FEBRUARY 6 - 8, 2009 AT THE JACOB K. JAVITS CONVENTION CENTER, NYC Presented by American Express

New Print Site Agreement with The Santa Fe New Mexican

Bay State Residents Tightening Belts Amid Fears for Economy, but Still Spending More

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. comedians Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman, who ended their five-year relationship in July, are dating again, a source told People magazine.

TEHRAN, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- Iranian officials have backed off their claim of forcing a U.S. warplane to land Tuesday after Pentagon officials said no evidence supported the claim.

The industry prognosis isn't good.

LUXEMBOURG CITY, Luxembourg, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- European leaders met in Luxembourg Tuesday to discuss a coordinated strategy to combat the continent's banking and financial ills.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- The U.S. Federal Reserve said it is considering a plan to buy unsecured short-term debt to keep a crawling flow of credit moving.

President Clinton signing the deregulation act that allowed financial institutions to co-mingle. Courtesy, New York Times, November 13, 1999. Now that Congress has passed and the President has quickly signed what may well prove to be a rather ineffective piece of pork-laden legislation to inject more failed socialism into our free market economy, I believe that the individual investor should take steps to defend hard-earned assets and protect against what is almost sure to come: a national recession,followed by a global recession, followed by a round of[More...]

It's official: the pork laden , ill-conceived bailout bill has passed the house and been signed by the President, or as this cynical Calvinistic individual would like to say it:

 

After letting laissez-faire economics run amuck and nearly bring the world's economies and financial systems to its knees, the government has decided to go the opposite direction via  ramming a so called "rescue bill" down the throats of American citizens that hands over 100s of billions of dollars to Wall St. The situation would be tolerable if the plan was likely to work, but instead we were force fed a plan that isn't really capable of delivering on its promises around housing , and won't really be able to help the banks either .

 

Maybe the markets realized this today and that's why they actually fell after the bill was passed, with the S & P 500 closing below the level it was at when the first bill failed to pass the house. Now was it due to the passage of the bill, the sheer weight of the economic problems the country is facing or because the passage was anti-climatic?

 

At this point I'm not sure, however if the markets continue to worsen in the weeks and months after the bill is passed and there isn't (at least) a short-term "pop", it doesn't bode well for the future.

 

Either way even if there is some short-term improvement in the credit and financial markets once the rescue plan is put into action, I anticipate a huge let down once the plan fails to show results. In fact the let down from a bailout plan that fails to deliver is more worrisome to me than the impact of not having a plan (even a bad one) at all.

 

Something that irritates me to no end is the fact that the people who created the plan and are now tasked with managing it, are (by varying degrees) responsible for either running the mortgage GSEs into the ground, the overall crisis in general or both. I.e. the people who have allegedly just "saved us all" are also the ones who got us into this mess in the first place . Wall St. couldn't have nearly destroyed the economy if the clowns in Washington hadn't facilitated the whole debacle, looked the other way or were just too ignorant to know what was going on.

 

The whole thing feels analogous to asking the person who stole your car and sold it for drug money, to track down your car and deliver it back to you for a fee. Obviously no one would ever do such a ridiculous thing, yet here we are doing that very same thing with the government and our economy.

 

Regardless the individuals who have been pleading for the government to save them from their own stupidity have finally gotten their wish, and now we're going to see how effective the rescue bill will truly be and what the short, medium, and long-term impacts will be.

 

At this juncture the big question isn't so much on the pending efficacy (or lack of thereof) of TARP, but how will the nation react when we still have a crisis six months now and need to put our heads together to draft a new solution? Will we get it right the next time?

 

You can read more here(WSJ) , and here(NYT) .

 

Disclosure: at the time of publishing the author didn't own a position in any of the companies mentioned in this article; the ideas expressed are solely the opinions of the author and shouldn't be viewed as financial or investment advice.

The U.S. House of Representatives rejected on Monday legislation designed to rescue the nation’s troubled financial system. After three hours of debate on Capitol Hill, the shock vote of 228-205 against the measure sent the markets almost instantaneously into convulsions. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 700 points - one of its biggest drops ever. The panic extended to global markets. Brazil’s Sao Paulo stock market plunged 10% and suspended operations. Canada’s S&P/TSX slid 7.1% and Mexico’s Bolsa tumbled 6.2%. Worldwide financial markets had slumped even before the House vote; shares in Hong Kong closed down 4% and in Paris and London they were down 3%. The rejection of the measure came as turmoil in financial markets widened, prompting the Federal Reserve to inject new capital in response to continued strains in short-term funding. In terms of Foreign Exchange Swap Lines - the Federal Open Market Committee authorized a $330[More...]

A few quick links as to where you can get the details of the tentative agreement: • Lawmakers Say They Have Breakthrough on Rescue Plan (Bloomberg) • Summary of the Draft Proposal To Rescue U.S. Financial Markets (WSJ) • Breakthrough Reached in Negotiations on Bailout (NYT) • Lawmakers Reach Tentative Bailout Deal (WSJ) • Bailout plan will help most Americans, but not as much as you might like (MarketWatch) • The Real Costs of the Bailouts (WSJ) • Timeline: Three Weeks of Financial Turmoil (NYT) • 25 Harshest Reactions To the Wall Street Bailout (10 zen monkeys) Interactive/Video: • Financial Turmoil (NYT) • Emergency measures (Marketwatch) • Tally of Federal Rescues (NYT via Big Picture) • Bailout by the Numbers (Portfolio) • What will the Bailout buy? (NYT) Related stories: • Futures tick higher (Bloomberg) • Economy in Trouble, No Matter Bailout Outcome (Real Time Economic) • Gold rises on safe-haven buying after plan stalls (MarketWatch) • U.K. Set to Nationalize B&B (WSJ) • Wall Street Executives Made $3 Billion Before Crisis (Bloomberg) • Maybe Short-Selling Isn’t So Bad, After All (NYT) • Short-sale ban disrupts trades for hedge funds (MarketWatch) • An Inside View of a Stormy White House...

A few quick links as to where you can get the details of the tentative agreement: • Lawmakers Say They Have Breakthrough on Rescue Plan (Bloomberg) • Summary of the Draft Proposal To Rescue U.S. Financial Markets (WSJ) • Breakthrough Reached in Negotiations on Bailout (NYT) • Lawmakers Reach Tentative Bailout Deal (WSJ) • Bailout plan will help most Americans, but not as much as you might like (MarketWatch) • The Real Costs of the Bailouts (WSJ) • Timeline: Three Weeks of Financial Turmoil (NYT) • 25 Harshest Reactions To the Wall Street Bailout (10 zen monkeys) Interactive/Video: • Financial Turmoil (NYT) • Emergency measures (Marketwatch) • Tally of Federal Rescues (NYT via Big Picture) • Bailout by the Numbers (Portfolio) • What will the Bailout buy? (NYT) Related stories: • Futures tick higher (Bloomberg) • Economy in Trouble, No Matter Bailout Outcome (Real Time Economic) • Gold rises on safe-haven buying after plan stalls (MarketWatch) • U.K. Set to Nationalize B&B (WSJ) • Wall Street Executives Made $3 Billion Before Crisis (Bloomberg) • Maybe Short-Selling Isn’t So Bad, After All (NYT) • Short-sale ban disrupts trades for hedge funds (MarketWatch) • An Inside View of a Stormy White House...

Colleen S. King takes a look at news on the Street before the market open.

Guest: Felix Salmon, Condè Nast Portfolio.com. Microsoft and Yahoo!, airlines and media stocks and a dose of the world economy. Felix brings a fresh perspective on the markets and world economy. Andrew asks Felix if bloggers are here to stay or simply a pest that will fade into the nothingness. Find out which is Andrew's favorite airline to cross the pond. Who has the best warm nuts?

Tammy DeRosier and Susan Morrison - Rational Exuberance

Two Wall Street Analysts Review Value Line's August 17, 2007 Edition

(NYT)(NWS)

Interview with Robert Peters, President of Morality in Media http://www.moralityinmedia.org/

Why are the New York Times and the Washington Post pro-pornography?

On today's show Mr. Peters shares his response to a New York Times Aug. 10 article by Neil Lewis, “Federal Effort on Web Obscenity Shows Few Results,” and an op ed article by Stephen Bates, “Outsourcing Justice, That’s Obscene,” which appeared in the Washington Post on July 15.

Statement by Morality in Media President Robert Peters:
Morality in Media (MIM) should be honored that a project it launched to combat Internet obscenity has been criticized in short order by two of our nation’s leading left-leaning daily newspapers. We must be doing something right; or perhaps the fear is that we may do something right in the near future, if the liberal press doesn’t come to the rescue of hardcore pornographers.

MIM launched the ObscenityCrimes.org website in June 2002 to provide citizens with a convenient means online to report possible violations of federal Internet obscenity laws. The site is patterned after http://www.cybertipline.com/ which was also launched by private citizens and which allows citizens to report possible violations of sexual exploitation of children laws. Complaints submitted to ObscenityCrimes.org are forwarded to each U.S. Attorney where a report originates and to the Justice Department in Washington.

As of August 2007, over 66,000 reports had been submitted to ObscenityCrimes.org, despite very little funds to promote the site. In 2002, MIM also retained the services of two retired law enforcement agents (with extensive experience investigating Internet pornography cases) to follow up on complaints submitted by citizens to ObscenityCrimes.org and to prepare their own investigative reports which describe in detail the promotional material and sexual conduct that the agents observe on various “adult” websites.

Most Internet pornographers provide free teasers that any child can view without providing proof of age, and many of the complaints submitted to ObscenityCrimes.org mention that a child easily could have been or was exposed to pornography or ads for pornography. The Supreme Court has also held repeatedly that the First Amendment does not protect obscenity. One might think, therefore, that the Times and Post would have long ago published articles highlighting Morality in Media’s fine work in combating pornography, urging citizens to make complaints and urging the Justice Department to enforce Internet obscenity laws. Instead, on July 15 the Post published an op ed article by Stephen Bates attacking Morality in Media for its views on a wide variety of subjects that have nothing to do with the ObscenityCrimes.org project and the Justice Department for delegating its authority to an “outfit” like Morality in Media.

If the Justice Department had in fact delegated to Morality in Media the authority to determine which cases will be prosecuted, Mr. Bates would have a point. But the Department hasn’t done that. The Justice Department determines which citizen complaints (if any) it will investigate and ultimately prosecute. Like it or not, Morality in Media has no say in those determinations.

Mr. Bates also implies that MIM’s two investigators “place the Bible over the Constitution.” That isn’t true. The Supreme Court has set forth a three-part test to determine whether sexual material is obscene and therefore unprotected by the First Amendment, and the investigators’ determinations as to which complaints to pursue are guided by that test. If they weren’t, we really would be wasting our time.

In the N.Y. Times article of August 10, Mr. Bates again bad mouths ObscenityCrimes.org. In particular, Mr. Bates says that MIM’s “religious cast, the…constitutional issue of free speech and the outsourcing together made a mockery of the First Amendment, chilling freedom of expression.” While not all of our nation’s founding fathers were devout Christians, most were certainly “religious.” Abraham Lincoln and Rev. Martin Luther King were also “religious,” as is Barak Obama. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were “religious,” as is Hillary Clinton. Many African Americans who work for government agencies or nonprofits that combat racial discrimination are “religious,” as are many Jewish Americans who work for agencies and nonprofits that combat anti-Semitism. Should all have been or now be suspect? Or is it just a particular “religious cast” that irks Mr. Bates?And if obscenity is unprotected by the First Amendment and if the determination as to what is or isn’t obscene is ultimately made by the Courts, how can a project that forwards information to the Justice Department make a mockery of the First Amendment and chill “freedom of expression?”

Mr. Lewis’s article in the Times repeats another of Mr. Bates’ misstatements – namely, the Justice Department is “outsourcing a search for obscenity.” ObscenityCrimes.org provides citizens with an opportunity to report websites that they believe are or may be violating obscenity laws. Except for complaints that lack necessary information or are obvious mistakes or hoaxes, all citizen complaints are forwarded to the Justice Department. Yes, two trained investigators do provide additional information about some websites that citizens complain about, but they are guided in their determinations by the Supreme Court’s obscenity test. Individuals who are not law enforcement agents perform a similar task for the Congressionally funded http://www.cybertipline.com/.

Mr. Lewis’s article did get two things right. First, I am concerned about the explosion of hardcore pornography viewed only by “consenting adults.” Viewing pornography is linked to variety of harms, including sexual addiction, the breakup of marriages, the breakdown of morality, and sexual crimes against adults and children. The Supreme Court has also held that there is a “right of the Nation…to maintain a decent society” and that “consenting adults” is not a defense to an obscenity prosecution. And second, I am troubled by the fact that Justice has publicly praised ObscenityCrimes.org on a number of occasions, but to my knowledge has not initiated a single prosecution in response to a citizen complaint submitted to the site. I am hoping that will change soon. During the Reagan & Bush years, pornographers complained if a prosecution wasn’t the result of citizen complaints; now the Department is getting tens of thousands of complaints, and appears to be ignoring them. Headquartered in New York City, MORALITY IN MEDIA works through constitutional means to curb traffic in illegal obscenity. MIM operates the http://www.obscenitycrimes.org/ website, where citizens can report possible violations of federal Internet obscenity laws.