Tag: Docudharma Times

Pay Czar Quietly Meets With Rescued Companies

Deadline to Propose Compensation Looms

By Brady Dennis and Tomoeh Murakami Tse

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, August 9, 2009

President Obama’s compensation czar has been meeting for weeks with executives at some of the country’s largest and most troubled companies as they face a Thursday deadline to propose how much they will pay their top employees.

Kenneth R. Feinberg has the unprecedented task of deciding executive compensation at seven companies that received large government bailouts. His meetings with American International Group, Citigroup, Bank of America, General Motors, Chrysler, Chrysler Financial and GMAC have been conducted in secret, with neither Feinberg nor the companies willing to say much in public.

But one window into this opaque process is an account provided by people familiar with his discussions with AIG, the crippled insurer that has received tens of billions of dollars in federal rescue money.

We cannot eliminate all risk of torture, ministers admit

It is impossible to guarantee that information used by the security services has not been obtained through torture, David Miliband and Alan Johnson now admit.

By Patrick Hennessy, Political editor

In a joint article for The Sunday Telegraph, the two Cabinet ministers hit back strongly at claims that the government is colluding in torture by insisting that everything possible is done to minimise the risk of mistreatment by foreign regimes.

However, the Foreign and Home Secretaries say Britain’s security and intelligence services (MI5 and MI6) face “hard choices” and the overriding aim is to “defend both our citizens’ rights and their security”.

The rare joint intervention by the pair, whose departments are responsible for MI5 and MI6, comes at the end of the week where ministers have faced detailed allegations of British complicity in torture – including providing questions for detainees to be asked under interrogation.

U.S. and Britain Again Target Afghan Poppies

Farmers Would Be Paid Not to Grow Crop

By Karen DeYoung

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, August 8, 2009

The U.S. and British governments plan to spend millions of dollars over the next two months to try to persuade Afghan farmers not to plant opium poppy, by far the country’s most profitable cash crop and a major source of Taliban funding and official corruption.

By selling wheat seeds and fruit saplings to farmers at token prices, offering cheap credit, and paying poppy-farm laborers to work on roads and irrigation ditches, U.S. and British officials hope to provide alternatives before the planting season begins in early October. Many poppy farmers survive Afghanistan’s harsh winters on loans advanced by drug traffickers and their associates, repaid with the spring harvest.

Interest in organic food on the rise in China

A small group of Chinese farmers is devoted to growing natural foods. But gaining consumers’ trust is an obstacle.

By Joshua Frank

August 8, 2009

Reporting from Beijing — Unlike most farms in China, no heaps of blackened sewage sludge are piled on the fields at the Green Cow farm. No workers spray pesticides from pumps strapped to their backs. No animals are in quarantine.

An oasis in a Beijing suburb, the organic farm’s modest 6 acres boast pepper and tomato plants, fields of corn and wheat, and sunflower patches that pop up in between. Two rotund cows chomp on grasses; under a grove of fruit trees, three young pigs slurp water.

Restaurateur and environmentalist Lejen Chen started Green Cow with her husband in 2004, fearful of the pesticides, chemical fertilizers and sewage sludge used in the cultivation of most domestic produce.

In China, the organic food movement is growing steadily, led by Chen and a small, dedicated group of like-minded farmers. It’s a battle in a country of recurring food scares, loosely enforced regulations and skepticism about paying more for produce that looks the same as regular market fare. But interest in natural food is on the rise.

A $191 Million Question

How a relationship between an Army official and a private contractor led to allegations of collusion and impropriety

By Robert O’Harrow Jr.

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, August 7, 2009

He called her Princess. She called him Bubba. They got together whenever they could, sailing on the Chesapeake Bay, traveling to business conferences, taking long walks. They exchanged e-mails night and day.

“You been sleepin??” George Raymond wrote to Catherine Campbell in September 2005.

“I slept some,” she wrote back. “Just got out of the shower.”

“Oh boy,” he wrote.

Theirs was a cozy relationship, and they worked in a world where such cozy relationships are officially frowned upon.

Secret deal to keep Karzai in power

Afghan President’s alliance with rival designed to prevent civil war after election

By Jerome Starkey in Kabul

Friday, 7 August 2009

With less than two weeks to go until national elections, the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, is trying to cut a secret deal with one of his rivals to knock out his leading contender and ensure a decisive victory to avoid the chaos that a tight result might unleash.

Afghanistan’s second democratic polls threaten to split the country along sectarian lines. That would risk undermining US and British-led peace efforts which are already under pressure from a resurgent Taliban.

Mr Karzai and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, hail from different ethnic groups and different regions.

U.S. Considers Remaking Mortgage Giants

‘Bad Bank’ Would Wipe the Slate Clean for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac by Taking Their Toxic Loans

By Zachary A. Goldfarb and David Cho

Washington Post Staff Writers

Thursday, August 6, 2009

The Obama administration is considering an overhaul of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that would strip the mortgage finance giants of hundreds of billions of dollars in troubled loans and create a new structure to support the home-loan market, government officials said.

The bad debts the firms own would be placed in new government-backed financial institutions — so-called bad banks — that would take responsibility for collecting as much of the outstanding balance as possible. What would be left would be two healthy financial companies with a clean slate.

The moves would represent one of the most dramatic reorderings of the badly shattered housing finance system since District-based Fannie Mae was created by Congress to support mortgage lending during the Great Depression. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, based in McLean, have government charters to buy home loans from banks, which they then repackage and sell to investors. The banks can then use the proceeds to offer more loans to home buyers.

Blackwater accused of murder in ‘crusade to eliminate Muslims’

From The Times

August 6, 2009

Tim Reid in Washington

A series of allegations including murder, weapons smuggling and the deliberate slaughter of civilians have been levelled against the founder of Blackwater, the security company being investigated for shooting deaths in Iraq.

The accusations, including a claim that the company founder Erik Prince either murdered or had killed former employees co-operating with federal investigators, are contained in sworn affidavits lodged at a Virginia court on Monday night.

The company was the most prominent of an army of private security companies employed by the Pentagon and State Department to protect military convoys and guard US diplomats in Iraq.

The accusations against Mr Prince are being made by two former employees, including a former Marine, who have sworn them anonymously as John Doe No 1 and John Doe No 2, because they said they feared for their lives if their identities were revealed.

Bill Clinton in North Korea to Seek Release of U.S. Reporters



By MARK LANDLER and PETER BAKER

Published: August 4, 2009

WASHINGTON – Former President Bill Clinton landed in North Korea on Tuesday to negotiate the release of two American television journalists sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for illegally entering North Korean territory, according to a person briefed on the mission.

Mr. Clinton flew into Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, in an unmarked jet early Tuesday morning local time, Central TV, a North Korean station, reported. The White House declined to comment.

Citing television footage from Pyongyang, The Associated Press said Mr. Clinton was greeted at the airport by North Korean officials including the chief nuclear negotiator Kim Kye Gwan and Yang Hyong Sop, vice parliamentary speaker. The footage showed him smiling and bowing as a young girl presented him with flowers.

New Leader Tries to Get Toyota Back on the Road



By MICHELINE MAYNARD

Published: August 3, 2009

DETROIT – General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are not the only ones working through wrenching restructurings. Toyota is, as well, though with a much lower profile.

The results have yet to show, and in fact, no one at Toyota expects 2009 to be anything but dismal. (On Tuesday, the company reported a loss of $819 million for the first quarter.)

Its new president, Akio Toyoda, has moved quickly since taking charge in June, when he declared his dismay at the company’s financial crisis.

“Like everyone in the company, I am extremely frustrated” about the automaker’s decline, Mr. Toyoda said at his first news conference as president. “So we must start again from the ground up.”

New Detainee Site In U.S. Considered

Facility Would Contain Courtrooms, House Some Guantanamo Prisoners

By Peter Finn and Scott Wilson

Washington Post Staff Writers

Monday, August 3, 2009

The administration is considering whether to transfer some detainees at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a facility in the United States that would contain courtrooms to hold federal criminal trials and military commissions to prosecute terrorism suspects, administration officials said Sunday.

The maximum-security facility would be jointly run by the departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, with each assuming responsibility for different sets of inmates. Officials said such a facility could also house prisoners held in indefinite detention and those cleared for release but who have no country willing to accept them. Those convicted in federal court or military commissions could serve their terms there.

Warning: Oil supplies are running out fast

Catastrophic shortfalls threaten economic recovery, says world’s top energy economist

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Monday, 3 August 2009

The world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading energy economist has warned.

Higher oil prices brought on by a rapid increase in demand and a stagnation, or even decline, in supply could blow any recovery off course, said Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the respected International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, which is charged with the task of assessing future energy supplies by OECD countries.

In an interview with The Independent, Dr Birol said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted and that global production is likely to peak in about 10 years – at least a decade earlier than most governments had estimated.

But the first detailed assessment of more than 800 oil fields in the world, covering three quarters of global reserves, has found that most of the biggest fields have already peaked and that the rate of decline in oil production is now running at nearly twice the pace as calculated just two years ago. On top of this, there is a problem of chronic under-investment by oil-producing countries, a feature that is set to result in an “oil crunch” within the next five years which will jeopardise any hope of a recovery from the present global economic recession, he said.

Obama Trims Sails On Health Reform

He Seeks to Rally Support by Promising Less

By Ceci Connolly

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, August 2, 2009

From the start of his presidency, Barack Obama made clear that his plan for enacting comprehensive health-care reform came down to three words: fast, broad and bipartisan.

That was then.

Now, as lawmakers begin to flee Washington for a month-long recess, the White House team is retooling its message and strategy, hoping a more modest approach will reinvigorate Obama’s signature domestic policy initiative and give him a first-year victory for Democrats to carry into the 2010 midterm elections.

Legislative wrangling, a well-coordinated Republican opposition and the sheer complexity of an issue that consumes nearly one-fifth of the nation’s economy have taken a toll on the president and his bold ambitions.

Conspiracy Trial for 100 Dissidents Begins in Iran



By ROBERT F. WORTH and NAZILA FATHI

Published: August 1, 2009

BEIRUT, Lebanon – The Iranian authorities opened an extraordinary mass trial against more than 100 opposition figures on Saturday, accusing them of conspiring with foreign powers to stage a revolution through terrorism, subversion, and a media campaign to discredit last month’s presidential election.

The trial, coming just days before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to be sworn in for a second term, signaled an intensified government attack on the opposition movement, which maintains that the June 12 election was rigged and continues to muster widespread street protests.

The accusations read out in the courtroom were a broadside against virtually every major figure associated with reform in Iran, going well beyond those actually arrested. State television broadcast images of the defendants, who included a former vice president and a Newsweek reporter, as well as some of the reform movement’s best-known spokesmen, clad in prison uniforms and listening as prosecutors outlined their accusations in a large marble-floored courtroom.

‘Cash for clunkers’ keeps dealers busy

Would-be buyers race in as reports surface that the federal rebate program is running out of money. The Obama administration is keeping it going at least through the weekend.

By Andrea Chang and Tiffany Hsu

August 1, 2009

Anxious buyers were rolling into Southern California car dealerships Friday, eager to snag a cash-for-clunkers deal while they still had the chance.

And some dealers said they were girding for a hellish weekend with a lucrative twist.

At Galpin Ford in North Hills, where huge banners promised “Big ca$h for your clunker,” the showroom was packed with people.

“I’ve never worked so hard,” said Galpin salesman Brian Fraleigh, who said he worked selling cars until 3:30 a.m. Friday and was back at his post before noon.

Car dealers said they have seen a healthy increase in customers all week, but things took off Thursday night when reports surfaced that the program was running out of money.

Losing Afghanistan’s Drug War

The U.N. drug czar says that efforts to eradicate opium have failed.

Christopher Dickey

 

After spending years and hundreds of millions of dollars trying to eradicate the fields of poppies that produce opium in Afghanistan, the United States suddenly announced in June that, in the words of special Af-Pak envoy Richard Holbrooke, “eradication is a waste of money.” Instead, NATO and Afghan forces are trying to focus on the nexus between the opium trade and Taliban financing. Nobody has watched these developments more closely than Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. A frequent visitor to Afghanistan himself, he also has a staff of some 360 locals “crisscrossing the country,” tracking the growth and sale of narcotics. In a series of interviews with NEWSWEEK’s Christopher Dickey, Costa talked about the surprising drug story behind the war story in Afghanistan. Excerpts:

Big Banks Paid Billions in Bonuses Amid Wall St. Crisis



By LOUISE STORY and ERIC DASH

Published: July 30, 2009

Thousands of top traders and bankers on Wall Street were awarded huge bonuses and pay packages last year, even as their employers were battered by the financial crisis.

Nine of the financial firms that were among the largest recipients of federal bailout money paid about 5,000 of their traders and bankers bonuses of more than $1 million apiece for 2008, according to a report released Thursday by Andrew M. Cuomo, the New York attorney general.

At Goldman Sachs, for example, bonuses of more than $1 million went to 953 traders and bankers, and Morgan Stanley awarded seven-figure bonuses to 428 employees. Even at weaker banks like Citigroup and Bank of America, million-dollar awards were distributed to hundreds of workers.

Japan jobless at six-year record

Japan saw unemployment levels reach a six-year high last month, with job availability at a new low, official figures have shown.

The BBC  Friday, 31 July 2009

The jobless number increased by 830,000 in June, or 31.3% from a year before, to 3.48 million. The unemployment rate was 5.5% up from May’s figure of 5.2%.

For every 100 people seeking work, there were 43 jobs.

Separate data showed core consumer prices, excluding food costs, fell 1.7% in July year-on-year, a new record.

“The core Consumer Prices Index data was largely within expectation and is expected to stay [negative] until mid 2011 as domestic demand is weak with this severe jobs market and income situation,” said Kyohei Morita, chief economist at Barclays Capital.

A fall in household demand, as consumers seek to tighten their belts, has compounded the problem of falling prices.

House Seems To Be Set on Pork-Padded Defense Bill



By R. Jeffrey Smith

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, July 30, 2009

The Democratic-controlled House is poised to give the Pentagon dozens of new ships, planes, helicopters and armored vehicles that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates says the military does not need to fund next year, acting in many cases in response to defense industry pressures and campaign contributions under an approach he has decried as “business as usual” and vowed to help end.

The unwanted equipment in a military spending bill expected to come to a vote on the House floor Thursday or Friday has a price tag of at least $6.9 billion.

The White House has said that some but not all of the extra expenditures could draw a presidential veto of the Defense Department’s entire $636 billion budget for 2010, and it sent a message to House lawmakers Tuesday urging them to cut expenditures for items that “duplicate existing programs, or that have outlived their usefulness.”

More protests planned in Tehran to mark end of 40-day mourning

From The Times

July 30, 2009

Martin Fletcher

Defiant opposition supporters will return to the streets of Tehran today, emboldened by tales of prison abuse and an eruption of hostilities between President Ahmadinejad and his fellow hardliners.

The occasion is the passing of 40 days – the official end of the mourning period for Shia Muslims – since Iranian security forces killed Neda Soltan and protesters during a demonstration on June 20.

A mourning ceremony in the Grand Mosala prayer hall, which can hold 100,000 people, has been banned so the opposition is planning demonstrations in at least nine locations around the capital.

Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, the defeated presidential candidates, will visit the grave of Ms Soltan whose death, which was caught on video, made her a global symbol of the regime’s brutality.

Foreclosures Are Often In Lenders’ Best Interest

Numbers Work Against Government Efforts To Help Homeowners

By Renae Merle

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Government initiatives to stem the country’s mounting foreclosures are hampered because banks and other lenders in many cases have more financial incentive to let borrowers lose their homes than to work out settlements, some economists have concluded.

Policymakers often say it’s a good deal for lenders to cut borrowers a break on mortgage payments to keep them in their homes. But, according to researchers and industry experts, foreclosing can be more profitable.

The problem is that modifying mortgages is profitable to banks for only one set of distressed borrowers, while lenders are actually dealing with three very different types.

 With Stubborn Unrest in Swat, Landowners Remain in Exile



By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH

Published: July 27, 2009

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Even as hundreds of thousands of people stream back to the Swat Valley after months of fighting, one important group is conspicuously absent: the wealthy landowners who fled the Taliban in fear and are the economic pillar of the rural society.

The reluctance of the landowners to return is a significant blow to the Pakistani military’s campaign to restore Swat as a stable, prosperous part of Pakistan, and it presents a continuing opportunity for the Taliban to reshape the valley to their advantage.

About four dozen landlords were singled out over the past two years by the militants in a strategy intended to foment a class struggle. In some areas, the Taliban rewarded the landless peasants with profits of the crops of the landlords. Some resentful peasants even signed up as the Taliban’s shock troops.

Ben Bernanke says Fed didn’t act quickly enough to stop reckless mortgage lending

But the central bank’s chairman defends its role in rescuing giant firms such as insurer AIG, saying that it needed to take steps to stave off an economic collapse.

By Don Lee

July 27, 2009

Reporting from Kansas City, Mo. — After taking a pounding in Congress over the economic crisis and the multibillion-dollar bailout of ailing financial firms, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke went to Middle America to try to explain the central bank’s actions and shore up its bruised image.

In his efforts to open a window into the traditionally secretive institution, Bernanke conceded to an assembled audience here Sunday that the Federal Reserve did not act soon enough to stop reckless mortgage lending that fueled the global financial crisis.

But he defended the Fed’s part in rescuing giant firms such as insurer American International Group Inc., saying that he was “disgusted” by their reckless behavior but needed to take steps to stave off an economic collapse.

“I was not going to be the Federal Reserve chairman who presided over the second Great Depression,” he said firmly in an event to be aired this week on the PBS program “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.”

Files Vanished, Young Chinese Lose the Future



By SHARON LaFRANIERE

Published: July 26, 2009

WUBU, China – For much of his education, Xue Longlong was silently accompanied from grade to grade, school to school, by a sealed Manila envelope stamped top secret. Stuffed inside were grades, test results, evaluations by fellow students and teachers, his Communist Party application and – most important for his job prospects – proof of his 2006 college degree.

Everyone in China who has been to high school has such a file. The files are irreplaceable histories of achievement and failure, the starting point for potential employers, government officials and others judging an individual’s worth. Often keys to the future, they are locked tight in government, school or workplace cabinets to eliminate any chance they might vanish.