Whatever happened to General McChrystal?

My Financial Times headlines yielded this nugget of information.

Siemens hires former Afghanistan general
German group acquires services of Stanley McChrystal with aim of bolstering US government business arm
http://link.ft.com/r/M2ZOXX/DWRBYN/KESL1U/QN1CFG/HY3AXQ/VU/h?a1=2011&a2=12&a3=19

Further research demonstrated that he spent the first half of 2011 establishing
The McChrystal Group.

Romney’s missing hard drives raise questions over government records

Romney’s missing hard drives raise questions over government records

This is a near-automatic post from other sites to my Blogger account. I intend to use this facility for fast-breaking news.

The Systematic Looting of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

By Olivia La Rosa -2008

We are now in the process of re-nationalizing two public corporations that were privatized long ago. These publicly-owned corporations began to be "securitized" in the mid-1970s. I was in banking then, and for the next twelve years. I saw it happen. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are a horrifying example of what happens when government functions are "privatized".

FM (short for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are short for Federal National Mortgage Association and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation were formed to support the home mortgage market.

Fannie Mae was created in 1938, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, at a time when millions of families could not become homeowners, or risked losing their homes, for lack of a consistent supply of mortgage funds across America.

In the mid-1970s, the character of these institutions changed because their charters changed. They were then in the beginning stages of privatization.

~*~

When I entered the banking business in 1971, each bank branch kept its own home loans on the books at the branch where the home loan was made.

When I entered the banking business in 1971, each bank branch kept its own home loans on the books at the branch where the home loan was made.

Yes, you read that twice. I did not want you to skim over it (for you skimmers).

When I went to the bank, I saw the loan officer who made my home loan twice a week. He knew what I looked like, and what my husband did for a living. He knew when we were going to have a child. He saw me every time I came into the bank and made a deposit.

In other words, this person was, if not a friend, an intimate acquaintance.

Now, lenders are completely divorced from the human being who is taking out the mortgage. And investors are lured by fictitious entities like "mortgage-backed securities" and the people who made a mint by "securitizing" the family home loan obligation. Clever Wall Street minds figured out a way to "securitize" the mortgage markets. When you hear the world "securitize", just run like heck. Do not invest in securitized instruments. At their most basic, they are scams designed to wring excess profit from financial instruments that do not usually yield excess profit by bundling together individual items and assigning risk factors to the pool of items. Usually, the risk factors are understated and the potential profit is overstated.

Examples of securitized investments include junk bonds and derivatives, both of which led to devastating losses for families in the last two decades. Now, we are witness to the biggest failure of securitization yet, and it will cause us to have to turn Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into public service institutions, which they should have been in the first place. Now, our grandchildren will be paying the bill for all those unrecoverable privatized profits.

###

Before you read this, please take a moment to reflect upon what you thought that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac meant before you read this article.

Freddie Mac Corporate Governance

We are committed to sound and effective corporate governance practices. We believe these practices are fundamental to maintaining a strong relationship with our stakeholders, reinforcing confidence in Freddie Mac's leadership, and achieving our mission to provide liquidity, stability and affordability to the U.S. housing and mortgage markets. We review and update our governance practices from time to time to be consistent with our shareholders’ best interests and with applicable requirements.

House panel hearing explores U.S. government contractors’ exploitation of workers overseas

By Olivia LaRosa
Those government entitlements corporations receive, called contracts by some, result in the enslavement of human beings and have for decades.  Yea verily even for centuries.

Congress is taking note.  I bet they will order a "study" then develop yet another toothless enforcement mechanism that will co-opt the the opposition of the left once more. Seems like the more often you tell people that you are going to do something about the say, the red-eared turtle problem, the more likely they are to forget about whatever was troubling them.

One recent stomach-turning example by a third-striker, DynCorp, here:

Wikileaks Reveals U.S. Tax Dollars Fund Child Sex Slavery in Afghanistan

I have often asked this question of my right-wing acquaintances:

"Why aren't your organizations involved in child-abuse prevention?"  Invariably, my answer is a blank stare from the questioned. 

My intuition, experience, and education tells me that the institutional instinct to shelter, or fail to report abusers, is related to the maintenance of patriarchy.  Today, the papers ran a feature story about a man who had been victimizing Boy Scouts since 1970.  He was occasionally impeded in his rampage, but never for long. Everyone knows about the system-wide institutional cover-up of abuse in the Catholic Church, and many other organizations, too numerous to list here.

The Left's Interest in this Issue

At least 1/3 of women have been sexually abused at some point in their lives.  Child abuse frequently continues for years, while the child feels increasingly alienated, abandoned, and fearful of the world. Most sexual abusers are men, 95% to women's 5%.  The high percentage of men is accounted for not because 95% of men are abusers, but because the abuser is a repeat offender of the worst sort.  I have met thousands of men in the course of my 46-year course of parenthood, 15 years of work in a consumer branch bank, and seemingly endless quest for a BA.

Therefore I believe that most of the thousands of men I met were civilized, kind, and thoughtful.

The needless damage abusers cause our children and their families costs our society in a geometric progression from the relationship between the abused and the abuser, those who choose to face the horror, and those who choose to run and hide from the monstrous act. All too often, serial child abusers walk free every single day of their lives, because too many of us choose to run and hide when confronted with the evidence that their brother/son/uncle is a child molester.

Please allow me to share with you my first sexual victimization.  Why?  Because I emerged only slightly damaged by the experience. It occurred when I was five years old.  The neighbor boy around the corner, 15 years old, talked me into going into his garage.  After he released me and I walked back home, my grandmother glanced at me, then peered at me in alarm, and said, "Baby, what's wrong?" I told her what had happened to me. It was that way between us; I always told my grandma everything.

She said, "You don't worry about a thing.  You did not do anything wrong. You just get comfy and wait here for me.  I am going next door."

Victims seldom feel the relief of closure of their violation.  Reasons for this include:

1. denial of violation or knowledge thereof by child's primary caregiver (say, father is violator and mother is enabler here).

2. violator is a stranger; or unsought or unapprehended

3. violator is the breadwinner of the family and thus deemed immune from punishment for his heinous acts.

4. violator is a family member; reports to parents are not believed

5. violator threatens to harm or kill family members who try to intervene in the abuse

6. violator is a sibling

Closure for most of us would be to tell the violator how his violation of our personal space and physical body hurt us. Children are trusting by nature. Nothing harms a child more than violations of that trust.

Closure would also include the ability to be secure in the knowledge that the violator will be unable to commit further crimes. We are kids; we don't know how you adults punish people.  We figure that they have outgrown spankings, and imagination fails to think of anything more horrible than a spanking.

The shock of the violation often frightens victims into cages bounded by fear; friendship and love often seem far away. It is amazing that we master the ability to regain a healthy relationship with other humans.

Furthermore, parents of abused children feel hollowed out by the knowledge that the child they had protected and warned (about people who tried to touch you or give you food or get in their car) was so powerfully coerced by her abuser that she could not tell. These parents would have given anything to be able to share and ease the terrible burden borne by their child.




Counseling and psychotherapy will do wonders for all of the victims of sexual abuse.

Alas, too often they end up at the bottom of the heap because their emotional damage and the bodily memories of their suffering burden them with less effective functioning capabilities.

The WaPo article links follow:

Print Style

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-panel-hearing-explores-us-government-contractors-exploitation-of-workers-overseas/2011/11/02/gIQAImMggM_print.html

Web Page

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-panel-hearing-explores-us-government-contractors-exploitation-of-workers-overseas/2011/11/02/gIQAImMggM_story.html?wpisrc=nl_fedinsider

The Left's Interest in this Issue

At least 1/3 of women have been sexually abused at some point in their lives.  This abuse frequently continues for years, while the child feels increasingly alienated, abandoned, and fearful of the world. Most sexual abusers are men, 95% to women's 5%.  The high percentage is accounted for because the abuser is a repeat offender of the worst sort.  The needless damage to our children by abusers costs us all in the long run.  Few victims of abuse emerge with the ability to regain a healthy relationship with other humans.  Far too often they end up at the bottom of the heap because their emotional damage and the bodily memories of their suffering burden them with less effective functioning capabilities.

Studies suggest MMS knew blowout preventers had 'critical' flaws

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0617/Studies-suggest-MMS-knew-blowout-preventers-had-critical-flaws

And Big Oil-led study earlier suggested that safety procedures were overdone. Noooo, we don't need effective regulation! That's for sissies.

Just stop to think for a moment whether the privatization of the oil industry is a good thing for humanity overall. BP, ExxonMobil etal are obscenely rich. What if we had that money to support our education system and infrastructure?

~Hypatia

Government regulators have said that the failure of the Deepwater Horizon's blowout preventer April 20 was unforeseeable. But studies conducted for federal regulators in MMS or with their participation show that blowout preventers were known to have 'safety critical' vulnerabilities.


Go to the original to see illustrations and photos.

Robot submarines vainly attempted to activate the shear rams on the Deepwater Horizon's blowout preventer on April 22 to close off the flow of oil from the Macondo well. Federal regulators from MMS set the standards for blowout preventers, but several studies suggest the agency took no action to tighten safety measures even when 'critical' vulnerabilities became apparent.

US Coast Guard/AP/file

he federal agency charged with setting safety standards for offshore oil exploration failed to act on at least four warnings about vulnerabilities in subsea blowout preventers, the critical safety device that failed to shut down the Gulf oil spill when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded April 20.
Skip to next paragraph

*

In this diagram of a blowout preventer, the hydraulic rams are the horizontal, piston-like protrusions. The rams are designed to cut and seal the pipe in an emergency, shutting off the flow of oil. They failed during the Deepwater Horizon blowout.

Newscom
Enlarge
Related Stories

* Before BP oil spill, Big Oil-led study urged feds to cut safety testing
* US rig inspectors received gifts from oil companies, report says
* Obama to sever ties between drilling cops and Big Oil

Each of those four design flaws – detailed in three studies conducted for the US Minerals Management Service (MMS) during the past decade – threatened the ability of blowout preventers in deep water to function in an emergency.

Yet the flaws did not result in federal safety alerts or tougher standards for blowout preventer (BOP) manufacturers, say experts familiar with the MMS response to such findings.

RELATED: Before BP oil spill, Big Oil-led study urged feds to cut safety testing

With investigators still seeking to determine the cause of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, it remains unclear whether any of these vulnerabilities played a role in the failures that led to the Gulf oil spill. But MMS’s lack of action in spite of warnings about the flaws, three of which have not been previously reported, points to a long pattern of ignoring rather than fixing known safety threats, the experts say.

“Were BOPs designed to fail and did MMS know this? Yes, some of their key people knew,” says Robert Bea, an engineer at the University of California, Berkeley and one of the expert reviewers of President Obama’s 30-day offshore oil-exploration safety review. “Did BP know?” he adds. “Yes, some of their key people knew. Did the industry know? Yes, some of their key people knew.”

So what exactly did the MMS and industry officials know about the BOPs’ vulnerabilities and when? Government and industry officials have said the Deepwater Horizon disaster was unforeseeable – that BOPs were previously regarded as a virtually infallible “last line of defense” against a catastrophic blowout in deep water.

But a deeper look into three engineering studies from 2004, 2006, and 2009 commissioned by MMS – or done with MMS participation – tells a different story. The 2009 study, for instance, identifies 62 instances of BOP failures, four of which were deemed “safety critical.” The study was a joint industry-MMS venture and included the participation of at least four senior MMS officials. Each study sounded warnings about BOP vulnerabilities that, if heeded, could have given the agency years to fix them.

Officials at West Engineering Service, the consulting company and BOP specialist that conducted all three of the studies referenced in this article, did not return e-mails or phone calls. MMS officials, along with the Department of Interior, responded to e-mailed questions but refused requests for an interview.

“We are looking at everything, from what happened on the rig that night and the equipment that was being used, to the safety, testing, and backup procedures that are in place for that equipment,” Kendra Barkoff, Interior Department press secretary, wrote in an e-mail. “It’s also clear that we need a stronger oversight and enforcement agency to police the industry.”

The four design flaws highlighted by the three studies are as follows. The first three have not been previously reported.
No. 1: deep water pressure

In the fall of 2006, West Engineering Services of Brookshire, Texas, turned over to MMS officials a study on the effects of pressure on BOPs. Among its key findings: High deep-water pressure could severely damage the critical gaskets and seals on BOPs’ hydraulic ram valves, causing them to leak and fail in an emergency.

One type of hydraulic ram valve, called a shear ram, is designed to prevent a situation like the one in the Gulf. In the event of a catastrophic failure, the shear rams are supposed to stop the flow of oil by cutting and crumpling the pipe between them. The Deepwater Horizon’s shear rams failed, though it’s not yet clear why.

Read more at the site.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

by Olivia LaRosa

We are now in the process of nationalizing two public corporations. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are a horrifying example of what happens when government functions are "privatized".

FM (short for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are short for Federal National Mortgage Association and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation were formed to support the home mortgage market.

Fannie Mae was created in 1938, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, at a time when millions of families could not become homeowners, or risked losing their homes, for lack of a consistent supply of mortgage funds across America.

Fannie Mae served commercial banks, and Freddie Mac soon followed. Freddie Mac served the Savings and Loan industry (remember them?). In the mid-1970s, the character of these institutions changed because their charters changed. They were then in the beginning stages of privatization.

They were mostly "deregulated" in the 1980s, which is a euphemism for privatization, which is a euphemism for giving away public goods to unaccountable corporations without any benefits to taxpayers. Taxpayers are STILL paying the bill for the rape of the saving and loan industry in the 1980s. John McCain was one who assisted the rape, as part of the "Keating Five."

~*~

When I entered the banking business in 1971, each bank branch kept its own home loans on the books at the branch where the home loan was made.

When I entered the banking business in 1971, each bank branch kept its own home loans on the books at the branch where the home loan was made.

Yes, you read that twice. I did not want you to skim over it (for you skimmers).

When I went to the bank, I saw the loan officer who made my home loan twice a week. He knew what I looked like, and what my husband did for a living. He knew when we were going to have a child. He saw me every time I came into the bank and made a deposit.

In other words, this person was, if not a friend, an intimate acquaintance.

Now, lenders are completely divorced from the human being who is taking out the mortgage. And investors are lured by fictitious entities like "mortgage-backed securities" and the people who made a mint by "securitizing" the family home loan obligation. Clever Wall Street minds figured out a way to "securitize" the mortgage markets. When you hear the world "securitize", just run like heck. Do not invest in securitized instruments. At their most basic, they are scams designed to wring excess profit from financial instruments that do not usually yield excess profit by bundling together individual items and assigning risk factors to the pool of items. Usually, the risk factors are understated and the potential profit is overstated.

Examples of securitized investments include junk bonds and derivatives, both of which led to devastating losses for families in the last two decades. Now, we are witness to the biggest failure of securitization yet, and it will cause us to have to turn Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into public service institutions, which they should have been in the first place. Now, our grandchildren will be paying the bill for all those unrecoverable privatized profits.



###
Before you read this, please take a moment to reflect upon what you thought that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac meant.

Freddie Mac Corporate Governance

We are committed to sound and effective corporate governance practices. We believe these practices are fundamental to maintaining a strong relationship with our stakeholders, reinforcing confidence in Freddie Mac's leadership, and achieving our mission to provide liquidity, stability and affordability to the U.S. housing and mortgage markets. We review and update our governance practices from time to time to be consistent with our shareholders’ best interests and with applicable requirements.

FOCUS | Mortgage Giant Overstated the Size of Its Capital Base
http://www.truthout.org/article/mortgage-giant-overstated-size-its-capital-base
Gretchen Morgenson and Charles Duhigg, The New York Times: "The government's planned takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, expected to be announced on Sunday, came together after advisers poring over the companies' books for the Treasury Department concluded that Freddie's accounting methods had overstated its capital cushion, according to regulatory officials briefed on the matter."