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sábado, 9 de abril de 2011
segunda-feira, 28 de março de 2011
Bob Herbert: Losing Our Way
Losing Our Way
By BOB HERBERT
Published: March 25, 2011
So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home.
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Bob Herbert
Readers' Comments
Welcome to America in the second decade of the 21st century. An army of long-term unemployed workers is spread across the land, the human fallout from the Great Recession and long years of misguided economic policies. Optimism is in short supply. The few jobs now being created too often pay a pittance, not nearly enough to pry open the doors to a middle-class standard of living.
Arthur Miller, echoing the poet Archibald MacLeish, liked to say that the essence of America was its promises. That was a long time ago. Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone.
The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.
Nearly 14 million Americans are jobless and the outlook for many of them is grim. Since there is just one job available for every five individuals looking for work, four of the five are out of luck. Instead of a land of opportunity, the U.S. is increasingly becoming a place of limited expectations. A college professor in Washington told me this week that graduates from his program were finding jobs, but they were not making very much money, certainly not enough to think about raising a family.
There is plenty of economic activity in the U.S., and plenty of wealth. But like greedy children, the folks at the top are seizing virtually all the marbles. Income and wealth inequality in the U.S. have reached stages that would make the third world blush. As the Economic Policy Institute has reported, the richest 10 percent of Americans received an unconscionable 100 percent of the average income growth in the years 2000 to 2007, the most recent extended period of economic expansion.
Americans behave as if this is somehow normal or acceptable. It shouldn’t be, and didn’t used to be. Through much of the post-World War II era, income distribution was far more equitable, with the top 10 percent of families accounting for just a third of average income growth, and the bottom 90 percent receiving two-thirds. That seems like ancient history now.
The current maldistribution of wealth is also scandalous. In 2009, the richest 5 percent claimed 63.5 percent of the nation’s wealth. The overwhelming majority, the bottom 80 percent, collectively held just 12.8 percent.
This inequality, in which an enormous segment of the population struggles while the fortunate few ride the gravy train, is a world-class recipe for social unrest. Downward mobility is an ever-shortening fuse leading to profound consequences.
A stark example of the fundamental unfairness that is now so widespread was in The New York Times on Friday under the headline: “G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether.” Despite profits of $14.2 billion — $5.1 billion from its operations in the United States — General Electric did not have to pay any U.S. taxes last year.
As The Times’s David Kocieniewski reported, “Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore.”
G.E. is the nation’s largest corporation. Its chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, is the leader of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. You can understand how ordinary workers might look at this cozy corporate-government arrangement and conclude that it is not fully committed to the best interests of working people.
Overwhelming imbalances in wealth and income inevitably result in enormous imbalances of political power. So the corporations and the very wealthy continue to do well. The employment crisis never gets addressed. The wars never end. And nation-building never gets a foothold here at home.
New ideas and new leadership have seldom been more urgently needed.
•
This is my last column for The New York Times after an exhilarating, nearly 18-year run. I’m off to write a book and expand my efforts on behalf of working people, the poor and others who are struggling in our society. My thanks to all the readers who have been so kind to me over the years. I can be reached going forward at bobherbert88@gmail.com.
domingo, 6 de fevereiro de 2011
Nicholas Kristof: Militants, Women and Tahrir Square -- We Are All Egyptians
Militants, Women and Tahrir Sq.
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: February 5, 2011
CAIRO
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof
On the Ground
Nicholas Kristof is posting from Cairo on his blog whenever he has Internet access. You can also follow his updates on Facebookand Twitter.
Related
Times Topic: Egypt News — The Protests
When Westerners watched television images of the popular uprising against President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, they winced at the government’s thuggery toward protesters. But some also flinched at the idea of a popular democracy that might give greater voice to Islamic fundamentalism.
In 1979, a grass-roots uprising in Iran led to an undemocratic regime that oppresses women and minorities and destabilizes the region. In 1989, uprisings in Eastern Europe led to the rise of stable democracies. So if Egyptian protesters overcome the government, would this be 1979 or 1989?
No one can predict with certainty. But let me try to offer a dose of reassurance.
After spending last week here on Tahrir Square, talking to protesters — even as President Mubarak’s thugs attacked our perimeter with bricks, Molotov cocktails, machetes and occasional gunfire — I emerge struck by the moderation and tolerance of most protesters.
Maybe my judgment is skewed because pro-Mubarak thugs tried to hunt down journalists, leading some of us to be stabbed, beaten and arrested — and forcing me to abandon hotel rooms and sneak with heart racing around mobs carrying clubs with nails embedded in them. The place I felt safest was Tahrir Square — “free Egypt,” in the protesters’ lexicon — where I could pull out a camera and notebook and ask anybody any question.
I constantly asked women and Coptic Christians whether a democratic Egypt might end up a more oppressive country. They invariably said no — and looked so reproachfully at me for doubting democracy that I sometimes retreated in embarrassment.
“If there is a democracy, we will not allow our rights to be taken away from us,” Sherine, a university professor, told me (I’m not using full names to protect the protesters). Like many, she said that Americans were too obsessed with the possibility of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood gaining power in elections.
“We do not worry about the Muslim Brotherhood,” Sherine said. “They might win 25 percent of the votes, but if they do not perform then they will not get votes the next time.”
Sherine has a point. Partly because of Western anxieties, fundamentalist Muslims have rarely run anything — so instead they lead the way in denouncing the corruption, incompetence and brutality of pro-Western autocrats like Mr. Mubarak. The upshot is that they win respect from many ordinary citizens, but my hunch is that they would lose support if they actually tried to administer anything.
For example, in 1990s Yemen, an Islamic party named Islah became part of a coalition government after doing well in elections. As a result, Islah was put in charge of the Education Ministry. Secular Yemenis and outsiders were aghast that fundamentalists might brainwash children, but the Islamists mostly proved that they were incompetent at governing. In the next election, their support tumbled.
It’s true that one of the most common protester slogans described Mr. Mubarak as a stooge of America, and many Egyptians chafe at what they see as a supine foreign policy. I saw one caricature of Mr. Mubarak with a Star of David on his forehead and, separately, a sign declaring: “Tell him in Hebrew, and then he might get the message!” Yet most people sounded pragmatic, favoring continued peace with Israel while also more outspoken support for Palestinians, especially those suffering in Gaza.
I asked an old friend here in Cairo, a woman with Western tastes that include an occasional glass of whiskey, whether the Muslim Brotherhood might be bad for peace. She thought for a moment and said: “Yes, possibly. But, from my point of view, in America the Republican Party is bad for peace as well.”
If democracy gains in the Middle East, there will be some demagogues, nationalists and jingoists, just as there are in America and Israel, and they may make diplomacy more complicated. But remember that it’s Mr. Mubarak’s repression, imprisonment and torture that nurtured angry extremists like Ayman al-Zawahri of Al Qaeda, the right-hand man of Osama bin Laden. It would be tragic if we let our anxieties impede our embrace of freedom and democracy in the world’s most populous Arab nation.
I’m so deeply moved by the grit that Egyptians have shown in struggling against the regime — and by the help that some provided me, at great personal risk, in protecting me from thugs dispatched by America’s ally. Let’s show some faith in the democratic ideals for which these Egyptians are risking their lives.
I think of Hamdi, a businessman who looked pained when I asked whether Egyptian democracy might lead to oppression or to upheavals with Israel or the price of oil. “The Middle East is not only for oil,” he reminded me. “We are human beings, exactly like you people.”
“We don’t hate the American people,” he added. “They are pioneers. We want to be like them. Is that a crime?”
terça-feira, 1 de fevereiro de 2011
Embraer Legacy 600 Jet Involved in Brazil Midair Finally on U.S. Soil
Jet Involved in Brazil Midair Finally on U.S. Soil
The Embraer Legacy 600 involved in the midair with a Gol Transportes Aéreos Boeing 737 on Sept. 29, 2006, will arrive today at Cleveland (Ohio) Hopkins International Airport after a ferry flight from Eduardo Gomes International Airport in Manaus, Brazil. (See current FlightAware flight track.) The Legacy 600–now registered as N965LL–was recovered by a mobile repair team from Cleveland-based Constant Aviation, which was hired by the new owners of the Legacy to recover and repair the jet. Before arriving in Cleveland today, the Legacy flew from Manaus to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., yesterday, landing on U.S. soil at 7:23 p.m. Last month, it was flown from the military airbase in Cachimbo, where the twinjet made an emergency landing after the midair, to Manaus in northern Brazil.
The business jet had originally been purchased by charter/management firm ExcelAire of Ronkonkoma, N.Y., and was on its delivery flight from the Embraer factory in São José dos Campos when the collision occurred. According to Constant Aviation president Stephen Maiden, the insurance company declared the Legacy as a write-off and sold the jet as-is to the new owner, whom Constant would not identify. FAA records list the new owner as Cloudscape of Wilmington, Del.
In early 2007, a team from Constant Aviation visited Brazil to examine the Legacy on behalf of the insurance provider, along with personnel from Embraer, and they conducted an initial analysis of the airplane. Later, another visit was made to conduct alignment checks of the airframe and determine whether it could fly again, Maiden said. The Legacy had a damaged left elevator and the left wing was missing its winglet. “Some structural repairs had to be done to get it in a position to where we could fly it,” Maiden said, “even on a ferry permit.” This included replacing the horizontal stabilizer before the Legacy left the airbase.
The humid jungle environment in Brazil was not kind to the airplane, which sat outside for a year-and-a-half after the accident, and all of its Honeywell avionics displays had to be replaced, he said. The fuel tanks were clean and the Rolls-Royce AE3007 engines had been preserved–although they hadn't been run, they were in good shape. “We did extensive boroscoping and testing to verify the validity of the engines,” he said. The airframe wasalso free of corrosion. “We had a team of 10 people,” he said, “and we spent three weeks doing testing and analyzing all the systems to make sure it was a safe airplane to put back in the air.”
After arriving in Cleveland later this morning, the Legacy will get a new wing and a heavy (48-month) inspection. The owner will have to decide whether to buy a new wing or a used serviceable wing, Maiden said. The engines will be sent to a Rolls-Royce-authorized service center for evaluation and any necessary repairs. “We'll inspect and repair all the systems,” he said, “and do a full evaluation of the interior. The airplane is relatively new, with only 20 flight hours. [We may] refurbish the interior.”
For Constant Aviation, which recovers airplanes from all over the world, the Legacy job was one of the company's most difficult, Maiden said. “With an airplane that was this notable, it created a lot of other issues legally, which [caused] a timing issue and restrictions on how we were going to work to get the airplane out of Brazil. It's one of the most challenging we've done.”
Maiden expects the Constant Aviation team to finish the repairs and refurbishment of the Legacy in about 90 days. “We do this type of work all the time,” he said. “Airplanes are damaged and repaired. The owner is buying a brand-new Legacy for a portion of the cost, as long as it is successfully recovered and repaired. The intent is to have an airworthy airplane in like-new status.”
As a Legacy service center, Constant Aviation does about 70 percent of Legacy scheduled maintenance in the U.S., according to Maiden, and 99 percent of 48-month inspections for U.S.-registered Legacys. “We are the resident expert in that field,” he said. “We're the only MRO ever to replace a nose and wing on a Legacy or Embraer 135. That drove the insurance company to reach out to us. We jumped at the opportunity to evaluate it and work to bring this airplane back to the U.S.”
The business jet had originally been purchased by charter/management firm ExcelAire of Ronkonkoma, N.Y., and was on its delivery flight from the Embraer factory in São José dos Campos when the collision occurred. According to Constant Aviation president Stephen Maiden, the insurance company declared the Legacy as a write-off and sold the jet as-is to the new owner, whom Constant would not identify. FAA records list the new owner as Cloudscape of Wilmington, Del.
In early 2007, a team from Constant Aviation visited Brazil to examine the Legacy on behalf of the insurance provider, along with personnel from Embraer, and they conducted an initial analysis of the airplane. Later, another visit was made to conduct alignment checks of the airframe and determine whether it could fly again, Maiden said. The Legacy had a damaged left elevator and the left wing was missing its winglet. “Some structural repairs had to be done to get it in a position to where we could fly it,” Maiden said, “even on a ferry permit.” This included replacing the horizontal stabilizer before the Legacy left the airbase.
The humid jungle environment in Brazil was not kind to the airplane, which sat outside for a year-and-a-half after the accident, and all of its Honeywell avionics displays had to be replaced, he said. The fuel tanks were clean and the Rolls-Royce AE3007 engines had been preserved–although they hadn't been run, they were in good shape. “We did extensive boroscoping and testing to verify the validity of the engines,” he said. The airframe wasalso free of corrosion. “We had a team of 10 people,” he said, “and we spent three weeks doing testing and analyzing all the systems to make sure it was a safe airplane to put back in the air.”
After arriving in Cleveland later this morning, the Legacy will get a new wing and a heavy (48-month) inspection. The owner will have to decide whether to buy a new wing or a used serviceable wing, Maiden said. The engines will be sent to a Rolls-Royce-authorized service center for evaluation and any necessary repairs. “We'll inspect and repair all the systems,” he said, “and do a full evaluation of the interior. The airplane is relatively new, with only 20 flight hours. [We may] refurbish the interior.”
For Constant Aviation, which recovers airplanes from all over the world, the Legacy job was one of the company's most difficult, Maiden said. “With an airplane that was this notable, it created a lot of other issues legally, which [caused] a timing issue and restrictions on how we were going to work to get the airplane out of Brazil. It's one of the most challenging we've done.”
Maiden expects the Constant Aviation team to finish the repairs and refurbishment of the Legacy in about 90 days. “We do this type of work all the time,” he said. “Airplanes are damaged and repaired. The owner is buying a brand-new Legacy for a portion of the cost, as long as it is successfully recovered and repaired. The intent is to have an airworthy airplane in like-new status.”
As a Legacy service center, Constant Aviation does about 70 percent of Legacy scheduled maintenance in the U.S., according to Maiden, and 99 percent of 48-month inspections for U.S.-registered Legacys. “We are the resident expert in that field,” he said. “We're the only MRO ever to replace a nose and wing on a Legacy or Embraer 135. That drove the insurance company to reach out to us. We jumped at the opportunity to evaluate it and work to bring this airplane back to the U.S.”
segunda-feira, 24 de janeiro de 2011
Sandy Pope speaks out on mud-slinging by the Hoffa campaign for Teamster general president and what it will take to organize the nonunion competition
Taking on the Nonunion Competition
Question: The Hoffa Campaign says Local 805 is losing money and that you can’t be trusted with our union’s finances.
Local 805 has a strong financial foundation. We’ve put our reserves to work taking on the nonunion competition.
The Hoffa Campaign has made a big deal of attacking Local 805 because we have less money in the bank. I will never apologize for putting members’ dues money to work protecting their jobs and their contracts.
Q: How does one local take on the nonunion competition?
It’s tough. The lack of leadership and support from the IBT on organizing is a big reason I’m running for General President. Most local unions don’t have the resources or the reach to succeed on their own.
At Local 805, we’ve still made organizing a priority. I cut my salary. I make $40,000 less than the Local 805 President did more than ten years ago. We hired full-time organizing staff and launched campaigns to take on the nonunion competition.
We’ve organized around a dozen companies—and taken on major targets like FreshDirect, a grocery warehouse that employs more than a 1,000 nonunion workers in the heart of New York City.
When nonunion companies have threatened to take our work, we’ve leafleted customers and protected Teamster jobs.
We even took on Mayor Bloomberg when he tried to kill union jobs by shutting down the Brooklyn Piers. We teamed up with community groups—and took to the streets.
People told me I was crazy. They said you can’t beat City Hall. We proved them wrong.
Not many unions have even dared to take on Mayor Bloomberg. We did and we won. Teamsters are working on those piers today because we took on that fight.
Q: The Hoffa Campaign says your local has lost membership….
A few. Since I’ve been President, the local’s membership has been steady at around 1,200 members. I have never had a company decertify. But we have lost members when electronics companies and tobacco distributors have closed.
Under Hoffa, our International Union has lost a quarter of a million members—and added 140,000 through mergers.
I’m not interested in finger-pointing. We need less of that—and more organizing. The biggest threat to our union’s membership is the nonunion competition.
Q: What can the International Union do differently to boost Teamster organizing?
First, we’ve got to make it a priority. The International Union needs long-term, nationally coordinated campaigns to target the nonunion competition in our core industries—including freight and FedEx.
The concessions we’re seeing, especially in freight but in other industries too, they are the direct result of a decade of failure to make organizing in our core industries a priority.
As an International Union representative, I negotiated a neutrality agreement with the biggest nonunion grocery company in the Northeast, C&S.
We protected thousands of grocery workers under good contracts and good Teamster benefits. Hoffa let that agreement expire. Now C&S is eliminating Teamster warehouse distribution jobs up and down the East Coast.
If we’re going to protect our contracts, our jobs and our benefits, we’ve got to get serious about organizing.
Q: What about organizing at the local union level?
The International has got to do more to help. Hoffa doubled the International Union’s income when he raised members’ dues. He found the money to raise his own pay to more than $350,000. But he can’t find the money to help local unions organize.
As General President, I will expand funding to local unions to help finance strategic campaigns to organize the nonunion competition at the local union level.
That goes for any local. We’ve got to take the politics out of this. If you’ve got a plan to organize the nonunion competition, you’ll get resources to help you do it.
We’ve got to get smarter and more aggressive—and we’ve got to work together. I want to bring local unions together who operate in the same market to organize the nonunion competitors that are undercutting us.
Local unions in the Northeast have started to coordinate on our own to take on nonunion warehouse distribution employers. But locals unions can’t be abandoned to do this by ourselves. We need backing and resources from the International Union.
quinta-feira, 13 de janeiro de 2011
Sarah Palin shows her true colors -- yellow -- and takes no blame at all for her gunsight map -- refuses to dial down rhetoric in aftermath of shooting tragedy in Tucson, Arizona
Palin: Blaming me for Tucson shootings is 'blood libel'
Right-wing firebrand goes on offensive as Obama leads national mourning for victims
On a day set aside for healing and prayer in the wake of last weekend's mass shooting in Tucson, all vestiges of a political armistice were shattered when Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor, issued a video message accusing her critics of committing "blood libel" against her.
In a nearly eight-minute video posted on Facebook that veered between defiant and defensive, the Tea Party figurehead broke her days-long silence to answer allegations that her own rhetoric and the passions stirred by the Tea Party had somehow propelled the man accused of Saturday's carnage that left six dead and critically wounded congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
Her video was posted just hours before President Barack Obama, in the role of healer-in-chief was to address a memorial event at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and John Boehner, the new House Speaker, opened a day of debate and reflection on the floor of the House of Representatives as Ms Palin's video played.
Ms Palin, [once] seen as a likely Republican candidate for president in 2012, had been under pressure to respond publicly to the criticisms piled on her since the Tucson shooting, notably linked to a map posted by her political action committee last year that used cross-hair symbols to identify districts with vulnerable Democrat incumbents before last year's midterm elections. One was Ms Gifford's.
Her statement may have had a greater impact than she expected because of her citing "blood libel," a phrase associated with the centuries-old slander of Jews that they used the blood of Christian children in their rituals and one used as a pretext for anti-Semitic persecution. Some Jewish leaders objected to her using the phrase. Ms Giffords, still in intensive care, is Jewish.
In her video, shot before a stone fireplace and an American flag, Ms Palin rejected the case for drawing a link between the attempted assassination of Representative Giffords and the heated rhetoric of political debate in last year's campaigns. She had listened to commentary on the killings, she said, "at first puzzled, then with concern and now with sadness to the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportion blame for this terrible event... Within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.
"There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal," Ms Palin went on. "And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when was it less heated? Back in those 'calm days' when political figures literally settled their differences with duelling pistols?" [nice of her to compare the 1800s with the 21st century]
Violent acts, she went on, should be blamed on the perpetrators only. "They begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of the state, not with those who listen to talk radio, not with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle [huh, oh, I think she just said it was ok to put gun sights on maps], not with law-abiding citizens who respectably exercise their First Amendment rights at campaign rallies."
While the fairness of pointing a finger at Ms Palin will be fiercely debated, her standing may already have suffered serious damage, possibly not helped by a statement that seemed more focused on her than on the dead and 14 wounded victims of the assault. "Instead of dialling down the rhetoric at this difficult moment, Sarah Palin chose to accuse others trying to sort out the meaning of this tragedy of somehow engaging in a 'blood libel' against her and others," David Harris, president of the National Jewish Democratic Association said of the governor's video. "This is, of course, a particularly heinous term for American Jews."
Mr Obama was expected last night to say nothing in his speech that could be interpreted as partisan. His challenge was to make a speech that will be remembered as uplifting and inspiring at a time of tragedy. The address is inevitably going to be compared to the widely praised words of Bill Clinton in 1995 after the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma that claimed 168 lives, including 19 children under six, and injured more than 680 people.
Mr Obama's predecessor, George W Bush, faced a similar challenge in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks, when he stood in the rubble of New York's World Trade Center, speaking through a bullhorn.
sexta-feira, 7 de janeiro de 2011
quinta-feira, 9 de dezembro de 2010
Nature editorial: Give up the ghosts
Give up the ghosts
- Nature
- 468,
- 732
- (09 December 2010
- doi: 10.1038/468732a; p
- ublished online
Editorial
The spectral fingerprints of a big drug company have once again been found all over academic publications. Documents released last week by a watchdog group based in Washington, DC, raise concerns about the role of writers paid by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in works attributed to psychiatric researchers at a number of US institutions. They add to the drumbeat of allegations in recent years indicating that such ghostwriting — in which articles contain substantial portions written by someone who is not listed as an author — is endemic in the biomedical literature.
The documents were made available as a result of litigation over GSK's antidepressant Paxil (paroxetine) and were pounced on by the Project on Government Oversight, which raised concerns about authorship of a research article, journal editorial and textbook.
The researchers did acknowledge the alleged ghostwriters of the textbook and the editorial in notes, but only for “editorial support.” For the journal article, which appeared in a supplement to Psychopharmacology Bulletin, GSK is thanked for an “unrestricted educational grant.” But the original front page of the manuscript — which the academic author is instructed to remove before submission to the journal — declares that it was prepared by writers from Scientific Therapeutics Information, a company based in Springfield, New Jersey, hired by GSK. The article and textbook discuss the uses of Paxil. The editorial, in Biological Psychiatry, gives an overview of depression as a major and growing public-health problem — which certainly does no harm to a company aggressively marketing an antidepressant.
The academic authors and the American Psychiatric Association, which published the textbook, have strongly denied that the pharmaceutical giant influenced its content. So, too, have the authors of the editorial and the journal article. GSK shareholders, then, may wonder what the company got for its money. The issue here is not that industry-financed experts cannot write useful and unbiased reports, but that their role must be declared in full. It is for readers, not authors, to conclude that there is no conflict of interest.
All the academic authors involved in this case have been recipients of US National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding; all but one still are. The NIH may argue, rightly, that the ghostwritten publications did not use its money. It will also note, correctly, that this in an issue that demands far broader action. Both are beside the point. Money is fungible, and rarely do the studies and intellectual output of senior researchers divide neatly into industry-funded and taxpayer-funded work. If its grantees are not playing by the rules, the NIH is tarred and public trust is damaged. So, how clear are the rules on ghostwriting? A study last year found that just 10 out of 50 top US academic medical centres had explicit, web-accessible policies that prohibit the practice. Another three banned ghostwriting in practice without naming it as such (J. R. Lacasse and J. LeoPLoS Med. 7, e1000230; 2010).
Discussing the issue of ghostwriting a year ago, Francis Collins, the NIH director, said publicly that he was “shocked” that “people would allow their names to be used on articles they did not write, that were written for them, particularly by companies that have something to gain by the way the data is presented.” Many will share that shock, but, unlike Collins, few are in a position to do something about it. The agency is “considering how best to address and ensure” greater transparency and accountability as its grantees develop and author articles, Sally Rockey, NIH chief of extramural research, told Nature in an e-mail last week.
A good start would be for the NIH to require all institutions that take its funds to articulate, publicize and vigorously enforce a clear ban on ghostwriting. Other funders should follow suit. Without such a clear signal, and the willingness to give a ban teeth, this troubling ghost will linger at the feast.
segunda-feira, 22 de novembro de 2010
terça-feira, 16 de novembro de 2010
What In The World Is Going On Inside Bank Of America?
What In The World Is Going On Inside Bank Of America?
by Dan Froomkin, Huffington Post, November 8, 2010
WASHINGTON -- You could do a lot worse things with your time than read every word of what William K. Black and L. Randall Wray have written for the Huffington Post in the last two weeks -- even though it would take a while.
Black and Wray both teach economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Black, himself a regulator during the S&L scandal of the 1980s, has emerged as one of the most blistering critics of the Obama administration's limp response to the mortgage and foreclosure crisis. For an introduction, read my article on Black and his list of nine stories the press is underreporting - most of them involving fraud, fraud and more fraud.
In their first piece, back on Oct. 22, Black and Wray described how the ongoing foreclosure fraud epidemic is the work of precisely the same unrepentant bank officers whose fraudulent mortgage schemes crashed the financial system in the first place. They called on the FDIC to put some of the nation's biggest banks into receivership, in order to clean house. "Foreclose on the foreclosure fraudsters," they wrote -- and start with the worst: Bank of America.
I wrote a news story about their piece, I thought it was so important.
In part two, they called for a foreclosure moratorium, and explained why the guilt gets greater the higher you go in the mortgage fraud food chain - not the other way around.
Black, writing alone, also corrected President Obama's assertion during his interview with Jon Stewart, that chief economic adviser Larry Summers had done a "heckuva job." Summers did not resolve the financial crisis, Black wrote, he just papered over the problem. In another solo effort, Black warned that papering over the problem will actually increase the total cost of the crisis in the long run, and he concluded that "the administration's banking policies have attained the terrible trifecta: terrible economics, terrible ethics, and terrible politics."
After Bank of America executive Rebecca Mairone posted a largely nonresponsive rejoinder to Black and Wray's call for her bank's dissolution, the professors took to their keyboards again and wrote about how "[t]he bank's response primarily criticizes its borrowers as deadbeats, yet the data it provides support points we have made in our prior posts."
In her defense of BofA, Mairone noted that most of the bank's problem loans were made by Countrywide Financial, which Bank of America acquired in January 2008 -- well after the toxicity of its mortgage holdings had made the company and its practices notorious. Mairone casts the action as a heroic one, staving off a failure that "would have been devastating to the economy, the markets, and millions of homeowners." But Black and Wray argue that putting Countrywide into receivership would have been a much better option: "A receiver would have fired Countrywide's fraudulent senior leaders. Bank of America, by contrast, put them in leadership roles in major operations, including foreclosures, where they could commit continuing frauds." And Bank of America bragged at the time of having had more than 60 people doing "due diligence" on Countrywide before the acquisition. So they knew what they were getting into; or at least they should have known.
In the second part of their response to Mairone, Black and Wray called on Bank of America to come clean. And in that post, they raise some fascinating questions that all of us should be asking. Among them:
- How did you determine the losses in Countrywide's assets?
- How large were the market value losses at that time?
- How large are the market value losses now?
- Which members of the due diligence team were assigned to determine the incidence of fraud in various loan categories? What did they find?
- How large a sample of subprime and liar's loans did BofA's due diligence team review?
- What likely mortgage fraud incidence did BofA's due diligence team discover?
- What did they report to BofA with regard to fraud incidence?
- What changes in lending and personnel did BofA implement in response to these findings?
- What actions did BofA take in response to finding the incidence of mortgage and accounting/securities fraud?
Ambac Assurance sued Bank of America in September, saying Countrywide had fraudulently induced Ambac to insure bonds backed by loans that they knew had been improperly made. This came after Ambac's review of the underlying loans. Black and Wray ask:
- Ambac reviewed Bank of America's assets and reported a 97 percent rate of false reps and warranties. Has Bank of America done such a review?
- If so, who conducted the review, and what rate of false reps and warranties did they find?
- Does Bank of America agree that liar's loans have extremely high fraud rates?
- Does Bank of America agree that an honest secured lender would never seek to inflate an appraisal?
- Does Bank of America agree that a competent, honest secured lender would prevent others from frequently inflating appraised values?
- Does Bank of America agree that appropriate home mortgage underwriting can minimize adverse selection and produce a positive expected value to home lending?
- How many fraudulent mortgage loans made by Countrywide has Bank of America identified?
- What is Bank of America's procedure when it finds suspicious evidence of a fraudulent loan?
- How many fraudulent mortgage loans, by year, since 2000, have Countrywide and Bank of America identified.
- Has Bank of America reviewed Countrywide's nonprime loans for fraud incidence, fraud losses, and the incidence of lender fraud and fraud by the lender's agents? Please provide the results.
- What has Bank of America done to remedy the injuries that borrowers suffered through loan or foreclosure fraud by them or Countrywide?
- Does Bank of America agree that Countrywide's nonprime lending was often conducted in a manner that was unsafe and unsound?
- Does Bank of America agree that Countrywide's record keeping was not adequate and required substantial improvement?
- At current market value of its assets, just how insolvent is Bank of America?
- How much can the bank sell its toxic assets for in today's market?
- What is the value of mortgages and mortgage backed securities held by Bank of America for which it has no clear title?
- How many mortgage-backed securities has the bank sold to investors for which it does not hold the notes that are required?
- What is the bank's current estimate of losses it will suffer in court due to lawsuits by investors?
- The top four banks are holding $434 billion in second liens (good only if the first lien -- the mortgage -- is paid), and carrying these on their books at 90% of face value. What are Bank of America's reasonably expected losses on second liens against properties that are delinquent, in foreclosure, or likely to go into foreclosure?
As for the ongoing foreclosure crisis, in which it has become apparent that banks are forcing people out of their homes despite the absence of original, "wet ink" documentation, Mairone blamed the foreclosures on deadbeat borrowers, many of them unemployed, a third of whom no longer occupied their homes. Black and Wray asked:
- Does Bank of America hold the "wet ink" notes on any of these homes, as required by 45 states?
- How many of the mortgages were fraudulent from the very beginning: low docs, no docs, liar loans, NINJA's (all specialties of Countrywide)?
- How many homes are now vacant because the homeowners were illegally removed from them?
- How many of these homeowners were unemployed or otherwise financially distressed when the loans were originally made?
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