Monday, February 15, 2010

News to Use

Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Rob Portman, a member of the Bush administration, was a big supporter for privatizing Social Security. If Ohio voters send Portman to the U.S. Senate, he will help push it again.(source)

* The Dayton Daily News has a question for readers today:

Which U.S. President do you admire most?

Answers vary on their website. My own personal answer would include Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Visit the Dayton Daily News and add your comments: Link


* There is some speculation that Goldman Sachs has ties to the financial crisis in Greece.
NYTimes:

Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermining the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts....

....Even as the crisis was nearing the flashpoint, banks were searching for ways to help Greece forestall the day of reckoning. In early November — three months before Athens became the epicenter of global financial anxiety — a team from Goldman Sachs arrived in the ancient city with a very modern proposition for a government struggling to pay its bills, according to two people who were briefed on the meeting.

The bankers, led by Goldman’s president, Gary D. Cohn, held out a financing instrument that would have pushed debt from Greece’s health care system far into the future, much as when strapped homeowners take out second mortgages to pay off their credit cards....


Some people might say that Goldman Sachs might be promoting dangerous schemes.