Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise

Rappel du premier message :

U.S. clamps down on banking transactions; terror group finds new funding

By Robert Windrem and Garrett Haake
NBC News
updated 7:56 a.m. ET Nov. 14, 2008
Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. intelligence officials believe they've won many small victories against al-Qaida's ability to finance its operations, but they remain unable to put a concrete dollar figure on their impact.

That's because they have no reliable estimate of al-Qaida's overall budget, according to current and former U.S. counterterrorism officials, which means the only measures of the organization's economic health are sporadic, anecdotal and fragmentary.

"When you see a cell complaining that it hasn't received its monthly or biannual stipend and it's unable to pay the salaries of the people in the cell, unable to make the support payments to the families of terrorists living or dead, that's a tremendous indicator we have pressured the financial channel," said Adam Szubin, the director of the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control and the man in charge of tracking terrorist finance.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27644191

peut-etre "a la Putin", oui.

Canaillou, va! "Where's the outrage?"

Si c'est vrai

1) Elle va etre absolument furieuse

2) les Republicains avaient parfaitement raison lorsqu'ils parlaient de clivage entre le plan de NNP et celui de Nancy.

3) je ne pense pas 1 seconde que Jim Cooper ait lache ca sans l'accord ni meme la demande de la Maison Blanche.

Ca ne sent pas bon pour elle mais, c'est comme Hilary, je ne la vois pas mise a l'ecart sans une terrible bataille.

Democrat: Obama Team 'Encouraged' Defiance of Pelosi on Stimulus

Wednesday, February 04, 2009



AP
Tennessee Rep. Jim Cooper

Rep. Jim Cooper, a conservative Democrat from Tennessee, told a liberal radio network that the Obama White House encouraged him to defy House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the $819 billion economic stimulus bill.

"Well, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I actually got some quiet encouragement from the Obama folks for what I’m doing," said Cooper, one of only 11 Democrats to vote against the economic stimulus plan that passed the House last week.

"They know its a messy bill and they wanted a clean bill," he said. "Now, I got in terrible trouble with our leadership because they don’t care what’s in the bill, they just want it to pass and they want it to be unanimous."

Cooper, whose startling admission came Sunday on Liberadio, was one of about 55 House Democrats to sign a letter criticizing Pelosi for suspending debate and committee rules on the fiscal package.

"They don’t mind the partisan fighting cause that's what they are used to. In fact, they're really good at it — and they’re a little bit worried about what a post-partisan future might look like," Cooper said during the radio interview. "If members actually had to read the bills and figure out whether they are any good or not. We’re just told how to vote. We’re treated like mushrooms most of the time."

An early supporter of President Obama, Cooper is a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition of Democrats.

The White House and Pelosi did not immediately return requests for comment.

Vidéogramme Yt mess. 372

Citation :

Soyez particulièrement attentifs à partir de la 30ème seconde !

Je me demande qui Aladin Dineaveclediable traite tant de fois de suite "Ah la la qu'il est gland !" ? Y avait-il un personaute dans le satellite ? En passager clandestin.

Persia is back ! Je n'ai jamais pu comprendre comment les descendants des Sassanides ont pu se faire balayer par les cueilleurs de dattes mahométans en 637 à la bataille de al-Qadisiyya, 100 ans avant la raclée de Poitiers infligée par l'infanterie franque aux chevaucheurs du cimeterre ?

Pour qui a bossé (et même plus si affinités avec les belles iraniennes...) avec des Iraniens ayant fuit le totalitarisme théocratique il est lumineux que ce peuple animé d'une grande intelligence et d'une immense soif de savoirs puisse dans une relative autarcie développer un secteur de la recherche extrêmement pointu. Si jamais quelqu'un se frottait à eux il essuierait des déconvenues. Il y a un timing, si l'on ne dialogue pas avec le pouvoir iranien maintenant, demain si jamais il y a confrontation, les gardiens de la Révolution auront du répondant militaire qui fera mal, très mal... Et les Chinois de rigoler de voir l'Occident consommer ses capacités militaires, car ils nous attendent au tournant les Célestes.

ça n'a pas grand chose à voir, mais qu'est-ce qu'il est moche quand même le gnome iranien (on dirait Gargamel la barbe en plus)... c'est moi qui ai une poussière dans l'oeil ou il est aussi petit que Sarkozy ?

J'ai trouve pour:

Nicolas: 1m68

et pour l'autre: 1m524 (5'2")! (mais tout en hargne)

FEBRUARY 5, 2009

CIA Nominee Panetta Received $700,000 in Fees

By GLENN R. SIMPSON

WASHINGTON -- The White House's nominee for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon Panetta, has earned more than $700,000 in speaking and consulting fees since the beginning of 2008, with some of the payments coming from troubled financial firms and from a firm that invests in contractors for federal national security agencies, according to financial disclosures released Wednesday.

Mr. Panetta received $56,000 from Merrill Lynch & Co. for two speeches and $28,000 for a speech for Wachovia Corp., according to disclosures released ahead of Thursday's scheduled Senate hearing on Mr. Panetta's nomination.

Both Merrill and Wachovia reported big losses last year and were acquired by larger firms. The Wachovia honorarium was dated Oct. 30, and the last Merrill Lynch honorarium was dated Oct. 11, according to disclosure forms filed by Mr. Panetta in connection with his nomination. At the time, Bank of America had agreed to a rescue of Merrill Lynch; Wachovia had agreed to be acquired by Wells Fargo & Co.
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Associated Press

The Senate confirmation hearing for Leon Panetta, nominated to be director of the CIA, is scheduled for Thursday.Mr. Panetta's disclosure form illustrates how retired politicians commonly make money giving speeches and consulting for prominent companies with significant interests before the government. That was one element in the controversy over the cabinet nomination of former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who withdrew Tuesday.

The former White House chief of staff's disclosure form also shows the delicate balance President Barack Obama is trying to strike -- trying to curb the influence of lobbyists, while relying on Washington veterans who often help clients navigate the halls of power. Mr. Panetta's forms show that he performed government affairs consulting last year and also sat on the board of a public affairs firm that lobbies Congress. Like Mr. Daschle, who also worked for a firm with lobbying clients, Mr. Panetta doesn't violate Mr. Obama's ban on hiring registered lobbyists.

"We anticipate that [Thursday's] hearing will focus on the substance of Mr. Panetta's views about how to strengthen our intelligence gathering and keep our nation safe, as all of Mr. Panetta's income and investments have been thoroughly reviewed by the Office of Government Ethics," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said.
Mr. Panetta also received a $28,000 honorarium from the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm that owns companies doing business with national-security agencies of the U.S. government. Carlyle holds a majority stake in the government consulting arm of Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., which works for the CIA and other agencies. A Carlyle spokesman said Mr. Panetta was paid to speak at an investor conference and that the matter was unrelated to Booz Allen or any other defense contractors.

Mr. Panetta also reported receiving a $60,000 "Governmental Advisor Fee" from the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents the shipping industry. The group lobbies the federal government regarding terrorism laws that affect shipping. A spokesman for the association didn't respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Panetta is a former Congressman from central California who served as White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton. A White House spokesman said Mr. Panetta "provided consulting services on port security issues and some labor issues" to the Pacific Maritime Association. The spokesman said Mr. Panetta was "unaware" if his work was related to lobbying efforts by PMA in Washington that were described in public disclosure forms. Regarding potential conflicts of interest involving his speaking fees from Carlyle and other firms, the spokesman said, "All of his income and investments have been thoroughly reviewed by the Office of Government Ethics, and he will abide by whatever they require."

Fleishman Hillard, a large public affairs and lobbying firm, also paid Mr. Panetta $130,000 in director's fees. Fleishman Vice Chairman Paul Johnson said Mr. Panetta advises firm clients on policy and economic issues but performs "absolutely no lobbying or government relations work."

Another source of income for Mr. Panetta was California State University, which hosts the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy, a nonprofit foundation. Last night, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee posed a series of new questions to Mr. Panetta about his finances, according to a Senate aide. The panel is seeking information on his relationship to a nonprofit firm called EduCap Inc. that is under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service. EduCap and a sister firm donated $50,000 to Mr. Panetta's institute and provided flights on its corporate jet to Mr. Daschle and other Washington figures.

—Susan Schmidt contributed to this article.

soit parti de Washington pour que les Democrates qui avaient tant combattu ce programme, le reprennent a leur nom!

Enfin, bon, ce qui n'arretera jamais de me surprendre c'est que quelqu'un d'aussi intelligent que NNP suive de si pres tant de programmes de Pres. Bush, que l'on dit si bete.

Obama to expand Bush faith program

By CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN | 2/5/09 4:29 AM EST

President Barack Obama, who has been reversing course on a host of Bush administration policies, Thursday will make a bid to expand and strengthen one of the programs most closely associated with his predecessor.

(hey, Lawrence ! )

George W. Bush created the White House faith-based grant program, and Obama intends to keep the same structure. But Obama is going a significant step further, with the creation of a new board of advisers whose recommendations will be woven directly into his policy-making apparatus.

Under Bush, a White House-based program to encourage grants to faith-based social service programs began with high hopes and a barrage of publicity. But over time this Bush hallmark suffered amid complaints from many of its backers that it had become marginalized and used for partisan purposes by White House political aides.

Under Obama, the President’s Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will allow 25 faith and secular leaders to provide regular input on policy and to advise the White House faith office, which is tasked with distributing grants. Obama is slated to announce the council Thursday and meet privately with members at the White House.

“The conventional wisdom suggests that, since Bush used much rhetoric about his commitment to working closely with religious leaders and communities, that the new Democrat coming to the White House might seek to diminish the role of religion in his administration,” said the Rev. Jim Wallis, the president of the progressive Christian group Sojourners and a member of Obama’s new council. “But I believe the opposite may turn out to be true. There will be a new paradigm of religious influence under the Obama administration.”

The council will pull together an evangelical megachurch pastor, a Reform rabbi, a former Southern Baptist Convention president and the first female bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.* The membership is intended to cross the political and religious spectrum, fulfilling Obama’s promise to run an inclusive administration. But with the diversity could come conflict.

* , la religion musulmane n'est pas representee?

“Some folks on the right and left will have heartburn when they look at the full range of people on this council,” said Shaun Casey, a faith adviser to the Obama campaign and an associate professor of Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary.

An early struggle could erupt over how Obama deals with a Bush administration rule that allows religious groups that receive federal funding to hire only staff members who share their faith — a move that critics say puts the government’s imprimatur on discrimination. For example, Wallis favors the Bush rule, while another soon-to-be council member, Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, vociferously opposes it.
“These are people who are not used to going along to just get along,” Casey said.

...

“If the Obama administration feels it necessary to put some pressure on Israel to do something different, what they gathered from that particular group was the desire for a more even-handed policy,” Gushee said. “They are taking the pulse of religious leaders, so they have a sense of how people would respond if they move in different directions in policy, and how to mobilize public opinion if they need support. They want grass-roots support for tough decisions.”

Despite its goal of diversity, some conservative Christian leaders said they don’t expect invitations to join the council, given their significant differences with Obama over abortion, gay rights and embryonic stem cell research.

“I don’t expect them to be getting routine input from us,” said Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, who received one call from an Obama aide.

Bush assiduously pursued the support of Christian conservatives, relying for most of his two terms on key advisers such as Karl Rove to keep leaders on speed dial. Bush used his Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to cast a wider net, reaching Hispanic and African-American churches with funding grants.

But liberal and moderate faith leaders say they felt left out during the Bush administration and are hopeful that their eight-year struggle for presidential face time may be over.

“They are very aware that in order to sustain broad-based support for cooperation in government, they are going to have to continue to be engaged in a way that leaders will take that message back to their constituencies,” said Hunter, a board member of the National Association of Evangelicals. “It is very smart politically, and it is also what public service should be.”

WOW!

Ce sont les Liberaux visceralement anti-religion qui ont vote pour NNP qui vont etre contents!

Obama losing the stimulus message war

JEANNE CUMMINGS 2/5/09 6:32 AM EST

At this crucial juncture in the push to pass an economic recovery package, President Obama finds himself in the most unlikely of places: He is losing the message war.

Despite Obama’s sky high personal approval ratings, polls show support has declined for his stimulus bill since Republicans and their conservative talk-radio allies began railing against what they labeled as pork barrel spending within it.

The sheer size of it – hovering at about $900 billion — has prompted more protests that are now causing some moderate and conservative Democrats to flinch and, worse, hesitate.

The anxiety over lost momentum seemed almost palpable this week as the president in television interviews voiced frustration with his White House’s progress and the way his recovery program was being demonized as a Democratic spending frenzy.

In Obama’s own words in an NBC interview, it’s his job to “get this thing back on track.”

Already, he’s trying – rolling out Michelle Obama to talk stimulus Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday (at a train station, no less) and sitting down with key senators one-on-one.

But this is unfamiliar turf for a team that achieved near epic status for its communication skills during the presidential campaign. They’ve rarely ever had to play catch-up.

With the president’s gifted oratory and a technologically savvy team, the Obama camp was able to seize control of the national conversation as early as April and never fully relinquish it right through his Inaugural Address two weeks ago.

To be sure, some of Obama’s headaches stem from the normal dysfunction that occurs when a White House is in transition. Phones don’t work, chains of command are fuzzy, and there are formalities that need tending to.

But the Obama team also made its own mistakes. The president’s troubled cabinet nominees added to the cacophony that at times drowned out the White House economic messages in the past two weeks.
And it seems more apparent each day that the nascent Obama Administration isn’t fully prepared for the task at hand.

The president’s decision to push through a massive stimulus bill, while perhaps unavoidable, is forcing the much-vaunted Chicago crowd to adapt at lightning speed to its more skillful adversaries on Capitol Hill, while at the same time taking a crash course on harnessing the full power of bully pulpit. If he doesn’t figure it out soon, Obama is likely to find out that his stimulus package looks very different than he had in mind indeed.

The Jetsons versus the Flinstones

Obama’s campaign was lauded for its visionary use of modern tools for old-fashioned politics. Through the Internet, it recruited supporters, collected dollars, rallied supporters and organized get-out-the vote operations.

But when these modern heroes arrived at the White House, it was like the lights all went out.
Their contact with their millions-fold supporters was cut off, literally, as e-mail systems broke down and ‘The List’ of political supporters was blocked at the iron gate.

To meet government ethics rules, the campaign operation and its grassroots army were forced to de-camp to the Democratic National Committee, robbing the president of one of his most potent political weapons just as the stimulus bill was under consideration in the House.

But while the White House team struggled to adapt, it was business as usual on Capitol Hill for Republicans.

They could practically sleep-walk through their attack plan once House Democrats began to fill in Obama’s broad outlines for a stimulus with a few pet projects of their own.

It required two simple steps: Scream pork, call Rush Limbaugh.

They even could have even used a rotary phone.

...

FEBRUARY 5, 2009, 7:53 A.M. ET

Faith-Based Program gets wider focus

By LAURA MECKLER

WASHINGTON -- When President Barack Obama launches his version of the faith-based initiative Thursday, he will expand the mission to include abortion reduction and outreach to the Muslim world. He will also try to avoid the thorniest constitutional issues that beset the program for years under his predecessor.

Mr. Obama's approach to the federal faith office reflects his search for common ground on contentious social issues, and his willingness to dial back some of his campaign positions.

Mr. Obama's goal, much like President George W. Bush's, is to harness the power of churches and other religious groups to solve some of the nation's toughest social problems. But almost from the start, the Bush plan was ensnared by constitutional questions about the separation between church and state, most notably whether an organization that received tax dollars can make hiring decisions on the basis of religion.

As a candidate, Mr. Obama came down firmly against such hiring. But on Thursday, he will take a more nuanced position, saying that these issues should be decided on a case-by-case basis, said Joshua DuBois, the 26-year-old former campaign adviser who will be named to head the White House Office for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

"The president found one of the problems with the previous initiative was that tough questions were decided without appropriate consideration and data," Mr. DuBois said in an interview Wednesday. President Obama, he said, "doesn't have an interest in rushing questions that are so complex."

Instead, the president will sign an executive order making clear that the director of the new office should seek guidance from the Department of Justice on specific legal issues regarding "how to respect the Constitution" and nondiscrimination laws, Mr. DuBois said.

Bien evidemment, Pres. Bush s'assurait egalement de la constitutionalite de ses decisions!

The same case-by-case approach will govern another tricky question: whether federal funds can pay for secular portions of programs that also include proselytization, he said.

That approach will likely anger some on the left who were hoping for a clean break with the Bush policy. In a speech last July, Mr. Obama presented a more clear-cut view of how to draw the constitutional line. "If you get a federal grant, you can't use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can't discriminate against them or against the people you hire on the basis of their religion," he said then.

But the new approach will please people like David Kuo, who was deputy director of the Bush faith-based office, and who says that too much energy was spent on questions that have little impact in the real world. He said that very few charities actually discriminate in their hiring.

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Obama campaign



Barack Obama in April with Joshua DuBois, who will head the White House's new version of the faith-based initiative.





"Bush tried to say, 'OK, we're going to open everything up to hiring' and got caught up in this massive Washington fight," Mr. Kuo said. "My fear is Obama will take the opposite view and he'll get embroiled in the same swamp."

In unveiling the office Thursday at a morning prayer breakfast, Mr. Obama will set out a structure that is similar to the Bush program: a White House office supplemented by offices in 11 federal agencies. He will add a new 25-member advisory council made up of a diverse group of religious and some secular leaders.

The office will be given four specific missions, including an administration effort to reduce teen pregnancy and reduce the need for abortion. The goals, Mr. DuBois said, will include ensuring access to health care and support for adoption.
The office also will also be asked to encourage interfaith dialogue "at home and, more pressingly, abroad," he said. He said the president he won't necessarily single out any particular part of the world, clearly outreach to Muslim nations will be part of the mix. In addition, the office will be asked to engage organizations in helping people deal with the economic crisis, and addressing fatherhood issues, a longtime interest of the president.

By PAUL KRUGMANPublished: February 8, 2009


What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses?

A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.
Even if the original Obama plan — around $800 billion in stimulus, with a substantial fraction of that total given over to ineffective tax cuts — had been enacted, it wouldn’t have been enough to fill the looming hole in the U.S. economy, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will amount to $2.9 trillion over the next three years.
Yet the centrists did their best to make the plan weaker and worse.

One of the best features of the original plan was aid to cash-strapped state governments, which would have provided a quick boost to the economy while preserving essential services. But the centrists insisted on a $40 billion cut in that spending.

The original plan also included badly needed spending on school construction; $16 billion of that spending was cut. It included aid to the unemployed, especially help in maintaining health care — cut. Food stamps — cut. All in all, more than $80 billion was cut from the plan, with the great bulk of those cuts falling on precisely the measures that would do the most to reduce the depth and pain of this slump.

On the other hand, the centrists were apparently just fine with one of the worst provisions in the Senate bill, a tax credit for home buyers. Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research calls this the “flip your house to your brother” provision: it will cost a lot of money while doing nothing to help the economy.

All in all, the centrists’ insistence on comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted will, if reflected in the final bill, lead to substantially lower employment and substantially more suffering.

...

So Mr. Obama was reduced to bargaining for the votes of those centrists. And the centrists, predictably, extracted a pound of flesh — not, as far as anyone can tell, based on any coherent economic argument, but simply to demonstrate their centrist mojo. They probably would have demanded that $100 billion or so be cut from anything Mr. Obama proposed; by coming in with such a low initial bid, the president guaranteed that the final deal would be much too small.

Such are the perils of negotiating with yourself.
Now, House and Senate negotiators have to reconcile their versions of the stimulus, and it’s possible that the final bill will undo the centrists’ worst. And Mr. Obama may be able to come back for a second round. But this was his best chance to get decisive action, and it fell short.

So has Mr. Obama learned from this experience? Early indications aren’t good.

For rather than acknowledge the failure of his political strategy and the damage to his economic strategy, the president tried to put a postpartisan happy face on the whole thing. “Democrats and Republicans came together in the Senate and responded appropriately to the urgency this moment demands,” he declared on Saturday, and “the scale and scope of this plan is right.”

No, they didn’t, and no, it isn’t.

Sur 1000 electeurs potentiels

Etes-vous pour ou contre le plan de relance economique propose par Barack Obama et les Democrates du Congres?

Date ...................... Pour...................Contre

Feb 2-3 ................. 37% ................... 43%

Jan 27-28............... 42% ................... 39%

Jan 19-20, 2009....... 45%.................... 34%

(le meme monsieur qui avait un peu oublie de payer ses impots parce qu'il n'avait pas bien compris la loi, chose que le porte-parole de la Maison Blanche demande aux reporters d'oublier maintenant que Monsieur Geithner a ete confirme dans son poste, ben voyons donc) est sans doute tres competent - NNP nous l'a assure - mais en tout cas la presentation de son plan de repechage des banques a tout de meme resulte en une perte de presque 5% des actions hier.

Market Pans Bank Rescue Plan
Treasury Secretary's Announcement Short on Details About Bad Assets, Mortgages

Wall Street Journal

By DEBORAH SOLOMON
WASHINGTON -- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner promised forceful action to get credit flowing again in the economy, but the lack of detail in his much-anticipated speech helped drive stocks down nearly 5%, the worst selloff since President Barack Obama assumed office.

Announcing the Obama administration's financial-rescue plan in the Treasury's ornate Cash Room, Mr. Geithner described a mix of efforts that were mostly already known in their outlines. They included a fresh round of capital injections into banks, an expansion of a Federal Reserve lending program and a public-private effort to relieve banks of soured assets. The steps are aimed at getting $1 trillion to $2 trillion in financing flowing through the economy to kick-start both consumer and business lending.

...

FEBRUARY 10, 2009, 11:11 P.M. ET

Wall Street Journal

By PETER FERRARA

In his inaugural address, President Barack Obama said, "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works -- whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified." Or as administration spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said in January, the touchstone is, "What will have the biggest and most immediate impact on creating private sector jobs and strengthening the middle class? We're guided by what works, not by any ideology or special interests."

Corbis
Ronald Reagan and Paul Volcker, July 1981.

Unfortunately, this rhetoric is not true. Mr. Obama's economic policy is following not what has been proven to work but liberal ideology.

The best way to understand this is to compare what's being proposed now with what Ronald Reagan accomplished. In 1980, amid a seriously dysfunctional economy, Reagan campaigned for president on an economic recovery program with four specific components.

...

The Obama administration's economic policies do not include any of the four Reagan components. In fact, the stimulus plan is the greatest increase in government spending in the history of the planet. Meanwhile, the Fed is furiously reinflating, sowing more havoc down the line. Mr. Obama is still promising future increases in tax rates by letting the Bush tax cuts lapse, because for ideological reasons he thinks even current rates are too low. And instead of deregulating for more energy production, he is still promising massive increases in regulatory barriers -- through global warming cap-and-trade legislation -- to increased production from proven energy sources to serve an extreme environmentalist ideology.

This is why America seems so hopeless right now, and so depressed. We are stuck going in exactly the wrong direction on economic policy because of currently dominant ideological fashions.

AP
Comment le trouvez-vous notre nouveau secretaire au tresor?

Mais non, je ne me pas de son look plutot de son attitude, ca j'ai le droit. Parce que cette photo officielle, s'il ne l'avait pas voulue, il pouvait la changer

=====

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

The unmentionable Bank Solution

It's all about "regulatory forbearance."

Tim Geithner didn't use the words "regulatory forbearance" yesterday in his banking bailout presentation. In fact, no one in Washington uses those words, which are seriously out of fashion. Yet regulatory forbearance is the most important item in the government toolkit, and the giant raspberry Mr. Geithner received from the market yesterday should be his signal that the market understands this and worries he doesn't.



When you hear critics complaining about mark-to-market, they're in effect calling for regulatory forbearance. Banks are required to report holdings of securitized loans at market prices, though market prices are severely depressed right now -- perhaps more so than justified by the performance of the underlying assets.

Is mark-to-market the best of all possible disclosure regimes for investors? Maybe so, but that's no reason for regulators to tie their own hands when flexibility about bank solvency would better serve the public interest. That's regulatory forbearance.

Let's not kid ourselves, either, that banks haven't already received a few nods to avoid accounting write-downs that would endanger their capital adequacy. Mr. Geithner would have done himself a favor simply to embrace that fact rather than issue the catalog of hand-waving he issued yesterday, which we fear will just extend the government's record of confusing and destabilizing markets.

...

Sadly, much of what Mr. Geithner offered yesterday was, in fact, redundant. Banks "too big to fail" already are effectively backed by government and don't need trillion-dollar capital injections or taxpayer-financed toxic asset relief. What markets really could have used was a guiding word about regulatory forbearance and also its corollary: Stepped-up enforcement to make sure bank managements don't take crazy risks while digging out.
Instead, Mr. Geithner offered that Washington now would "stress test" banks to find out their true condition. Huh? Aren't our multiple regulatory agencies already doing this? And does viability mean on a cash-flow basis or mark-to-market basis? Either way, all he's done is put the market in suspense once more about which banks will be allowed to live and die and what standard the government will apply in deciding.

...

Geithner n'est pas mal la non plus par dessus l'epaule de NNP

Pelosi's Indefensible Bill

For Barack Obama, a cautionary tale of audacity.

Historians tell us it was Roman custom to place a slave in the chariot behind a conquering hero, there to whisper warnings about the fleeting nature of fame amid the accolades of adoring crowds.


Martin Kozlowski

Barack Obama is no stranger to the cheers of roaring crowds. If his prime-time press conference last night is any clue, moreover, he intends to use this personal popularity to help Congress get a stimulus bill to his desk quickly. As he does, those who wish his presidency success might do well to whisper in his ear two words of tempering wisdom: "Nancy Pelosi."

In the public eye as well as on Capitol Hill, the California Democrat has become the mother of all stimulus packages. Whatever issues Mrs. Pelosi may claim with the Senate version, her leadership has defined the direction. Her intransigence has set the tone. And her penchant for excess helps explain why out of 535 members of Congress, only three Republicans seem willing to go anywhere near the thing.

Therein lies a cautionary tale.

In the afterglow of President Obama's inauguration, it's easy to forget that Mrs. Pelosi's similarly historic elevation to the speaker's chair just two years ago had its own elements of a coronation -- and its own claims of change we were to believe in.

Like President Obama, who characterized his ascent to the White House as a mark of "how far we have traveled," Speaker Pelosi spoke of her swearing in as a "moment for which we have waited more than 200 years."
Like President Obama, whose supporters made ubiquitous a red, white and blue image of the candidate over the word "hope," Speaker Pelosi's supporters brandished their own icon at her swearing-in: commemorative buttons depicting her as Rosie the Riveter flexing her muscle.

And like President Obama, Speaker Pelosi heralded her election as "a call to change." In her acceptance speech, she put it this way: "We have made history," she said. "Now let us make progress for our new America."
That was January 2007. Before the year was out, her approval ratings would be lower than George W. Bush's.
Under her leadership, Congress failed to pass a single appropriations bill until early November. Congress also failed to override the president's veto on what Democrats thought would be an easy win for an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Most significant of all, Congress failed to force Mr. Bush to begin what Democrats had said was their real goal: a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

The way Mrs. Pelosi handled Iraq has some interesting parallels to the way she is now handling the stimulus. In the early months of her speakership, the Democratic Congress faced its first test on Iraq in the form of a war funding bill. Mrs. Pelosi's response? To lard it up with billions in unrelated domestic spending -- including a now infamous provision that would have spent $74 million for peanut storage.

In many ways, Mrs. Pelosi's decisions would make it easier for Mr. Bush to get his war funding through her Congress. While the president argued for supporting our troops, Democrats were forced to defend pork. And though Mr. Bush was ultimately forced to accept more domestic spending than he would have preferred, on the central issue -- funding for the war -- he got what he wanted without agreeing to a timetable for withdrawal.

Just as she did with war funding, Mrs. Pelosi is once again putting her fellow Democrats -- Mr. Obama included -- in the position of defending the indefensible. And she let it all ride on a game of chicken. Her bet has been that a Republican minority would sooner or later cry "uncle" on a laundry list of pet Democratic spending projects rather than risk being painted as holding up vital economic legislation.

But a funny thing happened: House Republicans called her bluff. The result has been more attention to the content of the legislation passing through Congress. And as the focus on content has increased, the American people have grown more skeptical.

In public, Mr. Obama may tell us the problem is the lack of Republican support. But if he is as comfortable with the stimulus as he says, if the bills under consideration are really the tonic our economy needs, if by not passing a stimulus immediately we truly risk catastrophe, and if the American people are going to call the Republicans to account for not going along, why all the fuss? Why not just have it passed on your own, and take full credit.

Unless, of course, even Democrats are beginning to hear whispers of "Nancy Pelosi" ringing in their ears.

Oups

Vous voyez, même Rë peut nous donner des exemples à suivre, hein ?

(Bonjour Sylvette ! )

Formidable, merci!

A Commentary By Tony BlankleyWednesday, February 11, 2009

President Barack Obama's first presidential news conference was performed feebly by the once-ferocious White House press corps and shrewdly -- if deceptively -- by the president. In the six years I did communications on former President Ronald Reagan's White House staff, I don't recall a single news conference in which there were no follow-up questions, no challenges to anything the president had said recently, no assertions of fact that the president was challenged to deal with. In fact, I don't remember former President Bill Clinton, either, ever getting a full 45-minute prime-time news conference pass.

Yet Monday night, all the questions but one were of the "please, sir, could you tell us how you plan to deal with x?" variety. Only Major Garrett of Fox News raised even a slightly embarrassing question: What was Vice President Joe Biden referring to when he said the administration had a 30 percent chance of failing at some initiative? And I must confess that if I had been the vice president, I would not have been happy with the president's answer, which was, in essence: I don't know what Biden was talking about, but that sounds like him.

It can't be good that the president is making his vice president the public butt of his snickering after only three weeks in office. Not that it is Biden's fault. Along with a fair amount of blarney, Joe Biden also makes more honest and candid observations in an afternoon than many politicians make in a lifetime. One comes away from a conversation with Biden with at least one truthful nugget.

The same cannot be said for President Obama. Both Monday night and usually, the president offers his audience one of the finest verisimilitudes of sincerity and manly vigor this side of an old Laurence Olivier performance of "Henry V."

One has to listen closely to spot the straw men and general bunk that carefully -- indeed, it would seem, instinctively -- are laced into his answers. While he repeatedly said he was willing to negotiate with Republicans on the stimulus bill, he pointed out that some of them wanted to do nothing. Well, perhaps there may be a few who want to do nothing. But Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate are proposing their own very large stimulus packages that, using President Obama's economists' own methods, would create more jobs faster than Obama's version would. In fact, according to the study, it would create 6.2 million jobs, compared with the president's plan's 3-4 million.

Now, whether the president's plan or the GOP's plan actually would create that many jobs, no one can know for sure. But for the president to leave the American public with the powerful implication that the Republicans are not worthy negotiating partners because they just don't want to do anything in the face of the crisis is a particularly sordid bit of rhetorical manipulation.

Mind you, he didn't lie. There are a few backbench Republicans who propose nothing. But as the leadership, backed by the overwhelming majority of GOP members, is proposing big plans and is trying, without success, to engage in negotiations with either the president or his congressional party allies, the president willfully misled, by implication, his public.

In another statement that can't have made liberal Democrats any happier than it made conservative Republicans, he contrasted his reasonable self to both liberal Democrats who measure education success only by how much money they spend and Republicans who want to "blow up" public education. As the family friend and educational partner of Bill Ayers, who actually did blow up public buildings, the language was a little cheeky. But more importantly -- and more shrewdly -- he grossly mischaracterized both his opponents and his allies to make himself look like the only decent man in Washington.

As he patronizingly says (over and over again), it has taken Washington a long time to develop its bad habits and it will take time for those in Washington to get over their partisanship and ideology. But by gosh and by golly, good-natured optimist that he is, our plucky president will keep trying to hold out the hand of reason and cooperation.

Our president has let it be known that he is an admirer of Abraham Lincoln's -- as well he should be, as are we all. He should take the time to read Old Abe's speeches and public letters. Honest Abe was exactly that. He would make his cases with meticulous and honest presentations of facts. He would describe his opponents' arguments honestly and fairly and then knock them down by genuine reason harnessed to a profound sense of morality. Lincoln wasn't fast and clever; he was slow and honest, and he carved out a place in the pantheon for the ages. He also noted that "you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time." He thus left his newest admirer at least two lessons for a successful presidency.

WOW!

Voila encore quelque chose a ajouter a votre liste de produits chinois nocifs! les cloisons en placoplatre (drywall)

(Chinese drywall is quietly removed from houses )

By Aaron Kessler
Published: Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 6:11 a.m.


MANATEE COUNTY - One neighborhood hit hardest by the Chinese drywall phenomenon -- Montauk Point Crossing in Heritage Harbour -- is now the scene of a half-dozen houses being gutted by Lennar Corp.

...

U.S. Offers Europe Goodwill, and Expects Something in Return

By HELENE COOPERPublished: February 12, 2009


WASHINGTON — President Obama’s national security team went to Munich last weekend to unveil the new administration’s approach to America’s relations with the rest of the world.

There was a lot of nice talk about how things are going to be different, and how the United States will consult with Europe on everything from Afghanistan to climate change to Iran. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. drew applause from the audience of mostly European leaders and security officials as soon as he walked on stage, and he promised a “strong partnerships to meet common challenges.”

“I come to Europe on behalf of a new administration determined to set a new tone in Washington, and in America’s relations around the world,” Mr. Biden said.

European officials, many of whom had been critical of the Bush administration in the past for what they characterized as President Bush’s go-it-alone policy, were fulsome in their praise of the new administration. But along with all of the goodwill and bonhomie, there was some trepidation.

“There’s a little of a feeling of ‘be careful what you wish for,’ ” one European diplomat told me that Saturday night in Munich after Mr. Biden’s speech.

*

No kidding. The Obama administration has made clear that it is going to be making a lot of demands on Europe. Administration officials have dubbed it their “more for more” strategy, and it basically boils down to this: In return for making nice on climate change, reaching out to Iran, shutting down the military prisons at Guantanamo, pledging not to torture, and sundry other things which the Bush administration wouldn’t do, the Obama administration will expect Europe to give things to the United States that it denied Mr. Bush.

During an interview at his hotel after his speech, Mr. Biden elaborated on “more for more.”
“We are going to do more,” he said, “and we should do more. But we are going to expect a lot more too.”

The list is long, and it starts in Afghanistan, where Mr. Obama pledged during his campaign to send at least two additional brigades to launch a concerted and re-focused fight against the insurgency there, particularly in the lawless areas of the country in the south and the east. In return, Mr. Obama, who is scheduled to make his first presidential trip to Europe for a NATO summit in April, is expected to ask European allies for more troops and more development aid.

European governments have already been ahead of popular opinion when it has come to sending additional troops to Afghanistan, and they have been loathe to take on an additional load.

Both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, both of whom were at the Munich conference and listened to Mr. Biden’s speech, skirted the issue of whether they would send troops to Afghanistan.
NATO Secretary General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer warned Europe against marginalizing itself on Afghanistan. “The Obama administration has already done a lot of what Europeans have asked for, including announcing the closure of Guantanamo and a serious focus on climate change,” Mr. De Hoop Scheffer told the conclave. “Europe should listen; When the United States asks for a serious partner, it does not just want advice, it wants and deserves someone to share the heavy lifting.”

The Obama administration will also be asking for more from Europe on Iran. While Mr. Obama repeated on Monday during his press conference that his administration will reach out to Iran for direct talks, administration officials also say that they plan to strike a tough line in negotiations over Iran’s enrichment of uranium, which the West has charged is aimed towards a nuclear bomb, a charge Iran denies.

Administration officials say that they want to get Europe — and Russia and China — to ramp up the sanctions against Iran if Tehran refuses to stop its enrichment of uranium.

The Obama administration will also be asking European governments to step up to take some of the Guantanamo prisoners off of America’s hands.

“Our security is shared,” Mr. Biden told the group in Munich. “So, too, is our responsibility to defend it.”



-----

* (justement le dicton auquel je faisais allusion hier dans mon 268 )

NNP se maintient fort bien,

Obama Approval Index History

Date ............................................. Index Strongly Approve Strongly Disapprove Total Approve Total Disapprove

02/12/2009	+19	43%	24%	61%	37%
02/11/2009	+19	42%	23%	60%	38%
02/10/2009	+15	39%	24%	60%	38%
02/09/2009	+14	38%	24%	60%	38%
02/08/2009	+11	36%	25%	59%	39%
02/07/2009	+14	37%	23%	60%	38%
02/06/2009	+17	38%	21%	61%	36%
02/05/2009	+19	39%	20%	62%	36%
02/04/2009	+18	39%	21%	62%	36%
02/03/2009	+15	37%	22%	61%	36%

... toutefois, le pourcentage d'Americains qui voteraient pour des Democrates plutot que des Republicains a chute de 7 points depuis les elections, mettant les deux partis presqu'a egalite.

Date.......Dem..... GOP

02-08-09 ..40% ..39%
02-01-09 ..42% ..38%
01-25-09 ..42% ..35%
01-18-09 ..42% ..35%
01-11-09 ..42% ..36%
12-31-08 ..43% ..37%
12-21-08 ..44% ..36%
12-14-08 ..42% ..37%
12-07-08 ..42% ..38%
11-30-08 ..43% ..40%
11-23-08 ..44% ..39%
11-16-08 ..42% ..38%
11-09-08 ..43% ..41%
11-02-08 ..47% ..41%

SAME

By CHARLES MAHTESIAN & PATRICK O'CONNOR | 2/12/09 4:25 AM EST



Photo: AP

The first month of the new administration has been marked by extreme division.

So much for post-partisanship.

Not a single House Republican crossed the aisle to vote for the stimulus package, and just three GOP senators made the leap. Last week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi brushed off calls for a bipartisan consensus as mere “process,” hardly relevant to the passage of the $800 billion-plus plan.

Democrats are carpet-bombing the districts of vulnerable Republicans with negative ads. At noon Wednesday, Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) stood outside the Speaker’s office and filmed a brief video in which he claimed “there are more shady deals going on behind closed doors.”

While no one expected Obama’s pledge to fix our “broken politics” would be met quickly or easily, the first month of the new administration has been marked by extreme polarization, with hints of more to come.

"They're not interested in building anything. Their only goal is seek and destroy. You can't have bipartisanship with only one side," said Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.). "Once we put them back in the minority, they've gone back to the Gingrich model."

“It doesn’t have to be this way, but Pelosi continues to operate in a narrow, partisan way,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.). “In the end, she’s undermining Obama’s pledge of bipartisanship.”

So despite Obama’s campaign call for an end to “the smallness of our politics” and his criticism of the “preference for scoring cheap political points,” that’s exactly what’s happened during the first big legislative test of his administration.
The tooth-and-nail scrapping among legislators makes clear that, Obama era or not, almost everyone in office is still considered fair game.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) charged Tuesday that House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wisc.) failed to divulge that his son Craig was lobbying him on the economic recovery package, while Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) offered a resolution calling on House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) to step down from his post while an ethics probe into his personal finances continues.

A day later, MoveOn.org, a liberal organization founded by two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who “shared deep frustration with the partisan warfare in Washington D.C. and the ridiculous waste of our nation's focus at the time of the impeachment mess,” weighed in with a radio ad nailing Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) for missing Monday’s cloture vote on the stimulus package.

"You’d think Senator John Cornyn would be fightin’ like hell for Texas. But just a month into a new term, Cornyn made it clear who he really works for," says the narrator. "On Monday instead of voting to save tens of thousands of jobs and billions in tax cuts for Texas, Senator Cornyn was in New York City toasting Wall Street donors and political insiders – the same people who got us into this mess. Cornyn said he didn’t show up, ‘cause his vote wouldn’t have made a difference. But when Wall Street needed a bailout, Cornyn was there and he voted to give them seven hundred billion dollars."

If anything, the stimulus debate suggests that the scope of that crisis and the amount of money required to revive the economy, when combined with the toxic environment on Capitol Hill, may make Obama’s bi-partisan—or post-partisan—goals unattainable.

"Their strategy,” concludes Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), “is to be obstructionist no matter how inclusive the process is."

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) put the shoe on the other foot, of course.

"Despite our repeated attempts to work with President Obama and the Democrat Majority, Speaker Pelosi has refused to meet with us, or even include us in key negotiations, choosing instead to stick with a pork-filled bill that even members of her own party do not support," he said in a statement.

While Obama himself has made highly-publicized overtures aimed at building broader support for the stimulus plan, when those failed to build Republican support he too has played the old politics, even while preaching a new brand.

In his first White House press conference Monday, Obama didn't hesitate to go on the offensive when discussing Republican objections to his spending plan.

“First of all, when I hear that from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt, then I just want them to not engage in some revisionist history,” he said. “I inherited the deficit that we have right now, and the economic crisis that we have right now.”

But at the same news conference, Obama again sounded a post-partisan note, suggesting that even as the players around him had all but given up on a new approach, he still hadn't.

“[H]opefully the tone that I've taken, which has been consistently civil and respectful, will pay some dividends over the long term,” he said. “There are going to be areas where we disagree, and there are going to be areas where we agree.”