From Volume 36, Issue 32 of EIR Online, Published Aug. 21, 2009

United States News Digest

Manufacturers Group Attacks Cap-and-Trade Bill

Aug. 13 (EIRNS)—The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) released a report on Aug. 12 illustrating the physical economic effects of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, currently before the Senate. According to the authors of the report, its release was timed to play a big role in the ongoing debate over a cap-and-trade bill in the Senate.

One of the main assumptions in the NAM/ACCF report is the expanded use of nuclear power, as opposed to the recent Energy Information Administration analysis of Waxman-Markey, which assumes that nuclear power will play only a minor role in the period 2012-30. According to the report, electricity prices would immediately rise after the enactment of Waxman-Markey, and would rise 31-50% higher by 2030. The report says that this rapid increase in energy cost would have tremendous negative effects on the elderly and low-income families. (That is a politically correct way of saying the bill would kill people.)

According to the report, due to the energy cost increases caused by the enactment of Waxman-Markey, the economy would lose an additional 2 million jobs, 750,000 of which would be in the manufacturing sector. This is on top of the already close to 500,000-600,000 jobs lost every month.

Even though the report illustrates some harsh physical economic effects, its major flaw is that it fails to take into account the worldwide crisis, and therefore severely underestimates the devastating effects that a cap-and-trade bill would have on people's lives and the prospect of any meaningful recovery, based on building nuclear power plants and maglev trains.

Brits Set Operations in Motion for Major U.S. Violence

Aug. 12 (EIRNS)—Frustrated at the inability, thus far, of their puppet Barack Obama to ram fascist health-care reform down the throats of the American people, the British have set in motion various French Revolution-style options to trigger chaos and violence in the country. Lyndon LaRouche warned today that there is even a danger of a British-sponsored assassination attempt against President Obama. Much of the media coverage of the town hall revolt against Obama and the Congress has attempted to play up "racism" and fringe-group calls for violence. For example, on July 11, a swastika was painted on a sign outside the office of Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.). At the Obama meeting in Portsmouth, N.H. that same day, a much photographed man with a gun in a holster openly strapped around his calf, showed up to "protest." On cue, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)-linked Southern Poverty Law Center issued a new study reporting that right-wing militia groups are having a revival. And USA Today reports that the Secret Service and the FBI are cooperating to root out potential political attackers, given "the rising level of hate speech" and "surging gun sales."

Beware the guiding British hand behind such provocations.

Is Summers Still on the Take from the Hedge Funds?

Aug. 12 (EIRNS)—The Obama Administration's determination to bail out the speculators is leading to suspicions that White House economic advisor Larry Summers could still be getting big payoffs from the hedge funds he formerly worked for, a City of London analyst told EIR yesterday. Everyone knows that Summers got millions from the hedge funds in the past. It is clear that all the toxic-debt bailouts did not work at all, and, come September, as these operations expire, the decay of the whole system will be exposed, the analyst said—but Summers keeps on bailing.

Lyndon LaRouche said that Summers could certainly still be on the take, along with the Obama Administration's other hedge fund crony, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Summers was paid millions of dollars by Wall Street during 2008, the New York Times has reported. He was paid $5.2 million by hedge fund D.E. Shaw in 2006-07, for just one day of "work" a week, as well as receiving $2.7 million in fees from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Lehman Brothers for speeches in 2008.

Congressional Drive To Terminate TARP Getting Belated Attention

Aug. 10 (EIRNS)—A McClatchy Newspapers article yesterday on the anemic oversight of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), by a congressionally mandated panel headed by Harvard Prof. Elizabeth Warren, has been picked up widely by newspapers and Internet sites. The articles make note of a bill introduced June 8 by Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.) that would terminate the TARP program at the end of this year. The bill, H.R. 2745, entitled the "TARP Repayment and Termination Act of 2009," has 31 co-sponsors.

Hensarling is the lone Congressman to sit on Warren's Congressional oversight panel, and is the top Republican on the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit.

In a July 22 op-ed in the Washington Times, Hensarling wrote, "It's plain to see that the program originally intended for financial stability and taxpayer protection has become a $700 billion revolving bailout slush fund to promote the administration's political, social and economic agenda. And, it is not just the administration's agenda. Congress is getting in on the act, too.... The bill would allow TARP recipients who are deemed safe and sound to pay back the taxpayer and ensure those funds are not recycled for the bailout slush fund but diverted to deficit reduction."

Hensarling voted against the bill that created TARP.

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