There are some deeply nervous and scared investment banks on Wall Street about now, probably wishing they’d never heard the word “subprime.”

“When they start using the Martin Act, you don’t run, you don’t hide, you don’t fight. You settle early, and often,” a veteran of an earlier round of Martin Act subpoenas told us.

With the Martin Act, the prosecutor doesn’t need to prove intent. Think big penalties. Also, the subpoenas “don’t spell out whether matters are civil or criminal in nature,” which could certainly imply that criminal indictments could be forthcoming for those who don’t cooperate.

As with Enron and Worldcom, some of those involved in mortgage and securities fraud should go to prison. Why? Because they are criminals, that’s why.

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Two brothers were found guilty in L.A. of participating in home invasion robberies staged to look like police raids which netted them over $1 million. They will probably spend decades in prison.

One was an LAPD officer, the other a Long Beach police officer. The ringleader was also an LAPD officer. They weren’t pretending to be cops, they weren’t retired cops, they were active duty cops. AKA Criminal thugs with badges.

The judge said “the case underscored the need for aggressive outside oversight of the Los Angeles Police Department.”

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Obama is within three points of Clinton in California, this before Edwards withdrew, while Romney is balking about spending more money, a sure sign of a dying candidacy.

As mentioned yesterday, if Ron Paul runs on the Libertarian Party ticket he will unquestionably pull votes from the Republican ticket.

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El Piolín, Latino radio radio show host extraordinaire in southern California, just gave Obama a huge boost by having Ted Kennedy on the show for 20 minutes talking about why he endorses Obama.

You must understand, in the lead up to the massive, historic immigration rights march in L.A. in March 2006 it was Latino radio that spread the word. In the days before the march Latino friends told me that Latino radio hosts stopped playing music so they could talk about the march. The buzz was incredible and Latino radio was what did it.

And the biggest and most influential of all of them is El Piolín, who has the highest ratings of any radio host in southern California, Latino or otherwise.

This could be important.

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Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief-of-staff to Colin Powell, on why the US badly needs a new policy towards Latin America and Cuba.

Whoever is the new president in January 2009, two things need to happen with regard to Latin America and Cuba. First, Cuba, never on the front burner, needs at least to be put on the stove. Second, U.S. relations with Latin America should be completely refurbished. And there is the connection: no more effective and swifter way exists to signal a new approach to Latin America than to effect a rapprochement with Cuba as the opening gambit. Mr./Madam President, over to you.

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Genetically modified trees are being used on oil spill sites. They “remove pollutants 100 times faster than non-genetically modified poplars.”

They will be cut down after three years before they can pass their genes on. A Frankentree perhaps, but certainly a useful one.

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Best knife sharpener ever. 6-8 swipes sharpens a dull blade without hassling about getting the edge at just the perfect angle. The secret of the Furi Ozitech knife sharpener is the diamond coated fingers. Folds up into a compact case too.

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A bank CEO says, unlike in previous economic downturns, once homeowners go 30 days late on the mortgage they never make another payment. In previous times, they might have kept paying, remaining 30 days late. But no more. They just walk away from the home, and mail those jingling keys back to the bank.

This is something quite new. In the past, people would try to hold on to the house. However, they probably also put 20% or so down and thus had a financial stake in the house.  But many current homeowners in trouble today probably got NINJA loans (No Income, No Job, No  Assets) and might have only put a few thousand dollars down, if that. Some put nothing down.

Thus, the homeowner has little or no money in the house, can live in it for several months as foreclosure happens without paying anything, then walks away. Sure, their credit is damaged for a while, but if their mortgage just reset to a higher level they probably have no real choice anyway.

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Venture capitalists invested $1 billion in solar companies last year, up from just $100 million in 2005. This is an exponential increase and it’s really only just begun. Solar is still just a toddler.

The country is going into a recession, or at least a slowdown. Huge amounts of money is exiting Wall Street, fleeing the now-toxic wasteland that is debt-backed securities.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all that money got put to actual use, building and creating stuff, rather than in creating bizarre financial instruments that benefit few, if any. The long-term effect of the current debt crisis will be years of pain. The long-term effect of r&d into cleantech will be an economy and country transformed.

Hey, if most of our transportation were EVs powered by renewable energy sources, then we wouldn’t have to go to war to get oil, now would we? Many countries would then breathe a sigh of relief and the world would become a more peaceful place as countries everywhere moved to renewable power and clean transportation.

Such a future can happen. In fact, I’ll say that it will happen. Because it has to. And such a development may be precisely what pulls us out of the coming economic slump too.

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He’s got $20 million in campaign contributions, hasn’t spent much of it, and the Libertarian Party has issued an offer for him to participate in their nominating convention in May.

Ex-House member Cynthia McKinney will probably get the Green Party nomination, thus we could have two credible-to-strong third party runs in 2008.

(And I would not count Bloomberg out quite yet either…

As for Nader, if he runs, it will be a non-event and embarrassing to him. He’s done an extraordinary amount in 4+ decades, but it’s time for him to retire before he becomes a parody of himself.)

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McCain favors immigration reform, Romney doesn’t. Republican Hispanics in Florida went for McCain by a huge margin.

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Food prices have risen so sharply in Haiti that the poor are eating cookies made dirt, salt, and vegetable shortening.

Higher oil prices and demand for biofuels are forcing food prices higher.

The price of the dirt cookies is rising too.

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Doug Henwood’s Behind the News broadcast on 1/24/08 on WBAI covers the subprime debacle in depth. One illuminating discussion covered race and subprime. In the 80’s-90’s, areas were redlined for race to prevent them from getting mortgages. Then the opposite happened. Those areas were deliberately targeted for abusive mortgages, even to the length of door-to-door salesmen pimping them. The Fed has data showing that people in such areas got much more abusive mortgages even as their credit scores were higher than in white areas and other factors such as income were equal. Yes, they had higher credit scores, not lower. The determining factor here was race. Areas with 50% more people of color were specifically chosen for high pressure, sleazy sales tactics.

Henwood has written a number of left books on economics and finance, has serious chops in the area, publishes an occasional newsletter Left Business Observer, and the spinoff from that, LBO-Talk, is one of the best left listservs around with quality posts and little noise.

The radio show is also available on iTunes.

PS. And in related news, we bring you the new, not satire, YouWalkAway.com which explains, I’m guessing for a fee, how to live in your foreclosing home for months without paying, then walk away from it.

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Coca Cola to pay for refueling Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace anti-whaling vessels

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Bloomberg just announced it.

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The Vigilante Journalist is on the ground in Kenya, with disturbing photos and coverage. How any non-native could get these photos and live is beyond my comprehension, especially considering that she is a non-African woman.

The violence is psychotic, apparently encouraged by shadowy elites for their own purposes, and the spawn of the divisions deliberately sown by colonialism. None of which serves as justification for giving forced “circumcisions” to males of other tribes, of course.

Tip: Danger Room

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The Anasazi in Temecula post I linked to recently got me thinking. It likened the enormous numbers of abandoned and emptying out subdivisions in the once-booming city of Temecula CA to the Anasazi leaving their ancient settlements.

Last week, Sue and I toured Biosphere 2 in Tucson AZ. Originally built as a closed-system experiment where eight people lived sealed inside for two years, it has passed through a number of owners and seems now like an abandoned space ship, slowly falling into disrepair. Oh, the tour guides try to keep a happy face and some experiments still go on, but rust is appearing on the supporting beams, maintenance is needed, and it seems slowly and inalterably doomed.

So too seem the numerous subdivisions all over southern California spawned by subprime. Built in hot desert-like areas requiring insane commutes to get to work, they appeared because prices in the big cities were too high for many to afford. Now those city prices are dropping fast and the subprime developments are filled with foreclosure signs.

For any recovery to occur, prices in these developments will have to fall much more than in the cities, else why live there and deal with a two hour commute each way to work. But by then the local economy will have taken huge hits, which will make people even less likely to buy.

Driving through Arizona last September to Utah on back roads, we went through a little town, I forget the name, that had about dried up and blown away. Will the ongoing foreclosure crisis be creating more towns like that? And how do we help those who lost homes and how do the cities and towns in those areas start to recover?

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Looks like that’s who the candidates will be.

One good thing: Both genuinely get it about global warming.

Here’s a thought. The US can works its way out of recession by investing hugely in renewable energy and clean transportation. This not only cleans up the environment, it also creates entire new industries and a zillion jobs to boot plus it gives us energy independence and security. Thus, this is something conservatives as well as liberals can back. Spread the meme.

We also need to do the same for our Internet infrastructure. European and Asian countries tend to have a much faster Internet at a much lower price. We need that here too.

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That is a staggering number. More ghost burbs are coming…

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A next-gen heat pump under development will work even in cold weather. It “tricks” the heat pump by surrounding it with a second air compressor with 10 degree warmer air, thus allowing the heat exchange to occur. This could be a major breakthrough, especially here in the Northeast where heating oil prices are approaching nose bleed levels.

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Homeowners whose homes are losing value as their mortgage resets to much higher levels increasingly feel no need to tough it out. Instead, they just mail the keys back and walk away. This happens enough that it’s called ‘jingle mail.’

There have been so many foreclosures in Cleveland that parts of it now resemble a ghost town. When block after block of residential areas become empty, then businesses in the area suffer too. Tax revenue for the municipality drops, causing budget shortfalls. And so on.

In theory, when home prices drop enough, then speculators will move in, buying at the bottom. But if entire blocks are ravaged and no businesses are nearby, prices will have to drop way down indeed to attract the vultures.

It took parts of the South Bronx decades to come back.

Or will it be like the Anasazi in Temecula?

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… they’re running out of water. The problem is so severe than they plan to stop agriculture subsidies and plan to import all their food by 2016. Think about that. Importing all food means sharply higher prices due to transportation costs plus increased spending and development for the transportation infrastructure to support it. Most the food would have to come in by ship or plane rather than truck too.

Some think Saudi Arabia has also hit peak oil. Thus, they could be on a long slow slide down in the coming decades.

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Iraq Veterans Against the War will hold Winter Soldiers in D.C. on March 13-16, 2008 to give testimony about atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan and the military policies that led to them.

From their website.

Winter Soldiers, according to founding father Thomas Paine, are those who stand up for the soul of their country, even in its darkest hours. With this spirit in mind, IVAW members are standing up to make their experiences available to all who are concerned about the direction of our country.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time America has needed its Winter Soldiers, in 1971, over one hundred members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War gathered in Detroit to share their stories with America. Atrocities like the My Lai massacre had ignited popular opposition to the war, but political and military leaders insisted that such crimes were isolated exceptions. The members of VVAW knew differently.

Over three days in January, these soldiers testified on the systematic brutality they had seen visited upon the people of Vietnam.

Over thirty years later, we find ourselves faced with a new war. But the lies are the same. Once again, American troops are sinking into an increasingly bloody occupation. Once again, war crimes in places like Haditha, Fallujah, and Abu Ghraib have turned the public against the war. Once again, politicians and generals are blaming “a few bad apples” instead of examining the military policies that have destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan.

Once again, our country needs Winter Soldiers.

Like the Vietnam Veterans who came before them, whose opposition to the war signaled and triggered a major turning point in public sentiment against the war, Iraq Veterans Against the War will convince people the traditional left can’t hope to reach.

Stop the war. Support Winter Soldiers.

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Blogging and podcasting pioneer Dave Winer nails it in the Huffington Post.

It was an interesting election until the Clintons started calling Obama the nice young African-American candidate. Yeah, I lived in the south long enough to understand what that means. When I went to Tulane I was often explained as soandso’s Jewish friend Dave. It meant that I could come over for dinner, but there would never be a marriage.

Read on.

Winer can be controversial in the tech world, sometimes brilliant, sometimes infuriating. He’s never been afraid to call them as he sees it, probably made serious enemies with this, probably doesn’t care, and this is one of the best pieces he’s ever written.

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This was the worst drop since records began in 1963. Also, the median price of a home dropped 10% from Dec 2007 vs. Dec. 2006.

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