessness of a profession once seen as part of society's elite.

"The common good depends on a certain level of moderation in the individual," says German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). "Such excesses are the expression of a loss of connection with reality, and they threaten the basic consensus of our society."

Social Democratic Party (SPD) chancellor candidate Frank-Walter Steinmeier agrees: "I keep being shocked by the loss of any sense of reality and the cynicism of some leading executives. Executives are role models -- in both good and bad aspects."

Rarely has public outrage been so unanimous, reaching from the citizen on the street into the cabinet, from Chancellor Angela Merkel to US President Barack Obama.

"It is incomprehensible that banks helped out by the state in many cases pay out huge sums in bonuses," says Merkel. Executive bonuses will also be a subject of discussion at the G-20 summit in London in early April. "Overall the bonus system must be linked to the truly sustainable success of the banks in an internationally more transparent way."

The subject of bonuses has given a new impetus to the discussion of executive salaries and compensation that has long worried the politicians in the two parties that make up Berlin's grand coalition government, the SPD and the CDU. Federal Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries, who earns a net monthly salary of about €8,000 ($10,400) and, as the daughter of a pharmacy owner, tends to favor the pro-business wing of the SPD, wants to see more "social responsibility" and the "awareness of an honorable businessperson" among Germany's business elite.

Zypries said she is astonished that "bonuses are paid essentially as part of fixed salaries, and they are even earned when a company is on the brink of bankruptcy."

Labor Minister Olaf Scholz has been traveling around Germany for weeks, meeting with company executives and urging them not to lay off employees despite the crisis and declining orders and sales. Scholz too finds executive greed hard to believe, saying that in firms "where employees are accepting reduced working hours and wages, generous bonuses cannot be paid."

For Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner, the bonus payments represent one of the triggers of the crisis. "When bank customers must accept losses, those responsible for the losses should not be rewarded," says Aigner, a member of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU).

The grand coalition has rarely been this united. Bankers have now gambled away any moral capital they may once have had, so much so that some now refer to members of the profession as "banksters" -- gangsters in pinstriped suits. They were once known in German as Bankiers and were considered the gentlemen of the business world. Then Germans began using the English word "banker," which sounded more modern. But as the name changed, so did the profession's self-image. The new bankers emulated their Anglo-American role models, the luminaries of Wall Street.

DER SPIEGEL

Graphic: Wall Street bonus payments, 1985-2008

Banks shifted their focus to making profits instead of supplying credit to the economy. As returns rose, so did the risks. Avoiding those very risks had been the profession's supreme objective in the age of the gentlemen bankers.

But in the age of investment bankers, a new rule applied: the bigger the risks, the better. Risk seemed manageable, thanks to sophisticated products and mathematical models. But the complexity of those models only gave the illusion of security.

Didn't anyone ever step back and ask themselves whether this brave new world where there were no real risks could even be possible? Or were such questions simply suppressed because an honest answer would have jeopardized the bankers' own lifestyle?

For a long time, everyone benefited from the system, including investors both large and small. But most of all the investment bankers themselves profited. With the help of increasingly absurd salary- and bonus systems, they managed to funnel 50 percent of all profits into their pockets. The sums involved ran into billions.

What began as a perfectly sensible way to share profits developed more and more into a system of unrestrained greed.

The Illusion of Value

When Henry Paulson resigned from his job as CEO of the investment bank Goldman Sachs in June 2006 to serve as the US treasury secretary, he received a generous bonus of $18.7 million (€14.4 million). He was also permitted to sell his accumulated Goldman stock, worth $480 million (€369 million), earlier than had originally been stipulated.

Half a billion dollars, for one person, earned in only a few years -- what kind of work could be worth that much money?

None, not even honest work. But the activities of investment bankers had nothing to do with honest work, because the value that they created was merely an illusion. It was achieved on the basis of risks that would eventually bring down the entire system.

It is an irony of history that it was Henry "Hank" Paulson who, as treasury secretary of the United States, was called upon to fix the problems that members of his own profession created in the first place. Following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, one investment bank after another began to falter, and they were forced to flee into mergers or modify their business models and accept government money.

Paulson drummed up $700 billion (€538 billion) to avert the worst, but it wasn't enough. Now his successor, Timothy Geithner, plans to invest another $2 trillion (€1.5 trillion) in the ailing financial system -- money that the government doesn't have. No one knows whether it will help prevent the economic collapse of the country and the global economy. And no one knows how the government will ever be able to pay off the debt it must now take on.

The situation in Great Britain and Germany is not all that different. The governments there are approving bailout packages for previously unheard of sums, and they are investing in banks, some of which are being more or less nationalized.

The coalition government in Berlin has even drafted a law that would allow the country to expropriate shareholders of Hypo Real Estate. The crisis-ridden Munich-based mortgage lender is constantly requiring new government loan guarantees and aid and has already received €102 billion ($131 billion) from the state.

Even if the governments manage to avert the worst and stabilize the banks, the world economy is experiencing its worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. All of this is the consequence of a system that investment bankers invented, and from which they have benefited the most.

But the bankers deny their own culpability and refuse to do anything to atone for their sins. Even though many banks would have gone under without government help, it has only occurred to a very few bankers that they should pay back their bonuses, which are based, after all, on illusionary results.

Last November, German President Horst Köhler gave bank executives a piece of his mind. In a speech at the European Banking Congress in Frankfurt, he called upon the assembled members of the banking elite to go without their bonuses and use the money to help those affected most by the crisis instead.

"Those in your industry who made a lot of money as a result of the developments of the last few years could send a special message of solidarity by contributing to a fund," Köhler said at the time. Last week, he reiterated his proposal and noted how disappointed he was to see that not one bank executive had taken him up on his idea.

There are many, on the other hand, who are doing their utmost to hang on to their cash.

In the summer of 2007, IKB, a bank that lent money primarily to small and medium-sized businesses, was the first German bank to be hit by the financial storm. The provincial bankers had gambled in the US mortgage market, and IKB was only saved with the help of a bailout package paid for by banks and the government. After that, almost the entire management had to go.

The new management had IKB's balance sheet recalculated for the critical period 2006-2007. Suddenly the bottom line was much worse than before. The logical consequence was to demand repayment of bonuses that had already been paid out. But the then-chairman, Stefan Ortseifen, sued the bank over his dismissal and refused to repay €805,000 ($1,046,000) in performance-based bonuses. Joachim Neupel, another former member of the executive board, also refuses to relinquish his €451,000 ($586,000) bonus, which was to be deducted from his pension. A court in Düsseldorf ruled in Neupel's favor.

While Neupel and Ortseifen have challenged their employers' demands for repayment of bonuses, other former colleagues are more understanding. At the end of last year, Volker Doberanzke and Markus Guthoff each returned about €500,000 ($650,000) to IKB -- naturally without acknowledging any guilt whatsoever.

In Switzerland, Peter Wuffli, the former CEO of UBS, returned €8 million ($10.4 million), and in late November former UBS president Marcel Ospel and two other senior executives agreed to waive their claims to payments totaling €22 million.

DER SPIEGEL

Graphic: Wall Street bonus payments, 1985-2008

But what is this compared with the sums these bankers earned throughout their careers, and compared with the massive loss of more than €12 billion ($15.6 billion) that the bank made last year? The Swiss government was also forced to step in, and yet the bank, to the dismay of citizens and politicians, is paying out €1.4 billion ($1.8 billion) in bonuses for 2008.

"One can only distribute what one has earned," says Martin Blessing, the CEO of the now partially government-owned Commerzbank. "Companies that lost money should not be handing out bonuses."

A bonus, Blessing said in a speech to owners of small and medium-sized businesses, is "a supplementary payment that is based primarily on a company's overall economic success, and secondarily on personal performance -- in that order."

This sounds obvious enough, and yet it isn't, especially not in Blessing's case. Dresdner Kleinwort's 5,500 investment bankers received a commitment from their old employer, and now they are waiting for their last, big check.

The investment bankers at Dresdner Bank are not amused by the fact that Commerzbank is now reexamining each employment contract, partly in response to pressure from the federal government. "Allianz promised us a bonus pool. This was included in the purchase price for Dresdner Bank," says one senior manager.

The executive personally expects a bonus worth millions, because business, he says, was not all that bad in his division. If he does not receive the bonus, he plans to sue. His former co-workers are also gearing up for litigation, and he predicts that the labor courts will be flooded with "hundreds of cases."

Most investment bankers have little left to lose. According to one human resources consultant, 88 of the bank's 90 stock analysts in London were let go last week. Commerzbank plans to slash a total of 1,300 jobs in Dresdner's investment banking division. The bankers, for their part, acknowledge the brutality of the business with a shrug of the shoulders. Nevertheless, they insist on the pay to which they believe they are entitled. Even those who have already lost their jobs are still waiting for their bonus letters, which usually consist of a single sentence and a number.

At Deutsche Bank, most of the letters have already been distributed, as part of a ritual that takes place every year. The department manager summons each individual trader into his small glass box next to the trading room and hands over an envelope. Anyone who does not receive a bonus basically knows that he should start looking for a new job.

Instead of the €400 million ($520 million) distributed at Dresdner Kleinwort, Deutsche Bank handed out €3.5 billion ($2.7 billion) to its investment bankers. From secretaries to derivatives specialists, employees received an average of €234,085 ($180,065) each. This amount also includes base salaries, which often make up only 10 to 20 percent of total compensation at the upper levels of management.

Is €234,085 a lot of money or a little? It depends on one's point of view. In the previous year, the average at Deutsche Bank was €413,204 ($317,849). Investment bankers are not unaffected by a drop of more than 40 percent.

On the other hand, Deutsche Bank's investment bankers were responsible for a pretax loss of €7.4 billion ($9.6 billion). CEO Josef Ackermann owes it to his more stabile business units, like the consumer-banking division, that the overall loss was limited to €3.9 billion ($5.1 billion).

Top Deutsche Bank executives like Anshu Jain or Michael Cohrs, who can earn up to €20 million ($26 million) in a good year, are going without their bonuses this year. "Many others didn't receive a bonus either," says Ackermann. Traders who speculated with the bank's capital in stock markets or with structured loans went home empty-handed this time. The stars, some of whom earned more than Ackermann in past years, are now leaving the bank.

Other investment bankers continued to make a killing. Those who traded in German government bonds were able to earn a lot of money. Liquid securities like government bonds were in demand, as were smart traders with contacts. Hardly anyone seemed to care that the securities trading business managed by Jain was incurring high losses.

Deutsche Bank can do as it pleases, especially since it has not applied for government bailout money. Nevertheless, it relies indirectly on the fact that governments around the world have used trillions in public funds to protect the financial system from total collapse -- otherwise Deutsche Bank would no longer exist. Besides, Deutsche Bank was one of the major players in the market for the highly speculative transactions that ultimately triggered the financial crisis.

Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word

People like Boaz Weinstein, 35, helped to shape the bank's image. The New York-based banker is a talented chess player and a gifted gambler. Late at night, when the screens in the trading room went dark, he and his boys played poker. Whoever put a $100 bill on the table could be in the game.

Weinstein started working for Deutsche Bank at the age of 24 as a specialist for credit insurance, and at 27 he became one of the youngest directors Deutsche Bank had ever had. The market in credit derivatives, or CDS, was young and exciting, and hardly anyone in faraway Frankfurt understood it. It sounded like insurance. Weinstein used mathematical formulas to map out risk. Everything seemed great.

Because business was going so well, the bank kept funneling more and more capital to its star trader. It also took on risk of its own; after all, the dull business of consumer banking was something any neighborhood savings bank could do.

Deutsche Bank's dealers were entrusted with funds running into tens of billions to go on gambling sprees in the world's markets. Their orders comprised up to 20 percent of the bank's securities business.

Weinstein was one of the best. He raked in enormous profits for the bank and, of course, for himself. Investment bankers expect half of the profits they make to end up in their own bank accounts. According to the Wall Street Journal, Weinstein was earning about $40 million in annual pay for himself.

Last year, Weinstein was promoted to co-head of global credit trading at Deutsche Bank. When the global financial system collapsed in mid-September, it turned out that his bets were not quite as safe as he had expected. His department incurred losses estimated at $1.8 billion (€1.38 billion). The bank's risk managers are still in the process of liquidating his trading positions, some of which were for very long terms.

He will not be getting a bonus this year. But the news is not exactly disastrous for Weinstein, who left Deutsche Bank a few days ago to set up a hedge fund together with 15 other traders. The bank has even considered investing seed capital in the new fund.

For talented traders, Deutsche Bank represents the best of all worlds. The best of them were able to speculate with the bank's capital and maximum their incomes. The more risk they were able to take on, the higher the potential return. Until the system collapsed, that is.

None of the big banks is completely innocent. But who is willing to take the blame? How can the industry regain the trust it gambled away if it does not accept responsibility?

'A Reversal of Robin Hood'

When top banking executives were summoned before the British parliament's finance committee last week, they repeatedly used the little word "sorry." Their PR consultants had done their homework. But the executives still insisted that the crisis has nothing to do with the bonus culture and over-inflated salaries.

In fact, the opposite was the case, said Andy Hornby, the former CEO of the bank HBOS, who claimed to have lost a lot of money himself. He received his bonuses in the form of stock options, and their value plummeted when the bank ran into difficulties. HBOS has since been taken over by another bank, LloydsTSB. The government owns 43 percent of the new entity.

Former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott is leading the crusade against bonus payments by those banks that had to be rescued with billions in taxpayer money. "Using the contracts argument is absolutely nonsense," he said recently. "These contracts would have been worthless without the government. Without the government, these bankers would have been on the dole. We are seeing a reversal of Robin Hood -- rob the poor to pay the rich." Last week Prescott submitted to the House of Commons a petition with almost 30,000 signatures as part of his initiative to protest against the high payments.

In London's financial district, 3.6 billion pounds ($5.1 billion) in bonuses are scheduled to be paid out soon for the disastrous year of 2008. As large as this sum is, it is still only 40 percent of the total bonuses paid out in the previous year. Nevertheless, Schools Secretary Ed Balls, formerly current Prime Minister Gordon Brown's closest adviser when Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer, warns that the current crisis will be the worst global recession in more than 100 years. "These are seismic events that are going to change the political landscape," he said. "The economy is going to define our politics … in Britain in the next five years, the next 10 years and even the next 15 years."

It is no surprise that most Britons are furious. One of the principal targets of their outrage is the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which was so massively mismanaged by its former CEO Sir Fred Goodwin -- nicknamed "Fred the Shred" -- that it had to report a loss of close to 28 billion pounds ($40 billion) for 2008.

After spending 20 billion pounds ($28.4 billion) in taxpayer money to rescue RBS in the fall, the government now owns 68 percent of the bank. Nevertheless, the bank still plans to issue bonuses worth 340 million pounds ($484 million), albeit less than the 1 billion pounds ($1.42 billion) originally planned in bonuses. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling explained Tuesday that the bank would pay "the minimum it can with regard to its legal obligations," in reference to the fact that some employees are obliged by contract to receive bonuses.

The opposition, as well as Labour MPs like Prescott, called upon the government to prohibit the bonus payments despite the contractual agreements. At the same time, Prescott wrote an open letter to the new CEO of RBS, Stephen Hester, in which he criticized the bonus payments as "morally and economically outrageous." And although Hester told a parliamentary committee that he empathized "100 percent with the public mood" when it came to bonuses, the payouts will still be disbursed.

Hester's predecessor Fred Goodwin told the committee that he "could not be more sorry" for what had happened. Goodwin, who the Labour government had knighted in 2004, collected 13 million pounds ($18.5 billion) in bonuses himself over a 10-year period.

Disasters of the Universe

Not even bankers in the United States are excused for such excesses. Even in the motherland of unbridled capitalism, the mood has now shifted.

In the past, Americans had no objections to seven-figure salaries and giant bonuses. Wall Street was always at the core of the American dream, the place where anyone could make a lot of money in a very short time.

But they have taken it too far this time. Take, for example, former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain, who had his office redecorated for $1.2 million (€920,000) -- $1,400 (€1,070) waste basket included -- in the middle of the crisis. And even though his bank could only be saved by an emergency sale, Thain, who was forced to resign in January, refused to go without his $10 million (€7.7 million) bonus.

Or Richard Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers, who secretly sold his beachside villa in Florida to his wife for $100 (€77) to shelter some of his assets from pending civil suits. Fuld had originally bought the estate for $14 million (€10.8 million).

And then there were the executives at insurance giant AIG, rescued from bankruptcy with government funds, who had no qualms about rewarding top-performing employees with a hunting trip to England.

Then, of course, there was Bernard Madoff. The former head of the Nasdaq Stock Market allegedly cheated investors out of $50 billion (€38 billion) with an illegal pyramid scheme. On the day before Madoff's arrest, his wife withdrew $15 million (€11.5 million) from an account at a firm co-owned by her husband.

For many Americans, Wall Street executives now fall into one of two categories: those in the first group are arrogant and greedy, and those in the second are criminals and frauds.

The New York Times wrote that the former stars of Wall Street have now become star villains. Even author Tom Wolfe, who called the Wall Street gurus the "masters of the universe" in his novel "Bonfire of the Vanities," says he is "shocked" by the level of audacity.

A few weeks ago, when it was revealed that Wall Street had distributed bonuses worth $18.1 billion (€13.9 billion) in 2008, even the president could no longer hold his tongue. "That is the height of irresponsibility," said a visibly angry Barack Obama, who must now sell the American public yet another enormous bank bailout package to prevent the US economy from collapsing altogether.

In recent days, it was revealed that Merrill Lynch handed out bonuses of $1 million (€770,000) to each of 696 managers at the end of last year, even though the investment bank incurred a loss of $15 billion (€11.5 billion) in the fourth quarter alone and had to be bailed out by the government.

"It is abundantly clear that we are here amidst broad public anger at our industry," Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, said in a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee last week. "Many people believe -- and, in many cases, justifiably so -- that Wall Street lost sight of its larger public obligations and allowed certain trends and practices to undermine the financial system's stability."

The Wall Street luminaries had to submit to the committee's embarrassing questions for a full seven hours. They were asked questions like: "Why do you own a company jet?" or "Why on earth do you need bonuses? Do you get up earlier in the morning?"

Much of today's bonus system was established in the 1970s. At that time, investment banks were similar to law firms, with partners who divided up the profits. Employees with no share of the profits received a relatively modest bonus. Risk was generally kept within limits, because the partners, as principal owners, tended to favor more conservative policies.

But then large commercial banks like Citigroup and Deutsche Bank forced their way into the exclusive world of investment bankers, fighting hard for the business and the employees of the Wall Street investment houses.

One after another, the investment banks Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs became publicly traded companies, so as to improve their capitalization and distribute risk more broadly.

Everything had changed. They were now large, publicly traded financial corporations, and they had a new business model. Instead of relying solely on the highly volatile mergers and acquisitions business, as they had in the past, they began to speculate for themselves.

DER SPIEGEL

Graphic: Wall Street bonuses 1985-2008

For investment bankers, the rule of thumb was simple: the bigger the profit from these speculative transactions, the bigger the bonus. In only two decades, the total amount of bonuses paid out by Wall Street banks increased by a whopping 1,695 percent, from $1.9 billion (€1.46 billion) in 1985 to $34.1 billion (€26.2 billion) in the peak year, 2006. Some top executives were collecting bonuses worth 10 to 20 times their base salaries.

The bonus system acted as an "accelerant," says Nikolaus von Bomhard, head of the Münchner Rück insurance group, but others started the fires.

For Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, the arsonist-in-chief is a household name: Alan Greenspan. The hot era began in 1987, when Greenspan was named chairman of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve. Then-President Ronald Reagan wanted to get rid of Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. Although Volcker had successfully combated inflation, he could not be dissuaded from the idea that financial markets must be kept on a tight rein. Greenspan, an admirer of the author and philosopher Ayn Rand, who espoused laissez-faire capitalism, was of a different persuasion altogether.

The new Fed chairman loosened regulations and opened up the money supply further and further in the coming years. It was called "financial innovation" at the time, and no one wanted to, or was even permitted to stand in the way of "innovation."

In 2003, then-President George W. Bush, who was enthusiastic about all forms of deregulation, and representatives of various regulatory agencies posed for journalists as the liberators of the markets, armed with hedge clippers and chainsaws. From then on, Washington blocked attempts by state governments to impose tighter controls on mortgage lenders.

This was followed by the next step in the disaster, the loosening of equity capital requirements. In 2004, the agency that regulates US markets, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), began allowing the major investment banks to take on three times as much debt as before. This enabled them to buy large numbers of mortgage-backed securities, inflating the mortgage bubble even further.

The structure of the US financial system changed fundamentally in the next few years. The once-dominant commercial banks lost more and more ground to the reckless financial wizards in New York. They, in turn, invented increasingly fanciful products, with ever-more opaque names and ever-riskier structures.

At the beginning of 2007, the five largest US investment banks managed a combined portfolio worth $4 trillion (€3.1 trillion). Roughly 40 percent of all banking activity in the United States was now taking place in a high-risk zone.

But who cared? Investment money was abundant, coming from places like China and Dubai, as a result of Greenspan's low-interest-rate policies. Once banks began bundling credit risk into attractive packages which they immediately re-sold, they lost the incentive to scrutinize their borrowers. After all, they got their money back as soon as they sold on the loans.

The investment banks put more and more of their shareholders' money in questionable investments. But they were raking in enormous profits, and they kept charging ahead. Gradually, they divorced themselves from the real world and disappeared into a parallel universe of wealth, self-indulgence and unshakeable faith in their own infallibility.

All that counted was the transaction, because it served as the basis for the banker's longed-for bonus at the end of the year. Reservations about the system were pointless: No one got a bonus for preventing a crisis.

On the other hand, those who took high risks could have it made in just a few years. What was there to lose? If their bets paid off, they received the bonus. If not, it was the shareholders' problem. It was this mechanism of greed that was partially responsible for the financial crisis.

'I Hate Investment Banking'

In the world of investment banking, everything revolved around the bonus. The base salary, which could easily amount to $150,000 (€115,000) even for newcomers, was treated as little more than compensation for expenses. The true pay for an 80-hour week, for giving up one's personal life and living a life of nerve-wracking stress was the bonus, which could be five or 10 times as much as the base salary. The bonus paid for the luxury, for the Ferraris, the villas and an assortment of excesses.

In the past few years, luxurious condominium buildings have shot up all across Manhattan, futuristic glass towers with small apartments selling for the "starter" price of $2-3 million (€1.5-2.3 million). Their owners were junior traders, most of them Harvard or Princeton graduates in the early- to mid-20s who had found jobs with hedge funds.

Their bosses bought apartments in the most desirable spots along Central Park, where penthouse apartments sold for upwards of $70 million (€54 million). In what is probably the world's most expensive condominium building, a new, neoclassical structure worth a total of $2 billion (€1.5 billion), people like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Citigroup patriarch Sandy Weill live under the same roof with actor Denzel Washington -- who had to make do with an apartment on a lower floor.

Even a Hollywood star can seem downright poor when measured against the earnings of some investment bankers. Year after year, enormous sums of money were being extracted from companies in the form of bonuses.

The bonus mania being pursued by the banks and their employee was so obscene that in December 2006, the climax of the boom, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, became concerned about his company's image and urged his employees to practice moderation. "As stewards of the firm's reputation, I ask each of you to remember that our actions -- inside and outside of the office -- reflect on Goldman Sachs," he told employees in a voice mail message. "Even a perception of arrogance hurts all of us."

At the same time, Blankfein was collecting an unbelievable personal bonus of $53 million (€41 million), in addition to his annual salary of $220,000 (€169,000).

Goldman Sachs reported record earnings in 2007. The company expressed its appreciation by paying its employees a total of $18 billion (€13.8 billion) -- an average of $623,000 (€479,000) for each employee. Blankfein earned close to $70 million (€54 million).

In 2007, Lehman Brothers also celebrated the joys of making money and rewarded its employees by paying them $9.5 billion (€7.3 billion), $800 million (€615 million) more than in the previous year.

Not to be undone, Morgan Stanley, despite setbacks resulting from the beginnings of the banking crisis, paid $16.5 billion (€12.7 billion) in bonuses, an 18 percent increase over the previous year. CEO John Mack, who took home $40 million (€31 million) in 2006, had to make do with a modest $800,000 (€615,000) in 2007.

That year, Merrill Lynch CEO Stan O'Neal was sent home -- with a $161 million (€124 million) severance payment. His successor, John Thain, was paid $83 million (€64 million) in his first year on the job.

In 2007, Wall Street paid out more than $30 billion (€23 billion) and London's City €12 billion ($15.6 billion) in bonuses. Was there a financial crisis on the horizon? Perhaps, but the executives kept their cool. Even though his bank was in trouble, James Cayne, the then-CEO of Bear Stearns, remained calm as a cucumber. When his bank reported billions in losses, he was attending a 12-day bridge tournament in Nashville, and he was irritated at having to break it off and hurry back to New York. In the end, he quickly sold off his own Bear Stearns shares for well over $60 million (€46 million), before his life's work fell apart. Half of the money was just enough to buy two apartments in the converted Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue, one for his wife and one for himself.

The financial crisis hit Wall Street with full force in 2008, when Lehman Brothers and other big names disappeared. Unmoved, the bankers who had brought on the disaster paid themselves $18.4 billion (€14.2 billion) -- the sixth-largest bonus amount ever paid. In December 2008, the Associated Press reported that $1.6 billion (€1.23 billion) of the money that US taxpayers coughed up to bail out their banks ended up in the pockets of top executives.

Merrill Lynch, sold with an injection of about $230 billion (€177 billion) in government funds, still paid bonuses to its top performers. It quickly decided to pay bonuses worth $3.6 billion (€2.8 billion) early, in December, just before the shareholders approved the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America.

Today the banking industry's reputation is ruined. T-shirts featuring the slogan "I Hate Investment Banking" are currently selling like hotcakes in New York. For years, the Wall Street banks could attract the best and brightest of any university's graduates, but those students will likely look elsewhere in the future. After all, the government now determines what bankers earn -- at least at those banks which are taking money from the government. And that number is growing.

The new bailout plan for the financial industry unveiled by Treasury Secretary Geithner last week expressly put a cap on executive compensation. In the future, banks that accept public funds will not be permitted to pay their senior executives more than $500,000 (€385,000) in annual compensation, bonuses included. Executives in those banks will not be permitted to cash in their stock options until the government's money has been repaid. Even such customary perks as the use of company jets will be subject to radical restrictions.

At the same time, President Obama tried to make it clear that he has no intention of shaking the country's cultural roots. "This is America. We don't disparage wealth," Obama said. "We don't begrudge anybody for achieving success, and we certainly believe that success should be rewarded. But what gets people upset, and rightfully so, are executives being rewarded for failure."

Sources in Washington way that some of Obama's top advisers would have preferred to take things a step further. There was apparently a lengthy debate before Treasury Secretary Geithner managed to prevail over proponents of even tighter restrictions on banker compensation. One proposal under discussion was not only to impose salary limits on executives, but on all bank employees.

For Wall Street, on the other hand, even the watered-down rules go too far. In a recent essay for the Wall Street Journal entitled "Greed is Good," Roy C. Smith, a finance professor at New York University's Stern School of Business and a former Goldman Sachs partner, wrote that bonuses are "an important and necessary part of the fast-moving, high-pressure industry." Wall Street employees "flourish with strong performance incentives," he wrote.

Gordon Brown's close ties to the country's financial elite are probably one of the reasons why the British prime minister has been reserved on the question of bonuses. The government plans to limit such payments to 25,000 pounds ($35,500) for this year. The rest can be paid out in stock, which cannot be sold until all government money has been repaid. Under the program, this would also apply to private banks that take advantage of the government's insurance coverage for bad risks in the future.

With the approval of the next budget in late April, Brown wants to see new laws enacted to ensure that the way bankers are paid is changed. "We are leading the world in sweeping away the old short-term bonus culture of the past and replacing it with a determination that there are no rewards for failure and rewards only for long-term success," he said.

Stimulus Special

Unknown user — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:46:20 EST

Hey there!

I gathered some videos about the Stimulus Package. - Link - opens in a new window

Regards - Max

P.S.: And one video about the most expensive helicopter in the world, the Marine One: - Link - opens in a new window

New videos in my blog

Unknown user — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 07:30:38 EST

ENGLISH:

Hi everyone!

I gathered some new videos about president Obama.

Some of the CNN series "First 100 Days" and some Youtbe stuff. http://obama-videos.blogspot.com/

Have fun!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For everyone who wants to learn German...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DEUTSCH:

Hallo!

Ich habe ein paar neue Videos über President Obama gesammelt.

Einige aus der CNN Reihe "First 100 Days" und einige von Youtube. http://obama-videos.blogspot.com/

Viel Spass

Guten Morgen!

Unknown user — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:29:23 EST

Guten Morgen!

There is an update in my blog, it's a kind of stimulus video special. I collected several videos about the stimulus deal.

Don't miss it! http://obama-videos.blogspot.com/2009/02/stimulus-showdown.html

Max

Some new videos

Unknown user — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 11:19:57 EST

Hi everyone!

There are some new Video on my blog. Enjoy it: http://obama-videos.blogspot.com

President Obama - Please sign this bill !

Daniel from APO, AE — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 04:03:35 EST

US Rep Walter Jones: Punish Those Who Lie Us Into WarFebruary 09, 2009Daily News

U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., has introduced legislation that would impose fines or prison time on presidents or executive-branch officials who "knowingly and willfully" mislead Congress to gain authorization to use U.S. military forces.

Jones, who has repeatedly and publicly regretted his vote to support the war in Iraq, said that he doesn't know how far the Executive Accountability Act of 2009 will get when it comes to gaining passage. But even if all the bill gets is a springtime hearing in the House Judiciary Committee, Jones says, he thinks that is progress.

"We're saying, 'Mr. President, be sure,'" Jones said in an interview. "Be sure that if you are going to ask us to commit our boys and girls to risk their lives, that all the facts are on the table. ... Make sure there are no questions. ... Mr. President, you better be sure."

Jones' 3rd District is dotted with military bases, including Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in Havelock and Camp Lejeune and New River in Jacksonville. He thinks of the young men and women serving on those bases and others, he said.

And he rejects the notion that a bill requiring the president to tell the truth about a potential war is an extreme measure.

"The Constitution says that the Congress shall declare war ... but the Congress has been neutered," he said.

Jones said his decision to support the Executive Accountability Act is based on history. But it was the Clinton administration, not that of former President George W. Bush, that Jones discussed in the next breath.

In April 1999, Jones and about 15 other legislators filed a federal lawsuit opposing former President Bill Clinton's decision to commit troops to Kosovo.

The lawsuit "never went past the filing stage," Jones said

The Executive Accountability Act was introduced last week and is co-sponsored by Rep. Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat from Hawaii. If passed, the act would apply only to current and future presidential administrations and executive branches.

The act calls for fines or up to 10 years in prison for leaders found guilty of misleading Congress in order to get authorization to go to war.

The five-year statute of limitations on prosecuting any such crime would not begin until the end the presidential term during which the alleged crime happened, according to the legislation.

Jones invoked the words of Abraham Lincoln to explain his own reasoning for supporting the legislation.

"Lincoln famously said, 'I have faith in the people. ... The danger is, they are misled. Let them know the truth and the country is safe,'" Jones said. "Our country is safest when the people and their elected representatives in the U.S. Congress can make decisions based on hard evidence and facts."

3 New Videos

Unknown user — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:02:59 EST

Hey there!

There are 3 new videos on my blog.

1st video is about Obama's Supreme Court http://obama-videos.blogspot.com/2009/02/obamas-supreme-court.html

2nd video is about the Republicans who support Obama's plans http://obama-videos.blogspot.com/2009/02/gop-mayor-for-obama-plan.html

3rd video is an old one, but it reminds of the grassroots movement http://obama-videos.blogspot.com/2009/02/barack-obama-on-60-minutes.html

One add to: Media - Friend or Foe? - Arm yourself against lies! (4)

! Steffen from European Union, Dr. - Together We Can! Yes. We. Can. — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 14:24:57 EST

Let's use the member of campaign of change to help Obama and get the change.

Cable news and right wing blogs are swarming with the revisionist history on the New Deal. Arm yourself against lies, spin and propaganda by reading info from a number of sources.

Here down a article about this topic. [Media Matters is a progressive media watchdog and fact checking organization which has received accolades from numerous sources (except the right wing media which often gets debunked by Media Matters).]

The link to digg it and for article: Conservatives Cherry-Pick 1930s Unemployment Figures

Conservatives cherry-pick 1930s unemployment figures in continued assault on New Deal

Summary: Columnists Mona Charen and George Will continued a trend among conservative media of responding to comparisons between the current economic situation and that of the 1930s and between Barack Obama and FDR by attacking the New Deal. In separate columns, both Charen and Will cherry-picked unemployment figures to assert that the New Deal did not reduce unemployment. But historians and progressive economists have noted that unemployment fell every year of the New Deal except during the 1937-38 recession; further, Nobel-laureate Paul Krugman has said it was a reversal of New Deal policies, not a continuance of them, that contributed to rising unemployment in 1937 and 1938.

Yes we can! Best wishes, Steffen

http://changeforbetterworld.blogspot.com/2009/01/my-way-to-say-goodbye-to-neocons-bush.html

Formal Petition to Attorney General-Designate Eric Holder to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute any and all government officials who have participated in War Crimes.

Bailout is a Windfall to the Banks but not to Borrowers

Daniel from APO, AE — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 08:42:44 EST

January 18, 2009Bailout Is a Windfall to Banks, if Not to Borrowers By MIKE McINTIRE, New York Times

At the Palm Beach Ritz-Carlton last November, John C. Hope III, the chairman of Whitney National Bank in New Orleans, stood before a ballroom full of Wall Street analysts and explained how his bank intended to use its $300 million in federal bailout money.

“Make more loans?” Mr. Hope said. “We’re not going to change our business model or our credit policies to accommodate the needs of the public sector as they see it to have us make more loans.”

As the incoming Obama administration decides how to fix the economy, the troubles of the banking system have become particularly vexing.

Congress approved the $700 billion rescue plan with the idea that banks would help struggling borrowers and increase lending to stimulate the economy, and many lawmakers want to know how the first half of that money has been spent before approving the second half. But many banks that have received bailout money so far are reluctant to lend, worrying that if new loans go bad, they will be in worse shape if the economy deteriorates.

Indeed, as mounting losses at major banks like Citigroup and Bank of America in the last week have underscored, regulators are still searching for ways to stabilize the banking system. The Obama administration could be forced early on to come up with a systemic solution, getting bad loans off balance sheets as a way to encourage banks to begin lending, which most economists say is essential to get businesses and consumers spending again.

Individually, banks that received some of the first $350 billion from the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, have offered few public details about how they plan to spend the money, and they are not required to disclose what they do with it. But in conversations behind closed doors with investment analysts, some bankers have been candid about their intentions.

Most of the banks that received the money are far smaller than behemoths like Citigroup or Bank of America. A review of investor presentations and conference calls by executives of some two dozen banks around the country found that few cited lending as a priority. An overwhelming majority saw the bailout program as a no-strings-attached windfall that could be used to pay down debt, acquire other businesses or invest for the future.

Speaking at the FBR Capital Markets conference in New York in December, Walter M. Pressey, president of Boston Private Wealth Management, a healthy bank with a mostly affluent clientele, said there were no immediate plans to do much with the $154 million it received from the Treasury.

“With that capital in hand, not only do we feel comfortable that we can ride out the recession,” he said, “but we also feel that we’ll be in a position to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves once this recession is sorted out.”

The bankers’ comments, while representing only a random sampling of the more than 200 financial institutions that have received TARP money so far, underscore a growing gulf between public expectations for how the $700 billion should be used and the decisions being made by many of the institutions that have taken part. The program does not dictate what banks should do with the money.

The loose requirements in the original plan have contributed to confusion over what the Treasury intended when it abruptly shelved its first proposal — to buy up bad mortgages — in favor of making direct investments in individual banks in return for preferred shares of stock.

The Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., said in October that banks should “deploy, not hoard” the money to build confidence and increase lending. He added: “We expect all participating banks to continue to strengthen their efforts to help struggling homeowners who can afford their homes avoid foreclosure.”

But a Congressional oversight panel reported on Jan. 9 that it found no evidence the bailout program had been used to prevent foreclosures, raising questions about whether the Treasury has complied with the law’s requirement that it develop a “plan that seeks to maximize assistance for homeowners.”

The report concluded that the Treasury’s top priority seemed to be to “stabilize financial markets” by simply giving healthy banks more money and letting them decide how best to use it. The report also said it was not clear how giving billions to banks “advances both the goal of financial stability and the well-being of taxpayers, including homeowners threatened by foreclosure, people losing their jobs, and families unable to pay their credit cards.”

For the banks, fearful that the economic downturn could deepen and wary of risking additional losses, the question of what to do with the bailout money comes down to self-preservation.

Mark Fitzgibbon, research director at Sandler O’Neill & Partners, which sponsored the Palm Beach conference, said banks seemed to be allocating the bailout money for four general purposes: increased lending, absorbing losses, bolstering capital and “opportunistic acquisitions.” He said those approaches made sense from a business perspective, even though they might not conform to popular expectations that the money would be immediately lent to consumers.

“For the banking industry, this isn’t a sprint, this is a marathon,” Mr. Fitzgibbon said. “I think over time there will be pressure to lend that capital out and get a return for their shareholders. But they’re not going to rush out and lend all that money tomorrow. If they did, they could lose it.”

For City National Bank in Los Angeles, the Treasury money “really doesn’t change our perspective about doing things,” said Christopher J. Carey, the bank’s chief financial officer, addressing the BancAnalysts Association of Boston Conference in November. He said that his bank would like to use it for lending and acquisitions but that the decision would depend on the economy.

“Adding $400 million in capital gives us a chance to really have a totally fortressed balance sheet in case things get a lot worse than we think,” Mr. Carey said. “And if they don’t, we may end up just paying it back a little bit earlier.”

In addition to wanting more lending, members of Congress have said TARP should not be used to fuel mergers and acquisitions, although Treasury officials say the financial system would be strengthened if healthy banks absorbed weaker ones. To that extent, bailout money has been useful for improving capital ratios — the amount of money available to absorb losses — for banks that merge.

On Friday, Bank of America said it would receive $20 billion more from the Treasury to help it digest losses it took on by acquiring Merrill Lynch, a process begun in September.

At least seven banks that received TARP money have since bought other companies, including one that had been encouraged to do so by federal regulators. That one, PNC Financial Services, took $7.7 billion from the Treasury and promptly acquired the struggling National City Bank for $5.2 billion in stock and $384 million in cash.

Among the others, PlainsCapital Bank of Dallas announced in November, not long after the bailout program began, that it planned to merge with a healthy investment bank, First Southwest. PlainsCapital received $88 million from the Treasury on Dec. 19, and the all-stock merger was completed two weeks later. PlainsCapital’s chairman, Alan B. White, insisted in an interview that the two events were not connected.

He said the bank had not yet decided what to do with its bailout money, which he called “opportunity capital.” Increased lending would be a priority, said Mr. White, who did not rule out using it for other acquisitions, adding that when regulators invited PlainsCapital to apply for federal dollars, there were no conditions attached.

“They didn’t tell me I had to do anything particular with it,” he said.

None of the bankers who appeared before recent investor conferences offered specific details about their intentions, but recurring themes emerged in their presentations. Two of the most often cited priorities were hanging on to the money as insurance against a prolonged recession and using it for mergers.

At the Sandler O’Neill East Coast Financial Services Conference in Florida, bankers mingled with investment analysts at an ocean-front luxury hotel, where the agenda featured evening cocktails by the pool and a golf outing at a nearby country club.

During his presentation, John R. Buran, the chief executive of Flushing Financial in New York, said the government money was a way to up the “ante for acquisitions” of other companies.

“We can get $70 million in capital,” he said. “So, I would say the price of poker, so to speak, has gone up.”

For Mr. Hope, the Whitney National Bank chairman, “the main motivation for TARP” was not more loans, but rather to safeguard against the “possibility things could get a lot worse.” He said Whitney would continue making loans “that we would have made with or without TARP.”

“We see TARP as an insurance policy,” he said. “That when all this stuff is finally over, no matter how bad it gets, we’re going to be one of the remaining banks.”

Nationalize the Investment Banks and Fire the Executives !

Daniel from APO, AE — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 08:24:07 EST

January 27, 2009 US bets on bank executives to fix this mess by MATT APUZZO and DANIEL WAGNER, ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON -- They've been bailed out, but not kicked out. At banks that are receiving federal bailout money nearly nine out of every 10 of the most senior executives from 2006 are still on the job, according to an Associated Press analysis of regulatory and company documents.The AP's review reveals one of the ironies of the bank bailout: The same executives who were at the controls as the banking system nearly collapsed are the ones the government is counting on to help save it.Even top executives whose banks made such risky loans they imperiled the economy have been largely spared any threat to their jobs, as Washington pumped billions in taxpayer money into the companies. Less fortunate are more than 100,000 bank employees laid off during a two-year stretch when industry unemployment nearly tripled, bank stocks plummeted and credit dried up."The same people at the top are still there, the same people who made the decisions causing a lot of our financial crisis," said Rebecca Trevino of Louisville, Ky., a mother of three who was laid off from her job as a Bank of America training coordinator in October. "But that's what tends to happen in leadership. The people at the top, there's always some other place to lay blame."That workers and managers experience a recession differently is hardly a surprise. What's new is that taxpayers are now shareholders in the nation's bailed-out banks, yet they lack the usual shareholder power to question management decisions or demand house-cleaning in the executive suites.Wells Fargo & Co., for example, once was among the top lenders of subprime mortgages, or loans to buyers with low credit scores. The company received $25 billion in bailout money and plans layoffs in the coming months. But longtime CEO Richard Kovacevich remains the company's chairman, and the board recently waived its mandatory retirement age for him. John Stumpf, the president since 2005, became chief executive in 2007."Our senior leadership team of our CEO and his direct reports have an average tenure of almost a quarter-century with our company," Wells Fargo spokeswoman Julia Tunis Bernard said in a prepared statement. "Our unchanging vision, values and time-tested business model will continue to guide our leaders and our team into the future, and are now more than ever a competitive advantage as our industry evolves."Under the government's no-strings-attached bailout plan, taxpayers must take it on faith that bank executives will make better decisions this time around, said Jamie Court, president of the California-based group Consumer Watchdog."When you deal with the same dogs, you're going to end up with the same fleas," Court said.The bailout list includes banks of all sizes - from Wall Street giants to small community banks. Some led the rush into subprime mortgages. Others followed.Many executives on the list are small-town executives who don't earn anything close to Wall Street salaries and who suffered alongside their communities when the economy turned sour. The trouble with the bailout is that nobody in government ever stopped to figure out who caused the avalanche and who simply got buried, said University of Maryland business professor Peter Morici."If they got involved in questionable loans and contributed to the speculative bubble, they should be out," Morici said. "These people should be removed and banned from banking, unless we wanted to make them all janitors. But the question then is, 'Can they be trusted wandering around the offices at night?'"Barack Obama as president-elect and some in Congress have suggested auto company executives should lose their jobs as part of the bailout of that industry. But there has been no such suggestion about banks. Congress twice authorized $350 billion in bank bailout money. Both times, lawmakers set few conditions on the money.The president of the American Bankers Association, Ed Yingling, said he understands taxpayers are frustrated. But most banks had nothing to do with the subprime crisis, he said. As for whether taxpayers should demand management changes, he said that was never a condition of the bailout plan the government crafted."Are we going to have the American people saying, 'We're invested in you, so now we should look at your margins, look at every loan you make, look at your lending policies?' No. That was never discussed," Yingling said. "You can't micromanage banks."In some cases the market held executives accountable for the mortgage crisis. When banks such as Washington Mutual, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers were bought up, many executives lost their jobs. When the government took over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, directors and executives were fired.But the financial bailout has resulted in no such consequences. AP's review of the more than 200 publicly traded banks that received federal bailout money found that about 87 percent of the top three executives in 2006 - typically the chief executive, operating and financial officers - still remain on the job.And that number is deceptively low, since those few executives who left their jobs often did so because they retired - or died. Several stayed on as directors or in consulting positions.Even banks that were involved in risky lending saw little turnover:-JPMorgan Chase & Co., which invested billions in subprime mortgages, has the same leadership team, led by CEO James Dimon. Dimon made about $28 million in 2007. The company is shedding about 10 percent of its investment bank staff.-Cleveland-based KeyCorp, which ran subprime lending subsidiary Champion Mortgage until late 2006, received $2.5 billion in bailout money. Its chairman and CEO, Henry Meyer, has been in charge since 2001. Jeffrey Weeden, the company's chief financial officer, and Thomas Stevens, the administrative officer who oversaw the risk review group, have been on the job for years.KeyCorp has been cutting jobs over the past two years, including 200 announced this month at a Tacoma, Wash., call center. A company spokesman said the bank was too busy preparing its earnings report to answer questions about whether taxpayers should have confidence in the company's management."The on-the-record comment I would make is that we declined to comment even though we'd like to, because we don't have time," spokesman Bill Murschel said.-Capital One Financial Corp., one of the nation's biggest credit-card providers, dove into the risky mortgage business when it bought GreenPoint Mortgage in 2006. GreenPoint made exotic loans to borrowers without verifying income or credit scores, then sold those loans to investors.A year later, Capital One shuttered GreenPoint, cutting 1,900 jobs. CEO Richard Fairbank and his top executives were not among them. The company received about $3.5 billion in bailout money.In Louisville, Trevino and her family are living mostly off credit cards and savings while she interviews for jobs. Her husband is in commercial real estate, which has slowed significantly. After what she described as a bare-bones Christmas, she said she looked over her household finances and realized they might lose their home."That's when I was just, 'Lord, I know you have a plan. Can you just show me? I'd really like to know,'" she said.Trevino said she isn't upset that her old boss, Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, is still on the job. There are others in the industry with greater responsibility for the crisis, she said.Trevino agreed the federal government needed to rescue the banks but said there should have been some oversight."It is surprising that leadership can make decisions that lead to financial ruin for so many," she said, "and then get bailed out for it."---Associated Press writer Bruce Schreiner in Louisville, Ky. contributed to this report.

Wall Street Executive Bonuses = $ 70 Billion of the $ 700 Billion US Taxpayers' Bailout

Daniel from APO, AE — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 07:59:43 EST

Wall Street Payouts And Bonuses Being Financed By Bailout Funds?

Have you heard the latest?

$70 Billion of the $700 Billion bail-out is going to the wall street bankers/staff in the form of bonuses. Simon Bowers of the Guardian wrote the article on October 18, 2008. No mention of this anywhere in the US media. .

Financial workers at Wall Street’s top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash, the Guardian has learned.

Staff at six banks including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are in line to pick up the payouts despite being the beneficiaries of a $700bn bail-out from the US government that has already prompted criticism. The government’s cash has been poured in on the condition that excessive executive pay would be curbed.

Mr. Bowers’ piece brings up a good point: What ever happened to all that tough-talk on Capitol Hill about restricting excessive executive pay as a condition of receiving bailout funds? Looks like it was all talk, as usual. According to United Press International yesterday:

Executive pay limits mandated by the $700 billion financial bailout bill may not have any teeth to them, a Democratic congressman warned.

“I found seven loopholes that will protect their outrageous paychecks and golden parachutes,” Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., wrote in a letter to fellow Democrats before the bailout bill passed. “Imagine how many more loopholes the Wall Street lawyers will find to protect their CEOs’ paycheck,” DeFazio wrote.

While not technically a loophole, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who will oversee the new standards for executive pay, may be the best bet for executives who want to protect exorbitant pay packages, the Palm Beach, Fla., Post reported…

Technically, the bill only limits one of the hidden bonus deals executives frequently receive, the golden parachutes that allow them huge payments when they are fired, the Post reported.

Back when the bailout legislation was still being scripted, Gail Russell Chaddock of the Christian Science Monitor wrote:

“There have to be consequences for the people who aided, abetted, and created this system,” says Rep. Peter DeFazio (D) of Oregon, who reports that his office has been deluged this week with calls from constituents opposing the bailout.

“Anyone taking assistance from the federal government should have dramatic limits over their executive compensation,” he adds. Taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook “to make these firms whole … so they can pay their bonuses this Christmas.”

Well, by the looks of it, Wall Street is going to have a very Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, courtesy of Joe Six-Pack’s tax dollars.

And what about this “best bet” loophole UPI talked about. Sarah Anderson, director of the Institute for Policy Studies Global Economy project, and Sam Pizzigati, an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow, wrote the following yesterday as guest columnists for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has executed two fairly slick about-faces since Congress passed the $700 billion Wall Street bailout two weeks ago.

The first makes eminent sense. The second should outrage you…

Here’s what’s still bad. Remember all that talk about the bailout legislation placing limits on excessive CEO compensation? That talk appears to have been a rather cynical smokescreen. Paulson and his top deputy, according to news reports, are assuring top Wall Street executives they have nothing to worry about on the paycheck front.

Those executives have plenty of reasons to trust the assurances. The bailout legislation that passed Congress does place some limits on excessive executive pay. But the limits come with a giant loophole. Paulson — alone — wields the ultimate power to define what counts as “excessive” and what doesn’t. The American people have absolutely no reason to trust Paulson, a former high-finance CEO himself, on executive pay. In his bailout negotiations with Congress, Paulson fought restrictions on CEO compensation at every turn. He simply doesn’t see excessive executive pay as a problem that desperately needs fixing.

Following up on his original piece about Wall Street payouts and bonuses being planned despite helping steer us into a financial storm, Simon Bowers of The Guardian (UK) wrote earlier today about a possible investigation into the matter. Bowers wrote:

US congressman Dennis Kucinich has called for an inquiry into remuneration proposals at Wall Street’s top banks, after a Guardian report revealed that six distressed institutions had drawn up pay plans, including substantial discretionary bonuses, worth more than $70bn for the first nine months of the year.

Kucinich, an outspoken Democratic opponent of the US taxpayer’s $700bn bank bail-out, said his staff would immediately begin asking Wall Street firms set to benefit what plans they had to distribute bonuses.

“When Congress placed restrictions on excessive executive pay, it had no intention of permitting business as usual with respect to bonus structures,” he said. “It would add insult to injury to ask taxpayers not only to bail out a firm, but to pay for bonuses as well. The Guardian’s report necessitates an immediate inquiry.”

Sources:

“Wall Street banks in $70bn staff payout”
Simon Bowers
The Guardian (UK), October 18, 2008

“CEO pay now in former CEO’s hands”
UPI, October 20, 2008

“Congress to Wall Street: ‘Curb excessive pay and perks’”
Gail Russell Chaddock
Christian Science Monitor, September 24, 2008

“Rewrite bailout rules on CEO pay”
Sarah Anderson, Sam Pizzigati
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 20, 2008

“Call for inquiry into Wall Street bank bonuses”
Simon Bowers
The Guardian (UK), October 21, 2008

Merrill Lynch - Executive Bonuses - taken from $ 700 Billion Taxpayers' Bailout

Daniel from APO, AE — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 07:37:18 EST

January 27, 2009Op-Ed ContributorMoney for Nothing By DAVE KRASNE, New York Times

MERRILL LYNCH lost $27 billion last year, and yet still managed to rush through $4 billion worth of year-end bonuses in the days before it was taken over by Bank of America.

Because both companies have been the beneficiaries of the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, news of these bonuses was met with predictable uproar: Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of New York threatened to investigate; any elected official with access to a microphone joined in a chorus of “shame on you”; and around every water cooler and on every cable channel, pundits offered up scathing commentaries of Wall Street greed.

Merrill Lynch is not the only irresponsible institution out there. Despite a year of record losses, despite all the taxpayer money being injected into our financial institutions, bonuses for 2008 were, in some cases, down less than 50 percent from those the previous year.

This is shocking, of course, but what’s been missed in these discussions is how completely the culture of executive compensation has permeated the financial industry. One need not even be an executive to receive a bonus far in excess of the yearly salary of people in most other professions.

Bonuses, which typically consist of some multiple of an employee’s base salary, are doled out to everyone from the 22-year-olds just out of college (these are called analysts) to managing directors (banker parlance for the most senior rank attainable).

I spent much of my early career at Merrill Lynch, and I can still remember how I yearned for the holiday season, because it signified bonus time. And by “bonus time,” I mean that brilliant 10-minute conversation during which you learned how many zeros would be on that year’s check.

The euphoria that followed justified the days on end of working into the wee hours, the months on end without a single day off, the never-ending “fire drills” — when a client wanted something and wanted it now, whether it was 7 p.m. or 7 a.m. — that kept the stress and adrenaline levels high.

For some, euphoria quickly gave way to anger and envy upon hearing what their colleagues got paid. Luckily for management and shareholders, that anger twisted itself into motivation to work even harder, get even less sleep and put up with even more in order to get a better bonus next year. For others, the days after bonus distribution were the perfect time to jump to another firm for more responsibility, authority and, no surprise, more money.

That’s not to say that bonuses are always bad. When I graduated from business school in early 2000 and returned to Wall Street, there was a war for talent raging. Without those bonuses, firms simply couldn’t attract the best and brightest and certainly couldn’t get 100-hour work weeks out of them. And when profit is created through ingenuity and hard work, it deserves to be rewarded handsomely — that is the American way.

But we’ve come to the end of outsized paper profits generated from proprietary trading operations and 30-to-1 leverage. So too has the war for talent waned. Firms are disappearing or laying off thousands. In this environment of bleak job prospects, investment bankers who got a smaller bonus in 2008 than they did in 2007 won’t be running for the exits and the greener pastures of Lehman or Bear Stearns.

Yet some institutions that begged for taxpayer aid to stave off bankruptcy — simply to stay alive — made 2008 compensation packages their first order of business after receiving their bailouts. This speaks to how completely foolhardy behavior has overtaken our industry. It certainly defies logic and sensible business practice. After all, it’s one thing to reap great rewards when creditors are being repaid and shareholders are earning a return; it’s quite another to reward failure almost as well.

Year-end bonuses also undermine the efforts of the troubled assets program. The whole point of the program was to bolster the equity capital bases of recipients. But any bonuses paid just reduce the earnings or increase the losses sustained by the firms paying them, which in turn decreases the equity capital base of those firms. Shareholders are justifiably angry and have plenty to sue about; the case could certainly be made that management and compensation committees ignored their fiduciary duty when 2008 bonuses were scheduled and paid.

Honestly, I’m not sure if I should be more offended as a taxpayer or as a shareholder of Merrill Lynch. I suppose there’s no difference nowadays, because we taxpayers are among the largest shareholders of many American financial institutions.

Regardless, financial institutions clearly relied on Uncle Sam’s largess when they agreed to authorize 2008 incentive compensation packages. Politicians will continue to wag their fingers at the greedy executives, but Washington’s actions enabled these bonuses to occur.

Without the United States government’s open wallet, after all, these teetering companies would have had to decide between offering healthy bonuses and complete insolvency.

Luckily for them — and most unhappily for us — it was a choice they never had to make.

Dave Krasne is a partner at a private equity firm.

My way to say GOODBYE to neocons, Bush and Cheney! ( 4)

! Steffen from European Union, Dr. - Together We Can! Yes. We. Can. — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:28:35 EST

You can Digg it: My_way to say GOODBYE to neocons, Bush and Cheney!

A picture from me to say goodbye from most bad president of US and all neocons.
We can only hope many people will long enough remember. Bush had a lot bad gifts for the change! Let's take care the poor and normal people will not have to pay now too much after the rich made profit in good time!
And what's with impeachment now?! What's with hidden knowledge of Sept. 11 2001?
[ Maybe an explanation of picture: it's made like an "egg laying wool milk sow" a metaphorical-idiomatic term in Germany]

Yeah, and here you can see something new about neocons were bringing to us - for me to say: don't forgive Bush and neocons and there is still a lot to work of. We will and can do this too - Yes we can!
I got now message too like "If anybody can clean up the mess bush left, it's President Obama." - Yes and Obama likes people helping still to do the work - help him! We were a big and strong movement and so people got knowledge back how strong people can be together!
Whistleblower: Bush's NSA spied on EVERYONE
(already 4255 Diggs) The NSA had access to ALL YOUR COMMUNICATIONS, regardless of who you were or whether or not you were communicating internationally.

Please help the US Auto Industry !

Daniel from APO, AE — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 05:42:35 EST

US Senate to Middle Class: Drop Dead

Friday, December 12th, 2008

Friends,

They could have given the loan on the condition that the automakers start building only cars and mass transit that reduce our dependency on oil.

They could have given the loan on the condition that the automakers build cars that reduce global warming.

They could have given the loan on the condition that the automakers withdraw their many lawsuits against state governments in their attempts to not comply with our environmental laws.

They could have given the loan on the condition that the management team which drove these once-great manufacturers into the ground resign and be replaced with a team who understands the transportation needs of the 21st century.

Yes, they could have given the loan for any of these reasons because, in the end, to lose our manufacturing infrastructure and throw 3 million people out of work would be a catastrophe.

But instead, the Senate said, we'll give you the loan only if the factory workers take a $20 an hour cut in wages, pension and health care. That's right. After giving BILLIONS to Wall Street hucksters and criminal investment bankers -- billions with no strings attached and, as we have since learned, no oversight whatsoever -- the Senate decided it is more important to break a union, more important to throw middle class wage earners into the ranks of the working poor than to prevent the total collapse of industrial America.

We have a little more than a month to go of this madness. As I sit here in Michigan today, tens of thousands of hard working, honest, decent Americans do not believe they can make it to January 20th. The malaise here is astounding. Why must they suffer because of the mistakes of every CEO from Roger Smith to Rick Wagoner? Make management and the boards of directors and the shareholders pay for this.

Of course that is heresy to the 31 Republicans who decided to blame the poor, miserable autoworkers for this mess. And our wonderful media complied with their spin on the morning news shows: "UAW Refuses to Give Concessions Killing Auto Bailout Bill." In fact the UAW has given concession after concession, reduced their benefits, agreed to get rid of the Jobs Bank and agreed to make it harder for their retirees to live from week to week. Yes! That's what we need to do! It's the Jobs Bank and the old people who have led the nation to economic ruin!

But even doing all that wasn't enough to satisfy the bastard Republicans. These Senate vampires wanted blood. Blue collar blood. You see, they weren't opposed to the bailout because they believed in the free market or capitalism. No, they were opposed to the bailout because they're opposed to workers making a decent wage. In their rage, they were driven to destroy the backbone of this country, not because the UAW hadn't given back enough, but because the UAW hadn't given up.

It appears that the sitting President has been looking for a way to end his reign by one magnanimous act, just like a warlord on his feast day. He will put his finger in the dyke, and the fragile mess of an auto industry will eke through the next few months.

That will give the Senate enough time to demand that the bankers and investment sharks who've already swiped nearly half of the $700 billion gift a chance to make the offer of cutting their pay.

Fat chance.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

Congratulations on your Victory as our President-Elect

Daniel from APO, AE — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:02:22 EST

http://www.obama2008.eu/ This website from here in Europe, shows some of the enthusiasm of Europeans for the election of Barack Obama as our next US President. We should all support Barack Obama in his leadership as President. I wish Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden all success in leading us Americans in a progressive change in our US economy and in our foreign affairs.

Mr. Obama, you have the courage, integrity and enthusiasm to lead us out of this, our greatest economic crisis, since 1933, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt inherited the Great Economic Depression, of the 1930's from the previous US President Herbert Hoover, who did nothing.

The Economic World-wide Depression of the 1930s allowed extremist political groups like the National Socialist (Nazi) Party of Dictator Adolf Hitler to take power here in Germany and other fascist dictators in Italy (Benito Mussolini) and in Spain (Gen Franco) and in Argentina (Peron).

We must resolve our US economic crisis with full employment programs of all Americans, just like the Workers Progress Administration (W.P.A.) of President Roosevelt with new bridges, dams, railroads and highways built by the US Army Corps of Engineers. We also need strict controls of all financial loans and credit swaps of the Wall Street Investment Bankers and commodity brokers.

The change - Obama Acceptance Speech - Change is come to America (4)

! Steffen from European Union, Dr. - Together We Can! Yes. We. Can. — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:11:32 EST

next post in my main blog about "Change for better world" - here i collected some movies from this day and shortly before.

(And i saved it to hard disc too. If some original will not be longer responsible in YouTube i will bring it new.)

Please, ckick this link to see the movies:

The change - Obama Acceptance Speech - Change is come to America

[But of course - it's just beginning with the change, there is a lot to do. Please stay in touch, however we do that, through these groups or some other way. ]

Wall Street "Bonuses" of $ 70 Billion (from US Taxpayers Bailout)

Daniel from APO, AE — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 07:53:17 EDT

Senator Obama, please make this a campaign issue to STOP the Bonus Payments for Wall St Executives by US Taxpayers!

I saw this outrageous report on CNN International News today with Rep Kucinich showing Wall Street Bonuses for greed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

US Rep Dennis Kucinich Questions Wall Street "Bonuses"
Washington, DC, October 19, 2008 http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=104888 Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Domestic Policy, said today he will direct his staff to immediately begin canvassing Wall Street firms which have been recipients of any portion of the $700 billion in federal bailout monies to determine the extent to which those firms are distributing bonuses to firm members. Kucinich has been one of the leading opponents of the $700 billion bailout passed by Congress last month. Kucinich was responding to a published report in The Guardian (UK), which reported Friday that top banks' employees were in line for more than $70 billion in pay and bonus deals, an amount equal to about 10% of the bailout. "When Congress placed restrictions on excessive executive pay, it had no intention of permitting business as usual with respect to bonus structures. It would add insult to injury to ask taxpayers not only to bailout a firm, but to pay for bonuses as well. The Guardian's report necessitates an immediate inquiry," Kucinich said.

Deregulation - wars - bank crisis - movie Bush without words - (4)

! Steffen from European Union, Dr. - Together We Can! Yes. We. Can. — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:33:31 EDT

Deregulation - wars - bank crisis - movie Bush without words

To look the movie you must go to my blog. Unfortunately the situation can still change to be more terrible and so movie is not fun like could be.

(If you have a chance give a Digg please.)

Normally this should be known since hundred of years - without regulation a lot of banks will fall for profit! The end is always the same, like Bush McCain would be the same too - we, the world need change! Of course it's now more worse like we had known last crisis because of huge amounts of wasted money in wars too.(post continued)

RNC - - Republicans today are not standing for own values and moral

! Steffen from European Union, Dr. - Together We Can! Yes. We. Can. — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:03:50 EDT

RNC - Republicans are not standing for own values and moral

Post of green antiwar blog "Change for better world -"

- Ron Paul on November Ballot for President

- Cheney colleague admits bribery in Halliburton oil deals

- Insane Neocons Will Drive Us to War with Russia and Nuclear Confrontation

- Out of Touch: Cindy McCain's Monday Outfit Cost $300,000

- 5 Deeply Disturbing Things About Last Night’s RNC

- McCain operatives stole American Flags for a political stunt

- "Republican Flag Pins "Made in China"?

- Stop the greed at home too! Obama and McCain Tax Proposals

- McBush - Election speeches of Bush and McCain compared... (movie)

62 diggs (Monday 8.)

8 Comments

The Melodies of McLOVIN - what's the best?(3)

! Steffen from European Union, Dr. - Together We Can! Yes. We. Can. — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:21:54 EDT

Digg this list too - Change for better world - Wandel fuer bessere Welt Digg it

Yes, Bush-administration and "the same" is leading a country too, but not well, only leading to use more weapons and to occupying places in the world because of oil and so leading to waste more money. Stop this; save money, lives and nature - bring jobs back, restore the future! Yes we must fight, but for new energies and our future, to get Obama elected!

What is the best of "The Melodies Of McLovin"? Use Digg it to vote - the best is with highest number of Diggs!

You want to be creative and want be part of this contest? Very well! Tell the other your link in a comment here and i will insert your link into table with small picture to click to your site. Topic must be Bush and McCain hugging and in addition background with bad politic (wrong way) Bush and McCain standing for both.

Now feel free to vote with a quick click for a Digg. (Click on picture and you get it big, click next on the big and you can Digg.)

But because the table is not well displayed here in MYBO you might go to same, but normal displayed table in blog "Change for better world - ... ", if you want.

title

picture

title

picture

The Melodies Of McLOVIN - Iraq

Th Melodies Of McLOVIN

- Iraq, oil and crying woman

The Melodies Of McLOVIN - Dying For Oil

The Melodies Of McLOVIN - Dying For Oil And Vet

The Melodies Of McLOVIN - " The Burning City "

Sign The Petition: Get Our Voices Heard Before Congress

The CEO — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:39:31 EDT

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is times in our history where our very way of life depends on dispelling illusions, and awakening to the Challenge of a present danger. In such moments we are called upon to move quickly and shake off complacency and arise alert to the necessity of making very big changes in your Government. Those whom choose to remain neutral in these times must be persuaded to act or must be asked to step aside. (Former Vice Al Gore)

Yet what is essential to our democracy is being afforded the right to a transparent government and having our voices heard during the making of governmental policy, yet with a majority vote and with a majority rule as set forth in our constitution. During this time while my Environmental Justice complaint was stifled in Washington DC, Our communities now have an inherited increased Health Risks associated with water pollutants impacting our environmental conditions. This must be Stoped!!!!

More over, During this time awaiting the EPA's investigation to be completed, our Indiana State House passed a bill that only requires 5% of our voting population to bring forth “New Regionalism”. Meaning that with a regional government in place our votes and our voice are even less likely to be heard by a corporate controlled regional government as the regional towns and cities (subdivisions) boundaries and political structures will Cease to Exist. More over, with States’ autonomy and the States' ability to make policy that affects every ones quality of life, begs the question of what kinds of rights will we loose, and how can we hold this new form of government accountable to the public.

Sign The Petition Here

Example:

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management had the audacity to tell Environmental and Social justice Groups that that they where not going to list our Grand Calumet in the 303 (d) Report detailing “Impaired Water” in our area. Under Mitch McDaniel’s there has been among many things happing in our state government but mainly the Corporatism within our government which is still in place today. Click >>> Quality of Life Council: Post Tribune on IDEM EPA approved the Indiana Department of Environmental Management’s Impaired Waters Report as being within the Guidelines of the Clean Water Act. But Look at the conditions of our waters that appear on the report. Click >>> IDEM: Impaired Waters - Section 303(d)

According to the listed contaminations in our waters, it is my opinion that we are all Environmental Justice communities through out this region, as infectious waste and bio hazards have been introduced in to the entire regions water ways. To refuse to clean up before reorganizing and building or Revitalizing First before Regional/Smart Growth Development would only, further corrode our environmental conditions, and reduce our effectiveness to hold accountable the Industrial/ Political complex that will be in place with "New Regionalism". The Privatization of your government is strongly promoted by those whom have been bullied, and or bribed into selling out public accountability. Click >>>Private Rights and Public Illusions by Tibor R Machan - 1995 - 406 pagesbooks.google.com - About this book - More book results »

The corporatization of our governments is the means by which, Powerful and Wealthy hold us hostage to the policies that they just may have written them selves, in combination with influence peddling commonly found in our local politics. History has shown us that in almost every case these groups are anti-Social Equality, anti-Environmental Justice, anti-First Amendment, anti-public accountability, Non Transparent, and anti-Social Justice. Organizations, in the most recent past under the Bush administration have united with extreme right wing ideologs in Federal, State and local governments using there influence for monetary gain, and power at the expense of the publics quality of life. The Powers that be, are not making public the whole truth about “New Regionalism. What the big secret? Have promises been made to our local leadership? Are they willing to come forth with answers to our questions? After reviewing each blog on this page, please revisit each area and take time to read the information I have provided through links for a more in-depth look. Here you can find the answers for your self. Click >>>House Bill 1362 and Click >>>The Indiana Law Blog: Env't. -HB 1451 Proposed legislation would steal ... the corporations and Insurance Companies lobbied for those bills: Stealing money, Seizing property and Land. Click >>>The Indiana Law Blog: Ind. Gov't. - [Updated] More on Daniels ...

There is an Environmental and Economic Crisis headed our way and they are waiting for us to unknowingly hammer the last nail in our own coffins by voting it in. According HB 1362 a minority vote from your voting base, will regionalize your City or town. When you read the legislation you will see that it is possible for Only a 5% vote from your voting base will be needed to trap you in according to the “Rejection Threshold” language in the bill; Trap you in to likely Paying Maximum Tax Levys for indebtedness incurred, prior to reorganization, of your political subdivision. Click >>>HB 1362 Detailed Read For your Self This is un-democratic by all standards and should have never been allowed to be voted on by our representatives encompassing that kind of language. Click >>>Read The U.S. Constitution on Elections and Policy Making

This Indiana Legislation was enacted during a time when the Republicans ruled the Indiana Legislature, but now the tables have turned in both the House and Senate. Moreover, Jill Long Thompson winning the Indiana gubernatorial race will be of great importance in my view.Therefore we must make sure that our voices are heard as our region is at risk, America is at risk and with the Global Warming crisis and energy crisis the future of Human Civilization is a Stake: There has never been a time in our history as a Nation where so many things have went so wrong simultaneously. We Must Act Now and Position our Young Generation to take Power over their Destiny.

1. National Security: Bio Terrorism and Infectious Disease Outbreaks

2. Environmental Revitalization First before Reorganizing and Development

3. Building Sustainable Communities with Alternative and Renewable Energy

4. Environmental justice and New Regionalism

5. Social Justice and Social Equality

6. Public Private Partnership Transparency

7. Privatization Vs Public Sector accountability, and Outsourcing Human Dignity

8. The Basic Fundamentals of Democracy

9. Green Collar Jobs

Obama Champagne Group “The CEO-Truth to Power” will be holding a forum Entitled “Listening to America the Y Generation” at First AME Church Located at 2000 Massachusetts Street, Gary Indiana 46407: (No Date has been scheduled Yet.) We are providing to the public a petition, for your review and consideration. This petition is to show our representatives where stand on Environmental Justice, Social Equality, and “The New Regionalism. SIGN THE PETITION HERE: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/cleanwater/

It is imperative that we the people, demand that our concerns in these matters are heard; Our political leaders whould do good by supporting congressional and Senate hearings on behalf of those whom they serve.

Tell them that it is time to Listen to America SIGN THE PETITION HERE: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/cleanwater/

Write your Law Makers Complete List Here Or Call

Senator Richard Lugar
Phone: 202-224-4814

Senator Evan Bayh
Phone: 202-224-5623

The Green Challenge: Van Jones & Al Gore Former Vice President

The CEO — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:59:50 EDT

The Gore Challenge: My company will be poised to help our Northern Region of Indiana meet this challenge, but we need better legislation, and a New Governor. Jill Thompson’s experience and track record shows the integrity most desired by my colleagues and venture capitalists in the Northwest region of Indiana. We are looking at the prospects of “No more Business As Usual”. Jill Thompson is our choice.

Freedoms Choice LLC is currently forming an alliance with Environmental Companies, Organization Whom maintains the highest of ethical standards, understand the importance of re-vitalization and Social Justice, and have proven high consumer ratings. We are dedicated to building Sustainable Walk-able Communities with smart growth initiatives that include Environmental Justice and Social Equality in Transportation measures. Fair Zoning and Transparency must be established, to protect and insure public accountability. The Poor should be considerd first in Regional Planning and Freedoms, Choice LLC stand firmly by that value.

Indiana Renewable Electricity Standard that is being considered.

The Following standard Did not become law in 2007, but please continue calling and writing your legislators on this critical issue and demand that legislation created to meet the Global Crises at a much faster rate than what is being considered!

A Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) would increase the generation and sales of renewable energy in Indiana to 2% of the total electricity supply by 2009 and 10% by 2017.

More renewable energy will produce thousands of Green Collar jobs, spur economic growth, improve environmental quality, reduce energy price volatility and increase national security but not at this slow rate.

Every State in the union including Florida Texas, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa should adopted very aggressive RES mechanisms to meet the current Challenges.

More than 50 states have added renewable energy standards in the last two years, with New York topping the list. While that may be a step in the right direction it is not enough. it has been predicted that our Ice Caps in the north and south pole will be completely melted by 2013, causing a devastating humanitarian crises around the world. Where Indiana may be considering a target of 1% renewable energy by 2013 we may all be refugees by that time.

Public opinion polls show that the vast majority of Indiana voters want more clean energy generation. Renewable energy, and the ideas of an RES for Indiana, is strongly supported by distinguished leaders such as Senator Dick Lugar and Representative Pete Visclosky but we must hold them to their commitments and ask for higher standards that will reduce green house gases at a much faster rate.

Elements of the Renewable Electricity Standard should be raised to meet 100% within Ten Years:

• By 2009, electricity produced from renewable energy will constitute at least 2% of all electric utilities’ sales to Indiana consumers, rising to 10% by 2017 at this rate. Not Enough!!!
• Qualifying renewable energy resources will include wind,, solar and other environmentally superior energy sources such as biomass but the New Green Challenge is to eliminate all Carbon Based Fuels even Ethanol. We Must Do It

Ethanol has a very low EROEI Net @ .7 to 1.8 Meaning that It would take MORE energy to acquire or produce the energy than you would get by using it...NOT a good deal. In the mean time your community may become highly impacted with bio-hazards if such a facility is located in your City or town. (Depending on the Cellulosic process being used by the plant.)

Passing more aggressive legislation The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission will implement the standard.
• A 16% annual increase in energy supply from renewable enables utilities to step up their procurement of renewable energy sources in a predictable and manageable ways that could meet our Global warming issues and Energy Cost crises head on with significant results by 2011.

Indiana Coalition for Renewable Energy and Economic Development (ICREED has support similar Stands but not as strong as what Ten Challenge calls for:

But please contact your state legislator about the Renewable Electricity legislation that meet the 100% Renewable within Ten Years Challenge. Listen to Al Gore’s Powerful Speech Click>>> http://www.wecansolveit.org.

Netroots Annual conference with Van Jones Must See: Click>>> Van Jones has a plan to shift funds from the Prison Industry in to Green Collar jobs for Felons

The urban values shared can be found here: Click>>> http://www.greenforall.org

Then contact your Legislators

You can find your legislators using the Lawmakers link.

Information on buying from renewable sources in Indiana can be found at
National Renewable Energy Lab website at www.eere.energy.gov/greenpower/buying/buying_power.shtml?state=IN Indiana Clean Community

Make your voice heard: Challenge website:
www.in.gov/idem/programs/oppta/clean/
1-800-988-7901

Truth to Power The CEO

Why I Support Barack Obama

The CEO — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 04:40:59 EDT

I support Obama because of his genuine desire to unify Americans in the wake of aggressive divisive, fear tactics used to divide us. I support Barack because he understands, like we do, that the only way America can realize the Constitutional Guarantees, is to allow the peoples voices to be heard. This is our primary defense against fascism, and our voices are the core source of power that enables us to take back control of our rogue government giving hope to our pursuit of the American Dream. Where there was fear and doubt, now resides, hope and optimism, and courage generating throughout our country and the world. I support barrack be cause his track record and his current pace, clearly shows that he can unify our Government and our people of all ethnic backgrounds around common issues that plague us today. He has valiantly shown us through his integrity that he will not allow Extreme Idealogs from either side of the isle to overpower the voices of the people and scurry us into what appears in this day and time, to be a softer and more subtle form of fascism.

It is evident to me that Obama Lives in the LIGHT, because he understands the longevity, prolonged existence and durability of Principals of Truth, fairness, diplomacy, prudence, and Integrity.

All the things that make it easy for us to unify in this time in history, can be found in the Presidential Candidate Barack Obama.

Bringing Truth to PowerTruth to Power The CEO

A New Generation of CEO's

The CEO — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 04:01:50 EDT

A New Generation of CEO’s

We live our complete lives effecting principle in one form or another, we live in the boundaries of natural laws alive with all kinds of principals where we affect the lives of others in vicarious ways if not insipid. We then can reasonably expect that the rewards or retribution from our actions and/or inactions would be the manifestations or the results from principals applied or the lack there of in our living. What principle do you apply in your life, in your work, in your interaction with others, or even more effectively, in all of your day-to-day affairs? The answer is easy…...Look at your results.

CEO Freedom's Choice LLC. Alternative and Renewable Energy: Bringing Truth to Power

Truth to Power The CEO

A little something about the author

Timm — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:51:48 EDT

Hey folks,

I set up this blog to provide anybody who might be interested with an international perspective on American Politics, Obama and the upcoming election.

First of all, let me introduce myself real quick. I am a 23-year old student living in the city of Bremen in Germany. My major is Political Sciences while my minor is English Speaking Cultures. You might be irritated and tempted to ask why a German guy like me wants to get involved in the American presidential election, as I don't even have a vote in it. The obvious argument here is that American Politics affect not only fellow citizens but also every International that lives in this world. This is probably not the first time you've heard this standpoint but with me, there's more to add. During my senior year at high school (2002/2003), I lived in the small city of La Plata, MD. I was a young adult developing political beliefs, 9/11 was still very much in everybodys mind, the Iraq war was started and that o'Reilly guy on TV regurlarly drove me mad with anger. This time might help everybody explain my desire to get involved in this election. It was a time in which I grew very interested in American Politics but also very fond of the American people. Although the patriotism sometimes is a little bit over the top for the European soul I love this country and hope to be back this fall for an internship (possibly volunteering for the Obama campaign?) and otherwise for a 3-week California roundtrip next April. What I am haplessly trying to hammer down here is: I might be a German directly affected only by Foreign Policy but I also care a great deal about domestic politics in America, a country I consider a second homeland and one I could easily see myself living in a couple of years from now.

That's it for now, I'll be back soon with why I support Obama for the election.

New Discussion Group for Democrats Out of the US

Carole@www.Americans-Away-From-Home.com — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:38:34 EDT

Hi!!

Do you know about the new discussion group for people around the world?

Democrats_Worldwide - has members in Afghanistan, Thailand, Serbia, Korea, England, France....Virgin Islands, etc.

If you are an American away from the U.S., please come talk.

This is not a typical chatlist. It's for intelligent conversation with Democrats. No personal attacks are allowed. Not too many messages, we have 57 members.

Democrats_Worldwide-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

If you are outside the U.S., please come talk to other Democrats out of the U.S.

Democrats_Worldwide-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Looking forward to meeting you!

Carole

www.Americans-Away-From-Home.com

Primaries in Kentucky and Oregon

Jakob Pontius — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:06:07 EDT

Obama will win in Kentucky and Oregon - we believe in!

Obama The Real Choice

The CEO — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:25:22 EDT

Obama has brought to this nation a real choice where he is in perfect sync with the pitch of America’s moods, concerns, and needs. While McCain (Grand Father Clock) is promising solutions based in fallacy, Barack understands and has informed us that much of the rhetoric and promises of solutions are very much dependant upon the political impact on economical events and other judicial and legislative factors that have not yet happened. Such as, bringing our troop out of Iraq, and who is elected to congress, with President Obama in 2008 and the type of judicial appointments that will place three New Supreme Court Judges to the bench in the next term of presidency.

Will they be Moderate or extreme?

Therefore, he has brought to us Honesty about the complexity of it all, and prospect of benevolence towards our Nation. Our Nation is in need of healing and Barack understands that it is up to us provide the therapeutic treatment in the November election.Listening to other peoples concerns is not a sign of being unclear with ones owns views; it just reinforces the possibility and the potential for getting it right when in the process of making government policy that reflects all our concerns. This is where we are right now in this moment of history and Barack is the only presidential candidate that is on point.

Let’s look at some facts.

He has already shown us that he has clear view on, plans of strengthening America over seas, ending the war in Iraq, creating a health care system that really works, plans to hold the cooperate world accountable to bargaining with employees in good faith, plans to penalize American Corporations who refuse to create jobs in America, Plans to reverse tax policies of the Bush Admin, strengthen public education, and make education affordable for collage students and strengthening Civil Rights Laws. With a Common Since approach, inspiring our young and old through HOPE and not through fear and anger like the Bush Administration has done, is what we all have been waiting for.

Barack makes it very clear to our Young People, that while there may soon be an opportunity for us to get some of those things that we have been waiting for, America is actually waiting for you and me. We must unify, the young and old, and heal this land; we must move our local and regional government by becoming active and petitioning our governments on any and all levels with passions for Social justice, Economic Fairness, and a Healthier Way of Life while the doors are open.

Barack has opened the door for us to believe that we as citizen of all races, ages and backgrounds can participate in the development of new progressive governmental policy addressing the economy, energy and environmental concerns, assuring us that our voices will be heard over the Lobbyist and special interest. I am looking forward to holding Barack accountable to that as I have a deep and unwavering belief that he will not let me down. I plan to work with our youth and seniors vigorously during the Obama Presidency, addressing Health concerns, employment and environment issues, Green Energy, Transportation, and not withstanding Environmental Justice Vs New Regionalism. Much of what we know first hand about the issues has been pushed under the rug by corrupted politicians, fraudulent companies, and organizations. Including Government Agencies on the Administrative Levels held back American progress and has ill-served the public under the Bush Admin. Such as the EPA, Justice Department, National Labor Relations Board, The EEOC, and State Operated Federal OSHA Programs all seem to allow the public, and working class to fall through the cracks as our health and livelyhood hang in balance.

Now is the time for us to stand for common causes and on Real Issues of the day. We cannot afford to allow Fox News Personalities, ABC Debate Moderators from the extreme, Corrupted Politicians or Selfish Un-Godly Preachers divide us prior to the General Election. After the election when Obama becomes our President, for the sake of our country we must continue to stay active. We cannot afford to allow the Major News Media Network’s to distract us with spewed Biases heavily dosed with controversy, dashes of superficiality, sprinkled with distracting sensationalisms, glazed over and served up with Government Corporatization. This is what blinds us from the truth about the corrupted relationships between political leaders and business’s. That is hidden at the core of or our Food and Gas Crises.

The Political Industrial complex is designed to prevent us from using our God Given Talents and Powers for protect our selves from their very profitable unethical practices, which will ultimately destroy our American way of life. Many of our U.S. Conglomerates and political leaders from every level of government has been found to sell out our quality of life, just to enhance their own by creating the causes and conditions that give them the power to re-shape our governments and business practices to their advantage.

We need Barack and America Needs us all.

We all bring a special strength to this movement when we stand up, and speak out, and get involved. But it is up to us to put the right persons in the White House to get our voices heard. Our Young Generation will be the ones who will actually choose the Next President of the United States; the powers that be are threatened by that. I look forward to hearing from you and working with you to empower you.

Truth to Power

The CEO

In support of Clean Energy, Affordable Health Care, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Living Wages, and Civil Rights.

My spiritual connection with Obama's politics

Mark U.S. Army Veteran — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:44:03 EDT

The German-language quote by Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer (on my profile) has really informed my spiritual and political beliefs. I have been asked via email to provide a full translation. Pastor Bonhoeffer (a man from a wealthier and more prominent German family) was arrested for his participation in a conspiracy against Hitler. While in jail, Bonhoeffer learned what he called "der blick von unten" ("the view from below" -- what life is like for people who are poor, maltreated, lonely, marginalized, in the criminal justice system, and genrally on the underbelly of society). We must never leave other Americans behind (who may or may not be as fortunate as we are). This dog-eat-dog social Darwinism seems to be at the root of the GOPs philosophy. We must reject this mentality! The Bush-Cheney-McCain types totally lack compassion and empathy. Senator Obama has been the victim of racism as a child. He knows what it is like to not be from a wealthy or poweful family dynasty. He knows what it is like to feel like an outsider. He knows what it is like to have a terminally ill mother, weakened by cancer, worried about her health insurance coverage. We, more than ever, need a president with this life experience and this compassionate perspective. We have lacked this for the last eight years. And the Republicans seem to be the ones who, even when they are in power, have a culture and an attitude of perpetual resentment and constant, malicious anger (have you listened to Rush Limbaugh and other hate radio types since the Bush coup d'etat in 2000?). Obama's life experiences didn't make him bitter. They made him better! This quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer really resonates with the life experiences and the (compassion-empathy) attitude of Barack Obama. This good man, as president, won't neglect anyone and won't leave anyone behind.

The Bonhoeffer quote in English is:
"There remains an experience of incomparable value. We have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled -- in short from the perspective of those who suffer. The important thing is that neither bitterness nor envy should have gnawed at the heart during this time, that we should come to look with new eyes at matters great and small, sorrow and joy, strength and weakness, that our perception of generosity, humanity, justice and mercy should have become clearer, freer, less corruptible. We have to learn that personal suffering is a more effective key, a more rewarding principle for exploring the world in thought and action than personal good fortune. This perspective from below must not become the partisan possession of those who are eternally disastisfied; rather we must do justice to life in all its dimensions from a higher satisfaction, whose foundation is beyond any talk of 'from below' or 'from above.' This is the way in which we may affirm it."

If you do some quick research you'll find that there are many groups of non-American citizens who are supportive of Senator Obama's race for the White House. There are Germans, Dutch, Russian, Bulgarians, French, Belgians, Italians, Spaniards, Africans -- literally people from all over the planet - blogging for Obama and taking part in dialogue with American voters! They are in groups on this Obama website. I think it is important to have dialogue with them (in their own language if possible -- which is why I sometimes post in languages other than English and I encourage others to post in other languages, too) to demonstrate that Americans are actually better than the eight-year nightmare of Bush-Cheney. Bush-Cheney do not represent "how we are" as a people. Bush-Cheney were not first elected by a majority of the popular vote! They are a fluke and in no way are characteristic of decent American people. I believe Senator Obama, as president, will renew America's positive image and our friendships around the globe. It seems like many non-U.S. guests are participating in this dialogue out of a sense of hope that the dark days of the Bush-Cheney-GOP regime are almost over. A new era of truth, decency, mutuality, and goodwill will begin when Senator Obama s sworn in as our 44th president.

Here is the quote in the original German:

"Es bleibt ein Erlebnis von unvergleichlichem Wert, daß wir die großen Ereignisse der Weltgeshicte einmal von unten, aus der Perspektive der Ausgeschaltenen, Beargwöhnten, Schlechtbehandelten, Machtlosen, Unterdrückten und Verhöhnten, kurz der Leidenden sehen gelernt haben. Wenn nur in dieser Zeit nicht Bitterkeit oder Neid das Herz zerfressen hat, daß wir Großes und Kleines, Glück und Unglück, Stärke und Schwäche mit neuen Augen ansehen, daß unser Blick für Großs, Menschlichkeit, Recht und Barmherzigkeit klarer, freier, unbestechlicher geworden ist ja, daß das persönliche Leiden ein tauglicherer Schlüssel, ein fruchtbareres Prinzip zur betrachtenden und tätigen Erschließung der Welt ist als persönliches Glück. Es kommt nur darauf an, daß diese Perspektive von unten nicht zur Parteinahme für die ewig Unzufriedenen wird, sondern daß wir aus einer höheren Zufriedenheit, die eigentlich jenseits von unten und oben begründer ist, dem Leben in allen seinen Dimensionen gerecht werden, und es so bejahen."

What spiritual values or spiritual teachers inform your political philosophy? How has this led youto support Senator Obama for president ?

On Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Senator Obama's empathy

Mark U.S. Army Veteran — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:49:23 EDT

Yesterday was the 63rd anniversary of the martyrdom of Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer at the hands of the far-right Nazi regime. A few people have emailed me about the Bonhoeffer quote on my Obama for President personal profile. Learning about Bonhoeffer and reading some of his writings has had a powerful influence on my political beliefs. Senator Obama's personal character and poltical proposals, I believe, are congruent with many of the positive values promoted by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Here is an excerpt from a response I sent to one friend today:

Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1945

The 63rd anniversary of the martyrdom of Pastor Bonhoeffer was April 9, 2008. So it is wonderful to hear from you so close to the festival of this great German. Like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was only 39-years-old when he was hanged by the Nazi regime. The quote from Bonhoeffer on my Obama profile is from Bonhoeffer's text "Widerstand und Ergebung: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft" (In English, "Widerstand und Ergebung is translated," as "Resistance and Acquiescence" -- a poignant title). This book is a compilation of Bonhoeffer's personal letters and other writings from Berlin's Tegel prison. In the quote I have posted on my profile, Bonhoeffer emphasizes that we must embrace and not lose awareness of "der blick von unten" (the "view from below"). We must understand and have empathy for "der Perspektive der Ausgeschaltenen, Beargwöhnten, Schlechtbehandelten, Machtlosen, Unterdrückten und Verhöhnten."

The current American president and his cohorts have absolutely no sense of empathy for the profound suffering of the impoverished, the sick, the victims of war, those harmed by natural disaster, the uninsured, the homeless, the hungry, and the victims of discrimination, violence, and bigotry in our nation and in the world. For example, when President Bush vetoed the SCHIP funding increase he callously stated that those with sick children could simply use the emergency room of a local hospital (as opposed to ongoing treatment or preventive care for chronically sick or vulnerable children). Bush is opposed to what he calls "socialized medicine" (apparently even young American children and babies would be "better dead than red"). There seems to be no concern or empathy by the Republican administration for the suffering, grief, and deprivation the Iraq war has inflicted on the civilians of Iraq. I seriously doubt if Mr. Cheney or Mr. Bush have ever worried about obtaining health care for their families or having their homes foreclosed due to a job loss. When Bush's twin daughters were young, I wonder if he would have told his own wife their girls didn't need health insurance or preventive care, they could just go to the emergency room when they got sick. And, as opposed to embracing all people at all levels of our society (all Americans being equal as our Constitution and Declaration of Independence assert), Mr. Bush and the GOP have used the marginalization of lesbian and gay persons as a cynical political strategy, appealing to the most base and despicable bigotry to obtain votes in the 2004 federal election. One GOP legislator, a fervent Bush and McCain supporter, Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern recently asserted that "lesbians and gays are more dangerous than terrorists." This hateful, outlandish, and hysterical rhetoric reminds me of the way the Nazis attacked and defamed Jewish persons with their own hate speech and propaganda (the vile and pornographic excesses of the film "Der ewige Jude" and the newspaper "Der Stürmer" come to mind). Just re-read some old Nazi progaganda online and substitute the word "gay" for the word "Jew" and you have a modern American Republican "family values" allocution (former Republican Senator Rick Santorum, a McCain supporter, is another GOP hatemonger who devoted much of his career to anti-gay hate speech). Senator Obama has stated he will work to overturn the ban against gays and lesbians serving in the military (The USA is one of the few modern democracies with an outdated rule like this in place and just how many more Arabic linguists can we afford to kick out of the military because of their sexual orientation). Ironically, so many Republicans don't want gays and lesbians in the military, but they certainly won't serve in the military themselves (this is the "yellow elephant sydrome") and it seems like very few GOP leaders have adult children in the armed forces (none of Mitt Romney's sons serve in the armed forces, yet Romney campaigned for a ban on same-sex marriage and would not want the ban on lesbians and gays serving in the military overturned). I served with honor in the Army and I received hazardous duty pay ("combat pay") for portions of my own military service during deployments. I am a gay man and I know what it is like to serve in a certain fear in the military, knowing that if the Army had found out about my private life I wouldn't have been considered worthy enough to even die for my country. One of my gay military colleagues and friends, PFC Barry Winchell, was beat to death with a baseball bat in an anti-gay hate crime at Fort Campbell, KY in 1999. One of the reasons I support Senator Obama for President is because I believe that Senator Obama (because of his early grassroots community activism on behalf of the less fortunate) will not lose his grasp of "der blick von unten" (the "view from below"). Senator Obama knows what life is like for people on the bottoms and fringes of American society. Bush and McCain don't seem to care (a McCain first term would be a third term for Bush's values). I've heard Senator Obama describe the pain he felt watching his mom, very ill with cancer, trying to wade through the confusing minutiae of health insurance policy papers. Sick people don't need this awful stress added to the burden of their illness. Does anyone really believe that lack of universal healthcare is a viable or consistent "pro-life position." America needs many things. Certainly, we need a leader who cares about all Americans equally. We need a leader who has a sense of empathy and real concern for other human beings. I don't worry that Senator Obama (his own life overlaps black and white and his life experiences touch on all of ours) will target human segments of America for marginalization or treat his fellow citizens as outcasts. The Bush-McCain-GOP approach to government has been antithetical to basic American values.

My theology has a bearing on the way I vote. I am, in a sense, a values voter. My spirituality and faith lead me to support Senator Obama for President in 2008.

Selection of MidWest Large Minded or Million Goal Groups including a Midwest Top 150! Join One Million MySpace Friends for Obama'08 here and on MySpace. See URLs below. Thanks!

One Million MySpace Friends for Obama'08 in Iowa — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 11:30:49 EDT

1.) My.BarackObama.com: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

2.) Official MySpace profile: Link (under construction)

3.) Official Group profile on MySpace: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

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PLEASE DONATE WHATEVER YOU CAN TO ONE MILLION MYSPACE FRIENDS FOR OBAMA'08'S MIDWEST $10,000 CAMPAIGN COFFER DRIVES!

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<A href="Link Dakota!</A>

<A href="Link Dakota!</A>

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MIDWEST'S TOP 150! If you would like your group to be added or deleted from my list please let me know.

Obama Endorses Senator Durbin's Fair Elections Now Act!

One Million MySpace Friends for Obama'08 in Iowa — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 12:21:11 EDT

Presidential Hopefuls on Public Financing and FENA
The three front-runners for the Democratic nomination for
President are on the record in support of public financing of
elections. John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama have
all come out strongly in favor of a change to the system. You
can see Edwards' endorsement here
Link and Clinton's here
Link. See this clip
Link of Obama's recent endorsement
of Senator Richard Durbin's Fair Elections Now Act, and
exhortation for public pressure on the issue here. Republican
presidential hopeful, John McCain, meanwhile has been less
supportive of public financing while on the campaign trail this
year, but has supported it strongly in the past
Link at the state level as well as
for the Presidential race. He has joined Obama in promising to
run under public financing in the general election if his
opponent agrees to do the same. It's encouraging to see
discussion of and support for this policy from the presidential
field; nobody knows better than the candidates racing to raise
the millions they'll need to get to the White House that
campaign financing needs an overhaul.

Speaking of the Fair Elections Now Act, it's been popping up in
the news left and right drawing positive editorials and LOTS of
attention on the letters to editor page
Link thanks to efforts of Public
Campaign Action Fund members. You can write your own letter to
the editor using our tool here
Link />
New Mexico Close to Judicial Public Financing
Great news! New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson plans to turn
his endorsement of public financing for judicial races into
action when he signs the bill recently passed out of the state
legislature in special session that would expand the state's
public financing program to include state Supreme and Appellate
court races: Link. He plans to
line-item veto the "poison pill" provision in the bill that
would require voters to amend the state constitution to
eliminate retention elections (making those judges run in
partisan races) before the public financing system could take
effect. New Mexico already has public financing available to
candidates for the state's Public Regulation Commission, and the
city of Albuquerque approved public financing for municipal
elections by ballot initiative in 2005. Many thanks to New
Mexico Common Cause and Public Campaign Board member Richard
Romero, for their efforts in passing this bill!

Maryland Campaign in Final Days
Thousands of emails, hundreds of calls, and a pair of lobby days
later we are in the last week of the Maryland legislative
session: the moment of truth for a Clean Elections win in the
state this year Link. In fact, the
Senate is schedule to vote today on the bill that would bring
full public financing for legislative elections in Maryland --
the state Assembly is already in support. Though Senate
President Mike Miller (D) is notoriously opposed to Clean
Elections, the gossip in Annapolis is that grassroots organizing
(all those emails, all those calls) and the tireless efforts of
Progressive Maryland, Maryland NAACP, Maryland Common Cause,
Maryland Sierra Club, and The Reform Institute, have really
boosted support among previously ambivalent legislators for
passing Clean Elections. It's going to be quite a showdown -- as
soon as we get the results of the vote we'll let you know!

April Showers?
Did Uncle Sam give you a refund on your federal tax return this
year? How about turning a little bit of that around with an
investment in winning Clean Elections through a gift to Public
Campaign Action Fund Link Your tax
dollars fund the policies of the country, what better way to
ensure they are spent responsibly than by establishing Clean
Elections systems that make elected officials accountable to
you?

VOICEing Support
Public Campaign staffers checked their inboxes a few weeks ago
and found an email from National Field Director Jeannette
Galanis: "I think we need to go to Iowa." Why? Because a
dedicated group of legislators and activists from Iowa Citizens
for Community Improvement and the Clean Elections Coalition had
advanced full public financing legislation, the Voter-Owned Iowa
Clean Elections (VOICE) Act, farther than they ever had in the
state: far enough to make a win this year a real possibility.

A pair of bills, HSB 105 championed by Representative Pam Jochum
(D-Dubuque) and SSB 1173 headed up by Senator Mike Connolly
(D-Dubuque) have passed out of their respective State Government
committees and are moving on to Appropriations, where they look
to face formidable opposition. We are gearing up for a full
court press grassroots field effort; getting calls in to
legislators in support of VOICE, getting the word out through
door-to-door canvassing and phone banking, and ramping up
lobbying efforts in Des Moines to win Clean Elections for Iowa!
You can find out more about the campaign here
Link />
Blog/News Roundup
Have you been reading Paid For By?, Public Campaign Action
Fund?s blog? In case you missed this week, check out the stories
we've been following on?

- New Jersey Governor John Corzine signing the bill continuing
his state's Clean Elections Pilot project
Link />- Presidential candidates raising money any way they can --
ethics? What ethics? Link
- Energy for change: watch Senator Durbin's passionate speech
Link introducing the Fair Elections
Now Act on the floor of the Senate here.

MILLION GOAL! SELECTION OF IA, IL, IN NATIONAL OR LARGE MINDED GROUPS PLUS A TOP 25 LIST JOIN ONE MILLION MYSPACE FRIENDS FOR OBAMA'08 AND POST YOUR EVENTS AND BLOGS ON OUR PAGES!

blueball3 — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 12:49:58 EDT

JOIN ONE MILLION MYSPACE FRIENDS FOR OBAMA'08 AND POST YOUR EVENTS AND BLOGS ON OUR PAGES!

1.) My.BarackObama.com: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

2.) Official MySpace profile: Link (under construction)

3.) Official Group profile on MySpace: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

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Following is a SELECTION OF IA, IL, IN GROUPS list INCLUDING A TOP 25 of National OR Large Testimonial Groups that need everyone to join TODAY regardless of their State of residence in most instances. If you would like your group URL(s) to be added or deleted from my list please let me know.

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1.) Relay for Life Obama Team, Cedar Falls, April 13: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

2.) Ragbrai riders for OBAMA: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

3.) Single Parents Support Barack: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

4.) Barack the Vote: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

5.) Diversity4Obama: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

6.) Minorityspacers for Obama '08!: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

7.) Youth for Obama: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

8.) America for Obama: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

9.) Military for Barack Obama: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

10.) Vietnam Veterans for Obama: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

11.) 1,000,000 Americans for Obama: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

12.) Caregivers for Barack: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

13.) One Million MySpace Friends for Obama'08!: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

The Official Profile on MySpace: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

The Official Group on Myspace: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

14.) Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack): Link (PLACE HOLDER)

The Official profile of the outstanding Facebook group on Myspace: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

15.) Illinois Students for Barack Obama (Official Chapter): Link (PLACE HOLDER)

16.) Iowa Students For Barack Obama (Official State Chapter): Link (PLACE HOLDER)

17.) Mamas for Obama: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

18.) Dads for Obama: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

19.) Bark for Barack: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

20.) Peace and Justice Voters for Obama: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

21.) Organized Labor for Obama: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

22.) Moodlers for Obama: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

23.) Young Women Voters Support Obama: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

24.) Indiana Obama Backers: Link (PLACE HOLDER)

25.) So. Indiana for Obama: Link (PLACE HOLDER)