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The Lady Macbeth of the Oil Spill
How Obama and Interior Sec. Ken Salazar put a top BP exec in charge of deep sea drilling in the Gulf. Part 2 of Jeffrey St Clair’s path-breaking investigation of how BP and the Obama administration have been joined at the hip in the creation and handling of the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. How much does it cost to be driven past a corrupt border patrol agent at an official port of entry to the U.S. from Mexico? Frank Bardacke reports from Watsonville on the real border-crossing economy. PLUS JoAnn Wypijewski, Daniel Wolff and Alexander Cockburn remember Ben Sonnenberg. Get your new edition today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and t-shirts make great presents.
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Today's Stories July 15, 2010 Paul Craig Roberts July 14, 2010 Janan Abdu Ellen Brown Anthony DiMaggio Greg Moses Sherwood Ross Tolu Olorunda Mark Weisbrot Laura Flanders Sam Smith Phil Rockstroh Website of the Day July 13, 2010 Jonathan Cook Greg Dropkin Blockade! Dockworkers, Worldwide, Respond to Israel's Flotilla Massacre and Gaza Siege Dean Baker George Wuerthner Deepak Tripathi Firmin DeBrabander Billy Wharton Roberto Rodriguez Brian J. Foley Sasha Kramer Website of the Day July 12, 2010 James Abourezk Harry Browne George Ciccariello- Maher Neve Gordon Jonathan Cook Linn Washington Dr. Susan Block Jean Casella / Dave Welsh Bouthaina Shaaban Website of the Day July 9 - 11, 2010 Alexander Cockburn Joanne Mariner Mike Whitney Rannie Amiri Business as Usual: Behind Turkey and Israel's Not-So-Secret Meeting Ramzy Baroud Michael Hudson Jeffrey St. Clair / Joshua Frank Beyond Gang Green Joe Bageant Jesse Strauss James Ridgeway Charles Hirschkind M. Shahid Alam Ralph Nader Summer Reading: 10 Books That Might Change America Carl Finamore Runaway Recession: How Did It Happen, How Bad Will It Get? David Ker Thomson John Ross Rev. William E. Alberts Julie Hilden Jefferson Chase Dave Lindorff Christopher Brauchli Gregory Vickrey David Macaray Soha Al-Jurf Missy Beattie Laura Flanders Clare Hanrahan Patrick Bond Billy Wharton Shamus Cooke Lee Sustar Harvey Wasserman Farzana Versey Binoy Kampmark Winslow Myers Charles Larson David Yearsley Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
July 8, 2010 Carl Ginsburg Paul Craig Roberts Patrick Cockburn Brian Cloughley Sakura Saunders Jayne Lyn Stahl Eric Walberg Chris Genovali / Harry Browne Robert Bloom Website of the Day July 7, 2010 Anthony DiMaggio Patrick Cockburn Dean Baker Gareth Porter / Ahmad Walid Fazly Nadia Hijab Marjorie Cohn William Blum Peter Gelderloos Carla Blank John Grant Website of the Day July 6, 2010 Mike Whitney Bill Hatch Gary Leupp Yvonne Ridley Gareth Porter P. Sainath Mark Weisbrot Harry Browne Missy Beattie Dave Lindorff Website of the Day
July 5, 2010 Alan Farago Uri Avnery Felice Pace America's Energy Future: Countdown to Failure? Ron Jacobs Dave Lindorff Linn Washington Steven Higgs Martha Rosenberg Linh Dinh Al Krebs Website of the Day July 2 -4, 2010 Alexander Cockburn Russell Mokhiber Vijay Prashad Rannie Amiri Peter Lee Ralph Nader Dean Baker Jonathan Cook Matt Shultz David Ker Thomson Steven Higgs Saul Landau Ramzy Baroud John Stanton David Michael Green Kent Paterson Steven Sherman David Macaray John Ross Shamus Cooke Missy Beattie Paul Watson Norman Solomon Sherwood Ross Ben Hillier Binoy Kampmark Christopher Brauchli Cal Winslow Maria Páez Victor Winslow Myers Greg Moses Stephen Martin Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend July 1, 2010 Conn Hallinan William R. Polk Bill Quigley / Nadia Hijab Arman Grigorian Russell Mokhiber Harry Browne Jayne Lyn Stahl Website of the Day June 30, 2010 Julien Mercille Ellen Brown Alan Farago Dave Lindorff Ralph Nader Joe Shansky Ron Jacobs Winslow Myers Billy Wharton Shepherd Bliss Website of the Day June 29, 2010 Jules Boykoff Dean Baker Sheldon Richman Nadia Hijab George Ciccariello-Maher David Macaray Jeanine Molloff Brian Horejsi Helen Redmond John Grant Website of the Day June 28, 2010 Eamonn McCann Frank Menetrez Elena Kagan's Harvard David Ker Thomson Mark Weisbrot Bill Quigley Jonathan Cook Alan Farago Damien Millet / Harry Browne Manuel Garcia, Jr. Dr. Susan Block Website of the Day June 25 - 27, 2010 Alexander Cockburn Winslow T. Wheeler Michael Hudson Noor Elashi Patrick Cockburn Jonathan Cook John Ross Darwin Bond-Graham Paul Fitzgerald / Andrea Peacock Ralph Nader M. Shahid Alam Kathy Kelly / Russell Mokhiber Ramzy Baroud Rannie Amiri David Rosen Linn Washington Margaret Kimberley Anthony DiMaggio Fred Gardner Mark Weisbrot Christopher Brauchli Adam Engel Ananya Mukherjee-Reed Julie Hilden David Ker Thomson Saul Landau Judith Bello Trond Andresen Don North Patrick Bond Missy Beattie Stuart Jeanne Bramhall Whitney Cole / Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Kim Nicolini Paul Krassner Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend June 24, 2010 Gareth Porter Anne McClintock Paul Craig Roberts Mike Whitney Alan Farago S. Eben Kirksey John Halle Harry Browne John Grant Website of the Day
June 23, 2010 Kathy Kelly Deepak Tripathi Dave Lindorff Sheldon Richman Laura Carlsen Conn Hallinan Jayne Lyn Stahl Susan Galleymore Björn Kumm John Holt Website of the Day June 22, 2010 Uri Avnery Lawrence S. Wittner Dean Baker Ludwig Watzal Rick Kuhn Martha Rosenberg James Ridgeway /
Jean Casella Russell Mokhiber Yvonne Ridley Shamus Cooke Website of the Day June 21, 2010 Joshua Brollier / Vijay Praahad Ralph Nader Ronnie Cummins Mark Weisbrot Jayne Lyn Stahl Harry Browne Tom Turnipseed Thomas H. Naylor Website of the Day June 18 - 20, 2010 Alexander Cockburn Dean Baker Rannie Amiri Richard Ward Saul Landau Ramzy Baroud Martine Bulard Ellen Brown David Macaray Stanley Heller Paul Craig Roberts Russell Mokhiber M. Shahid Alam Robert Bryce Mark Weisbrot David Michael Green George Wuerthner John Grant John Stanton Christopher Brauchli Missy Beattie Robert Jensen Tanya Golash-Boza Robert Roth Farzana Versey David Ker Thomson Charles R. Larson David Yearsley Mitu Sengupta Kim Nicolini Poets' Basement Website of the Day
June 17, 2010 John Ross Gareth Porter Robert Weissman Farrah Hassen Ron Jacobs Harry Browne Kevin Zeese Harvey Wasserman Website of the Day June 16, 2010 Paul Craig Roberts Anthony DiMaggio Ralph Nader Robert Weissman Dean Baker Greg Moses M. Kamiar Dave Lindorff Alison Weir Laura Flanders Misty MacDuffee / Chris Genovali Website of the Day June 15, 2010 P. Sainath Jordan Flaherty Mike Whitney Patrick Cockburn / Terri Judd Fred Gardner Linn Washington Roberto Rodriguez Tolu Olorunda Steven Higgs Tom Woodbury Prairie Miller Website of the Day June 14, 2010 Diana Johnstone Uri Avnery Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Dean Baker Dave Lindorff Harry Browne Patrick Bond Eve Spangler David Michael Green Christopher Ketcham Phyllis Pollack Website of the Day
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If You're Going to Do Something Illegal in America, Do Something Spectacularly Illegal!How Bank of America Got Away With a Huge SwindleBy DAVE LINDORFF If you want to avoid facing a tough prosecution for malfeasance, be a banker, not a biker. That appears to be the lesson of Saturday’s front page of the Wall Street Journal, where the lead story was about how Bank of America repeatedly hid its massive bad debt holdings from regulators and investors through a creative accounting device called “repurchase agreements,” and the second story, just above the fold, was about how US Food and Drug Administration prosecutors are “Casting a Wider Net” investigating the use of steroids by competitive cyclists. According to the BofA story, the bank, during a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into the real financial condition of the nation’s biggest financial institutions, admitted that at the ends of all the quarterly reporting periods from 2007 through 2009, it had used repurchase agreements, or “repos,” to temporarily shed bad debt before drawing up and releasing its required public filings. That is to say, it managed to lie about and hide from view its weakened liquidity position all through the financial crisis. Astonishingly, the Wall Street Journal article reports that this practice, known euphemistically in financial industry parlance as “window dressing,” is “not illegal in itself,” unless it is done with the intent of misleading investors. The article is quick to note that “Bof A said its incorrect accounting wasn’t intentional.” (The newspaper didn’t go to the SEC or to any independent source such as an academic expert or lawyer for comment on this laughable whopper.) BofA, every three months, was transferring mortgage-backed securities briefly to a trading partner in return for a simultaneous agreement to repurchase similar securities from the same partner, once the required SEC filing had been shipped out in the mail. As the Wall Street Journal’s reporter Michael Rapoport writes, “The practice amounts to a bank renting out its balance sheet for short periods; the bank gets fees, and the client on the other end of the trade gets short-time cash.” If this kind of thing is not deliberate fraud I don’t know what is, and yet the bank, in its statement to the Wall Street Journal, claims the “effort to manage its balance sheet” was “appropriate,” and that the intent behind the shell game was not to mislead investors or regulators, but rather was “to reduce the specific business unit’s balance sheet to meet its internal quarter-end limits for balance sheet capacity.” How’s that for financial mumbo jumbo? It would be interesting to see how well an ordinary citizen would fare, if he or she used a “repo” type strategy to hide half his or her income from the IRS (the equivalent scam might involve “donating” half of one’s income on December 31 of the tax year to an accommodating charity, and then taking the money back on January 1 of the next year), and then claimed that the fraud was “not intentional.” But hey, it works for the banks. The article goes on to report that, “Apart from requiring more disclosure about its repo accounting, the SEC hasn’t taken any action against BofA over the matter. The fact that the [BofA] letter [to the SEC] was released suggests the SEC has concluded its review.” Meanwhile, even as BofA and other financial behemoths get away with accounting murder, and are held harmless after their crooked dealings brought the US and the global economies to their knees, we’re informed that FDA legal bloodhounds are doggedly stepping up their investigation into illegal steroid use by US cyclists involved in the current Tour de France bicycle competition. The FDA is reportedly hoping to get some participants to turn in competitors who are using illegal substances to enhance their physical performance. In this fishing expedition, the FDA, according to this second Wall Street Journal article by Reed Albergotti and Vanessa O’Connell, is not out to prosecute rank-and-file riders, but rather wants to bring charges against “any team leaders and team directors who may have vacillated or encouraged doping by their riders.” Clearly, it is viewed by the US government as being critically important that the sport of cycling be kept clean of drugs, so that the Americans who watch the race from the comfort of their sofas and barcaloungers will know that the winners really deserved to win. But it clearly is not very important for Americans to know whether the bank where they put their hard-earned savings, or in whose artificially inflated stock they have invested their IRA or 401)(k) retirement funds, is cooking its books. It is apparently critically important to know that those who encourage the use of performance enhancing drugs, thus undermining the confidence of America’s sports viewers in the validity of their viewing experience, will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. It is apparently not that important at all that the people who caused a financial collapse that has pushed real unemployment and underemployment in the US up to close to 20 percent, collapsed the housing market, and put school districts, town and state governments on the brink of bankruptcy, be called to account, made to do jail time, or to perform community service. The absurdity of this juxtaposition is made all the more clear by the fact that the FDA isn’t even able to come up with a significant charge to bring against the alleged dopers in its intensifying investigation of the cycling sport. As the Journal notes, “Federal investigators are exploring several avenues,” for possible prosecution, including “whether teams defrauded sponsors by failing to race cleanly,” or whether US Tour de France multiple winner Lance Armstrong’s US Postal Service team might have “misused federal funds.” It’s the old story: steal a loaf of bread for a family and go to jail for years. Deceive national regulatory authorities and steal from a generation of pension investors and get a Troubled Asset Relief Program handout of billions of dollars in taxpayer funds. Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). He can be reached at dlindorff@mindspring.com
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Now Available from CounterPunch Books!
By Andrea Peacock
Yellowstone Drift: Waiting for
Lightning
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Click Here to Buy! 
