Eideard

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Former Icelandic Prime Minister Geir Haarde has appeared at a special court on charges of “failures of ministerial responsibility” in his handling of the 2008 financial crisis.

The country’s three main banks collapsed amid economic turmoil.

The failure of Icesave, which hit thousands of savers in the UK and Netherlands, led to a dispute over compensation, which remains unresolved…

The two-hour hearing finished at midday, and a decision is expected within three weeks.

Mr Haarde, who pleaded not guilty, said as he left the courthouse: “My conscience is clear. And now I wait for the result of the court whether it comes in a few weeks or next year with a verdict.”

The hearing was held before the Landsdomur court, a special body to try cabinet ministers, which has never before heard a case.

Public opinion is divided, with some people seeing the trial of Mr Haarde as scapegoating, and others arguing that public accountability is essential following the country’s financial collapse.

Iceland was plunged into a deep recession following the collapse of its three leading banks, including Icesave’s parent company Landsbanki, in autumn 2008.

Mr Haarde, 60, led the Independence Party government at the time…

The charges carry a maximum penalty of two years in prison.

One would expect the defendant in any trial as serious as this to protest its worthiness to be heard. Yet there is sufficient respect for law and justice to have it proceed, treated as a legal proceeding should be dealt with.

Clinton’s impeachment for being silly and stupid about sex was rococo enough. Bush accepting, his Oil Patch handlers accepting – the right of the nation to put his incompetence and corruption on trial would still be going on – with no end in sight.

When the housing bubble burst, one of the culprits, economists agreed, was exotic mortgages, including those that required little or no money down…

“Loans that have zero down payment perform worse than loans with down payments,” said Mathew Scire, a director of the Government Accountability Office’s financial markets and community investment team. “And loans with down payment assistance” — “perform worse than those that do not.”

An analysis filled with logical fallacies.

But the surprise is the support these loans have received, even from critics of exotic mortgages, who say low down payments themselves were not the problem, except when combined with other risk factors like adjustable rates or lax underwriting.

Say “lax underwriting” out loud several times and genuflect in the direction of Countrywide Financial. Or as the process is referred to in community banking, “liar loans”.

Moreover, they say, the housing market needs such nontraditional lending, as long as it is done prudently.

“This is subprime lending done right,” said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, an umbrella group for 600 community organizations, and a staunch critic of the lending industry. “If they had done subprime this way in the first place, we wouldn’t have these problems.”

At Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, Eric Belsky, the director, said the loans might be the type of step necessary to restart the housing market, because down payment requirements are keeping first-time home buyers out.

“If you look at where the market may get strength from, it may very well be from first-time buyers,” he said. “And a very significant constraint to first-time buyers is the wealth constraint.”

Wealth constraints are the all-American bugaboo. The wealthy of this nation and their flunkies in the Republican and Democrat parties fear someone with little or no income qualifying for the benefits they claim as a god-given imperative. They apply to everything from welfare to unemployment insurance, healthcare to mortgages.

The Party of NO is to become the Tea Party, Young Guns, John Wayne in a hip-hop video and, of course, the kindly caring face of liars and hypocrites like John McCain and Sarah Palin playing the lead roles in Little Poorhouse on the Prairie.

HMS Turbulent docked in Plymouth

Two British nuclear submarines went to sea with a potentially disastrous safety problem that left both vessels at risk of a catastrophic accident, the Guardian can reveal.

Safety valves designed to release pressure from steam generators in an emergency were completely sealed off when the nuclear hunter killers Turbulent and Tireless left port, a leaked memo discloses.

The problem went undetected on HMS Turbulent for more than two years, during which time the vessel was on operations around the Atlantic, and visited Bergen in Norway, the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, and Faslane naval base near Glasgow.

It was not noticed on HMS Tireless for more than a year, and was finally detected last month, two months after Tireless started sea trials from its home port at Devonport naval base in Plymouth…

The Ministry of Defence memo, which was written last week, admits that both cases involving the sealed-off valves were “a serious incident” that raised major questions about “weak and ambiguous” safety procedures at Devonport dockyard and within the Royal Navy…

John Large, a consultant on nuclear safety who advises governments on submarine safety, said: “It was a very significant failure. These two submarines were unfit for service. It was a perilous situation.”

The excuse offered – and accepted – is that safety procedures are very complex. Seems to be a perfectly good reason for all the more care and oversight.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

The United States will give Pakistan the tools in needs to defeat al Qaeda, but it expects accountability in return, President Barack Obama said in an interview about his new Afghan strategy.

On CBS’s “Face the Nation” program, Obama also said if the United States had al Qaeda leaders in its sights in Pakistan, it would go after them after consulting Pakistani authorities…

“One of the concerns that we’ve had building up over the last several years is a notion, I think, among the average Pakistani, that this is somehow America’s war and they are not invested,” Obama said.

“What we want to do is say to the Pakistani people — you are our friends, you are our allies. We are going to give you the tools to defeat al Qaeda and to root out these safe havens, but we also expect some accountability,” he said.

He also said the United States would go after so-called “high-value” targets in Pakistan after consulting with Pakistani authorities…”Our plan does not change the recognition of Pakistan as a sovereign government,” Obama said. “We need to work with them and through them to deal with al Qaeda. But we have to hold them much more accountable.”

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The Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence will pay $1.3 million to four men who said they were abused by priests, lawyers announced Friday. The settlements were reached in June and will go to the victims or their estates, said attorney.

“There is no amount of money that is going to make it right,” said Carl DeLuca, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers. “It is more an issue of validation. And in that sense they feel validated.”

Three men sued the diocese starting in 2003 alleging that priests abused them as children. Murphy said a fourth man contacted church authorities to report that he had been abused; he never filed a lawsuit and died before the settlement was reached.

Bishop Thomas Tobin and the Providence diocese did not admit any wrongdoing as part of the agreement.

In 2002, the diocese reached a $14.25 million settlement with 37 alleged victims of sexual abuse in Rhode Island who filed lawsuits. The cases involved allegations against 11 priests and a nun.

These creeps rarely admit wrongdoing or ask forgiveness of the people whose childhood was distorted and stolen by criminal acts.