n2doc

n2doc's Journal

September 26, 2013

Mt. Flushmore

September 20, 2013

Five possible ways around the Debt Ceiling

They know this because there were at least four other options that were offered in the blogosphere and the news media during the 2011 debt limit crisis, three of them at CNN, that a well-informed White House might have been expected to know about. The four options were:

1. a selective default strategy by the Executive, prioritizing not paying for things that Congress needed, and perhaps not paying debt to the Fed when it falls due and working with the Fed to get the $1.6 Trillion in bonds that it was holding canceled;

2. an exploding option involving selling a 90-day option to the Fed for purchasing some Federal property for $ 2 Trillion. Then when Congress lifts the debt ceiling, the Treasury could buy back the option for one dollar, or the Fed could simply let the option expire;

3. using the authority of a 1996 law to mint proof platinum coins with arbitrary face values in the trillions of dollars to fill the Treasury General Account (TGA) with enough money to cease issuing debt instruments, and even enough to pay off the existing debt; and

4. using the authority of the 14th Amendment to keep issuing debt in defiance of the debt ceiling, while declaring that the debt ceiling legislation was unconstitutional because it violated the 14th Amendment in the context of Congressional appropriations passed after the debt ceiling mandating deficit spending.

Since, the summer of 2011, beowulf has offered yet a fifth option for getting around the debt ceiling by issuing consols. Consols are debt instruments that pay a fixed rate on interest in perpetuity, but never promise principal repayment at a maturity date.

The debt ceiling law is written in such a way that what counts against the ceiling is the principal repayment guaranteed by the instrument. Since consols provide no principal repayment, one can have unlimited consol issuance without increasing the debt-subject-to-the-limit.

more

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/09/ezra-terrified-framing.html

September 20, 2013

Senator Diane Feinstein’s Husband Selling Post Offices to Cronies on the Cheap

To quote famed short seller David Einhorn: “No matter how bad you think it is, it’s worse.” On the “corruption among what passes for our elites” front, this story about self-dealing in the privatization of the Postal Service gives an indication of how bad things really are.

By way of backstory: the Postal Service is being plundered through the device of a completely fabricated financial crisis. The mail provider has been widely declared to be broke, but that’s utter hogwash. Congress has created the appearance of financial ill health via a 2006 measure which astonishingly makes it prepay retiree benefits 75 years in advance. Yes, you read that right. It has to fund benefits now for workers who haven’t even been hired. The Postal Service is the only agency subject to this absurd requirement. If that were eliminated, and the Post Office charged stopped pricing business mail (meaning all that junk you get) at a loss, the Postal Service would be profitable. The Save the Post Office site sets forth the forces behind the campaign to turn the Post Office into a looting opportunity public-private partnership, including Pitney Bowes, DHL, Federal Express, UPS, and USPS supplier Ursa Major.

EastBayExpress, via publishing a section from a new e-book by Peter Byrne called Going Postal (um, sadly the same as used by Mark Ames for his important book on workplace shootings), tells us how the husband of powerful Senator Diane Feinstein, Richard Blum, is feeding at the Postal Service privatization trough. Blum is the chairman of C.B. Richard Ellis (CBRE) which has the exclusive contract to handle sales for the Post Office’s $85 billion of property. Bryne summarizes the finding of his investigation:

• CBRE appears to have repeatedly violated its contractual duty to sell postal properties at or above fair market values.

• CBRE has sold valuable postal properties to developers at prices that appear to have been steeply discounted from fair market values, resulting in the loss of tens of millions of dollars in public revenue.

• In a series of apparently non-arm’s-length transactions, CBRE negotiated the sale of postal properties all around the country to its own clients and business partners, including to one of its corporate owners, Goldman Sachs Group.

• CBRE has been paid commissions as high as 6 percent by the Postal Service for representing both the seller and the buyer in many of the negotiations, thereby raising serious questions as to whether CBRE was doing its best to obtain the highest price possible for the Postal Service.

• Senator Feinstein has lobbied the Postmaster General on behalf of a redevelopment project in which her husband’s company was involved.

September 20, 2013

This Porpoise Slaughter Is Seven Times Bigger Than the Cove’s, So Why Haven’t You Heard About It?

September 19, 2013
David Kirby

Every year for the past decade, volunteers from around the world have made a pilgrimage of protest to Japan, home to the eight-month bloodbath of whale and dolphin slaughter in the cove at Taiji. That hunt began again this month, and all eyes are on the infamous inlet—now more than ever—thanks to the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove.

But even as activists, scientists and movie stars rail against the brutal massacre of highly social and sentient animals, few campaigners know that some 500 miles to the north, in Iwate Prefecture, an annual slaughter of a beautiful species called Dall’s porpoise has been taking place in numbers that dwarf anything found at the cove.

Operating somewhat under the radar of public opprobrium, Iwate has traditionally staged the largest cetacean hunt on the planet. That is, until the 2011 earthquake and tsunami eviscerated Iwate’s coastal towns and destroyed much of the porpoise-hunting fleet.

For a while, it looked as though the hunt was gone forever, perhaps the only silver lining in a dark cloud of devastation. But now TakePart can exclusively report that operations somehow managed to resume last season, though on a much smaller scale, with a few hundred porpoises taken.

more

http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/09/19/porpoise-iwate-japan-hunt-bigger-than-cove-taiji-japan?cmpid=ef-reddit

September 20, 2013

Bolivia to sue US for crimes against humanity

Source: Alalam

Bolivian President Evo Morales has decided to file a lawsuit against the US government for crimes against humanity, censuring its violation of international law.

“I would like to announce that we are preparing a lawsuit against (US President) Barack Obama to condemn him for crimes against humanity,” said President Morales at a press conference in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz on Thursday.

Morales branded the US president as a “criminal” who violates international law.

He decried the US for its intimidation tactics and fear-mongering after the Venezuelan presidential jet was blocked from entering US airspace.

Read more: http://en.alalam.ir/news/1518474