Fed to Hire {ENRON} Lobbyist
The Federal Reserve is close to appointing a veteran Washington lobbyist to a senior role as the Obama administration prepares to ask Congress to redraw the central bank’s powers.
Linda Robertson, a former top aide at the Treasury Department during the Clinton administration, is expected to start at the Fed in July. She has been a lobbyist at Johns Hopkins University since 2002, where she was most recently a vice president for government affairs. At the Fed, she would lead the congressional-affairs team.
Ms. Robertson had a brief stint on the lobbying team at Enron Corp., but spent eight years in the Clinton administration where she worked closely with then-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers as well as his predecessors, Lloyd Bentsen and Robert Rubin.
The central bank is bulking up its political operations as it faces increased scrutiny from lawmakers. The Obama administration is expected to call for the central bank to have the power to oversee companies, products and practices that could pose systemic risks to the economy.
But Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.) and Sen. Richard Shelby (R., Ala.) have said they are uncomfortable with expanding the Fed’s powers in this way.
There are other legislative challenges facing the central bank. Ben Bernanke’s term as Fed chairman expires on Jan. 31; he or his successor face confirmation by the Senate. If President Barack Obama chooses not to renominate Mr. Bernanke, many believe a top option could be Mr. Summers.
Sen. Dodd said he hasn’t yet made up his mind about what changes, if any, to make to the Fed. “[W]e need to fix what’s broken and be careful about all of a sudden extending new authorities and powers and so forth in ways that may jeopardize the underlying primary functions of entities,” Mr. Dodd said.
“In the Fed’s case, the primary function is monetary policy and obviously they’ve taken on these other responsibilities, which they frankly haven’t handled terribly well,” Mr. Dodd said. “That’s not my conclusions alone. I think others who have looked at this objectively would agree with that.”
up against the smartest guys in the room…
more…
REP Grayson:Why We Need HR 1207
had enough?
Do This Instead
HOUSE BILL H.R. 1207
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SEC Officially Charges Angelo Mozilo With Insider Trading
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged former Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo and two other former executives with securities fraud for deliberately misleading investors about the significant credit risks being taken in efforts to build and maintain the company’s market share. Mozilo was additionally charged with insider trading for selling his Countrywide stock based on non-public information for nearly $140 million in profits.
NOW! Bank of America disclosed that it was paying the legal fees of Angelo R. Mozilo, the former chief executive of Countrywide Financial, who has been accused of securities fraud and insider trading.
The bank said Mr. Mozilo was covered by an indemnity clause in place when he ran Countrywide, which Bank of America acquired last summer.
“Under the agreement that he had when Countrywide was an independent company, Countrywide continued to be responsible for his legal expenses for actions taken while he was an employee,” a Bank of America spokesman, Robert Stickler, told Reuters.
So, we honor contracts for insider traders who fail, but not GM workers?
BTW you’re paying for his legal fees
On The Edge
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ISTORY: Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000
Snake Oil
Follow The Money
HR 1207
The Watchman
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KBR Halliburton Open Pit Burning – Killing Americans
Thirty-four suits have been filed or are expected to be filed in 34 states where people with symptoms have surfaced, plaintiffs’ attorney Elizabeth Burke said.
The burn pits are so large, the suit said, that tractors are used to push “every type of waste imaginable” into the fire, and the flames shoot hundreds of feet into the sky, sometimes around the clock.
The suit claims the contractors failed to install incinerators to limit the toxic exposure.
“They took an enormous amount of taxpayer dollars and did shoddy work,” Burke said of the contractors. “The work they did harmed the soldiers and hindered the military mission. In some bases with an Air Force presence, planes could not take off and land because of the smoke.”
An Air Force memo that was leaked recently on Wikileaks, a Web site that receives documents from anonymous sources to help expose government misdeeds, said thousands of people might have been exposed to toxins at a burn pit at Balad Air Base.
“In my professional opinion, the known carcinogens and respiratory sensitizers released into the atmosphere by the burn pit present both an acute and chronic health hazard to our troops and local population,” Lt. Col. James R. Elliott, the chief of aero-medical services, wrote in a December 2006 memo.
The memo said the pit had been identified as a health concern for several years.
full story
burnpit.org
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Nuclear and Worker Safety: Limited Information Exists on Costs and Reasons for Work Stoppages at DOE’s Hanford Site
The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Hanford Site in Washington State stores 56 million gallons of untreated radioactive and hazardous wastes resulting from decades of nuclear weapons production. The 31 work stoppages from January 2000 through December 2008 ranged from an hour to more than two years. DOE emphasized in the report that the work stoppages were for portions of projects and that in most cases workers were reassigned to projects where work was continuing.
summary
GAO finds 31 work stoppages at Hanford
The short stoppages usually were pauses to refocus workers on safety issues or to address safety concerns. They ranged from a forklift collision with a vehicle to the spread of radiation contamination inside a facility.
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look, what I bought today!
hope they’re radiation and burnpit free
Dear AMA,
Crony Capitalists
"no doubt about it that nut's a genius" 