Meh.  If you can get out a good night for a date.

You are too old and fat to be jumping horses.

• AMC– True Grit (I don’t understand why they ever remade this)
• Bravo– Jerry Maguire
• Disney– Good Luck Charlie Snow Show
• Discovery– Gold Rush (last week’s and new), Flying Wild (premier)
• E!– The Soup (premier)
• ESPN– Winter X Games; Hoopies, Celtics @ Suns
• ESPN2– Milrose Games
• FX– Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!, Kung Fu Panda
• National Geographic– Dog Whisperer (premier)
• Nick– An hour of new Spongebob
• Oxygen– Titanic x 2
• Sci Fi– Being Human (Series Premier repeat)
• Style– Garden State
• TBS– Get Smart (Steve Carell is just awful, in everything)
• Turner Classic– Tunes of Glory, The Odessa File (Ronald Neame night)
• TLC– Say Yes to the Dress marathon (with premier)
• TNT– The Dark Night
• Toon– Clone Wars (premier of Part 1 of the 3 Part Mortis story arc)
• VH1– Ghostbusters

You’re gonna endanger us, you’re gonna endanger our client – the nice lady, who paid us in advance, before she became a dog…

Not necessarily. There’s definitely a *very slim* chance we’ll survive.

I love this plan! I’m excited to be a part of it! LET’S DO IT!

Later-

An American without ice in his drink is unthinkable, if not unconstitutional!

…

Yours was gin and ginger ale, right?

Mine was NEVER gin and ginger ale. Montrochet ’69, right next to the beer.

• AMC– El Dorado
• Bravo– Something’s Gotta Give
• Comedy– Eddie Murphy Raw
• Disney– Phineas and Ferb
• FX– Lights Out (this week’s)
• Spike– Days of Thunder
• TBS– Legally Blonde
• Turner Classic– Hopscotch (genuinely good and horribly under exposed caper flick with Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson, you should set your VCR)
• TNT– Lethal Weapon, The Negotiator
• USA– Chaos

Dave in repeats from 1/13.

And at the end, everybody sued me. Claiming I whipped they ass. I’m 5ft 10in, I weigh 180lbs. I cannot whip a disco’s ass by myself.

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Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 54 Top Stories.

1 Clashes in Tunisia as new cabinet sworn in

by Ines Bel Aiba, AFP

2 hrs 2 mins ago

Wall Street Appears To Have Violated Federal Securities Law, Crisis Panel Finds

Shaihien Nasiripour, The Huffington Post

01/27/11 10:28 PM

Wall Street firms that sold mortgage-backed securities appear to have violated federal securities laws by misleading investors on the quality of the underlying mortgages, a bipartisan panel created by Congress to investigate the root causes of the financial crisis concluded.

…

In September, the crisis commission heard testimony from Keith Johnson, former president of Clayton Holdings, one of the nation’s biggest mortgage research companies. Johnson testified that some 28 percent of the loans given to homeowners with poor credit examined by his firm on behalf of Wall Street banks failed to meet basic standards. Yet nearly half appear to have been sold to investors regardless, he added.

Last April, the commission heard from Richard Bowen, a whistleblower and former chief underwriter for Citigroup’s consumer-lending unit. Bowen told the panel that in the middle of 2006, he discovered more than 60 percent of the mortgages the bank had purchased from other firms and then sold to investors were “defective,” meaning they did not satisfy the bank’s own lending criteria. On November 3, 2007, Bowen sent an e-mail to top Citi officials, including Robert Rubin, a former Treasury Secretary. Bowen’s warnings appear to have been ignored.

In Panel’s Report, Stern Warning on Repeating Financial Crisis

By SEWELL CHAN, The New York Times

Published: January 27, 2011

WASHINGTON – Behind closed doors, Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, called it “the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression.”

He said that 12 of the country’s 13 most important financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, had been on the verge of collapse “within a week or two.” (The apparent exception: JPMorgan Chase.)

…

Enabling those developments, the panel found, were a bias toward deregulation by government officials, and mismanagement by financiers who failed to perceive the risks.

Goldman Sachs Got Billions From AIG For Its Own Account, Crisis Panel Finds

Shaihien Nasiripour, The Huffington Post

01/26/11 10:23 PM

Goldman Sachs collected $2.9 billion from the American International Group as payout on a speculative trade it placed for the benefit of its own account, receiving the bulk of those funds after AIG received an enormous taxpayer rescue, according to the final report of an investigative panel appointed by Congress.

The fact that a significant slice of the proceeds secured by Goldman through the AIG bailout landed in its own account–as opposed to those of its clients or business partners– has not been previously disclosed. These details about the workings of the controversial AIG bailout, which eventually swelled to $182 billion, are among the more eye-catching revelations in the report to be released Thursday by the bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

…

At a hearing on July 1, 2010–two weeks before Goldman sent the e-mail acknowledging how $2.9 billion in AIG funds wound up in its own account–the crisis panel questioned Goldman’s chief financial officer, David A. Viniar and managing director David Lehman. Both said they knew nothing about AIG funds landing in the bank’s private coffers, according to a transcript of the hearing.

The report concludes that Goldman collected the $2.9 billion as payment for so-called proprietary trades made for its own account–essentially successful bets on large pools of financial instruments.

Some premiers.  Meh.

I like to watch.

• ABC Family– Practical Magic
• AMC– Mrs. Doubtfire x 2
• Animal Planet– Planet Earth marathon
• Bravo– Real Housewives marathon (with premier)
• Disney– The Incredibles
• Discovery– Survival Mashup (premier)
• ESPN– College Hoopies, Michigan @ Michigan State, Winter X Games
• ESPN2– College Hoopies, Vanderbilt @ Mississippi State, UCLA @ Arizona
• Food– Ace of Cakes (premier)
• FX– Archer (premier)
• History– Conspiracy Theories! (premier)
• Lifetime– The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
• Sci Fi– Ghost Ship, Identity
• TBS– Rush Hour 3
• Turner Classic– Man in a Cocked Hat, Being There (Peter Sellers night)
• TNT– Heat @ Knicks, Celtics @ Blazers
• Travel– Man v. Food marathon (thank goodness)
• USA– Royal Pains, Fairly Legal (premiers)
• VH1– SNL marathon

When they tortured you. Did you talk?

Ah, oh, no… well, I don’t think they wanted me to talk really. I don’t think they wanted me to say anything. It was just their way of having a bit of fun.

Later-

• ESPN2– College Hoopies, St. Mary’s @ Gonzaga
• FX– Me, Myself & Irene
• Sci Fi– Toolbox Murders (not the good 1978 version)
• Turner Classic– Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Lolita (more Sellers)

Dave in repeats from 12/17.  Jon has T. Boone Pickens (ugh), Stephen Brian Greene.  Conan hosts Jane Lynch, Joe Buck, and Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger.

But this is absolute madness, Ambassador! Why should you *build* such a thing?

There were those of us who fought against it, but in the end we could not keep up with the expense involved in the arms race, the space race, and the peace race. At the same time our people grumbled for more nylons and washing machines. Our doomsday scheme cost us just a small fraction of what we had been spending on defense in a single year. The deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a doomsday gap.

This is preposterous. I’ve never approved of anything like that.

Our source was the New York Times.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 61 Top Stories.

1 Uganda gay rights activist murdered

by Ben Simon, AFP

10 mins ago

Double barrel Nova (it means won’t go in Spanish).  Unmemorable “reality” TV.

Now, would you like to learn to shoot?

I can already.

Oh, I saw. Very American. Fire enough bullets and hope to hit the target.

• AMC– The Chronicles of Riddick, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
• Discovery– Howe & Howe (premier), Sons of Guns, Desert Car Kings (Series Premiers)
• ESPN– College Hoopies, Texas @ Oklahoma State; Hoopies, Spurs @ Jazz
• ESPN2– College Hoopies, North Carolina @ Miami, Australian Open
• Food– Throwdown, Restaurant: Impossible (premiers), Worst (last week’s)
• FX– The Incredible Hulk, Hancock (again and again)
• History– Aliens!
• Lifetime– Murder by Numbers
• Oxygen– Kiss the Girls x 2
• Sci Fi– Face Off (Series Premier)
• Turner Classic– Lucky Jordan, The Snows of Kilimanjaro
• TLC– Toddlers & Tiaras (premier)
• TNT– Bones marathon
• Travel– Man v. Food marathon (thank goodness), The Traveler’s Guide to Life (Series Premier and premier)
• TV Land- Hot in Cleveland, Retired at 35 x 3 (premiers and Instapeats)
• USA– NCIS marathon
• Vs.– Devils @ Red Wings

Later-

• Turner Classic– Phantom Lady, Love Me Tonight
• USA– Fairly Legal (Series Premier repeat)

Dave in repeats from 1/11.  Jon has Jonathan Alter (ugh), Stephen Michael Waldman.  Conan hosts Nick Thune, Jon Cryer, and Motorhead.

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Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Interpol issues arrest alert for Tunisia’s ex-ruler

by Kaouther Larbi and Mohamed Hasni, AFP

1 hr 58 mins ago

The next part of my story centers around frauds 6, 7, 8, and 9 of 11 criminal frauds.

AMBAC is a Monoline Insurer and they offer-

Bond insurance is a service whereby issuers of a bond can pay a premium to a third party, who will provide interest and capital repayments as specified in the bond in the event of the failure of the issuer to do so. The effect of this is to raise the rating of the bond to the rating of the insurer; accordingly, a bond insurer’s credit rating must be almost perfect.

The premium requested for insurance on a bond is a measure of the perceived risk of failure of the issuer.

The economic value of bond insurance to the governmental unit, agency, or company offering bonds is a saving in interest costs reflecting the difference in yield on an insured bond from that on the same bond if uninsured. Insured securities ranged from municipal bonds and structured finance bonds to collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) domestically and abroad.

AMBAC is suing Bear Stearns (JP Morgan Chase).

The Ambac Suit: Bear Stearns Execs Double-Dipped, Committed Criminal Fraud on Investors

By: David Dayen Tuesday January 25, 2011 11:01 am

The mortgage traders at Bear, who now are spread out across the financial sector, sold purposefully bad securities to investors – emails revealed show that they told superiors they were selling “a sack of shit.” They got data on their pools of mortgages bundled up in securities deals that came back with high percentages of bad underwriting or even loans already slipping into default. They falsified that data for the rating agencies to get AAA ratings, never told the investors about the bad loans in the pools, and sold the shit as gold. But it gets worse.

…

They got paid by the investors for selling the mortgage-backed security, AND they got paid by the originator for taking back the bad loan. So Bear traders made money on the same mortgage twice. Only the investors could force a put-back on an originator after the security was sold – Bear Stearns didn’t have a legal claim on the loan after they sold it. They did so anyway.

There is no legal universe under the sun where that isn’t just criminal fraud and theft. Ambac eventually discovered that 80% of the loans in its MBS had an early payment default. They were corrupted and substandard from the moment they received them, so awful that Bear Stearns was forcing the bank to take them back – even though they didn’t own the loans.

This Ambac suit names the actual decision-makers, Marano and two others who are working at Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. JPMorgan, which now owns Bear Stearns, is named in the lawsuit as well, as a responsible party. It seems that this is a pretty standard repurchase lawsuit, but Ambac added accounting fraud to the claim to double the award owed to them.

The original Atlantic article-

E-mails Suggest Bear Stearns Cheated Clients Out of Billions

Teri Buhl, The Atlantic

Jan 25 2011, 1:01 AM ET

Former Bear Stearns mortgage executives who now run mortgage divisions of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Ally Financial have been accused of cheating and defrauding investors through the mortgage securities they created and sold while at Bear. According to e-mails and internal audits, JPMorgan had known about this fraud since the spring of 2008, but hid it from the public eye through legal maneuvering. Last week a lawsuit filed in 2008 by mortgage insurer Ambac Assurance Corp against Bear Stearns and JPMorgan was unsealed. The lawsuit’s supporting e-mails, going back as far as 2005, highlight Bear traders telling their superiors they were selling investors like Ambac a “sack of shit.”

…

According to the lawsuit, the Bear traders would sell toxic mortgage securities to investors and then sell back the bad loans with early payment defaults to the banks that originated them at a discount. The traders would pocket the refund, and would not pass it on to the mortgage trust, which was where it should have gone to be distributed to the investors who owned the bonds. The Marano-led traders also cut the time allowed for early payment defaults, without telling the bond investors. That way, Bear could quickly securitize defective loans, without leaving enough time for investors to do their own due diligence after the bonds were sold and put-back any bad loans to Bear.

The traders were essentially double-dipping — getting paid twice on the deal. How was this possible? Once the security was sold, they didn’t have a legal claim to get cash back from the bad loans — that claim belonged to bond investors — but they did so anyway and kept the money. Thus, Bear was cheating the investors they promised to have sold a safe product out of their cash. According to former Bear Stearns and EMC traders and analysts who spoke with The Atlantic, Nierenberg and Verschleiser were the decision-makers for the double dipping scheme, and thus, are named as individual defendants in the suit.

…

Last week, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said it will take years to get through mortgage litigation risk the bank inherited and had set aside around $9 billion for litigation-related risk. Yet in the bank’s January earnings call, Dimon suggested that the bank may not have to buy back any soured mortgages from private investors and said that the issue is “not that material” for JPMorgan. Still, Ambac recently won a court order in December to add accounting fraud against JPMorgan to its suit, which can double or triple lawsuit awards. So it’s hard to tell whether America’s largest bank is prepared to pay for the sins of Bear. JPMorgan did fight tooth and nail for the Ambac suit not to be made public, however, because the firm argued it could damage the reputations of senior bank executives currently working in the industry. Individuals named as defendants in the amended complaint include: Jimmy Cayne, Alan “ACE” Greenberg, Warren Spector, Alan Schwartz, Thomas Marano, Jeffrey Mayer, Mary Haggerty, Baron Silverstein, Jeffrey Verschleiser, and Michael Nierenberg. But the court chose to fold these individuals into the charges against JPMorgan as the case goes through appeal.

JPMorgan is not the only firm in trouble-

Countrywide Accused in Lawsuit of ‘Massive Fraud’

By Karen Freifeld, Bloomberg News

Jan 25, 2011 5:54 PM ET

Bank of America Inc.’s Countrywide Financial unit, acquired by the bank in 2008, was accused of “massive fraud” in a lawsuit by investors who claim they were misled about mortgage-backed securities.

TIAA-CREF Life Insurance Co., New York Life Insurance Co. and Dexia Holdings Inc. are among a dozen institutional investors who filed the complaint yesterday in New York state Supreme Court.

As I’ve pointed out before one of the confusing things about Bankster Fraud is that there are no less than 11 different criminal frauds that are all lumped together.

In my next piece I’m going to examine one particular part of this puzzle, but I should note that starting tomorrow we’re going to be one step closer to the jump-suited perp walks we’ll need to see in order to unwind this discredited neo-liberal disaster of an economy with the release of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission report which recommends investigation by the Department of Justice for Criminal Prosecution.

Financial Crisis Commission Finds Cause For Prosecution Of Wall Street

Shahien Nasiripour, The Huffington Post

01/24/11 07:29 PM

(T)he decision to refer cases for potential prosecution could provoke a different conclusion: It may yet satisfy public craving for what Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner once referred to as the “very deep public desire for Old Testament justice.”

…

The commission drew on testimony from less prominent senior executives with intimate knowledge of how Wall Street engaged in modern-day financial alchemy, turning mountains of dubious mortgages into seemingly rock-solid investments rated as safe as American Treasury bonds.

Richard Bowen, former chief underwriter for Citigroup’s consumer-lending unit, testified that, in the middle of 2006, he discovered more than 60 percent of the mortgages the bank had purchased from other firms and then sold to investors were “defective,” meaning they did not satisfy the bank’s own lending criteria.

Keith Johnson, former president of Clayton Holdings, one of the top mortgage research companies, testified that some 28 percent of the loans given to homeowners with poor credit examined by his firm for Wall Street banks failed to meet basic standards. Yet nearly half appear to have been sold to investors regardless, he added.

FCIC Will Refer Report to Authorities for Potential Criminal Prosecution

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Tuesday January 25, 2011 6:00 am

Many have found themselves disappointed in the FCIC’s work to this point, be it their inability to gain headlines, their inability to issue subpoenas without bipartisan cooperation, or even the commission’s personnel. But lest we forget that the FCIC uncovered, virtually by itself, the enormous mortgage bond scandal, based on testimony they gathered from Clayton Holdings in October. William D. Cohan said at the time that this strong, if pulled properly, could lead to justice:

…

This could be the building block for the criminal referrals, or it could be something deeper. But we know it will be backed up by a voluminous amount of evidence. In addition to their long report on the origins of the crisis, Yves Smith notes that the FCIC will release audio archives of all of their interviews with hundreds of witnesses. She was one of them. They will also release all the source documents, which is crucial.

As for the report itself, the Democratic version promises to be extremely satisfying to those who recognize quickly that corporate greed, deregulation and a financial industry determined to sidestep oversight entirely with the shadow banking system caused the crisis. One official told Reuters that Commission Chair Phil Angelides subscribed to the “vampire squid” view of the crisis, recalling the famous turn of phrase Matt Taibbi used to describe Goldman Sachs.

Don’t know about you, but I’ll certainly be looking for alternative viewing tonight.

Please take your seats for the second act.

But I’m not done vomiting.

• AMC Family– Mean Girls, Mean Girls 2
• Bravo– The Fashion Show (Finale)
• Comedy– Onion SportsDome
• Disney– Eloise at the Plaza
• Discovery– Dirty Jobs (last week’s and new), Auction Kings (premier)
• ESPN– College Hoopies, Florida @ Georgia, Purdue @ Ohio State
• ESPN2– Australian Open
• Food– Cupcake Wars, Chopped (premiers)
• FX– The Incredible Hulk, Lights Out x 3 (Episode 2 premier and 2 Instapeats)
• National Geographic– English Royals (with premier)
• Oxygen– Catwoman
• Sci Fi– TNG marathon
• Speed– Monster Jam
• Turner Classic– Sons of the Desert, General Spanky, Topper
• TLC– What Not to Wear (premier)
• TNT– Bad Boys
• Travel– Bizarre Foods With Andrew Zimmern (last week’s and new)
• USA– White Collar x 2 (premier and Instapeat)
• Vs.– Canadiens @ Flyers

Hello, Fry. Muahahahaha! Just dropped by to make sure you’re as happy with our little deal as I am… oh, give me back my hands! These things are always touching me in… places.

Later-

“The use of words expressing something other than their literal intention.” Now that *is* irony!

Not quite Bender Bending Rodriguez.

• AMC– Airplane
• Comedy– The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings
• History– Top Gear (Season Finale repeat)
• Sci Fi– Dead Space: Downfall
• Turner Classic– There Goes My Heart, Zenobia
• Toon– Blue Harvest
• USA– Royal Pains (this week’s)
• VH1– Barbershop

Dave in repeats from 11/22.  Jon has James Franco, Stephen Amy Chua.  Conan hosts Steven Ho and Wanda Jackson.

Your lyrics lack subtlety! You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!

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