Today's Stories

February 2, 2010

Chris Floyd
War, Budgets and Blind Ambition

February 1, 2010

Michael Hudson
Obama's Junk Economics

Stan Goff
The Murderous Mystique of JSOC: How Secret Becomes Special

Patrick Cockburn
The Case Against Tony Blair

Saul Landau
Universal Disorientation: the Modern Media and Haiti

Dr. Carol Paris, MD
Staying When They Tell You to Leave: What I've Learned Doing Civil Disobedience for Single Payer

Marshall Auerback
A Proposal for Genuine Financial Reform

Harvey Wasserman
Will Obama Guarantee a New Nuclear Reactor War?

Johanna Berrigan
Destruction, Hope and Faith in Port au Prince

Peter Gelderloos
More Wood for the Fire

David Michael Green
An Ugly Week for the Human Race (and Other Living Things)

Martha Rosenberg
If You Liked Bovine Growth Hormone, You'll Love Beta Agonists

Kevin Zeese
Health Care: a Better Idea

Alan Farago
Where Nature Saves the World ... From Us

Website of the Day
Demolishing Flint

January 29 - 31, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
The Oldest Game in Washington

Daniel Ellsberg
A Memory of Howard Zinn

Bill Quigley
Hell and Hope in Haiti

Franklin Spinney
Turning Sun Tzu on His Head: the Eikenberry Cables and the Escalation in Afghanistan

Jeffrey St. Clair
Showdown in the Malheur Marshes

Steve Early
The Night They Drove Old Labor Down

Joe Bageant
The Annotated Obama

P. Sainath
Memories of Maharaj

Jordan Flaherty
The New Politics of Post-Katrina New Orleans

Joshua Frank
Why the Stimulus Falls Short: an Interview with Doug Henwood

Winslow T. Wheeler
The New Pentagon Budget: Spending Even More, Buying Even Less

Brian M. Downing
Negotiating an Afghan Agreement?

Wajahat Ali
Dissent as Democracy: an Interview with Howard Zinn

William Loren Katz
Changing History: Howard Zinn, John Hope Franklin and Ivan Van Sertima

Dave Lindorff
SOTU Whoppers: Obama's Fog Machine

Jim Goodman
The Political Capital is Gone, Now What About Political Will?

Judith Scherr
Sending in the Marines: a Q & A with the State Dept. on Haiti

Kerry Kennedy / Monika Kalra Varma
Human Rights and Haiti

Anthony Papa
The Ordeal of Cameron Douglas: Punished for Being an Addict

David Macaray
A Man for All Seasons

Roger Burbach
Indigenous Challenges to Ecuador's Neo-Liberal Model

Belén Fernández
Police Perform Halftime Show at Zelaya Airport Farewell

Nikolas Kozloff
Chávez and Earthquakes

Dr. Susan Block
Defending the G-Spot: Yes, Virginia, It Does Exist

Windy Cooler
Salinger and Zinn: Dead Together, But Read Together?

Charles R. Larson
The Last Cargo Cult: Econ. 101 with Mike Daisey

Mikita Brottman
Theaters of Death: Losing it at the Movies

David Yearsley
Fancy Footwork

Lorenzo Wolff
The Stoic Soul of Bill Withers

David Rovics
He Fades Away: the Life and Music of Alistair Hulett

Poets' Basement
Cirino, Holt and Farrelly

Website of the Weekend
Arrest Blair

January 28, 2010

Bill Quigley
Haitians are Helping Haitians

Peter Hallward
The Fourth Invasion: Securing Disaster in Haiti

Tanya Golash-Boza
Struggling for Dignity and Survival in Haiti

Shamus Cooke
Taxing the Rich Wins in Oregon

Dave Lindorff
In Liberty County Jail

Ray McGovern
Obama Put Politics First on Afghanistan

Uri Weiss
Distorting the Basic Law: Apartheid at the Israeli High Court

Thomas M. Power
Logging for Electricity?

Cecil Brown
The Greensboro Sit-In and Obama

Wajahat Ali
Muslims Helping Haiti

Harvey Wasserman
The Late, Great Howard Zinn

Website of the Day
Hayduke, Take a Walk on the Wild Side

January 27, 2010

Daniel Kovalik
Obama's War for Oil in Colombia

Paul Craig Roberts
Rule by the Rich

Dean Baker
We Won't Get Tarped Again!

Uri Avnery
The Two-Headed Monster

Sasha Kramer
Fear Slows Aid Efforts in Haiti

Vijay Prashad
Plan of Death in Haiti

Nikolas Kozloff
Hugo and the Shockwave: the U.S., Latin America and Haiti

Mark Weisbrot
Haiti: Where Security Kills

Jonathan Cook
Holocaust Day Invited Raises Storm in Israel

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman
Et Tu, ACLU?

Binoy Kampmark
Gordon Ramsay in India

Website of the Day
White House Die In

January 26, 2010

Michael Hudson
Myths of Recovery

Joan Roelofs
It's the Whole System

Patrick Cockburn
The Hanging of the Henchman

Mike Roselle
Photographing Mountain Top Removal: an Interview with Antrim Caskey

Brian M. Downing
Return of the Trust Busters

David Macaray
Big Brother is Alive and Well ... and He's Signing Your Paycheck!

Bouthaina Shaaban
Haiti -- Gaza: Varieties of Compassion

Kevin Zeese
Remodeling the Antiwar Movement

Richard Morse
The Press Only Likes Fresh Blood and the Blood in Haiti is Drying

Fidel Castro
We Send Doctors, Not Soldiers

Farzana Versey
Making Haiti: Survival, Charity Tourism and the Marketplace

Jonathan Cook
Israel's "Army-Owned" University

Website of the Day
Bagram: an Annotated Prisoners List

January 25, 2010

Michael Hudson
Will Obama Put Muscle Into the White House's New Populist Play?

Anthony DiMaggio
Supremely Swindled

JoAnn Wypijewski
Judges' Shock Ruling Okays Fantasist's "Repressed Memories" Fraud

Nadia Hijab
Aiding Yemen

Robert Jensen
Great Television, Bad Journalism: Media Failures on Haiti

John Maxwell
Boojum Hunting in the Caribbean

Richard Morse
Tweets From Port au Prince: We are Far From Normal

Marilyn Langlois
Standing Shoulder-to-Shoulder in Haiti

Dan Bacher
Has Obama Sold Out to Big Ag?

James L. Secor
The Mental Paralysis of the Left

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Putting the "Pro" Back Into Progressive

Website of the Day
Glenn Beck's "Revolution Holocaust"

January 22/24, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
The Great Leap Sideways

Russell Feingold
The Supremes Have Opened the Floodgates

Ralph Nader
The Supremes Bow to King Corporation

Christopher Ketcham
Freedom of Speech for a Fiction

Manuel Garcia, Jr
Corporate Personhood and Political Free Speech

Paul Craig Roberts
How Wall Street Destroyed Health Care

Jeffrey St. Clair
Poison Letters

Nikolas Kozloff
A Thorn in the Side of the U.S. Military in Haiti

Jean Damu
Haiti: Blood, Sweat and Baseball

Mitchel Cohen
Haiti and Toxic Waste

Paul Buccheit
The Tragedy of Haiti ... and Us

Conn Hallinan
Something About Yemen

Steven Higgs
The Mystery of the Eli Lilly Rider

Rob Stone, MD
Face Time With Rahm on Health Care

Saul Landau /
Nelson P. Valdes
The Preventive Coup

Ron Jacobs
Just Walk Away From the Democrats

Vijay Prashad
The Killings in Bengal

P. Sainath
India: Self-Slaughter Every 30 Minutes

M. Shahid Alam
Inviting David Brooks to My Class

George Wuerthner
Why Grass-Fed Beef Won't Save the Planet

Missy Comley Beattie
Could a Woman Who Posed Nude Get Elected?

Jean Sabaté
Russia's Ruined Far East Metropolis

Shamus Cooke
Company Unionism

Stephen Fleischman
The Founding Fathers and the Luck of the Draw

Michael Donnelly
Gitmo Closes

David Michael Green
How to Wreck a Presidency

Michael Dickinson
Art on Trial in the Capital of Culture

Charles R. Larson
In the Aftermath of 9/11

David Yearsley
From the Liberace Museum to Persian aub Zam Zam

Lorenzo Wolff
Catching Ziggy on the Lower East Side

Poets' Basement
Ahmad and Corseri

Website of the Day
Hitler Finds Out Scott Brown Won Mass. Senate Seat

January 21, 2010

Paul Craig Roberts
Security Fools

Alan Farago
Fat Tires in the Everglades

Richard Morse
Earthquake in the Red Zone

Stewart J. Lawrence
The Prospects for Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Harvey Wasserman
The Weimar Democrats

Carl Finamore
Class Clowns

Ramzy Baroud
Iran and Latin America: the Press Stirs the Pot

Marshall Auerback
Obama Still Doesn't Get It

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Pakistan Love Story

Adam Federman
Did Commercial-ization Kill the Bees?

Website of the Day
How Free Market Theory Destroyed the Free Market

January 20, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
A Richly Deserved Humiliation

James Bovard
How the Patriot Act Perpetuates Official Robberies

Mary Lynn Cramer
Class and Party Differences in Massachusetts

Dean Baker
Making the Banks Pay

Uri Avnery
The Turkish Incident

Kathy Kelly
Tough Minds and Tender Hearts

Jeb Sprague
Haiti's Classquake

Ron Jacobs
Revolution Not a Tea Party

John V. Walsh
Why I Voted for the Republican in Massachusetts

Bouthaina Shaaban
A Wise Strategy for Obama

Gail Dines
The Ideal Partner?

Website of the Day
Water Insecurity in the Colorado Basin

January 19, 2010

Michael Hudson
Wall Street's Power Grab

John Maxwell
No, Mister, You Can't Share My Pain

Stephen Soldz
The Guantánamo Suicides

Richard Morse
Tweets from Port au Prince: "A Hungry Man is an Angry Man..."

Björn Kumm
The Tragedy of Toussaint L'Ouverture

Gary Leupp
Blowback of the Drones

Eric Toussaint /
Sophie Perchellet
Haiti's Odious Debt

Nikolas Kozloff
Chile's New Right

Benjamin Dangl
Profiting From Haiti's Misery: If the Marines Don't Kill You, the Loans Will

Dave Lindorff
The Blackout on Cuban Aid to Haiti

Robert Roth
The Politics of an Earthquake

Website of the Day
Break Up the Big Banks--ASAP

January 18, 2010

Petra Bartosiewicz
The Intelligence Factory: How America Makes Its Enemies Disappear

Nelson P. Valdés
The Rescue Operation's Priorities in Haiti

Bill Quigley
Why the U.S. Owes Haiti Billions

Richard Morse
I See No Evidence of a Government Presence Here: Tweets from Port au Prince

Tolu Olorunda
More Than Aid, Haiti Needs Allies

John Ross
The Silence of the Sub

Manuel Garcia, Jr. The Murder of Masoud Alimohammadi: Assassinating the Iranian H-Bomb

Ralph Nader
Privatizing Everything

Franklin Lamb
How McCain was Greeted in Lebanon

Frederick B. Hudson
Plucking the Chords of Change

Website of the Day
Senator Centerfold

January 15-17, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
Bum Rap for Harry, Not for Bubba Bill

Richard Morse
The Streets are Now Haiti's Living Room, Bedroom and Morgue

Bill Quigley
Ten Things the U.S. Can and Should Do for Haiti

Patrick Cockburn
Crushing Haiti, Now as Always

Jeffrey St. Clair
On the Firing Line

Anthony DiMaggio
Remaking an American Myth: Haiti, U.S. Aid and Humanitarian Relief

Tom Reeves
Haiti, Where America Never Learns

Daniel Wolff
Haiti's Ongoing Emergency

Alan Nasser
Obama's Latest Ruse: the Bank Tax

Saul Landau /
Nelson P. Valdes
A Coup in Honduras ... So Twentieth Century!

Andrew Oxford
Afghanistan's Soft-Spoken Rebel

Michael Donnelly
Big Greens and Real Greens: Biodiversity in the Age of Big Money Environmentalism

Russell Mokhiber
Democrats Going Down in Flames

Darwin Bond-Graham
The Green Drillers

Missy Beattie
War Dealer

David Ker Thomson
The Attention Economy

Gary Leupp
War on Yemen

Ron Jacobs
The Untold Story of Afghanistan

Clifton Ross
Nicaragua Now: Living the Farce

Jordan Flaherty
Her Crime? Sex Work in New Orleans

Marshall Auerback
Why Placating the Tea Baggers Protects the Status Quo

Marjorie Cohn
Keeping Same Sex Marriage in the Dark

Joe Bageant
Bass Boats and Queer Marriage

Tariq Ali
Remembering Daniel Bensaîd

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Too Soon to Fail?

Charles R. Larson
Iran at the Seams

Kim Nicolini
Vampires in Hard Times

David Yearsley
Histories of Western Music, From Grout to Kleinzahler

Poets' Basement
Garcia and Bryan

Website of the Weekend
Green Tags: Words That Stick

Support Haiti Action

January 14, 2010

Ashley Smith
The Incapacitation of Haiti: Before and After the Quake

Harvey Wasserman
Hard Core Green: How to Kick Corporate Butt

Dean Baker
The Case for Bernanke: a Really Bad Joke

Brian Cloughley
Selective Compassion

Brock L. Bevan
One Night in Sana'a: Parties, French Girls and Security in Yemen

Don Monkerud
The Health Insurance Monopoly

Winslow T. Wheeler
More Pentagon Spending

Gideon Levy
Only Shrinks Can Explain Israel's Behavior

Adam Federman
The Exxon Clause

James McEnteer
This Week in Stupid

Brian Concannon Jr
Working with the Haitian Government

Website of the Day
Protest at Wall Street

January 13, 2010

Patrick Haenni /
Sami Amghar
The Myth of Muslim Conquest

Jonathan Cook
The Iron Dome

Cecil Brown
Knocking on Woods: What Tiger Woods Jokes Tell Us About the American Character

Steven Higgs
Mercury and the "Environmental Soup"

Paul de Rooij
A People's Cartoon History of Gaza

Richard Forno
What Happens When They Change Targets?

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists in an Age of Torture

Daniel Drennan
A Black Panther in Beirut

Martha Rosenberg
The "Good Cancer" Spin

Brenda Baletti, Gilson Rego and Antonio Sena
Battle in Amazonia

Website of the Day
Haiti Aid: Artists for Peace and Justice

January 12, 2010

Bill Salganik
The Myth of "Cadillac" Health Plans

Uri Avnery
The Quiet American Goes to Yemen

Dean Baker
Big Bank Theory

Dan Kovalik
Chiquita Lauded for Human Rights Abuses

Raza Naeem
Yemen's Memories of Revolution and Resistance

George Wuerthner
Up in Smoke: Why Biomass Wood Energy is Not the Answer

Dave Lindorff
Looking for Those Green Shoots

David Macaray
I am Blacker Than Rod Blagojevich

Tolu Olorunda
Bono Bombs, Again

Patrick Bond
Copenhagen Inside-Out

Website of the Day
Unfortunate Checkout Aisle Juxtapositions: Tiger and Abdulmutallab

January 11, 2010

Patrick Cockburn
Only Fools Rush Into Yemen

Gareth Porter
Potemkin Tunnels: Iran Uses Fear of Secret Nuclear Sites to Avert Attacks

John Ross
Mexico Welcomes 2010 With Bombs and Riots

Gregory V. Button
TVA Health Assessment Report on Coal Ash Raises Troubling Questions About the Agency

Ralph Nader
The Last of the Prairie Populists: Losing Byron Dorgan

Tom Barry
Not Systemic Failure, Failed System

Mikita Brottman
The Healing Powers of Facebook

David Michael Green Lost in the White House

David Swanson
Obama as the Secret Decider

Kevin Zeese
The Baucus 8 Are Free

Website of the Day
Solitary Watch: News From a Nation in Lockdown

February 2, 2010

Bernanke and the Fat Cats

Bair's Damning Testimony

By MIKE WHITNEY

The reappointment of Fed chairman Ben Bernanke means that the opportunity for change has passed and the reform movement is dead. It means that and that derivatives trading, off-balance sheet operations, securitization, dark pools and high frequency trading will go on much as they have before. It means that the public will continue to be gouged so that a handful of Wall Street sharpies can rake in obscene profits using complex "financial innovations" and over-leveraged debt instruments. It means that the entire system will continue to be put at risk to protect the interests of investment banks and hedge funds. It means that the subsidies, the preferential treatment, and the bailouts will continue to fuel populist rage and exacerbate deepening divisions in society. It means that the status quo has been preserved and that it's "business as usual".

No reform movement will succeed as long as Bernanke is at the Fed. He's an agent of the big banks and a Wall Street loyalist. He's also the author of "Too Big To Fail", the controversial theory which provides unlimited state support for financial institutions that are deemed too large or interconnected to fail. TBTF means that capitalism's vital market-clearing function can avoided if one is rich or powerful enough. Bernanke repealed capitalism to save his friends.

The Fed's role in the housing fiasco, goes way beyond Alan Greenspan's low interest rates which helped to ignite a frenzy of speculation. It's clear now, that both Greenspan and Bernanke knew that the multi-trillion dollar credit expansion, was based on mortgages to applicants who had no way of repaying the money they had borrowed. It was a complete scam. Recent testimony by FDIC chairman Sheila Bair before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (Jan 14, 2010) provides many of the details. Naturally, Bair's testimony has been ignored by the media.

Sheila Bair:

"Federal consumer protections from predatory and abusive mortgage-lending practices are established principally under the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act (HOEPA), which is part of the Truth in Lending Act (TILA). TILA and HOEPA regulations are the responsibility of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FRB) and apply to both bank and non-bank lenders.

HOEPA, which was enacted in 1994, contains specific statutory protections for a narrow category of high cost loans used for mortgage refinancings. These protections include restrictions on prepayment penalties, balloon payments, and extensions of credit without consideration of a borrower's ability to repay. HOEPA defines these high cost loans in terms of threshold levels for either interest rates or points and fees. Many of the toxic mortgage products that were originated to fund the housing boom did not fall within the high cost loan definition under HOEPA. However, many of these toxic products could have been regulated and restricted under another provision of HOEPA that requires the Federal Reserve to prohibit acts or practices in connection with any mortgage loan that it finds to be unfair or deceptive, or acts and practices associated with refinancing of mortgage loans that it finds abusive or not otherwise in the interest of the borrower.

PROBLEMS IN THE SUBPRIME MORTGAGE MARKET WERE IDENTIFIED WELL BEFORE MANY OF THE ABUSIVE MORTGAGE LOANS WERE MADE. A joint report issued in 2000 by HUD and the Department of the Treasury entitled Curbing Predatory Home Mortgage Lending noted that a very limited number of borrowers benefit from HOEPA's protections because of the high thresholds that a loan must exceed in order for the protections to apply. THE REPORT ALSO FOUND THAT CERTAIN TYPES OF SUBPRIME LOANS APPEAR TO BE HARMFUL OR ABUSIVE IN PRACTICALLY ALL CASES. To address these issues, THE REPORT MADE A NUMBER OF RECOMMENDATIONS INCLUDING THAT THE FEDERAL RESERVE USE ITS HOEPA AUTHORITY TO PROHIBIT CERTAIN UNFAIR DECEPTIVE AND ABUSIVE PRACTICES BY LENDERS AND THIRD PARTIES. During hearings held in 2000, consumer groups urged the Federal Reserve to use its HOEPA rulemaking authority to address concerns about predatory lending. Both the House and Senate held hearings on predatory abuses in the subprime market in May 2000 and July 2001, respectively...."

Bernanke--who followed developments in housing in great detail--didn't lift a finger to stop the predatory lending until 2008 when he finally used his authority to restrict activities in just one small area of the market, closed-end mortgage loans.

Shiela Bair again:

"For this new category of higher priced mortgage loans, these changes address many of the abuses which led to the current housing crisis and help assure that mortgage borrowers have stronger, more consistent consumer protections, regardless of the lender they are using or the state where they reside. The rule imposes an "ability to repay" standard in connection with higher-priced mortgage loans. For these loans, the rule underscores a fundamental rule of underwriting: that all lenders, banks and nonbanks, should only make loans where they have documented a reasonable ability on the part of the borrower to repay. The rule also restricts abusive prepayment penalties."

So, you see, that even after the media had started exposing the hijinx that were rampant in the mortgage market, Bernanke still refused to act, or rather, only used his regulatory powers on one narrow part of the market. At the very least, Bernanke's failure to respond makes him criminally negligent in the biggest ripoff in US history.

Sheila Bair again:

"We believe that an 'ability to repay' standard should be required for all mortgages, including interest-only and negative-amortization mortgages and home equity lines of credit (HELOCs). Interest-only and negative-amortization mortgages must be underwritten to qualify the borrower to pay a fully amortizing payment. Otherwise, the consequences we have seen during this crisis will recur."

Bernanke even refused to enforce the most basic "common sense" regulation, that loan applicants be able to prove that they have the ability to repay their mortgages. No wonder Bair's testimony appears nowhere in the mainstream media; it provides concrete evidence of the Fed's culpability.

But, why? Why would Bernanke refuse to act even though he could see that markets would plummet and millions would lose their homes in foreclosure?

William Seidman, the former head of the FDIC, figured it out back in 1993 when he was cleaning up after the S&L crisis. He said:

“Instruct regulators to look for the newest fad in the industry and examine it with great care. The next mistake will be a new way to make a loan that will not be repaid.”

That's it in a nutshell. The banks didn't care if the loans were repaid because they got their money "up front" on volume originations. That's why they were so eager to issue mortgages to people with no income, no collateral, no job, and a bad credit history. It was all a gigantic skimming operation, where banks and brokers got their cut and then bailed out before the whole thing blew up. Bair's testimony shows that the Fed knew what was going on; knew that the loans were garbage, knew that people were being victimized, knew that eventually the bubble would burst and the economy would go into a long-term nosedive.

Bernanke's job was simple; just look the other way while fatcat banksters steal as much as possible.

Don't believe me? Read Bair's testimony.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com

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