The bond market thinks Warren Buffett is a safer investment than President Barack Obama.
Bloomberg analyzed the bonds of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. along with other major businesses and found that investors wanted a slightly higher interest rate from government bonds.
That means investors think the government is a higher risk.
"It's a slap upside the head of the government," said Mitchell Stapley, the chief fixed-income officer in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at Fifth Third Asset Management, which oversees $22 billion. "It could be the moment where hopefully you realize that risk is beginning to creep into your credit profile and the costs associated with that can be pretty scary."
Government securities usually have the lowest rates, because they are considered so safe. However, the Obama administration is projected to add nearly $10 trillion in new federal debt in the next decade.
And that means Washington's credit rating could start to slip.
"America will use about 7 percent of taxes for debt payments in 2010 and almost 11 percent in 2013, moving "substantially" closer to losing its AAA rating," Moody's Investors Service said last week.
LONDON, March 23, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A ten-year-old British boy has become the first child to be given a new windpipe, which will grow inside his body, created from his own stem cells. The breakthrough surgery was conducted at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London on Monday, and doctors hope that it represents the next step forward in transplantation technology.
Stem cells taken from the boy’s bone marrow were injected into a fibrous collagen “scaffold” created from a donor trachea. Only hours after the boy’s cells were mixed with a growth medium and applied to the scaffold, the trachea was stripped of the donor cells and implanted surgically into the boy...."-Click link above for more.
Ever so often I like to highlight LifeSiteNews.com with a bundle of interesting articles. They do a great job in covering issues of faith, family and life around the world. Below are some recent examples on the issue of life.
SAN DIEGO, California, March 15, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Abandoning its long-held neutrality on the marriage debate, the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT) has slowly come to disavow pro-family views and sexual orientation therapy as "homophobic." Instead it now warmly supports homosexuality as a "normal and positive" variant of sexuality - all thanks to pressure by gay activists who have openly vowed to transform the organization from within.
The disturbing result of the activists' tactics, says one anonymous CAMFT intern, is that pro-family therapists in California are becoming increasingly afraid to speak up in favor of natural marriage and the family.
CAMFT, one of the largest therapist associations in California with over 30,000 members, had maintained a broadly neutral stance on same-sex "marriage" for most of its existence.
But in the run-up to California's vote on Proposition 8 banning same-sex "marriage" in November 2008, CAMFT's neutrality began drawing unfriendly attention. Gay activists pointed out that organizations such as The American Psychological Association, the California Psychological Association, and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, had all come out in support of deconstructing the legal definition of marriage...."-Clink link above for more.
OTTAWA, March 22, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – During a nail-biting session in Canadian parliament Tuesday, the Liberal motion which sought to force Prime Minister Stephen Harper to include abortion in the Canadian plan to address maternal and child health at the G8 summit was defeated in a narrow 144-138 vote.
Rae's motion stated that the maternal health plan "must include the full range of family planning, sexual and reproductive health options," which would have included abortion.
Minister for International Cooperation Bev Oda, announced this morning that the Conservatives would be voting against the motion. However, the vote still required some pro-life Liberals to vote against the motion as the Bloque and NDP were voting in support of the motion.
Yesterday Liberal and Conservative MPs were contacted by pro-life Canadians, and urged to vote against the motion. One Liberal MP, Dan McTeague, informed LSN yesterday that he could not support the motion...."-Click link above for more.
Blog post will mostly stop for a week or two as my family and I are going on a family vacation. Values Voter News is only going to produce a post a day for the next 10 days or so but I think they will be quite interesting. Will return Lord willing on 04/05/2010. God bless you and yours.
Values Voter News posted No family values at Girl Scouts. First, the UN Climate Change Conference now Planned Parenthood, abortion and sexuality. Now there is further evidence that Girl Scouts is in the business of comprehensive sex education which includes abortions. Click on image to the left from the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. Found the image via a link from WND.COM from article titled Girl Scouts hiding secret sex agenda?. Doesn't really matter who you are going to believe on the issue in dispute but one thing that is clear is that Girl Scouts supports the same comprehensive sex education that includes abortion as Planned Parenthood and UNICEF supports as the image clearly evidences.
"Accessible, affordable and safe abortions should be made part of the minimum packages of sexual and reproductive health services."-Click image to left to read.
In Girl Scouts response to the concerns surrounding this event they made it clear that they worked "jointly" with "UNICEF's Working Group on Girls". See Statement from GSUSA.
And now check out these excellent and heated speeches in support of the American people as documented above just before the final vote that passed ObamaCare on Sunday.
House Minority Republican Leader Boehner: "Hell no you can't"
Now, to the left is an image of a page from a CNN poll released Monday that reveals that 70% of the American people do not believe this bill will reduce the deficit. 62% believe this bill will not reduce costs. Which probably explains why 59% are against this bill.
Who are they listening to? If you watch the debate on CSPAN between Democrats and Republicans it is clear that the Republicans are winning this debate. I would like to point to some prior posts at Values Voter News that gives good evidence for Americans to believe as they do.
By the way the government doesn't own or fund CSPAN. CSPAN is a product of the private and free market. So your tax dollars are not being used and this comes free of charge and is clearly the least biased of all programming on TV. As a matter of fact I would argue that the best way you can determine if your favorite media is biased or not is by CSPAN.
I have yet to see anything beat CSPAN. I have tried to watch and embed government TV in other countries on line and it is difficult. But the free and private market in American has created CSPAN and has just gotten better. I have used many CSPAN videos at another site called AvoidtheBias.com.
1) To get different sides of the issues without the influence of media bias so that one can make his or her own decision about the issues untainted by media bias.
2) To know the different sides of the issues without bias so that one can be able to better detect bias in the media and be aware of when they are being biased against or for a certain side of the issue.
Avoid the Bias assumes that as its readers know the different sides of the issues and can get the different sides of the issues without media bias then the readers of Avoid the Bias will be better informed as to bias in our media and will be better informed themselves on the issues then the media itself."
The recent health care debate took place on Sunday and let us use this debate as an example. Below is embedded video of the 10 hours of debate at CSPAN.
Now that is not all that impressive but it is nice to know that you can watch any proceeding in the House or Senate at any time day or night and get the story from both sides of the issue without having to trust the media to accurately relay those messages to you and embed it on your site for others to watch.
Now the feature I found most interesting is that sometimes you don't want to listen to all 10 hours of the proceeding cause you are not interested in every issue that comes before the floor. Some of it is quite boring. So CSPAN has made it so you can view what they call a Session Timeline. Click here to see what that looks like. Again I am using the recent Health Care debate on Sunday.
You can see the subject they may be discussing in the middle of the screen and you can move the cursor over the names to the left and see how long this speech on this subject was for and then click on the name to watch that speech on that subject.
To the far right you will see pictures of congressmen and women who made speeches that day on the floor in alphabetical order. It will also show how many times that congressman or woman spoke on the floor and for how many minutes. If you click on the link where it shows how many times and minutes you can watch every speech given by that individual on the floor for that day. Congressman Ryan had the second most minutes for the Republicans on the floor from the Health Care debate on Sunday and I think as you watch you will see why. Watch Ryan's speeches by clicking the link or click here.
Now you can get even more familiar with your congressman or woman by clicking on the name of the congressman or woman. And you can get pretty much as familiar as you want with CSPAN video of your congressman or woman. Take for example the top speaker for the Democrats from the health care debate and click on his name. You've got some 20 plus years of video footage in some 931 days on the floor with hours upon hours of speeches on the floor.
So you can get a pretty good idea of both sides of the issues rather quickly without having to trust that the media is accurately portraying the two sides. The more you click around the more you will become familiar and able to quickly find what you are looking for. There is much more at CSPAN but this is good for starters.
One issue that I reported to CSPAN is that I was unable to embed the video footage of the 14 minutes of Paul Ryan's speeches on my blog. I reported this issue to them and I am sure it will be resolved. As soon as they resolve this issue you could post the best speakers from both sides side by side and you have just given the most possible unbiased report to your viewers.
I would suggest a view of AvoidtheBias.com for more programing on CSPAN that will help you give unbiased reports from both sides by just letting the speakers from both sides speak for themselves and weeding out the necessity of the media.
"For more than a year, PP has worked tirelessly for a health care reform bill that would fix our broken health care system, strengthen women's health, and achieve quality, affordable health care for all Americans.
Today, monumental progress was made toward achieving these goals with the passage of historic health care reform legislation by the U.S. House of Representatives, despite a symbolic gesture, in the form of an Executive Order, to anti-choice Congressman Bart Stupak (D-MI), which has diverted attention from the central goal of health care reform - controlling costs and extending coverage.
As a trusted health care provider to millions of women and families across the country, Planned Parenthood applauds the fact that this legislation would extend health care coverage, including family planning, to tens of millions of women and families, guarantee access to affordable life-saving screenings for cervical and breast cancer and other serious health problems, protect women against gender discrimination by private insurers, end the practice of dropping coverage because of pre-existing conditions, and significantly increase access to reproductive health care.
The proposal also includes a commonsense provision to expand family planning under Medicaid, which would significantly increase access to essential preventive health care for millions of women....
Nonetheless, we regret that a pro-choice president of a pro-choice nation was forced to sign an Executive Order that further codifies the proposed anti-choice language in the health care reform bill, originally proposed by Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
What the president's executive order did not do is include the complete and total ban on private health insurance coverage for abortion that Congressman Bart Stupak (D-MI) had insisted upon. So while we regret that this proposed Executive Order has given the imprimatur of the president to Senator Nelson's language, it is critically important to note that it does not include the Stupak abortion ban."
Remember Stupak was against Nelson's language cause it did not protect tax payers money from going to abortion. Planned Parenthood doesn't believe the Stupak language does anything to change that. Watch Stupak explain how the Nelson language is not good enough in below article.
So Stupak really got nothing out of this but an excuse to vote for the bill after holding out for so long. I think Stupak was really trying to get the Hyde Amendment language inserted into the bill but also wanted this reform to pass and so compromised with an Executive Order that is unbinding on this legislation as Planned Parenthood admitted is "a symbolic gesture" which National Right to Life agrees. See there statement below.
"WASHINGTON -- (Sunday, March 21, 2010, 6 PM EDT) -- In response to today's announcement regarding an agreement between Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mi.) and President Obama on the pending health care bill (H.R. 3590), the following statement was issued by the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of right-to-life organizations in the 50 states:
The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) remains strongly opposed to the Senate-passed health bill (H.R. 3590). A lawmaker who votes for this bill is voting to require federal agencies to subsidize and administer health plans that will pay for elective abortion, and voting to undermine longstanding pro-life policies in other ways as well. Pro-life citizens nationwide know that this is a pro-abortion bill. Pro-life citizens know, and they will be reminded again and again, which lawmakers deserve their gratitude for voting against this pro-abortion legislation.
The executive order promised by President Obama was issued for political effect. It changes nothing. It does not correct any of the serious pro-abortion provisions in the bill. The president cannot amend a bill by issuing an order, and the federal courts will enforce what the law says..."
Pro-choice Democrat congresswoman agrees with both Planned Parenthood and National Right to Life. Watch her comments below.
First, I would like to direct you all to the final debates on this bill from both sides at AvoidtheBias.com for better understanding of what the debate was about and what effects both sides claim this bill will have. As the debate ended there was more clarity and the best of the best came out to argue as both sides were debating the issue to persuade a yes or no vote on this bill in the House.
I have yet to make any posts concerning passage of the Health Care bill which I probably will do this week. One thing I found interesting off the top though is that this bill barely passed and at about 2 pm yesterday both sides caved to pass the bill. A deal was struck with the very White House by pro-life democrats that were holding out there vote until they got assurance that tax payer money would not go to fund abortions. That assurance came in the form of an Executive Order that President Obama promised he would sign after he signs the bill. The Executive Order says that the Hyde Amendment would apply to this bill.
Every respectable pro-life organization (see National Right to Life statement and further links here who has been championing the cause of the unborn since 1973) has condemned the compromise for the simple reason that an Executive Order can not override law and can be repealed any time as evidenced by the Mexico City Policy. If a President can sign an Executive Order and that order override current law then there would be no need for the legislative process. We don't legislate deals like this through the White House in America. This Order if enforced would surely bring a lawsuit and a true pro-life politician will usually chose not to take chances or cut deals over the issue of the unborn. It is clear to many that this legislation was more important to pass for those pro-life democrats than protecting the unborn and for that reason and others pro-life organizations will declare a vote for this bill as a vote against the unborn.
Anyways, as I learn more I will be posting more on this this week. We are getting ready to take a vacation for part of this week and next week so I will squeeze in what I can and will be taking a break from posting for a week except maybe to copy and paste interesting articles from elsewhere. We will see as time allows.
And I just found Planned Parenthood's statement on the bill here. This further confirms the National Right to Life statement in link above.
The latest post from David at FireDogLake.org which has been doing a great job keeping tally. FireDogLake is a liberal blog but since this House is a liberal House they seem to know it better than us conservatives. Click on link below to read post in its entirety at FireDogLake.org. FireDogLake has the current count at 205 No 207 Yeas 10 Leaning Oppose and 9 Unknown and it is 9 pm Washington time with less than 24 hours till voting time.
Looking at the numbers, I don’t see a really good way to evade the Stupak bloc without pulling the trigger on the executive order from the President clarifying no federal funding for abortion services. While Diana DeGette has agreed to such a maneuver, I’ve heard nobody in the Stupak bloc actually do the same. Apparently members are reading the proposed language.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn is going to give members a few hours to review the draft language of an executive order on abortion before he gets back to whipping them. The order is still being drafted and has not yet been circulated.
“I’m sure hopeful,” Clyburn said, of the order’s ability to pickup votes. “I understand the language is being read by various people.”
He says he doesn’t know whether the order will satisfy pro-life Democrats, “but we’re going to be taking a measure of that within the next couple of hours to make sure.”
Stupak has said throughout that he merely wants to affirm current law, and presumably that’s all an executive order would do. But as Suzy Khimm says, Stupak’s kind of backed himself into a corner by arguing that only his amendment would be sufficient. Of course, the executive order is designed to peel off votes softer than Stupak on the issue, like Kathy Dahlkemper, Marcy Kaptur, Steve Driehaus, or the two West Virginia Reps., Nick Rahall and Alan Mollohan.
In a twist, Republicans may offer their own Stupak language inside a motion to recommit. David Waldman tells you more than you ever need to know about that action...."
Call, fax, Twitter, and email your representative right now even if your representative is not pro-life like mine you can argue that for the sake of getting enough votes they need to support the Stupak pro-life language. Ask them to accept pro-life Stupak language or kill the bill. We do not want health care reform on the backs of the unborn.
First, watch this report concerning the recent Gallup poll from CBNNews.com.
Two respected polling groups report that our President has his worst yet approval rating since the beginning of his presidency. In fact Rasmussen has President Obama at a worse "strongly disapprove" rating than when Bush left office. This is coming at a time when he has pushed for health care reform for the last two weeks canceling two trips to do so and when the health care will finally be voted on to pass and into the president's hands to sign.
"The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that 23% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21. That matches the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President (see trends)."
"Overall, 43% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. That also matches the lowest level yet recorded for this President. Fifty-six percent (56%) disapprove."
The best whip count I have been able to find is by a liberal blogger at FireDogLake.org and he has divided the count into for categories. Yes, No, Undecided and the Stupak group. According to David Dayen at FireDogLake.org if Pelosi doesn't pick up one of the Stupak group the bill fails as the count is 204 Yes to 206 No 11 Undecided and 10 Stupak group. With the Stupak group Pelosi would have enough to pass the bill. There were talks last night of making a deal with Stupak to insure a fix in the Senate bill with the Stupak language to insure tax payer funding of abortion would be eliminate to get Stupak and his group. But pro-choice Democrats were upset and threatened to withhold some 40 or so votes. So Pelosi is now forced into the position we are now which is not enough votes to pass the bill. She needs to pick up all remaining undecided and one member from the Stupak group or you can figure other possible scenarios. Either way at least one will need to defect from the pro-life Stupak group.
As New York Times reported an hour ago, "Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan and a leader of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, has postponed a news conference that had been scheduled for 11 a.m. on Saturday, a sign that there is still serious maneuvering under way in the fight over abortion language in the major health care legislation."
ABC reported their tally which includes leaners: "the tally is nearly a straight split, with 212 House members voting "yes" or leaning in that direction; and 212 voting "no" or leaning in that direction. The bill needs 216 House votes to pass." And then adds "The president is not the only one making his opinion known -- calls to House members by the electorate were coming in today at more than 100,000 per hour."
Call, fax, Twitter, and email your representative right now even if your representative is not pro-life like mine you can argue that for the sake of getting enough votes they need to support the Stupak pro-life language. Ask them to accept pro-life Stupak language or kill the bill. We do not want health care reform on the backs of the unborn.
BOISE, Idaho, March 19, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Virginia and Idaho have now taken the lead among U.S. states in the fight against national health care, with the two states having successfully enacted laws empowering their attorneys general to sue the federal government for trying to force their respective residents to buy health insurance.
On Wednesday, Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter signed the Idaho Health Freedom Act into law, during the first public ceremony for this year's legislature.
"What the Idaho Health Freedom Act says is that the citizens of our state won't be subject to another federal mandate or turn over another part of their life to government control," Otter told reporters.
Otter issued an executive order mandating the state attorney general defend the law and take action against the U.S. government if health care reform is passed. He said that while opponents may scoff at the Act, he believed litigation would have a chance at success, since thirty-six other states are considering similar legislation. "That's a critical mass. That's a constitutional mass," he added.
Virginia fired the first warning shot against the federal government last week, by becoming the first state to pass a bill declaring any federal mandate to require individuals to purchase health insurance null and void in the Commonwealth. The bill became law without the signature of Gov. Bob McDonnell.
Virginia State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli officially warned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that his state will fill a constitutional challenge to the health care bill, if she and the Democratic leadership decide to ram the bill through using Rep. Slaughter's "deem and pass" parliamentary rule. Under this scheme House representatives will only vote on a reconciliation "fix" package to the Senate health bill, and will not vote on the Senate bill itself. Once the "fix" package is passed, the Senate bill will simply be "deemed" passed by the House.
"Should you employ the deem and pass tactic, you expose any act which may pass to yet another constitutional challenge," said Cuccinelli. He cited Supreme Court precedent in Clinton v. City of New York (1998), which he stated required that for a law "to be validly enacted, the Senate bill would have to be accepted by the House in a form that is word-for-word identical."
States confronting the federal government directly would also invoke their rights guaranteed by Amendment X of the US Constitution. It states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
First, check out excellent interview below of Stupak explaining exactly how tax payers will be funding abortions if his language is not accepted into the Senate bill as he takes on MSNBC interviewers.
Pelosi apparently doesn't have the votes. Pelosi is talking to Stupak. This is making pro-choice democrats irate and threatening their vote which would kill the bill. I thought this wasn't a bill about abortion. Apparently, it is boiling down to a major disagreement in the Democrat party over abortion.
Values Voter News reported earlier today that Pro-choice female Democrats are shuttling in and out of Pelosi's office and they won't say why. Current vote count is 209 No to 201 Yes and 214 No to 207 Yes with leaners. Pelosi has apparently been talking to Stupak and pro-choice democrats are upset. I have been following the liberal blog of David Dayen over at FireDogLake and he is quite a resource. Check out his latest post concerning this very issue and he even has the new Stupak language posted on his blog at The Stupak Amendment Is Back: What’s an Enrollment Corrections Bill? that lists the 9 other co-sponsors of the language who are Marion Berry, Sanford Bishop, Joseph Cao, Kathy Dahlkemper, Steve Driehaus, Marcy Kaptur, Dan Lipinski, Alan Mollohan, and Nick Rahall. It takes a liberal to know the liberal House and he knows it and is on top of it. Values Voter News highly recommends a continued check of his blog for what is going on in this liberal House as we get to the goal line on this bill. David Dayen currently has the vote count at 210 No to 202 Yes but some of those No's are part of the Stupak gang which would be game changer.
Call, fax, Twitter, and email your representative right now even if your representative is not pro-life like mine you can argue that for the sake of getting enough votes they need to support the Stupak pro-life language.
He suspects a possible deal being cut with pro-life Democrats to get the Stupak language in the bill to get the pro-life democrats aboard and if so this bill is going to pass unless they loose pro-choice Dems. So the hunch is that possibly Pelosi is playing out the pro-choice Dems to be sure they stay on board and make a deal with Stupak since they won't have the votes without Stupak.
Call, fax, Twitter, and email your representative right now even if your representative is not pro-life like mine you can argue that for the sake of getting enough votes they need to support the Stupak pro-life language.
Do watch videos below and then read this 3 page letter from the National Right to Life to congressmen and women of why the health care bill as it stands now does allow tax payer funding of abortion.
The pro-life Stupak language to insure tax payers do not pay for abortions is not dead yet in this current health care debate. Check out this interview. It could be that since Dems don't have the votes they need to pass health care reform with only 2 days to go they may be working to get the Stupak 12. Latest count I have found is Health Care Whip Count Updates: Titus Yes, Kaptur Lean Yes (195 firm Yes, 208 firm No) so Call, fax, Twitter, and email your representative right now even if your representative is not pro-life like mine you can argue that for the sake of getting the Stupak 12 they need to support it.
You can watch this debate on the House floor from yesterday below and do listen to the whole 6 minutes as they intertwine other subjects. For some more recent debate on the health care legislation see AvoidtheBias.com.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
By Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press
Washington (AP) - Banks weren't the only ones giving big bonuses in the boom years before the worst financial crisis in generations. The government also was handing out millions of dollars to bank regulators, rewarding "superior" work even as an avalanche of risky mortgages helped create the meltdown.
The payments, detailed in payroll data released to The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act, are the latest evidence of the government's false sense of security during the go-go days of the financial boom. Just as bank executives got bonuses despite taking on dangerous amounts of risk, regulators got taxpayer-funded bonuses despite missing or ignoring signs that the system was on the verge of a meltdown.
The bonuses were part of a reward program little known outside the government. Some government regulators got tens of thousands of dollars in perks, boosting their salaries by almost 25 percent. Often, though, rewards amounted to just a few hundred dollars for employees who came up with good ideas.
During the 2003-06 boom, the three agencies that supervise most U.S. banks -- the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency -- gave out at least $19 million in bonuses, records show.
Nearly all that money was spent recognizing "superior" performance. The largest share, more than $8.4 million, went to financial examiners, those employees and managers who scrutinize internal bank documents and sound the first alarms. Analysts, auditors, economists and criminal investigators also got awards.
After the meltdown, the government's internal investigators surveyed the wreckage of nearly 200 failed banks and repeatedly found that those regulators had not done enough:
--"OTS did not react in a timely and forceful manner to certain repeated indications of problems," the Treasury Department's inspector general said of the thrift supervision office following the $2.5 billion collapse of NetBank, the first major bank failure of the economic crisis.
--"OCC did not issue a formal enforcement action in a timely manner and was not aggressive enough in the supervision of ANB in light of the bank's rapid growth," the inspector general said of the currency comptroller after the $2.1 billion failure of ANB Financial National Association
--"In retrospect, a stronger supervisory response at earlier examinations may have been prudent," FDIC's inspector general concluded following the $1.8 billion collapse of New Frontier Bank.
--"OTS examiners did not identify or sufficiently address the core weaknesses that ultimately caused the thrift to fail until it was too late," Treasury's inspector general said regarding IndyMac, which in 2008 became one of the largest bank failures in history. "They believed their supervision was adequate. We disagree."
--"OCC's supervision of Omni National Bank was inadequate," Treasury investigators concluded following Omni's $956 million failure.
Because most bank inspection records are not public and the government blacked out many of the employee names before releasing the bonus data, it's impossible to determine how many auditors got bonuses despite working on major banks that failed.
Regulators say it's unfair to use those missteps, seen with the benefit of hindsight, to suggest any of the bonuses was improper.
"These are meant to motivate employees, have them work hard," thrift office spokesman William Ruberry said. "The economy has taken a downturn in recent years. I'm not sure that negates the hard work or good ideas of our employees."
At the OCC, spokesman Kevin Mukri noted that the national banks his agencies regulate generally fared better than others during the financial crisis.
"In making compensation decisions, the OCC is mindful of the need to recruit and retain the very best people, and our merit system is aimed at accomplishing that," Mukri said. "We also believe it is important to reward those who worked so hard and showed such great professionalism throughout the crisis."
David Barr, a spokesman for the FDIC, which handed out two-thirds of the bonuses during the boom, had no comment.
In government, as on Wall Street, bonuses are part of the culture. Federal employees can get extra pay for innovative ideas, recruiting new talent or performing exceptional work. Candidates being considered for hard-to-fill jobs may be offered student loan reimbursement or cash bonuses to get them in the door and keep them from leaving.
The bonus data released to the AP does not say specifically why each person received a bonus. For instance, one person in the OCC's financial examining division got a $41,000 recruitment bonus on top of a $179,000 salary in 2005. In 2006, the last boom year for banks buying risky mortgages, the FDIC gave out more than 2,000 bonuses to financial examiners.
In 2008, the year the market collapsed, OTS gave 96 financial examiners bonuses of up to $3,000 for exceptional work.
At the three regulatory agencies, the value of the bonuses stayed roughly constant from before the banking boom, through the good times and into the collapse. While the total pales in comparison with the billions spent on Wall Street perks, the justification was similar.
"Bonuses were determined based upon the performance and the retention of the people," said John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, the troubled brokerage firm that paid out $3.6 billion in bonuses just before selling itself to Bank of America. "And there is nothing that happened in the world or the economy that would make you say that those were not the right thing to do for the retention and the reward of the people who were performing."
To be sure, Washington policymakers eased regulations and encouraged banks to write risky loans. Families bought homes they couldn't afford. Brokers found them mortgages. Bankers quickly snatched them up, never asking whether they could be repaid. And rating agencies certified it all as safe.
But regulators were part of the problem, and the bonuses were a symptom, said Ellen Seidman, a research fellow at the New America Foundation think tank and the former head of OTS from 1997 to 2001.
"Is it probably the case that the standards for evaluating how well people in the regulatory system were doing were not as high as they should have been? Probably," Seidman said.
But the bigger question, she said, is why government regulators thought they were doing so well: "Why did the system fool itself?"
(Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
