Jesse Eisinger - Fed Shrugged Off Warnings, Let Banks Pay Shareholders Billions

In early November 2010, as the Federal Reserve began to weigh whether the nation’s biggest financial firms were healthy enough to return money to their shareholders, a top regulator bluntly warned: Don’t let them.

“We remain concerned over their ability to withstand stress in an uncertain economic environment,” wrote Sheila Bair, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., in a previously unreported letter obtained by ProPublica.

The letter came as the Fed was launching a “stress test” to decide whether the biggest U.S. financial firms could pay out dividends and buy back their shares instead of putting aside that money as capital. It was one of the central bank’s most critical oversight decisions in the wake of the financial crisis.

“We strongly encourage” that the Fed “delay any dividends or compensation increases until they can show” that their earnings are strong and their assets sound, she wrote. Given the continued uncertainty in the markets, “we do not believe it is the right time to allow transactions that will weaken their capital and liquidity positions.”

Four months later, the Federal Reserve rejected Bair’s appeal.

Read More:

 http://www.nationofchange.org/fed-shrugged-warnings-let-banks-pay-shareholders-billions-1330783928

Robin McKie - Fasting can help protect against brain diseases, scientists say

Fasting for regular periods could help protect the brain against degenerative illnesses, according to US scientists. Researchers at the National Institute on Ageing in Baltimore said they had found evidence which shows that periods of stopping virtually all food intake for one or two days a week could protect the brain against some of the worst effects of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other ailments.

"Reducing your calorie intake could help your brain, but doing so by cutting your intake of food is not likely to be the best method of triggering this protection. It is likely to be better to go on intermittent bouts of fasting, in which you eat hardly anything at all, and then have periods when you eat as much as you want," said Professor Mark Mattson, head of the institute's laboratory of neurosciences.

"In other words, timing appears to be a crucial element to this process," Mattson told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver.

Read More:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/18/fasting-protect-brain-diseases-scientists

David Suzuki - Climate Change Denial isn’t About Science, or Even Skepticism

Lets’ suppose the world’s legitimate scientific institutions and academies, climate scientists, and most of the world’s governments are wrong. Maybe, as some people have argued, they’re involved in a massive conspiracy to impose a socialist world order. Maybe the money’s just too damn good. It doesn’t matter. Let’s just imagine they’re wrong, and that the polar ice caps aren’t melting and the climate isn’t changing. Or, if you prefer, that it’s happening, but that it’s a natural occurrence—nothing to do with seven billion people spewing carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere.

Would it still make sense to continue rapidly burning the world’s diminishing supply of fossil fuels? Does it mean we shouldn’t worry about pollution?

We could pretend global warming isn’t happening, or that humans aren’t a factor if it is. That would be crazy in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, but even if it weren’t, there would still be no reason to continue down the road we’re on. Energy is at the heart of modern society’s needs, but when the source is finite, it seems folly to be hell-bent on using it up in a few generations, leaving the problems of depletion and pollution to our children and grandchildren. The longer we delay implementing solutions to our energy challenges the more costly and difficult it will be when we have to face the inevitable.

Read More:

http://ecowatch.org/2012/climate-change-denial-isnt-about-science-or-even-skepticism/

Stephanie Hegarty - The myth of the eight-hour sleep

In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month.

It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep.

Though sleep scientists were impressed by the study, among the general public the idea that we must sleep for eight consecutive hours persists.

In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks.

Read More:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783

S. Paul Forrest - Genetically Modified Foods and the Monsanto Initiative

by S. Paul Forrest, America Revealed

Deception, manipulation, propaganda and profit: These words have become the basis of the American corporate and political landscape without any seeming concern or guilt over their promulgation. One company in particular, which seems to be the iconographic example of this is Monsanto; or so go the claims today by the “conspiracy crowd” in reaction to the Genetically Modified (GM) food technology and its apparent governmental backing.

In order to understand the purpose of GM foods and the reasons stated for its implementation, the powers that be will tell us we need only look at the current global environment and the necessity of solutions to provide an adequate food supply to those in need in the global community. Farmable land and access to water, energy, and biological resources are not as plentiful in many countries as they are in many parts of America. These shortages equate to low crop yield, which means certain death and starvation to many people around the world each year.

Unfortunately, the facts surrounding these assertions are accurate. According to the World Bank and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “1.02 billion people are undernourished, a sizable increase from its 2006 estimate of 854 million people,” indicating a combination of insufficient food, low incomes, and inadequate distribution of food. This is the largest number of hungry humans ever recorded in history. Likewise, reports from numerous other international organizations and reputable scientific researchers confirm the existence of these serious food supply problems. In the face of these realities, the U.S. Government will have us believe that we need GM foods to meet the demands of a modern world.

Click to read more ...

Steven Forrest - The War on Terror: How it is Affecting Our Politics and Society Today

Retrospect is an amazing thing.  Decisions rendered in the past can many times be looked at with this tool of reason in order to protect against future mistakes. It also gives one the opportunity to recognize the motives for decisions made by others in situations which seemed at the time, confusing or conflicted.  Given the religiously charged, national security centered, political frenzy of late in the race to reclaim the Presidency, the War on Terror and the rhetoric accompanying it, now more than ever, makes poignant sense.

Post 9-11, America experienced a wave of legislative acts to combat terrorism. With these acts, political propaganda and media manipulation began to promote a wave of nationalism not seen since World War II. The cries for a Christian rebirth to battle the "evil empire" both domestically and abroad had surfaced and with it, a new form of control over the people's opinions and actions which we still today, are having to battle. In retrospect, these events were the beginning of not only our National march toward an offense-oriented military policy abroad and a police state at home but the surge of Christian Reconstructionism as well, introducing a Constitution-crushing march toward the militaristic and theocratic blindness we are experiencing now.

Read More:

http://dailycensored.com/2012/03/03/the-war-on-terror-how-it-is-affecting-our-politics-and-society-today/

Bernard Starr - Romney and Santorum Envision a Caste System for America

Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum will no doubt deny that they endorse a caste system. They will insist that they love the plain folks and will enthusiastically point to their family historiesas they compete for blue collar credentials. Rick Santorum, spiffy in his sweater vest, will tell you about his granddaddy who worked the coal mines. And Mitt Romney, decked out in his everyman's jeans, will describe how his daddy, when he was training to be a carpenter before he was governor of Michigan and later a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, could spit out nails, point first. But a hidden agenda lurks beneath these common man stories.

It's troubling that Romney isn't worried about the poor because they have safety nets(which by the way happen to be government programs), especially since more and more formerly middle class Americans have fallen into poverty, losing their jobs and their homes.

Read More:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernard-starr/romney-santorum-poverty_b_1318001.html

Chris Hedges - AIPAC Works for the 1 Percent

The battle for justice in the Middle East is our battle. It is part of the vast, global battle against the 1 percent. It is about living rather than dying. It is about communicating rather than killing. It is about love rather than hate. It is part of the great battle against the corporate forces of death that reign over us—the fossil fuel industry, the weapons manufacturers, the security and surveillance state, the speculators on Wall Street, the oligarchic elites who assault our poor, our working men and women, our children, one in four of whom depend on food stamps to eat, the elites who are destroying our ecosystem with its trees, its air and its water and throwing into doubt our survival as a species.

What is being done in Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison, is a pale reflection of what is slowly happening to the rest of us. It is a window into the rise of the global security state, our new governing system that the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls “inverted totalitarianism.” It is a reflection of a world where the powerful are not bound by law, either on Wall Street or in the shattered remains of the countries we invade and occupy, including Iraq with its hundreds of thousands of dead. And one of the greatest purveyors of this demented ideology of violence for the sake of violence, this flagrant disregard for the rule of domestic and international law, is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC.

Read More:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/aipac_works_for_the_1_percent_20120304/

Amy Fried - What's Worse Than Being Called the "S" Word?: Why Rush's "Apology" Added Insult to Injury

So much of the outrage against Rush Limbaugh has focused on his having called Georgetown law student, Sandra Fluke, a "slut" and a "prostitute," that I think it's easy to lose sight of what's even worse than what he called her. 

First, let's remember that Sandra Fluke was testifying about the difficulty that all students at Georgetown have getting insurance coverage for birth control pills. It may have been easy for Rush to call the (presumably single, straight and childless - after all, she did not testify about herself) Fluke a slut. But that let the anti-woman crowd pretend that this issue is somehow about morality or premarital sex. But, of course, the anti-birth control forces don't discriminate between married and single women, or between women with twenty children or women with none. It has nothing to do with morality. Mitt Romney had it right with his first, gut reaction to a question about the Blunt amendment: it is not government's role to involve itself in the personal decisions made between men and women. (Unfortunately, of course, he immediately caved on that issue.) 

Read More:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/What-s-Worse-Than-Being-Ca-by-Amy-Fried-Ph-D-120305-243.html

Brentin Mock - Five Million Voters May Lose Rights in the 2012 Elections

Today’s Super Tuesday primary involves 10 states and 437 delegates at stake for the Republican Party’s presidential prospects. There are two states among that crop that are worth taking a look at: Georgia and Tennessee. Both are emblems for a growing, and troubling, legislative trend in which new election laws mandate citizens to produce photo identification to vote, ask people to prove their citizenship to vote, or outright curtail voter registration efforts.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, as many as five million eligible voters could meet difficulties this Election Day due to these new, imposing voter laws.

Read More:

http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/03/voter_id_card.html