April 6, 2009 archive

1. Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post writes Millions of reasons to doubt Larry Summers.

   The latest White House Friday-night document dump had its desired effect, as it’s Monday morning and there’s little to no attention being paid to how stupendously beholden it turns out President Obama’s top economic adviser, Larry Summers, is to the financial industry that he is ostensibly trying to rein in.

   Summers, it turns out — according to financial disclosure statements released by the White House late on Friday — was paid $5.2 million for his part-time work for a massive hedge fund last year. He also raked in more than $2.7 million in fees for speaking engagements at such places as Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs. For one speech alone last April, Goldman Sachs paid him a cool $135,000.

   All of a sudden, Obama’s expressions of outrage over the culture of excessive pay on Wall Street are a bit harder to take at face value. And the advice Obama is getting from Summers, his economic guru, is looking very suspect.

   And Michael Tomasky of The Guardian adds:

   This is legal corruption. And $5 million is a helluva lot of money. Should having accepted that much money from a firm that does work that’s controversial in Democratic circles a priori bar one from serving in a Democratic administration? I wouldn’t quite say yes. But by cracky it comes awfully close. It’s pretty appalling news. Summers would be an unusual human indeed not to have been influenced by this.

   The NY Times, yesterday, has the low down in A rich education for Summers (after Harvard). “Little attention” has been given to Summers’ “two years in New York, from late 2006 to late 2008, advising an elite corps of math wizards and scientists devising investment strategies for D. E. Shaw & Company.”

   Mr. Summers and Shaw executives say his role there was to be a sounding board for Shaw’s traders. But interviews with friends and former colleagues suggest that Mr. Summers’s role at D. E. Shaw was wider and more complex…

   Mr. Summers, who taught economics and public policy at Harvard while advising Shaw, also met with investors in the United States, as well as in the cash-rich Middle East and Asia. He spoke at industry conferences, mixing with officials from public pension funds, endowments and other large institutions with many billions of dollars to invest…

   Mr. Summers joined the hedge fund world after his tempestuous, five-year term as the president of Harvard came to an unhappy end in February 2006, after a statement he made that women might lack an intrinsic aptitude for math and science…

   Some people in the financial world say they have more confidence in the White House’s plans because of Mr. Summers’ time at D. E. Shaw…

   Asked about that, Mr. Shaw laughed. “Oh, boy, I have no idea,” he said. “Thankfully he’s doing what he’s doing. I’m really glad he’s running this. It’s a scary time, and I can’t think of anybody I’d rather see there.“

   No doubt. At $5.2 million, D. E. Shaw is getting their money’s worth. As for American taxpayers (present and future) — bailout promises “works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S.” already. In other words, small change Wall Street can believe in.

Four at Four continues military spending and missile defense, suicide bombings in Baghdad and Obama in Turkey, ice is melting at both poles, and good news from Beijing.

Crosspost links collected at: Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

In Part 1, the testimony representing the Transbay Joint Power Authority, managing the Transbay project, resulted in such a pile of red herring left behind that it seemed that there was something fishy going on.

What that something fishy seemed to be was whether the Transbay Terminal “train box” was suited for serving as the main northern terminus for both California High Speed Rail (HSR) services and for Caltrain services.

But … what if the Transbay Terminal is not the terminus of the HSR services?

In that case, the problem turns from physical limits … to legal requirements that the design has to meet. A garbled version of that is showing up in the newspapers … join me beyond the fold as I try to ungarble the story.

Crossposted from Antemedius

From RawStory, Saturday April 4, 2009:

A team of scientists claim to have unearthed startling data from dust and debris gathered in the days and weeks after the World Trade Center towers collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001.

Note: Abstract here… full .pdf here – 9.88mb

In a study published by the Open Chemical Physics Journal – a peer-reviewed, scientific publication – Steven E. Jones and Niels Harrit [Affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen] level a stark allegation: that within the dust and rubble of the World Trade Center towers lays evidence of “a highly engineered explosive,” contrary to all federal studies of the collapses.

“We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center,” reads the paper’s abstract. “One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC Tower, two the next day, and a fourth about a week later. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC).”

They claim their analysis has uncovered “active thermitic material”: a combination of elemental aluminum and iron oxide in form of thermite known as “nanostructured super-thermite.”

Today’s New York Times front pages a bizarre story about Larry Summers and his very strange “job” at powerhouse hedge fund D.E. Shaw. It seems that Larry was paid a few million over two years for working one day a week at Shaw. What did he do to earn this money? Well, that’s never made clear in the article, but the writers are at pains to point out that it was all perfectly legal. Larry and his sidekick Tim Geithner are now cooking up deals that will let Larry’s hedge fund buddies make big profits using taxpayer money. And, yes, this is all perfectly legal. Larry Summers knows how to sell political influence to the highest bidder, and his hands always stay perfectly clean. He gets paid $135,000 for a ONE DAY appearance at Goldman Sachs, and a few months later he is making decisions in the Obama administration that favor Goldman Sachs. It is all perfectly legal.

Meanwhile, at DKos, the Presidential Guard looks for more neat pictures of Barak and Michelle wowing Europe as the crickets chirp. Summers? Who is Larry Summers?  

Jordan Valley stands next to me at the crap game. She looks like a hooker but she’s really a porn star. Big difference. Sex for money, sure, but still a big difference. Hookers have no screen presence, Spitzer’s is a perfect example, and when you see Jordan for the first time, well all you can say is – “I get it.”

Jordan could have been a big star. She’s got the looks; the camera loves her; her voice is smoky valley girl, but Jordan Valley can’t act her way out of a paper bag. Or plastic.

So, I’ve got Jordan standing next to me blowing on my dice for luck, the pit crew is looking at me like I’m crazy and I’m sure the eyes in the sky are gathering for the next play. I’ve bet it all on one roll of the dice; a $50,000 prop bet on a crap three. It pays fifteen to one. One roll for $750,000. Just enough for what I need.

And just as I throw down the table, Jordan whispers in my ear “Are you a madman or a fool?”

That Missile Went

For A Swim

At Least 27 Are Dead as Buildings Fall After Quake in Italy



By RACHEL DONADIO

Published: April 6, 2009

ROME – At least 27 people died and thousands were left homeless when an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 shook central Italy early Monday morning, seriously damaging buildings in the mountainous Abruzzo Region east of Rome, officials told Italian news media.

The epicenter was in L’Aquila, a picturesque Medieval fortress hill town, where eight people died and more were trapped under rubble, officials said.

The situation is “extremely critical, as many buildings have collapsed,” Luca Spoletini, a spokesman for Italy’s Civil Protection Agency, told the ANSA news agency. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi declared a state of emergency in the region.

UN divided on North Korea rocket launch

By Jon Herskovitz and Louis Charbonneau, Reuters

Monday, 6 April 2009

The United Nations failed to agree on a response to North Korea’s long-range rocket launch despite pressure from Washington and its allies for action, while regional powers weighed the extent of the new security threat.

Analysts said Sunday’s launch of the rocket – which flew over Japan during its 3,200 km (2,000 mile) flight – was effectively a test of a ballistic missile designed to carry a warhead as far as the US state of Alaska.

They said an emboldened North Korea would use the first successful launch of its Taepodong-2 missile to extract concessions for showing up at any future round of six-party talks on ending its nuclear programme. It could also seek to water down obligations it signed onto under previous negotiations.

“With this capability, North Korea is equipped with the infrastructure to play the nuclear game and raise the stakes in the six-way talks,” said Kim Tae-woo, a nuclear and weapons expert at the Korea Institute for Defence Analysis.

“As a result, more will have to be given to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear programme.”

USA

Blacks at Odds Over Scrutiny of President



By Krissah Thompson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, April 6, 2009; Page A01

Jeff Johnson knows how to make his audiences squirm. The young, black radio and TV political commentator waits for the discussion to turn to the topic being talked about ceaselessly, incessantly, ad nauseam: the meaning of the barrier-breaking election of Barack Obama.

Then, in his laid-back style, he says, “The real issue for me is that history is not enough.” That’s when the mood becomes tense.

“Black folks, in particular, get irritated,” says Johnson, who travels the lecture circuit, hosts a half-hour show on Black Entertainment Television and has a weekly spot for social criticism on a radio program popular with black listeners.