Jon Stewart Declares: Elizabeth Warren Is Financial Chicken Soup

I love Harvard’s Elizabeth Warren, a truth teller and brilliant advocate for the people’s need to know and have a fair economy. She was on with Jon Stewart last night, and even she couldn’t really make sense of the stupidity and criminality of the TARP program as conceived by Hank Paulson and still run by his Goldman Sachs protégé, Neel Kashkari, even though Warren heads the Congressional Panel on TARP.

What a costly SCANDAL, a scandal that co-opted the Congress and the media. Watch this interview and marvel at how we have all been ripped off. This makes the TEAPOT DOME scandal and the many that came after it mere blips on the screen of history, and even puts Ponzi King Bernie Madoff to shame. Are these people as stupid as they appear or was their an evil method to their madness?

Professor Warren’s April oversight report of the Congressional Oversight Panel: Assessing Treasury’s Strategy: Six Months of TARP. A must watch — especially for Timmy and his boss!

NYT: 11 Pirates Are Seized in Raid by French Navy

French forces detained 11 suspected pirates during an assault on what they described as a pirate “mother ship” in the Indian Ocean.

Enough Dead Pirate Porn: The Press is Relishing the Killing of Three Teenage Pirates With Disturbing Zeal By Chris Nolan, Majikthise.

The American public is relishing the deaths of the pirates to a degree that’s downright unseemly.

Toxic Waste’ Behind Somali PiracyBy Najad Abdullahi

Somali pirates have accused European firms of dumping toxic waste off the Somali coast and are demanding an $8m ransom for the return of a Ukranian ship they captured, saying the money will go towards cleaning up the waste.

Guardian: Something the Pirates Should Go After

Health risks of shipping pollution have been ‘underestimated’

One giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50m cars, study finds

Errant Drone Attacks Spur Militants in PakistanBy Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON, Apr 15 (IPS) – The U.S. program of drone aircraft strikes against higher-ranking officials of al Qaeda and allied militant organisations, which has been touted by proponents as having eliminated nine of the 20 top al Qaeda leaders, is actually weakening Pakistan’s defence against the insurgency of the Islamic militants there by killing large numbers of civilians based on faulty intelligence and discrediting the Pakistani military, according to data from the Pakistani government and interviews with senior analysts.

Some evidence indicates, moreover, that the top officials in the Barack Obama administration now see the programme more as an incentive for the Pakistani military to take a more aggressive posture toward the militants rather than as an effective tool against the insurgents.

NYT: Afghan Women Protest New Restrictive Law By DEXTER FILKINS

Three hundred women in Kabul demanded the repeal of a Taliban-like law that permits, among other things, marital rape. Their protest was stoned.

FINANCE NEWS

Truthout: Robert Scheer Endgame for Gramm?

“One wonders if Phil Gramm has been made just a tad nervous by the news on Tuesday that one of UBS’ super-wealthy private clients has pleaded guilty to tax evasion. That’s the second case in two weeks involving the bank at which the former senator is a vice chairman, and 100 other clients are under investigation for possible bank-assisted tax fraud. Gramm, the Republican former chair of the Senate Finance Committee, where he authored much of the deregulatory legislation at the heart of the current banking meltdown, has for the six years since he left office helped lead a foreign-owned bank specializing in tax dodges for the wealthy. These schemes by the Swiss-based UBS not only force the rest of us taxpayers to pay more to make up the government revenue shortfall but are blatantly illegal. In February, UBS admitted to having committed fraud and conspiracy and agreed to pay a fine of $780 million. Republican ‘Tea Baggers’ take note: Offshore tax havens do not equal populist revolt.”

FT: Credit Cards in Trouble: Capital One card loss rates hits 9.3%

Concerns over the leading US credit card companies grew on Wednesday as Capital One Financial COF, a leading issuer, reported that its credit card loss rates were exceeding the unemployment rate.

Related Headlines:

• ROUBINI and the Bad News Bears: How Bad Will It Get?

• Denise Richardson: Fighting Back Against Credit Card Abuses

• MISH: Beware of “Help With My Credit

• 2009 Sees Surge In First-Time Delinquent Tax Payers

• Spending The Future: Economic Child Abuse

Felix Salmon: How Not To Questions Larry Summers

• Nieman Watchdog: Executive Compensation Continues To Rise. Why Isn’t The Press Reporting It?

FINALLY, thanks to Jayne Stahl, and for the Teabaggers —George Carlin on Balancing the Budget