The Many Faces of US Politics...

[muppet]

Eamonnca1

Never argue with a fool - he will drag you down to his level then beat you with experience!!

Indeed. It's painful to watch, isn't it? It's like talking to a brick wall.

At least a brick wall maintains a solid position.

[heganboy]

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/10/20/cant-argue-with-american-policy-now-qaddafis-dead-and-results-speak-for/

I'm not to quote fox news but I am shocked they put this up...

[Tyrones own]

No need to be hating lads...if the relay team weren't flat out trying to be
smart asses, ye wouldn't be getting the trousers pulled
down around your ankles quite as often

[Eamonnca1]

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/10/20/cant-argue-with-american-policy-now-qaddafis-dead-and-results-speak-for/

I'm not to quote fox news but I am shocked they put this up...

Has their website been hacked? I thought they were going to give GW Bush the credit for this one.

[Groucho]

To quote George Hook......"Horse Manure"

[stew]

The republicans don't have a viable candidate at this juncture, my fear is Obama will get elected again because to be honest the Republicans don't seem to have anyone with the vision and magnetism to take him on and beat him.

The republicans should tax the super rich, they dont and unless they start they wont be getting my vote in 2012.

[Tyrones own]

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/10/20/cant-argue-with-american-policy-now-qaddafis-dead-and-results-speak-for/

I'm not to quote fox news but I am shocked they put this up...

Fair and balanced

[Tyrones own]

The republicans don't have a viable candidate at this juncture, my fear is Obama will get elected again because to be honest the Republicans don't seem to have anyone with the vision and magnetism to take him on and beat him.

The republicans should tax the super rich, they dont and unless they start they wont be getting my vote in 2012.

While I don't disagree with you entirely...if we were to take every single penny
off them let alone tax them, how long would it fund this administration's entitlement and welfare programs alone... Then what?
This is a question I've posed to many people that are in huge favor of gouging the super wealthy, to say they have trouble answering it is a bit of an understatement!
And I'm sure you realize that a non vote next year is a vote for the epic failure
in chief

[Eamonnca1]

And I'm sure you realize that a non vote next year is a vote for the epic failure
in chief

So GW Bush is running again?

[dec]

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/10/20/cant-argue-with-american-policy-now-qaddafis-dead-and-results-speak-for/

I'm not to quote fox news but I am shocked they put this up...

Well the author, Juan Williams, is Fox's pet liberal(ish).

[Tyrones own]

And I'm sure you realize that a non vote next year is a vote for the epic failure
in chief

So GW Bush is running again?

Is that you Eamonn or is it Dec...hard to tell from this angle!
How embarrassing

[Declan]

Citigroup Settles for $285 Million; No Wall Street Exec Jailed Yet
by Kevin G. Hall and Greg Gordon
WASHINGTON — Global banking giant Citigroup has agreed to pay $285 million to settle charges that it misled investors about a complex financial instrument tied to the now-crippled housing market, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday.

This sort of "heads I win, tails you lose" behavior by Wall Street is what prompted last year's extensive revamp of financial regulation, known as the Dodd-Frank Act, which several GOP presidential candidates vow to repeal. It's also what has driven many Americans to support the Occupy Wall Street protest movement growing in cities across the nation. The announcement was unlikely to satisfy critics of Wall Street and Washington's bailout of its banks who've waited years for any major Wall Street executive to be jailed for practices that led to the global financial meltdown in 2008, which still roils the U.S. economy.

The SEC alleged that Citigroup's main broker-dealer subsidiary duped investors who had bought portions of a $1 billion offshore deal known as a collateralized debt obligation. CDOs are bundles of bonds tied to the performance of mortgages and other loans. The deal in question was precisely the kind of engineered financial product that blew up in 2008 and nearly brought down the global financial system.

In the complaint, the SEC alleged that Citigroup Global Markets selected about $500 million worth of assets in the deal, but in marketing materials suggested to investors that Swiss bank Credit Suisse had conducted the selection.

That gave the appearance that it was an arms-length transaction. In reality, said the SEC, Citigroup's subsidiary selected the assets and then bet against the investors in the very product it was selling. Betting that a bond will default is known as shorting, or going short.

With the settlement, Citigroup joins other major banks that collectively have shelled out more than $1 billion to settle SEC enforcement cases. Investment titan Goldman Sachs last year agreed to a $550 million civil settlement. Earlier this year JPMorgan Chase also settled on similar charges, agreeing to pay more than $153 million.

This sort of "heads I win, tails you lose" behavior by Wall Street is what prompted last year's extensive revamp of financial regulation, known as the Dodd-Frank Act, which several GOP presidential candidates vow to repeal. It's also what has driven many Americans to support the Occupy Wall Street protest movement growing in cities across the nation.

"It's not called Occupy Wall Street because it's a random geographical location," said Bartlett Naylor, who heads financial policy for advocacy group Public Citizen, which wants criminal charges filed against Wall Street executives. "The details (of this case) are the face of the problem that brings Occupy Wall Street protestors to the streets. We have theft from actual people. In the end these are pension fund beneficiaries ... it's clear we know the names of the perpetrators, and yet these people are apparently not heading to jail."

In a statement on its website, Citigroup neither admitted nor denied guilt.

"We are pleased to put this matter behind us and are focused on contributing to the economic recovery, serving our clients and growing responsibly," the statement said.

Citigroup had previously reached a $75 million settlement with the SEC in July 2010 for failing to adequately disclose how much risk it carried on junk mortgages. A federal judge first rejected that settlement as too light, before agreeing later to accept it.

Prompted by allegations from Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, the SEC's inspector general began investigating whether enforcement chief Robert Khuzami, a former general counsel for Deutsche Bank, gave preferential treatment to executives in reaching that settlement. Results of that inquiry haven't been disclosed, but it apparently won't sideline Khuzami, who made Wednesday's announcement.

SEC documents released Wednesday spell out how the Citigroup transaction, known as Class V Funding III, closed on Feb. 28, 2007, and that by November about 83 percent of the assets in the complex deal had defaulted. Citigroup still walked away with staggering profits.

As part of Wednesday's settlement, Citigroup agreed to pay a $95 million penalty. It also committed to return $160 million in fees and profits and another $30 million in interest payments. Credit Suisse agreed to pay $2.5 million in penalties for its alleged role in misleading investors about who selected the assets for the deal.

Former Citigroup executive Brian Stoker, also charged with civil fraud, refused a settlement and chose to fight the SEC in civil court.



Big bucks and minimal transparency characterized the world of structured finance, where Wall Street sliced and diced $2 trillion in loans into complex securities that eventually went bust. McClatchy Newspapers reported exclusively in 2009 on how Moody's Investors Service was complicit by giving AAA ratings to junk bonds, and how Goldman Sachs secretly bet against its mortgage products while safely exiting a cresting housing market before its collapse.

During a Wednesday news conference, Khuzami read from an email sent by a veteran CDO trader that referred to the Citigroup's deal as "the best short ever." In SEC documents, this same trader refers to the deal as "dog shit."

Somehow this deal still got a gold-plated AAA rating from both Moody's and Standard & Poor's, yet neither was charged in the Citigroup case or any other one. Khuzami declined to answer questions from McClatchy about the role of ratings agencies in the deal and whether they were complicit in misleading investors.

[seafoid]

The Republican party is a mess


http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/sep/29/republican-days-wrath/

When you call someone an "enemy" enough times, when you say enough times that the person across from you doesn't have simply wrong ideas but wicked ones, how can you tolerate compromise with such a person? The conservative rhetoric factory has persuaded millions of Americans that Democrats and liberals are evil, that the poor are lazy, that government is incapable of any good, and that the press, television, and Internet are in on the conspiracy to make sure they all triumph at the expense of everyone else.

After the economic crisis of 2008, those millions, primed by all those years of dyspeptic expression, rose up in fury. The reach and impact of their rhetoric placed certain conditions on Republican politicians: that they not support anything that even hinted that the government would intervene in their lives, and of course that they oppose the Kenyan-Muslim-terrorist-pal President above all else. As a survey by Robert Putnam and David Campbell recently concluded, the Republicans who became "Tea Partiers" are not only "overwhelmingly white," but they "had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do." Policy and ideas mattered a little, but not very much. Rhetoric determined the collective Republican position.

Proof of this could be found most obviously in the fact of the individual mandate to buy health insurance, a centerpiece of the Obama health bill whose constitutional validity the Supreme Court will probably weigh next term. The proposal for an individual mandate came in no small part from, of all places, the conservative Heritage Foundation in the 1990s. The Heritage conservatives argued that each family should be required to take responsibility for its health care and not depend on handouts. A party more interested in ideas might have claimed victory in seeing a Democratic president come around to its way of thinking; it might then have worked with the administration to arrive at a bill that included still more of its ideas, to which Obama would no doubt have been amenable. But the rhetoric prevented that. The base insisted that compromise was treason, and the party establishment agreed.

[Tyrones own]

When you call someone an "enemy" enough times, when you say enough times that the person across from you doesn't have simply wrong ideas but wicked ones, how can you tolerate compromise with such a person?

Tea party anyone?

the Republicans who became "Tea Partiers" are not only "overwhelmingly white," but they "had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do."

Utter horse shite... can you back that up or are you simply tarring all of them with the actions of a select few
Funny there's no mention here of the racism coming out of the Wall street occupiers, but then it's only racism
when it's evil whitey keeping the black man down...Jews don't seem to count with Liberals.

Furthermore, care to give your thoughts on the comparisons on the numbers of those arrested between both
Tea party goers and those in Zuccotti park who judging by the videos coming out of it wouldn't know a days work if it fell on them 
But then again, it is an article from the Guardian after all!

[muppet]

There you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S38VioxnBaI