PERTZ

Michelle Obama to receive $30,000 thank you from the President-Elect

Posted Dec 1st 2008 3:01PM by Meg Massie
Filed under: Jewelry

She loves her inexpensive outfits from the mall, but Michelle Obama will soon be sporting something much fancier than anything you'll find at J. Crew.

A spokesman for top Italian designer Giovanni Bosco has confirmed that President-Elect Barack Obama is looking to purchase a $30,000 Harmony ring made of rhodium and encrusted with diamonds as a thank you gift to his wife Michelle. We expect the future First Lady to receive the ring in time for her husband's January inauguration ceremony. The gift is a thank you for her support throughout the last two years of campaigning.

One of the world's rarest and most precious metals, only about 25 tons of rhodium are mined each year, setting the price at over $7,660 per ounce -- or about ten times the cost of gold.

Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede

BY JOE GOULD
DAILY NEWS WRITER

Updated Friday, November 28th 2008, 10:19 AM

Can you believe this?  Crazy people kill a guy just to save a few bucks on junk.

Anderson/News

A Wal-Mart store was the scene of chaos this morning.

A worker died after being trampled and a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart Friday morning, witnesses said.

The unidentified worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."

Nassau County Police are still investigating and would not confirm the witness accounts. The Medical Examiner will determine the cause of death. Police did say there were several injuries but weren't more specific.

Jessica Keyes was among the shoppers. She told the Daily News she saw a woman knocked down just a few feet from the dying worker.

"When the paramedics came, she said 'I'm pregnant,'" Keyes said.

Paramedics treated the woman inside the store and then, according to Keys, told the woman:

"There's nothing we can do. The baby is gone."

Before police shut down the store, eager shoppers streamed past emergency crews as they worked furiously to save the store clerk's life.

"They were working on him, but you could see he was dead, said Halcyon Alexander, 29. "People were still coming through."

Only a few stopped.

"They're savages," said shopper Kimberly Cribbs, 27. "It's sad. It's terrible."

Larry the man Burglars really hold in contempt Larry Adams is making your stuff more secure!

http://www.earthcam.com/usa/missouri/stlouis/kiener/

He has a host of relatives in exotic locations from Hawaii to Kenya, and during his run for the American presidency he discovered that he had an aunt living in Boston.

Now Barack Obama is being claimed by not one but as many as 8,000 Beduin tribesmen in northern Israel.

Although the spokesman for the lost tribe of Obama has yet to reveal the documentary evidence that he says he possesses to support his claim, people are flocking from across the region to pay their respects to the “Beduin Obama”, whose social standing has gone through the roof.

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“We knew about it years ago but we were afraid to talk about it because we didn’t want to influence the election,” Abdul Rahman Sheikh Abdullah, a 53-year-old local council member, told The Times in the small Beduin village of Bir al-Maksour in the Israeli region of Galilee. “We wrote a letter to him explaining the family connection.”

Mr Obama’s team have not responded to the letter so far but that has not dampened Sheikh Abdullah’s festivities.

He has been handing out sweets and huge dishes of baklava traditional honey-sweetened pastries to all and sundry, and plans to hold a large party next week at which he will slaughter a dozen goats to feed the village.

It was his 95-year-old mother who first spotted the connection, he says. Seeing the charismatic senator on television, she noted a striking resemblance to one of the African migrant workers who used to be employed by rich sheikhs in the fertile north of British Mandate Palestine in the 1930s.

The Africans would sometimes marry local Beduin girls and start families, though, like many migrant workers, would just as frequently return home after several years.

One of those men was a relative of Barack Obama’s Kenyan grandmother, Sheikh Abdullah maintains.

He estimates that his tribe extends to as many as 8,000 members, all of them loosely connected to the African-American senator for Illinois.

Sheikh Abdullah swears that he has papers and pictures to back up his claim but has promised his mother not to divulge them until he has presented them to Mr Obama, something he hopes will happen once his “relative” is in the White House.

“We want to send a delegation to congratulate him, and we know we’ll get an answer soon,” he grinned.

Sheikh Abdullah’s renown as the relative of the soon-to-be most powerful man on Earth has spread like wildfire among the Arab community of northern Israel, and especially among Beduins, a formerly semi-nomadic group of pastoralists corralled into townships by the modern state of Israel.

Two baby boys born into the sheikh’s large clan have even been named Obama.

“We knew he’d win,” the sheikh said, constantly interrupted by a barrage of phone calls from wellwishers and those hoping to cash in on his newfound wasta, an Arabic term denoting influence or clout. “We have always been a lucky family.

“We hope he’ll end all wars and intervene here to solve our problems in Israel. The Beduin are the people who suffer the most here,” he added while greeting a wellwisher from Ghajar, an Arab town divided between Israel and southern Lebanon, the bitter legacy of the Jewish state’s long occupation of southern Lebanon.

“We hope to God that Obama will solve the problem of Ghajar,” said Sheikh Issam al-Khalil, a leading citizen of the divided town, whose residents mostly speak Hebrew and Arabic but many of whom consider themselves as originally Syrian.

“Everyone is talking about [Sheikh Abdullah’s ties to Mr Obama] . . . They believe it. The sheikhs from all the villages are talking about it. There’s a whole delegation of Druze leaders coming from the Golan Heights to congratulate him.”

The history of the Middle East is littered with the stories of false messiahs and their brief followings. For the time being, Sheikh Abdullah is greeting a dozen respectful visitors a day, basking in the reflected glory of what would be not only the first African-American US President but the first one who could claim kinship with an entire clan of Beduins.

Skinny kid with funny name' who'll lead the free worldPERTZ OBSERVATION, THAT IS NOT RUSH LIMBAUGH WALKING UP BEHIND WITH A STICK....THAT VERBAL BEATING IS JUST STARTING.

Barack Obama with his grandad, Stanley Dunham, in Hawaii in the 1960s Picture:
  Published Date: 06 November 2008 By Stephen McGinty WHEN BARACK Obama announced on 10 February, 2007, that he was running for president, he did so standing in front of the Old State Capital building in Springfield, Illinois. It was a symbolic choice. For it was here that Abraham Lincoln delivered his historic speech in 1858, predicting civil war and insisting a "House Divided" could not stand. To many, the American Civil War finally came to a close on Tuesday night, when the state of Virginia, the first to break from the union in defence of their right to enslave a people on account of the colour of their skin, voted to elect a black man to the White House by judging the content of his character.

To Mr Obama, it was a childhood dream come true. As a young boy in third grade, he wrote an essay announcing his plan to be president, and he was already displaying signs of his formidable organisational skills by urging fellow pupils into straighter lines. As his teacher later explained: "He always wanted to be No 1…he wants to be in charge."

Yet first he had to gain control of himself and discover who he really was. Born on 4 August, 1961, in Hawaii, to a white mother, Ann Dunham, and a black father, Barack Obama snr, a Kenyan student at the University of Hawaii, young Barack never really knew his father, who would abandon his family two years later.

Instead, he was initially raised by his mother and her second husband, Lolo Soetoro, in Jakarta, Indonesia, where he spent three years and was taught to box by his stepfather.

His stepfather was also to teach him a valuable lesson in life. "Men take advantage of weakness in other men. They're just like countries in that way. The strong man takes the weak man's land," Mr Soetoro told young Barack, adding: "Which would you rather be?"

Barack later returned to live in Hawaii with his grandparents, Stanley Durham and his wife, Madelyn, whom Barack, who was known as Barry, always referred to as "Toot". He saw his father for the last time when he was 11 when Mr Obama snr returned to the island on a difficult visit during which he tried to re-exert his paternal rights by insisting his son turn off How the Grinch Stole Christmas and read a book instead. The son was glad when the father departed and would later write: "If my father hadn't exactly disappointed me, he remained something unknown, something volatile and vaguely threatening."

As a mixed-race child in a white home, the question of the colour of his skin barely entered his mind. Yet, as an exceptionally bright teenager, where exactly he fitted into society began to prey on his mind, and he started dabbling in drugs, using alcohol, marijuana and cocaine to, as he put it, "push questions of who I was out of my mind".

Stepping across educational establishments in Los Angeles and New York, his political conscience was finally ignited in Chicago, where he spend time as a community organiser charged with developing relations with black churches. After being raised in a religiously indifferent household, he also developed his spirituality, joining the Trinity United Church of Christ, whose pastor's inflammatory comments would later almost derail his presidential campaign.

His political star began to shine most brightly at Harvard Law School, which he entered in 1988. Within two years he was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, which led to national press and a book deal. It also led to an offer to clerk on the Supreme Court, which he turned down, explaining that the law was not his true path, but politics.

While at law school, he worked as an associate at the legal firm Sidley & Austin, where he met his wife, Michelle, with whom he would have two daughters. It was appropriate that their first date was to go see the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing, about a race riot in Brooklyn. A descendent of slaves, Michelle Robinson helped her future husband embrace his racial identity and nurtured his political ambitions, introducing him to the likes of Jesse Jackson.

Six years after his father died in a 1982 crash, Barack visited his Kenyan relations, and he would later write eloquently about his absent parent in Dreams of My Father, which was published in 1995, just a few months before his mother died of ovarian cancer.

After Harvard, Mr Obama returned to Chicago to practice civil rights law, representing victims of housing and job discrimination. He served in the Illinois state senate from 1996 to 2004.

His biggest break came when John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, invited him to speak at that year's party convention. Mr Obama electrified the audience with a speech about self reliance and high aspiration. He declared: "Through hard work and perseverance, my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, which stood as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before," he said. In a chorus that would become worn with repetition over the next few years, he insisted there were not "Republican" or "Democratic" states, "only the United States of America".

After a landslide US Senate election victory in Illinois a few months later, Mr Obama became a media darling and one of the most visible figures in Washington, with two best-selling books to his name.

As a senator, he established a firmly liberal voting record, but also worked with Republican colleagues on issues such as HIV/Aids-education and prevention. An early critic of the Iraq war, he spoke out against the prospect of war several months before the 2003 invasion.

He eventually clinched the 2008 Democratic nomination after a long and gruelling battle with former first lady Hillary Clinton. In the course of campaigning, Senator Obama broke all fundraising records by harnessing the internet to collect huge numbers of small donations, as well as larger sums from corporate donors.

He has demonstrated the ability to generate crowds of 100,000 or more to his rallies, and to create a buzz seldom seen in American politics.

Now comes the hard pa

---

St. Louis Firefighter, 52-year-old  Leonard  Riggins,  was off duty when he was murdered  trying to help a crash victim who turned out to be a carjacker. Riggins came upon the crash, while on his way home from work.

When Riggins approached the car he was shot once in the chest. The carjacker left Riggens dying in the street and took his vehicle which he later crashed as well.

The killer  then ran shooting back at St. Louis County Police.  They returned fire killing the killer before he could destroy more lives.

Leonard Riggins died from his chest wound at Christian NE Hospital.  Please leave your condolences if you wish.

 I Was on the air this morning when the call came in, Cody the dog is found in North St. Louis.  Cody was stolen with his Louisiana family's Chevy Suburban a week ago today from the cobblestone parking area below the Arch.       I nice fellow named Anthony found him near the Bissel Mansion site in North St. Louis last night.  Poor little Cody looked tired and hungry so Anthony brought him home and he gobbled up a whole can of Alpo.  The vets have looked at Cody and say he's ok despite some bites or cuts to his rear left leg.  His owners are coming back for Cody.  More to follow in a John Auble report later today.

 

 

 

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Joe Shoemaker, Communications Director for U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, issued the following statement on the death of the Durbin’s oldest daughter.

“Christine Ann Durbin, daughter of Senator Dick Durbin and Loretta Durbin, passed away today from complications relating to a congenital heart condition.

“In addition to her parents, she is survived by her husband Marty Johnson and son Alex; brother Paul (and wife Jamie); sister Jennifer (and husband Michael).

“For sixteen years she worked in the Emerging Markets Division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington.

“Chris Durbin, 40, fought a heroic lifelong battle with heart disease and our thoughts and prayers are with the entire Durbin family.

“Funeral arrangements are pending.”   Senator Durbin is up for re-election Tuesday

From The Times October 30, 2008Found in a rundown Boston estate: Barack Obama’s aunt Zeituni Onyango  

(Tom Pilston/The Times)

Barack Obama's Kenyan aunt, Zeituni Onyango, walks from her home at a housing project in Boston

Barack Obama has lived one version of the American Dream that has taken him to the steps of the White House. But a few miles from where the Democratic presidential candidate studied at Harvard, his Kenyan aunt and uncle, immigrants living in modest circumstances in Boston, have a contrasting American story.

Zeituni Onyango, the aunt so affectionately described in Mr Obama’s best-selling memoir Dreams from My Father, lives in a disabled-access flat on a rundown public housing estate in South Boston.

A second relative believed to be the long-lost “Uncle Omar” described in the book was beaten by armed robbers with a “sawed-off rifle” while working in a corner shop in the Dorchester area of the city. He was later evicted from his one-bedroom flat for failing to pay $2,324.20 (£1,488) arrears, according to the Boston Housing Court.

The US press has repeatedly rehearsed Mr Obama’s extraordinary odyssey, but the other side of the family’s American experience has only been revealed in parts. Just across town from where Mr Obama made history as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, some of his closest blood relatives have confronted the harshness of immigrant life in America.

In his book Mr Obama writes that “Uncle Omar” had gone missing after moving to Boston in the 1960s – a quarter-century before Mr Obama first visited his family in Kenya. Aunt Zeituni is now also living in Boston, and recently made a $260 campaign contribution to her nephew's presidential bid from a work address in the city.

Speaking outside her home in Flaherty Way, South Boston, on Tuesday, Ms Onyango, 56, confirmed she was the “Auntie Zeituni” in Mr Obama’s memoir. She declined to answer most other questions about her relationship with the presidential contender until after the November 4 election. “I can’t talk about it, I just pray for him, that’s all,” she said, adding: “After the 4th, I can talk to anyone.”

A photograph of Ms Onyango was later shown to George Hussein Onyango, Barack Obama’s half-brother in Nairobi, who confirmed that it was their aunt. George Onyango, 26, the youngest child of Barack Obama Sr, said that he had spent weekends with his Aunt Zeituni when he was growing up, and instantly recognised her.

George Onyango said that his aunt had left for the US about eight years ago but sent him e-mails. “She left to find work and I suppose she thought her life would be better there,” he said. “She was kind and caring.”

In his memoir Mr Obama describes the joy of meeting his father’s family during his first visit to Kenya in 1988. Aunt Zeituni, then a computer programmer at Kenya Breweries in Nairobi, is portrayed as a feisty woman who proclaims herself “the champion dancer”. Uncle Omar, by contrast, remains a mysterious figure who left for America and never came back. At one point in the book a half-sister tells Mr Obama that people “like our Uncle Omar, in Boston” move to the West.

“They promise to return after completing school. They say they’ll send for the family once they get settled. At first they write once a week. Then it’s just a month. Then they stop writing completely. No one sees them again.”

Aunt Zeituni and Uncle Omar are the children of Mr Obama’s grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama, by his third wife – the woman Mr Obama calls “Granny” because she raised his father. Mr Obama’s father, Barack Sr, was Onyango Obama’s son by his second wife, Akumu. That makes Zeituni and Omar a half-sister and half-brother of Mr Obama’s father, or Mr Obama’s half-aunt and half-uncle.

While Mr Obama was on his voyage of personal discovery in Africa, his aunt and uncle were engaged in their own journey in his homeland.

The Times could not determine their immigration status and an official at Boston City Hall said that Ms Onyango was a resident of Flaherty Way but not registered to vote on the electoral roll. However, that Ms Onyango made a contribution to the Obama campaign would indicate that she is a US citizen. Records at the Boston City Hall confirmed Zeituni Onyango’s birthdate as May 29, 1952.

It is not clear when Ms Onyango first came to the US. She said: “I have been coming to America ever since 1975. I always come and go.”

She is a frail woman who walks with the aid of a metal stick. Neighbours said that she lived alone in a ground-floor flat normally set aside for people facing physical hardship.

An Associated Press story about poor people buying lottery tickets at cheque-cashing shops, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 25, 2003, quotes a Zeituni Onyango whom it describes as out of work and without much money. “It's like when I feel luck might fall I do that, like manna might come from Heaven. That’s when I buy it,” she told AP.

A staff member at the Boston Housing Authority office, 50 yards from her house, said Ms Onynango had been a volunteer resident health advocate between December 2007 and August this year. She worked six hours a week for a small stipend. Records show she used the housing authority’s address to make her campaign contribution.

Ms Onyango is also listed on the internet as a volunteer with Experience Corps, a programme in which adults over 55 mentor children in their communities. The “former computer systems co-ordinator” tells the group’s online newsletter: “I felt that I should help the children in my community. I love people and enjoy interacting with them . . . Also, I was idle, and this was a chance to get involved.”

A public record search lists an “O. Onyango Obama”, born on June 3, 1944, at 24 Colgate Road whose name matches that of the “Uncle Omar” in Dreams from My Father.

Nelson Ochieng, a cousin of Mr Obama who lives in the Kenyan city of Kisumu, near the family village of Kogelo, said that Omar had changed his first name after moving to the US. “Before he went to America we all knew him as Omar, but he dropped that bit, changing it to Obama Onyango, because he said he preferred his African name,” he said. Gail Greenberger, the landlady who bought the four-storey brick block of flats at a foreclosure sale in 1994, knew her tenant, however, by the name Obama Onyango. “We used to call him ‘Oh-bummer!’. That is how I pronounced Obama in 2000,” she said.

Ms Greenberger said she inherited him with the building but was forced to evict him in 2000 for nonpayment of his rent of about $500 a month. “I remember him being decent but I think he lost his job. When they lose their job, they just stop paying rent. He did not even go to court. He bolted from the apartment,” she said. Records of Boston Housing Court show a “summary process” was executed against Mr Onyango on February 23, 2000, for unpaid rent of $2,324.70.

Mr Onyango was a business partner in a “convenience store” called the Wells Market at 1760 Dorchester Avenue, now a Hispanic bodega, or grocery. Records list him as the treasurer of the corporation, which was set up without his name in 1992 and involuntarily wound up in 2007 after failing to file annual reports since 1997.

In 1994 Obama Onyango was attacked in an armed robbery at the Wells Market, the Boston Herald reported. According to a police report, two masked black males entered the store around 9.30pm on June 7, 1994, and “did assault and beat the victim, and did rob victim of an undetermined amount of US currency. Suspects were believed to be armed with a ‘sawed-off’ rifle, and did flee the area on foot .”

Asked why the man believed to be “Uncle Omar” went by the name Obama Onyango, Zeituni Onyango said that Obama was his true name. “That is the name his father gave him,” she said. Dershaye Geresu, the Ethiopian-born president of Wells Market Inc, confirmed that Mr Onyango was a “cousin” of Mr Obama.

Lennard Tenende, whose wife Lucy was secretary to the shop, said: “I don’t know where he is. It seems as if he is getting a lot of inquiries, a lot of people trying to find him and find out about his relationship with Obama and he just doesn’t want to be found.” Mr Ochieng said that he believed Mr Onyango ran a chain of stores.

The Obama campaign was repeatedly approached for comment yesterday but had not responded at the time of going to press. It is not clear whether Mr Obama has been in touch with his African relatives living in the US, or even whether he is aware that they are on US soil.

In the preface to the 2004 reissue, he writes: “Most of the characters in this book remain a part of my life, albeit in varying degrees – a function of work, children, geography, and turns of fate.”

“What is family?” he reflects. “Is it just a genetic chain, parents and offspring, people like me?” Twenty years after he first met Aunt Zeituni, and first heard of the elusive Uncle Omar, the man likely to be the next president will have the opportunity for another family reunion, rather closer to home.

MAKE SURE BARRY DOESN'T GET LOST

How Barack Obama tells of his first meeting with his aunt

‘‘Barack!” I turned to see Auma [his Kenyan cousin] jumping up and down behind another guard who wasn’t letting her pass into the luggage area. I excused myself and rushed over to her, as we laughed and hugged as silly as the first time we’d met. A tall, brown-skinned woman was smiling beside us, and Auma turned and said: “Barack, this is our Auntie Zeituni. Our father’s sister.”

“Welcome home,” Zeituni said kissing me on both cheeks . . .

We went to drop Zeituni off at Kenya Breweries, a large, drab complex where she worked as a computer programmer. Stepping out of the car, she leaned over again to kiss me on the cheek, then wagged her finger at Auma. “You take good care of Barry now,” she said. “Make sure he doesn’t get lost again.”

Once we were back on the highway, I asked Auma what Zeituni had meant about my getting lost. Auma shrugged.

“It’s a common expression,” she said. “Usually it means that the person hasn’t seen you in a while. ‘You’ve been lost,’ they’ll say. Or, ‘Don’t get lost’. Sometimes it has a more serious meaning. Let’s say a husband or son moves to the city, or to the West, like our Uncle Omar in Boston. They promise to return after completing school. They say they’ll send for the family once they get settled. At first they write once a week. Then it’s just once a month. Then they stop writing completely. No one sees them again. They’ve been lost, you see. Even if people know where they are.”

Extracted from Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama, pp305-307 (Canongate)

Copyright 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.

 

http://www.armstrongteasdale.com/Attorney/Bio.php?HrID=
00133


Yesterday's bombing has many talking about personal safety Thursday night and Friday morning. The injured man is an attorney John L. Gillis Jr, 69. He has been a director since 2007. Mr. Gillis serves as senior counsel to the law firm of Armstrong Teasdale LLP. Mr. Gillis began his career as an associate with Armstrong Teasdale LLP in 1968 and served as partner with the firm from 1975 to December 2006. Mr. Gillis is a member of the American Bar Association, Missouri Bar Association and Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis. Mr. Gillis serves as a director of Siegel-Robert, Inc. He has been active in various civic and charitable organizations in the St. Louis, Missouri area, and currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors for Aquinas Institute of Theology A magazine once called him, "The Deal Maker" His photo is with  the Armstrong Teasdale lawfirm in downtown St. Louis . These are becoming desperate times  according to fire Chief Jim Silvernail in the county..
.Be Safe.

Congressional chefs stuff all kinds of pork into the $700 billion financial rescue bill passed by the Senate Wed night - including a tax break for makers of kids' wooden arrows!

It's a 451- page bill simmering with a  $1.7 billion stew of  tax breaks.

Here are some of the little piggys hidden in the 451-page  1.7 billion dollar bill:

* Manufacturers of kids' wooden arrows - $6 million.

* Puerto Rican and Virgin Islands rum producers - $192 million.

* Wool research.

* Auto-racing tracks - $128 million.

* Corporations operating in American Samoa - $33 million.

* Small- to medium-budget film and television productions - $10 million.

The Congressional Budget Office said the package of breaks - including obvious pork and some defensible tax-relief measures - will add about $112 billion to budget deficits over the next five years because the bill doesn't contain enough offsetting revenue hikes to keep the budget balanced.

  Tom Schatz, president of the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste says:

"There's always something that goes on at the end where the last dozen members are trying to get something for themselves or for a special interest rather than what might be good for the country," Schatz said.

Some of the other measures added to win approval include a $3.8 billion health-care provision that forces insurance companies to provide coverage for mental-health treatment equivalent to the coverage they provide for physical illness.

Other add-ons will increase individual tax credits and help shield more than 20 million Americans from the painful alternative minimum tax, and offer breaks for businesses that invest in alternative fuels.

Also, several federal income-tax breaks due to expire will now be extended through 2009.

  More fuel for the finger pointing crowd
 
White House warned 17 times about problems with Fannie and Freddie ET For many years the President and his Administration have not only warned of the systemic consequences of financial turmoil at a housing government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) but also put forward thoughtful plans to reduce the risk that either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac would encounter such difficulties.  President Bush publicly called for GSE reform 17 times in 2008 alone before Congress acted.  Unfortunately, these warnings went unheeded, as the President's repeated attempts to reform the supervision of these entities were thwarted by the legislative maneuvering of those who emphatically denied there were problems.   2001 April: The Administration's FY02 budget declares that the size of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is "a potential problem," because "financial trouble of a large GSE could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting Federally insured entities and economic activity." 2002 May: The President calls for the disclosure and corporate governance principles contained in his 10-point plan for corporate responsibility to apply to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  (OMB Prompt Letter to OFHEO, 5/29/02) 2003 January: Freddie Mac announces it has to restate financial results for the previous three years.   February: The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) releases a report explaining that "although investors perceive an implicit Federal guarantee of [GSE] obligations," "the government has provided no explicit legal backing for them."  As a consequence, unexpected problems at a GSE could immediately spread into financial sectors beyond the housing market.  ("Systemic Risk: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Role of OFHEO," OFHEO Report, 2/4/03)   September: Fannie Mae discloses SEC investigation and acknowledges OFHEO's review found earnings manipulations. September: Treasury Secretary John Snow testifies before the House Financial Services Committee to recommend that Congress enact "legislation to create a new Federal agency to regulate and supervise the financial activities of our housing-related government sponsored enterprises" and set prudent and appropriate minimum capital adequacy requirements. October: Fannie Mae discloses $1.2 billion accounting error. November:  Council of the Economic Advisers (CEA) Chairman Greg Mankiw explains that any "legislation to reform GSE regulation should empower the new regulator with sufficient strength and credibility to reduce systemic risk."  To reduce the potential for systemic instability, the regulator would have "broad authority to set both risk-based and minimum capital standards" and "receivership powers necessary to wind down the affairs of a troubled GSE."  (N. Gregory Mankiw, Remarks At The Conference Of State Bank Supervisors State Banking Summit And Leadership, 11/6/03) 2004 February: The President's FY05 Budget again highlights the risk posed by the explosive growth of the GSEs and their low levels of required capital, and called for creation of a new, world-class regulator:  "The Administration has determined that the safety and soundness regulators of the housing GSEs lack sufficient power and stature to meet their responsibilities, and therefore…should be replaced with a new strengthened regulator."  (2005 Budget Analytic Perspectives, pg. 83) February: CEA Chairman Mankiw cautions Congress to "not take [the financial market's] strength for granted."  Again, the call from the Administration was to reduce this risk by "ensuring that the housing GSEs are overseen by an effective regulator."  (N. Gregory Mankiw, Op-Ed, "Keeping Fannie And Freddie's House In Order," Financial Times, 2/24/04) June: Deputy Secretary of Treasury Samuel Bodman spotlights the risk posed by the GSEs and called for reform, saying "We do not have a world-class system of supervision of the housing government sponsored enterprises (GSEs), even though the importance of the housing financial system that the GSEs serve demands the best in supervision to ensure the long-term vitality of that system.  Therefore, the Administration has called for a new, first class, regulatory supervisor for the three housing GSEs:  Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banking System."  (Samuel Bodman, House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Testimony, 6/16/04) 2005 April: Treasury Secretary John Snow repeats his call for GSE reform, saying "Events that have transpired since I testified before this Committee in 2003 reinforce concerns over the systemic risks posed by the GSEs and further highlight the need for real GSE reform to ensure that our housing finance system remains a strong and vibrant source of funding for expanding homeownership opportunities in America… Half-measures will only exacerbate the risks to our financial system."  (Secretary John W. Snow, "Testimony Before The U.S. House Financial Services Committee," 4/13/05) 2007 July: Two Bear Stearns hedge funds invested in mortgage securities collapse. August: President Bush emphatically calls on Congress to pass a reform package for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying "first things first when it comes to those two institutions.  Congress needs to get them reformed, get them streamlined, get them focused, and then I will consider other options."  (President George W. Bush, Press Conference, The White House, 8/9/07) September: RealtyTrac announces foreclosure filings up 243,000 in August – up 115 percent from the year before.   September: Single-family existing home sales decreases 7.5 percent from the previous month – the lowest level in nine years.  Median sale price of existing homes fell six percent from the year before. December: President Bush again warns Congress of the need to pass legislation reforming GSEs, saying "These institutions provide liquidity in the mortgage market that benefits millions of homeowners, and it is vital they operate safely and operate soundly. So I've called on Congress to pass legislation that strengthens independent regulation of the GSEs – and ensures they focus on their important housing mission.  The GSE reform bill passed by the House earlier this year is a good start.  But the Senate has not acted.  And the United States Senate needs to pass this legislation soon."  (President George W. Bush, Discusses Housing, The White House, 12/6/07) 2008 January: Bank of America announces it will buy Countrywide. January: Citigroup announces mortgage portfolio lost $18.1 billion in value. February: Assistant Secretary David Nason reiterates the urgency of reforms, says "A new regulatory structure for the housing GSEs is essential if these entities are to continue to perform their public mission successfully."  (David Nason, Testimony On Reforming GSE Regulation, Senate Committee On Banking, Housing And Urban Affairs, 2/7/08) March: Bear Stearns announces it will sell itself to JPMorgan Chase.   March: President Bush calls on Congress to take action and "move forward with reforms on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They need to continue to modernize the FHA, as well as allow State housing agencies to issue tax-free bonds to homeowners to refinance their mortgages."  (President George W. Bush, Remarks To The Economic Club Of New York, New York, NY, 3/14/08) April: President Bush urges Congress to pass the much needed legislation and "modernize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. [There are] constructive things Congress can do that will encourage the housing market to correct quickly by … helping people stay in their homes."  (President George W. Bush, Meeting With Cabinet, the White House, 4/14/08) May: President Bush issues several pleas to Congress to pass legislation reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the situation deteriorates further.  

• "Americans are concerned about making their mortgage payments and keeping their homes. Yet Congress has failed to pass legislation I have repeatedly requested to modernize the Federal Housing Administration that will help more families stay in their homes, reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to ensure they focus on their housing mission, and allow State housing agencies to issue tax-free bonds to refinance sub-prime loans."   (President George W. Bush, Radio Address, 5/3/08)
• "[T]he government ought to be helping creditworthy people stay in their homes. And one way we can do that – and Congress is making progress on this – is the reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That reform will come with a strong, independent regulator."  (President George W. Bush, Meeting With The Secretary Of The Treasury, the White House, 5/19/08)
• Congress needs to pass legislation to modernize the Federal Housing Administration, reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to ensure they focus on their housing mission, and allow State housing agencies to issue tax-free bonds to refinance subprime loans."  (President George W. Bush, Radio Address, 5/31/08)

June: As foreclosure rates continued to rise in the first quarter, the President once again asks Congress to take the necessary measures to address this challenge, saying "we need to pass legislation to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."  (President George W. Bush, Remarks At Swearing In Ceremony For Secretary Of Housing And Urban Development, Washington, D.C., 6/6/08) July: Congress heeds the President's call for action and passes reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as it becomes clear that the institutions are failing.

the Federal Insurance created as a result of the great depression is not a bottomless Pit of wealth.   The FDIC has a secret list of 117 thousand banks that could fail.  The Fed will not release the list for fear of a run on banks. 

Besides 700 billion Bailout...The FDIC may need 400 Billion to insure your money.

 

How much longer can it continue?

 

 

This is one of the most popular Raps in Europe right now in relation to the Bing Bang experiement between Switzerland and France.

 

Excellent learning tool for the kids!