How Rahm got rich
 By EAMON JAVERS | 11/19/08 4:41 AM EST Incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s career as an investment banker was short but, oh, so sweet. Emanuel left the Clinton White House in 1998 as a senior adviser on a government salary. By the time he won election to the House in 2002, he had earned an astonishing $16 million. How did he do it? Partly, it was simple luck: Emanuel dipped quickly into the world of investment banking in time to catch the tail end of the 1990s boom economy as a Chicago-based managing director at Wasserstein Perella & Co., where he worked from 1999 to 2002. While he was there, the firm was sold to the German Dresdner Bank for $1.37 billion in stock, netting Emanuel much of his Wall Street windfall. Returning to Chicago in 1998 after his White House stint, Emanuel soon ran Wasserstein’s small Midwestern office, developing a reputation as a deal guy who focused on mergers and acquisitions among companies that were subject to heavy government regulation. There, he deployed his skills as a born negotiator who knew the inner workings of government bureaucracies. Frequently, Emanuel turned big Democratic donors and others he’d met during his White House years into clients for Wasserstein Perella, a firm that was led by Bruce Wasserstein, a hefty financial supporter of Clinton. Emanuel is “tireless,” said John Canning, a managing director of Chicago-based Madison Dearborn Partners, a multibillion-dollar private equity firm. Canning became friendly with Emanuel while he was setting himself up in Chicago business circles and has remained close to him through his congressional career. “He’s got a nose for a transaction, a sense for what each party’s looking for and where each party can concede,” Canning said. Emanuel was unavailable for comment. But in 2003, he described his investment banking career to the Chicago Tribune. “Fundamentally, I brought in business and worked on business that was very successful,” Emanuel said then. “I didn’t work on one deal. I didn’t work on two deals. I think it was close to six or seven, of which a couple of them were over $1 billion.”
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The Democratic congressman from Illinois will be starting out as White House chief of staff for President Barack Obama during a severe global economic crisis. And as a former investment banker himself, Emanuel may be well-positioned to understand the problems and priorities of the nation’s struggling financial system. While Emanuel lucked into the timing of the Wasserstein sale, the deals he worked on contributed in a significant way to the firm’s bottom line, generating hefty bonuses for him along the way.
 One signature transaction was the $16 billion merger of Unicom Corp. and PECO Energy Co. into Exelon Corp., now one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, with nearly $19 billion in annual revenue. The company owns 17 nuclear reactors, which produce about 20 percent of the nation’s nuclear power.
When the transaction began in 1999, it was not at all clear that such an energy behemoth could be created. Utilities are subject to intense government regulation, and nuclear power plants face a host of government approvals before they can be sold to a new owner. At the time, the energy industry was not known as a place for fast-moving negotiations. “Every deal starts with a list of reasons why it can’t get done,” said Canning, who recently joined the board of directors of Exelon. “And I can’t think of a deal that had more unsolvable obstacles than that one.”
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http://morris108.wordpress.com

I. The Fact of Israel
 
Israel at 60 is an intractable historical fact. It has one of the world's strongest armies, without peer in the Middle East, and its 200 or so nuclear warheads give it the last word in any military showdown with any of its neighbors. Don't believe the hype about an Iranian threat Israel certainly fears Iran attaining strategic nuclear capability, but not because it expects Iran to launch a suicidal nuclear exchange. That's the sort of scare-story that gets trotted out for public consumption in Israel and the U.S. Behind closed doors, Israeli leaders admit that even a nuclear-armed Iran does not threaten Israel's existence. (Israel's security doctrine, however, is based on maintaining an overwhelming strategic advantage over all challengers, so the notion of parity along the lines of Cold War Mutually Assured Destruction with Iran is a major challenge, because without a nuclear monopoly, Israel loses a trump card in the regional power battle.)
 
Palestinian militants may be able to make life in certain parts of Israel exceedingly unpleasant at times, but they are unable to reverse the Nakbah of 1948 through military means. (Hamas knows this as well as Fatah does, which is why it is ready to talk about a long-term hudna and coexistence although it won't roll over and accept Israel's terms as relayed by Washington in the way that the current Fatah leadership might.) Israel, in other words, is here to stay and its citizens know this, which may be why they appear to be more indifferent to the search for peace with the Palestinians than at any time in the past three decades. So confident are the Israelis in being able to withstand whatever the Palestinians throw at them that they are able to turn away from the hellish life they have created for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Sure, let Olmert a weak and skittish leader whose domestic political standing is comparable to that of President Bush, except that the Israeli prime minister can't seem to shake off the whiff of corruption engage in the charade of negotiating a hypothetical peace (let s be very clear about this: the current talks between Abbas and Olmert are aimed only at designing a shelf agreement, the elaboration of an horizon not unlike the Geneva exercise by Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed-Rabbo a couple of years ago not a series of steps or deadlines that anyone plans to implement this is its most optimistic outcome; even that seems doomed to fail, though ) with a hypothetical Palestinian leader. (To paraphrase Stalin on the pope, how many divisions does Mahmoud Abbas command?) Who cares? It's not as if Olmert is going to confront the settlers or even dismantle most of the 600 or so roadblocks that choke life in the West Bank. So let him and Abbas perform their endless duet of the Beach Boys  'Wouldn't It Be Nice'.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
V. Israel Without Zionism
 
On Yom Kippur in 1979, instead of going to shul a pointless exercise for an atheist who no longer felt the need to pretend for the sake of communal bonds, now that I was forging my own community I stayed home and read Uri Avnery s seminal book, Israel Without Zionism. His work was a revelation that had a major part in my deprogramming as a Zionist. Here was a soldier of the Haganah speaking bluntly about the crimes committed against the Palestinians in 1948, laying bare the brutal truth beneath the national mythology I'd been spoonfed. Avnery recognized that for Israelis to be able to live in peace in their neighborhood, their starting point had to be relinquishing the ideology that rationalized their conquest and displacement of others, and instead to forge a common commitment to justice. Zionism rationalizes conquest and colonization as redemption of Jewish territory on behalf of the world's Jews. It treats the Palestinians only as an obstacle and threat to its own purposes, not as people with the same rights as Jews and with legitimate claim to the land on which they were born. And yet, there's a guilty conscience that sometimes emerges in flashes a rare moment of Jewish ethical recognition, that is quite at odds with Zionism. My favorite came from Ehud Barak, world class chump though he may be in the annals of statesmanship, when he was on the campaign trail in 1999, and was asked by a TV talkshow host what he d have done if he d been born Palestinian. Join a fighting organization, he said in a flash of honesty he'd later regretted.
MORE at:
http://tonykaron.com/2008/05/08/israel-is-alive-zionism-is-dead-what-now/

Citigroups Survival in Doubt as 50,000 Jobs Cut

By: Captain_Hook

In yet another round of massive financial layoffs, Citigroup plans to cut about 50,000 jobs .

Citigroup's layoffs are the latest in a brutal round of job cuts across the financial industry. The cuts have been sparked by unprecedented losses due to bad credit investments, as well as the subsequent precipitous drop in banking and other financial-services business amid the worst economic conditions in 70 years.

Combined with earlier cuts of more than 20,000 positions, the latest job cuts will equal a 20 percent reduction in the bank's workforce from peak levels reached in the fourth quarter of 2007.

In October, fellow blue chip American Express Co. (AXP) announced major layoffs, unveiling plans to slash 7,000 jobs. So far this year, Goldman has said it would cut 3,200 jobs, Whirlpool dropped the ax on 5,000, Yahoo cut 1,000 positions, and Hewlett-Packard shed 24,000 jobs.

Israeli forces cross Lebanese border
Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:27:19 GMT

Bush Said to Tell Aides He Won't Seek Bailout Funds (Update2)

By Alison Vekshin and Alison Fitzgerald

Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- The Bush administration told congressional aides it won't ask lawmakers to release $350 billion remaining as part of the $700 billion U.S. financial- rescue package, people familiar with the matter said.

The administration of President George W. Bush ends in less than 10 weeks, and a delay in submitting a request to lawmakers would leave it to President-elect Barack Obama to tap remaining funds in the bailout fund.

``I think it is the right thing to do,'' Senator Richard Shelby, top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said today in a Bloomberg Television interview. ``I think we need to debate this. I think the American people need to know where the first $350 billion went, who benefited from it.''

The Treasury Department has committed $290 billion, or about 83 percent of the total allocated so far in a program Congress enacted last month to inject capital into a wide spectrum of banks and American International Group Inc. The U.S. invested $125 billion in nine major banks, including Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. and plans to buy an additional $125 billion in preferred shares of smaller lenders.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has been criticized by lawmakers for shifting the focus of the program to inject capital directly into financial institutions. His initial proposal presented to Congress called for buying troubled assets from the firms.

`Preserve the Firepower'

Paulson told the Wall Street Journal today he is unlikely to use what remains of the package, estimated at $410 billion, unless a need arises.

``I'm not going to be looking to start up new things unless they're necessary, unless they make great sense,'' Paulson said. ``I want to preserve the firepower, the flexibility we have now and those that come after us will have.''

The Treasury Department informed Congress that there would be no notification seeking the funds this week, and didn't go beyond that, a department spokesman said today. The secretary has no timeline for accessing the second $350 billion, the spokesman said.

Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will meet today with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders to discuss how the funds are being used and a proposal to rescue the auto industry.

``We have some questions about the significant alterations that have been made in the implementation'' of the bailout program, Pelosi said before meeting with Paulson and Bernake.

Paulson last week repeatedly declined to answer when and whether he would go to Capitol Hill for the rest of the funding.

`No Timeline'

``Right now, I have no timeline for drawing down the next $350 billion,'' he said in a Nov. 13 interview with Bloomberg Television. The legislation setting up the program gives Congress the ability to block the final installment.

The shift in using the funds came under fire last week from legislators in a committee hearing with Neel Kashkari, Treasury's interim head of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

``This looks like classic bait-and-switch,'' said Representative Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat.

Paulson and Bernanke are scheduled to testify tomorrow on the program before the House Financial Services Committee.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alison Vekshin in Washington at avekshin@bloomberg.net.

The Ifs of Gaza

I am in a very strange kind of mood. I am listening to Tracy Chapman. I like that singer a lot. There is something very genuine about her. I guess she represents 1% of the American population. A 1% hope. 

If I were a gambler, I would say that the odds are not in my favor. Not with a 1% for sure.

I still can't shake that strange feeling off my shoulders...It must have been that interview with that young Afghani girl, who found her foot in tiny pieces whilst she was with other women in a garden, celebrating something. She said " I saw my foot lying next to me in pieces. My cousin was also laying dead right next to me...They (the Americans) saw that we were only a group of women, and they attacked us nonetheless. The Americans are animals. "

Notice she did not say the American soldiers or the American Pentagon, or the American army or the American administration or the American government, or the American neocons -- are animals. She said Americans are animals.

Yep, that is what she said - Americans are animals.

I don't blame her one bit. I would only add that animals are too kind compared to the Americans. And I would not forget to include the British either.

I receive many emails. A lot of them are pure crap. A lot of them preach to me about love and forgiveness. A lot of them are blaming the victim. A lot of them dictate to the victim what words, what feelings, what thoughts she must or must not have. A lot of them talk about the victim being an angry bitter hateful thing. But none of them, NONE of them acknowledge FULL responsibility. None

MORE = http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2008/11/no-title.html

President Abdullahi Yusuf has admitted Islamist insurgents now control most of Somalia and raised the prospect his government could completely collapse.

Islamists have been slowly advancing on the capital, raising the stakes in their two-year rebellion and undermining fragile UN-brokered peace talks to end 17 years of chaos in the Horn of Africa nation.

A grenade attack on Sunday killed four people and injured nine others in Baidoa, the government's seat.

"Most of the country is in the hands of Islamists and we are only in Mogadishu and Baidoa, where there is daily war," Yusuf told some of his legislators in neighbouring Kenya on Saturday.

His remarks were aired by Somali media late on Saturday.

"We, ourselves, are behind the problems and we are accountable in this world and in the hereafter. Islamists have been capturing all towns and now control Elasha. It is every man for himself if the government collapses.

"The Islamists kill city cleaners, they will not spare legislators," Yusuf said.

Elasha is only 15km south of Mogadishu.

The insurgents have been enforcing a strict form of Islamic law in areas they capture. On Saturday, they whipped 32 people for taking part in a traditional dance in rebel-held territory south of the capital.

Last month, they stoned to death a young woman accused of adultery in the southern port of Kismayu. It was the first such public killing by the hardline militants for about two years.

Yusuf blamed his government's ineffectiveness partly on disagreements between him and Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein.

Regional head of states held a Somali crisis meeting at the end of October and demanded the four-year administration name a new cabinet within 15 days.

"The prime minister gave me a list of new cabinet ministers but I do not know how to approve names of those who destroyed our government when the constructive ones were excluded," Yusuf told the legislators.

"We have no government (ministers) and we should go back to our country very quickly and establish a government."

Yusuf is in Nairobi to meet MPs who remained after the regional meeting. Some analysts said he lobbied them to vote against the list of ministers the prime minister forwarded to him when the matter was tabled in parliament.

Meanwhile, the insurgency continues. "Three women and a baby died after Islamists hurled two hand grenades at police patrolling Baidoa's main market on Sunday," Abdihakim Abdi, chief of police operations, said.

A Somali aid worker was also critically injured when gunmen shot him in the head in Merka, a port city captured by the rebels on Wednesday.

Islamists ruled Mogadishu and most of south Somalia for half of 2006. Allied Ethiopian and Somali government forces toppled them but they have waged an Iraq-style guerrilla campaign since then, gradually taking back territory.

As when they controlled the capital in 2006, the Islamists are again providing much-needed security in many areas but are unpopular with many moderate Muslims in Somalia for also imposing fundamentalist practices.

The turmoil in Somalia has caused instability across the Horn of Africa, fuelling one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters and triggering a wave of pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden, a vital shipping lane for trade between Europe and Asia.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4763534a12.html