Obama Talks Jobs With Apple’s Steve Jobs

October 22nd, 2010

The Washington Post

By: Cecilia Kang

Apple CEO Steve Jobs met with President Obama on Thursday in a rare connection for the nation’s most valuable high-tech company that has been purposefully shy of Beltway culture.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the meeting took place during Obama’s visit to San Francisco and the two discussed energy independence and ways to increase job creation.

“They discussed American competitiveness and education, especially reforms such as the President’s Race to the Top initiative,” Gibbs said in a statement.

Earlier, Gibbs told reporters traveling on Air Force One from Seattle to San Francisco that it was “a meeting the president was interested in having.” The last time they met was during Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008. Later in the day, White House pool reporters said Obama gave a Democratic party fundraiser speech at the Palo Alto home of Google executive Marissa Mayer.

Apple, despite its size and growing reach into new businesses — mobile phone software and devices, television and music — has a decidedly small lobbying and policy operation in Washington. The company spent $340,000 in lobbying in the last quarter, a fraction of the amount that competitor Microsoft and telecom giant AT&T spend.

Apple has about four lobbyists, headed by Cathy Novelli. a former assistant U.S. Trade Representative. Apple has contracted Paul Margie, a partner at Wiltshire & Grannis, to press the Federal Communications Commission on communications policies.

But those issues — including lobbying on a requirement for devices to contain an aid for the hearing impaired — are few and not at the top of the agency’s agenda, even as Apple sits at the center of many policy issues, analysts said. Apple’s exclusive deal with AT&T to sell and operate the popular iPhone has sparked criticism from smaller carriers, which say they don’t have the scale to attract similar deals. The FCC also questioned why voice application Skype was blocked on the iPhone.

The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission reviewed practices by the company that were criticized as anti-competitive. Justice settled its probe of Apple and high-tech firms for agreeing to keep wages down by not hiring from one another. The FTC looked into a complaint by Adobe that Apple was blocking its Flash software and unfairly harming its business through its control over the iPhone applications store. Apple ended up relaxing its rules for applications developers.

With $51 billion in cash and a drive to make acquisitions, observers said Apple will face increased interest by lawmakers and regulators. Apple’s stock is approaching the value of Exxon Mobile as the most valued U.S. public company.

“One of the advantages Apple has enjoyed in terms of antitrust scrutiny is that it has remained a small yet successful and profitable player in market,” said Andy Gavil, an antitrust law professor at Howard University. “It has received more attention recently because of the popularity of the iTunes store and the iPhone.”

The company, like many Silicon Valley firms before it, has kept a skeptical eye on Washington policy and legislation except for issues directly related to its products such as patent law reform, taxes and trade.

But analysts say the company may not be able to keep its distance for too long.

“They are probably going to move in the direction of Google, which was also initially dismissive of Washington and the inside-the-Beltway issues,” said Rebecca Arbogast of Stifel Nicolaus. “But they are now at the vortex of some key issues at the FCC and FTC that they will need to move forward on.”

Click here for the full report from the Washington Post

Wall Street Mogul Picked For State Department Post

October 20th, 2010

The Washington Times

By: Jim McElhatton

President Obama’s nominee for deputy secretary of state has earned more than $8 million in salary and bonuses since January 2009 as an executive at a Wall Street bank that received a federal bailout.

Thomas R. Nides, a six-figure fundraiser for Hillary Rodham Clinton during her 2008 presidential run, disclosed his compensation from Morgan Stanley in a recent filing with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.

Mr. Nides, the company’s chief operating officer, also said he remains eligible for additional bonus money at Morgan Stanley, which repaid its share of the federal bailout last year.

As deputy secretary of state for management and resources, Mr. Nides would replace Jacob Lew, who is awaiting confirmation as Mr. Obama’s federal budget chief and whose own nearly $1 million bonus at bailed-out banking giant Citigroup last year came under scrutiny.

The powerful position is one of two deputy secretary slots at the State Department, a post described on the department’s website as chief operating officer and “alter ego” to Mrs. Clinton, the secretary of state.

Mr. Nides told ethics regulators that he could receive a prorated bonus from the company based on his work there this year. He will remain with the firm during the Senate confirmation process, the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing. Morgan Stanley did not return telephone and e-mail messages seeking comment.

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said that like all nominees, Mr. Nides will be subject to ethics restrictions barring his participation for two years in particular matters involving his former employer.

Asked whether Mr. Nides’ fundraising helped him get the job, Mr. Vietor said, “Mr. Nides was selected because he’s extremely well qualified for the job.” He referred questions about Mrs. Clinton’s involvement in Mr. Nides’ selection to the State Department. A State Department spokesman said officials there do not discuss pending nominations as a matter of policy.

Mr. Nides is well-connected politically. According to the watchdog group Public Citizen, he raised at least $100,000 for Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 campaign and election records show he personally donated tens of thousands of dollars to other federal politicians, including Mr. Obama.

Craig Holman, legislative director for Public Citizen, said money is the most effective way to befriend a politician and to gain access and appointments.

Click here for the full report from The Washington Times

Official Suggested Letting U.S. Plane Be Shot Down To Provoke War

October 22nd, 2010

Huffington Post

By: Jason Linkins

In the publicity sheet that St. Martin’s Press has been sending out to spur interest in General Hugh Shelton’s new memoir, Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior, the last highlight is a doozy: “A high-ranking cabinet member suggests intentionally flying an American airplane on a low pass over Baghdad so as to guarantee it will be shot down, thus creating a natural excuse to reltaliate and go to war.”

Turns out the incident took place during the Clinton administration, and Shelton’s response to the suggestion…well, let’s just say it more than lives up to the title of the memoir.

Over at Salon’s War Room, Justin Elliott has the specifics.

Shelton sets the scene at a “small, weekly White House breakfast” that served as regular “informal” meetings that “encouraged brainstorming of potential options on a variety of issues.”

At one of my very first breakfasts, while Berger and Cohen were engaged in a sidebar discussion down at one end of the table and Tenet and Richardson were preoccupied in another, one of the Cabinet members present leaned over to me and said, “Hugh, I know I shouldn’t even be asking you this, but what we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event — something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world. Could you have one of our U-2s fly low enough — and slow enough — so as to guarantee that Saddam could shoot it down?”

The hair on the back of my neck bristled, my teeth clenched, and my fists tightened. I was so mad I was about to explode. I looked across the table, thinking about the pilot in the U-2 and responded, “Of course we can …” which prompted a big smile on the official’s face.

“You can?” was the excited reply.

“Why, of course we can,” I countered. “Just as soon as we get your ass qualified to fly it, I will have it flown just as low and slow as you want to go.”

Go read the whole thing.

Readers aren’t told explicitly who had this particular brainstorm, but Shelton gives you some clues. The breakfasts, he says, were attended by NSA Sandy Berger, Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, CIA Director George Tenet, Vice President Chief of Staff Leon Firth, and U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson. If you eliminate Berger, Cohen, Tenet, and Richardson and look at the Cabinet members that remain, you’re sort of left where Elliott is: with Madeleine Albright.

Of course, as Jonathan Schwarz points out, this would hardly be the first or only time this sort of plan was discussed. Here’s a New York Times article from 2006 on the build up to the 2003 Bush-led invasion of Iraq:

During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, [Bush] made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair’s top foreign policy adviser…

“The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours,” the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. “If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.”

Click here for the full report from the Huffington Post

Wikileaks To Release Largest Cache Of Secret U.S. Documents

October 22nd, 2010

MyWay News

By Raphael G. Satter and Pauline Jelenek

The WikiLeaks website appears close to releasing what the Pentagon fears is the largest cache of secret U.S. documents in history – hundreds of thousands of intelligence reports compiled after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In a message posted to its Twitter page on Thursday, the organization said there was a “major WikiLeaks press conference in Europe coming up.” WikiLeaks has not commented publicly on the imminent announcement.

Their disclosure would be the most massive leak of secret documents in U.S. history, and defense officials are racing to contain the damage.

A team of more than a hundred analysts from across the U.S. military, lead by the Defense Intelligence Agency, has been combing through the Iraq documents they think will be released.

Called the Information Review Task Force, its analysts have pored over the documents and used word searches to try to pull out names and other issues that would be particularly sensitive, officials have said.

The task force has informed the U.S. Central Command of some of the names of Iraqis and allies and of other information they believe might be released that could present a danger, officials have said, noting that – unlike the WikiLeaks previous disclosure of some 77,000 documents from Afghanistan – in this case they had advance notice that names may be exposed.

That previous leak, back in July, outraged the U.S. military, which accused WikiLeaks of irresponsibility.

But The Associated Press has obtained a Pentagon letter reporting that no U.S. intelligence sources or practices were compromised by the posting of secret Afghan war logs.

Although U.S. officials still think the leaks could cause significant damage to U.S. security interests, the assessment suggests that some of the administration’s worst fears about the July disclosure have so far failed to materialize.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates reported the conclusions in an Aug. 16 letter to Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who had requested a Pentagon assessment.

Click here for the full report from MyWay News

Obama Attends Swanky Fundraiser With Google Execs

October 22nd, 2010

The Washington Examiner

By: Byron York

On the day it was reported that Google uses income shifting techniques known by such arcane names as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” to avoid paying taxes on its foreign profits, President Obama attended an intimate, high-dollar fundraiser at the Palo Alto, California home of a top Google executive. He didn’t mention Google’s tax tricks, according to a White House transcript of his remarks.

The Democratic fundraiser, which guests each paid $30,400 to attend, was at the home of Marissa Mayer, one of Google’s best-known executives. At the lavish home, which was “decked out in Halloween decorations on steroids,” according to a White House pool report, Obama spoke briefly and had nothing but praise for Google. He spoke fondly of his first visit to the company when he was an Illinois state senator. And of his work as president dealing with the recession, he said, “My task over the last two years hasn’t just been to stop the bleeding. My task has also been to try to figure out how do we address some of the structural problems in the economy that have prevented more Googles from being created…” (Although founded in the 1990s, Google went public and prospered enormously in the years that Obama and his fellow Democrats characterize as an economic disaster.)

Google, according to a report by Bloomberg News, has used paper transactions to shift $3.1 billion of its income to Bermuda and other low-tax havens in recent years. The company’s aggressive use of such tax dodges has reduced its overseas tax rate to just 2.4 percent. Although the practice is common, Google “has cut its effective tax rate abroad more than its peers in the technology sector,” Bloomberg reports. “Such income shifting costs the U.S. government as much as $60 billion in annual revenue.”

In the past, Obama has been sharply critical of companies that move their income around the globe to avoid paying taxes. But with Google, whose employees give an estimated 75 percent of their political contributions to Democrats — well, the president didn’t have much to say about taxes.

Click here for the full report from The Washington Examiner

Juan Williams: I Was Fired For Telling The Truth

October 22nd, 2010

Fox News

By: Juan Williams

Yesterday NPR fired me for telling the truth. The truth is that I worry when I am getting on an airplane and see people dressed in garb that identifies them first and foremost as Muslims.

This is not a bigoted statement. It is a statement of my feelings, my fears after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 by radical Muslims. In a debate with Bill O’Reilly I revealed my fears to set up the case for not making rash judgments about people of any faith. I pointed out that the Atlanta Olympic bomber — as well as Timothy McVeigh and the people who protest against gay rights at military funerals — are Christians but we journalists don’t identify them by their religion.

And I made it clear that all Americans have to be careful not to let fears lead to the violation of anyone’s constitutional rights, be it to build a mosque, carry the Koran or drive a New York cab without the fear of having your throat slashed. Bill and I argued after I said he has to take care in the way he talks about the 9/11 attacks so as not to provoke bigotry.

This was an honest, sensitive debate hosted by O’Reilly. At the start of the debate Bill invited me, challenged me to tell him where he was wrong for stating the fact that “Muslims killed us there,” in the 9/11 attacks. He made that initial statement on the ABC program, “The View,” which caused some of the co-hosts to walk off the set. They did not return until O’Reilly apologized for not being clear that he did not mean the country was attacked by all Muslims but by extremist radical Muslims.

I took Bill’s challenge and began by saying that political correctness can cause people to become so paralyzed that they don’t deal with reality. And the fact is that it was a group of Muslims who attacked the U.S. I added that radicalism has continued to pose a threat to the United States and much of the world. That threat was expressed in court last week by the unsuccessful Times Square bomber who bragged that he was just one of the first engaged in a “Muslim War” against the United States. — There is no doubt that there’s a real war and people are trying to kill us.

Mary Katharine Ham, a conservative writer, joined the debate to say that it is important to make the distinction between moderate and extreme Islam for conservatives who support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on the premise that the U.S. can build up moderate elements in those countries and push out the extremists. I later added that we don’t want anyone attacked on American streets because “they heard rhetoric from Bill O’Reilly and they act crazy.” Bill agreed and said the man who slashed the cabby was a “nut” and so was the Florida pastor who wanted to burn the Koran.

My point in recounting this debate is to show this was in the best American tradition of a fair, full-throated and honest discourse about the issues of the day. — There was no bigotry, no crude provocation, no support for anti-Muslim sentiments of any kind.

Two days later, Ellen Weiss, my boss at NPR called to say I had crossed the line, essentially accusing me of bigotry. She took the admission of my visceral fear of people dressed in Muslim garb at the airport as evidence that I am a bigot. She said there are people who wear Muslim garb to work at NPR and they are offended by my comments. She never suggested that I had discriminated against anyone. Instead she continued to ask me what did I mean and I told her I said what I meant. Then she said she did not sense remorse from me. I said I made an honest statement. She informed me that I had violated NPR’s values for editorial commentary and she was terminating my contract as a news analyst.

I pointed out that I had not made my comments on NPR. She asked if I would have said the same thing on NPR. I said yes, because in keeping with my values I will tell people the truth about feelings and opinions.

I asked why she would fire me without speaking to me face to face and she said there was nothing I could say to change her mind, the decision had been confirmed above her, and there was no point to meeting in person. To say the least this is a chilling assault on free speech. The critical importance of honest journalism and a free flowing, respectful national conversation needs to be had in our country. But it is being buried as collateral damage in a war whose battles include political correctness and ideological orthodoxy.

I say an ideological battle because my comments on “The O’Reilly Factor” are being distorted by the self-righteous ideological, left-wing leadership at NPR. They are taking bits and pieces of what I said to go after me for daring to have a conversation with leading conservative thinkers. They loathe the fact that I appear on Fox News. They don’t notice that I am challenging Bill O’Reilly and trading ideas with Sean Hannity. In their hubris they think by talking with O’Reilly or Hannity I am lending them legitimacy. Believe me, Bill O’Reilly (and Sean, too) is a major force in American culture and politics whether or not I appear on his show.

Years ago NPR tried to stop me from going on “The Factor.” When I refused they insisted that I not identify myself as an NPR journalist. I asked them if they thought people did not know where I appeared on the air as a daily talk show host, national correspondent and news analyst. They refused to budge.

This self-reverential attitude was on display several years ago when NPR asked me to help them get an interview with President George W. Bush. I have longstanding relationships with some of the key players in his White House due to my years as a political writer at The Washington Post. When I got the interview some in management expressed anger that in the course of the interview I said to the president that Americans pray for him but don’t understand some of his actions. They said it was wrong to say Americans pray for him.

Later on the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock crisis President Bush offered to do an NPR interview with me about race relations in America. NPR management refused to take the interview on the grounds that the White House offered it to me and not their other correspondents and hosts. One NPR executive implied I was in the administration’s pocket, which is a joke, and there was no other reason to offer me the interview. Gee, I guess NPR news executives never read my bestselling history of the civil rights movement “Eyes on the Prize – America’s Civil Rights Years,” or my highly acclaimed biography “Thurgood Marshall –American Revolutionary.” I guess they never noticed that “ENOUGH,” my last book on the state of black leadership in America, found a place on the New York Times bestseller list.

This all led to NPR demanding that I either agree to let them control my appearances on Fox News and my writings or sign a new contract that removed me from their staff but allowed me to continue working as a news analyst with an office at NPR. The idea was that they would be insulated against anything I said or wrote outside of NPR because they could say that I was not a staff member. What happened is that they immediately began to cut my salary and diminish my on-air role. This week when I pointed out that they had forced me to sign a contract that gave them distance from my commentary outside of NPR I was cut off, ignored and fired.

And now they have used an honest statement of feeling as the basis for a charge of bigotry to create a basis for firing me. Well, now that I no longer work for NPR let me give you my opinion. This is an outrageous violation of journalistic standards and ethics by management that has no use for a diversity of opinion, ideas or a diversity of staff (I was the only black male on the air). This is evidence of one-party rule and one sided thinking at NPR that leads to enforced ideology, speech and writing. It leads to people, especially journalists, being sent to the gulag for raising the wrong questions and displaying independence of thought.

Daniel Schorr, my fellow NPR commentator who died earlier this year, used to talk about the initial shock of finding himself on President Nixon’s enemies list. I can only imagine Dan’s revulsion to realize that today NPR treats a journalist who has worked for them for ten years with less regard, less respect for the value of independence of thought and embrace of real debate across political lines, than Nixon ever displayed.

Click here for the full report from Fox News

FDA Warns of Prostate Cancer Drug risks

October 21st, 2010

FiercePharma.com

By: Tracy Staton

Hormone treatments for prostate cancer need new warnings about a small increased risk of diabetes and heart problems including sudden death, U.S. health officials said on Wednesday.

The medications include Abbott Laboratories Inc’s Lupron, AstraZeneca Plc’s Zoladex and Sanofi-Aventis SA’s Eligard.

The drugs, known as gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists, are used to suppress the production of testosterone, a hormone that helps fuel prostate cancer growth. The drugs are approved to relieve symptoms of advanced prostate cancer in a treatment known as androgen deprivation therapy.

The Food and Drug Administration said the risk of diabetes and heart disease in men treated with the drugs appeared to be low, but that patients should be regularly monitored for increased blood sugar or possible signs of heart damage.

Doctors also should evaluate a patient’s risk for diabetes and heart disease before starting treatment and weigh potential side effects versus benefits, the FDA said.

Other GnRH drugs include Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc’s Trelstar, Endo Pharmaceuticals Holdings Inc’s Vantas, and Pfizer Inc’s Synarel. Several generic versions also are sold.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer among U.S. men. More than 217,000 new cases are expected to be diagnosed in the United States this year and about 32,000 men will die from the disease, according to government estimates.

Hormone therapies are a mainstay of treatment for advanced prostate cancer when other therapies fail, Abbott spokeswoman Elizabeth Hoff said.

Diabetes, increases in blood sugar and heart problems already are mentioned on Lupron’s label, and the company will comply with the FDA request to add the new warning, she said.

The agency asked manufacturers to put the information in a section of the prescribing instructions called “warnings and precautions.”

Sanofi spokeswoman Emmy Tsui said the company was “committed to the safe and effective use of Eligard” and was reviewing the FDA request. Officials at other makers had no immediate comment or could not immediately be reached.

In February, various doctors’ groups wrote in the medical journal Circulation that they felt androgen deprivation treatment was likely to raise the risk of heart attack. They called for studies to determine the level of risk.

The FDA said in May it was reviewing six studies that showed a small increased risk of diabetes or heart disease in patients treated with the drugs when compared with other prostate cancer therapies.

Click here for the full report from Reuter’s

4 Deaths Tied to Bacteria at Food Processing Plant

October 21st, 2010

CNN

By: Greg Botelho

Authorities have shut down a Texas food processing plant, saying it was contaminated by bacteria linked to the deaths of four people, state health officials said.

The Texas Department of State Health Services on Wednesday ordered Sangar Produce and Processing to immediately stop processing food and recall all products shipped from its San Antonio plant since January. This comes after state laboratory results showed Listeria monocytogenes, a bacteria that can cause severe illness, in chopped celery at the plant.

Four people died after contracting listeriosis after consuming celery that had been processed at the Sangar plant, said Carrie Williams, a department spokeswoman. State health authorities came to this determination while investigating 10 cases in which people with serious underlying health problems contracted listeriosis over an 8-month period.

Six of those cases — in Bexar, Travis and Hidalgo counties — were linked to chopped celery processed at the SanGar plant, the state health services department said. Four of those people died, as did one other person who authorities believe got listeriosis from another source not connected with Sangar products.

Sangar, however, sharply questioned the state’s findings and strongly denied wrongdoing, saying it has had “an excellent record of safety and health” over the past three years. Its president said outside tests “directly contradict” the state’s conclusion.

“The independent testing shows our produce to be absolutely safe, and we are aggressively fighting the state’s erroneous findings,” said Kenneth Sanquist, president of Sangar.

State health inspectors said they believe the bacteria found in the chopped celery may have contaminated other products at the company’s plant. Sangar processes a wide variety of products — including three varieties of lettuce, peppers, carrots, cucumbers and various cut-up fruit, as well as salad, fruit and soup mixes, according to the company’s website. They are distributed primarily in sealed packages to restaurants, hospitals, schools and other large institutions that serve food.

Besides the bacteria, inspectors found a condensation leak above a food product area, dirt on a food-preparation table, and hand-washing problems at the San Antonio plant, the state health department said. The state said that it is contacting distributors, restaurants and others who may have received Sangar products.

Listeria monocytogenes is a bacterium found in the soil, in water, and in animals that carry it without showing signs they are sick, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It can get into vegetables from soil or manure that is used as fertilizer. The strain of bacteria is relatively resilient — with an incubation period of three to 70 days, Williams said — and some foods can be contaminated after cooking but prior to packaging.

The bacteria have been tied to listeriosis, which sickens about 2,500 Americans and contributes to the death of 500 people annually, the CDC reports. People with weakened immune systems, including newborns and the elderly, are especially susceptible to listeriosis. Pregnant women are about 20 times more likely than other adults to contract the disease.

In August, Sanquist told CNN affiliate KENS5 that food-safety measures were not tough enough, saying the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should be more involved in inspections. At the time, the SanGar president said that his company had never had a high bacteria count or had anything recalled.

“Ultimately, you can get someone very sick,” Sanquist told KENS5, criticizing city health inspections as insufficient. “We’re talking about fresh-cut fruits and vegetables that need to be sanitized.”

The Texas health department is taking the lead in the investigation, with assistance from the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC. The state justified its closure of the Sangar plant, citing Texas law that authorizes such actions if conditions pose “an immediate and serious threat to human life or health.”

“At this point, the order prohibits the plant from reopening without our approval,” said Williams. “We will work with the company about setting up some guidelines before it can [reopen].”

Click here for the full report from CNN

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Bailouts Could Hit $363 Billion

October 21st, 2010

LA Times

By: Jim Puzzanghera

The taxpayer bailouts of housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could more than double over the next three years to as much as $363 billion, according to government projections released Thursday.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which has regulated the former government-sponsored enterprises since they were seized during the financial crisis in 2008, said the figure was based on the worst of three scenarios for the economy and housing market that assumes a “deeper second recession.”

Under the best-case scenario, which would be a “stronger near-term recovery” in housing prices, the bailouts of Fannie and Freddie would reach $221 billion. The third scenario, in which housing prices continue on their current projections, would result in the combined bailouts reaching $238 billion.

But those figures don’t clearly reflect the actual cost to taxpayers of the bailouts because they include dividend payments to the government on the loans Fannie and Freddie have received. Those costs largely are double-counted as the companies must borrow taxpayer money to pay the dividends to the Treasury Department.

Excluding dividends, the pricetag for the bailouts would range from $142 billion in the best-case scenario to $259 billion in a deep double-dip recession.

So far, Fannie and Freddie have received about $148 billion in taxpayer money since they were seized by Bush administration officials and placed in government conservatorship. Taxpayers now own 79.9% of the two companies.

“These projections are intended to give policymakers and the public useful snapshots of potential outcomes for the taxpayer support of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” said Edward J. DeMarco, FHFA’s acting director. “These are not predictions; the results reflect the potential effects of a limited set of hypothetical changes in house prices, a key variable driving credit losses for the enterprises.”

DeMarco told a House subcommittee last month that taxpayer losses from Fannie and Freddie likely wouldn’t top $400 billion, as some have feared, but did not provide specific data. In December, concerns mounted about the potential cost of the bailouts after the Obama administration lifted a $400-billion cap through 2012.

Officials said they did so to provide certainty to the real estate market that the government would stand behind the agencies as lawmakers and the White House began wrestling with their future. Many Republicans have blamed Fannie and Freddie for triggering the subprime mortgage problems and complained that the recently enacted financial reform law did not deal with the future of the two entities.

But the law did call for the administration to produce a plan by January, and Congress has been conducting hearings on the fate of Fannie and Freddie and the broader question of government involvement in the housing finance market.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are almost singlehandedly keeping the housing finance market going as investors have fled because of the financial crisis and deep recession. Together, they hold about $1.6 trillion worth of mortgage loans.

The additional projected losses would come from further eroding of the value of loans, particularly subprime mortgages, that Fannie and Freddie bought before the government seizures, the FHFA said.

Click here for the full report from the L.A. Times

NPR Fires Juan Williams After O’Reilly Appearance

October 21st, 2010

Fox News

National Public Radio fired Fox News contributor Juan Williams on Wednesday after a Monday night appearance on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” in which Williams said that it makes him nervous to fly on airplanes with devoutly-clad Muslims.

“I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country,” Williams told host Bill O’Reilly during a discussion on the dilemma between fighting jihadists and fears about average Muslims.

“But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they’re identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous,” Williams said.

Williams also commented on remarks by Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad warning Americans that the fight is coming to the U.S.

“He said the war with Muslims, America’s war is just beginning, first drop of blood. I don’t think there’s any way to get away from these facts,” Williams said.

NPR issued a statement saying that it was “terminating” Williams’ contract over the remarks.

“Tonight we gave Juan Williams notice that we are terminating his contract as a senior news analyst for NPR News,” CEO Vivian Schiller and Senior Vice President for News Ellen Weiss said in a statement.

“Juan has been a valuable contributor to NPR and public radio for many years and we did not make this decision lightly or without regret. However, his remarks on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ this past Monday were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR,” they said. “We regret these circumstances and thank Juan Williams for his many years of service to NPR and public radio.”

The conversation with O’Reilly stemmed from a well-publicized argument the previous week between O’Reilly and “The View” hosts Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg, who walked off their own set when O’Reilly said, “Muslims killed us on 9/11.”

The comment had been an explanation by O’Reilly why the majority of Americans don’t want a mosque housed in an Islamic cultural center built near Ground Zero.

The women, who argued that Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh wasn’t a Muslim, returned after O’Reilly said that he was — perhaps inartfully — talking about Muslim extremists.

The conversation has been fodder for both shows. Goldberg appeared Wednesday night on “On the Record With Greta Van Susteren,” and said when she cursed at O’Reilly on air — a word that was bleeped for broadcast — she knew she was beyond reason and had to leave.

“He wasn’t thoughtful and he knew he wasn’t thoughtful and once he said, ‘if I offended someone I apologize’ … it showed me that he recognized it,” she said.

“But he knew that for us it was not ok. … He got what he wanted and I don’t feel bad about doing it. Should I have sat and just bit my tongue? I don’t think I could because it was too much like all the things I heard about black folks and women,” Goldberg said, adding that she has no hard feelings and planned to appear on O’Reilly’s show in a few weeks..

Williams, a liberal African American commentator who has written extensively on civil rights in America, previously got in trouble with NPR for comments he made while appearing on “The O’Reilly Factor” in February 2009. At that time, he described first lady Michelle Obama as having a “Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going.”

Carmichael was a black activist in the 1960s who coined the phrase “Black Power.”

After the Carmichael quote, Williams’ position at NPR was changed from staff correspondent to national analyst.

He has declined to comment since his dismissal.

Click here for the full report from FOX News

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