Lieberman is a spiteful man. Plain and simple.

I used to cover Lieberman when he was the majority leader of the State Senate in Connecticut. We got along very well, except for one interview, during which he talked about working for J.F.K., and how he kept a Mass card from Robert Kennedy’s funeral to remind him of the principles to which he had dedicated his career. Showing me the card, he remarked casually that he hadn’t looked at it for some time.

I wrote an article using the neglected Kennedy card as a metaphor for Lieberman’s fall from his old ideals into the pragmatic politics of a party leader. He was outraged and wounded, and I believe I apologized.

Taking back the apology now.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Sorry, Senator Kerry – NYTimes.com.

Note: I don’t think a journalist should apologize for someone being outraged and/or wounded if they researched and believed what they wrote.

The Obama administration and the Democratic congress have fallen behind the issue.

Citi, JPMorgan and Goldman want to sell your debt as long as they don’t have to bid to underwrite it. What could go wrong?

If California were willing to forgo competitive bidding for a $4.5 billion bond offering, the banks promised more orders from individuals and a lower bill to the taxpayers. The firms insisted that by negotiating with them, the state would benefit from its special relationship with the Wall Street troika and wind up with what two underwriters called a salutary “buzz” to boost demand for the debt.

When the October offering failed to sell as planned, California was forced to accept 8 percent less money than it needed and to pay as much as $123 million more in interest than the banks said was sufficient for the market. And the threesome made $12.4 million on the deal, contributing to record bonuses in the securities industry a year after getting a total of $80 billion in a federal bailout.

[…]

When the New York banks’ promises to California proved unreliable, Lockyer, 68, not his underwriters, tried to explain the miscalculation to taxpayers.

“It turned into a bad week for bonds,” the treasurer said in an Oct. 9 interview. “This seemed to be a very hard week with some headwinds for issuers.”

The underwriters left Lockyer “standing on the platform alone,” said Christopher Taylor, former executive director of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board in Alexandria, Virginia, a self-regulatory organization. Taxpayers “probably didn’t get their money’s worth because California only got someone taking orders,” he said. “They didn’t get somebody out there that had any really strong incentive to sell.”

Banks don’t want “any unsold bonds hanging around,” so they prefer to help states set rates and see if the bonds sell, as happens in negotiated deals, Taylor said. If demand falls short, the dealers say, “Listen, we can’t sell this” without higher yields, he said. “It’s a wonderful world that the dealer community has created — just fees, no risk.”

via California Bonds Fail on Advice Bill Lockyer Couldn’t Refuse – Bloomberg.com.

Charge 8% less for purchase of tax funded debt and pay out an unexpected $123 million dollars in interest to the buyers of that tax funded debt. Basically, California sold some debt, to increase their debt. Plus fees to some Big Banks. Good thing they didn’t go through that crazy bidding process. Lockyer explained it as “a bad week for bonds”. That is the B.S. he was fed by his underwriters. It was a bad deal any week of the year.

38. On May 5, 2009, in front of the Joint Economic Committee, you said the following

about the unemployment rate: “Currently, we don’t think it will get to 10 percent. Our

current number is somewhere in the 9s” . In November it hit 10.2%, and many economists

predict it will go even higher. This is happening despite enormous fiscal and monetary

stimulus that you previously said would help create jobs. What happened after your JEC

testimony in May that caused your prediction to miss the mark?

At the time of my testimony before the JEC, the central tendency of the projections made by

FOMC participants was for real GDP to fall between 1.3 and 2.0 percent over the four quarters

of 2009 and for the unemployment rate to average between 9.2 and 9.6 percent in the fourth

quarter. As it turned out, we were too pessimistic about the overall decline in real GDP this year

and too optimistic about the extent of the rise in the unemployment rate. Although we indicated

in the minutes from the April FOMC meeting that we saw the risks to the unemployment rate as

tilted to the upside, we underestimated the extent to which employers were able to continue to

reduce their work forces even after they began to increase production again. These additional

job reductions have contributed to surprisingly large gains in productivity in recent quarters and

to the unexpectedly steep rise in the unemployment rate.

A Gulf Currency is looming and it may hasten the end of the US dollar as reserve currency may (hat tip to Marla Singer at ZeroHedge)

“The Gulf monetary union pact has come into effect,” said Kuwait’s finance minister, Mustafa al-Shamali, speaking at a Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) summit in Kuwait.

The move will give the hyper-rich club of oil exporters a petro-currency of their own, greatly increasing their influence in the global exchange and capital markets and potentially displacing the US dollar as the pricing currency for oil contracts. Between them they amount to regional superpower with a GDP of $1.2 trillion (£739bn), some 40pc of the world’s proven oil reserves, and financial clout equal to that of China.

[…]

“The single currency should come last. We need to coordinate our economic policies and build up common infrastructure as a first step,” [Khalid Bin Ahmad Al Kalifa, Bahrain’s foreign minister] said.
Mohammed El-Enein, chair of the energy and industry committee in Egypt’s parliament, said Europe’s example could help the Arab world achieve its half-century dream of a unified currency, but the task requires discipline. “We need exactly the same institutions as the EU has created. We need a commission, a court, and a bank,” he said.

via Gulf petro-powers to launch currency in latest threat to dollar hegemony – Telegraph.

Hats off to Person of the Year.

Philadelphia City Paper’s Blog “The Clog” runs down plans for casino legislation for the Philadelphia locations. None of it is Good. Its bad enough that we are selling Philadelphia to the casino and passing it off as development, but in addition we are doing it at bargain prices.

• The bill levies a tax of only 14% on table game revenues – compared with 55% for slot machines. A license to operate table games would cost only $16 million – despite studies presented to the House which suggested that such licenses might be worth more than $50 million. […]
• Although gambling has been billed as property tax relief, the bill pays money first into a state “rainy day” fund, which might not fill for several years. Only then would the revenues g(o) to [is] property tax relief. […]
• The bill contains a provision that would allow Foxwoods to extend its license beyond the deadline currently provided for in state law. Why would such a favor be extended to Foxwoods, which has been so far unable to get the financing to open up shop on the waterfront?
• The bill allows casinos to extend credit to patrons – a practice that was explicitly banned in Act 71, the original gaming law (passed in the middle of the night with no debate) that brought slots to Pennsylvania. The gaming industry has argued that credit lines are necessary to making table games work – why, then, does this bill allow the casinos to extend credit to slots players as well?

via The Fix is In, Part One: How casinos hijacked the House of Representatives last night – and intend to do it again tonight. :: The Clog :: Blog Archive :: Philadelphia City Paper :: Philadelphia Events, Arts, Restaurants, Music, Movies, Jobs, Classifieds, Blogs.

Casinos rot urban environments, not help them. The two planned Philadelphia casinos will have an even worse social impact due to the fact that casinos are supposed to only go to property tax relief. Meaning they affect Philadelphia which has a higher than average renters population and will benefit homeowners elsewhere in the state. In addition, a casino as a lender is legalized loan sharking.

I don’t know all the “inside baseball” ramifications of this, but on its face, I like it.

The Speaker recently assured her freshman lawmakers and other vulnerable members of her caucus that a vote on immigration reform is not looming despite a renewed push from the White House and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The House will not move on the issue until the upper chamber passes a bill, Pelosi told the members.

But according to Democrats who have spoken to Pelosi, the Speaker has expanded that promise beyond immigration, informing Democratic lawmakers that the Senate will have to move first on a host of controversial issues before she brings them to the House floor.

“The Speaker has told members in meetings that we’ve done our jobs,” a Democratic leadership aide said. “And that next year the Senate’s going to have to prove what it can accomplish before we go sticking our necks out any further.”

via Speaker Pelosi to shield vulnerable members from controversial votes – TheHill.com.

I take it Pelosi is tired of delivering a bill more than liked by progressives just to be filtered, distilled and diluted by Committee Chairs like Max Baucus to benefit those people in one of the least populous states in the United States. I am sure Clyburn is not happy to whip up the votes to pass every bill he is asked to deliver, in time to get pat on the back from President Obama just to have Durbin fall short in the Senate. I am definitely sure Weiner doesn’t enjoy Rockefeller, Schumer, Wyden being replaced in health care negotiations with dishonest brokers Snowe, Collins, Grassley, Enzi and Lieberman who demand compromises they will never support. I am also sure the majority of house democrats don’t like horse trading with blue dogs to get Obama’s cost bending, Public Option bill passed just to find out it isn’t the Public Option or cost bending that is desired, but not required by the President right now.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), among the most vocal supporters of the public option, said it would be unfair to blame Lieberman for its apparent demise. Feingold said that responsibility ultimately rests with President Barack Obama and he could have insisted on a higher standard for the legislation.

via Lieberman expresses regret to colleagues over healthcare tension – TheHill.com.

No, sorry Feingold, the campaign and the speech before joint session of congress laid out the real goals and requirements. After both support for health care reform with a public option increased. Congressman Anthony Weiner was hitting talk shows like a mad man, Democratic senators involved in health care reform were almost no where to be found. Instead of focusing on the millions of under-insured or those bankrupted by insurance fine print, they focused on the uninsured (a public relations loser). Yes, senate PR and strategy (internal and external) are what I am mad about. Climate Change, Gitmo, 9/11/Gitmo trials and Health Care: Republicans got out front and manufactured scandals and spectacles at every turn to push Democratic message off the media radar and spook blue dogs. Pelosi and Clyburn run a tight ship, Reid and Durbin don’t. I am pretty sure Obama knows this and this is why the pressure is just to get a deal done. The White House knows Reid has been beaten. Obama wanted a public option, but he isn’t a senator anymore. Which is good, because under Reid he wouldn’t have any power anyway.

This bill will fall short of what I can imagine, but its a foot in the door. Its time for democratic senators to start kicking a bit harder to improve upon this after (hopefully) it passes.

Remember when the press and GOPers were calling this guy a clown, a joke. They wished.

h/t Crooks and Liars.