Free Republic

The U.S. government's $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout likely had a greater impact on foreign banks than the stimuli packages of foreign countries had on their American counterparts, according to a report released by the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), “Although the crisis began with subprime mortgage defaults in the U.S., its damage spread rapidly overseas,” the report stated. “[We] found that policymakers were ill-prepared for such a worldwide crisis and that the internationalization of the financial system has outpaced the ability of national regulators to respond." COP indicated that despite the limits of international coordination, most countries ultimately...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A top city official sharply criticized Mayor James K. Hahn following reports that a public relations company billed the city's Department of Water and Power thousands of dollars for work done on his behalf. City Controller Laura Chick said it was a "very sad day for the city" after the Los Angeles Times reported that Fleishman-Hillard charged the utility more than $400,000 to arrange news conferences and press releases featuring Hahn and to provide other publicity services to the mayor. "The ratepayers of Los Angeles were used to fund a public relations team for the mayor,"...

Anyone still remember the mess all the news outlets made of reporting election results in 2000? Many of us still wonder if that wasn't a contrived deal to help Gore. Newscasters actually were calling the winner in states (like Florida) while citizens were still voting. The problem started with a company named Voter News Service. VNS was owned by the Associated Press and the television networks. It was a profit making organization, a business. The rabidly left AP ran a large part of VNS, so there's little surprise about how they reported things. Generally, through polls and exit polls, VNS...