China should guard against risks from “excessive” holdings of U.S. assets as Washington could pursue a policy to weaken the dollar, a senior currency regulator said in comments published on a website that briefly pushed the dollar lower.
However, the comments by Guan Tao of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange were quickly removed from the website at his request.
THIS WEEK’S HEADLINES:
“He makes a bee line to me right after the talk, in front of everybody,” West says. “He just lets me have it. He says, ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, saying I’m not a progressive. Is that the best you can do? Who do you think you are?’ I smiled. I shook his hand. And a sister hollered in the back, ‘You can’t talk to professor West. That’s Dr. Cornel West. Who do you think you are?’
The audits accuse the five major lenders of violating the False Claims Act, a Civil War-era law crafted as a weapon against firms that swindle the government…
The audits conclude that the banks effectively cheated taxpayers by presenting the Federal Housing Administration with false claims: They filed for federal reimbursement on foreclosed homes that sold for less than the outstanding loan balance using defective and faulty documents.
THIS WEEK’S HEADLINES:
Each customer request to replace a credit card would cost lenders about $3 to $5 per card, several analysts told Reuters on Wednesday and Thursday. Those costs would include the new piece of plastic itself, postage, and various customer service costs.
Hackers earlier in April broke into Sony’s PlayStation Network, stealing names, addresses and possibly credit card details from 77 million users. Sony shut down the network on April 19 but waited about a week to disclose that the system had been hacked and users’ data could have been stolen.
Hackers who claim they are responsible for the Sony breach wrote on underground forums last week that they had access to over 2.2 million credit cards. If these millions of new stolen cards were sold online, the price could fall to well below the standard rate to as low as $1 or $2 each.
Karma is the concept that what you do is done to you. You do dirt, you get dirt. You do good, good comes to you. The problem is that a lot of people want to specify their karmic reward. It doesn’t work like that. The good you do today is not instantly rewarded, or placed on account like frequent flier miles. It is distributed based on forces unknown and unseen to us. Your karmic good may not come back to you in ways you recognize, but that does not change your duty to do it. It is more faith than science but it is real and it is in operation all the time.
Recently, I’ve witnessed tea party enthusiasts recoiling in horror when Jerry Brown had the temerity to do what they say they want done, slash spending. “It’s okay to kill other people’s programs, just not mine,” they exclaim. I’ve seen progressives dismiss those concerned about the massive debt as knuckle dragging throwbacks in an attempt to keep the money flowing. What I don’t see very often is truth or constructive conversation. Budgets will be cut, pain will be felt. It will be exquisitely bi-partisan.
Dispatches From The Front 