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Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:49:09 +0100
Lehman's Brothers: Bernake, Geithner and the Mechanics of Collapse
Geithner and Bernanke's Possibly Criminal Roles
Lehman Brothers Scandal Rocks the Fed
by Mike Whitney l ICH
After a year-long investigation, court-appointed bank examiner Anton Valukas has produced a deadly 2,200 page report which details the activities that led to the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. The report is a keg of dynamite. The question now is whether anyone in government has the nerve to light the fuse. Valukas provides powerful evidence that Lehman executives were involved in “balance sheet manipulation” by implementing an arcane accounting procedure called “Repo 105” which masked the bank's true financial condition from investors and regulators.
According to Valukas, Lehman was “Unable to find a United States law firm that would provide it with an opinion letter permitting the true sale accounting treatment" using Repo 105. So, Lehman executives went outside of the country in an effort to enlist the support of a London law firm that would approve the procedure.
It is impossible to overstate the significance of Valugas's findings. The report exposes the opaque but central role of the repo market which provides essential short-term loans for financial institutions. (Lehman used repos to conceal the full extent of its collapse, by dint of the amount of leverage it was using, meaning the pitiful asset anchor tethered to a vast zeppelin of debt) More importantly, it shows the cozy and, very probably criminal relationship between the
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Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:41:00 +0000
Tracking Enbridge PR Machinations
Tracking Enbridge PR Machinations
by Ingmar Lee
Hi All; currently, Enbridge PR machinations are grinding through the gears all across their proposed 1100 km pipeline route from the Tar Sands to Kitimat. Here on Denny Island, the Chamber of Commerce has invited Enbridge to participate in a community discussion re. the massive super tanker traffic-jam which is intended to pass through BC Central Coast waters.
We called Enbridge and invited them to send a rep out here to discuss their project, but they refused. Apparently, Enbridge is only willing to appear at staged community meetings in which they control the agenda.
As a director of the Denny Island Chamber, I have put forward a motion which states: "The Denny Island Chamber of Commerce vehemently condemns the proposed Enbridge Gateway pipeline project and associated tanker traffic through the BC Pacific Coast, and further condemns any offshore oil and gas development on the BC Coast." The issue will be discussed and voted on at a community meeting on March 21st next week.
Those interested in tracking the giant American pipeline corporation's PR machinations across our province can check out these following links:
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Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:27:00 +0000
How the “Lively Arts” Became “the Media”
The Great White Whale in San Francisco Bay,
or How the “Lively Arts” Became “the Media”
by Lewis Lapham
Art as a medium of exchange is the gift in the hand of its creator, alive in the mind of its beholder, converting the private to a public good, and thereby adding it to the common store of human energy and hope. It’s the embodiment of the spirit in the flesh to which Leo Tolstoy refers as “a means of communion among people… the capacity of people to be infected by the feelings of other people,” by “feelings, the most diverse, very strong and very weak, very significant and very worthless, very bad and very good.”
The supposition that art is a gift as opposed to a collectible, something that doesn’t try to sell you anything, runs counter to our contemporary notions of what constitutes a meaningful exchange. If I couldn’t deduce that fact from the price paid for Damien Hirst’s shark afloat in formaldehyde, I was reminded of it some months ago when asked by the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan to mount a discussion about the role of the artist in postmodern American society.
The Y’s auditorium serves as a trendsetting display case for the city’s high-end cultural merchandise, and the booking agent requested participants -- an author, an actress, possibly a musician or a film director -- deserving the cost of ad space in the
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Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:11:00 +0000
Gorilla Radio for Monday, March 15, 2010 FunDrive
This Week on GR
by C. L. Cook
 This week tune in for the annual FunDrive, wherein we try to reach this year's goal of 25,000 big ones. Gorilla Radio's principles, me and Janine Bandcroft, are going off format to bring to you a compendium of information, music, rants, raves, and reasons you could and should support us and join the movement for better media and music on Canadian radio.
Listen. Hear.
Of course, we rarely blow our own horns, a practice even Diogenes may disapprove; but, buoyed by the recent emergence of Olympic games-inspired "in your face-ism," coming replete with the CAN-A-Duh chants of the mobs, I think it high time we forego modesty, take pride in our singular sincerity, and remind you loyal listeners just how dismal Victoria's radio dial was before CFUV burst forth, Promethean-like 26 years ago, and how easily it could return to mono-minded two-dimensionality without your intervention.
Ever since the long ago and fateful lapse in vigilance made by the CRTC overlords of the airwaves that allowed CFUV wiggle room on the radio spectrum, truth, justice, and the American way have all been held up to the piercing light of independent thought and scrutiny, and where found wanting exposed for all to hear. It's a mission the continuance of we're
Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:15:00 +0000
Remembering the St. Patrick's Batallion
This March 17, Remember St. Patrick's Battalion:
There's more to St. Patty's Day than green beer and parades
by Mickey Z.
 My mother's side of the family is Irish and, about a million years ago, I attended St. Patrick's grammar school here in New York City. So, for me, St. Patrick's Day usually involved a corned beef and cabbage meal and a day off from school.
Today, I'm a vegan and not often seen near a church. In the ensuing years, however, I have discovered something else to commemorate on March 17: St. Patrick's Battalion.
During the buildup to the Mexican-American War (1846-8), scores of
immigrant Irishmen joined the army for the $7 a month. "The U.S.
anti-immigrant press of the time caricatured the Irish with simian
features, portraying then as unintelligent and drunk and charging that
they were seditiously loyal to the pope," Anne-Marie O'Connor wrote in
the Los Angeles Times.
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