I kept running into the story of Lehman Brothers during my morning research, and the more I learned, the more I asked myself this question.
On top of everything Lehman Brothers did before it collapsed in 2008, nearly toppling the financial system, it now seems that it was aggressively massaging its books. Of course, many colossal bankruptcies involve bad accounting. But a new report on the Lehman collapse, released last week and described in an article in Friday’s Times, would leave anyone dumbstruck by the firm’s audacity — and reminded of the crying need for adult supervision of Wall Street.
The 2,200-page report was written by Anton R. Valukas, a former federal prosecutor who was appointed by the Justice Department as an examiner for the Lehman bankruptcy case. According to the report, Lehman engaged in transactions that let it temporarily shift troubled assets off its books and in so doing, hide its reliance on borrowed money.
The maneuvers, which Mr. Valukas said were “materially misleading,” made the firm appear healthier than it was. He wrote that Richard S. Fuld Jr., Lehman’s former chief executive, was “at least grossly negligent,” and that Lehman executives engaged in “actionable balance sheet manipulation.”
At the time, one Lehman executive sent e-mail to a colleague describing the accounting ploys as “basically window dressing.”
Window dressing? Shortly before Lehman’s failure, $50 billion in troubled assets were shed from its balance sheet… [emphasis added]
OK, so far that’s pretty bland stuff: just the normal workings of corporate criminals polluting the financial sand-box created by years of GOP economic policy that Bill Clinton should have interrupted, but didn’t. Then at Crooks and Liars, I discovered this Dylan Rattigan video with Elliot Spitzer:
Geithner and Bernanke should have known. They had access to the records. Geithner in particular did three separate stress tests on Lehman before they declared bankruptcy. The company failed all three. Geithner turned a blind eye and took no action. Either he is so incompetent that he could not see what was directly under his nose, or he is so corrupt that he saw it clearly and turned a blind eye. In either case, this is more than sufficient cause to remove him as Treasury Secretary. Did he and Bernanke, along with Paulsen and Summers, collude to create a crisis designed to save the Banksters at our expense? I cannot answer that. If so, they all belong in jail. We need those answers.
Why is this so important right now? On Monday, Chris Dodd plans to reveal his Financial Reform bill. I have held off reporting on it until the actual document is available for analysis, but I understand that it places far too much authority in the Federal Reserve and Treasury Secretary. Based on current indications, neither can be trusted.
It pains me to share so great a loss to one who has given us so much.
Theodore Olbermann, father of MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann, died this afternoon after suffering complications from a surgery last year. Keith posted a tribute to his father at his Baseball Nerd blog a short time ago.
"He was my inspiration, and will always remain so," he wrote. "His bravery these last six months cannot be measured. He is as much my hero now, as he was when I was five years old."
In the past few months, Olbermann did not anchor a number of "Countdown" episodes so he could spend time with his dad. He had also discussed his father’s hospitalization several times on the program.
Few acts in my recent memory are more indicative of the depths to which the GOP has fallen.
Okay, a politician like Harry Reid is a polarizing figure. He makes some people very angry. Fine.
But when anyone — be it Harry Reid or one of his critics across the aisle — faces a random, personal tragedy, the American public can expect media commentators to remove their ideological boxing gloves and give that person a break.
Right?
Well, apparently not.
Two days after Reid’s wife Landra was sent to the hospital with a broken neck and broken back after a car accident in which their daughter was also hurt, conservative blogger Dan Riehl took the golden opportunity of Reid’s grief to say something so morally abhorrent [GOP sociopath delinked] and politically reprehensible.
So, in Riehl’s own words:
If Democrats want so badly to abort babies because of (healthcare costs), why are we bothering with someone who has a broken neck and back at 69? It sounds to me like she’s pretty well used up and has probably been living off the taxpayers for plenty of years to begin with. Aren’t we at least going to get a vote on it?
It’s possible that Riehl is trying to allude to the non-existent “death panels” made infamous by Sarah Palin. But if Riehl is attempting irony, it falls seriously flat. Writers across the Web have quickly denounced his statement that Reid “pull the plug” on his wife.
Come on, Harry – do your civic duty. The nation’s broke and counting on you guy. Pull the plug and get back to work. And don’t bill us for a full day today, either. This is no time to be sloughing off. Air freight her home, you can bury her during recess on your own time and dime. Or are you going to bill us for that, too?
Media Matters quickly linked to the blog and eviscerated Riehl for his statement. Riehl immediately responded [GOP sociopath delinked] with this little gem:
Well, that didn’t take long for Media Mutters to link. I wish I knew those babies way back when. I’d have taken a coat hanger to them!
Yesterday I gave myself an unintentional birthday gift. Sleep. After I published for the day, I went back to bed, but instead of sleeping until 7 AM, my norm, I stayed asleep until 11:30. I replied to comments, returned visits and answered a big bunch of greetings on FB. Then I went back to bed. I guess I must have really needed the sleep. I have a few tasks to complete today, but I should get some visiting in.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:36. To do it, click here. How did you do?
The last 24 hours has seen considerable movement on the health care front, including the apparent demise of the public option.
It started with a statement from Dick Durbin.
With now more than 40 Senators saying they would support the public option in a reconciliation vote, Dick Durbin is trying to put the brakes on the process, saying that liberals may be asked to oppose the amendment [sub req] now that they’ve said they would support it. Roll Call reports:
Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) acknowledged Wednesday that liberals may be asked to oppose any amendment, including one creating a public option, to ensure a smooth ride for the bill. “We have to tell people, ‘You just have to swallow hard’ and say that putting an amendment on this is either going to stop it or slow it down, and we just can’t let it happen,” Durbin, who supports a public option, told reporters. “We have to move this forward. We know the Republicans are likely to offer a lot of amendments, and some of them may be appealing to Democrats, but we have to urge them to stick with the bill.”
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), a leading centrist, suggested Democrats should be able to avoid blowing up a reconciliation package if there is ample negotiation on it before it hits the floor. But Carper appeared to warn his Democratic colleagues that any move to amend the reconciliation bill, however noble the policy aims, would only lead to chaos.
That’s the same Tom Carper whose contribution to the hcr debate was the deservedly short-lived opt-in, triggered co-op. But regardless of how worthless his contribution to the debate has been, he still gets a vote. As should Senate liberals, who as of yet aren’t backing down.
But prominent Senate liberals said they are determined to put the public option question to the test when reconciliation comes to the floor.
“I think we have got to do everything that we can to get a public option so that is absolutely something … somebody can and should do,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with Democrats.
Sanders said liberals have not decided who would offer such an amendment. However, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) led a petition drive to get Senators to sign a letter pledging their support for it. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has been tracking the letter signatories and Member statements, projects 41 firm votes in favor of the public option.
Sanders said he believes supporters will have the votes when the amendment comes up. “I can’t swear it to you, but I do think we can,” Sanders said. “I think that some people for whatever reason choose not to sign a letter but will vote. Yeah, I think we’ve got it.”
This largely seems to be an effort to discourage any amendments from being offered, though there is no indication as of yet that anyone other than public option supporters are being told to stand down… [emphasis added]
This was not an attempt on Durbin’s part to kill the public option. To move the bill to an immediate vote, Reid has ‘filled the tree” on amendments. Simply put, that means neither side may offer amendments. He may not open it for just one amendment. If he opens it for the public option, he must also open it for Republican amendments, and that would open Pandora’s box to a flood of garbage amendments intended to stall the vote indefinitely. To prevent this, the Senate must proceed directly to a vote on the reconciliation bill as it comes from the House. And Durbin clarified that, if the House bill contains the public option, he will whip the votes for passage. So the onus sifted to the House.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Thursday that she would not include a public option in a health care reconciliation package that the House will send to the Senate.
"We’re talking about something that is not going to be part of the legislation," Pelosi said, noting "with sadness" that the public insurance option won’t be part of legislation. "I’m quite sad that the public option is not in there," she said.
Earlier Thursday, a spokesman to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the Majority Whip, said Durbin would "aggressively whip" a health care bill that included a public option.
Pelosi, however, put the onus back on the Senate, saying that the chamber didn’t have the votes needed for it.
"I’m not having the Senate, which didn’t have a public option in its bill, put any of that on our doorstep," she said. "It did not prevail. What we will have in reconciliation will be something that is agreed upon, House and Senate, that they can pass and we can pass… It isn’t in there because they don’t have the votes."… [emphasis added]
I disagree with their conclusion. While I can understand Pelosi’s concern that some Senators might have signed the public option letter as a means of appeasing base voters, while thinking that would not have to back it up. But I think there is something else in play here.
I have no evidence whatsoever to support this except for my own gut, but that gut has a pretty good track record. Here’s what I think is going on. Pelosi is trying to put together a very fragile coalition in the House. She lost Stupak’s coat-hanger coalition, who voted for the original House bill, but will vote against this one. There are thirty nine Bush dog Democrats who voted against the original House bill. To make up for the coat-hanger coalition, Pelosi had to convert some of the Bush dogs. Some of them voted against the original bill, because they oppose the public option. Thinking that the Senate could not pass the public option, I think Pelosi made a deal with Bush dogs. Part one is that they will vote for bill as long as there is no public option. Part two is that the deal be secret so the Bush Dogs don’t face the ire of the base over it. Now, all of a sudden, it appears that the Senate could pass the public option if the House includes it, but not realizing that, Pelosi had already negotiated it away. That’s the only scenario I can envision that explains why the best explanation Pelosi could offer is ludicrous.
Whatever the reason, the public option is dead for this reconciliation bill. It still needs to pass because it outlaws denial of coverage for preexisting conditions, it outlaws rescission of sick patients, it mandates that insurance companies pay out 85% of premiums in benefits, it expands Medicaid to cover the poor, and it provides subsidies to allow people, who could not afford it otherwise to get coverage. It will save lives. It is a platform on which we can build.
With all its faults, it does too much good to let it go.
For now, we have to take what we can get. But why stop there? The day it is signed into law, we immediately campaign for another reconciliation bill, H.R. 4789.
Health care reform — here’s where we are. The House of Representatives is about to vote on a Senate bill without a public option. It looks like the reconciliation amendment will not have a public option. The House bill had a public option, but once the House passes the Senate bill, that’s history.
Which is why I introduced H.R. 4789, the Public Option Act. This simple four-page bill [PDF] lets any American buy into Medicare at cost. You want it, you pay for it, you’re in. It adds nothing to the deficit; you pay what it costs.
Let’s face it. Health insurance companies charge as much money as possible, and they provide as little care as possible. The difference is called profit. You can’t blame them for it; that’s what a corporation does. Birds got to fly, fish got to swim, health insurers got to rip you off. And if you get really expensive, they’ve got to pull the plug on you. So for those of us who would like to stay alive, we need a public option.
In many areas of the country, one or two insurers have over 80% of the market. They can charge anything they want. And when you get sick, they can flip the bird at you. So we need a public option.
And they face no real competition because it costs billions of dollars just to set up a national health care network. In fact, the only one that’s nationwide is . . . Medicare. And we limit that to one-eight of the population. It’s like saying that only seniors can drive on federal highways. We really need a public option.
And to the right-wing loons who call it socialism, we say, "if you want to be a slave to the insurance companies, that’s fine. If you want 30% of your premiums to go to ‘administrative costs’ and billion-dollar bonuses for insurance CEOs who figure out new and creative ways to deny you the care you need to stay healthy and alive, that’s fine. But don’t you try to dictate to me that I can’t have a public option!"
And there is a way left to get it. By insisting on a vote on H.R. 4789. Three votes on health care, not two. The Senate bill, the reconciliation amendments, and the Public Option Act.
We got 50 co-sponsors for this bill in two days. Including five powerful committee chairman. But we need more.
This is one of the better arguments I have seen for blocking it. But they miss the most important point.
What do you do if you’re a really big company that consumers despise, but you want government regulators to okay – and the public to accept — a merger with another really big company?
Change your name, of course: introducing Xfinity (aka Comcast).
Comcast is a massive cable TV and Internet provider, which wants to merge with NBC Universal, one of the world’s largest news and entertainment content providers.
However, a history of bad corporate citizenship, as indicated by this latest deceptive maneuver has caught up with Comcast. This Thursday, the U.S. Senate convened a legislative hearing to question Comcast and NBCU’s CEOs on the social impact of the proposed merger.
You may have seen the recent commercials for XFinity: In February, Comcast began rebranding itself with this new name, promising customers "more of everything you want."
That would be a pleasant change, but consumers are rightly skeptical. After all, in a 2009 Forrester Research survey of customer satisfaction, Comcast ranked number 105 out of 113 companies. That’s just one of many reasons that regulators should block the merger with NBC Universal – or, at the very least, attach tough conditions before letting it go forward.
The merger would give this massive new media conglomerate an unacceptable chokehold on innovation and the flow of information. It would have the potential to stifle the democratic, competitive nature of the budding internet content market and its small, independent businesses.
That’s not idle speculation. After all, this is a company with quite an interest in politics: Comcast is reported to have spent over $5.5 million in campaign contributions since 2006, on top of over $50 million spent on lobbying in the last three years. Comcast has also been repeatedly and credibly accused of censorship of Internet and cable TV content and advertising, including both political messages and file-sharing applications. Do we really want to hand Comcast even more power over what we are allowed to view and download?
We have seen mega-deals like this one before fail and leave the merging companies in tatters. Recent history brings to mind the AOL-Time Warner break-up and Comcast’s own botched attempt to acquire Disney. If Comcast-NBCU joins this list as the latest reckless corporate pipe dream to crash, do not expect Comcast and NBC CEOs Brian Roberts and Jeff Zucker to return their exorbitant salaries with their public apologies. No, the real pain will be felt by American employees and consumers.
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) has rightly asked some tough questions of the CEOs of both Comcast and NBC Universal. Would they, for example, commit to holding cable rate increases to no more than the rate of inflation? Would they end the onerous practice of "bundling," that forces less-popular channels on unwilling buyers rather than letting them simply pay for the channels they want?
With Comcast remaining silent on many of these questions, its history of broken promises, deceitful customer relations, and underwhelming service speaks volumes. To be fair, Comcast’s Roberts did give an assurance that there would be "no massive layoffs." That’s nice, but awfully vague and glaringly insensitive at a time when the nation remains crippled by unemployment and Washington is scrambling to create jobs.
But despite concerns being voiced by many, a growing consensus seems to think this merger is inevitable — the same sort of defeatist attitude that led to some banks becoming "too big to fail" and a mishandled bailout. Those "too big to fail" banks ultimately became too big to control… [emphasis added]
In the interest of transparency, I am a Comcast customer for TV only. I get my Internet from a separate source. Because my landlord includes basic service with my rent, I pay a small fee for HD and additional channels. I consider it a fair value and have no complaint with their customer service.
That said, Comcast has their own political agenda. According to Source Watch, Comcast’s CEO is a Bush Ranger, and Comcast still donates more to Republicans than to Democrats.
A content provider merging with a content distributor conflicts with the public interest, because it gives them the capability to favor their own content and block content that opposes their political interests. In addition, I fear that they might replace Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz with brainless parrot-heads, or worse yet with Beck-O’Reilly-Hannity equivalents.
Yesterday I caught up with comments and returned recent visits. I started to visit other blogs when my grocery delivery arrived. By the time I dealt with a problem with the order and got everything put away, I was pooped. I expect to do more visiting today.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:38. To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
62 years ago today, I was born.
Yesterday in an interview with BBC, Karl Rove, aka Turdblossom, proclaimed to a foreign audience that he was proud of torture, although he claimed it was not torture. He parroted the now thoroughly debunked GOP lies that it provided intelligence that kept America safe. The best way for him to accomplish this is to stay abroad.
A new study reveals that the median wealth for single white women from 36 to 49, is $42,600, 61% of single white men of the same age. But single black women of the same age have a median wealth of $5. 😯
In addition to the House announcement that the reconciliation bill will not contain Bart ‘Coat Hanger’ Stupak’s abortion language, and Harry Reid informing Mitch ‘Filibuzzard’ McConnell that Democrats will pass HCR using reconciliation, HCR enjoyed a couple more positive news items yesterday.
The numbers from the CBO are in.
Estimate of the Budgetary Effects of the Senate-Passed Health Bill
CBO has just released an estimate of the budgetary effects of the health bill, H.R. 3590, that passed the Senate on December 24. Today’s estimate differs from the estimate for a slightly earlier version of the legislation that we released on December 19 in that it encompasses all of the amendments that were adopted by the Senate, reflects a revised assumption about its enactment date, and incorporates some technical revisions. We and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) prepared this updated estimate in preparation for further consideration of health care legislation. However, the changes we have made do not result in an estimate that differs substantially from the earlier one.
CBO and JCT now estimate that, on balance, the direct (mandatory) spending and revenue effects of enacting H.R. 3590 as passed by the Senate would yield a net reduction in federal deficits of $118 billion over the 2010–2019 period. (Direct spending—as distinguished from discretionary spending—is spending that stems from legislation other than appropriation acts.) In our earlier estimate, the budgetary impact was a net reduction in deficits of $132 billion.
The more this bill will save, the more Republicans say it will cost.
In addition, one of the Nation’s premiere progressive organizations conducted an email poll of its members.
Here’s a pretty clear indication that the left, whatever its disappointment with the Senate health bill, still overwhelmingly sees passing it as by far the best course of action.
As I noted here yesterday, MoveOn polled its members to ask whether the organization should support or oppose passing the Senate bill. Check out these results, sent over by a MoveOn official:
Should MoveOn support or oppose the final health care bill if it looks like the plan recently proposed by President Obama?
Support 83
Oppose 17
Not terribly surprising, perhaps, but MoveOn’s membership is comprised of pretty hard-core liberal activists, and this shows pretty clearly that among this crowd, the kill-the-bill camp overwhelmingly lost the argument. [emphasis added]
Holdouts can no no longer claim that they represent the progressive position, as this clearly demonstrates that progressives overwhelming support passage. While I respect and admire their idealism, this is not an ideal world. This bill will save lives and provide a higher plateau, on which to base more reform.
On top of everything Lehman Brothers did before it collapsed in 2008, nearly toppling the financial system, it now seems that it was aggressively massaging its books. Of course, many colossal bankruptcies involve bad accounting. But a new report on the Lehman collapse, released last week and described in an article in Friday’s Times, would leave anyone dumbstruck by the firm’s audacity — and reminded of the crying need for adult supervision of Wall Street.
