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Maybe the Downgrade was a pre-emptive strike
by Flavius 8/12/2011 - 11:24 pm
Suppose S&P knew it had some sub-prime skeletons which it wanted to protect from any investigation. The Downgrade did that since now any investigation could be characterized as Obama's revenge.
What sort of skeletons?
Consider the initial period of minimal payments in sub-prime loans..
Suppose that wasn't really designed as a "come-on" to entrap naive buyers. Suppose instead its purpose was to facilitate, say S&P, providing a triple A to the derivatives based on this junk. Pretty hard for Stuffy & Pompous to do that if they started defaulting immediately.
But no early payments =d no early defaults. which =d a window during which profitably to flog the derivatives to some naive investors .
Wouldn't S&P have understood that game? Not if the unholy alliance of realtors and banks made it worthwhile not to understand.
But suppose there are some emails explaining this collusion ... That would make it very useful if Justice were prevented from investigating because it would seem like Obama' s revenge for the Downgrade.
But I guess I've just become a conspiracy theorist in my old age.
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In the News
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For Native American Women, Scourge of Rape, Rare Justice
The issue of sexual assaults on American Indian women has become one of the major sources of discord in the current debate between the White House and the House of Representatives over the latest reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act of 1994.
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“We should never have a woman come into the office saying, ‘I need to learn more about Plan B for when my daughter gets raped,’ ” said Charon Asetoyer, a women’s health advocate on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, referring to the morning-after pill. “That’s what’s so frightening — that it’s more expected than unexpected. It has become a norm for young women.”
The difficulties facing American Indian women who have been raped are myriad, and include a shortage of sexual assault kits at Indian Health Service hospitals, where there is also a lack of access to birth control and sexually transmitted disease testing. There are also too few nurses trained to perform rape examinations, which are generally necessary to bring cases to trial.
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PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A Pakistani doctor who helped the Central Intelligence Agency pin down Osama bin Laden's location under cover of a vaccination drive was convicted on Wednesday of treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a senior official in Pakistan said.
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To add to any conspiracy theories which might develop it was reported on Bloomberg that 66 executives of S&P very recently bought stock in the company.
However one slices and dices the downgrade, it happened on Obama's watch, and he cannot escape some blame for it, fair or not. So ultimately the downgrade was a shot at Obama, and, I think, Dodd-Frank, the bane of any S&P client.
Yeah I think so too.
They would not do this to Bush.
But such is life!
There's something fishy about it, I just haven't figured out yet what it is. I don't know if it is as innocent as the pendulum swinging too far the other direction, or something more malevolent. I tend to think it is probably the latter. I've seen the head guys trying to explain their position, and I'm just not buying it.
As far as conspiracy theories go, this is not a bad one. Ha!