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Issue #9 for galo gimenez

11/13/2007 - 7/22/2008

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Danny Schechter: Homeowners "March" Against Foreclosure (The Huffington Post Full Blog Feed) Submitted at 7/22/2008 9:34:54 AM

NACA's 5 Day DC Event Offers Help, And A Way Forward WASHINGTON JULY 20: Forty-five years ago this summer I spent a day Marching on Washington. Everyone remembers it as just four words of the many uttered by Dr. Martin Luther King: "I have a dream." After that march for justice (and jobs), the organizers led by Bayard Rustin returned to the Statler Hilton Hotel, now the Capital Hilton, which was the event's headquarters. Dr. King was there, and Malcolm X even dropped by for a press conference of his own to warn that non-violence was unlikely to lead to change. It was August 28, l963, a day which is still memorialized in the hotel's lobby. I was a civil rights worker then, and a small fry organizer of that historic mobilization. That night, I crashed in a hotel room rented for SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Within five years, violence would claim the lives of both Malcolm and Martin, and today, Dr. King's children are, sadly, suing each other in part over how best to monetize his legacy. Today, I am back in that very same hotel, although the name Hilton is better known now for the antics of Baron Hilton's granddaughter Paris. Over this past weekend, the hotel, just a few blocks from the White House, was once again playing host to a human rights battle, this time the fight against foreclosures. America's largest and most militant homeownership organization, NACA, The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation hired out the grand hotel for five days, and brought 460 staffers from 38 offices to Washington for a five day event to demonstrate that their approach to stopping foreclosures is superior to everything that is being done elsewhere or proposed in Congress. They reference "the dream" too, 45 years ago activists wanted to claim it. Today they fight to save it. NACA believes that making mortgages affordable is the only way to stabilize at-risk homeowners. They call on banks to restructure mortgages, lower interest rates and replace adjustable mortgages and ARMS with low fixed rates for the long term. To make its point, and serve the community, NACA publicized an offer of free counseling and advice for homeowners that included creating modified and restructured loan proposals and aggressively persuading lenders to accept them. A solicitation was made in radio ads and through direct mail. People with mortgage problems were

advised to make appointments on the NACA.com website and bring their mortgage documents with them. The event was a big and audacious gamble by NACA's feisty CEO Bruce Marks. Something amazing happened. Some homeowners started arriving at 6:30 AM. Soon lines stretched around the block. It was a march of the We Don't Want To Be Homeless, "wearing their troubles on their faces," as one NACA staffer later observed. A million families face foreclosure this year and many are trying to do something before their lives go on the auction block. The statistics are hard to wrap your head around; a parade of real people can't be ignored. By day's end, thousands of homeowners had trekked through the NACA process which included an orientation, the scanning of their documents into the organization's proprietary mortgage software and then one on one counseling in a ballroom which had been transformed into a vast arena of small tables, each with a HUD certified counselor and a computer. The counselors help the homeowners assess the affordability of their mortgages and the prospects of their losing their homes. They then draft sustainable budgets and a plan. With personal financial data in place, backed by bank statements, mortgage paper and pay stubs, they proposed affordable "solutions" to mortgage servicers and banks. These call for cutting interest rates and restructuring the mortgages at fixed rate for 30 years. NACA negotiators emailed the proposals to the finance companies and then advocated for their new members. Soon, emails started coming back from lenders with letters accepting some of the proposals. I spoke to some ectstatic homeowners who were leaving after a frustrating day of waiting for new deal that would allow them to save money and their homes. Officials from some banks and agencies dropped by and marveled over this well organized, business like and passionate first of a kind event. It clearly showed the enormity of the foreclosure crisis and the anger among so many homeowners who feel victimized by the subprime ponzi scheme. It also showed that there is a solution within reach if lenders are willing to compromise. NACA may take it on the road. These people--old and young, some with children, others in wheel chairs. came from as far away as Ohio, North Carolina and Florida. They were dignified and quiet, perhaps also frightened. Many told me they have had trouble sleeping because of worries about whether they could keep their families together.

The event did rate some press attention, but, as is often the case, drug related murders they night before were, predictably, of more interest to most local TV outlets. The CBS Evening News and Fox News showed up. (Afterwards, the Fox cameraman told me he was coming back with his own mortgage documents.) A Washington Post columnist had praised the event the day before it happened, writing, "The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America is doing something that should have been done a long time ago. Homeowners won't have to wait weeks for a callback from their loan servicers. They won't have to fret and fuss -- and in some cases cuss -- to get a mortgage servicing company to listen to their pleas to save their homes from foreclosure." But when the event unfolded, exceeding organizer's expectations, the Post did not bother to send a reporter. The newspaper is right next door to the hotel. Only z few of the media outlets contacted bothered to show up. Early next week, NACA will encourage its homeowners to descend on Congress to "encourage" their Senators and Representatives to press bankers to restructure constituent's loans. While congress debates bailouts, NACA saves homes. Early next week, NACA will encourage its homeowners to descend on Congress to "encourage" their Senators and They may be more successful with bankers who know that getting some payment is better than none, than with posturing members of Congress who seem paralyzed when it comes to helping people in need. Last week, Bill Moyers featured journalist William Greider who discussed, as Graig Gingold reports, "the abject failure of the politicians in DC to do what was called for to protect the public from the predatory lenders." He cites as evidence a headline from the Washington Post: "Figures in Both Campaigns Have Deep Ties to Mortgage Giants" The battle lines are being joined, NACA, a modern day David is taking on the mortgage Goliath---and, so far, making progress Hopefully the bloggers, gathered in their own convention in Austin Texas, and other activists, will take notice and realize there is more to politics than electoral contests. News Dissector Danny Schechter made the film In Debt We Trust and has just finished a new book investigating the crisis, Plunder to be published by C o s i m o . C o m m e n t s t o [email protected]

As Glaciers Melt, Can Artificial Ones Fill the Gap? (WSJ.com: The Informed Reader WSJ.com) Submitted at 1/31/2008 6:19:00 AM

Can artificial glaciers help compensate for the disappearance of naturally forming ones? Scientists and aid agencies are studying communities in mountainous regions of India and Pakistan that have a long tradition of assembling glaciers by grafting together ice and snow masses, reports the

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New Scientist. In these areas, glaciers serve as a regular and reliable source of water in the growing season. If their techniques can be verified, they could bring stability to communities in areas where climate change might have diminished glaciers, crimping the water supply and lowering crop yields. According to legends, villagers in the Hindu Kush and Karakoram mountain ranges that span the India-Pakistan border areas have been building

artificial glaciers for centuries – even using one to stop the advance of Gengis Khan in the 13th century. The artificial versions are far smaller than regular glaciers, but can reach 800 feet in length. Usually, the glaciers are built in rocky areas 14,800 feet above sea level. Villagers pack ice and snow in the shadows of boulders. When winter arrives, snow bridges the areas between the ice and, over a few years, forms into a self-sustaining glacier.

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Jeffrey Kluger: Cartoon Complexity (The Huffington Post Full Blog Feed) Submitted at 7/22/2008 9:25:31 AM

Never mind the nervous Nellies, I say kudos to the New Yorker for its recent cover illustration of Barack and Michelle Obama. The image of the potential first couple as a Muslim and a terrorist, fist-bumping in the Oval Office while an American flag burns in the fireplace was just a crackerjack bit of irony. The visual jujitsu the editors intended was immediately evident. (We don't think these things are true! We're just making fun of people who do!) And as for anxious Democrats and other worriers who suggest that maybe, just maybe, such a satiric bank-shot with comedic backspin won't be quite so clear to a broader audience--anyone outside the Conde Nast building, for example--well, just look at the record. If political history shows us anything, it's that subtlety and nuance always get through more powerfully than a single picture or resonant sound bite. To hear the fussbudgets tell it, you'd think that Obama's opponents were already making hay out of the fact that his middle name is Hussein or that he donned traditional Ethiopian clothing while on a state visit to Africa, even though Hussein is as common as "Bob" in the part of the world where Obama's father was born and politicians are forever donning local costumes to please local hosts. You'd think Democrats were already pounding John McCain for allegedly saying that he wants the Iraq war to continue for 100 more years, when all he really said was that he doesn't much mind if a longterm peacekeeping force remains in Iraq as long as the shooting has stopped. You'd even think some people still believe that Al Gore claims to have invented the Internet, when what he did say was that he took the legislative lead in creating the organized Web that exists today--which he did--a statement of fact no one would stoop to misrepresent because, well, it just wouldn't be sporting. If this through-the-looking-glass world--in which fair play and square dealing were the rules in politics--really did exist, then the folks at the New

Yorker really would have made a perfectly defensible decision in running their cover. Nothing wrong with editors indulging their puckish selves if the 300 million of us sitting around the giant Algonquin round table that is our nation are all in on the joke. In the slightly more rough-and-tumble world that actually exists, however, an election is less an exchange of civilized badinage than of rabbit punches, kidney jabs, and slanders so shameless they'd make a Tammany hack blush. And that presents problems. There are few fields in which the increasingly sophisticated science of simplexity--the study of the way simple things can be improbably complex, and complex things can be brilliantly simple-applies more powerfully than in politics. The Twainian dictum that a lie can make it around the world before the truth even gets its boots on is nothing compared to the light-speed fleetness with which a simple idea takes hold in politics, compared to the mud-footed slowness of a complex one--something you'd think we'd have learned by now. In 1976, Gerald Ford sank his own presidential campaign when he declared that he didn't think the East bloc was under Soviet domination. Few rational people believed he had really forgotten the ongoing, 30-year lockdown Moscow had imposed on the Warsaw pact nations; rather he was merely making the more nuanced point that the democratic aspirations of those countries couldn't be smothered even if their political freedoms could be. Nonetheless, which impression do you think stuck? In a debate four years later, Jimmy Carter was asked the most important issue then facing the world and he answered nuclear proliferation, citing his 14-yearold daughter Amy as the source of that idea. Nobody truly thought that the President had huddled with his child for policy guidance before going out on stage, but rather that he was merely reminding voters that the world we create today will be left to our children tomorrow so we need to listen to their hopes and fears. Now try making these more subtle arguments when pundits are hooting that Ford thinks Poland is a thriving

democracy and Carter's got a teenager running the NSC. Ronald Reagan was the modern master of the clean, lethal sound bite--the maestro of "There you go again" and "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" The Bushes raised the stakes --while lowering the game--with their toxic stew of Willie Hortons and Swift Boats and John McCain's nonexistent black child. But the sheer ability of the simple--even if phony--idea to steamroll the clumsy, complex one has been with us as long as there have been elections. It was into this environment that the New Yorker released its Barack and Michelle cover, almost certainly knowing that it would be used in innumerable slanderous ways by innumerable bloggers and other folks who wish Obama something other than succcess in November. That did both the candidate and the New Yorker itself a disservice. In 2001, many people argued that Time magazine ought to name Osama bin Laden as its Person of the Year, since that year bin Laden undeniably influenced world events for better or worse more than any other person, which is the historic criterion for the Person of the Year designation. I have been a writer and editor for Time since 1996, and though back then I was not part of the Person of the Year discussions, I was relieved when I learned we had chosen Rudolph Giuliani as 2001's cover boy instead. I for one didn't have the stomach to watch Time get villified in the U.S. and feted in the Arab world for what appeared to be an honor bestowed on a man who had killed 3,000 Americans--feeling pretty confident that our subtle for better or worse explanation would not get heard through the din. While the reaction to the New Yorker cover will hardly be as passionate as all that, the magazine's complex message will surely be simplified--and misused--the same way. I hope that'll be worth the laughs it got. Jeffrey Kluger is the author of Simplexity: Why Simple Things become Complex (and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple)

Deals of the Day: Will Congress Save Fannie and Freddie This Week? (WSJ.com: Deal Journal - WSJ.com) Submitted at 7/22/2008 8:31:00 AM

Deals of the Day includes all the major news of the morning related to mergers and acquisitions and financing. For breaking deal news, turn to the WSJ’s Deals & Deal Makers page, or click here to automatically sign up for Deals Alert emails. The Game Da, we will buy you: This year has seen a spate of merger activity by Russian firms on U.S. soil. [ WSJ] Mergers & Acquisitions Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer: Yahoo’s agreement to appoint Icahn to its board gives the activist investor a direct hand in any decision about selling to Microsoft. The question is whether Yahoo may come to regret its move. Icahn’s saga with video rental chain Blockbuster suggests a rocky road ahead for the new board. [ WSJ] Related: Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft is likely to emerge as a clear winner following the IcahnYahoo accord. [ WSJ] Blindsided: Roche’s $44 billion bid to gain full ownership of Genentech took the staunchly independent biotech company by surprise and risks upsetting the highly successful — but delicate — relationship the partners have developed over two decades. Executives agreed to meet Tuesday to discuss the offer. [ WSJ] Unilever: The company sold Bertolli, one of the

world’s bestselling olive oils, to Spain’s Grupo SOS for €630 million. [ Times of London] Diesel: The Italian denim brand bought a majority stake in Viktor & Rolf, the Dutch fashion brand. [ Daily Telegraph] OZ Minerals: The group created by the merger of Oxiana and Zinifex is eyeing takeover targets. [ The Australian] Huawei: Silverlake Partners and Providence Equity Partners have teamed up for a bid for the Chinese technology company. Earlier this year, Huawei was forced by U.S. regulators to kill its plans to acquire part of 3Com. [ PEhub.com] Financial Institutions Dresdner Kleinwort and Morgan Stanley: The two investment banks underwriting HBOS’s £4 billion rights issue took a £100 million paper loss on the offering. [ Times of London] Related: Hedge funds may have made more than £1 billion from shorting shares in HBOS. [ The Independent] Fannie and Freddie: Treasury Secretary Paulson expects Congress to approve a Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bill this week. [ Bloomberg] Richard X. Bove: The oft-quoted Ladenburg Thalmann analyst is being sued by BankAtlantic, which disagrees with his methodology in last week’s “Who is Next to Fail” report. [ New York Post] Buyside GE: General Electric is joining with Mubadala, an Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund, to

HP RENUEVA EL CONCEPTO PERSONAL SYSTEM By Tesnick (Blog de Tesnick)

create an $8 billion commercial finance fund that will invest in the Middle East and Africa. [ Bloomberg] Hedge funds: Doing better than you think. Of course. [ WSJ] Inmarsat: Harbinger is suspending talks with Inmarsat because of the lengthy regulatory process involved, causing Inmarsat’s shares to tumble 9%. [ Daily Telegraph] Smooth transition: Wall Street firms handled the SEC’s new short-selling limits, which took effect Monday, relatively smoothly. [ WSJ] All-Star Hedge Funds: Some 2007 stars are having an encore year, defying skeptics who questioned if they could keep going. [ WSJ] Apollo: The private equity firm zigged when others zagged. But now its bets on cyclical industries have come back to bite it, writes John Morris in this week’s edition of The Deal. [ TheDeal.com] People & Players Ken Wilson: The Goldman banker will be a formidable ally for Paulson in navigating the current banking crisis. President Bush called Wilson — an old business-school classmate — pleading, “Kenny, your country needs you.” Wilson, who was standing in line at the airport, decided it would be obnoxious to call him Mr. President in public, so he called him “George.” This is how your political sausage gets made, people. [ WSJ]

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Jonathan Schwarz: Looking Back: Rumsfeld Privately Criticized Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki As Inferior To Mass Murderers (The Huffington Post Full Blog Feed) Submitted at 7/22/2008 9:22:04 AM

There's no question Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri alMaliki has recently been giving the White House and John McCain heartburn. On Saturday in an interview with Der Spiegel he essentially endorsed Obama's plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. Then did it again today, right after speaking with Obama in Baghdad: After talks with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Monday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki reaffirmed that Iraq wants U.S. combat troops to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2010, a few months later than Obama had proposed. So it's worth looking back at the Bush administration's private views of Maliki, as stated by Donald Rumsfeld back in 2006. For the recent New York Time story on the close government ties of TV military analysts, the paper pried loose tons of internal Pentagon records never meant to see the light of day. Buried in the pile was a recording of Rumsfeld having lunch with many of the Pentagon's analysts in December, 2006 just before he was replaced by Robert Gates. (The large .wav file is available here.) One section of the recording goes like this: UNIDENTIFIED ANALYST #1: This is really off the record, but do you think that this government can survive -- the unity government -or they're eventually gonna have to go to an authoritarian one like came out of [South] Korea, Syngman Rhee, was really an authoritarian leader. The eleven years I was supporting commander in Korea, the president was an Army major general in civilian clothes and they had their highest growth rates and did the '88 Olympics and they finally handed it over. The real question is, and we all hope the unity government [inaudible], but it's very difficult. RUMSFELD: It is very difficult. You look at it and there isn't anyone smart enough to know the answer to your question. UNIDENTIFIED ANALYST #1: I think the answer's they can't, but how you do get that right person? RUMSFELD: I mean, Allawi had steel up his backside. UNIDENTIFIED ANALYST #2: Fallujah. RUMSFELD: And he wasn't well liked and wasn't perfect. He'd leave the country for long periods and stuff. He was not as attentive as he needed to be, it strikes me. But good lord, in terms of dealing with him, he was terrific. He could make a decision and he would kick some fanny to get it

implemented, and you felt good about it. The fellow who proceeded Maliki [Ibrahim al-Jaafari] was like a windsock. You know, he was the last guy he talked to, and we're still off the record. Q: We heard that windsock terminology over there from somebody else. RUMSFELD: Oh man, he was something. Yes, he's a hell of a -- a very pleasant guy, but good grief, the last guy he talked to. This fella [Maliki] is better than the one before, but he's not Syngman Rhee. For anyone familiar with Ayad Allawi and Syngman Rhee, the casual admiration Rumsfeld expresses for them is like a punch in the stomach. The hands of both Allawi and Rhee are covered with the blood of their countrymen. Allawi was a member of Saddam Hussein's Baathist Party during the sixties and seventies. Seymour Hersh quotes an American intelligence official as saying "Allawi helped Saddam get to power"; Hersh also reports that a high level Middle East diplomat told him that Allawi was part of a Baathist Party hit squad that murdered dissenters in Europe. (After a falling out with Saddam in the mid -seventies, Allawi lived in England and ended up channeling false information about Iraq's purported

WMD and Al-Qaeda ties to the media.) But that may merely have been the prelude. The Bush administration was able to briefly install Allawi as Iraq's Prime Minster in 2004. Soon afterward, Jon Lee Anderson of the New Yorker provided convincing evidence that, just before taking office, Allawi had personally shot seven Iraqi prisoners. Yet as bad as Allawi was, the South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee was far worse. According to recent reporting by AP, Rhee, who took power in 1948, supervised the slaughter of over 100,000 South Koreans in the space of a few weeks. Indeed, Allawi and Rhee seem almost indistinguishable from Saddam Hussein. But then, Rumsfeld never had any real problems with him either. [The secret dictator handshake] BONUS: Allawi's successor and Maliki's predecessor as prime minster was Ibrahim alJaafari. Jaafari is the one whom Rumsfeld refers to as a "windsock." In what must have come as quite a surprise to the Bush administration, Jaafari was a fervent admirer of Noam Chomsky. originally posted at the Tiny Revolution

Informed Reader Signs Off (WSJ.com: The Informed Reader WSJ.com) Submitted at 2/1/2008 8:09:00 AM

We have had an exciting — and informative — year bringing you what we thought was some of the best in journalism from sources around the world. We are retiring Informed Reader in order to focus on other journalistic pursuits, but we didn’t want to leave without highlighting a few stories from the past year that were especially compelling, amusing or provocative:• Texas Monthly told us about the trouble brewing in the nation’s sewers. • Fast Company’s Charles Fishman explored the environmental costs of bottled water. • National Geographic traveled to some of the

countries that recycle wealthy nations’ electronic waste, with sometimes dangerous consequences. • The Atlantic reported on how the spread of DNA testing has led to some nasty paternity surprises. • BusinessWeek exposed how some companies are luring the poor deeper into debt; and reported on the elite tech support available to c-suite executives. • Thinking “outside the box” and brainstorming blindly might be a big waste of time, consultants suggested in Harvard Business Review. • Streetsblog prompted us to ask whether cyclists should run red lights, while Salon reported on how street kids can be more violent than they look. • The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s music critic

wondered if the time had come to sanction midsymphony applause. • Harper’s Ken Silverstein went undercover to find out how Washington lobbyists do business. • Vanity Fair unmasked the preppy, Ocean’s 11obsessed college kids who staged a rare-book heist • The L.A. Times exposed problems with UHaul’s safety record, while the Chicago Tribune wrote about the slow regulatory response to toys with small magnets. • The New Yorker punctured the myth about profilers of serial killers. • And New Scientist exposed how the earthworm has become a global menace. Thanks for reading, and thanks for your comments.

Page-One Extras for Thursday, Nov. 15 (WSJ.com: Online Today - WSJ.com) Submitted at 11/14/2007 11:08:00 AM

Merrill Taps NYSE’s Thain as CEO

Question of the Day: Which will be in the best shape five years from now: Citigroup, Merrill Lynch or NYSE Euronext? Don’t Be a Square at the Post Office — There’s a

Surcharge See photos from Mr. Friedman’s visit to the Buffalo postal processing center.

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Rob Kall: McCain to New York Times: Dammit My Friend, Can't You See? I Am Right, Obama's Wrong. Let Me Repeat... (The Huffington Post Full Blog Feed) Submitted at 7/22/2008 9:20:49 AM

Senator McCain is beginning to show us what a McCain presidency will look like and it ain't pretty. It's creepy. Not surprisingly, the right wing echo chamber is demonstrating what it will act like, with its latest clueless demonstration, proving that Fox News and the Drudge Report are good at what they do -echoing talking points and delivering messages -but short on the goods when it comes to even getting what it means to function as a journalistic operation. Earlier this week, Obama sent the New York Times an op-ed ahead of a speech, one that contained new ideas and information. The New York Times opted to run it. McCain sent a print version of what we've been seeing on TV since Obama started on his massively successful, slam dunk overseas tour. The McCain piece was a poorly written, painfully repetitive recitation of his anti-Obama, "I was right on the surge and he was wrong and won't admit it" rant. I was going to say talking point but it's no longer just a talking point. McCain looks desperate and frustrated when he launches into his tirade how, and annoyed that "we" are not getting it, not lapping up his bromides and understanding how

right he is. The problem is, his message is now falling on ears that have been updated. It's an old, stale message that doesn't seem to be working. Right on Surge, Obama Wrong. Yadda yadda yadda. So what?! He's been right on how to get out and Maliki has repeatedly confirmed that this is what the Iraqis want. Oh? You say Maliki doesn't know what he wants or what the Iraqis need? Just imagine what a president this kind of inability to let go, this obtuse, stuck, inability to recognize the fact that the situation has changes, that the vectors in play have changed. McCain seems imprisoned within his brittle inflexibility, stuck with his limited range of ideas. Look familiar? It should. It's the G.W. Bush modus operandi sans a pitbull Dick Cheney type to drive it through. Even the right wing echo chamber players who are having fun thinking they are beating up on the New York Times don't get it that their attacks, while they may play to their usual Kool-Aid marinated base, are clearly seen as clueless by any and all of the players in the real media, in the real journalistic world -- both publishers and writers alike. I publish a medium sized website and routinely encounter rank amateurs who declare that their freedom of speech is violated if their poorly written

Wachovia-Golden West: Another Deal From Hell? (WSJ.com: Deal Journal - WSJ.com) Submitted at 7/22/2008 9:54:00 AM

While Goldman Sachs Group banker Ken Wilson– call him “Kenny” only if you are President George W. Bush–takes up his new job as an adviser to Hank Paulson, former Paulson adviser and fellow Goldman alum Robert Steel has his hands full at Wachovia. The North Carolina bank today posted a net loss of $8.66 billion–compared with net income of $2.34 billion last year–and took $6.1 billion of write-downs. It also slashed its dividend to just five cents a share from 37 cents. Associated Press A lot of this pain can be traced back to Wachovia’s errant 2006 acquisition of mortgage lender Golden West Financial. The entire market value of Golden West–which Wachovia bought for $25.5 billion–has nearly disappeared. Even on the day the deal was announced in May 2006, investors hated it so much that they slammed $1 billion out of Wachovia’s market value. At the time, Wachovia had a market cap of $90.2 billion and predicted that with Golden West its combined market cap would be $117 billion; today Wachovia’s market cap is hovering around $25.87 billion, or just a little more than Wachovia paid to acquire Golden West. Wachovia this year procured a capital infusion of around $8 billion because of that pain. Wachovia’s net slid last year to $6.3 billion from $7.7 billion in 2006, mainly because of bad loans made by Golden West. Former Wachovia CEO G. Kennedy Thompson(left) lost his job last month in large part because of the fallout. And Wachovia’s stock price today–cover your eyes–was a piddling $12.24 at the open, or just about a quarter of the 52-week high of $53.10 in September. Considering all these signs, it may be time to enshrine Wachovia’s acquisition of Golden West Financial as a Deal From Hell. Taking on the mantle of “Deal From Hell” isn’t a

casual affair; it is a difficult-to-achieve level of shame inspired by Robert Bruner, dean of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, and his book, “Deals From Hell: M&A Lessons That Rise Above the Ashes.” Bruner’s requirements for consideration included destruction of market value; financial instability; impaired strategic position; organizational weakness; damaged reputation; or violation of ethical norms and laws. Another Deal From Hell, for instance, is Sprint’s disastrous merger with Nextel. Wachovia/Golden West now seems to qualify, if only because of the “destruction of market value” criterion. It seems a harsh housewarming for Steel, now Wachovia’s cleanup man. But Steel at least didn’t have to engage in the usual new-CEO ritual of castigating the work of his predecessors. Instead, Wachovia Chairman Lanty Smith wore the hair shirt in today’s earnings announcement. Smith called Wachovia’s results “disappointing and unacceptable.” Investors would be hard-pressed to argue. He went on to explain, “While to some degree [these results] reflect industry headwinds and weaker macroeconomic conditions, they also reflect performance for which we at Wachovia accept responsibility.” Contrast Lanty’s take-one-for-the-team mentality with John Thain’s testy rebuttal to a question on last week’s Merrill Lynch earnings call. Thain sharply corrected one analyst who asked about the CDOs packaged by “you guys” at Merrill with this: “First of all, I take exception to the ‘you guys’ comment. I did not create any of these CDOs.” Related Links: Medlin + Duke + Ole ‘Wachovia Way’ = Robert Steel Dear CEO: Capital Infusions May Not Save Your Job. Sorry. Wachovia and Golden West: A Good Idea at the Time

articles are rejected. Sorry. You have the right to speak or write hackneyed or badly written pieces. We don't have to publish them. Real media operations realize that. Faux media are so accustomed to accommodating the people and organizations they serve that they demonstrate their cluelessness with their smarmy remarks and indignation that McCain's repetitive hack writing was rejected. I give the New York Times extra credit for NOT publishing the McCain piece. It might have sold some extra papers, but it would have definitely NOT been up to the standards the New York Times holds for writing. You can read it, here, on the Drudge Report. Ironically, now that the piece of writing has become news as an object, it would be appropriate to publish it, but not as an op-ed, instead, as the document that was rejected. Of course, it is totally unrealistic to think that the right wing echo chamber organizations (I am loath to call them media) will ever actually report that this is actually another blunder by McCain and his handlers. It will be interesting to see if the more moderate media -- the big three networks and CNN will follow MSNBC in mocking the indignation that Fox News and the Drudge Report have demonstrated. Cross-posted from OpEdNews.com

Roche-Genentech: Acquire Globally, Finance Locally? (WSJ.com: Deal Journal - WSJ.com) Submitted at 7/21/2008 4:21:00 AM

Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche Holdings may find it tough going to get Genentech directors to accept an $89-a-share bid that offers a premium of just 8.8%. But Roche can take comfort that, whatever the deal does get done at (should it get done), at least financing shouldn’t be hard to find. Roche has said it will pay for the acquisition with a combination of cash on hand and proceeds from the sale of debt. This year, the European debt capital markets have been relatively strong and active for healthy companies and have taken shallower hits than in the U.S. In Europe, investment-grade companies–those with solid credit ratings–are issuing debt at roughly the same pace as last year. Issuance of investment-grade debt has fallen only 3% in Europe, according to data provided by Banc of America Securities analyst Michael Hecht. While total European debt issuance is down 24% to $1.2 trillion this year, that compares to a 41% decline in the U.S. Most of the pain in the European debt markets came in riskier securities, like high-yield and asset-backed securities. Highyield issuance is down 62% while ABS issuance has dropped off 82%. The drop-off has hurt some banks while helping others. The market shares in European fees of many homegrown European banks–including Royal Bank of Scotland, Italy’s UniCredit, UBS of Switzerland and HSBC Holdings of the U.K.–have jumped, while those of Lehman Brothers Holdings, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs Group and Citigroup have fallen. Deutsche Bank has had the steepest one-year slide in share in its fees, at 1.9%, according to Hecht. Roche hasn’t said which banks will provide it with financing for its bid.

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XM-Sirius: Regulatory Approval Is for the Weak (WSJ.com: Deal Journal - WSJ.com) Submitted at 7/22/2008 10:47:00 AM

The American pragmatist philosopher William James advised readers who fervently wanted a quality to act as if they already had that quality. “Belief creates the actual fact,” he said. XM Satellite Radio Holdings and Sirius Satellite Radio may have taken that classic advice to heart. The two companies Monday started preparing a bond offering to finance their merger– a deal that, as you may remember, is hung up in probably the most torturous regulatory approval process of all time. No matter. XM tapped J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and UBS to sell $400 million of bonds to refinance outstanding debt related to the deal. Associated Press XM plans to use the proceeds from the offering to finance some of its outstanding debt, which has “change of control” puts that allow investors to cash in when the company merges. XM and Sirius agreed in February 2007 to merge. The offering can be unwound if the deal isn’t consummated. Still, the move is a bold indication of confidence on XM’s part that the merger will go through. But, back at the Federal Communications Commission ranch, there is a significant amount of regulatory flailing. The Deal’s Ron Orol reported that the two swing voters on the five-person commission–Republican Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate and Democratic Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein–are putting up a fight and demanding fines for XM and Sirius. (You can read Deal Journal’s take on where the Commissioners stand in last month’s post, XM-Sirius and Five

Angry Men.) According to Orol, both Tate and Adelstein allege that XM and Sirius have committed numerous infractions of FCC rules and must be fined before their deal can be approved. Here are the three major violations XM and Sirius have committed, according to Orol: 1. Tate and Adelstein maintain that the wireless devices XM-Sirius use to transmit audio signals from satellite radio devices to car radios are noncompliant with FCC limits. These devices have been interfering with terrestrial radio, he said. 2. They worry about hundreds of XM-Sirius antennas they say either aren’t in FCC approved locations or are emitting signals that are too strong and violate agency rules. 3. They complain that Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin promised to build an interoperable radio the agency ordered when the commission created the Satellite Digital Audio Radio System. It hasn’t reached the market. Connoisseurs of broadcast mergers will recognize a lot of these concerns align with the same concerns that the National Association of Broadcasters has about the deal. (So much so that wags have dubbed the NAB as the National Association of Satellite Radio Killers.) Of course, as Sun Tzu would say, the enemy fights hardest when it is cornered. The fact that the commissioners are pushing for fines may be an actual indication of faith that the merger will go through. Otherwise, it is difficult to see why they would bother. Related links: XM and Sirius Get Downgraded. Yippee! XM-Sirius and Five Angry Men XM-Sirius: Still No End in Sight

A Global Warming Skeptic Is Challenged (WSJ.com: The Informed Reader WSJ.com) Submitted at 2/1/2008 5:11:00 AM

Global warming hasn’t stopped, as a prominent science writer claimed recently in the New Statesman, a generally liberal British weekly. In fact, the pace of climate change has accelerated, and saying otherwise misleads readers and gives unnecessary ammunition to conspiracy theorists, declares Mark Lynas, the magazine’s environmental correspondent. Mr. Lynas takes on a controversial article by David Whitehouse published online by the New Statesman in December (we wrote about it here). Mr. Whitehouse, a former longtime science journalist for the BBC who holds a Ph.D. in astrophysics, said that while carbon emissions are clearly rising, temperatures increases have leveled off since 1998. The latest temperature readings suggest that the prevailing scientific wisdom about global warming is incorrect, Mr. Whitehouse wrote, a view that prompted a heated debate on

New Statesman’s Web site and elsewhere. That Mr. Whitehouse’s article opened the door to climate-change skeptics is unfortunate, says Mr. Lynas, because the analysis was fundamentally flawed. Mr. Whitehouse relied erroneously on year -to-year temperature changes instead of long-term averages. Many variables cause temperatures to fluctuate widely over the short term. To calculate climate change by starting with a very warm year — 1998, in this case — is a form of scientific cherry-picking, says Mr. Lynas. There is an overwhelming consensus with the scientific community that the planet is getting hotter as a result of human activities, says Mr. Lynas. To halt steps to combat climate change simply because not everything about it is known could be catastrophic. Even if the 99% of scientists who support global-warming findings are proved wrong, shifting away from fossil fuels — which are a finite resource with many other drawbacks — would hardly be ruinous.– Wendy Pollack

HP MediaSmart Connect By Tesnick (Blog de Tesnick) Submitted at 6/19/2008 8:12:00 AM

Con el habitual diseño sobrio pero muy elegante, HP ya ha informado del lanzamiento de su nueva apuesta por llevar contenido digital al salón de casa. Hablamos del HP MediaSmart Connect, que fue presentado en el pasado CES 2008, pero que no ha sido hasta ahora cuando hemos conocido su precio y especificaciones. Este equipo es la apuesta de HP con sus televisores MediaSmart pero sin pantalla. Es lógico pensar en esta opción pues mucha gente ya cuenta con su propio televisor y no necesita más que el

receptor de medios. Así, con el HP Mediasmart Connect obtenemos un equipo que se coloca junto a nuestro televisor para mostrar en él imágenes, vídeo y música almacenado en nuestro ordenador o disponible en la red. Viene con acceso directo a servicios online que nos proporcionan sitios para ver o subir fotos (Snapfish), alquilar películas (CinemaNow) o escuchar la radio por Internet (Live365). No se dispone de conexión directa a Internet, por lo que por la información dada por HP, no se podrán ver por ejemplo vídeos de Youtube, un error común de algunos de estos dispositivos.

Links for Wednesday’s paper, Nov. 14 (WSJ.com: Online Today - WSJ.com) Submitted at 11/13/2007 11:43:00 AM

Holiday Sales, Sure — But Don’t Expect Steals Question of the Day: When will you start your holiday shopping? Gates Foundation, China to Fight AIDS Read a Q&A with Bill Gates on AIDS prevention in China Veteran Weighs In on Tackling Bad Loans Talking Business: Join a discussion about bankers’ judgments. Wal-Mart’s Net Rises 7.9% on Tight Control of Costs Read a transcript of Wal-Mart’s conference call, plus track holiday retail sales news. For Greenberg’s Attorney, Loyalty Trumped Payouts Law Blog: Read more about law, business and the business of law, with updates throughout each business day. Why BofA Didn’t Flag Its Hit Subpar Scorecard: See a chart of companies blaming the credit crunch for poor earnings. Cancer Survivors Find Support Read poetry written by cancer survivor Don Winslow.

HP Dreamcolor: 1 billón de colores en tu pantalla By Tesnick (Blog de Tesnick) Submitted at 6/19/2008 8:21:00 AM

Partiendo de la base que el ojo humano puede percibir ondas visuales en el espectro de onda que va de los 380 a los 740 nanómetros, y que la cantidad de colores que somos capaces de identificar ha sido estimada por científicos en una cifra superior a los 10 millones, cabe preguntarse si no será demasiado lo del HP Dreamcolor, creado en conjunto con los exigentes cerebros tras DreamWorks Animation. Es un display LED de alta precisión cromática para profesionales con una profundidad de 30 bits, lo que daría como resultado una paleta de — aproximadamente — un billón (1.000.000.000.000) de colores; eso es unas 64,5 veces de lo que puede representar tu fiel y querido monitor casero. Por ende, los rojos, verdes y azules serán decididamente más profundos, los negros cuatro veces más oscuros y los blancos tendrán mayor precisión de ajuste. Guau. Si quieres darle un toque extra de color a tu vida, puedes hacerlo por USD$3.499 (CLP$1.744.601, 2.275€). Tras el salto un par de fotos comparativas entre un LCD estándar y el Dreamcolor, para que veas la diferencia.

Online Exclusives for Thursday, Nov. 15 (WSJ.com: Online Today - WSJ.com) Submitted at 11/14/2007 11:08:00 AM

Fiscally Fit: It’s open enrollment season again — Terri offers advice on how to avoid common mistakes. Tech Diary: What do people think about the new high-tech GPS computers that have been installed in New York City taxis? Andy Jordan rides along for an evening with a Cyndi Lauper-loving cabbie to find out. On the Block: Postings and slideshows on Sotheby’s sale. Auto Show Tracker: Reports from the floor of the LA auto show, including slideshows, video and audio reports.

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How the U.S. Gave Iran the Upper Hand (WSJ.com: The Informed Reader WSJ.com) Submitted at 2/1/2008 4:47:00 AM

The U.S. government so badly mishandled the findings on Iran’s uranium-enrichment program that the world now faces a far greater risk of nuclear-weapons proliferation, the Economist says. In a cover story some two months after U.S. intelligence services concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear-weapons program in 2003, the British newsweekly says the report undid five years of painstaking diplomacy aimed at keeping the bomb out of Tehran’s hands.

Why not applaud what might be an olive branch from Washington toward its longtime adversary? The problem is that the intelligence estimate played down Iran’s ability to produce uranium, which the authors call the toughest skill in bomb-making. The design and engineering work needed to turn fissile material into weapons, the focus of the National Intelligence Estimate assembled by 16 U.S. agencies, would be relatively easy to hide, and to restart. No one knows how much progress Iran achieved toward building a nuclear warhead before 2003.

Tablet PC HP TX2500 By Tesnick (Blog de Tesnick) Submitted at 6/19/2008 8:15:00 AM

grabadora de DVD±RW de doble capa con tecnología LightScribe. • Pantalla de 12,1 pulgadas con resolución de 1280×800 píxeles. • WiFi 802.11g y opcionalmente 802.11n. • Altavoces Altec Lansing. • Trae 3 puertos USB. • Entradas de audio. • VGA • Ethernet. • Entrada del dock de expansión. • Lector de tarjetas SD y ExpressCard.

Electric MINI hitting US streets in summer 2009 (Engadget) Submitted at 7/22/2008 9:29:00 AM

Transistors on paper become a reality

Filed under: Transportation Not that electric MINIs are anything new, but unless you were willing to pay for all the mods yourself, procuring one wasn't exactly simple. Now, however, we're hearing that MINI itself will be bringing scads of these buggers to American streets in the summer of 2009. Yeah, like, one year from right now. MINI USA VP Jim McDowell was the source of said statement, though he didn't mention whether all of them would be reserved for California or if they would be available sold out nationwide. Hey MINI, we'd say you've got a hit on your hands. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

(Engadget)

HP iPAQ 914

Submitted at 7/22/2008 9:51:00 AM

By Tesnick (Blog de Tesnick)

HP nos presetenta su nueva Tablet PC y es la actulizacion de la TX2000. La nueva gama es la PC HP TX2500 con la exclusividad de procesador AMD Turion 64 X2. Entre otras caracteristicas de la Tablet PC HP TX2500 tenemos: • 4GB de memoria RAM DDR2. • Tarjeta gráfica ATI Radeon HD 3200 y de 160GB a 320GB en disco duro. • Unudad óptica han incluido una lectora

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets Check it, nerds. A team over at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa has reportedly figured out a way to use paper (yes, paper) as an interstrate component of a Field Effect Transistor (FET). In testing, the group "fabricated the devices on both sides of the paper sheet," thus causing the paper to act as the "electric insulator and as the substrate" simultaneously. Remarkably, results showed that performance actually rivaled that of best-in-class oxide thin film transistors, giving revived hope for the realm of disposable devices like paper displays, labels, intelligent packaging, tracking tags, etc. The findings are scheduled to be published this September, after

Submitted at 6/19/2008 8:11:00 AM

HP Photosmart C8180 By Tesnick (Blog de Tesnick) Submitted at 6/19/2008 8:20:00 AM

which we're sure any firms interested in taking this stuff commercial will be putting their best foot forward. [Via Scientific Blogging] Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Links for Thursday’s paper, Nov. 15 (WSJ.com: Online Today - WSJ.com) Submitted at 11/14/2007 11:08:00 AM

Economists in Poll Expect Credit Turmoil to Continue Dig into an interactive graphic charting the results of the survey and download the full findings. Games Backers Play Up Green Read more coverage of China’s preparations for the 2008 Olympic Games.

HP Touchsmart By Tesnick (Blog de Tesnick) Submitted at 6/19/2008 7:58:00 AM

HP, el primer fabricante mundial de ordenadores, se ha adelantado a la competencia. Cuando la industria miraba hacia otro lado -los miniportátiles baratos-, HP se ha destapado con un ordenador doméstico, con apariencia de televisión plana, que entra por los ojos, el Touchsmart, el toque inteligente, un aparato para el hogar con una pantalla que se maneja con el dedo y preparado como un televisor. Empezará a venderse en septiembre en España por 1.399 euros. Un anterior Touchsmart, de 19 pulgadas, más pesado con la unidad de procesamiento en la peana salió el año pasado pero no se vendió en España.

Good News for Professionals Who Want to Work at Home The Juggle: Sue Shellenbarger on her personal experience with working from home. Inside a Salon That Serves the Logo-Phobic Video: Get an inside look at Yuta Powell’s boutique. On a Roll, Without the Stones Listen to clips of“Charmed Life” and“Too Many Cooks.”