Pitts Report http://www.pittsreport.com NATIONAL INTERNATIONAL NEWS Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:03:55 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 America: It’s Time To Stand Up And Scream “We Want New Leadership” http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/america-its-time-to-stand-up-and-scream-we-want-new-leadership/ http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/america-its-time-to-stand-up-and-scream-we-want-new-leadership/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:01:18 +0000 CMAC http://www.pittsreport.com/?p=30485 Jim Boswell |

Where is Howard Beale when we need him? Two years into the Greatest Recession Since the Great Depression (GRSGD) and our financial leaders are still telling us that we need to be patient while waiting for our economic recovery.

It’s time to wake up, America. There is no reason to wait. So let’s stick our collective heads out the window and scream in unison, “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore. We want new leadership. And here is why.”

If there is any symbol that represents the beginning of the GRSGD, it should be the Toxic Asset Relief Program (TARP). Remember TARP? Remember how our American leadership dolled out $45 Billion to Bank of America and Citigroup and another $25 Billion to JP Morgan/Chase and Wells Fargo back in the fall of 1988?

Remember how we were told that these funds were necessary to avoid a complete collapse of our financial system? Remember how Congress did not even know or understand how the money was going to be used or who it was going to before they signed it into legislation? Then remember how nearly all that money was paid back within a year of our leaders’ graciousness?

Well, as a sanity check on that earlier claim, it is interesting to look at the financial condition of the above mentioned “too large to fail banks” as they reported quarterly to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) at the time of TARP (09/30/2008) and most recently (03/31/2010).

Exhibit 1 provides a fairly good financial picture of those banks for those two different time periods—eighteen months apart.

Chart Boswell

Does it strike anyone strange that in the 2008 fall of our despair that Bank of America needed $45 billion to survive when they were reporting an annualized net income of $12.7 billion to the FDIC with $192 Billion in equity on their books? And does it surprise anyone that Bank of America paid back that $45 billion with interest, and now based upon their first quarter results of 2010 are showing increased equity ($219 Billion) and continued profits with a projected annualized net income of $10.5 Billion?

Take a look at the books of the other three banks in Exhibit 1. My question for you, America, is this? How in the world could our financial leadership ignore this information when they started putting their panic argument together for TARP which essentially then started the GRSGD?

During the S&L crisis in the early1990s, there was no where near the panic we experienced as part of this GRSGD. Those of us who were working in the government financial sector back during that period learned very quickly how to identify banks and savings and loan institutions that were in trouble. It did not take a rocket scientist? There were two fundamental gauges: (1) Equity; and (2) Non-performing assets (NPA). If a bank did not have enough Equity to cover losses associated with non-performing assets (delinquent and real estate owned loans), the bank was indeed in trouble.

Clearly the FDIC learned that during the S&L crisis, as my analytical group did while supporting Ginnie Mae with the analytical risk of its mortgage-backed security program. Doubt me? Then let’s take a look at the most recent (03/31/2010) quarterly data submitted for the seven banks that the FDIC shutdown last weekend (taking their total for the year up past the century mark to 102). The same financial factors shown in Exhibit 1 are shown in Exhibit 2 for those seven banks.

Chart Boswell

Source: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (Industry Statistics)

Note the distinct difference between the Equity versus NPA statistics shown for the banks in Exhibit 2 versus those of Exhibit 1. Note the difference in annualized net income amounts and Equity. If that does not make you want to stick your head out the window and scream about our leadership during this crisis, which has now stretched out for nearly two years, then I don’t even think Howard Beale could help us today.

Who came up with the design and rationale for TARP? The same people who came up with design and rationale for the latest financial reform bill, which also missed the target. Yes, the banks had problems, but the problems were not with derivatives (derivatives are a zero sum game with both winners and losers), but with the amount of non-performing assets on the books.

My question now is: If our leadership did not understand banking data and the real “housing” problem that led us into the GRSGD, why should we continue to count on them now? After two years of the GRSGD, we have paid the bill for most of our housing problems (not counting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) in unemployment and taxpayer losses.

It is time for our country to move on with new vigor and with new financial leadership. The world may have a right to be angry with our recent fiduciary-irresponsibility, but that same world still looks toward America for leadership and direction, especially in terms of economic direction.

There is no need for patience. Recovery should be now, and the best way to start is to make the necessary “financial” leadership changes at the top and then to implement the 4.0% bond solution discussed in an earlier article I wrote for Business Insider.

Patience is a virtue, but poor performance is not.

Business Insider

Share/Bookmark]]> http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/america-its-time-to-stand-up-and-scream-we-want-new-leadership/feed/ 0 Chavez: One Puppeteer of USA’s Broken Immigration System http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/chavez-one-puppeteer-of-usa%e2%80%99s-broken-immigration-system/ http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/chavez-one-puppeteer-of-usa%e2%80%99s-broken-immigration-system/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:31:34 +0000 CMAC http://www.pittsreport.com/?p=30482 Posted by Peter R. Huessy Jul 30th 2010 at 7:43 am in Border Security

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela’s is sending $1 million a year of his oil revenue to an American organization bent on keeping America’s borders wide open. Casa de Maryland openly helps migrants illegally in the United States. It also receives $4 million from the state of Maryland and Montgomery County out of a total budget of $9.5 million a year.

Chavez is knee deep in a terrorist conspiracy to ship Russian weapons to terrorist organizations–Hezbollah–and criminal drug cartels–FARC–to facilitate terrorist acts against the United States, including blowing up pipelines carrying oil to the United States. He has also promised to ship both uranium to Iran to help Tehran make nuclear weapons material and oil to help break a possible refined petroleum products sanctions law now before the US Congress.

Open borders with the world pose grave dangers to the United States. The San Diego Union described the chaos on our borders this way:

Every night, the understaffed and outnumbered Border Patrol engaged in a losing battle of cat-and-mouse with thousands of illegal immigrants being led by ruthless smugglers…. San Ysidro residents locked themselves in at night as smugglers and immigrants traipsed through their yards. Caches of drugs were carried across the border by smugglers and the people they were leading. Hundreds of illegal immigrants lingered in the median strip of Interstate 5 waiting for rides northward. Immigrants running across freeways were hit and killed by motorists.

A USA Columnist visited the border to examine the prospects for a fence. She wrote: “The carnage makes one wonder why environmental groups aren’t out lobbying for a sturdy border fence — instead of arguing against tougher border enforcement.”

But we not only have a problem at the border. The United States still has no reliable system for verifying that foreign visitors have left the country. Federal officials estimate that “40 percent of the…illegal immigrants in the United States came on legal visas and overstayed.”

At a recent community event in Maryland, a veteran Democrat legislator told me there was no problem in Casa de Maryland receiving funding from Chavez because “Venezuela is a model for Latin and Central American development”. I thought she must have been kidding. Inflation in the country is over 30% and may reach twice that. Unemployment is skyrocketing. Chavez has so mismanaged the economy the country does not produce enough coffee for domestic consumption for the first time ever. The currency has dropped in value by over half as Chavez prints money wildly.

Casa de Maryland condemns those who advocate effective limits on immigration as racists, as does Chavez. It has threatened civil disobedience should the US Congress not approve amnesty. It publishes pamphlets that instruct people to refuse to cooperate with immigration and law enforcement officials.

The Times Square bomber is just the latest example of the connection between lax immigration laws and terrorism. In this case it was granting citizenship to someone from a known terrorist hotbed and apparently looking the other way when reviewing what appears to be a sham marriage. How much worse is it to give tax-exempt status to those who actively seek to leave unprotected our borders while supporting themselves with funds from terror supporting states?

Share/Bookmark]]> http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/chavez-one-puppeteer-of-usa%e2%80%99s-broken-immigration-system/feed/ 0 Clerk Invokes Jesus During Robbery – New York Post http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/clerk-invokes-jesus-during-robbery-new-york-post/ http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/clerk-invokes-jesus-during-robbery-new-york-post/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:02:37 +0000 CMAC http://www.pittsreport.com/?p=30475 Raw Video:

Woman talks robber out of committing armed theft in Pompano Beach, Fl.

Share/Bookmark]]> http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/clerk-invokes-jesus-during-robbery-new-york-post/feed/ 0 Real Sherrod Story Still Untold (FOX got PUNKED? Not a peep on JD’s Holder after Shirley Charade) http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/real-sherrod-story-still-untold-did-fox-news-get-punked-or-what/ http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/real-sherrod-story-still-untold-did-fox-news-get-punked-or-what/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:12:05 +0000 CMAC http://www.pittsreport.com/?p=30452 By Jack Cashill

American Thinker

Had Andrew Breitbart dutifully written a column detailing how an obscure USDA official, Shirley Sherrod, and her husband, Charles Sherrod, had scammed the government out of millions, the story would have had the range and lifespan of a fruit fly.

Then, of course, when the full version of the speech emerged — which showed Sherrod as a recovering racist, not as a practicing one — the Obama White House fell all over itself apologizing, and the media turned their guns on Breitbart.
Breitbart, however, had put a potentially huge story into play the only way he could — through sheer provocation. As he knew, and as we are learning, the story goes well beyond Sherrod’s long-ago racist mischief-making with a poor white farmer.
This past Sunday, in his weekly column for the San Francisco Chronicle, “Willie’s World,” veteran black politico Willie Brown confirmed that “there is more to the story than just [Sherrod's] remarks.”
“As an old pro,” Brown acknowledged, “I know that you don’t fire someone without at least hearing their side of the story unless you want them gone in the first place.” Brown observed that Sherrod had been a thorn in the USDA’s side for years, that many had objected to her hiring, and that she had been “operating a community activist organization not unlike ACORN.” Although Brown does not go into detail, he alludes to a class action lawsuit against the USDA in which she participated some years ago.
In the way of background, in 1997, a black farmer named Timothy Pigford, joined by four hundred other black farmers, filed a lawsuit against Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, claiming that the USDA treated black farmers unfairly in all manner of ways, from price support loans to disaster payments to operating loans. Worse, they charged that the USDA had failed to process any complaints about racial discrimination.
The notion that the Clinton Ag Department had spent four years consciously denying black farmers their due defies everything we know about Clinton’s use of race and should have made the media suspicious about Pigford’s claims dating back to 1983.
Flush with revenue in 1999 and eager to appease this bedrock constituency, the administration settled with the farmers — more realistically, their attorneys — for fifty grand apiece, plus various other perks like tax offsets and loan forgiveness. If any of the presumably racist USDA offenders were punished, that news escaped the media.
After the consent decree was announced, the USDA opened the door to other claimants who had been similarly discriminated against. They expected 2,000 additional claims. They got 22,000 more, roughly 60 percent of whom were approved for this taxpayer-funded Lotto.
Despite having a year and a half to apply, some 70,000 more alleged claimants argued that they not only had been discriminated against, but also had been denied notice of the likely windfall that awaited them.
In 2008, for reasons unknown, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa lobbied to give the alleged 70,000 “another bite at the apple.” Co-sponsoring the bill was none other than U.S. Senator Barack Obama. In February of 2010, the Obama administration settled with the aggrieved 70,000 for $1.25 billion that the government did not have to give. This money, by the way, was finessed out of a defense appropriation bill.
At the time, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the agreement would close a “sordid chapter” in the department’s history, a chapter in which no one seems to have been so much as reprimanded.
The major media reported the settlement as though it were the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. For the last forty years, as the civil rights industry has manufactured more and more absurd grievances — most notably the Tea Party smear that incited Breitbart’s reprisal — the media have reported on them with increasingly wide-eyed innocence.
In the various stories on the settlement, not one reporter that I could identify stopped to do the math. Pajamas Media did in a detailed article by “Zombie” titled appropriately, “Pigford v. Glickman: 86,000 claims from 39,697 total farmers?”
Although 86,000 black farmers are alleged to have received payments, at no time in the last three decades have there been more than 40,000 black farmers. Nor is there much turnover in the farming business. No entrepreneurial activity involves more long-term investment.
Realistically, of the 40,000 or 86,000, how many could have applied for a USDA loan and been rejected while white farmers in comparable circumstances were getting loans? If there were hundreds, let alone thousands, the heads of loan officers should have been rolling around the USDA floors, but I know of no such purge.
More to the point, out of about $1 billion paid out so far in settlements, the largest amount has gone to the Sherrods’ New Communities Incorporated, which received some $13 million. As Time Magazine approvingly reported this week, $330,000 was “awarded to Shirley and Charles Sherrod for mental suffering alone.”
Unwittingly, Charles Sherrod shed light on the how and why of the settlement in a speech he gave in January 2010. As he explained, New Communities farmed its 6,000 acres successfully for seventeen years before running into five straight years of drought. Then, according to Sherrod, New Communities engaged in a three-year fight with the USDA to get the appropriate loans to deal with drought.

Said Sherrod, “They were saying that since we’re a corporation, we’re not an individual, we’re not a farmer.” Nevertheless, the Sherrods prevailed, but the late payments “caused us to lose this land.” In other words, the bureaucratic delay over taxpayer-funded corporate welfare payments cost them their business.
Then, thanks to their “good lawyers,” said a gleeful Sherrod, who seems to have fully recovered from his mental suffering, the Sherrods successfully sued the government for “a large sum of money — a large sum of money.” While saying this, he made hand gestures suggesting $15 million. The land itself was admittedly worth no more than $9 million.
Sherrod gave this talk to announce that the FCC had awarded New Communities a radio station in Albany, Georgia, still another race-based corporate welfare boondoggle. Before the award of this station, he added, the Sherrods “had no means of communicating with our people.”
The “our people” in question, of course, are black people. With this new voice, the Sherrods will help “stop the white man and his Uncle Toms from stealing our elections. We must not be afraid to vote black.”
Yes, indeed — these are just the people we want spending the money we don’t have.
Share/Bookmark]]> http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/real-sherrod-story-still-untold-did-fox-news-get-punked-or-what/feed/ 0 BreakingNews http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/breakingnews-49/ http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/breakingnews-49/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:02:56 +0000 CMAC http://www.pittsreport.com/?p=30447
  • U.S. economic growth slows to 2.4 percent pace in second quarter, weakest pace in nearly a year about 1 hour ago via breakingnews.com
  • BP’s Tony Hayward says: ‘I became a villain for doing the right thing’ about Gulf Spill in newspaper interview http://bit.ly/b6DZBd about 3 hours ago via breakingnews.com
  • Officials say death toll in Pakistan flooding has risen to at least 430 – AP http://bit.ly/cefHak 2 minutes ago via breakingnews.com
  • Death toll from forest fires sweeping across Russia rises to at least 23 – Reuters about 1 hour ago via breakingnews.com
  • N. Korea’s soccer coach Kim Jong-hun reportedly forced to become a construction worker after poor World Cup http://bit.ly/cIDUUd about 2 hours ago via breakingnews.com
  • Update: Preliminary tests indicate mail in Paris embassy poisoning scare ‘not harmful’ http://bit.ly/96piLt about 2 hours ago via breakingnews.com
  • 3 U.S. embassy employees in Paris are treated for poisoning after opening mail, police source says – Reuters about 3 hours ago via breakingnews.com
  • Thousands of Bangladesh garment workers ransack factories, burn cars to protest wages http://bit.ly/aGf97G about 7 hours ago via breakingnews.com
  • 3 American service members killed, July deadliest month of Afghan war for U.S. military – AP about 7 hours ago via breakingnews.com
  • Disney sells Miramax film studio for $660 million to investor group http://bit.ly/ahwCmY about 8 hours ago via breakingnews.com
  • 4 paramilitary soldiers killed, 25 wounded in northeast India land mine blast – AP about 9 hours ago via breakingnews.com
  • House passes bill to boost commuter airline safety, stems from Buffalo, N.Y., crash of 2009 http://bit.ly/aniHba about 9 hours ago via breakingnews.com
  • 1,500 northern L.A. County homes under evacuation orders as new fire spreads to 3 sq. miles http://bit.ly/bUXJqO about 9 hours ago via breakingnews.com
  • Earthquake with preliminary estimate magnitude 6.4 strikes 72 miles off east coast of Kamchatka, northeast Russia about 10 hours ago via breakingnews.com
  • Arizona update: Maricopa deputies arrest 23 at protests and 7 in sweep operation http://bit.ly/aGRn7R about 11 hours ago via breakingnews.com
  • Update: Air show at Anchorage base to go on after crash kills 4 in C-17 training for event http://bit.ly/b3IYez about 11 hours ago via breakingnews.com
  • Bangkok bomb blast wounds man, stokes fears of renewed civil unrest – Reuters about 11 hours ago via breakingnews.com
  • U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez, on Mexican border, temporarily closes for security review – AP about 12 hours ago via breakingnews.com
  • Google update: Everything working normally in China; blockage report likely just a glitch http://bit.ly/doZ3Bc about 12 hours ago via breakingnews.com
  • Ellen DeGeneres leaving ‘American Idol’ after 1 season as judge on hit Fox TV singing contest – AP about 14 hours ago via breakingnews.com

    • twitter

    Share/Bookmark]]>     http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/breakingnews-49/feed/ 0     Arizona Sheriff Not Relenting After Court Ruling http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/arizona-sheriff-not-relenting-after-court-ruling/ http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/arizona-sheriff-not-relenting-after-court-ruling/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:58:47 +0000 CMAC http://www.pittsreport.com/?p=30443 Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has been doing aggressive crackdowns on illegal immigration for years. And despite Wednesday’s ruling by a federal judge to temporarily block portions of Arizona’s new law, the former federal drug agent will continue to carry out sweeps in the country’s busiest human and drug trafficking corridor.

    Arpaio’s tactics have made him the undisputed poster boy for local immigration enforcement, sometimes instructing his deputies to carry out sweeps in Hispanic neighbors to arrest illegal immigrants. His latest sweep was launched Thursday afternoon, when roughly 200 sheriff’s deputies and trained volunteers searched metropolitan Phoenix for traffic violators who may be in the country illegally.

    Share/Bookmark]]>     http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/arizona-sheriff-not-relenting-after-court-ruling/feed/ 0     Feds: Pharr officer assisted Zeta kidnapping ring(real problem in Mexico crooked government) http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/feds-pharr-officer-assisted-zeta-kidnapping-ringreal-problem-in-mexico-crooked-government/ http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/feds-pharr-officer-assisted-zeta-kidnapping-ringreal-problem-in-mexico-crooked-government/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:57:04 +0000 CMAC http://www.pittsreport.com/?p=30441 Jeremy Roebuck
    The Monitor

    McALLEN — One name emerged over and over again as authorities tracked a brutal Zeta kidnapping ring across Hidalgo County in 2008:

    “Chino”

    Throughout the investigation, witnesses ascribed that nickname to a Pharr police officer who allegedly helped the cartel operatives carry out their attacks.

    The nephew of a top Zeta lieutenant, the man had also purportedly shielded drug stash houses and guarded cocaine shipments through his city, all while on duty and in uniform, said Alfredo Barrera, an investigator with the Texas Department of Public Safety.

    Share/Bookmark]]>     http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/feds-pharr-officer-assisted-zeta-kidnapping-ringreal-problem-in-mexico-crooked-government/feed/ 0     Rangel Denies Misconduct Charges as Ethics Panel Meets to Decide His Fate http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/rangel-denies-misconduct-charges-as-ethics-panel-meets-to-decide-his-fate/ http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/rangel-denies-misconduct-charges-as-ethics-panel-meets-to-decide-his-fate/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:52:46 +0000 CMAC http://www.pittsreport.com/?p=30437 A House ethics panel on Thursday unveiled 13 allegations of misconduct against longtime Rep. Charles Rangel, then began meeting on Rangel’s fate — giving little indication whether a plea deal was at hand or Rangel was headed to trial.

    “We’re going home and so should you,” Rep. GK Butterfield, D-N.C., told reporters after the panel broke for the evening.

    Share/Bookmark]]>     http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/rangel-denies-misconduct-charges-as-ethics-panel-meets-to-decide-his-fate/feed/ 0     Nacho Coronel Killed in Zapopan, Jalisco http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/nacho-coronel-killed-in-zapopan-jalisco/ http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/nacho-coronel-killed-in-zapopan-jalisco/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:49:09 +0000 CMAC http://www.pittsreport.com/?p=30433 Ignacio”Nacho” Coronel Villarreal, one of the heads of the Sinaloa cartel and considered one of the most powerful kingpins in Mexico, was killed this afternoon during an armed encounter with the Mexican military in Zapopan, a suburb in the Guadalajara metropolitan area.

    Share/Bookmark]]>     http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/nacho-coronel-killed-in-zapopan-jalisco/feed/ 0     Syrian and Saudi Leaders in Lebanon for Talks http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/syrian-and-saudi-leaders-in-lebanon-for-talks/ http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/syrian-and-saudi-leaders-in-lebanon-for-talks/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:46:07 +0000 CMAC http://www.pittsreport.com/?p=30431 BEIRUT, Lebanon — President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia arrived in Beirut on Friday for talks on possible indictments of Syria’s allies in Lebanon in the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister.

    Share/Bookmark]]>     http://www.pittsreport.com/2010/07/syrian-and-saudi-leaders-in-lebanon-for-talks/feed/ 0