Bustin out

"You think I'm still the kid on the school bus?"

House Republicans voted against raising the debt ceiling today. Whoopee.
They want to cut spending, other than the wars of course. Oh yeah, and that whole Medicare thing, since that sort of affects much of their base constituentcy. And taxing corporations is naturally too far fetched.
Hmmm. Where are we gonna get some more money....

Polls show the public does not support a further increase in borrowing authority even as the Treasury Department scrambles to avoid a default that could push the country back into recession and rattle markets across the globe.

The Treasury Department has been tapping alternate funding sources, such as federal employee pensions, to cover its obligations since the debt limit was reached on May 16, but has warned it will run out of options if Congress does not act by August 2.
-Reuters

Our pensions.
And that won't even get us through the summer.
Wow.
It'll probably buy a couple of lucky bankstas some swanky greek islands though.

Increasing lawlessness

As the rich continue to get richer at the expense of the rest of us, it is obvious that more and more people are indeed leaving their respect for law and order behind.
We've been hearing about thieves stealing copper wiring and other hardware from streetlights and other municipal infrastructure. Well, even that is beginning to escalate.
Last week, we learned about a truck driver who disappeared with $400,000 worth of Russian King Crab somewhere along the West Coast.
Over the past few months, flash mobs have been overwhelming retail outlets and public spaces all across the country.

In a number of cities, gatherings have grown unruly and led to vandalism or assaults — and worse. Police have described some as "mob thefts" in which people assemble outside retail and convenience stores, loot them and vanish before police arrive.
Police and social media gurus say these flash mobs usually are organized on Twitter, Facebook and through text messages, as are peaceful flash mobs. Police say some of the thefts, in particular, appear to have been coordinated in advance but that violence and vandalism at other gatherings may have been random.
Still, the real-time immediacy and apparent randomness of the incidents can combine to outwit conventional policing methods, according to law enforcement authorities.
"Traditionally, if folks are assembling or holding a protest, there are permits or processes in place for law enforcement to prepare and be on site in case things happen. But with flash mobs, there's no advance warning. Law enforcement might not have staff on hand," says Nancy Kolb of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
-NPR

Well, what can you expect when the government won't even tell us what laws they are enforcing? When leaders don't follow the law, they shouldn't be surprised when citizens don't either.

Pre-crime detection

Oh, racial profiling, you've come such a long way baby.
Apparently, Homeland Security has been field testing pre-crime detection somwhere in the northeastern United States. They aren't testing it in an airport, where they allege they'll be using it in the near future, but at "a large venue that is a suitable substitute."

Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programme designed to spot people who are intending to commit a terrorist act, has in the past few months completed its first round of field tests at an undisclosed location in the northeast, Nature has learned.

Like a lie detector, FAST measures a variety of physiological indicators, ranging from heart rate to the steadiness of a person's gaze, to judge a subject's state of mind. But there are major differences from the polygraph. FAST relies on non-contact sensors, so it can measure indicators as someone walks through a corridor at an airport, and it does not depend on active questioning of the subject.
-Nature

It also doesn't depend on someone actually committing a crime either. Brilliant.
If you look, act, or even feel shady, anxious, or excited, NO FLIGHT FOR YOU!
I'd more easily go for a system that involved three clairvoyant sisters.

Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, a think-tank based in Washington DC that promotes the use of science in policy-making, is pessimistic about the FAST tests. He thinks that they will produce a large proportion of false positives, frequently tagging innocent people as potential terrorists and making the system unworkable in a busy airport. "I believe that the premise of this approach — that there is an identifiable physiological signature uniquely associated with malicious intent — is mistaken. To my knowledge, it has not been demonstrated," he says. "Without it, the whole thing seems like a charade."
-Nature

They're claiming a 70% success rate, which is pretty good actually, but not good enough. One innocent is one too many. Also, some people are naturally cold-blooded sociopaths who will probably go undetected. Others will learn the weaknesses in the system and figure out how to exploit them.
And then it will all just be another useless waste of the taxpayers' money.

Former CALPERS investment sells for 8 cents on the dollar

A 10,200-acre site in the Arizona desert has sold for $32.5 million this week, five years after a group with investors including the California Public Employees’ Retirement System paid $400 million for the land.
Arcus Property Solutions LLC, a private-equity fund with about $100 million under management, paid cash for the property in Goodyear (about 60 miles southwest of Phoenix), which is now called Amaranth Land LLC. It had been planned for a 42,000-home community by the Calpers-financed group when it was purchased in 2006.
Yes, that's right. Public employees had their pensions wasted on a million dollar real estate scam during the peak of the housing bubble, and now someone has just swooped in on the carcass of that fraudvestment for about 8 cents on the dollar.
Not surprisingly, the group of investors who benefitted off of that scam was led by....wait for it.....you guesssed it....the Goldman Sachs.

“Of all the speculative deals I’ve seen here, this was right at the top,” (Terry McDonnell, publisher of Business Real Estate Weekly in Scottsdale, AZ) said in a telephone interview. “It’s hard for me to think of a more speculative deal of this magnitude in Maricopa County.”

Calpers, the nation’s largest pension fund, had investments valued at $209.7 million in MW Housing Partners III in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2007, according to its annual report. The next year, the investment had a negative market value of $102.9 million, the fund said. MW Housing wasn’t listed as a Calpers investment in fiscal 2010, its most recent report.
-Bloomberg

Sigh.
So to make it simple, public employees in California invested some of their salaries in a pension fund. That pension fund invested that money in a planned living development in Arizona (somewhere that perhaps some of those employees might have wanted to retire to). That development tanked when the housing bubble (created by companies like Goldman Sachs) burst, and the investment was foreclosed upon. Three years later, Goldman Sachs purchased the property for 8% of the price that the public employees (through their pension fund) had paid for it. Now, the public employees can't afford to retire, have one less place to retire to even if they could afford to retire anyway, and Goldman Sachs has a shitload of cattle-grazing land.
Oh, and Goldman Sachs continues to get away with fraud, and public employees are getting blamed for all of the problems in America.
Got it?

KofC sues BofA

First the Mormons, now the Catholics. The Knights of Columbus are seeking a court order to allow them to look into the fraudclosure practices of Bank of America. Bank of America is not specifially named in the lawsuit, but the Bank of New York is.

Knights of Columbus requested the court order in a lawsuit against Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (BK) that seeks an accounting of two trusts that hold mortgage loans. Knights of Columbus owns mortgage securities in the two trusts, for which Bank of New York is the trustee, according to the complaint.

The complaint doesn’t assert any claims against Bank of New York or seek damages, Kevin Heine, a spokesman for the bank, said in an e-mailed statement.

An accounting is necessary to learn of losses to investors stemming from failures by Bank of America to promptly pursue valid foreclosures and sell homes it has seized, Knights of Columbus said. The group also said investors have no assurance that fees and costs associated with so-called robo-signing are being borne by Bank of America or being passed on to investors.

Robo-Signing
Robo-signing is the practice by bank representatives of signing foreclosure paperwork without verify the information in the documents. Expenses include attorneys’ fees for fixing paperwork and defending government investigations into mortgage- servicing practices, and any resulting settlements, according to the complaint.
-Bloomberg

Given the sacklessness of Eric Holder's Justice Dept., ultimate accountability may never materialize, but it is good to know that at least some bankstas are scrambling to deal with lawsuits, which aren't exactly revenue-generating endeavors.

Egypt opens border with Gaza Strip

RAFAH, Gaza Strip – Egypt lifted a four-year-old blockade on the Gaza Strip's main link to the outside world Saturday, bringing relief to the crowded territory's 1.5 million Palestinians but deepening a rift with Israel since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak earlier this year.

The Egyptian move will allow thousands of Gazans to move freely in and out of the area — heightening Israeli fears that militants and weapons could easily reach its doorstep.

Israel and Egypt imposed the blockade after the Islamic militant Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007. The closure, which also included tight Israeli restrictions at its cargo crossings with Gaza and a naval blockade, was meant to weaken Hamas, but it also fueled an economic crisis in the densely populated territory.

Hundreds of Gazans gathered early Saturday as the first bus load of passengers crossed the border at 9 a.m. Two Egyptian officers stood guard next to a large Egyptian flag atop the border gate as the vehicle rumbled through.
-Associated Press

"Too Big to Fail" banks are even bigger and fail-ier

"We have even more 'too big to fail' institutions; more politically interconnected, very deep and wide institutions that could create another systemic event," says (Gretchen) Morgenson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist at The New York Times. "It's almost as if the situation that brought us to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac having to be bailed out has now been squared or quadrupled. It's worse, not better."

(Joshua) Rosner, an analyst at Graham Fisher, wholeheartedly agrees.

"The risks are enormous" because there's even more concentration of assets among the biggest banks, which are "too big to analyze and manage," he says.

If the financial system was a "house of cards" before the crisis, the situation is worse today because back then investors had "some sense the numbers being given in annual reports and quarterly filings were accurate," Rosner says. "Now we know the government seems to be [complicit] in allowing them to fudge those numbers."
-Yahoo! Finance