TPMtv: The Fierce Urgency of ... February

post from Talking Points Memo on 08 January 2009 04:25:00 PM. © Talking Points Memo

With Obama's big economics speech today we were going to finally get some details on his proposed stimulus package. Or so we hoped. In a speech long on exhortations and short on specifics, Obama demanded dramatic action from Congress immediately, or at[...]

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Fed Mum On Efforts To Prevent Conflicts Of
Interest For Investment Firms

post from TPMMuckraker on 08 January 2009 04:21:00 PM. © TPMMuckraker

As regular Muck readers know, we've been tracking the transparency -- or lack thereof -- of the Federal Reserve's program to buy up $500 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities in an effort to boost the housing market.

And today it's worth focusing on the issue of conflicts of interest.

The four outside investment firms hired by the Fed to manage the program -- Blackrock Inc., Goldman Sachs, Wellington Management, and PIMCO -- began buying up assets this week. So one assumes that the conflict of interest provisions that the Fed has said it has in its contracts with the four companies must be firmly in place by now.

But the Fed still is telling us almost nothing about what those crucial provisions entail. A department spokesman did not respond to a call from TPMmuckraker requesting information on what the Fed is doing to guard against conflicts of interest among the investment firms managing our money.

So far, all we know on the subject is what the Fed told us in a fact sheet posted last month on its website:

What measures will the Federal Reserve take to ensure that an investment manager implementing the MBS program will not have an unfair advantage relative to other market participants due to the information it receives about the MBS program?
Each investment manager will be required to implement ethical walls that appropriately segregate the investment management team that implements the Federal Reserve's agency MBS program from other advisory and proprietary trading activities of the firm. The New York Fed will monitor each investment manager's compliance with this requirement.

What sort of "ethical walls"? How will they work? How will the Fed monitor each investment manager's compliance? (After all, the Treasury doesn't appear to be taking its duty to monitor similar conflicts with TARP money all that seriously).

We're still in the dark.

It bears repeating: this isn't an abstract issue. The potential for these firms to improperly use, in their other investment work, the information they've been granted access to is enormous. Relatedly, the Fed's broader stonewalling on the structure of the contracts (or anything to do with the contracts whatsoever!) means we have no guarantee that the firms are being incentivized to get taxpayers the best possible deal.

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GETTING CONGRESS READY.

post from Ezra Klein on 08 January 2009 04:20:00 PM. © Ezra Klein

In the Summer of 2007, frustrated that John Dingell's control of the Energy and Commerce Committee was blocking efforts at reform, Pelosi tried to do an end run. She created the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming and chose[...]

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Jimmy Carter

post from TPMCafe on 08 January 2009 04:14:00 PM. © TPMCafe

Jimmy Carter makes a powerful case in the WP that "the devastating invasion of Gaza by Israel could easily have been avoided." Neither Israel nor Hamas comes across blameless, in his account, but in his irritatingly level-headed way (and without the thundering abuse routinely handed out by his detractors) he makes a case that Israel could have done better protecting its south from rockets without going to war than it has done by going to war. His account of back-channel talks with Hamas last year is very spare and compressed, and in some particulars confusing--confusing about who in Hamas said what, and when, and what Israeli officials said. But he does succeed in reminding us that Hamas wanted resumption of full-scale supply delivery into blockaded Gaza and that Israel declined. How wise was that?

Depressingly and predictably, the Post's online reader comments immediately plunged into vicious capital-letter abuse. If Carter is wrong about what Hamas was demanding, I'd like to hear some evidence.

In any event, Matt Yglesias anticipates that the cognoscenti will now full-throatedly declare that "as everyone knows Carter is a raging, Jew-hating, Israel-bashing bigot" and invites us to "note the irony that Carter is the most-loathed of US Presidents among Israel hawks, but the Camp David accords he sponsored have done more to advance Israeli interests than anything any president's done since Harry Truman recognized Israeli independence."

Yes, more than George W. Bush, hard as that may be to believe. Matt gets a lot of abuse too, though not as much as Carter, who actually brokered a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.

Meanwhile, Hamas has lost no prestige either in Gaza or on the West Bank. According to Alistair Lyon of Reuters, the Israeli attack on Gaza is doing Israel's partner Abbas any good:

"There is a sense of fear in the West Bank. People are lying low," said International Crisis Group analyst Nicholas Pelham.
"The psychological impact of the Gaza campaign is going to be major in the West Bank, but at the moment it is being held in check by security measures. The pressure is mounting."

It's not mounting in favor of Abbas and the PLO.

Can we please fast-forward to January 21?

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Dems Move Left: Political Chromatography in the
House

post from Open Left - Front Page on 08 January 2009 04:11:25 PM. © Open Left - Front Page

With a new House at work in DC, Democrats are now back up to their pre-1994 election numbers, and[...]

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Dave Lindorff: Time for Obama and Us to Face the
Economic and Political Music

post from BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash on 08 January 2009 04:10:38 PM. © BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash

The real cost of the Bush Administration's trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street is becoming painfully apparent as the incoming Obama Administration attempts desperately to make a case for its own $800-billion economic stimulus package, while warning about "trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see."

On its own merits, all other considerations aside, with the economy slipping into a sinkhole, President-elect Barack Obama's call for $800 million in stimulus spending should be a slam dunk for Congress. The problem is, Congress already caved in a hurry and approved nearly that same amount -- $700 billion -- in a matter of days when Bush's Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and his Federal Reserve Board Chair Ben Bernanke said they needed the money to prevent a collapse of the financial industry, as the nation's biggest banks, investment banks, and insurance companies teetered on the brink of insolvency last fall. Bookmark/Search this post with: buzzflash | delicious | digg digg | yahoo yahoo | technorati Technorati Tags: Dave Lindorff

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You Can Say That Again

"Office of Norm Coleman Is Closed"[...]

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Gonzales claims he can’t get a job because
of the ‘rough economy.’

In April, reports revealed that former attorney general Alberto Gonzales was “unable to interest law firms in adding his name to their roster.” Gonzales has previously said that law firms were hesitant to hire him because of “all the investigations and the possibility that I might be indicted.” But in an interview with the Austin-American Statesman this week, Gonzales blamed the “rough economy” for his lack of work:

“It’s a rough economy right now, and it’s a tough time for a lot of law firms right now. Obviously they are very careful about bringing on new people, and they are going to be careful about bringing on people where there are questions about things that may have happened in their past,” he said. “Over time, I’m confident those things will be resolved, and things will work themselves out.”
“Greater opportunities,” Gonzales, 53, said, “will present themselves once the stories are out there.”

Later in the interview, Gonzales mentioned that he did have some dream jobs outside of the legal profession. “I’m very fortunate that I’m at a point in my life where if I wanted to do something completely different ? be baseball commissioner, for example, I would love a job in baseball, a plug there ? I can do it,” said Gonzales.

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THE NETROOTS' HALFWAY HOUSE FOR LOST AND LONELY
LEGISLATION.

Over at OpenLeft, Chris Bowers is kicking off his Progressive Legislation project with a very useful document. "I have looked over the 224 bills introduced to the House, and referred to committee, on Tuesday," he writes. "After removing bills introduced[...]

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