The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the market for credit-default swaps, according to Markit Group Ltd., the data provider majority-owned by Wall Street’s largest banks.

“Markit has been informed of an investigation by the Department of Justice into the credit-derivatives and related markets,” spokeswoman Teresa Chick said yesterday in an e- mailed statement in response to questions from Bloomberg News. She declined to comment on the nature of the investigation. “We will work with the Department to provide any information requested of us.”

The antitrust division sent civil investigative notices this month to banks that own London-based Markit to determine if they have unfair access to price information, according to three people familiar with the matter. U.S. lawmakers plan to regulate the $592 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market, which includes credit-default swaps blamed for helping worsen the biggest financial calamity since the Great Depression.

Source/Full Story: Bloomberg.com

Executives at Goldman Sachs sold almost $700m worth of stock following the collapse of Lehman Brothers last September, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Most of the sales occurred during the period in which the investment bank enjoyed the support of $10bn from the troubled asset relief programme.

The surge in selling among Goldman partners, at a time when the US government had thrown a lifeline to Wall Street, is likely to draw criticism from lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Having survived the crisis, the bank is expected to report strong second-quarter earnings on Tuesday on rebounding trading profits.

For the eight-month period for which figures are available, Goldman partners sold more than $691m in company stock, even as the firm expanded its public float from 395m to 503m shares in several capital raises.

For the comparable period between September 2007 and April 2008, when the average share price was substantially higher, Goldman partners sold about $438m in stock.

Source/Full Story: FT.com

The survival of CIT Group Inc, a key source of financing for thousands of small and medium-sized companies, became ensnared in disagreements between regulators in Washington on Monday.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, which insures deposits at U.S. banks, opposed an attempt by the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve to rescue the lender by granting it access to a government debt-guarantee program, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The prices of CIT shares and bonds tumbled as investors worried the commercial lender would not be able to meet its obligations to bondholders, perhaps pushing the company into bankruptcy and disrupting the financing on which its corporate customers depend.

CIT’s difficulties are “going to make funding more expensive all around,” said Dan Brown, chief economist for Euler Hermes, a unit of insurer Allianz SE.

The lender’s failure would be the biggest collapse of a financial firm since regulators seized Washington Mutual Inc in September.

It is not the first time in recent months that there has been a disagreement between the FDIC and the Treasury and Federal Reserve. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, who is well-liked by key congressional leaders, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner have battled over policy and turf, according to numerous reports.

Source/Full Story: Reuters

Parts of Britain are in the grip of a swine flu epidemic today after the first healthy child died of the virus that is sweeping the country.

Chloe Buckley, six, died within 48 hours of complaining of a sore throat and just a day before her seventh birthday.

She was not given the anti-viral drug Tamiflu after her doctor apparently misdiagnosed her illness as tonsillitis.

It was also announced yesterday that Dr Michael Day, a 64-year-old GP who had been treating swine flu victims, had died after contracting the virus.

Both the little girl and the doctor are believed to have been perfectly healthy before succumbing to swine flu.

Three people with no previous health problems have now died of the illness out of a total of 17 deaths across Britain.

Experts have moved to reassure the public that swine flu is no more contagious than the normal seasonal flu, and for most of those who catch it, the illness will be mild.

‘The vast majority of people will recover quickly by taking paracetamol or ibuprofen, and drinking plenty of fluids,’ said Dr Laurence Buckman, chairman of the BMA’s GP committee.

Source/Full Story: Mail Online

U.S. small businesses, already facing the toughest credit conditions since the 1980s, may soon find things are about to get tougher.

Concerns over the future of CIT Corp (CIT.N) — a major lender to small businesses — which provides capital in situations where many commercial banks fear to tread, makes small business advocates wary about the next few months.

Since small business is typically a major driver of the U.S. economy, any barrier to this sector’s recovery could mean a longer, slower U.S. economic revival, and could limit the effectiveness of the government’s stimulus dollars.

CIT has tried various capital-raising plans, including growing its retail bank and selling assets and stock, to pay off maturing debt and avoid further ratings downgrades.

CIT said it was talking to the U.S. government to gain access to funding, but that there was no guarantee the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp would approve its application to join the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program. That has exacerbated a liquidity crunch and led CIT To explore a possible bankruptcy filing, The Wall Street Journal said.

“The CIT crisis takes a lending source that’s been relatively active in a very tight credit market and eliminates one more source of capital,” said Ken Gaebler, president of Gaebler Ventures LLC, a consultancy that helps entrepreneurs raise capital and acts as a business incubator.

CIT’s failure, if it happens, would pull existing lines of credit, forcing creditors to seek alternative funding.

Source/Full Story: Reuters

The worldwide supply of a pandemic influenza vaccine will take twice as long to manufacture and countries could have barely half of what they need for the fall’s flu season if current production problems persist, the World Health Organization revealed Monday.

Canadian health authorities admitted that not everyone will receive the vaccine at the start of the flu season, as they scrambled to prioritize which groups would move to the head of the queue. Pharmaceutical manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline Inc. is under contract to produce enough vaccine for all Canadians who wish to receive it, but it’s unclear how quickly the vaccine will be rolled out and even if most will be vaccinated in the event the virus returns with a vengeance this fall.

Still, Canada and other affluent countries are better off having lined up manufacturers and purchased the bulk of the vaccine. The WHO urged wealthier nations to hand over vital pandemic influenza vaccines to poorer nations – a tall order in the face of dwindling supplies.

The federal government said it is considering the WHO’s request, but health authorities stressed that Canadians would get first priority.

“ The vaccines may not come all at once and we can’t vaccinate everybody at the same time ”— Theresa Tam, Public Health Agency of Canada

Fear of a limited supply was sparked Monday after the WHO revealed that the race to produce an H1N1 vaccine has achieved “poor” results because the new virus strain is not growing fast enough in the eggs used as a mainstay of flu vaccine production. Manufacturers report that the swine flu strains being used are barely producing half as much yield to make vaccines as the seasonal flu virus. If the problem persists, the vaccine wouldn’t be immediately available for everyone.

Source/Full Story: The Globe and Mail

The new H1N1 influenza virus bears a disturbing resemblance to the virus strain that caused the 1918 flu pandemic, with a greater ability to infect the lungs than common seasonal flu viruses, researchers reported on Monday.

Tests in several animals confirmed other studies that have shown the new swine flu strain can spread beyond the upper respiratory tract to go deep into the lungs — making it more likely to cause pneumonia, the international team said.

In addition, they found that people who survived the 1918 pandemic seem to have extra immune protection against the virus, again confirming the work of other researchers.

“When we conducted the experiments in ferrets and monkeys, the seasonal virus did not replicate in the lungs,” said Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, who led the study.

The H1N1 virus replicates significantly better in the lungs.”

Source/Full Story: msnbc.com

The U.S. Federal Reserve on Thursday launched a robust defense of its independence and warned that efforts in Congress to put monetary policy under political sway would hurt the economy.

Fed Vice Chairman Donald Kohn said opening up some of the U.S. central bank’s most sensitive decisions to political scrutiny could result in higher long-term interest rates and hurt the United States’ credit rating. Kohn was speaking before a Congressional panel where he was seeking to beat back a proposal that would open policy decisions by the U.S. central bank to audits by a federal watchdog agency.

“Any substantial erosion of the Federal Reserve’s monetary independence likely would lead to higher long-term interest rates as investors begin to fear future inflation,” he said in testimony prepared for delivery to a House of Representatives Financial Services subcommittee.

…

Public anger over last year’s financial crisis and Fed-backed bailouts of investment bank Bear Stearns and insurer American International Group has created a popular backlash that could gain momentum in Congress.

A bill put forward by Representative Ron Paul, a Texas Republican, would expose the Fed’s decisions on monetary policy and emergency lending to audits by the Government Accountability Office. It has won support from a majority in the House of Representatives.

The GAO is currently prohibited from auditing these areas. Kohn said removing this exclusion would be highly detrimental and could lead investors to worry politics — not economics — would guide the Fed’s decisions.

“The Federal Reserve strongly believes that removing the statutory limits on GAO audits of monetary policy matters would be contrary to the public interest by tending to undermine the independence and efficacy of monetary policy,” he said.

He also said it could “cast a chill” on monetary policy deliberations by making officials nervous ideas they throw around behind closed doors could become public.

Paul’s bill has 250 co-sponsors, including 78 Democrats. But it has not been promoted by the Democratic majority leadership in the House, where it has yet to face even a committee-level vote.

If it were to emerge from the House, to become law it would also need to clear the Senate, where support may be more scarce.

Kohn warned that congressional meddling in the Fed’s affairs could exact a high cost.

Source/Full Story: Reuters

A swine flu vaccine will be fast-tracked for use in Britain within five days once it is developed, and 130 million doses are on order.

The Department of Health expects to have enough vaccine this year to give it to half the population. Further supplies will be available if needed. Each person will need two doses of the vaccine, unless one single jab is found to provide high rates of immunity.

The first doses specific to the H1N1 swine flu virus are set to arrive in September and could be given regulatory approval in less than a week.

The move came after the first British patient without underlying health problems died from swine flu, taking the number of swine flu-linked deaths in Britain to 15. Peter Holden, the British Medical Association’s lead negotiator on swine flu, said that GPs’ surgeries were prepared for one of the biggest winter vaccination campaigns in almost 50 years. He said that, although swine flu was not generally causing serious illness in patients, health officials were eager to start a mass vaccination campaign, starting first on groups that were susceptible to infection or prone to complications.

Source/Full Story: Times Online

Ohio will receive $9.8 million to help prepare for a pandemic if a more severe form of swine flu develops, the state health department has announced.
The funding is Ohio’s share of a $260 million national program to help states and communities provide for continued planning and preparations for H1N1 flu.

Money for pandemic planning has been provided before. Between 2005 and 2008, Ohio received $17.4 million.

A free H1N1 vaccine is expected to be provided to states in the fall by the federal government. The $9.8 million will not be used for that purpose.

Source/Full Story: toledoblade.com

World leaders on Friday pledged to commit $20bn over three years for a “food security initiative” to develop agriculture in poor countries, but aid agencies responded with scepticism, pointing to a chain of broken promises and a habit of switching around existing budgets.

The Group of Eight summit of rich countries in L’Aquila, Italy, had aimed to pledge $15bn (€10.8bn, £9.3bn). Ministers described how a last whip-round before delegations left came up with an extra $5bn to make a bigger headline ­figure. “There is an urgent need for decisive action to free humankind from hunger and poverty,” said a joint statement of 40 heads of government and international organisations, including the G8.

How much of the promised money was new or how it would be managed remained unstated. Officials said a substantial amount of the $3.5bn promised by the US was a new allocation. UK officials candidly admitted that their pledge of $1.8bn had been reallocated to food and agriculture from other aid lines.

Even some of the eight African leaders present were left in the dark about the substance.

Source/Full Story: FT.com

Florida’s surgeon general says the state is preparing for massive swine flu immunizations, starting with schoolchildren, as the Obama administration urges states to prepare for the likelihood that the virus might worsen in the fall.

”We may end up averting a crisis. That’s our hope,” said President Barack Obama, who took time away from the G-8 summit in Italy to telephone another summit back home — the 500 state and local health officials meeting to prepare for swine flu’s fall threat.

”We want to make sure we aren’t promoting panic, but we are promoting vigilance and preparation,” Obama said.

Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, told the swine flu summit some H1N1 vaccine should be ready by mid-October.

”Scientists and public health experts forecast that the impact of H1N1 may well worsen in the fall, when the regular flu season hits or even earlier, when schools start to open, which is only five or six weeks away,” she said.

Florida already is planning for such vaccinations, said Dr. Ana M. Viamonte Ros, Florida surgeon general, as she emerged from the summit.

”We’re already meeting with local schools and day-care centers on how we would do this,” she said. “By mid-October we won’t have doses for everyone. The vaccines will have to be directed toward individuals at high risk. It’s important to determine who really is at risk. With swine flu, more of the younger ages are affected. That puts more stress on schools.”

Source/Full Story: floridatoday.com

Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A “Planetary Regime” with the power of life and death over American citizens.

The tyrannical fantasies of a madman? Or merely the opinions of the person now in control of science policy in the United States? Or both?

These ideas (among many other equally horrifying recommendations) were put forth by John Holdren, whom Barack Obama has recently appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology — informally known as the United States’ Science Czar. In a book Holdren co-authored in 1977, the man now firmly in control of science policy in this country wrote that:

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;
• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
• People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
• A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.

Impossible, you say? That must be an exaggeration or a hoax. No one in their right mind would say such things.

Well, I hate to break the news to you, but it is no hoax, no exaggeration. John Holdren really did say those things, and this report contains the proof. Below you will find photographs, scans, and transcriptions of pages in the book Ecoscience, co-authored in 1977 by John Holdren and his close colleagues Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich. The scans and photos are provided to supply conclusive evidence that the words attributed to Holdren are unaltered and accurately transcribed.

Must read the entire piece at zombietime.com

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday the strain of E. coli found in a sample of raw cookie dough collected at a Nestle USA manufacturing plant does not match the strain that has been linked to a 30-state outbreak, and they aren’t sure how the dough was contaminated.

The FDA and the federal Centers for Disease Control have been investigating whether the cookie dough was the source of the E. coli outbreak which has sickened at least 69 people in about 30 states.

E. coli is a potentially deadly germ that can cause bloody diarrhea, dehydration and, in the most severe cases, kidney failure.

Last month, Nestle voluntarily recalled all Toll House refrigerated cookie dough products made at its Danville, Va., factory after the FDA told Nestle it suspected consumers may have been exposed to E. coli bacteria after eating the dough raw.

On June 29, the FDA confirmed evidence of E. coli O157:H7 in a retained production sample of 16.5 oz. Nestle Toll House refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough bar. But on Thursday, FDA spokesman Mike Herndon said tests on the dough, which came from an unopened package, show the strains of E. coli don’t match the E. coli strain linked to the outbreak.

That could mean the dough may have been contaminated with multiple strains. But neither the FDA nor Nestle has discovered a probable source.

Source/Full Story: The Associated Press

The Obama administration warned Americans on Thursday to be ready for an aggressive return of the swine flu virus in the fall, announcing plans to begin vaccinations in October and offering states and hospitals money to help them prepare.

“The potential for a significant outbreak in the fall is looming,” President Obama said by telephone link from Italy to the White House’s H1N1 Influenza Preparedness Summit, held at the National Institutes of Health.

With good planning, “we may end up averting a crisis,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s our fervent hope.”

The summit meeting was jointly led by the secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius; the secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano; and the secretary of education, Arne Duncan. It gathered health and school officials from across the country and took questions by video link from the governors of several states, most of whom wanted to know who would pay for preparations like the vaccination drive.

Vaccinations will begin in October only if tests scheduled to begin in August prove that the vaccine is safe and effective. Even then, officials expect only tens of millions of doses to be ready, so they will have to decide who is vaccinated first. The most likely candidates, Ms. Sebelius said, are school children, health care workers, pregnant women and people with asthma or other conditions that make the flu riskier.

While health officials were careful to warn that there was no evidence that the flu had mutated into a more dangerous form, they noted that it seriously disrupted some cities, including New York, in the late spring and could do worse as the fall flu season begins.

“This flu is not over,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the new head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, describing its continuing spread in more than 50 summer camps, the large numbers of cases seen in Chile, Argentina and Australia, which are now at the beginning of their flu season, and the initial detections of three cases resistant to the drug Tamiflu.

Source/Full Story: NYTimes.com