FED Pressured Bank Chief Lewis to Buy Merrill Lynch

U.S. Pressured Bank to Buy Merrill Lynch, Executive Says – NYTimes.com
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By LOUISE STORY
Published: June 11, 2009

Kenneth D. Lewis, the chief executive of Bank of America, testified before a congressional committee on Thursday that he was pressured by the government late last year to purchase Merrill Lynch.

But, he said, without the government pressure, the bank still might have completed the deal.

“It’s hard for me to project what I ultimately would have done,” Mr. Lewis said when asked if he would have walked away from the Merrill Lynch purchase. “But, yes, we were strongly considering it.

The twists and turns of the Bank of America’ marriage to Merrill Lynch have attracted scrutiny since early this year when the government provided a second round of bailout money to help the bank absorb Merrill’s surprise losses.

The New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, has been investigating bonuses paid by Merrill and questions of whether Merrill’s losses should have been disclosed before the merger was closed. Shareholders, angry over the price the bank paid for Merrill, voted to strip Mr. Lewis of his chairman title in the spring, and regulators have pressured the bank to shake-up its board and management.

Bank Chief Tells of Pressure to Buy Merrill Lynch – NYTimes.com.

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The FED to Hire Lobbyist to Counter Congress on Banking Cartel’s Growing POWER

Fed Intends to Hire Lobbyist in Campaign to Buttress Its Image
Bloomberg.com By Robert Schmidt

June 5 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve intends to hire a veteran lobbyist as it seeks to counter skepticism in Congress about the central bank’s growing power over the U.S. financial system, people familiar with the matter said.

Linda Robertson currently handles government, community and public affairs at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and headed the Washington lobbying office of Enron Corp., the energy trading company that collapsed in 2002 after an accounting scandal. She was also an adviser to all three of the Clinton administration’s Treasury secretaries.

Robertson would help the Fed manage relations with lawmakers seeking greater oversight of a central bank that has used emergency powers to prevent Wall Street’s demise. While she wasn’t tied to Enron’s fraud, her association with the firm may raise questions, analysts said.

“Some members of Congress think there are votes in attacking the Fed” after it “unnecessarily and unwisely entangled monetary policy with fiscal policy,” said former St. Louis Fed President William Poole. “The Fed is going to have a tricky time of unwinding what has been done” and will need to “keep in touch with members of Congress more thoroughly,” said Poole, now senior fellow with the Cato Institute in Washington.

Robertson served under Treasury Secretaries Lawrence Summers, Robert Rubin and Lloyd Bentsen. She didn’t return calls seeking comment.

Fed Intends to Hire Lobbyist in Campaign to Buttress Its Image – Bloomberg.com.

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WHO Changing Pandemic Label?

WHO Tweaks Pandemic Label to Avoid Swine Flu Panic - Bloomberg.com
By Jason Gale and John Lauerman

June 3 (Bloomberg) — Swine flu, becoming entrenched in Australia and Chile, will prompt the World Health Organization to declare the first influenza pandemic in 41 years, said three people familiar with the agency’s plans.

Margaret Chan, the WHO’s director-general, will make the announcement sometime in the next 10 days, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deliberations are private. The agency, having spent the past five years alerting the world to the dangers of a pandemic, is now looking for a way to declare one without causing panic.

Chan has to navigate a delicate path between raising alarm about a virus that in most cases causes little more than a fever and a cough, and underestimating a bug that could kill millions. Moving to the top of WHO’s six-step pandemic scale may spur some countries to restrict travel, ban public events and adopt other measures that aren’t needed for mild flu, worsening the deepest economic slump since the Great Depression.

“The formalization of an influenza pandemic does have cascading consequences,” said Michael Leavitt, former U.S. health and human services secretary. “The decision ought not to be taken lightly,” Leavitt said in an interview. “The system of evaluating and triggering different levels of alert is still being refined at the WHO.”

Chan and colleagues spent 7 hours on June 1 consulting experts and public health officials from 23 countries on how to explain that swine flu is global, but not severe.

WHO Tweaks Pandemic Label to Avoid Swine Flu Panic (Update1) – Bloomberg.com.

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US Drones Eliminated Al-Qaeda Extremist along Pakistan-Afghanistan border

US drone strikes hit ‘high-value’ Al-Qaeda targets
DAWN.COM Monday, 01 Jun,

WASHINGTON: US missiles from unmanned drones have eliminated about half of 20 ‘high-value’ Al-Qaeda and other extremist targets along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, The Washington Post reported Monday.

Citing unnamed US military and intelligence officials, the newspaper said the strikes and Pakistan’s ongoing military offensive in the Swat Valley have unsettled Al-Qaeda and its relative invulnerability in Pakistani mountain sanctuaries.

The report did not identify who or what the ‘high-value’ targets were.

Although Al-Qaeda remains ‘a serious, potent threat,’ the paper quotes a US counterterrorism official as saying, ‘they’ve suffered some serious losses and seem to be feeling a heightened sense of anxiety, and that’s not a bad thing at all.’

DAWN.COM | World | US drone strikes hit high-value Al-Qaeda targets.

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Climate-change diasters kill 300,000 a year?

Climate-change diasters kill 300,000 a year
The Associated Press By MEERA SELVA

LONDON (AP) — Climate-change disasters kill around 300,000 people a year and cause about $125 billion in economic losses, mainly from agriculture, a think-tank led by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan reported Friday.

The Global Humanitarian Forum also estimated that 325 million people are seriously affected by climate change – a number it says will double by 2030, as more people are hit by natural disasters or suffer environmental degradation caused by climate change.

“Climate change is a silent human crisis,” Annan said in a statement. “Yet it is the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time.”

News from The Associated Press.

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U.A.W. Members Easily Ratify G.M. Contract Concessions

U.A.W. Members Easily Ratify G.M. Contract Concessions – NYTimes.com
By NICK BUNKLEY May 29, 2009

DETROIT — The United Automobile Workers union said Friday afternoon that hourly employees at General Motors had overwhelmingly ratified a cost-cutting deal that would help smooth the automaker’s path through bankruptcy.

The accord was approved with 74 percent voting in favor, the union said at a news conference.

Now, the focus turns to G.M.’s bondholders, who have until 5 p.m. Saturday to decide whether to accept a sweetened deal that swaps their bonds for a 10 percent stake in the restructured company and the potential to later buy an additional 15 percent. G.M. extended the offer Thursday, two days after the bondholders, which hold $27.2 billion in G.M. debt, widely rejected a previous proposal.

The approval of both deals will probably not be enough to stop G.M. from filing for bankruptcy, most likely on Monday, the restructuring deadline set by the Obama administration, but the deals would eliminate obstacles that could slow the reorganization.

The U.A.W. agreement cuts some retiree benefits, gives a union retiree health care fund up to 20 percent of the equity in the restructured G.M. and prevents the union from mounting a labor strike until at least September 2015.

U.A.W. Members Easily Ratify G.M. Contract Concessions – NYTimes.com.

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