Tag Archives: Bankruptcy

Standard and Poor’s cuts credit ratings for nine European Union countries

From CNBC.

Excerpt:

Standard & Poor’s downgraded the credit ratings of nine euro zone countries, stripping France and Austria of their coveted triple-A status but not EU paymaster Germany, in a Black Friday 13th for the troubled single currency area.

[…]S&P lowered its long-term rating on Cyprus, Italy, Portugal and Spain by two notches, and cut its rating on Austria, France, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia by one notch.

The move puts highly indebted Italy on the same BBB+ level as Kazakhstan and pushes Portugal into junk status.

The credit-rating agency affirmed the current long-term ratings for Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

[…]The credit-rating agency put all 14 euro-zone nations — Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, and Spain — on “negative” outlook for a possible further downgrade.

Germany was the only country to emerge totally unscathed with its triple-A rating and a stable outlook.

A negative outlook indicates that S&P believes there is at least a one-in-three chance that a country’s rating will be lowered in 2012 or 2013.

It’s gotten so bad that Greek families are abandoning their children, and ordinary medicines like Aspirin are in short supply.

Greece is a socialist country

Why is this happening to Greece?

Well, Greece elected a socialist majority in 2009, and the socialist party was in power from 1981 to 1989, 1993 to 2004, and now 2009 to 2012.

Excerpt:

The Panhellenic Socialist Movement, better known as PASOK, is a Greek centre-left political party and the current majority party in the Greek Parliament. In 1981 PASOK formed the first socialist government in Greece’s history, and subsequently governed the country for most of the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. PASOK served as the main opposition party between 2004 and 2009. It is a member of the Party of European Socialists and the Socialist International. In the European Parliament it has 8 out of 22 Greek MEPs. On 31 January 2006, the party’s president, George Papandreou, was elected President of the Socialist International, the worldwide organisation of social democratic, socialist and labour parties. Following the 2009 legislative election, PASOK became the majority party and Papandreou became Prime Minister.

The Wall Street Journal explains what the socialists in Greece have been doing lately.

Excerpt:

“The present government has done absolutely nothing during the last 12 months to speed up privatizations, reduce the public sector or open up closed professions,” Athanasios Papandropoulos, a leading economic analyst, told me recently in an interview. “In these 12 months it has not fired even one civil servant. The only thing it is doing is trying to tax the private sector out of existence. Why should we believe that they will do something different now?”

One commentator writing in the newspaper Kathimerini this week made the point even more forcefully: “Whereas more than 1,000 Greeks were losing their jobs in the private sector every day in August, the government was assuring civil servants with lifetime tenure that their job privileges were not in danger.”

Structural reforms have been repeatedly announced by Greek officials during the past. Yet nothing has happened. Greece’s plans tend to resemble Soviet Five Year Plans: They look good on paper but have absolutely no bearing on reality. Anyone in the government who tries to point this out is forced to resign. Economist Stella Balfousia, the head of the Greek Parliament budget office, had to tender her resignation after her office published a report contradicting the government’s official forecasts on debt and deficit.

Privatization is a case in point. Greece will have to raise some €1.7 billion by the end of September from the privatization program and €5 billion by the end of the year from the medium-term fiscal strategy program. Yet in the past year and a half not a single privatization has taken place. The explanation given for this is the low share prices of the listed companies. The real reason is probably that Greek politicians are loath to give up the system of spoils that they have long run through these enterprises, which are staffed by the party faithful in exchange for votes.

I saw that Zero Hedge posted recently regarding the massive withdrawal of deposits from Greek banks.

Excerpt:

The year is not over yet, and already Greece’s banks have lost €36.7 billion of their deposit base in 2011, and a whopping €64.6 billion since the beginning of 2010, which is down from €233 billion to €173 billion in under two years. In October another €3.5 billion was withdrawn from Greek banks and likely either redeposited somewhere deep in the heart of Switzerland, or converted to various inert metals and buried somewhere in the back yard. The good news: the outflow is just over half of October’s record €6.8 billion. The bad news: at this rate of outflows, Greek banks will have zero deposits in around 4 years. Which at the end of the day is all the matters, because while the Troica can keep funding capital shortfalls indefinitely, all faith in the country’s banks has now been lost and Greece is officially a zombie economy. The fact that the country’s deficit as a % of GDP is about to be re-revised even higher is no longer even meaningful: the Greek economy and its banking sectors are now officially dead. We merely feel bad for anyone who still has cash in banks as, just like gold in 1930s America, any residual cash may soon be “sequestered” for national security purposes. After all there are bankers who need record bonuses, and Military sales from Europe and the US that have to proceed using what will likely soon be “commingled” deposit cash.

Greece is a socialist nation. And they are reaping the rewards of socialism. You cannot spend your way out of debt. You cannot create jobs by taxing job creators. You cannot create wealth by punishing those who create wealth.

Since Barack Obama was elected, we have been running deficits of about $1.3 trillion dollars each year. The last Republican deficit under Bush and Boehner was $160 billion dollars. We made a mistake and we elected a socialist, and now we are Greece – just a little less far down the road to serfdom.

Navy buys fuel for $15 per gallon from Democrat-connected green energy firm

I found this Hot Air story on Right Wing News. Hot Air was at the top of John Hawkins’ list of the top 40 conservative blogs.

Excerpt: (with links removed)

This is going to help the Defense Department weather looming budget cuts, for sure.  Teaming up with the Department of Agriculture (which has a cheery Rotary Club ring to it), the Navy has purchased 450,000 gallons of biofuel for about $16 a gallon, or about 4 times the price of its standard marine fuel, JP-5, which has been going for under $4 a gallon.

You won’t be surprised to learn that a member of Obama’s presidential transition team, T. J. Glauthier, is a “strategic advisor” at Solazyme, the California company that is selling a portion of the biofuel to the Navy.  Glauthier worked – shock, shock – on the energy-sector portion of the 2009 stimulus bill.

The Navy sale isn’t Solazyme’s first trip to the public trough, of course.  The company got a $21.8 million grant from the 2009 stimulus package.

See, this is why we need to vote for lower and lower taxes. The more money that you give the government to spend, the more likely they are going to waste it buying votes and rewarding their supporters and fundraisers. Do you think that a private company could waste money like this, and stay afloat? No way – they have competitors to worry about. If they waste money, then they will go out of business. However, the government can just spend the money with abandon – it just gets added to the national debt. Eventually, the young people, who vote for for Obama in droves, will have to pay the money back. This will be hard for them to do given the fact that many of them are growing up without two parents supporting them, and often without a good education. What a mess. Leave the money in the hands of the private sector schools and private sector job creators – they actually have to care about pleasing customers and reducing wasteful spending.

Let’s do a quick review of more instances of stimulus spending.

What exactly was he trying to stimulate? His 2012 election campaign?

By the way, check out John’s list of the top 40 blogs – I am number 40.

Cain accuser Ginger White was found guilty of libeling former business partner

Herman Cain Accuser Ginger White - Another Nutcase
Herman Cain Accuser Ginger White - Another Nutcase

From ABC News. (H/T Richard M.)

Excerpt:

The female bodybuilder who once ran a bicycle business with latest Herman Cain accuser Ginger White says the Atlanta woman never mentioned the Republican presidential candidate, who she says was her lover for 13 years.

“His name has never come up,” said Kimberly Vay, who told ABC News that she and White were former business partners.

But Vay, who filed and won a libel lawsuit against White, refused to comment directly when asked whether she considers White’s accusations about Cain credible. “When you see the details of my lawsuit,” said Vay, “they will speak for themselves.” She then referred ABC News to her attorney.

According to Vay’s suit, which was filed in June 2011, White and Vay were partners in a fitness coaching business called No Limit Cycling, and held spinning classes inside the Martin Luther King Recreation Center, which is owned by the City of Atlanta. In November 2010, claimed Vay, White asked to end their partnership, with White continuing to operate No Limit Cycling, and Vay agreed.

On December 9, according to the complaint, White sent a “defamatory” note to a master email list of the company’s clients and to city officials. The email said that White’s business had “come tumbling down [on] the day I invited Kim Vay into my life and my business” and that Vay had turned her “dream” into a “nightmare.” According to the complaint, the email alleged that Vay, a competitive bodybuilder, injected veterinary drugs into her system prior to contests,” and also said that Vay preferred to date black men but had made derogatory comments about black women’s hair.

Vay’s complaint termed the allegation about drug use “false, malicious, defamatory” and “reckless,” and therefore libelous.

Both women retained attorneys, according to Vay’s account, and reached an out-of-court settlement in April 2011. In June, Vay filed suit, claiming that White had failed to live up to the settlement and that she was entitled to sue for libel. Vay’s attorney Kurt Martin told ABC News that White had failed to honor the financial agreement that had settled the case.

Here’s a bit more about Ginger White from the NY Daily News.

Excerpt:

The Atlanta woman who says she was Herman Cain’s mistress for 13 years is a down-on-her-luck single mom who once sued a former employer for sexual harassment.

Ginger White surfaced in bombshell fashion on Monday, telling an Atlanta TV station that she’s “not proud” of what she described as long-running sexual shenanigans with the married GOP White House contender.

“I didn’t want to come out this way,” she said in an interview with Atlanta’s FOX affiliate WAGA-TV that put Cain on the defensive even before it was aired.

White described herself in the interview as a jobless former businesswoman. She is middle-aged, has two children and was evicted from her Atlanta home earlier this month, according to a background check done by the TV station.

WAGA reporters also found records showing she has been hit with several eviction notices in DeKalb County, Ga., over the past six years.

She filed for bankruptcy 23 years ago, the station reported. In 2001, she also filed a sexual harassment suit, which was later settled, according to the station.

Her former business partner, Kimberly Vay, once sued her and accused her of stalking, the station reported.

Vay, who did not respond to calls for comment Monday, also sought an order of protection against White, charging that she was bombarded with emails and texts “threatening [a\] lawsuit” and defaming her character.

A judge ruled in favor of Vay in a libel suit she had filed against White, the station reported.

It’s not surprising to me that a woman like this would make such accusations – she is getting a lot of attention, and possibly is being paid off by another candidate. There might even be a nice book deal for her.

Consider a parallel case, featuring Mariah Yeater’s paternity suit against Justin Bieber.

Excerpt:

The 20-year-old woman who claims teen idol Justin Bieber is the father of her child originally told her ex-boyfriend that he — and not Bieber — was the baby-daddy, the New York Post reported Friday.

“She came back here from California telling me she was pregnant with my child and I said this is impossible, you’ve been in California two months and back here for only a week,” said Las Vegas resident John Terranova, 19, about his ex-girlfriend Mariah Yeater, 20, who has sued Bieber for support for the son she later bore.

“After I told her that’s not my kid, you’ve only been here for a week, then she told me, ‘No, I got pregnant before I left by you,” Terranova told The Post. “But it didn’t make sense because she had a doctor’s note saying she wasn’t pregnant enough for that to be possible. It didn’t add up.”

Terranova said he had dated Yeater for nearly four years after meeting her at a Las Vegas high school that caters to students who had been thrown out of other schools. He said he broke up with her after he learned she had cheated on him.

Terranova scoffed at Yeater’s claim that it was the then-16-year-old Bieber who impregnated her in October 2010 during a 30-second sex session after the singer performed in Los Angeles.

“I know it’s not Justin Bieber,” Terranova said. “She just wants money. It’s a scam.”

His girlfriend Lacy Jensen, who herself is pregnant now, agreed.

“Poor kid. He’s worked so hard for his career and to deal with this. She just wants to get her name out there,” said Jensen.

“She’s a gold digger and just wants someone to take care of her,” Jensen said. “She was a really big party animal who got around a lot. She was a big slut. She’s scandalous.”

Yeater was arrested for battery last December for allegedly slapping Terranova in a jealous rage after she returned from her sojourn in California to find him dating a new girlfriend, Jensen.

I see no reason to think that White’s claims have any more validity than Yeater’s claims. It seems plausible to me that both women are making false claims for the same reason – they want fame and money.

Do women ever make false claims about sexual matters? Its more common than you might think. Studies show that false allegations are made about 20-40% of the time, depending on the study. These sorts of false accusations are usually made in order to 1) get attention or money, by trying to appear as an innocent victim, 2) in order to get an alibi for something the woman has done wrong (see below), or 3) to get revenge on someone who has mistreated the woman, as with the Duke lacrosse scandal.

Consider this case of a Hofstra student Danmell Ndonye who invented a false rape accusation.

Excerpt:

The Hofstra freshman who had a raunchy restroom romp and then cried rape made up the twisted tale because she didn’t want her schoolmates — particularly her new boyfriend — to think she was easy, the beau told The Post yesterday.

“I think she needs a psychologist. She probably felt like, ‘They’ll think I’m a slut,’ ” her boyfriend, who asked not to be identified, told The Post.

Danmell Ndonye, 18, who had accused five men of gang rape, admitted the truth only when prosecutors confronted her after learning of a cellphone video that captured the whole sordid episode and showed she had willingly participated, officials said.

She created her outlandish tale when her boyfriend, a Hofstra student who’s been dating her since the semester began a few weeks ago, demanded to know where she had disappeared after a wild frat party early Sunday.

The two had been dancing together at the Alpha Kappa Alpha mixer at the school’s on-campus club, Hofstra USA, but got separated when a fight broke out.

The boyfriend said he called her repeatedly, but she didn’t answer her cellphone, so he went to her seventh-floor dorm room at Estabrook Hall. Moments later she appeared.

“As I was about to leave, she comes up and she has no shoes on, she is holding them in her hands. She looked like she just finished hot sex,” he said. “I said, ‘Where were you? What were you doing?’ She told me, ‘Nothing.’ I said, ‘What do you mean, nothing?’ “

Ndonye then dropped a bombshell.

“I said, ‘Don’t lie to me, what’s going on?’ And she said, ‘Oh, I just got raped,’ ” he said.

“It didn’t seem real to me. She was calm,” he continued. “Then she started crying and saying, ‘I was raped.’ She lied to me. I think she was embarrassed. I said to her, ‘You have to call public safety.’ She hesitated. It seemed like she didn’t want to.”

She then tried to backpedal.

“Oh, you know, no, it’s OK,” she told him, but he was incredulous.

“How could it be OK that you just got raped?” the boyfriend said.

So she relented — and a four-day nightmare began for four innocent men: Stalin Felipe, 19, his stepbrother, Kevin Taveras, 20, Jesus Ortiz, 19, and 21-year-old Rondell Bedward, a Hofstra senior who had invited the others to the party.

Cops also hunted for a fifth man, who has not been publicly identified.

False allegations of abuse are routinely used in divorce custody hearings. They virtually never go to trial.

In the absence of ANY evidence, why think that these anonymous charges against a black conservative who is leading in national polls are anything but greed and attention-whoring? Surely, we need to see some charges laid against Cain that where brought forward in a real criminal trial, so we can see the evidence. Otherwise, it just seems to me like another case of false paternity claims and false sexual allegations. We need to see real criminal charges, with real evidence and real witnesses from a real trial, before we can draw any conclusions.

My previous post analyzed the media bias evident in how this story is being covered.

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