Solyndra execs will decline to testify at hearing
In the letters sent to the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, attorneys for Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison and CFO W. G. Stover said they advised their clients not to provide testimony during the hearings.
The bankrupt company’s $535 million federal loan guarantee is being investigated by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
China pulling the plug on the EU
A big market-making state bank in China’s onshore foreign exchange market has stopped foreign exchange forwards and swaps trading with several European banks due to the unfolding debt crisis in Europe, two sources told Reuters on Tuesday.
The European banks include French lenders Societe Generale, Credit Agricole and BNP Paribas [and Switzerland’s UBS].
Kaine and Allen meet in first debate Dec. 7 [and ONLY Kaine and Allen…]
Former governors and 2012 U.S. Senate candidates Timothy M. Kaine and George Allen will face off in their first debate in December at Associated Press Day at the Capitol.”
Besides Allen and Kaine, eligible participants include any declared candidates that average 15 percent or better in published, non-candidate primary polls and have raised at least 20 percent as much money as their party’s frontrunner by the end of October.”
The rationale behind this threshold is not explained, nor is anyone identified with having authored it. Obviously, no one wants to take the heat for birthing this closed event. We are left to guess, or perhaps to speculate that the reason is to contain the discussion to standard, establishment topics; in other words, to avoid any real discussion of any real ideas. We sure as hell don’t want to have any Ron Pauls on the stage getting cheers and making our boys look bad, do we? Maybe Allen wouldn’t do it if Radtke was invited. Who knows? These are your choices, citizen. Take it or leave it. Some free press, huh?
Why anyone would want to hear anything Allen or Kaine have to say is beyond me. I already know what their ideas are: more of the same, the same crap that got us into this mess. Shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. No substantive change in the face of a truly epic financial disaster. Anyone in the press who is connected with this travesty should be ashamed of themselves. My Disgust-O-Meter is pegged high, but that’s not really unusual anymore.
