Eideard

Greece is at the heart of the ongoing eurozone crisis, but is past sleight of hand by Greek statisticians to blame for the country’s current financial meltdown?

“We used to call him the magician, because he could make everything disappear. “He made inflation disappear. And then he made the deficit disappear,” recalls Greek economist Miranda Xafa…

The new fiscal treaty that 25 of the 27 EU member states agreed to…is meant to ensure that in future no country has a budget deficit of greater than 3% of GDP.

That same 3% rule was first enshrined in 1992, in the Maastricht Treaty, which led to the creation of the euro in the first place. But some countries did not respect it. In the case of Greece, not even from the beginning. Greece cooked the books to join the euro in the first place.

“Take the Greek state railway. It was losing a billion euros a year,” Ms Xafa remembers. “The Greek railway had more employees than passengers. A former minister, Stefanos Manos, had said publicly at the time that it would be cheaper to send everyone by taxi…”

“The [railway] company would issue shares that the government would buy. So it was counted not as expenditure, but as a financial transaction.” And it did not appear on the budget balance sheet.

So Greece fulfilled the Maastricht criteria and was admitted to the eurozone on January 1, 2001 – but by 2004 the deception was becoming transparent.”

That year a new, centre-right government was elected. Peter Doukas was appointed budget minister. “I invited the senior staff of the ministry and asked them to give me details of the budget that had been passed the previous December, two-and-a-half months before we took office…

The difference between the published deficit and the real one was huge…The budget said the deficit was 1.5%. The real shortfall was 8.3%.”

So what did Mr Doukas do about it, given the eurozone’s Maastricht treaty rule to keep budget deficits below 3% of GDP…?

“But the answer I got at the time was ‘listen, we are having the Olympic Games in a few months and we cannot upset the whole population and start having strikes and everything just before the Olympic Games’.”

Instead of reforming public finances, Greece borrowed and borrowed to meet the deficit. Banks queued up to lend. The markets did not believe there was a risk of default because Greece’s currency, the euro, was locked into that of Germany…

Suddenly, in this one very narrow respect, every country was Germany…The markets failed to see the debt mountains that were accumulating. And they underestimated the risk…

In fact the Stability and Growth Pact was as good as dead by the time Mr Doukas took office in 2004.

The big nations of the EU, the predominant economic forces of France and Germany were as willing as the little guys to bend the laws, stifle the accounting, because it made the overall books look bigger. The whole of Europe was becoming one big happy family and just one bank, the European Central Bank, was needed to keep track of everything. Even if the rules weren’t lived up to in the first place.

And all the work that’s been put into turning around the train wreck that was the Great Recession started by our local crooks in the United States still can be undone by another recession spinning out of control from Greece and Europe — courtesy of a magician who made the cost of running the Greek train wreck disappear into economic limbo.

His favorite Xmas Card photo

He rubbed elbows with some of the country’s highest politicians, and promised to help out America’s heroes. But, officials said he stole from veterans to the tune of nearly $100 million .

He went on the run and there is good information that he’s hiding here in New Mexico.

“He’s definitely a business man,” Deputy Ben Segotta said. A business man whose Christmas card included a picture with President George W. Bush. But the man who’s been going by the name Bobby Thompson is also a fake…

Thompson started a phony organization called the U.S. Navy Veterans Association. It raised about a $100 million which he promised would be used to help veterans. But, investigators claim he contributed some of it to high profile republican politicians, and pocketed the rest.

U.S. Marshals said he has lived in Albuquerque and knows the area. Recently new information pointed to him hiding out here.

“He is known for his ability to blend in or change his appearance or something. So he may not really be low profile he may just be using an alias.”

Segotta said they want him in handcuffs badly, “He solicited hundred of millions of dollars from people in order to help veterans and betrayed that trust between people and our military.”

Thompson is a fake name and officials don’t really know who this guy is…He’s 5 feet 8 inches about 160 pounds and said to be a heavy and often violent drinker.

If you suspect you know where this thug is – call your local coppers. Don’t be silly enough to try to take him down on your own.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

When Susan G. Komen announced Tuesday afternoon it was pulling its grants for breast-cancer screenings from Planned Parenthood, the reaction from critics was fast and furious.

The move was called, in some of the nicer assessments: “disgusting,” “anti-women,” and an “act of cowardice.” The president of Planned Parenthood said she couldn’t understand how the nation’s leading breast-cancer charity “could have bowed to this kind of bullying,” alleging that the funding was cut because of pressure from anti-abortion groups. Planned Parenthood offers wide-ranging reproductive health care services, but its work is centered on pro-choice decision-making and sexual education.

Petitions were also started that called for the partnership between Komen and Planned Parenthood to be restored…

Komen explained its decision by blaming new rules that prohibit it from giving money to groups under federal investigation. Planned Parenthood, which is the subject of congressional inquiry over whether it spent public money on abortions, falls into that category. Critics of the Komen decision say that inquiry is a “faux” one, and not likely to turn up anything…

Komen for the Cure has been under fire before, a number of times. As Amanda Marcotte points out in Slate, Komen was already “under serious scrutiny” by critics who believe “the organization cares more about shoring up their image than making real progress in the fight for women’s health…”

The Post’s Melinda Henneberger, who once suffered from breast cancer, writes that she doesn’t feel betrayed by the decision because “Komen has for some time seemed to me to be run like any other big business…”

I’m rarely surprised over the actions of charities which have become a corporate entity unto themselves – instead of remaining focused on whichever need prompted their profitable beginnings. Nothing new about a “non-profit” that is very profitable for its administrators – in terms of dollars and political clout.

Poisonally, henceforth I will advise anyone asking — to avoid the Susan Komen charity like the political plague they are. There is no shortage of legitimate, good-hearted and courageous charities dealing with women’s health. I’d suggest starting with Planned Parenthood.

UPDATE: Mollie Williams, Komen’s top public health official resigned in protest. “Williams believed she could not honorably serve in her position once Komen had caved to pressure from the anti-abortion right.”

Donors reacting to Komen’s decision to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood contributed $650,000 in 24 hours, nearly enough to replace last year’s Komen funding.

UPDATE 2: Mayor Mike Bloomberg — a longtime supporter of the Susan G. Komen breast cancer foundation — made a strong public rebuke of the organization Thursday by giving $250,000 to Planned Parenthood.

UPDATE 3: We won! Komen returns to profiding funds to Planned Parenthood.

A former Greek policeman who invented 19 fictional offspring to claim benefits for what would have been the largest family in Greece has been arrested for benefit fraud…

The former police officer, divorced and with no children of his own, quit his 1,000-euro-a-month job in 2001 and has been living solely on benefits ever since, police said on Thursday. Using photographs of children he found online, the 54-year-old man forged birth certificates and other documents needed to claim benefits for at least one child a year since 1996.

Police estimate he made at least 150,000 euros in claims over 15 years, but the actual amount is probably much higher.

The fraud was so expert, police said, that they only realized something was amiss when they noticed his was the only Greek family with that many children. The average Greek family usually has two or three children.

Truly sharp coppers, eh?

“We have never seen a scam like this before,” said a police official who declined to be named…

The former policeman, who under Greek law cannot be named, was arrested Wednesday as he was about to collect 8,000 euros in benefits from an Athens branch of Greece’s employment agency OAED. He was taken to the prosecutor’s office Thursday.

Widespread fraud, a generous welfare state and a notoriously inefficient public sector have been blamed as root causes of Greece’s financial trouble that threatens to break apart the euro zone.

Relying on coppers who commit fraud themselves might be part of that equation, as well.

A Dutch psychologist has admitted making up data and faking research over many years in studies which were then published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Diederik Stapel, a psychologist working at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, said he had “failed as a scientist” and was ashamed of what he had done, but had been driven to falsifying research by constant pressure to perform. The respected journal Science, which published some of Diederik Stapel’s work earlier this year, issued an “expression of concern” editorial in which it said it now had serious concerns about the validity of Stapel’s findings.

NSS. Part of the point of peer review is questioning in material and scientific analysis – not just accepting results as rote. Certainly in many other vocations that is the case.

Stapel was suspended from his position at Tilburg University in the Netherlands in September when an investigation was launched by the university into his work.

“The official report … indicates that the extent of the fraud by Stapel is substantial,” Science’s editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts wrote in the journal’s online edition Science Express…

The process of peer review, in which other scientists are asked to critique and analyze a paper before it is accepted for publication in a journal, is designed to minimize the risk that false data will get through, but it is not infallible.

As I said above, regardless of how a paper is vetted beforehand, a critical part of the process is investigation after the fact. Cripes, there are discussions in archaeology, paleontology, astronomy which have been in progress for decades.

A hoax bomber has been jailed for claiming his wife was carrying explosives aboard a transatlantic flight because he wanted to “humiliate” her after their relationship ended.

Kevin Flynn, a 31-year-old chef, phoned police to say a device was being taken on a New York-bound aircraft by his wife, Kerensa, from either Heathrow or Gatwick airport.

Flynn made the anonymous call from a phone box in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, after the couple decided to end their relationship and she was travelling home to the United States…

Judge William Wood QC said: “When there is a chance of large-scale disruption or evacuation of buildings or aeroplanes and airports, this class of misconduct is so serious there is no possibility to do anything but impose an immediate custodial sentence…”

Following the sentencing, a spokesman for Sussex Police said: “Flynn acted without care for any anxiety or disruption he might cause and our investigation and the sentence reflects the seriousness with which we and the courts take such hoaxes.”

RTFA for the details of the soap opera.

Fact is that if the coppers hadn’t been sharp and connected Flynn to an earlier call from his home they might have gone for an emergency evacuation of the plane and the nearby terminal. You don’t always succeed in something like that being safe and orderly. Some innocent person could have been injured in a fear-driven stampede – just for his anger at his wife.

Extremely detailed knock-off Apple retail stores, complete with blue t-shirt-wearing employees claiming to work for the company, have been discovered in China.

According to the blog BirdAbroad, several counterfeit Apple stores have popped up in Kunming, China. One such location featured a winding staircase and employees in t-shirts with Apple logos and name tags.

“The name tags around the necks of the friendly salespeople didn’t actually have names on them – just an Apple logo and the anonymous designation “Staff,”” the report read.

The author called the store “the best ripoff store” she had ever seen, though there were several giveaways, such as the poor quality of the staircase and a sub-par paint job. Also, the stores do not appear to have upgraded to Apple’s Retail 2.0 layout that uses iPads as “smart signs.”

According to her, the employees at the store “all genuinely think they work for Apple.” After store security guards and employees prohibited her from taking photos, the author hinted that she and her husband were “two American Apple employees visiting China and checking out the local stores” and were then allowed to photograph the store.

A world-class “Har”.

Some of the PHONY TWEETS at Fox News Twitter account

Fox News’ political Twitter account was hacked according to reports on FoxNews.com.

Tweets coming from the @FoxNewsPolitics account early Monday have been reporting the death of President Barack Obama. A series of six tweets say that Obama was assassinated in Iowa and the shooter is unknown.

Fox’s political Twitter account has more than 34,000 followers.

According to FoxNews.com, the hacking is being investigated. The website also posted an apology for “any distress the false tweets may have created.”

The hackers could have picked any number of sites. Between Christian right-wingers, nutball racists, the whole range of hate-mongers, bigots and corporate flunkeys funneled through the Republican Party like so much shit through the gut of a demented goose – there is no shortage of liars hoping to host news of the assassination of our president.

Fox News wasn’t a surprising choice.

Wyoming house big enough to house 2000 corporations?

Two companies incorporated at a little house in Cheyenne, Wyoming, won Pentagon contracts after their owner took advantage of the state’s liberal incorporation laws to create the firms using an alias, and then represented them as minority-owned to win favorable treatment as a military supplier. The firms and their owner were later banned from doing business with the Pentagon for providing knock-off parts.

A Reuters investigation has found that more than 2,000 companies are registered at 2710 Thomes Avenue in Cheyenne, the headquarters for Wyoming Corporate Services, a business incorporation company that specializes in corporate anonymity.

Among the firms incorporated there is a small subset that make their money from government contracts.

A Reuters review of federal contracting databases found nine firms registered at 2710 Thomes Avenue have been awarded 93 contracts worth more than $1.6 million by a half dozen government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Treasury’s Internal Revenue Service, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

More than 90 percent of the contracts were awarded by the Department of Defense…

Read the rest of this entry »

Police in the United States and seven other countries seized computers and servers used to run a “scareware” scheme that has netted more than $72 million from victims tricked into buying fake anti-virus software.

Twenty-two computers and servers were seized in the United States and 25 others in France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom…

The suspects involved in the scheme, who were not identified, planted “scareware” on the computers of 960,000 victims. The scareware would pretend to find malicious software on a computer. The goal is to persuade the victim to voluntarily hand over credit card information, paying to resolve a nonexistent problem.

Latvian authorities seized at least five bank accounts believed to have been used by the leaders of the scam…

U.S. authorities also said…they disrupted a second scam, charging two Latvians with running a similar scareware scheme that led to $2 million in losses through an advertisement placed on a Minnesota newspaper’s website…

Law enforcement officials would not confirm whether the seizures were directly connected to a raid early on Tuesday morning at a web-hosting company in northern Virginia where they took servers, a move that disrupted more than 120 websites.

U.S. authorities have been more aggressive this year in trying to stem cybercrime and have been scrambling to investigate several hacking attempts on U.S. institutions and corporations.

I know there’s no patch for stupid; but, it seems possible – since there have already been a few examples in the field – for the FBI to place software on a few compromised machines and trace back control of botnets to criminal sources.

Grab and incarcerate the crooks – and throw away the key.