Media ArticlesExcerpts of Key Media Articles in Major Media
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The Justice Department has indicated that the Obama administration is in support of renewing [three] controversial sections of the USA Patriot Act that expire later this year. The provisions that will expire in December include Section 206, that allows "roving" wiretaps so FBI agents can tap multiple phones or computers (with court authorization) that a specific person (target) may use. Another expiring provision, Section 215, is the so-called "library provision," which allows investigators to obtain [library, medical, business, banking and other] records with approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. And the final provision which was nicknamed the "Lone Wolf" authorization, allows intelligence gathering of people not suspected of being part of a foreign government or known terrorist organization. Critics of the Patriot Act protested loudly that the FBI could obtain individuals' library records under the legislation. [But] section 215 is much more expansive than reviewing a suspected terrorist's summer reading list. [It] allows the FBI to obtain any business record, "any tangible things," like credit card and bank statements and also allows access to medical and mental health records. The provision has been used to obtain communication and subscriber information to help set up surveillance and monitoring of computers and telephones.
Note: The American Library Association, the national organization of professional librarians, was the first and strongest defender of civil liberties after the passage of the PATRIOT Act. For a discussion of the concerns of professional librarians over this decision by the Obama administration, click here.
The world is getting better, one peanut butter and jelly sandwich at a time. It's called the Peanut Butter Plan. Like many of the best plans, it's simple: Strangers get together, make peanut butter sandwiches and immediately pass them out to homeless people. No federal subsidy, no foundation, no vouchers. No official sanction from anybody. Just strangers, good will and peanut butter. Jory John, a San Francisco children's book writer, got the idea for the PBJ stealth campaign this spring. John put forth the idea on Facebook and, over the past few months, PBJ handouts have taken place in Los Angeles; Berkeley; Phoenix; Little Rock, Ark.; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Austin, Texas; and London. "People are joining from all over the place," John said. "I thought it was about time to use a social networking site to do some good." The monthly gathering took place the other evening around a conference table inside a publishing house that had donated its office for the cause. Some sandwich-laden volunteers [went] to the Tenderloin and some others to the Haight and South of Market.There was no shortage of people who found the idea of a complimentary peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich to be just the thing. Outside the BART station at 16th and Mission streets, a dozen folks accepted sandwiches. When the sandwiches were gone, [the] sandwich makers retired to a nearby tavern for a beer. The camaraderie of doing something nice, along with the beers, made everyone feel pretty good and some of the strangers exchanged phone numbers. "The smallest actions make the biggest difference," [John] said. "There are some cynics who say it's not really curing hunger, and it isn't curing hunger. But it's curing one person's hunger. There's nothing wrong with that."
Note: Information on the Peanut Butter Plan and its operations in various cities around the U.S. is available at www.peanutbutterplan.org.
Murder and manslaughter dropped almost 4 percent last year, as reported crime overall fell around the country, according to new data released ... by the FBI. The 3.9 percent decline in killings reported to police was part of a nationwide drop in violent crime of 1.9 percent from 2007 to 2008. Rapes declined 1.6 percent, to the lowest national number in 20 years -- about 89,000. The statistics are based on crimes reported to police, who then forward the information to the FBI. There were 14,180 murder victims in the United States last year. ''What has been impressive has been how flat all the violent crime rates have been since 2000. To a large degree that's still the case, but the striking change this year has been murder,'' said Alfred Blumstein, a professor of criminal justice at Carnegie-Mellon University. The figures show that crime has come way down since its peak in the early 1990's. ''These are rates we haven't seen since the 1960's, even though the change from year to year has been rather small,'' said Blumstein. Property crimes declined overall, by 0.8 percent, but that was driven mostly by a 12.7 percent drop in car thefts. The other major categories of property crime -- burglaries and larceny-thefts -- both rose. Typically, crime is expected to rise during economic hard times, but Blumstein said last year's data was too early in the economic cycle to reflect that, because the most serious economic impacts came toward the end of 2008, and may not have affected teenagers -- the group most likely to turn to crime as their job prospects dwindle.
Note: What this report completely fails to report is that violent crime is down over 50% since 1994! Why does the major media consistently fail to report this awesome news? For verifiable information on this, click here.
The nation's political crosscurrents appear to have created vaccine skeptics of many stripes. Many citizens are less inclined than ever to accept the warnings of the Department of Health and Human Services or the recommendations of its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says Sandra Quinn, a University of Pittsburgh public health professor who has just completed a national survey of attitudes about the flu vaccine. Vaccine refusers have long decried vaccine mandates and campaigns as an unwarranted intrusion of parents' and local school boards' rights. For a new generation of vaccine skeptics, there are new objects of distrust. For some, it flows from a suspicion of the multinational corporations that develop and manufacture vaccines. For others, it comes from a belief that media outlets have hyped the pandemic flu story to secure the attention of readers and the revenue of advertisers. And many simply doubt the competency and independence of government agencies, which they believe are too inept, overwhelmed or co-opted by corporate interests to secure the safety of the nation's drugs and food supply. Adding to the wariness toward the forthcoming H1N1 vaccine is the fact that the formulations used on patients in the United States might require the use of adjuvants -- special agents added to a vaccine mix that rev up the immune system and foster a stronger immune response. While adjuvants have been used in vaccines in Europe for many years, the FDA has never approved them for widespread use in the United States. Some vaccine critics in Great Britain have charged that one adjuvant used in European formulations -- squalene -- is associated with a wide range of vague but persistent symptoms.
Note: Adjuvants are being added to vaccines, yet the resulting combined formula is not being tested for safety; the individual components are tested separately. The process for the testing of vaccines is endangering our health. For lots more on the dangers of vaccines and squalene in particular, read respected Dr. Joseph Mercola's incisive article available here.
Nothing succeeds like failure, as the saying goes. And nowhere is this dismal truth more evident than in our financial regulatory system, one year after the bankruptcy filing of Lehman Brothers. Even though calamitous lending practices laid waste to the nation’s economy, surprisingly little has changed about how the financial arena operates and is supervised. Sure, a couple of venerable brokerage firms have vanished, but many of the same players remain on the scene, in the same positions of power. Senior regulators who stood idly by for years as financial firms built their houses of cards have been rewarded with even bigger jobs or are jockeying for increased responsibilities. The Federal Reserve Board, for example, wants to become the financial system’s uber-regulator, even though its officials did nothing as banks made deadly decisions to lend recklessly and leverage themselves to the max. Awarding increased power to those who failed in their oversight duties flies in the face of all notions of accountability. Yet those in the public sector ask us to believe that regulators who snoozed during the credit bubble will be alert to emerging problems on their beats when the next mania begins. That’s asking a lot, isn’t it? Here’s a novel thought. Instead of creating more regulations to try to prevent this kind of mess from recurring, why not figure out how to hold regulators accountable when they perform as poorly as they did in recent years? Taxpayers must protect themselves against two things: the corrupting influence of bureaucratic self-interest among regulators and the political clout wielded by the large institutions they are supposed to police. [And] taxpayers must demand that the government publicize the costs of efforts taken to save the financial system from itself.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street crash and bailout, click here.
Wall Street lives on. One year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the surprise is not how much has changed in the financial industry, but how little. Backstopped by huge federal guarantees, the biggest banks have restructured only around the edges. Employment in the industry has fallen just 8 percent since last September. Only a handful of big hedge funds have closed. Pay is already returning to precrash levels, topped by the 30,000 employees of Goldman Sachs, who are on track to earn an average of $700,000 this year. Nor are major pay cuts likely, according to a report last week from J.P. Morgan Securities. Executives at most big banks have kept their jobs. Financial stocks have soared since their winter lows. Banks still sell and trade unregulated derivatives, despite their role in last fall’s chaos. Radical changes like pay caps or restrictions on bank size face overwhelming resistance. Even minor changes, like requiring banks to disclose more about the derivatives they own, are far from certain. Regulators and lawmakers have spent most of the last year trying to save the financial industry, rather than transform it. In the short run, their efforts have succeeded. Citigroup and other wounded banks have avoided bankruptcy, and the economy has sidestepped a depression. But the same investors and economists who predicted, and in some cases profited from, the collapse last fall say the rescue has come at an extraordinary cost. They warn that if the industry’s systemic risks are not addressed, they could cause an even bigger crisis — in years, not decades. Next time, they say, the credit of the United States government may be at risk.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm have managed to prove that fossils from animals and plants are not necessary for crude oil and natural gas to be generated. The findings are revolutionary since this means, on the one hand, that it will be much easier to find these sources of energy and, on the other hand, that they can be found all over the globe. “Using our research we can even say where oil could be found in Sweden,” says Vladimir Kutcherov, a professor at the Division of Energy Technology at KTH. Together with two research colleagues, Vladimir Kutcherov has simulated the process involving pressure and heat that occurs naturally in the inner layers of the earth, the process that generates hydrocarbon, the primary component in oil and natural gas. According to Vladimir Kutcherov, the findings are a clear indication that the oil supply is not about to end, which researchers and experts in the field have long feared. He adds that there is no way that fossil oil, with the help of gravity or other forces, could have seeped down to a depth of 10.5 kilometers in the state of Texas, for example, which is rich in oil deposits. As Vladimir Kutcherov sees it, this is further proof, alongside his own research findings, of the genesis of these energy sources – that they can be created in other ways than via fossils. This has long been a matter of lively discussion among scientists. “There is no doubt that our research proves that crude oil and natural gas are generated without the involvement of fossils. All types of bedrock can serve as reservoirs of oil,” says Vladimir Kutcherov.
Note: The research work of Kutcherov and others on this topic was recently published in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience. For more reports from reliable sources on key new energy discoveries, click here.
Thousands of troops from countries including Britain, America, Afghanistan and Pakistan search relentlessly for him. Dozens of CIA agents have no other mission than working day after day on his capture. Yet eight years after the 9/11 outrage on the Twin Towers of New York and the Pentagon in Washington, no one has come close to laying a finger on Osama Bin Laden. Ever since that day when nearly 3,000 people were murdered, America has wanted the leader of al Qaeda dead or alive. But there is a compelling argument, put forward by a respected American academic, that Bin Laden was killed eight years ago. Professor David Ray Griffin, who has written authoritative books on the 9/11 attacks, believes the US has kept the Bin Laden myth alive to bolster the war against terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. What is truly astonishing is that despite an army of investigators, a practically limitless budget and an immense Ł15million bounty on his head, so little is known about what has actually happened to Bin Laden. In his new book Osama Bin Laden: Dead Or Alive?. “There’s much evidence which points to the conclusion that Osama Bin Laden is no longer alive,” Prof Griffin insists. “We have had no credible intelligence on Bin Laden since 2001.” On Christmas Day 2001, Pakistan’s Observer newspaper carried a report of Bin Laden’s funeral, saying he died a natural and quiet death. “The major pretext for the war in Afghanistan is the expressed need to prevent Osama Bin Laden and his followers attacking the West again. This pretext would be removed by convincing evidence that Bin Laden is dead. Such evidence exists,” [said Prof. Griffin.].
Note: Esteemed scholar and WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin's book, Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?, can be purchased here.
Former New Jersey attorney general John Farmer served as senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, tasked with investigating the government response to the attacks. His new book, The Ground Truth, picks up where the commission left off – taking a deeper look at the government's ... response to the attacks and exposing officials determined to hide their failings from the inquiry. Farmer uses newly released transcripts and recordings to cast doubt on the official version of events. He spoke with TIME. [Time:] Why do you think officials tried to obscure [the truth about 9/11]? [Farmer:] It's almost a culture of concealment. You have someone like Sandy Berger ... taking rather extreme measures to remove documents from the National Archives and hide them at a construction site where he could retrieve them later and destroy them. There were interviews made at the FAA's New York center the night of 9/11 and those tapes were destroyed. The CIA tapes of the interrogations were destroyed. The story of 9/11 itself, to put it mildly, was distorted and was completely different from the way things happened. If what the government is telling you isn't true, then the truth could be anything. I think there is evidence that the truth wasn't told and that at least some of that was deliberate.
Note: Many respected scholars, officials and professionals have questioned the 9/11 Commission's report. Click here and here to read some of their statements. For lots more reliable, verifiable information from the major media questioning the 9/11 Commission's report, click here and here.
[President] Barack Obama has launched a fresh operation to find [Osama bin Laden]. Working with the Pakistani Army, elite squads of U.S. and British special forces were sent into Waziristan this summer to 'hunt and kill' the shadowy figure intelligence officers still call 'the principal target' of the war on terror. This new offensive is, of course, based on the premise that the 9/11 terrorist is alive. Yet what if he isn't? What if he has been dead for years, and the British and U.S. intelligence services are actually playing a game of double bluff? What if everything we have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9/11 is a fake - and that he is being kept 'alive' by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on terror? Incredibly, this is the breathtaking theory that is gaining credence among political commentators, respected academics and even terror experts. Still more questions have been raised with the publication in America and Britain of a book called Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive? Written by political analyst and philosopher Professor David Ray Griffin, ... it is provoking shock waves - for it goes into far more detail about his supposed death and suggests there has been a cover-up by the West. The book claims that Bin Laden died of kidney failure, or a linked complaint, on December 13, 2001, while living in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains close to the border with Waziristan. His burial took place within 24 hours, in line with Muslim religious rules, and in an unmarked grave, which is a Wahhabi custom. The author insists that the many Bin Laden tapes made since that date have been concocted by the West to make the world believe Bin Laden is alive. Could it be that, for years, he's just been smoke and mirrors?
Note: Hundreds of scholars, officials and professionals have raised questions about bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and other aspects of the official conspiracy about the events of 9/11. Click here and here to read their concerns.
Does the layout of Washington reveal some hidden Masonic influence? Masons first appeared in Britain in the early 1400s as members of craft guilds. The Masons encouraged free thought and religious tolerance. They helped invent America: George Washington, Ben Franklin, nine signers of the Declaration of Independence and 13 signers of the Constitution were Masons. Both Presidents Roosevelt and 11 other presidents besides Washington were, too. Also J. Edgar Hoover, Will Rogers, Ty Cobb, John Wayne. [There are] roughly 1.5 million Masons in the United States today. But you only have to visit any number of anti-Masonic Web sites to find the darker claims of conspiracies to rule the world. A persistent rumor involves secret symbols in the map of the city. The White House, Washington Circle, Dupont Circle, Logan Circle and Mount Vernon Square: Draw lines on the avenues connecting the points (pretend Rhode Island doesn't stop at Connecticut) and you get a five-pointed star. It's also possible to divine a six-pointed star on the map east of the Capitol. 16th Street is Washington's "Rose Line." The intersecting line from the Capitol across the Potomac River [takes you to] a place called Rosslyn, which ... is also the name of the sacred Templar chapel in Scotland. The Masonic headquarters ... is on Washington's Rose Line. In September 1793, Washington donned a ceremonial Masonic apron and helped lay the cornerstone of the Capitol. High on the Capitol Rotunda's domed ceiling is Brumidi's dramatic portrayal of the "Apotheosis of Washington" -- the Mason ascending to heaven. Of 100 or so statues in Statuary Hall and elsewhere in the building, [there are] at least 30 Masons.
Note: Without the secret meetings of the Masons, the U.S. likely would not have been able to throw off the oppressive yoke of the British king. Yet they became so powerful and corrupt by the 1820s that there was a huge anti-Masonic movement which swept the nation. For an abundance of reliable information on a number of secret societies and the power they wield, click here.
This is the story of hundreds, if not thousands, of foreign language documents that the FBI neglected to translate before and after the Sept. 11 attacks -- documents that detailed what the FBI heard on wiretaps and learned during interrogations of suspected terrorists. Sibel Edmonds, a translator who worked at the FBI's language division, says the documents weren't translated because the division was riddled with incompetence and corruption. Edmonds was fired after reporting her concerns to FBI officials. She told her story behind closed doors to investigators in Congress and to the Justice Department. Most recently, she spoke with the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. Because she is fluent in Turkish and other Middle Eastern languages, Edmonds, a Turkish-American, was hired by the FBI soon after Sept. 11 and given top-secret security clearance to translate some of the reams of documents seized by FBI agents who have been rounding up suspected terrorists across the United States and abroad. Edmonds says that to her amazement, from the day she started the job, she was told repeatedly by one of her supervisors that there was no urgency, that she should take longer to translate documents so that the department would appear overworked and understaffed. That way, it would receive a larger budget for the next year. Edmonds says that the supervisor, in an effort to slow her down, went so far as to erase completed translations from her FBI computer after she'd left work for the day.
Note: Sibel Edmonds just recently self-published a book exposing major intelligence cover-ups around 9/11. To see this highly rated book in which she breaks the government gag order placed on her, click here. For lots more verifiable news on this courageous woman, click here.
To listen to President Obama, or to just about anyone else in the health care debate, you would think that the biggest problem with health care in America is the system itself — perverse incentives, inefficiencies, unnecessary tests and procedures, lack of competition, and greed. No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet. That’s why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, three-quarters of health care spending now goes to treat “preventable chronic diseases.” Not all of these diseases are linked to diet — there’s smoking, for instance — but many, if not most, of them are. We’re spending $147 billion to treat obesity, $116 billion to treat diabetes, and hundreds of billions more to treat cardiovascular disease and the many types of cancer that have been linked to the so-called Western diet. One recent study estimated that 30 percent of the increase in health care spending over the past 20 years could be attributed to the soaring rate of obesity, a condition that now accounts for nearly a tenth of all spending on health care. The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in the debate over health care.
Note: For a detailed overview of some of the critical risks of the industrially-engineered modern American diet, click here.
Just a few years ago Ed Munyak, a fire protection engineer for the city of San Jose, seemed like a lonely, out-there figure, a sometimes-target because of his outspoken position on the events of Sept. 11, 2001. These days, hundreds of other building trade professionals have joined him in challenging the official narrative about the collapse of three buildings at New York's World Trade Center (WTC) on that fateful, traumatic day. Munyak, of Los Altos Hills, is a mechanical and fire engineer whose job is to review building plans to ensure they comply with the California Building and Fire Code. In 2007, after speaking out on his own for a few years, Munyak signed on with a then-fledging organization called Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth, founded by Bay Area architect Richard Gage. Today, far from being isolated, Munyak now counts as allies 804 professional architects and building engineers from around the country. Collectively, they have joined Munyak's call for an independent technical investigation of the causes of the WTC buildings collapse. In doing so, they reject the federal government's conclusions that two airplanes alone brought the buildings down—without the aid of pre-planted explosives. Munyak and his fellow AE911 supporters recently received acknowledgement from the FBI's counterterrorism division, which concluded that the organization's core evidence deserves—and will get—FBI scrutiny. In a letter, Deputy Director Michael J. Heimbach assessed AE911's presentation as "backed by thorough research and analysis."
Note: WantToKnow Team member David Ray Griffin has just published a detailed critique of the fraudulent "science" in the latest government publication defending the official account of the collapse of WTC 7.
Scientists have now levitated mice using magnetic fields. Scientists working on behalf of NASA built a device to simulate variable levels of gravity. It consists of a superconducting magnet that generates a field powerful enough to levitate the water inside living animals, with a space inside warm enough at room temperature and large enough at 2.6 inches wide (6.6 cm) for tiny creatures to float comfortably in during experiments. Repeated levitation tests showed the mice, even when not sedated, could quickly acclimate to levitation inside the cage. The strong magnetic fields did not seem to have any negative impacts on the mice in the short term, and past studies have shown that rats did not suffer from adverse effects after 10 weeks of strong, non-levitating magnetic fields. The researchers also levitated water drops up to 2 inches wide (5 cm). This suggests the variable gravity simulator could be used to study how liquids behave under reduced gravity, such as how heat is transferred or how bubbles behave.
Note: Remember that secret government research projects are generally at least 10 years ahead of any public research.
Actor Charlie Sheen has written a letter to President Barack Obama requesting a meeting over Sheen's theories about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The day of Sept. 11, 2001, saw America hit by the worst terrorist atrocities in the country's history, including an attack in New York which killed almost 3,000 people. Sheen has always been outspoken about his views on the attacks, supporting a conspiracy theory that the U.S. government at the time defrauded the public with its official story about the incident. The star has now written to Obama asking him to reopen the investigation into 9/11. The note, entitled "20 Minutes With The President," is written as a fictional meeting with Obama, in which Sheen urges the leader to follow through his promises of change, accountability and government transparency by using his powers to look into the actions of George W. Bush's previous administration. Sheen hopes the president will take note of his campaign and grant him a meeting.
Note: To watch an excellent six-minute video narrated by Sheen asking hard questions to the president, click here. For a powerful summary of many unanswered questions raised by the official account of 9/11, click here.
Because of concerns about climate change, a lot of current environmentalist advocacy — including movies like “An Inconvenient Truth” — concentrates on the dire results of burning fossil fuels. Joe Berlinger’s “Crude,” a thorough and impassioned new documentary, focuses its gaze on production rather than consumption. The film, which follows the fitful progress of a class-action lawsuit undertaken on behalf of the people of the Ecuadorean Amazon, is not about the unintended consequences of using petroleum. Instead, it examines the terrible, frequently unacknowledged costs of extracting oil from the ground. “Crude,” in other words, investigates the local manifestations — cancer, contaminated water, cultural degradation — of a global problem. Even as “Crude” dwells on a single, relatively small slice of territory (about the size of Rhode Island), its action shifts from muddy villages in Amazonia to law offices and shareholders’ meetings in the steel-and-glass cities of North America, drawing into its purview a motley cast of scientists, human rights crusaders, civil servants and international celebrities. Like almost every other recent documentary on a politically charged topic, “Crude” does not pretend to neutrality. Yet while Mr. Berlinger’s sympathies clearly lie with the oddly matched pair of lawyers — Steven Donziger, a big, outgoing American, and Pablo Fajardo, a wiry, diffident Ecuadorean — who are consumed by the now 16-year-old suit against Chevron, he is fair-minded enough to include rebuttals from the company’s executives and in-house environmental scientists. And since this is, in part, a courtroom drama, both sides have a chance to be heard.
Any time corporate executives and directors are heavily selling their company's stock there's reason for concern. And lately they've been doing just that. The last time insider selling was as high as it is now was in the period from late 2006 to late 2007. It was right after that insider-selling surge that the stock market began its long painful decline, says Charles Biderman, CEO of TrimTabs, an independent institutional research firm. Biderman believes that insider trades shoot higher when there's a disconnect between broad market opinions and what business executives feel in their gut. "When [insiders think] things are going better than most people think, they buy stock," he says. "When things are going worse than people think, they sell." That's to say, insiders have no crystal ball but they often have access to up-to-the-minute sales data as well as firsthand impressions from their sales managers — and that gives them an inside track on what's happening in the economy. When this special access leads them to be big sellers of their stock, well, it's a vote of no confidence in their employer's near-term future. Biderman has measured the ratio of insider selling to buying since 2004, and says historically the ratio is 7 to 1. (Insiders almost always sell more than they buy because they receive stock as part of their compensation.) Right now the ratio is 30, one of the highest he's recorded. November 2007 is the last time the ratio even came close, at 24.
Note: According to the New York Times, insider trading levels are at the "highest levels since the firm started keeping numbers in 2004." Why does this Time article state they were higher in 2006 to 2007? For a treasure trove of revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Most people in the world, it's fair to say, want to do a little good. At the very least, we try to follow a kind of secular golden rule: Try to do no harm. But in our communities and around the world, there's a kind of person who takes all this further – to an extreme, even. They're called, most often, "social entrepreneurs," and some of them have become famous, at least in certain circles: Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is revered in do-good financial circles for pioneering microfinance, a lending system for the very poor. From protecting our natural environment to improving our children's education to combating global poverty and disease, we've come to rely on extreme do-gooders to tackle the world's toughest problems. And they're happy to do so, even though their dedication will cost them in the long run. What makes these people tick, and how do they sustain a lifetime of commitment to a change that might take generations to see? Social entrepreneurs seem to think in terms of everything except sacrifice. "I've interviewed several hundred social entrepreneurs over the last 15 years," says David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, "and the thing that struck me is how little they think about sacrifice, ... and how much their lives are about really doing something that gives them extraordinary joy and satisfaction when they're successful."
After the mortgage business imploded last year, Wall Street investment banks began searching for another big idea to make money. They think they may have found one. The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die. The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money. Either way, Wall Street would profit by pocketing sizable fees for creating the bonds, reselling them and subsequently trading them. But some who have studied life settlements warn that insurers might have to raise premiums in the short term if they end up having to pay out more death claims than they had anticipated. In the aftermath of the financial meltdown, exotic investments dreamed up by Wall Street got much of the blame. It was not just subprime mortgage securities but an array of products ... that proved far riskier than anticipated. The debacle gave financial wizardry a bad name generally, but not on Wall Street. Even as Washington debates increased financial regulation, bankers are scurrying to concoct new products. In addition to securitizing life settlements, for example, some banks are repackaging their money-losing securities into higher-rated ones.
Note: As this article reveals, Wall Street will make a killing on these new securitized investments if American life expectancy should drop. Can you think of any ways in which powerful corporations could bring this about? Say an increase in sugar content or genetically modified components in foods? Perhaps lower standards for chemical toxicity? More time watching TV, or other changes leading to increased obesity? Swine flu vaccinations? For lots more from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street crash and bailout, click here.
Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.