Joao Rei's random thoughts

The trouble with the Fed’s secret bailout - Federal Reserve - Salon…

The trouble with the Fed’s secret bailout The Federal Reserve has come clean about its covert actions. Now it’s time to look at the worrisome consequences The U.S. Federal Reserve Building in Washington The Federal Reserve has finally came clean. It now admits it bailed out Bear Stearns – taking on tens of billions of dollars of the – in order to smooth Bear Stearns’ takeover by JPMorgan Chase. The secret Fed bailout came months before Congress authorized the government to spend up to $700 billion of taxpayer dollars bailing out the banks, even months before Lehman Brothers collapsed. The Fed also took on billions of dollars worth of AIG securities, also before the official government-sanctioned bailout. The losses from those deals still total tens of billions, and taxpayers are ultimately on the hook. But the public never knew. There was no congressional oversight. It was all done behind closed doors. And the New York Fed – then run by Tim Geithner – was very much in the center of the action. First, only Congress is supposed to risk taxpayer dollars. The Fed is not part of the legislative branch. Its secret deals, announced almost two years after they were done, violate the …

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Centuries-Old Shipwrecks Found in Baltic Sea

A gas company building an underwater pipeline stumbled upon several wrecks, some dating back 800 years. The wheel of a 18th or 19th century sailing ship appears in the waters of the Baltic Sea. AP Photo/Nord Stream A dozen centuries-old shipwrecks dating from medieval times to the world wars have been found. The ships were very well preserved because ship worms that eat wooden wrecks don’t live in the Baltic Sea. Thousands of similar wrecks have previously been found in the Baltic Sea. A dozen centuries-old shipwrecks – some of them unusually well-preserved – have been found in the Baltic Sea by a gas company building an underwater pipeline between Russia and Germany. The oldest wreck probably dates back to medieval times and could be up to 800 years old, while the others are likely from the 17th to 19th centuries, Peter Norman of Sweden’s National Heritage Board said Tuesday. “They could be interesting, but we have only seen pictures of their exterior. Many of them are considered to be fully intact. They look very well-preserved,” Norman told The Associated Press. Thousands of wrecks – from medieval ships to warships sunk during the world wars of the 20th century – have been f…

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Between Germany and Greece, a Chorus of Sturm, Drang and Pathos

By NICHOLAS KULISH In recent days, novel solutions to the Greek debt crisis have surfaced, though perhaps not the constructive ones European leaders desperate to hold their struggling union together were hoping to hear. A pair of German politicians, incensed at the thought of paying for a bailout of the profligates to the south, suggested Thursday that the Greeks consider plugging the large hole in their budget by selling off some of their lovely islands. Several Greek politicians and commentators have argued that the Germans should pony up reparations for the death and destruction wrought by the Nazis during World War II. These would not be the coolest heads prevailing. In times of economic growth and rising prosperity, the continent’s shared and all-too-often unhappy history was a lot easier to paper over. Now that there’s room for blame and recrimination, the history suddenly matters. Germans, still smarting from the replacement of their beloved Deutsche mark with the euro, harbor deep suspicions that European unity boils down to them perpetually handing out their hard-earned money, an inerasable debt for the horrors of Nazism. The German news magazine Focus recently summed up t…

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