Faith in Obama Drops As Reform Fears Rise
Health-Care Effort Is Major Factor, Poll Finds
Public confidence in President Obama’s leadership has declined sharply over the summer, amid intensifying opposition to health-care reform that threatens to undercut his attempt to enact major changes to the system, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Among all Americans, 49 percent now express confidence that Obama will make the right decisions for the country, down from 60 percent at the 100-day mark in his presidency. Forty-nine percent now say they think he will be able to spearhead significant improvements in the system, down nearly 20 percentage points from before he took office.
As challenges to Obama’s initiatives have mounted over the summer, pessimism in the nation’s direction has risen: Fifty-five percent see things as pretty seriously on the wrong track, up from 48 percent in April.
But there has been a notable increase in optimism about the length of the recession: Half of all Americans expect it to be over within the next 12 months. In February, just 28 percent said the recession would end that rapidly.
Obama’s economic stimulus plan has come under attack from Republicans, who say it has failed to bring tangible benefits. But in the poll, almost twice as many say the program has made things better as say it has made things worse (43 percent to 23 percent), with a third saying the plan has had no effect.
The president’s overall approval rating stands at 57 percent, 12 points lower than its April peak, as disapproval has ticked up to 40 percent, its highest yet. On specific issues, Obama received more mixed marks. A majority, 53 percent, now disapprove of his handling of the federal budget deficit, and his ratings on health care continue to deteriorate. On the marquee issue of the economy, 52 percent approve of his actions, unchanged from June.
Despite the decline in general confidence in Obama, there is still little competition in the battle for public trust: Just 21 percent say they think congressional Republicans will make the right decisions for the country’s future, while 35 percent have confidence in Democrats.
Disapproval of Obama’s handling of the health-care issue reached 50 percent in the new poll, the highest of his presidency, and 42 percent of those surveyed say they now “strongly disapprove” of the way he is dealing with his main domestic priority. Views of the president’s actions on reform have dropped most sharply among seniors and independents.
The Public Option
The poll was completed just as a new debate about a public health insurance option erupted after administration officials appeared to signal their willingness to jettison the proposal as part of an eventual compromise. White House officials later insisted that there had been no change in their support for the public option as they sought to reassure Democrats furious about what they regarded as an administration cave-in.
In the survey, 52 percent of Americans said they favor the government’s creation of a new health insurance plan to compete with private insurers, while 46 percent are opposed. That is a big shift from late June, when 62 percent backed the notion and 33 percent opposed it.
The drop in support for the public option has been particularly steep among political independents, the closely watched group so critical to the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006 and Obama’s victory last year. Two months ago, independents supported the public option by a 2 to 1 ratio. Now, 50 percent are in favor, and 47 percent are opposed.
Seniors have also become decidedly negative toward the proposal: In June, seniors were evenly split on the plan, but now a majority strongly oppose the idea.
The momentum for any reform appears to have slackened as the debate has intensified, with 51 percent now behind the notion that government action is needed to control costs and expand coverage and 46 percent seeing such measures as doing more harm than good. Two months ago, proponents outnumbered opponents by a wide margin.
Obama faces an increasingly polarized environment as he campaigns for his health-care initiatives. Fifty percent of those surveyed say they oppose the set of proposals advanced by the president and congressional Democrats, while 45 percent support them. Intensity is on the side of the detractors: Forty percent of all Americans strongly oppose the plans, while 27 percent are solidly behind them.
Angry protests at some congressional town hall meetings have dominated the news over the August congressional recess. Just over half, 51 percent, of Americans see these demonstrations as “appropriate,” while 45 percent call them “inappropriate.”
Eighteen percent of those polled say they feel “angry” about the health-care changes that Congress and the Obama administration are proposing. And about as many, 15 percent, say they are “enthusiastic” about them, with the majority almost evenly divided between “satisfied” (32 percent) and “dissatisfied” (31 percent).
Positive feelings about reform drop significantly by age, with 57 percent of seniors holding negative feelings, including 29 percent who say they are outright angry.
Partisan affiliation plays directly into the intensity of feeling: Fifty-one percent of those who describe themselves as strong Republicans say they are angry, while enthusiasm peaks at 40 percent among liberal Democrats.
A Skeptical Public
The lack of energy behind broad change stems in part from widespread skepticism that the proposed overhaul would make things better. Only 19 percent envision the quality of their care improving or their costs going down if the system is changed, and few of those who now carry health insurance (the vast majority of Americans) say they think their coverage or costs would improve. Seniors are more than five times as likely to believe their care will deteriorate under projected modifications than to believe it will improve.
The overall drop in support for government action on health care is notable among political independents, who now divide evenly between whether government reform is even necessary or would do more harm than good. Disapproval of Obama’s handling of the reform issue has spiked to 57 percent among independents, a new high, with nearly half giving him strongly negative marks. Nearly six in 10 independents oppose the proposals.
There has also been slippage among independents on broader measures of Obama’s presidency. His job approval among independents now stands at 50 percent, the lowest level of his presidency. For the first time, more independents strongly disapprove than strongly approve of how he is doing. His approval among independents is also below 50 percent on the economy, the deficit and taxes.
Before Obama’s inauguration, 61 percent of independents expressed confidence in his ability to make the right decisions for the country. That number fell to 52 percent about 100 days into his presidency and now sits at 41 percent. Confidence in his judgment has also slipped substantially among seniors.
Looking ahead to the 2010 midterm elections, half of independents say a congressional candidate’s support for the proposed health-care changes will not affect their vote, but among the other half, twice as many say they are less apt to back such a contender than say they would be more likely to vote that way. Seniors tilt even more negatively on the question.
The poll was conducted Aug. 13-17 among a random national sample of 1,001 adults on both conventional and cellular telephones. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.
 |
At least 16 people were killed Wednesday in an attack on the American embassy in Sanaa, Yemen. The attackers used a suicide car bomber, rocket-propelled grenades, and automatic weapons to mount the deadliest assault yet on the embassy, which has come under fire four times in the last six years.
Unfortunately, those aren’t the only attacks in Yemen in recent memory. Eight years ago, suicide bombers on a boat hit the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden. That attack killed 17 U.S. sailors.
While the images from such attacks are hard to forget, few of us remember much about Yemen itself. So today, let’s review some essential Yemeni facts by answering five key questions about the place.
Question #1: Where Is Yemen?
Yemen occupies the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, south of Saudi Arabia and west of Oman. The nation’s west coast is less than 100 miles (160 km) across the Red Sea from the African nations of Eritrea and Djibouti. Its south coast is across the Gulf of Aden (an arm of the Arabian Sea) from Somalia.
Question #2: How Big Is Yemen?
Yemen covers 203,850 square miles (527,970 sq km). It’s a little bigger than Spain, a little smaller than France, and nearly the same size as Texas without its panhandle. Most of that land is desert. In fact, Yemen has no permanent rivers and little natural vegetation other than scrub brush. Rugged mountains divide the coast from the desert interior, much of which is uninhabitable.
Question #3: How Many People Live in Yemen?
Around 23 million people call Yemen home. That’s almost as many folks as live in Texas. About twice as many people live in Spain, and nearly three times as many live in France. Most Yemenis are ethnic Arabs, and nearly all are Muslim.
Question #4: Are the Yemenis Rich?
Most Yemenis are not rich. A few Yemenis make big bucks off the nation’s 3.6 billion barrels of proven crude reserves (which weren’t tapped until the last few decades). But Yemen as a whole is one of the Arab world’s poorest places.
Around a third of Yemen’s workforce is unemployed, and Yemen’s gross domestic product (GDP), adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP), is $52 billion. That’s about the same as Ethiopia’s GDP (PPP). Basically, a nation’s GDP is the value of all the goods and services it produces in a given year. Economists adjust GDP for PPP to account for the fact that a dollar buys more in some places than it does in others.
Question #5: What’s Yemen’s Recent History?
Like most of the Middle East, most of Yemen was part of the Ottoman Empire prior to World War I. The exception was the southern port of Aden, where the British had established a protectorate–and a bustling port for ships cruising to India–during the 19th century.
In 1918, the Ottoman Empire crumbled. The British cut deals with local leaders to create a safe haven around Aden. This area eventually came to be called South Yemen. The rest of Yemen became an independent state and, later, a republic known as North Yemen.
The British finally left South Yemen in 1967. After decades of talk and a couple of border wars, North Yemen and South Yemen formally unified in 1990. But the reunification celebration was short-lived. During the Persian Gulf War, Yemen’s economy crashed, and a brief civil war ensued. Political and economic conditions have improved since then, but plenty of problems remain.
–Steve Sampson
Where Did Trick-or-Treating Come From? In 2008, Americans spent an estimated $5.77 billion on Halloween costumes, decorations, candy, and pumpkins.
In fact, the National Retail Federation says that only five holidays beat Halloween for retail sales in the USA: the winter holidays (including Christmas and Hanukkah), Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Father’s Day. Every Halloween, we wonder, how did this multibillion-dollar collection of candy by colorfully costumed kids get started? When did children start donning masks and threatening us with “tricks” if they didn’t get “treats”?
Spook-tacular History Some historians point straight to ancient Celtic traditions like Samhain, a fall festival that celebrated the harvest and honored the dead. They note that the ancient Celts dressed in animal pelt “costumes” during their Samhain celebrations, perhaps, they think, to fool evil spirits.
Other historians point to the Middle Ages, when many people in the British Isles went “guising,” dressing up as saints and devils for Hallowmas. The poor would also go “souling,” going door to door offering to exchange prayers for “soul cakes.” Could these traditions have come to America with the emigrating descendants of the Celts in the 19th century?
The Devil’s in the Details The problem is the link isn’t that direct. A review of early 20th-century American literature shows no mention of trick-or-treating. A 1907 article in St. Nicholas magazine makes many suggestions for a successful Halloween party, including games for telling the future and harvest games like bobbing for apples. The article even suggests making jack o’lanterns from hollowed pumpkins, gourds, and cucumbers! But the author mentions costumes only in passing: “The guests may be received by someone dressed as a witch, or garbed in a white sheet to represent a ghost.”
Images show the kids in dresses, jackets, and ties, not costumes—and not once was it suggested that children ask the neighbors for candy handouts. In 1919, The Book of Hallowe’en described tricks, but not treats. The book said mischievous spirits choose Halloween “for carrying off gates and other objects, and hiding them or putting them out of reach. . . . Bags filled with flour sprinkle the passers-by. Door-bells are rung and mysterious raps sounded on doors, things thrown into halls, and knobs stolen.” Halloween Postcard, Before Trick-or-Treating Source: Vintage Halloween Postcard Candy Boo-nanza So, when did our modern trick-or-treating begin?
The first mention comes in a 1927 newspaper article from Alberta, Canada: “The youthful tormentors were at back door and front demanding edible plunder by the word ‘trick or treat.’”
The first mentions in the USA were also in the Northwest—in Oregon and Montana—in 1934. From there it spread, but the practice was still not universally accepted. In the 1940s, people often referred to trick-or-treating as a “racket,” organized “begging,” and a “nightmare.” Some adults wanted the practice banned, but communities saw it as preferable to the tricks that were getting out of hand. By the 1950s, trick-or-treating was entrenched in American pop culture, appearing in cartoons, movies, and TV shows.
Today, a chief complaint of adults is the holiday’s vast commercialization. Still, children love dressing as princesses, pirates, and superheroes—and they love the candy. —Rebecca Bigelow
To try to contain the damage, the Federal Reserve said Monday that it will extend into 2010 a program to help investors buy commercial property loans. But some say that will have limited impact.
“We seem to be nearing the end of the recession but the situation in the commercial real estate market is getting worse,” says Patrick Newport, an analyst at IHS Global Insight.
About $83 billion of office, retail, industrial and apartment properties have fallen into default, foreclosure or bankruptcy this year, says research firm Real Capital Analytics. The default rate for commercial mortgages jumped from 1.62% to 2.25% in the first quarter and should hit 4.1% by the end of the year, says Sam Chandan, president of Real Estate Econometrics. The carnage will likely cut half a percentage point off economic growth this year and in 2010, Newport says.
Fueled by easy credit, developers built too many shopping malls and office buildings from 2004 to 2007. As the economy soured, vacancy rates rose. Property values are down about 40% from their 2007 peak, Deutsch Bank says, and loans for commercial properties have come to a virtual standstill.
Islamist attacks in Nigeria
An Islamist insurgency in the north of Nigeria comes on top of another in the Delta
VIOLENCE has often disfigured religion in Nigeria. Usually, it has been a matter of bloody confrontation between Muslims and Christians in the middle of the country, where the largely Muslim north rubs up against the mainly Christian south. This week, however, Nigeria experienced its most serious outbreak of another kind of religious violence, provoked by Islamic fundamentalists who take their inspiration from the Taliban of Afghanistan. At least 180 people were killed in five days of clashes between militants and the police.
The fighting started on July 26th in Bauchi state after the police arrested several suspected leaders of an Islamist sect called Boko Haram, a local Hausa term that means “education is prohibited”. In particular, the group is against Western education and influence. It wants to impose a pure Muslim caliphate on Nigeria. In retaliation for the arrest of their leaders, militants went on the rampage in several northern states, attacking the police with anything that came to hand, from machetes to bows and poison arrows.
document.write(' ');
// ]]><a href=”http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/web.economist.com/all_articles;nav=world_politics_v_middle_east_and_africa;nh=C893970D;audience_topic=islam;audience_channel=lifestyle;!c=14156107;pos=mpu_left;tile=4;sz=350×300,336×236,300×250,250×250;ord=980055433?” target=”_blank” >[Munched]</a>
The police fought back, killing, so they claimed, 39 militants in Bauchi. Fierce fighting took place in Maiduguri, capital of Borno state, where the sect has its headquarters. On July 28th the army was called in to shell the compound where the sect’s leader, Muhammad Yusuf, has been based. As well as killing scores of Boko Haram fighters, the police arrested hundreds of suspected members of the group. Mr Yusuf himself was arrested on July 30th reportedly while hiding in a goat pen at a relative’s house. He was taken into custody and promptly shot dead, according to police as he “tried to escape”.
The “Black Taliban”, as such groups are dubbed in Nigeria’s northern states, have carried out isolated attacks for several years. This time the violence has been more widespread and prolonged. Muslim sharia law was introduced in 12 northern states after general elections in 1999, but the states’ Muslim rulers have usually been cautious in applying it. This has prompted the militants to demand a more extreme form of Islamist rule and for sharia to be extended to the whole of Nigeria.
Nigeria’s federal government, along with Western intelligence agencies, has long worried that extremist groups in the north may link up with Islamist terrorist groups elsewhere in Africa, in particular with al-Qaeda in the Maghreb. This outfit grew out of the blood-soaked struggle by Islamists to overthrow Algeria’s government in the 1990s. Such connections raise the spectre of a concerted Islamist threat against Nigeria, a close ally of America and a large oil exporter. But the links have not been proved and little is known about groups such as Boko Haram.
On this occasion Nigeria’s president, Umaru Yar’Adua, acted swiftly. But it was the exception to his presidential rule. Now halfway through his four-year term, the former governor of the northern state of Katsina has achieved little. His administration is beset by indecision and drift.
This week’s violence in the north comes on top of unceasing violence in the southern Niger Delta region, where an insurgency by militants demanding a bigger share of the country’s oil wealth continues to disrupt oil exports. By some estimates, Nigeria now exports only half of what it should: Angola has taken over as sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest producer.
Despite floating various well-meaning plans to pacify the Delta, the government has failed to stop the region’s unrest. The fall in tax revenues, as a result of illegal bunkering and the sabotage of pipelines, means that Mr Yar’Adua has even less chance of tackling his country’s other problems, such as a chronic lack of electricity. The insurgency in the Delta has thrived on the back of dire poverty and high unemployment in what should be a relatively wealthy region, were it not so poorly governed. Some fear the Islamist militants in the north may profit from the same lack of opportunities, which saps the morale of young Nigerians and makes so many of them prey to extremists.
A battery fueled by air June 2009 From Economist.com
A cheaper, lighter and longer-lasting alternative to modern batteries
MOBILE phones looked like bricks in the 1980s. Indeed, they were so cumbersome that most were installed in cars. That was because the batteries required to power them were so hefty. When lithium-ion batteries were invented, mobile phones became small enough to be carried in a pocket or slipped into a handbag. Now a new design of battery that uses oxygen from ambient air to power devices could provide even smaller and lighter sources of power. Not only that, such batteries would be cheaper and last for longer between charges.
Lithium-ion batteries have two electrodes immersed in an electrically conductive solution, called an electrolyte. One of the electrodes, the cathode, is made of lithium cobalt oxide; the other, the anode, is composed of carbon. When the battery is being charged, positively charged lithium ions break away from the cathode and travel in the electrolyte to the anode, where they meet electrons brought there by a charging device.
When electricity is needed, the anode releases the lithium ions, which rapidly move back to the cathode. As they do so, the electrons that were paired with them in the anode during the charging process are released. These electrons travel around an external circuit to which the battery is attached and power it.
Peter Bruce and his colleagues at the University of St Andrews in Scotland came up with the idea of replacing the lithium cobalt oxide electrode with a cheaper and lighter alternative. They designed an electrode made from porous carbon and lithium oxide. They knew that lithium oxide forms naturally from lithium ions, electrons and oxygen, but, to their surprise, they found that it could also be made to separate easily when an electric current passed through it. They exposed one side of their porous carbon electrode to an electrolyte rich in lithium ions and put a mesh window on the other side of the electrode through which air could be drawn. Oxygen from the air took the place of the cobalt oxide.
When they charged their battery, the lithium ions migrated to the anode where they combined with electrons from the charging device. When they discharged it, lithium ions and electrons were released from the anode. The ions crossed the electrolyte and the electrons traveled round the external circuit. The ions and electrons then met at the cathode, where they combined with the oxygen to form lithium oxide that filled the pores in the carbon.
Because the oxygen being used by the battery comes from the surrounding air rather than having to be carried around inside the battery, the device that Dr Bruce’s team has designed can be a mere one-eighth to one-tenth the size and weight of modern batteries, while still carrying the same charge. Alternatively, batteries using the new technology would last eight to ten times longer than modern batteries of the same size.
Performance and size are not the only expected improvements. Although they are not yet commercially available, making such a battery is expected to be cheaper. Lithium cobalt oxide accounts for 30% of the cost of a lithium-ion battery. Air, however, is free.
LONDON, England — If Rob Spence achieves his goal, technology will change his view of the world — literally.
Eyeborg: Documentary filmmaker Rob Spence has created a working prototype of his camera-embedded eye.
Spence, who lost an eye in a childhood accident, is in the process of installing a tiny camera into his prosthetic eye. He announced his plan last year, and now he’s a step closer to fulfilling his aim.
“It’s been an expensive and laborious process to make this thing. But fortunately we have leveraged the right people and have a working prototype,” he says.
A documentary filmmaker based in Toronto, Spence wants to use the wireless camera in his eye to make films and examine where “recorded image and video intersect with humanity.” Although, he says, the prototype containing delicate electronics isn’t ready for frequent use yet.
Spence, who calls himself the “eyeborg,” is the latest example of the convergence of human and machine. No longer restricted to the realm of sci-fi novels and movies, technology is increasingly being integrated into the living body.
Human kind has been using technology to improve the power of their senses since the days of cave men, according to James Geary, author of “The Body Electric: An Anatomy of the New Bionic Senses.”
He loosely describes bionics as any device that extends, repairs or enhances natural sensory abilities. For him, that includes everything from cochlear implants that provide deaf people with a sense of sound to the wireless gadgets people use today to talk on their mobile phones hands free.
In recent years, technology has helped create smaller, more power efficient electronic devices. As a result, there has been a “big conceptual shift towards inserting these components inside, instead of outside the body,” says Geary.
Spence will not be augmenting his senses in the traditional bionic sense — his vision won’t improve at all because his retina was damaged to the point where he had his eye replaced with a prosthetic.
But a California company, Second Sight, has developed a device that can restore limited vision for some blind people. So far, the company says it has implanted the device in 21 people around the world who have retinal degeneration.
The device, which is still in clinical trials, consists of a camera mounted on a pair of glasses. Captured images are transmitted to electrodes implanted in the retina, which then send images to the brain. The device gives patients the ability to perceive patterns of light, which are then interpreted as images.
Retinal implants, mind-controlled limbs, electrodes inserted in the brain — they’re just a few examples of next-generation technologies that may speed up the integration of body and machine. 
See photo gallery of bionic devices »
Dr. Miguel Nicolelis is a neuroscientist at Duke University. He has spent the last decade investigating the links between brain activity and devices, an area of research known as brain machine interface.
He hopes developments in the field will lead to the creation of the next generation of mind-controlled limbs. “We hope to restore mobility to those who have lost the ability to send messages to the brain and their muscles,” he tells CNN.
Scientists have already shown that monkeys with probes inserted in their brains are able to control artificial devices like robotic arms with their minds. They’ve found that computer software can interpret signals picked up by the electrodes.
Brain machine interface ultimately could help restore mobility to quadriplegics and others, such as those suffering from spinal cord injuries, says Nicolelis.
He’s involved in a global project called Walk-Again that aims to develop a wearable exoskeleton that paralyzed users could control with signals from their brain.
Finding a way to safely insert electrodes and probes into human brains remains an obstacle. But scientists are constantly working on finding ways to better integrate devices in living organisms.
Seamlessly fusing engineered devices into living tissue can be challenging since devices usually are metal, hard and flat, according to David Martin, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Michigan.
“This is where the real interesting scientific frontier is — implanted devices integrating themselves in the brain, ear, eye and in muscle. The question is whether we can do that and not cause too much cell damage,” he says.
The technology being developed is cutting edge and pushing boundaries, but there are potential pitfalls. Since it’s still early days, no one knows how bodies will react over the long term to inserted devices.
Furthermore, people have a heightened awareness when it comes to their body, and privacy concerns are already being raised, according to Geary.
“We’re just really sensitive about anything we put in our bodies,” he says. In science fiction, the cyborg is almost always the bad guy. The big barrier is overcoming that fear, he says.
#CNN NEWS#
Bank regulation in America
More than just repairs
Mar 26th 2009 | NEW YORK
From Economist.com
The Obama administration unveils core elements of its financial-regulation agenda
TIM GEITHNER has not had an easy time of it, but he is probably too busy to dwell on his tribulations. Three days after unveiling a plan to cleanse banks of their troubled loans and securities, America’s treasury secretary was back in front of a congressional committee outlining proposals to extend the government’s grip on the financial system. These would mark the biggest expansion of federal regulation since the 1930s.
The new framework has four parts: containing systemic risks; protecting consumers and investors; streamlining the regulatory structure; and international co-ordination. Mr Geithner had little to say about the last three, promising details in the coming weeks. Instead he focused on systemic risk, in part because that will be a focus of discussion at the G20 summit in London next week—and European countries have been pressing the Americans to tackle the issue—but also because the Obama government itself sees it as the priority in the wake of Lehman Brothers’ failure and the messy rescue of American International Group (AIG).
Mr Geithner urged Congress to help him enact “new rules of the game”, not “repairs at the margin”. His priorities are twofold. First, the government needs the authority to take over troubled non-banks whose failure could destabilise markets and to wind them down in an orderly way by selling assets, renegotiating contracts and so on. It is largely because it lacked such power that the AIG bail-out has been a fiasco. The Treasury, which has financial heft, suggests sharing this authority with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which has experience handling failed banks.
The other pressing issue is the creation of a “systemic-risk regulator”. This would help to police large financial firms of all stripes and keep a lookout for emerging dangers across the system, such as the shoddy loan underwriting and credit bubble that helped to cause this crisis. Government officials want the Federal Reserve to take the job on, but its central role in the AIG scandal has weakened its credentials in congressional eyes.
One way to strengthen the system, Mr Geithner believes, is to force banks to plump up their capital cushions. They should do this “counter-cyclically”, building up their defences in good times so they have more protection against losses in downturns, thus dampening rather than amplifying credit cycles. The rules currently work the other way, allowing banks to sail closer to the wind when times are good.
For the first time, the administration also plans to throw a regulatory net over non-bank pools of capital, such as hedge funds. They may not have caused the crisis, contrary to fears beforehand; indeed, they have been hurt more by the demise of banks and investment banks than the other way round. Nevertheless, the government wants all funds over a certain size to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission and provide it with more information about their assets and leverage. The very largest, if deemed systemically important, could become subject to “stringent” capital requirements. These rules may be extended to money-market funds—a huge and supposedly stable industry that wobbled alarmingly after Lehman’s fall.
The last plank of the proposed systemic framework is stronger oversight of derivatives, such as the credit-default swaps that detonated within AIG. Those that are traded over the counter (away from exchanges) will face federal regulation, and supervision of dealers will be tightened. To cut “counterparty risk”, all standardised over-the-counter contracts will have to be cleared through a central entity. Firms are already jostling to win this business. “The days when a major insurance company could bet the house on credit-default swaps with no one watching and no credible backing…must end,” said Mr Geithner in his testimony.
Many details remain to be hammered out. It is not clear, for example, who would pay the costs of handling bust non-banks; one idea is to charge a fee to all firms deemed systemically important. Some question whether a risk regulator would really be able to do much about looming dangers it identifies in good times, when everyone else is too busy enjoying themselves. Moreover, the politics of regulatory reform are sure to be messy—and most of the government’s proposals require legislation.
There is also a debate to be had about where regulation needs to be tougher, and where it should simply be smarter. As Mr Geithner acknowledged, “there were failures where regulation was extensive and failures where it was absent.” Banks, after all, blew up spectacularly despite being covered in red tape. Nevertheless, this week’s proposals make clear that the accent for years to come will be on re-regulation more than innovation. For the past quarter of a century, politicians and regulators stood back from financial markets, trusting them to set their own tolerance for risk. They are now wading back in.
Governor sees possibility in budget crisis
Friday, March 27, 2009
California’s budget crisis could turn out to be a good thing for the state, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Thursday, because it will give voters a chance to approve reforms that could stop another fiscal emergency from happening again.
Schwarzenegger, joined by legislative leaders from both parties, met with The Chronicle’s editorial board to ask for support for all six budget measures on the May 19 special election ballot.
The measures, numbered 1A to 1F, stem from the Legislature’s efforts this year to close a nearly $42 billion budget gap. If passed, the measures would provide an estimated $5.8 billion in borrowing and revenue transfers and authorize an extension of temporary state taxes to bring California an additional $16 billion in new revenue.
It’s important to pass all six budget measures, Schwarzenegger said.
“They’re all interconnected,” he said. “It’s not like going to the grocery story where you can pick and choose.”
Even so, Proposition 1A is the key to the package. By putting a cap on new state spending and creating a new, larger rainy-day fund, the measure will smooth out a decadeslong cycle of boom and bust in California’s budget that has brought financial chaos to the state, the governor said.
That proposed measure “would never have happened without the economic crisis,” Schwarzenegger added. “Crisis brings opportunity.”
But opponents of the measure say they’ve heard the governor’s claims before. In 2004, Schwarzenegger put a pair of budget measures, Proposition 57 and Proposition 58, on the ballot, promising that they would solve forever the financial problems he said were caused by a free-spending state Legislature.
The measures passed, but the troubles didn’t end.
“We’re hearing the same argument the governor made (in 2004), that this is the answer to the state’s problems,” Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, told reporters earlier this week. “But this is a $16 billion tax increase masquerading as tax reform.”
Two of the leading GOP candidates for governor, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, have come out against Prop. 1A, as have the League of Women Voters and several Democrat-leaning labor unions and advocacy groups.
But in 2004, no one could have predicted the worldwide recession that has drubbed the California economy over the past year, Schwarzenegger said Thursday.
“This is an unusual situation for us to get into,” with the deficit growing month by month as the economy tanked, he said. “It was extraordinary to see … the budget balanced in (February) and by March find it’s out of whack by $8 billion.”
Complaints about the measures are to be expected, said Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Baldwin Vista (Los Angeles County).
“All constituencies on both sides of the aisles are up in arms about different things,” she said.
State Sen. Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto, lost his job as Senate minority leader because of his support of the budget deal. But he joined Schwarzenegger on Thursday in talking about the importance of the special election.
When people say they oppose the budget measures, “ask them what is the alternative … and tell us how it can be done politically,” he said.
While recent polls have suggested the budget measures could be in trouble on election day, Schwarzenegger believes that only means more work is needed to let voters know how this election can change California’s future.
“I’m programmed only for victory,” he said. “I’ll travel up and down the state and work my butt off to let people know about this.”
Images
Second time lucky
Mar 23rd 2009 | NEW YORK
From Economist.com
Tim Geithner’s new effort to treat America’s financial toxins
AP
WILL it be second time lucky for Tim Geithner? On Monday March 23rd, six weeks after being heckled for a maddeningly vague bank-rescue plan, America’s beleaguered treasury secretary at last gave details of a public-private partnership to invest in the troubled assets clogging up banks’ balance-sheets. Cleaning up this mess is seen as a prerequisite of financial and broader economic recovery, and the Americans were keen to unveil a proposal before leaders of the G20 countries meet to seek a way out of the crisis, in early April. The new plan is certainly a lot meatier than the February effort, and markets for both debt and equities gave it an initial thumbs-up, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising by almost 500 points and credit-derivative spreads signalling a lower risk of bank defaults. There are, alas, several reasons why it may struggle to succeed.
In a sense, America has come full circle, reviving the asset-buying component of the original Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP), a $700 billion rescue fund created last October which was quickly refashioned into a bank-recapitalisation vehicle. This time, however, private investors will do the buying, not the government, though they will get plenty of help, through co-investment by the Treasury, cheap loans from the Federal Reserve and debt guarantees from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. For every private dollar invested in impaired loans, a matching dollar of equity and $12 of other financing will come from the public purse. And the loans will be non-recourse, meaning investors who walk away from loss-making deals lose only their initial investment.
Paradoxically, at a time when private firms are furiously cutting back on debt, the government sees this “leverage”, or borrowing, as the best way to unfreeze the market for mortgages and related securities. In theory private buyers, bidding in competition with one another, should be better than the government at determining the real value of assets; the government is more likely to overpay. Moreover, by combining private and public capital, the government hopes to generate up to $1 trillion of buying power using $75 billion-100 billion of TARP money.
Will private investors nibble? The potential returns look juicy, even though they must share profits equally with the taxpayer. Big firms that would be in the running to manage funds in the programme, such as BlackRock and PIMCO, have given it a cautious welcome. But others, such as hedge funds and private-equity groups, are wary of participating in government-backed plans after witnessing the hysteria whipped up over bonus payments at American International Group (AIG), a clapped-out (and now government-controlled) insurer.
Government officials have tried to quell these concerns by calling potential asset-buyers “good guys” and providing assurances that they will be exempt from pay restrictions aimed at recipients of taxpayer largesse. But fear abounds that they will become the next target of self-righteous politicians, especially if they are seen to be reaping windfalls. “The political risks are scary,” says one hedge-fund manager, who also points out that some of the plan’s details are still missing: for instance, the interest rate and duration on loans for mortgage-backed securities have yet to be determined.
Another question is whether banks will sell. Many are still holding assets, particularly whole loans, at unrealistically high values. With government help, buyers will be able to offer more than they would if relying solely on their own resources. But it may still not be enough to persuade banks to sell, since any amount below the carrying value would force them to take a write-down and deplete precious capital. (This is a bigger issue for stodgy commercial banks than it is for Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, which have aggressively marked down duff assets.) There may be a way round this impasse, thinks Michael Feroli, an economist with JPMorgan Chase: regulators could use the results of the “stress tests” they are currently conducting on large banks to force them to sell assets, in the process topping them up with fresh capital in return for a bigger government stake.
Moreover, the new plan may not be big enough to deal with the bad-asset problem. The sum of $1 trillion may sound a lot, but at least double that amount is in danger of souring in America as house prices continue to fall, unpaid credit-card debts mount and more companies slip into bankruptcy. With the chances of wringing more money out of Congress for troubled banks low and falling, the new plan could hit a funding wall. To date, just under half of the TARP’s $700 billion has been disbursed. Add in other commitments and the toxic-asset plan, and the total climbs to as much as $608 billion. Fine, except that more than the remaining $92 billion may be needed to plug banks’ capital holes once the stress tests are completed.
So Mr Geithner could face some hard choices. He will desperately want the new plan to succeed, not only because cleansing banks of toxic assets is so important to reviving confidence, but also because its failure could unseat him. He is already reeling from criticism that he was slow to put a lid on the pay furore at AIG. Barack Obama has been forced to defend Mr Geithner against calls for his resignation.
If the public-private partnership proves to be a damp squib, Mr Geithner can expect to face a barrage of complaints that he took the wrong course. He rejected both the standard “bad bank” model, in which the government takes on rotten assets, and takes over the banks most riddled with them; and the asset-insurance approach favoured by Britain, in which the state takes on the risk of a credit portfolio for a fee. Whether that is a decision he comes to regret will become clearer in the coming weeks.
- Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo pardons the remaining 10 convicted murderers involved in the Assassination of Ninoy Aquino. (Inquirer.net)
- Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao delivers the annual government work report as the 11th National People’s Congress’s second session begins. (Xinhua News)
- China stresses domestic demand and targets about 8% economic growth in 2009. (Xinhua News)
- Palestinian bulldozer driver is shot after ramming a police car and a bus in Jerusalem in a suspected terror attack. (Sky News)
 |
|
|
Yesterday, we took a trip through 4,000 years of India’s ancient history. Today, we’re zooming in on the last five centuries, during which the British Raj rose and fell.
Occidental Tourists
In 1497, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama rounded Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. In 1498, he landed in India, established friendly relations with a local kingdom, and began building a trade network. By 1510, the Portuguese had established an outpost on India’s west coast they would hold for more than 400 years. Their traders would control Indian Ocean trade until the Dutch supplanted them in the 17th century.
But soon Europeans would do more than trade. When India’s mighty Mughal Empire unraveled in the 18th century, princes began trading concessions to Europeans in exchange for military assistance. By the 1750s, the British and French–at war all over the world–were squaring off in battles across India. Within 15 years, Britain had become the dominant European player on the subcontinent, and the British East India Company had control of India’s far east Bengal region.
Founded in 1600, the British East India Company had started building “factories” (basically, warehouse trading posts) along the coast of the Bay of Bengal in the early 17th century. The biggest of these factories eventually became forts, as the company grew into a sovereign power within India, complete with its own troops. By 1773, its power was so great that Parliament passed the Regulating Act, which made the company answerable to the Crown.
Additional acts followed as the British Empire extended its reach across India–sometimes by clever politicking, often by military force. In much of India, English became the economic lingua franca, and British law became the rule. Meanwhile, efficient English factories produced cheap products from Indian raw materials–even as colonial taxes helped drive their Indian competitors out of business.
India Rebels
By the 1850s, the British East India Company was building bridges, railroads, and telegraph lines to link India’s interior to the coast. It was also functioning less as an independent company than as an arm of the British government. Then, in 1857, a group of the company’s Indian soldiers (called “sepoys”) mutinied–and wound up starting a year-long uprising across much of India.
The British crushed the rebellion, but it still put an end to the British East India Company. In 1858, the British government assumed direct responsibility for the company’s holdings. In 1876, Queen Victoria took the title Empress of India.
Direct rule didn’t change much for ordinary Indians. If anything, it fed Indian nationalism. In 1905, when the British decided to divide Bengal to improve administrative efficiency, a new crop of nationalist leaders helped organize a boycott of British goods. Local businesses boomed, imports dropped, and the British eventually undivided Bengal. Meanwhile, the Indian National Congress called for swaraj (“self-rule”).
“Quit India”
At the outbreak of World War I, India rallied to the British cause. But by war’s end, the nationalist movement had regained momentum. In 1919, British troops fired on Hindus who had gathered for a festival despite a last-minute ban on public meetings. They killed nearly 400 people.
National Congress leader Mohandas Gandhi then organized a national campaign of noncompliance with British rule. Indians boycotted British goods, resigned from British government jobs, and withdrew their children from British schools. Gandhi called off the noncompliance campaign in 1922, after 22 Indian policemen were burned to death. But he returned to his civilly disobedient ways in 1930, leading thousands on a march to the Arabian Sea to protest unfair taxes on salt.
As calls for swaraj grew louder, Parliament passed a law that provided for independent provincial legislatures in British India. Elections followed, and Congress emerged as the dominant party. Then, in 1939, the British viceroy declared India’s entry into World War II without consulting Indian leaders. Congress’s provincial ministers resigned in protest, and Gandhi declared a new “Quit India” movement.
Independence and Pakistan
After the war, the British entered into a new round of negotiations over Indian independence–and the real possibility of self-rule exposed age-old splits in the “self” that wanted it. Congress’s leaders, mindful of India’s cultural and religious diversity, had long espoused a policy of secular nonpreference. Their goal, they said, was simply to make India into a secular democracy, with no religious or ethnic group preferred over any other.
Muslim leaders had other ideas. They believed that with only 12 percent of the total population, India’s Muslims could never hope to have enough electoral power to ensure fair treatment. So, they proposed that the British partition India into two states: one Hindu, one Muslim.
When civil war erupted between India’s Hindu and Muslim populations in 1946, the British figured that partitioning Muslims from Hindus was the best choice. In 1947, India finally got its swaraj, but so did Pakistan–a “land of the pure” cartographically created out of Muslim-majority provinces. The two have been at each other’s throats practically ever since. Both are nuclear powers.
–Steve Sampson
 |
|
|
Few days in American history have wounded the nation more deeply than September 11, 2001. Yet a handful of horrible days did open wounds just as grievous. Today, we remember 9/11 by remembering those dark days of the past–and the strength that emerged from their shadows.
Double Issue
5 Dark Days in America
|
|
|
Few days in American history have wounded the nation more deeply than September 11, 2001. Yet a handful of horrible days did open wounds just as grievous. Today, we remember 9/11 by remembering those dark days of the past–and the strength that emerged from their shadows.
December 7, 1941
One sunny Sunday morning in the tropical paradise of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, more than 2,400 Americans died in a war they didn’t even know they were fighting. Tensions between the United States and Japan had run high all year, but the attack caught U.S. forces almost completely off-guard. No formal, unambiguous declaration of war ever came.
The two-hour attack was meticulously planned to cause maximum damage. Waves of Japanese planes conducted nearly simultaneous bombing runs. Some concentrated on strafing the Oahu airfields to destroy the aircraft parked there. Others bombed and torpedoed the 130 vessels moored in Pearl Harbor itself.
On the U.S.S. Arizona, which had arrived in Pearl Harbor just the day before, sailors were deep in battle when an armor-piercing bomb weighing nearly a ton smashed into the deck and ignited the forward magazine. The end came shockingly fast for 1,177 men. A huge explosion broke the ship in two, and the battleship sank in nine minutes. Full of fuel, the Arizona burned for three days.
The strike gave the Japanese a huge military advantage. Their attack had sunk five battleships and damaged three more. It also had destroyed a half-dozen light cruisers and destroyers and 188 aircraft. In a stroke of luck for Americans, however, the Pacific Fleet’s aircraft carriers were not in port and escaped the attack. Their survival would come to haunt Japanese military planners.
As the news spread across the United States, people were shocked at the sneak attack and horrified by the loss of life: 2,403 dead and 1,178 wounded. The next day, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the declaration of war that Congress had passed, and men all over the country volunteered for duty. The United States then embarked on a four-year mission that would change the lives of every American and put the nation on the world stage.
October 29, 1929
When the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange rang on October 29, 1929–Black Tuesday–the market lay in ruins. And so did many an investor. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the day down almost 12 percent. The day before, it had bled nearly 13 percent. Wall Street has seen worse days. On October 19, 1987, the Dow shed nearly 23 percent. But before long, that market had rounded up the bulls and regained its lost ground.
Not so in 1929. The brief rally that followed the crash quickly proved to be what traders call a dead-cat bounce. The Dow sank to new lows in November. Then it sank some more. By the time it hit bottom–in 1932–the market had shed nearly 90 percent of its value. Not until 1954 would the Dow again touch its 1929 peak.
The crash poured kerosene onto an already flammable financial house. Just as investors lost their shirts, poorly regulated banks went bust, either in the crash or in the crush of jittery depositors demanding their cash. By 1933, 11,000 of the United States’ 25,000 banks had closed up shop. Consumers stopped spending, businesses stopped producing, and the economy slipped into a coma. By 1933, U.S. manufacturers produced half of what they had in 1929, and a quarter of American workers had no job.
Government only made the crisis worse. Standard policy then was to let the economy sweat out financial fever. Treasury secretary Andrew Mellon said, “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. . . . People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”
Yet the depression that followed the crash of 1929 was an order of magnitude worse than any previous economic crisis, literally off the chart. The American economy eventually recovered–more than a decade later, spurred by massive wartime spending–but not before government completely changed its approach, shifting to hands-on economic policies and programs that persist even today.
September 17, 1862
In the early dawn of September 17, 1862, on a ridge near the small town of Sharpsburg, Maryland, Union artillery received orders to commence firing on Confederate infantry taking positions in the nearby cornfields. The shots started a one-day battle that would come to symbolize the fury of the American Civil War: Antietam.
The tide of the battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg, as it was called in the South) shifted constantly. Confederate sharpshooters inflicted heavy casualties on the advancing Union army, which in turn pounded Confederate positions in the corn with artillery barrages that mowed entire fields to the ground. At times, the fighting was so intense that men had to stop shooting because they couldn’t see their targets through the heavy smoke of gunfire.
After repulsing several Union charges, the Confederate line finally broke in the middle. But Union general George McClellan cautiously kept his reserves in check, giving Confederate general Robert E. Lee a chance to gather his defeated army, withdraw from the field, and fight again another day.
After a truce, the battle’s enormous toll became clear–more than 23,000 men were dead, wounded, or missing. In fact, the battle of Antietam remains the bloodiest day in American history, bloodier than Iwo Jima, Pearl Harbor, or Normandy. By some estimates, more Americans died at Antietam than died in the entire Revolutionary War.
The bitter irony is that either side could have ended the war that day. Scholars say that if McClellan had sent his remaining forces into the fray, Lee might have been forced to surrender. A Confederate victory would have put Lee on Lincoln’s doorstep, and might have forced a truce. Instead, the Civil War dragged on for almost three more years and claimed hundreds of thousands of American lives.
August 24, 1814
On an otherwise ordinary summer night in 1814, residents of Leesburg, Virginia, west of Washington, DC, gazed up at an orange-colored sky. It would be hours or even days before the panicked locals learned that Washington had been burnt to the ground by British soldiers. Clearly, the War of 1812 wasn’t going well for the American side.
Disorganized U.S. forces had managed few victories in their attempt to invade Canada. And British generals, bolstered by reinforcements from home, saw an opportunity to score a decisive blow, even as they avenged the Americans’ torching of York (now Toronto). So, in August of 1814, British soldiers landed along the Patuxent River in Maryland, mopped up a local militia, and cleared the way to Washington.
By then, the city was a veritable ghost town. As British solders marched ever closer, a handful of thoughtful patriots scrambled to pack up national artifacts like the Declaration of Independence. First lady Dolley Madison was one of the last to flee, staying to preside over the selection of items that would be carried away from the White House.
Arriving in the deserted capital, the British were so impressed by the architecture that some had second thoughts about setting the city ablaze–but decided to burn it nonetheless. They torched most of the city’s important buildings, including the White House, the Capitol, and the Treasury. Then they turned toward Baltimore, one of America’s busiest ports.
The damage to Washington was so great that Congress considered leaving the ruins behind and starting over elsewhere. Ultimately, though, leaders decided to rebuild the city on the Potomac, reflecting a growing sense of pride that would shepherd the country through dark days yet to come.
A Late Summer Day, 1619
The year 1619 falls almost outside the scope of U.S. history. But the nation’s longest and darkest chapter arguably began one late summer day of that year, when a Dutch ship put in at Jamestown to replenish its supplies–and delivered the first African slaves to the American colonies.
America’s first slaves arrived less by design than by sad historical accident. The Dutch sailors had stolen some 20 captive Africans from a Spanish slave ship, and they traded their ill-gotten “goods” at Jamestown for food. Though the new arrivals certainly received no warm welcome–they were promptly sold at auction–documents from the time suggest that the settlers weren’t sure what to make of them.
Records from the 1620s list the first African-Americans as “servants,” suggesting that they may have been considered “indentured” rather than “enslaved.” Later records show an increasing number of free blacks in the colonies. Still, by 1640, a court had condemned at least one African slave to “serve his master . . . for the time of his natural life.”
Over the next two centuries, lifelong race-based slavery would become an evil American institution. By the 1660s, colonies in the South were writing slave codes into law and confiscating the lands of formerly free African-Americans–setting up inevitable conflict: race against race, state against state, the ideal of freedom as a founding principle against the harsh reality of slavery as a part of American life.
The founders saw the conflict of slavery, even if they did nothing. George Washington claimed that “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it” and entertained a proposal from his friend Lafayette to establish an estate where they would “free the negroes, and use them only as tenants.” The French general was aware many would think the idea crazy. But “if it be a wild scheme,” he wrote, “I had rather be mad in this way, than to be thought wise in the other task.”
–Michael Himick, Steve Sampson, Colleen Kelly,
Christopher Call, and Laura Kane
Part 1
 |
|
|
America’s Democrats and America’s Republicans took time yesterday to agree on one thing: that yesterday was a historic day for the United States. For the first time in American history, a black man is a major party’s nominee for the country’s presidency.
We took a look at how women got the vote and asserted themselves politically earlier this week. So, today, let’s look at how African-Americans fought for their rights as citizens of the United States and asserted themselves as candidates for public office. The story doesn’t start with the 20th-century’s civil rights movement or with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The story starts with Reconstruction, the tumultuous period after the American Civil War.
A Nation Divided
Reconstruction was the consequence of the federal government’s decision to make the southern states pay a price for seceding from the Union. After the deaths of more than 620,000 soldiers, no one was ready to simply say, “No hard feelings. Welcome back.”
But the Reconstruction Acts that Congress passed in 1867 and 1868 were not just to punish the South for the war. Everyone knew that the men in charge of the Confederate states before the war were not going to support the 13th Amendment, which eliminated slavery, or the 14th Amendment, which gave citizenship to those freed from it.
So, in 1867, Congress divided most of the bottom half of the United States into five military districts. Federal authorities then sent Union troops to establish state governments, conduct trials, and generally run the show.
New Sheriffs, New Senators
In the late 1860s, massive changes occurred on the voter rolls. Black men were given the right to vote. And most of the men who had served in the Confederate Army, or had supported it with supplies, were barred from voting.
The logical thing happened. Black men got elected to all sorts of local offices. They got elected to some state legislatures, too. And when the Confederate states were admitted back into the Union, one by one, the first African-Americans took their seats in the Senate and House of Representatives.
In 1870, South Carolina sent Representative Joseph Rainey to the House. Senator Hiram Revels represented Mississippi. Choosing Revels was, in fact, a deliberately symbolic act. He took the seat that Jefferson Davis held before Davis became president of the Confederate States of America.
Up, Down, and Then Out
From 1870 to 1901, twenty-two African-American men served in Congress. Of course, all were Republicans, the party of Abraham Lincoln. Some were former slaves. Half the men had attended college, and most had held elected office before coming to Washington.
The peak year of black representation was 1875, with two senators and six representatives. By 1891, that had dwindled to just one man in the House, as whites across the South regained their voting rights and organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan stepped up campaigns to intimidate black voters from coming to the polls.
The last African-American, George White, left the House of Representatives in 1901. He declared from the House floor, “This, Mr. Chairman, is perhaps the Negro’s temporary farewell to the American Congress; but let me say Phoenix-like he will rise up someday and come again.”
Representative White was right. But it was not until 1928 that Oscar DePriest, a black man from Chicago, took his seat in the House. A few African-Americans were elected in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, but black Americans had to wait until 1966 to have six African-American representatives–the same number that had been achieved in 1875.
We’ll review the 20th-century’s civil rights movement
in our next issue.
–Colleen Kelly
|
