Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

I agree with Nec and CC here. Incarcerating someone for life works just as well as killing them, and there is too much chance of being wrong when we execute. Sure, that's one less nutjob in society... but throwing the same nutjob in jail has the same effect. And look at all the people we've released due to D.N.A. evidence... don't know the exact number but I do know it's quite a lot. Investigators and D.A.s get too focused on one suspect and it's very easy to make mistakes that way. At least if we throw the bastard in jail for life we can let him out if we find out later down the road that we fucked up.
 
Eye for an eye arguments are hilarious. If someone commits tax fraud, what is the equivalent? If someone hijacks a car, do you...hijack their car, at some random time? Or if they kidnaps a kid, do you...kidnap their kids? Clearly the amount of cases in which the eye for an eye rationale can be considered remotely equal are so few, that the system cannot be remotely considered for a legit basis of punishment.

I had a great class on social policy/ethical issues in the fall, and even in a course that really tried to be balanced, the arguments for the death penalty were feeble and easily refuted. A society should always restrain its anger and outrage in a way that the murderer did not.
 
Merrill Lynch might be fucked. Recession? You betcha

Giant Write-Down Is Seen for Merrill
By JULIA WERDIGIER and JENNY ANDERSON

Merrill Lynch is expected to suffer $15 billion in losses stemming from soured mortgage investments, almost double its original estimate, prompting the firm to raise additional capital from an outside investor.

Merrill, the nation’s largest brokerage firm, is expected to disclose the huge write-down when it reports earnings next week, according to people who have been briefed on its plans. The loss far exceeds the $12 billion hit many Wall Street analysts had forecast.

To shore up its deteriorating finances, Merrill is now in discussions with investors in the United States, Asia and the Middle East, including American private equity firms, to raise about $4 billion in the coming days, these people said.

The developments underscore the rising toll that the mortgage crisis is taking on many once-proud Wall Street banks. In recent months Merrill and several other firms have grabbed financial lifelines from wealthy foreign governments. Further investments by so-called sovereign wealth funds could prompt scrutiny by Congress.

The latest moves at Merrill come as John A. Thain, who became the company’s chairman and chief executive in December, struggles to bolster the firm’s capital, burnish its reputation and avoid the toxic internal battles that have hurt the firm in the past.

Mr. Thain, who won plaudits as head of the New York Stock Exchange, has wasted little time. After he took over last month, Merrill Lynch promptly sold a $5.6 billion stake to Temasek Holdings, which is controlled by the government of Singapore, and Davis Selected Advisers, a money management firm based in Tucson.

During a meeting in December in London, Mr. Thain told anxious employees that Merrill expected further losses after an $8.4 billion write-down in the third quarter. He also said the firm would require additional capital. He said the fourth quarter would be a “very bad quarter,” those attending recalled.

Mr. Thain has made clear that Merrill would not sell its 49 percent stake in BlackRock, the global money management firm. But he has said that Merrill is considering selling noncore assets like its stake in Bloomberg, the financial news and information company founded by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York. In a research report, Brad Hintz, a securities analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, said that stake was worth about $4 billion.

Mr. Thain also said at the London meeting that Merrill’s management style needed to change. Recalling his days as a co-president of Goldman Sachs, Mr. Thain said that he wanted employees to build consensus.

Among other things, that means Merrill will now pay fewer bonuses based on individual performance and instead focus on the performance of a team. Many employees received bonuses this week that included a greater portion of stock than in the past.

Merrill is hardly alone in seeking capital from overseas. United States financial institutions have raised more than $29 billion from foreign governments and their related investment entities, according to the market research firm Dealogic.

In recent months, the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, Singapore’s lesser-known government fund, invested $9.7 billion in UBS; Citigroup sold a $7.5 billion stake to the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority; and the China Investment Corporation poured $5 billion into Morgan Stanley.

If a foreign government takes another big stake in Merrill, Congress might ratchet up its scrutiny of sovereign wealth funds, which have ballooned thanks to rising oil prices and booming emerging markets.

On Thursday, SenatorCharles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, expressed concern about the amount of money American financial institutions are contemplating raising from sovereign wealth funds.

“Foreign investment, in general, strengthens our economy and creates jobs,” Senator Schumer said. “Because sovereign wealth funds, by definition, are potentially susceptible to noneconomic interests, the closer they come to exercising control and influence, the greater concerns we have.”

So far, none of the foreign investors that have bought into United States banks have sought management roles. “All have been very consciously structured to be passive,” said H. Rodgin Cohen, chairman of Sullivan & Cromwell, who has worked on a number of these deals. “None have asked for directors.”

In addition to seeking funds from outside investors, which heavily dilutes the stakes of existing shareholders, Merrill Lynch has sought alternative ways to raise capital. In December, it agreed to sell most of its commercial finance business, Merrill Lynch Capital, to General Electric, raising about $1.3 billion in equity.

Mr. Hintz, the securities analyst, suggested another option would be to reduce the firm’s fixed-income business by a third, which would add about $3 billion in capital.

He estimates that Merrill will write down its $27 billion of combined collateralized debt obligation and subprime-related exposures by $10 billion and report a loss of $5.10 a share for the fourth quarter. Any write-down above $20 billion, he said, would “significantly increase leverage and would threaten the credit ratings of the firm.”

During the London meeting, Mr. Thain said that Merrill would have to build its presence in China as well as expand its principal investing businesses, including private equity, commercial real estate and infrastructure.
Click to expand...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/b...&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
 
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080115/citigroup.html

Citi Loses Almost $10B, Slashes Dividend
Tuesday January 15, 8:39 am ET
By Madlen Read, AP Business Writer
Citi Loses Almost $10B in 4Q, Slashes Dividend, Gets $12.5B Investment After Hefty Write-Downs

NEW YORK (AP) -- Citigroup Inc. lost almost $10 billion in last year's final three months, the largest quarterly deficit in the bank's 196-year history, and slashed its dividend as it recorded a mammoth write-down for bad bets on the mortgage industry.

The nation's largest bank wrote down the value of its portfolio by $18.1 billion. It also boosted loan-loss reserves by $4.1 billion, signaling further problems in its consumer businesses as deflated home prices, high energy and food costs, and rising unemployment weigh on people's ability to make their loan payments.

To bolster its capital, the bank also said Tuesday it has lined up $12.5 billion in new investments from sovereign wealth funds and existing shareholders.

That includes $6.88 billion from the Government of Singapore Investment Corp. for a 4 percent stake. Other investors were Capital Research Global Investors, Capital World Investors, the Kuwait Investment Authority, the New Jersey Division of Investment, shareholder Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia and former chief executive Sanford Weill and his family foundation.

The $12.5 billion in fresh equity adds to the $7.5 billion that Citi got in November from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority in exchange for a 4.9 percent stake in the company.

Citigroup's shares, which were trading around $55 a year ago, fell 70 cents to $28.36 in premarket trading on Tuesday.

The financial services company made no mention in its earnings report about job cuts beyond the 17,000 announced in the spring, a disappointment to some investors who were looking for a big downsizing. That means Chief Executive Vikram Pandit, who replaced Charles Prince in December, hasn't yet decided whether any of the global bank's core operations need to be cut or sold.

Pandit, calling the fourth-quarter results "clearly unacceptable," said in a statement Tuesday that "in an uncertain environment, these actions put us on our 'front foot,' focused on capturing opportunities that earn attractive returns for our shareholders."

The loss for the quarter totaled $9.83 billion, or $1.99 per share, compared with earnings of $5.13 billion, or $1.03 per share, during the same quarter a year earlier. Citigroup's revenue fell to $7.22 billion, down 70 percent from $23.83 billion in the final quarter of 2006.

Citigroup said the 41 percent cut in its quarterly dividend to 32 cents a share from 54 cents -- along with the Asian investments and a stock offering of about $2 billion -- will help boost its Tier 1 capital ratio, a measure of its financial strength.

Financial companies have been the highest dividend-paying sector in the stock market, but many -- including Washington Mutual Inc., National City Corp. and the government-sponsored lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae -- have pared those payouts in recent months.

Citigroup's decision to cut its dividend and seek new cash from outside investors was widely anticipated on Wall Street after months of scrutiny over the bank's deteriorating operations. The biggest was Citigroup's bad bets on mortgage-backed bond instruments called collateralized debt obligations. It also was forced to bring $49 billion in hemorrhaging funds known as structured investment vehicles onto its books.

Over the past several weeks, Asian funds have been buying up the battered stocks of struggling U.S. banks. Early Tuesday, Merrill Lynch said it will receive a total of $6.6 billion from the Korean Investment Corp., Kuwait Investment Authority and Japan's Mizuho Corporate Bank -- in addition to the $4.4 billion it has already gotten from Singapore's state-run Temasek Holdings.

Pandit said Citigroup would continue to sell off "non-core" assets. The bank has already sold shares in Redecard, a card business in Latin America, and an ownership interest in a unit of the Japanese brokerage Nikko Cordial it bought last year.

Citigroup's $18.1 billion writedown was significantly wider than the $6 billion writedown it took in the third quarter last year, and bigger than the $8 billion to $11 billion it guessed in October that it would take for the fourth quarter.

Citigroup said as of Dec. 31, it had a total of $37.3 billion in direct subprime mortgage exposure, down from $54.6 billion three months prior.
Click to expand...
 
Holy jesus...

US drafting plan to allow government access to any email or Web search
01/14/2008 @ 9:02 am
Filed by RAW STORY

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a "walk in the park," according to an interview published in the New Yorker's print edition today.
Advertisement

Debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “will be a walk in the park compared to this,” McConnell said. “this is going to be a goat rope on the Hill. My prediction is that we’re going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens.”

The article, which profiles the 65-year-old former admiral appointed by President George W. Bush in January 2007 to oversee all of America's intelligence agencies, was not published on the New Yorker's Web site.

McConnell is developing a Cyber-Security Policy, still in the draft stage, which will closely police Internet activity.

"Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the autority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or Web search," author Lawrence Wright pens.

“Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation, he said," Wright adds. "Giorgio warned me, 'We have a saying in this business: ‘Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'"

A zero-sum game is one in which gains by one side come at the expense of the other. In other words -- McConnell's aide believes greater security can only come at privacy's expense.

McConnell has been an advocate for computer-network defense, which has previously not been the province of any intelligence agency.

According to a 2007 conversation in the Oval Office, McConnell told President Bush, “If the 9/11 perpetrators had focused on a single US bank through cyber-attack and it had been successful, it would have an order of magnitude greater impact on the US economy.”

Bush turned to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, asking him if it was true; Paulson said that it was. Bush then asked to McConnell to come up with a network security strategy.

"One proposal of McConnell’s Cyber-Security Policy, which is still in the draft stage, is to reduce the access points between government computers and the Internet from two thousand to fifty," Wright notes. "He claimed that cyber-theft account for as much as a hundred billion dollars in annual losses to the American economy. 'The real problem is the perpetrator who doesn’t care about stealing—he just wants to destroy.'"

The infrastructure to tap into Americans' email and web search history may already be in place.

In November, a former technician at AT&T alleged that the telecom forwarded virtually all of its Internet traffic into a "secret room" to facilitate government spying.

Whistleblower Mark Klein said that a copy of all Internet traffic passing over AT&T lines was copied into a locked room at the company's San Francisco office -- to which only employees with National Security Agency clearance had access -- via a cable splitting device.

"My job was to connect circuits into the splitter device which was hard-wired to the secret room," Klein. said "And effectively, the splitter copied the entire data stream of those Internet cables into the secret room -- and we're talking about phone conversations, email web browsing, everything that goes across the Internet."

"As a technician, I had the engineering wiring documents, which told me how the splitter was wired to the secret room," Klein continued. "And so I know that whatever went across those cables was copied and the entire data stream was copied."

According to Klein, that information included Internet activity about Americans.

"We're talking about domestic traffic as well as international traffic," Klein said. Previous Bush administration claims that only international communications were being intercepted aren't accurate, he added.

"I know the physical equipment, and I know that statement is not true," he added. "It involves millions of communications, a lot of it domestic communications that they're copying wholesale."
Click to expand...

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/US_drafting_plan_to_allow_government_0114.html
 
If it doesn't pass now, it will in the future. And if it doesn't pass, that most likely does not make a difference. Chances are that if they are not already doing this, they will be.
 
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