Monday, June 28, 2010

NARCOMEX PRESIDENT BLAMES GANGS... Doesn't He Usually Blame the Gringos?

Mexican leader blames candidate's killing on gangs
26 mins ago

MEXICO CITY – Mexican President Felipe Calderon is blaming drug cartels for the assassination of a front-running gubernatorial candidate.

He warns drug gangs are trying to infiltrate the election process.

Calderon said the assassination Monday of Rodolfo Torre in northern Mexico shows "organized crime is a permanent threat" and called on Mexicans to "close ranks to confront it."

He said organized crime "is trying to interfere in the decisions of citizens and in election processes."

Torre was running for governor in the border state of Tamaulipas.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The front-running candidate for governor in the violence-wracked border state of Tamaulipas was assassinated Monday, the first killing of a Mexican gubernatorial candidate in recent memory.

Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez Mont suggested the killing of candidate Rodolfo Torre of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, was the work of warring drug cartels whose battles have caused hundreds of deaths in recent months in the Gulf coast state.

"These events reinforce the need to combat organized crime on all fronts," Gomez Mont told a news conference. He refused to take questions.

Gunmen ambushed Torre's vehicle as he headed to a campaign event near the state capital, Ciudad Victoria. At least four other people traveling with him were killed.

"We firmly demand a rapid investigation of these events ... and punishment for those responsible," PRI party leader Beatriz Paredes said in a statement. "Nothing is going to intimidate us."

Attacks and threats against candidates in the run-up to Sunday's elections have raised fears that drug cartels may be trying to buy off politicians, and kill or intimidate those they oppose.

Gomez-Mont said the killings "fill all of society with indignation," and pledged to "find those responsible for these detestable acts, and bring them to justice."

The other main party in Tamaulipas — President Felipe Calderon's National Action Party, or PAN — said it would suspend the remaining three days of campaigning by its own gubernatorial candidate. But PAN party leader Cesar Nava said he hoped the elections could go forward Sunday. Twelve states are holding elections for governors, mayors and local posts.

Tamaulipas is one of the main trafficking corridors for drugs heading to the U.S. market, and in recent months has been the scene of bloody shootouts between the Gulf cartel and its rival, the Zetas drug gang. The two former allies split several months ago, and have since been battling for turf.

Television footage from the scene of Monday's attack showed several vehicles and sheet-covered bodies along the side of the highway.

Torre is the highest-ranking election candidate killed in Mexico since presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, also from the PRI, was assassinated in 1994.

Seldom have candidates been hit as hard as they have in Tamaulipas this year.

In May, gunmen killed PAN candidate Jose Guajardo Varela, who had received warnings to drop his bid for the mayorship of Valle Hermoso, a town about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of Brownsville, Texas.

Torre, 46, held a significant lead in polls as candidate for a coalition comprising the PRI and two smaller parties.

Campaigning on the slogan "So that you'll be better off," Torre was heading from Ciudad Victoria to the border city of Matamoros to accompany the PRI's mayoral candidates in the closing of their campaigns Monday.

Torre, a physician, had served as the state's health secretary from 2005 to 2009.

Supporters left dozens of messages offering their condolences on his Facebook page.

He was married and had three teenage children.

OBAMA - I Need Two Things! BANKSTERS' LOOT & ILLEGALS' VOTES FOR 4 MORE YEARS OF CORRUPTION!

THE STAGGERING CORRUPTION AND SELF-SERVING OF BARACK OBAMA
ON THE FLOOR OF THE SENATE IN THE STATE OF THE UNION MESSAGE, BARACK OBAMA LIED TO US AND CLAIMED THAT HIS OBAMACARE WAS NOT ONE MORE HANDOUT TO INDUCE MORE ILLEGALS TO CLIMB OUR BORDERS! AGAIN, HE LIED!
THE OBAMA PUSH FOR AMNESTY ALWAYS ASSERTS THE IMPORTANCE OF BORDER SECURITY FIRST, AS HE REMOVED BORDER GUARDS, STOPS CONSTRUCTION OF THE WALL, SABOTAGES E-VERIFY, AND THEN ASSAULTS THE PEOPLE OF ARIZONA.
FROM HIS FIRST DAY IN OFFICE HE SURROUNDED HIMSELF WITH THE MOST CORRUPT OF THE LA RAZA DEMS AND THE BANKSTER OWNED POLITICIANS. HE HANDED WHAT WAS LEFT OF THE ECONOMY OVER TO HIS BANKSTER DONORS, AND PROMISED HE WOULD DELIVER NO REAL REGULATION. HE DID!
AT A TIME OF UNPRECEDENTED UNEMPLOYMENT, OBAMA SABOTAGES OUR SECURITY TO KEEP THE BORDERS OVEN AND WAVES AND WAVES OF ILLEGALS POURING OVER OUR BORDERS, AS HE STACKS HIS ADMINISTRATION WITH LA RAZA PARTY MEXICAN RACIST TO CONTINUE SABOTAGING THE INTERESTS OF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS, WHO ULTIMATELY GET THE BILLS FOR HIS BANKSTER BAILOUTS, AND EXPANDED MEXICAN WELFARE STATE!
MOST OF THE FORTUNE 500 ARE GENEROUS DONORS TO LA RAZA – THE MEXICAN FASCIST POLITICAL PARTY. THESE FIGURES ARE DATE. CNN CALCULATES THAT WAGES ARE DEPRESSED $300 - $400 BILLION PER YEAR!

“The principal beneficiaries of our current immigration policy are affluent Americans who hire immigrants at substandard wages for low-end work. Harvard economist George Borjas estimates that American workers lose $190 billion annually in depressed wages caused by the constant flooding of the labor market at the low-wage end.” Christian Science Monitor
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House, Senate Democrats agree on pro-Wall Street bank “reform”
By Barry Grey
28 June 2010
The financial regulatory overhaul agreed to Friday by House and Senate conferees represents a total capitulation by the Obama administration and Congress to Wall Street.
The measure that was announced following a 20-hour negotiating session was even weaker than the largely token bills passed last December by the House of Representatives and by the Senate last month. It is expected to be voted on this week by the two congressional chambers.
Nearly 22 months after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, precipitated by reckless speculation and profiteering on the part of the major US banks, abetted by outright swindling and fraud, the White House and Democratic-led Congress have put together a patchwork of half-measures that avoids any structural reform or serious restraint on the activities of the most powerful financial firms.
Obama hailed the agreement Friday before leaving for the G20 meeting in Toronto. “We are poised to pass the toughest financial reform since the ones we created in the aftermath of the Great Depression,” he said, adding, “No longer will we have companies that are ‘too big to fail’.…”
In his weekly radio address Saturday, Obama adopted the pose of populist opponent of Wall Street, declaring, “In recent months, they’ve spent millions of dollars and hired an army of lobbyists to stop reform dead in its tracks. But because we refused to back down, and kept fighting, we now stand on the verge of victory….
“Put simply, we’ll end the days of taxpayer-funded bailouts, and help make sure Main Street is never again held responsible for Wall Street’s mistakes.”
Obama knows better, as does Wall Street. Bank stocks soared across-the-board Friday, as news leaked that the merged House-Senate bill included provisions for which the banks and hedge funds had lobbied furiously—including changes that watered down to virtual irrelevance proposals for limiting the banks’ gambling on risky derivatives and betting depositors’ money for their own profit.
On a day when the Dow declined slightly, Standard & Poor’s financial sector index rose 2.7 percent. Some of the biggest banks saw their shares rise even higher, including Citigroup (4.23 percent), JPMorgan Chase (3.7 percent) and Goldman Sachs (3.47 percent). Bank of America surged 2.66 percent and Wells Fargo rose 1.45 percent.
The Financial Times on Saturday summed up the general feeling on Wall Street, quoting a banker who said, “We are all breathing a sigh of relief here. It could have been much worse and, on balance, we can live with this.” The newspaper went on to say, “investors bet the historic overhaul in financial rules would not have a significant impact on the industry’s structure and profitability.”
The New York Times, even as it called the bill “historic” and claimed that it would “vastly increase” government power over Wall Street, admitted that “Industry analysts predicted that banks would most likely adapt easily to the new regulatory framework and thrive.”
Newsweek magazine quoted a former US Treasury official who said, “We’ve consolidated the position of the five banks that were most central to the crisis.”
Obama’s analogy to the banking reforms instituted in the 1930s, which has been echoed almost universally by the mass media, is specious. Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted significant structural reforms, including the Glass-Steagall Act, which established a legal wall between deposit-taking commercial banks and investment banks and brokerage firms. These and other reform measures forced some of the biggest financial powers, including the House of Morgan, to break apart.
Roosevelt’s reforms did not challenge private ownership of the banks or the basic profit interests of the ruling class. Rather, they were designed to end the most destructive practices of the banks and save the capitalist system from the threat of social revolution. They did, however, impose significant changes.
There is nothing of the kind in the so-called “reform” promoted by the White House and approved by the House and Senate conference committee. None of the banks that played key roles in the financial meltdown and ensuing global recession will be broken up. Nor will Glass-Steagall, which was repealed under the Clinton administration in 1999 (when Obama economic adviser Lawrence Summers was treasury secretary) be reinstated.
The New York Times on Saturday quoted Charles Geisst, a professor of finance at Manhattan College and a Wall Street historian, who said of the comparison to the New Deal reforms, “It doesn’t go anywhere near. It doesn’t change institutional behavior like that did. This is business as usual, with some moderation.”
The only questionable part of this assessment is the reference to moderation.
The entire process by which the financial regulation bill has been drafted testifies to the domination of both parties and the political system as a whole by a financial aristocracy, consisting of Wall Street CEOs and traders, billionaire investors and speculators of various sorts. The banks have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and employed an army of lobbyists to bribe and pressure congressmen and senators.
The operation has been shameless and open. Much of the bill approved Friday was undoubtedly drafted by Wall Street lawyers and lobbyists in closed-door sessions with Democratic legislators.
The Times indicated as much. Describing the marathon conference committee session that spanned Thursday and early Friday, it wrote: “While the televised proceedings at times provided a remarkable window into the minutiae of legislating, many of the deals to complete the bill were cut outside the conference room, in private discussions between Democratic lawmakers and the Obama administration, with some of Washington’s most influential lobbyists trying to weigh in as best as they could.
“One major bank on Friday scrambled to figure out what happened to six words that to its surprise were apparently cut from an amendment on proprietary trading, potentially posing a threat to its business.”
A group of Democratic legislators from New York at the last minute threatened to withhold support for the bill unless provisions barring banks from directly trading in derivatives and speculating with their own funds on their own account were scaled back to allow these practices to largely continue. They made no bones of the fact that they were acting in behalf of Wall Street interests.
“We wanted to make sure we didn’t drive all the derivative business out of New York,” said Representative Gregory W. Meeks, a Democrat from Queens on the conference committee.
The measure has been dubbed the Dodd-Frank bill, after its main authors and congressional sponsors—Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (Democrat from Connecticut) and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (Democrat from Massachusetts). These two individuals exemplify the corrupt relationship between Wall Street and Congress.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Dodd’s single biggest campaign contributor over the course of his Senate career has been Citigroup, which has donated $427,694. His top five donors include three banks. The biggest source of campaign funds has been the securities and investment industry, which has plowed over $6 million into his coffers. Included in his top five industries are insurance, real estate and commercial banks.
The Center for Responsive Politics reports that Frank’s top contributor has been the American Bankers Association ($78,950). Ranked second is JPMorgan Chase ($74,500). His top five industries for campaign donations are real estate, securities and investment, insurance, lawyers/law firms and commercial banks.
It is hardly surprising that what has issued from such a process is a bill entirely compatible with the interests of the major banks and hedge funds. Its main elements include:
* A watered-down provision on derivatives trading that allows the banks to continue trading 90 percent of the instruments they are currently trading. The most risky derivatives, including credit default swaps, will have to be spun off into subsidiaries of the banks.
* A diluted version of the so-called Volcker Rule (named after the former Fed chairman and current Obama economic advisor). Initially, this provision would have banned commercial banks from investing in or owning hedge funds or private equity funds, and barred them from engaging in proprietary trading, i.e., speculating on their own account with their own funds (which includes the deposits of retail customers). As amended, banks can continue to own and manage hedge funds and private equity funds, and can invest up to 3 percent of their Tier One capital in such ventures, i.e., they can continue to engage in proprietary trading, within certain limits.
* A regulatory scheme for derivatives that excludes so-called “customized” credit default swaps—the most lucrative form of bank trading in derivatives—and employs clearinghouses that are largely owned and controlled by major Wall Street banks. The vast majority of derivatives trades—those by non-financial companies—are exempt from regulation.
* A Consumer Financial Protection Bureau within the Federal Reserve Board to oversee banking practices in regard to credit cards, mortgage loans, student loans and other forms of consumer credit. The bill exempts from the bureau’s authority all banks with less than $10 billion in assets—some 98 percent of all banks in the US. It also exempts car dealerships. There is nothing to prevent banks from recouping lost revenues resulting from new consumer regulations by imposing other charges. Moreover, a panel of top financial regulators headed by the treasury secretary will have the power to overrule any regulations proposed by the bureau. And it is expected that no new rules will take effect for some seven years.
* A “resolution authority,” whereby regulators, headed by the Treasury, will have the power, without a vote by Congress, to use taxpayer funds to seize and wind down a major financial firm whose failure threatens a systemic crisis. The conference committee bill omitted a provision in the House bill—fiercely opposed by the banks—that would have imposed an up-front levy on the big banks to establish a fund for potential use in a financial firm’s “resolution.” This essentially institutionalizes a mechanism for future bank bailouts. No one on Wall Street and few in Washington take seriously Obama’s claim that this provision will prevent future bank rescues at public expense.
For the most part, these provisions are spelled out in vague terms in the bill. The actual drafting of rules and regulations and setting of critical limits—such as prescribed capital and liquidity reserves—is left to the regulatory bodies. This means that the banks’ lobbying (and bribing) efforts will intensify, but under even more favorable conditions, since this phase of the “reform” will be carried out with even less media scrutiny.
As the Wall Street Journal noted Saturday: “There are more than 200 items in the bill where final details will be left up to regulators. ‘The bottom line here is that this saga will continue,’ said Timothy Ryan, chief executive of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.”
The banks are already mobilizing their corps of lawyers to devise ways to evade whatever rules are eventually decreed. “Wall Street has always been very skilled at getting around rules, and this law will be no different,” Frank Partnoy, a professor of law at the University of San Diego and a former trader at Morgan Stanley, told the New York Times.

OBAMA & HIS CAMPAIGN TO GIVE OUR JOBS AWAY FOR "CHEAP" LABOR

THE STAGGERING CORRUPTION AND SELF-SERVING OF BARACK OBAMA

FROM HIS FIRST DAY IN OFFICE HE SURROUNDED HIMSELF WITH THE MOST CORRUPT OF THE LA RAZA DEMS AND THE BANKSTER OWNED POLITICIANS. HE HANDED WHAT WAS LEFT OF THE ECONOMY OVER TO HIS BANKSTER DONORS, AND PROMISED HE WOULD DELIVER NO REAL REGULATION. HE DID!

AT A TIME OF UNPRECEDENTED UNEMPLOYMENT, OBAMA SABOTAGES OUR SECURITY TO KEEP THE BORDERS OVEN AND WAVES AND WAVES OF ILLEGALS POURING OVER OUR BORDERS, AS HE STACKS HIS ADMINISTRATION WITH LA RAZA PARTY MEXICAN RACIST TO CONTINUE SABOTAGING THE INTERESTS OF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS, WHO ULTIMATELY GET THE BILLS FOR HIS BANKSTER BAILOUTS, AND EXPANDED MEXICAN WELFARE STATE!
*
MOST OF THE FORTUNE 500 ARE GENEROUS DONORS TO LA RAZA – THE MEXICAN FASCIST POLITICAL PARTY. THESE FIGURES ARE DATE. CNN CALCULATES THAT WAGES ARE DEPRESSED $300 - $400 BILLION PER YEAR!

“The principal beneficiaries of our current immigration policy are affluent Americans who hire immigrants at substandard wages for low-end work. Harvard economist George Borjas estimates that American workers lose $190 billion annually in depressed wages caused by the constant flooding of the labor market at the low-wage end.” Christian Science Monitor
*
THE BANKSTER PRESIDENT AND HIS CORPORATE OWNED LA RAZA PARTY!

And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.


June 27, 2010
The Third Depression
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Recessions are common; depressions are rare. As far as I can tell, there were only two eras in economic history that were widely described as “depressions” at the time: the years of deflation and instability that followed the Panic of 1873 and the years of mass unemployment that followed the financial crisis of 1929-31.
Neither the Long Depression of the 19th century nor the Great Depression of the 20th was an era of nonstop decline — on the contrary, both included periods when the economy grew. But these episodes of improvement were never enough to undo the damage from the initial slump, and were followed by relapses.
We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.
And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world — most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.
In 2008 and 2009, it seemed as if we might have learned from history. Unlike their predecessors, who raised interest rates in the face of financial crisis, the current leaders of the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank slashed rates and moved to support credit markets. Unlike governments of the past, which tried to balance budgets in the face of a plunging economy, today’s governments allowed deficits to rise. And better policies helped the world avoid complete collapse: the recession brought on by the financial crisis arguably ended last summer.
But future historians will tell us that this wasn’t the end of the third depression, just as the business upturn that began in 1933 wasn’t the end of the Great Depression. After all, unemployment — especially long-term unemployment — remains at levels that would have been considered catastrophic not long ago, and shows no sign of coming down rapidly. And both the United States and Europe are well on their way toward Japan-style deflationary traps.
In the face of this grim picture, you might have expected policy makers to realize that they haven’t yet done enough to promote recovery. But no: over the last few months there has been a stunning resurgence of hard-money and balanced-budget orthodoxy.
As far as rhetoric is concerned, the revival of the old-time religion is most evident in Europe, where officials seem to be getting their talking points from the collected speeches of Herbert Hoover, up to and including the claim that raising taxes and cutting spending will actually expand the economy, by improving business confidence. As a practical matter, however, America isn’t doing much better. The Fed seems aware of the deflationary risks — but what it proposes to do about these risks is, well, nothing. The Obama administration understands the dangers of premature fiscal austerity — but because Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress won’t authorize additional aid to state governments, that austerity is coming anyway, in the form of budget cuts at the state and local levels.
Why the wrong turn in policy? The hard-liners often invoke the troubles facing Greece and other nations around the edges of Europe to justify their actions. And it’s true that bond investors have turned on governments with intractable deficits. But there is no evidence that short-run fiscal austerity in the face of a depressed economy reassures investors. On the contrary: Greece has agreed to harsh austerity, only to find its risk spreads growing ever wider; Ireland has imposed savage cuts in public spending, only to be treated by the markets as a worse risk than Spain, which has been far more reluctant to take the hard-liners’ medicine.
It’s almost as if the financial markets understand what policy makers seemingly don’t: that while long-term fiscal responsibility is important, slashing spending in the midst of a depression, which deepens that depression and paves the way for deflation, is actually self-defeating.
So I don’t think this is really about Greece, or indeed about any realistic appreciation of the tradeoffs between deficits and jobs. It is, instead, the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times.
And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.