THE SECOND FAUX NEWS REPORT ON BARCLAYS

This was broadcast yesterday and the introduction shows the usual FAUX News bias:

BAIER:A growing scandal in Europe over the raking of a global interest rate is now also getting play here in the U.S. And chief Washington correspondent, James Rosen, tells us it involves a man who is now a key player in the Obama administration.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMES ROSEN, FOX NEWS CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Newly released documents show that when treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, was president of the New York Federal Reserve four years ago, central bankers got an early glimpse into the now mushrooming scandal surrounding the London Interbank Offered Rate or LIBOR which is the average interest rate that banks in London charge other banks seeking loans.

Barclays, the large British bank has paid out more than $450 million in the legal settlement, and top officers there have resigned on the disclosures that some bankers were deliberately misreporting data to fix LIBOR illegally.

MATT MCCORMICK, BANKING ANALYST: You have a manipulation in prices. And this affects every investment decision that people made, whether it'd be an interest rate, whether it'd be a loan, whether it'd be a derivative that people can come back and say, hey, I suffered a loss because this rate was artificially set. And it was wrong and I deserve compensation.

ROSEN: In April of 2008, investigators at the New York fed interviewed key witnesses, quote, "The Barclays employee explained that Barclays was underreporting its rate to avoid the stigma associated with being an outlier with respect to its LIBOR submissions relative to other participating banks."

The New York Fed disclosed today adding, "The Barclays employee also states that in his opinion, other participating banks were also underreporting their LIBOR missions."

NARIMAN BEHRAVESH, HIS CHIEF ECONOMIST: It could have a big impact clearly on the banking industry depending as you guys are saying earlier what this class action suit might look like. So, you know, bank stocks, bank profits could take another big hit.

ROSEN: Seven weeks after the Barclays employee disclosed wrongdoing, Geithner e-mailed the governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King, suggesting changes that could, quote, "eliminate the incentive for banks to misreport."

Among other things, Geithner urged that the British Bankers Association or BBA require that a reporting banks internal and external auditors confirm adherence to best practices and attest to the accuracy of bank's LIBOR rate.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SOURCE:
Fox News Network
July 13, 2012 Friday
SHOW: FOX SPECIAL REPORT WITH BRET BAIER 6:00 PM EST
Political Headlines
BYLINE: Bret Baier, Carl Cameron, Wendell Goler, Jim Angle, Mike Tobin, James Rosen
SECTION: NEWS; International
LENGTH: 3676 words

HERE'S WHAT MITTENS AFFIRMED IN 2003

This is the PDF of the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission form that Mittens filled out in 2003.

This is the affirmation section:

And these sections are where he claimed to have worked for Bain in 2002:

MITTENS IS IN BIG TROUBLE

His lies about his connection with Bain have gotten a lot of attention from commenters, including over 5600 on this NBC thread alone.

TOP 1% - "NO DISCLOSURE FOR US"

Last night, Sen. Mitch McConnell came on Mark "Foamer" Levin's show and whined about the DISCLOSURE Act because it's a direct threat to the 1st Amendment.  Let's recall that for the bottom 99%, all contributions to Federal elections are PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE.

MORE FREE MARKET FAIRY SUCCESS STORIES

We won't hear about these from the radio gasbags or FAUX News...

1) Wells Fargo pays $175 million to settle racial steering case

2) PFGBest chief arrested, admits 20-year fraud, FBI says

3) JPMorgan says bad trade has ballooned to $5.8B

4) Asian manufacturers pay $571 million for price-fixing LCD displays

5) FAA to fine Boeing $13.2 million

6) Visa, Mastercard, banks in $7.25 billion swipe-fee settlement

THE DEMISE OF GLENN KESSLER

(h/t Atrios)

Kessler used to be an honest fact checker for the WaPo but over the last few months he's turned into a talk radio hack, as Andrew Sullivan, Brad DeLong and others have noticed.

"I AM NOT A CROOK" - MITTENS VERSION

(h/t Mediaite)

"Is the Mittens campaign over?" is turning into a serious question because there are many documents that Mittens personally signed proving that he was very involved with Bain after 1999.

Jennifer Granholm of CURRENT TV found the documents and it looks bad for Mittens (but good for America):

“We have uncovered documents that reveal he was actively involved in Bain Capital businesses, even though he claimed he retired from the private equity company in 1999,” Gov. Granholm told viewers Thursday night. “Current TV has learned that Mitt Romney was the 100% stakeholder in 11 Bain Capital entities later than 1999. Romney signed, in 2003, a Massachusetts State Ethics Commission document stating he held several ‘executive’ positions at Bain Capital and its affiliates.”

THIS ALMOST MAKES SENSE

Mittens has taken on John Bolton as a foreign policy advisor so why not have a war criminal as VP?

Drudge Report Lists Condi Rice as Top Romney VP Candidate
By Dana Hughes | ABC OTUS News – 2 hrs 2 mins ago

THIS CHART IS HARD TO BELIEVE

We know that the conservative gasbags have lost ratings in major PPM markets like NYC so I think Talkers Magazine massaged these numbers.

I DON'T THINK MITTENS CAN HIDE FROM BAIN

Judging by the POLITICO activity, I'd say Mittens has already lost the argument.

RICK PERRY ALSO SLAMMED MITTENS

Perry called Mittens a "vulture capitalist" and didn't back down at all when Hannity challenged him:

HANNITY: Let me ask you, Governor, because I've been following your speeches as you've been going around South Carolina. You are talking about the success of Texas. You are making comparisons about the Obama economy. But you've also had some very harsh words about Governor Mitt Romney, who now has won Iowa and New Hampshire.

You said -- talking about his days at Bain Capital, Bain Capital compared (ph) companies like that, they leave the carcasses behind. Bain is a vulture capital company. They walked into South Carolina, a company like Gaffney (ph). They picked the bones clean of those people who lost their jobs in the same mill. You say, Rather than restructure jobs, they're trying to make money. Ethics get thrown out the door. They make as much money as they can in a hurry.

You know, when I hear that, it almost sounds like Occupy Wall Street. It doesn't sound like somebody that is governing the state of Texas as a conservative.

PERRY: Sean, there's a real difference between venture capitalism and vulture capitalism. Venture capitalism we like. Vulture capitalism, no. And the fact of the matter is that he's going to have to face up to this at some time or another, and South Carolina is as good a place to draw that line in the sand as any because those people in Gaffney, South Carolina, understand what happened to that photo album company. The folks in Georgetown, South Carolina, understand the jobs that were lost and that Bain Capital took $20 million and $65 million respectively from each of those deals and walked away from it.


That's not what we're looking for in a president of the United States. We're looking for someone that knows how to build jobs, create jobs. And that's what I've done in the state of Texas. So there's no use trying to paper this over. That is a problem for Mitt, and he's going to have to face it.

HANNITY: Well, are you saying that he's -- you said specifically that they're not ethical. You said specifically -- you're saying that Mitt Romney, Governor Romney, is a vulture capitalist, that Governor Romney is unethical?

PERRY: What I'm saying is that the way that they operate at Bain Capital, with those two particular companies in those two South Carolina cities, I think was irresponsible.

SOURCE:
Fox News Network
January 10, 2012 Tuesday
SHOW: FOX HANNITY 10:00 PM EST
Interview with Rick Perry
BYLINE: Sean Hannity
GUESTS: Gov. Rick Perry
SECTION: NEWS; Domestic
LENGTH: 2047 words

NEWT WAS RIGHT ABOUT MITTENS...

Filing false claims with the SEC is a big no-no and that's what the Boston Globe caught Mittens doing and it makes Newt Gingrich look prescient:

CBS correspondent Norah O'Donnell asking Gingrich, "Are you calling Mitt Romney a liar?"After a pause, Gingrich replies: "Yes."

IDENTITY THEFT AND THE RADIO GASBAGS

Fats Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Glenda Beck and many other right-wing extremists promote LifeLock, an identity-theft protection company. They all also constantly attack government for being incompetent yet almost all identity thefts are perpetrated on private companies.

NOT TO PUT TOO FINE A POINT ON IT...

(h/t Atrios)

Matt Yglesias sums up the real economic problem:

A well-functioning market economy in many ways depends on a normative superstructure that's eroded by the ethic of money-making by any means necessary. When firm managers believe it is not only permissable but obligatory to engage in fraudulent and corrupt practices and to exert time and energy into rent-seeking, you ultimately destroy the background conditions of prosperity.

A LOCAL RADIO DOPE

UPDATE:  Justice replied and let me know he didn't mention anything about solar flares today so it musthave been his main local competitor, Garrett Lewis of KNST.

John Justice of local wingnut radio station KQTH claimed this morning that solar flares accounted for the recent warm spell in America. Yes, this is another conservative FAIL:

NASA Measures Impact of Huge Solar Flare on Earth's Atmosphere
03.23.12

A key NASA instrument that can directly measure the impact of solar events on the Earth's upper atmosphere has weighed in on the huge flare that impacted Earth last week.

The upper atmosphere heated up, and huge spikes occurred in infrared emission from nitric oxide and carbon dioxide, said Marty Mlynczak, SABER's associate-principal investigator at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

As the Sun becomes more active, Mlynczak said, it emits more ultraviolet radiation and produces more solar flares - coronal mass ejections (CMEs) - which are absorbed in the atmosphere. "More heating results, and the atmosphere gets warmer, and the infrared emission increases," he said.

"We don't know yet how these affect weather or climate -- likely there is not any direct effect," he said, "but there may be, over time, influences on ozone that affect climate."

"DON'T MESS WITH JOE"

VP Joe Biden gets off a good line:

“When his father, George Romney, was a candidate was for President in 1968, he released 12 years of tax returns because, as he said, ‘One year could be a fluke, perhaps done for show.’

“His son has released one year of his tax returns.

“Making a lie of the old adage: Like father, like son.

“Mitt Romney wants you to show your papers, but he won’t show us his.

“So many questions…”

Joe was speaking to the National Council of La Raza and the line is close to perfection.

ONE OF THE REASONS TO PRY INTO MITTENS' PERSONAL FINANCES

I think most Americans don't know much about all the fancy dodges the top 1% use to legally avoid paying taxes so it would be great if Mittens was forced to explain his particular tax avoidance schemes.  This could naturally lead people to question the sub-culture of financial capitalism, perhaps making articles like this one go viral on the Net.

Many Wall Street executives says wrongdoing is necessary: survey
Tue Jul 10, 2012 10:07am EDT

(Reuters) - A quarter of Wall Street executives see wrongdoing as a key to success, according to a survey by whistleblower law firm Labaton Sucharow released on Tuesday.

In a survey of 500 senior executives in the United States and the UK, 26 percent of respondents said they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace, while 24 percent said they believed financial services professionals may need to engage in unethical or illegal conduct to be successful.

Sixteen percent of respondents said they would commit insider trading if they could get away with it, according to Labaton Sucharow. And 30 percent said their compensation plans created pressure to compromise ethical standards or violate the law.

"CAYMAN" MITTENS AND "FOAMER" LEVIN

Yesterday, Mark "Foamer" Levin took a call from a guy who objected to Mittens hiding his money in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Switzerland during a time of war.  I thought the caller perfectly pinned Levin between defending capitalism and defending patriotism.   The caller could also have brought up the fact that none of Mittens 5 sons enlisted to defend America in the great War on Terror that Levin used to worship.

FAUX NEWS AND BARCLAYS

I finally found one mention of Barclays on FAUX News:

Fox News Network
July 7, 2012 Saturday
SHOW: FOX NEWS WATCH 2:30 PM EST
FOX NEWS WATCH for July 7, 2012
BYLINE: Jon Scott, Jim Pinkerton, Judy Miller
SECTION: NEWS; International
LENGTH: 3885 words

PINKERTON: No, he's made a career, this Schactson (ph) fellow, out of investigating off-shore bank accounts. Look, let's start with the obvious. As we learn every day from, say, Barclays Bank and JPMorgan, we don't know what's going on in the international finance world. We wake up one day and a web site called "Zero Hedge" reported that the total value derivatives in the world is $504 trillion.

NO, LADY, WE GET IT

We get that the MOTU are a major part of our economic problems:

Donors arrive at Hamptons fundraisers with advice for Mitt Romney
By Maeve Reston

July 8, 2012, 1:31 p.m.
LA Times

A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. "I don't think the common person is getting it," she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. "Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them.

"We've got the message," she added. "But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies -- everybody who's got the right to vote -- they don't understand what's going on. I just think if you're lower income -- one, you're not as educated, two, they don't understand how it works, they don't understand how the systems work, they don't understand the impact."

"LET THEM EAT CAKE"

Rick Perry is a great symptom of the savage morality of the marketplace.  His state (Texas)  is the worst in the country for health care yet he refuses to increase Medicaid enrollment.

His reponse to this question tells you all you need to know about "compassionate conservatism":

When asked how he’d improve health care in a state where one in four people are uninsured, Perry bristled. “People come from all over the globe to the state of Texas for their health care,” he said.

WE REALLY HURT THE FATS LIMBAUGH BRAND

Cumulus only owns a few (38) of the of 600 stations that carry Fats Limbaugh's radio show and the boycott, recently joined by UPS, has cost Cumulus millions over the last 2 quarters.  Most the of stations belong to privately-held Clear Channel and it must be losing tens of millions.

DID ADAM SMITH BELIEVE IN SPREADING THE WEALTH?

In the Wealth of Nations, he contrasted the "masters of mankind" with the more socially beneficially:

In a country which has neither foreign commerce, nor any of the finer manufactures, a great proprietor, having nothing for which he can exchange the greater part of the produce of his lands which is over and above the maintenance of the cultivators, consumes the whole in rustic hospitality at home. If this surplus produce is sufficient to maintain a hundred or a thousand men, he can make use of it in no other way than by maintaining a hundred or a thousand men.

DOES THE GOP REALLY WANT AMERICA TO FAIL?

The GOP tries to portray itself as the one party that's really pro-business but they haven't been acting like that since the Baggers acted out in 2010.

Conservatives make it rough for business
Associated PressBy DONNA CASSATA | Associated Press – 2 hrs 40 mins ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Conservative Republicans have roughed up the business community this year — and it's not over yet.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and major companies like Boeing Co. and Caterpillar Inc. all wanted quick reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, which helps finance American companies' overseas sales. Congress had reaffirmed the independent federal agency some two dozen times since its creation in 1934. But this year it took months of pleas, briefings and negotiations to overcome conservative opposition.

...industries ranging from asphalt to steel pressed for the popular transportation bill to rebuild the nation's infrastructure. Conservatives wanted to give authority to the states. Nine short-term extensions later — and almost three years after the last transportation bill expired — businesses finally prevailed last month.

...when it comes to many of industry's top legislative priorities, conservative Republican lawmakers and like-minded groups including the Club for Growth and Heritage Action have thrown up roadblocks to tasks that had been easy before the 2010 elections sent a large class of conservative tea party insurgents to Congress.

REMEMBER, THE GOP WANTS TO STOP THIS

The GOP also wants to repeal Dodd-Frank and I don't think that gets enough attention in the news media. I hope some reporter asks Mittens about this.

Floodgates on U.S. derivative reforms set to open
By Alexandra Alper

WASHINGTON | Sun Jul 8, 2012 7:01am EDT

(Reuters) - The U.S. swaps regulator is set to finalize this week a critical reform that will trigger banks and traders having to comply with costly new derivatives rules.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission will vote on Tuesday on a definition of a "swap," which will start a countdown on compliance dates for big swaps players to start registering with regulators and reporting their trades.

Market watchers say this is a big step in regulators' efforts to bring the $650 trillion over-the-counter swaps market out of the shadows.


Widespread ignorance of swaps exposure at failed investment firm Lehman Brothers and insurer American International Group aggravated the 2007-2009 financial crisis, which led to billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE

The real point is that Mittens is a MOTU and can't be trusted on economic issues.

Martin O'Malley: Romney 'Bet Against America' with Swiss Account
By Terry Moran | ABC OTUS News – 6 hrs ago

Gov. Martin O'Malley, D-Md., said this morning on "This Week" that presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has "bet against America" by establishing a bank account in Switzerland and engaging in other offshore financial activities.

"He bet against America when he put his money in Swiss bank accounts and tax havens and shelters and also set up a secret company, the shell company in Bermuda," said O'Malley. "What went the way of Europe were the - the Swiss bank accounts and the American dollars that Mitt Romney stuffed in that offshore Swiss bank account, jobs that he facilitated companies in moving offshore, out of places like Ohio, out of Pennsylvania and Maryland."

WHAT THE MOTU ARE REALLY LIKE

(h/t Noam Chomsky)

Adam Smith (1723-90) was a keen observer of human nature and in his Wealth of Nations, Bk. III, Ch. III, he notes how the MOTU have always thought:

But what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures gradually brought about. These gradually furnished the great proprietors with something for which they could exchange the whole surplus produce of their lands, and which they could consume themselves without sharing it either with tenants or retainers. All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. As soon, therefore, as they could find a method of consuming the whole value of their rents themselves, they had no disposition to share them with any other persons.