How to Recycle Anything

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How to Recycle Anything | Real Simple

A Aerosol cans: These can usually be recycled with other cans, as long as you pull off the plastic cap and empty the canister completely. Antiperspirant and deodorant sticks: Many brands have a dial on the bottom that is made of a plastic polymer that’s different from the plastic used for the container, so your center might not be able to recycle the whole thing (look on the bottom to find out). Tom’s of Maine makes a deodorant stick composed solely of plastic No. 5. B Backpacks: The American Birding Association accepts donated backpacks, which its scientists use while tracking neotropical birds (americanbirding.org). Batteries: Recycling batteries keeps hazardous metals out of landfills. Many stores, like RadioShack and Office Depot, accept reusable ones, as does the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation (rbrc.org/call2recycle). Car batteries contain lead and can’t go in landfills, because toxic metals can leach into groundwater, but almost any retailer selling them will also collect and recycle them. Beach balls: They may be made of plastic, but there aren’t enough beach balls being thrown away to make them a profitable item to recycle. If a beach ball is still usable, donate it to a thrift store or a children’s hospital. Books: “Hard covers are too rigid to recycle, so we ask people to remove them and recycle just the pages,” says Sarah Kite, recycling manager of the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, in Johnston. In many areas, paperbacks can be tossed in with other paper. C Carpeting (nylon fiber): Go to carpetrecovery.org and click on “What can I do with my old carpet?” to find a carpet-reclamation facility near you, or check with your carpet’s manufacturer. Some carpet makers, like Milliken (millikencarpet.com), Shaw (shawfloors.com), and Flor (flor.com), have recycling programs. Cars, Jet Skis, boats, trailers, RVs, and motorcycles: Even if these are unusable―totaled, rusted―they still have metal and other components that can be recycled. Call junkyards in your area, or go to junkmycar.com, which will pick up and remove cars, trailers, motorcycles, and other heavy equipment for free. Cell phones: According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, fewer than 20 percent of cell phones are recycled each year, and most people don’t know where to recycle them. The Wireless Foundation refurbishes old phones to give to domestic-violence survivor calltoprotect.org. For information on other cell-phone charities, log on to recyclewirelessphones.com. In some states, like California and New York, retailers must accept and recycle old cell phones at no charge. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs: CFLs contain mercury and shouldn’t be thrown in the trash. Ikea and the Home Depot operate CFL recycling programs; you can also check with your local hardware store or recycling center to see if it offers recycling services. Computers: You can return used computers to their manufacturers for recycling (check mygreenelectronics.com for a list of vendors) or donate them to a charitable organization (log on to sharetechnology.org or cristina.org). Nextsteprecycling.org repairs your broken computers and gives them to underfunded schools, needy families, and nonprofits. Crayons: Send them to the National Crayon Recycle Program (crazycrayons.com, which melts down crayons and reforms them into new ones. Leave the wrappers on: “When you have black, blue, and purple crayons together without wrappers, it’s hard to tell them apart,” says the program’s founder, LuAnn Foty, a.k.a. the Crazy Crayon Lady. Crocs: The manufacturer recycles used Crocs into new shoes and donates them to underprivileged families. Mail them to: Crocs Recycling West, 3375 Enterprise Avenue, Bloomington CA 92316. § D DVDs, CDs, and jewel cases: If you want to get rid of that Lionel Richie CD because “Dancing on the Ceiling” doesn’t do it for you anymore, you can swap it for a disc from another music lover at zunafish.com. But if you just want to let it go and not worry about it ending up in a landfill, send it (along with DVDs and jewel cases) to greendisk.com for recycling.  E Empty metal cans (cleaning products): Cut off the metal ends of cans containing powdered cleansers, such as Ajax and Bon Ami, and put them in with other household metals. (Use care when cutting them.) Recycle the tubes as you would any other cardboard.   Empty metal cans (food products): Many towns recycle food cans. If yours doesn’t, you can find the nearest steel-can recycling spot at recycle-steel.org. Rinse out cans, but don’t worry about removing the labels. “Leaving them on doesn’t do any harm,” says Marti Matsch, the communications director of Eco-Cycle, one of the nation’s oldest and largest recyclers, in Boulder, Colorado. “When the metal is melted,” she says, “the paper burns up. If you want to recycle the label with other paper, that’s great, but it’s not necessary.” Eyeglasses: Plastic frames can’t be recycled, but metal ones can. Just drop them into the scrap-metal bin. However, given the millions of people who need glasses but can’t afford them, your frames, broken or not, will go to better use if you donate them to neweyesfortheneedy.com (sunglasses and plastic frames in good condition can also be donated). Or drop off old pairs of glasses at LensCrafters, Target Optical, or other participating stores and doctors’ offices, which will send them to onesight.org. F Fake plastic credit cards: They’re not recyclable, so you can’t just toss them along with their paper junk-mail solicitations. Remove them first and throw them in the trash. Film canisters: Check with your local recycling center to find out if it takes gray film-container lids (No. 4) and black bases (No. 2). If not, many photo labs will accept them. Fire extinguishers: There are two types of extinguishers. For a dry-chemical extinguisher, safely relieve the remaining pressure, remove the head from the container, and place it with your bulk-metal items (check with your local recycler first). Alternatively, call fire-equipment companies and request that they dispose of your extinguisher. Carbon dioxide extinguishers are refillable after each use. Food processors. Some communities accept small household appliances for recycling―if not in curbside collection, then in drop-off locations. (New York City will even pick up appliances left on the sidewalk.) “If an appliance is more than 50 percent metal, it is recyclable,” says Kathy Dawkins, director of public information for New York City’s Department of Sanitation. Most appliances are about 75 percent steel, according to the Steel Recycling Institute. So unless you know something is mostly plastic, it will probably qualify. Formal wear: Finally, a use for that mauve prom or bridesmaid dress: Give it to a girl who can’t afford one (go to operationfairydust.org or catherinescloset.org).  G Gadgets: There are many ways to recycle PDAs, MP3 players, and other devices so that any money earned from the parts goes to worthy causes―a win, win, win scenario (for you, the environment, and charity). Recycleforbreastcancer.org, for example, will send you prepaid shipping labels, recycle your gadgets, then donate the proceeds to breast cancer charities. Glue: Many schools have recycling programs for empty containers of Elmer’s glue and glue sticks. Students and teachers rinse out the bottles, which are then sent to Wal-Mart for recycling. Find out more at elmersgluecrew.com. Glue strips and inserts in magazines: Lotion samples and nonpaper promotional items affixed to glue strips in magazines should be removed because they can jam up recycling equipment (scented perfume strips, on the other hand, are fine). “One of the biggest challenges we get is pages of promotional stickers and stamps,” says Matsch, “which can adhere to the machinery and tear yards of new paper fiber.”  § H Hangers (plastic): These are not widely accepted at recycling centers, because there aren’t enough of them coming through to make it worthwhile. However, some cities, such as Los Angeles, are equipped to recycle them. You might consider donating them to a thrift store.  Hangers (wire): Some dry cleaners and Laundromats will reuse them. Otherwise, they can be recycled with other household metals. But be sure to remove any attached paper or cardboard first. Hearing aids: The Starkey Hearing Foundation (starkeyhearingfoundation.org) recycles used hearing aids, any make or model, no matter how old. Lions Clubs also accept hearing aids (as well as eyeglasses) for reuse; log on to donateglasses.org to find designated collection centers near you. Holiday cards: After they’ve lined your mantel for two months, you could throw them into the recycling bin, or you could give them a whole new life. St. Jude’s Ranch for Children (stjudesranch.org), a nonprofit home for abused and neglected youths, runs a holiday-card reuse program in which the kids cut off the front covers, glue them onto new cards, and sell the result―earning them money and confidence. I iPods:  Bring in an old iPod to an Apple store and get 10 percent off a new one. Your out-of-date iPod will be broken down and properly disposed of. The catch? The discount is valid only that day, so be prepared to buy your new iPod. J Jam jars: Wherever there is container-glass recycling (meaning glass jars and bottles), jam jars are eligible. It helps if you remove any remaining jam, but no need to get obsessive―they don’t have to be squeaky clean. Before putting them in the bin, remove their metal lids and recycle those with other metals. Juice bags: Because most are a combination of a plastic polymer and aluminum, these are not recyclable. But TerraCycle will donate 2 cents for each Honest Kids, Capri Sun, and Kool-Aid Drink pouch and 1 cent for any other brand you collect and send in to the charity of your choice. The organization provides free shipping, too. What does TerraCycle do with all those pouches? Turns them into colorful purses, totes, and pencil cases that are sold at Target and Walgreens stores throughout the country. To get started, go to terracycle.net. K Keys and nail clippers:  For many recycling centers, any metal that isn’t a can is considered scrap metal and can be recycled. “There’s not a whole lot of scrap metal we wouldn’t take,” says Kite. “It’s a huge market now.” L Leather accessories:  If your leather goods are more than gently worn, take them to be fixed. If they’re beyond repair, they have to be thrown in the trash―there’s no recycling option. (A product labeled “recycled leather” is often made from scraps left over from the manufacturing process, which is technically considered recycling.) Donate shoes in decent condition to solesforsouls.org , a nonprofit that collects used footwear and distributes it to needy communities. § M Makeup: Makeup can expire and is none too pretty for the earth when you throw it in the trash (chemicals abound in most makeup). Some manufacturers are making progress on this front. People who turn in six or more empty MAC containers, for example, will receive a free lipstick from the company in return; SpaRitual nail polishes come in reusable, recyclable glass; and Josie Maran Cosmetics sells biodegradable plastic compacts made with a corn-based resin―just remove the mirror and put the case in your compost heap. Mattresses and box springs: Mattresses are made of recyclable materials, such as wire, paper, and cloth, but not all cities accept them for recycling. (Go to earth911.org to find out if yours does.) Metal flatware: If it’s time to retire your old forks, knives, and spoons, you can usually recycle them with other scrap metal. Milk cartons with plastic spouts and caps: Take off and throw away the cap (don’t worry about the spout―it will be filtered out during the recycling process). As for the carton, check your local recycling rules to see whether you should toss it with plastics and metals or with paper. Mirrors: These aren’t recyclable through most municipal recyclers, because the chemicals on the glass can’t be mixed with glass bottles and jars. You can donate them to secondhand stores, of course. Or if the mirror is broken, put it in a paper bag for the safety of your trash collectors. To find out what your municipality recycles, call 800-CLEANUP or visit recyclingcenters.org. N Nikes and other sneakers: Nike’s Reuse-a-Shoe program (nikereuseashoe.com) accepts old sneakers (any brand) and recycles them into courts for various sports so kids around the world have a place to play. You can drop them off at a Nike store, other participating retailers, athletic clubs, and schools around the country (check the website for locations), or mail them to Nike Recycling Center, c/o Reuse-a-Shoe, 26755 SW 95th Avenue, Wilsonville OR 97070. If your sneakers are still in reasonable shape, donate them to needy athletes in the United States and around the world through oneworldrunning.com. Mail them to One World Running, P.O. Box 2223, Boulder CO 80306. Notebooks (spiral): It may seem weird to toss a metal-bound notebook into the paper recycling, but worry not―the machinery will pull out smaller nonpaper items. One caveat: If the cover is plastic, rip that off, says Matsch. “It’s a larger contaminant.” O Office envelopes Envelopes with plastic windows: Recycle them with regular office paper. The filters will sieve out the plastic, and they’ll even take out the glue strip on the envelope flaps. FedEx: Paper FedEx envelopes can be recycled, and there’s no need to pull off the plastic sleeve. FedEx Paks made of Tyvek are also recyclable (see below). Goldenrod: Those ubiquitous mustard-colored envelopes are not recyclable, because goldenrod paper (as well as dark or fluorescent paper) is saturated with hard-to-remove dyes. “It’s what we call ‘designing for the dump,’ not the environment,” says Matsch. Jiffy Paks: Many Jiffy envelopes―even the paper-padded ones filled with that material resembling dryer lint―are recyclable with other mixed papers, like cereal boxes. The exception: Goldenrod-colored envelopes must be tossed. Padded envelopes with Bubble Wrap: These can’t be recycled. The best thing you can do is reuse them. Tyvek: DuPont, the maker of Tyvek, takes these envelopes back and recycles them into plastic lumber. Turn one envelope inside out and stuff others inside it. Mail them to Tyvek Recycle, Attention: Shirley B. Wright, 2400 Elliham Avenue #A, Richmond VA 23237. If you have large quantities (200 to 500), call 866-338-9835 to order a free pouch. § P Packing materials: Styrofoam peanuts cannot be recycled in most areas, but many packaging stores (like UPS and Mail Boxes Etc.) accept them. To find a peanut reuser near you, go to loosefillpackaging.com. Some towns recycle Styrofoam packing blocks; if yours doesn’t, visit epspackaging.org to find a drop-off location, or mail them in according to the instructions on the site. Packing pillows marked “Fill-Air” can be deflated (poke a hole in them), then mailed to Ameri-Pak, Sealed Air Recycle Center, 477 South Woods Drive, Fountain Inn SC 29644. They will be recycled into things like trash bags and automotive parts. Paint: Some cities have paint-recycling programs, in which your old paint is taken to a company that turns it into new paint. Go to earth911.org to see if a program exists in your area. Pendaflex folders: Place these filing-cabinet workhorses in the paper bin. But first cut off the metal rods and recycle them as scrap metal. Phone books: Many cities offer collection services. Also check yellowpages.com/recycle, or call AT&T’s phone book–recycling line at 800-953-4400. Pizza boxes: If cheese and grease are stuck to the box, rip out the affected areas and recycle the rest as corrugated cardboard. Food residue can ruin a whole batch of paper if it is left to sit in the recycling facility and begins to decompose. Plastic bottle caps: Toss them. “They’re made from a plastic that melts at a different rate than the bottles, and they degrade the quality of the plastic if they get mixed in,” says Kite. Plastic wrap (used): Most communities don’t accept this for recycling because the cost of decontaminating it isn’t worth the effort. Post-its: The sticky stuff gets filtered out, so these office standbys can usually be recycled with paper. Prescription drugs: The Starfish Project (thestarfish-project.org) collects some unused medications (TB medicines, antifungals, antivirals) and gives them to clinics in Nigeria. The organization will send you a prepaid FedEx label, too.   Printer-ink cartridges: Seventy percent are thrown into landfills, where it will take 450 years for them to decompose. “Cartridges are like gas tanks,” says Jim Cannan, cartridge-collection manager at Recycleplace.com. “They don’t break. They just run out of ink. Making new ones is like changing motors every time you run out of gas.” Take them to Staples and get $3 off your next cartridge purchase, or mail HP-brand cartridges back to HP. Q Quiche pans and other cookware:  These can be put with scrap metal, and “a plastic handle isn’t a problem,” says Tom Outerbridge, manager of municipal recycling at Sims Metal Management, in New York City. R Recreational equipment: Don’t send tennis rackets to your local recycling center. “People may think we’re going to give them to Goodwill,” says Sadonna Cody, director of government affairs for the Northbay Corporation and Redwood Empire Disposal, in Santa Rosa, California, “but they’ll just be trashed.” Trade sports gear in at Play It Again Sports (playitagainsports.com), or donate it to sportsgift.org, which gives gently used equipment to needy kids around the world. Mail to Sports Gift, 32545 B Golden Lantern #478, Dana Point CA 92629. As for skis, send them to skichair.com, 4 Abbott Place, Millbury MA 01527; they’ll be turned into Adirondack-style beach chairs. Rugs (cotton or wool): If your town’s recycling center accepts rugs, great. If not, you’re out of luck, because you can’t ship rugs directly to a fabric recycler; they need to be sent in bulk. Your best bet is to donate them to the thrift store of a charity, like the Salvation Army. § S Shopping bags (paper): Even those with metal grommets and ribbon handles can usually be recycled with other paper. Shopping bags (plastic): If your town doesn’t recycle plastic, you may be able to drop them off at your local grocery store. Safeway, for example, accepts grocery and dry-cleaning bags and turns them into plastic lumber. (To find other stores, go to plasticbagrecycling.org.) What’s more, a range of retailers, like City Hardware, have begun to use biodegradable bags made of corn. (BioBags break down in compost heaps in 10 to 45 days.) Shower curtains and liners: Most facilities do not recycle these because they’re made of PVC. (If PVC gets in with other plastics, it can compromise the chemical makeup of the recycled material.) Six-pack rings: See if your local school participates in the Ring Leader Recycling Program (ringleader.com); kids collect six-pack rings to be recycled into other plastic items, including plastic lumber and plastic shipping pallets. Smoke detectors: Some towns accept those that have beeped their last beep. If yours doesn’t, try the manufacturer. First Alert takes back detectors (you pay for shipping); call 800-323-9005 for information. Soap dispensers (pump): Most plastic ones are recyclable; toss them in with the other plastics. Stereos and VCRs: Visit earth911.org for a list of recyclers, retail stores, and manufacturers near you that accept electronics. Small companies are popping up to handle electronic waste (or e-waste) as well: Greencitizen.com in San Francisco will pull apart your electronics and recycle them at a cost ranging from nothing to 50 cents a pound. And the 10 nationwide locations of freegeek.org offer a similar service. T Takeout-food containers: Most are not recyclable. Paper ones (like Chinese-food containers) aren’t accepted because remnants can contaminate the paper bale at the mill. Plastic versions (like those at the salad bar) are a no-go too. Tinfoil: It’s aluminum, not tin. So rinse it off, wad it up, and toss it in with the beer and soda cans. Tires: You can often leave old tires with the dealer when you buy new ones (just check that they’ll be recycled). Worn-out tires can be reused as highway paving, doormats, hoses, shoe soles, and more. Tissue boxes with plastic dispensers: The plastic portion will be filtered out during the recycling process, so you can usually recycle tissue boxes with cardboard. Toothbrushes: They’re not recyclable, but if you buy certain brands, you can save on waste. Eco-Dent’s Terradent models and Radius Source’s toothbrushes have replaceable heads; once the bristles have worn out, snap on a new one. Toothpaste tubes: Even with all that sticky paste inside, you can recycle aluminum tubes (put them with the aluminum cans), but not plastic ones. TVs: Best Buy will remove and recycle a set when it delivers a new one. Or bring old ones to Office Depot to be recycled. Got a Sony TV? Take it to a drop-off center listed at sony.com/recycle. U Umbrellas: If it’s a broken metal one, drop the metal skeleton in with scrap metal (remove the fabric and the handle first). Plastic ones aren’t accepted. Used clothing: Some towns recycle clothing into seat stuffing, upholstery, or insulation. Also consider donating clothing to animal boarders and shelters, where it can be turned into pet bedding. Utensils (plastic): “There is no program in the country recycling plastic flatware as far as I know,” says Matsch. “The package might even say ‘recyclable,’ but that doesn’t mean much.” § V Videotapes, cassettes, and floppy disks:  These aren’t accepted. “Videotapes are a nightmare,” says Outerbridge. “They get tangled and caught on everything.” Instead, send tapes to the ACT ( actrecycling.org ) facility in Columbia, Missouri, which employs disabled people to clean, erase, and resell videotapes. You can also send videotapes, cassettes, and floppy disks to greendisk.com ; recycling 20 pounds or less costs $6.95, plus shipping. W Wheelchairs: Go to lifenets.org/wheelchair, which acts as a matchmaker, uniting wheelchairs with those who need them. Wine corks: To turn them into flooring and wall tiles, send them to Wine Cork Recycling, Yemm & Hart Ltd., 610 South Chamber Drive, Fredericktown MO 63645. Or put them in a compost bin. “They’re natural,” says Matsch, “so they’re biodegradable.” Plastic corks can’t be composted or recycled. Wipes and sponges: These can’t be recycled. But sea sponges and natural sponges made from vegetable cellulose are biodegradable and can be tossed into a compost heap. Writing implements: You can’t recycle pens, pencils, and markers, but you can donate usable ones to schools that are short on these supplies. At iloveschools.com, teachers from around the United States specify their wish lists. And there’s always the option of buying refillable pencils and biodegradable pens made of corn (like those at grassrootsstore.com) so that less waste winds up in the landfill. X Xmas lights:  Ship your old lights to holidayleds.com , Attention: Recycling Program, 120 W. Michigan Avenue, Suite 1403, Jackson MI 49201. The company will send you a coupon for 10 percent off its LED lights, which use 80 percent less energy and last 10 years or more. And they’re safer, too. LEDs don’t generate much heat, whereas incandescents give off heat, which can cause a dry Christmas tree to catch fire. Y Yogurt cups:  Many towns don’t recycle these because they’re made of a plastic that can’t be processed with other plastics. But Stonyfield Farm has launched a program that turns its cups into toothbrushes, razors, and other products. Mail to Stonyfield Farm, 10 Burton Drive, Londonderry NH 03053. Or you can join TerraCycle’s Yogurt Brigade ( terracycle.net ) to recycle Stonyfield containers and raise money for your favorite charity. For every cup collected, Stonyfield will donate 2 cents or 5 cents, depending on the cup size.   Z Zippered plastic bags:  Venues that recycle plastic bags will also accept these items, as long as they are clean, dry, and the zip part has been snipped off (it’s a different type of plastic). Read more at www.realsimple.com

 

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Report: Apple, Sharp Partner For LCD Plant

According to a Japanese newspaper, Apple is partnering up with Sharp Electronics to build a $1.2 billion liquid crystal display (LCD) production line in Japan.

The plant's LCD output will reportedly go into Apple iPods and iPhones. Production is expected to start towards the latter half of 2012, the report says.

Apple has not disclosed which companies supply its LCD screens. However a recent iSuppli teardown analysis of the iPhone 4 called the phone's 3.5-inch LCD display the "single most expensive component," which most likely comes from LG or Toshiba. Read more at mobile.pcmag.com

 

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The Best Alternatives to Delicious

Tag-friendly and social bookmarking service Delicious is headed for shutdown. Sure, you can export those bookmarks, but what if you want a new place to tag, save, share, and maybe go beyond what Delicious offered? These are your best bets.

Best All-Around: Pinboard Pinboard makes no bones about its role as a simple, tagged, social bookmarking service, one that's even more stripped down in interface than Delicious. Wondering about how it stacks up to Delicious, pro and con? Pinboard tells it pretty honestly, though, honestly, staying with Delicious isn't really an option, it seems. The team also forecasts its features, with a dig at Yahoo included. Pinboard does charge for the service: $7.50 as this was written, but it goes up as more people join. At that level, you get a lot of great features above and beyond the Delicious-style bookmarking: automatic link de-shortening, automatic bookmarking of anything you save to Instapaper or Read It Later, archives of your links and favorites from Twitter, private tags that only you can see, and better bulk editing. For $25 per year, you can have Pinboard keep a copy of each page you bookmark, so that even dead links are readable, and have full text search of all those bookmarks, too. There are a good number of third-party Pinboard extensions and plug-ins out there, and likely one for your browser of choice. Pinboard offers a full how-to section, including a full export/import walkthrough for Delicious users. Best for Going Beyond Bookmarks: Diigo Diigo is a bit more expansive in aim than Delicious. It doesn't just handle bookmarks, though it handles Delicious-style bookmarking, and straight imports from Delicious, fairly well. Diigo offers a lot of tools to accompany its service, including browser extensions and bookmarklets, and clients for Android, iPhone, and iPad that let you save your notes for offline reading in some cases. Beyond basic bookmarking, Diigo offers a multi-color highlighting tool for browser-based research, and archiving of any bookmarked web page. There are lots of ways to collaborate with a group on notes and bookmarks, and the privacy settings are pretty Delicious-like and granular—you set which bookmarks are private or public, on a case-by-case basis. You can see the cost of Diigo's basic, premium, and education-focused plans at this extensively detailed chart. They offer some basic importing explainers, but the How-To Geek's site has a nice step-by-step Delicious-to-Diigo walkthrough. The Universal Capture Options: SpringPad & Evernote Both services aim to be more than just a bookmark catalog service, but they can both does this job pretty well. They're also both moving quick to claim Delicious users as they look for a new home, though neither does quite an adequate job for Delicious power users: Evernote can import your bookmarks, but without the tags. Springpad states on their Twitter account that they're working on a custom Delicious importer. Note, though, that these services are not necessarily made for such a use. They're generally aimed at wider use cases—what Adam calls "Everything Buckets", where a few bookmarks might get lost among photos of gift ideas, audio recordings, and other esoterica. But they can take in and hold your bookmarks, if you want a spot to toss them into, and they do support tagging. Simple Backup (Without Tags): Xmarks & Mozilla Sync As we detailed in a post yesterday, it's pretty easy to export Delicious bookmarks into your favorite browser. They arrive without tags, unfortunately, and they're only stored locally, unless your browser happens to sync its bookmarks, like Chrome. Keep your Delicious bookmarks safe (or at least safer) by backing them up to a cloud-based service. All you have to do is install Xmarks on any browser you happen to have, or Mozilla Sync if you happen to be a Firefox fan. Both services also offer means of syncing your bookmarks to your own server (we walked through Xmarks self-syncing recently). Read more at lifehacker.com

 

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Five Best Personal Media Streaming Tools

Streaming video or music from services like YouTube or Pandora is great for sampling a wide variety of stuff, but sometimes all you want is media from your own collection? Here's a look at five great solutions for streaming your personal media.

Subsonic (Windows/Mac/Linux, Free) Subsonic is best know for rock-solid music streaming over the internet to web browsers and other supported devices, but unbeknownst to many, it can also stream any video format that supports HTTP streaming, such as AAC. Subsonic supports plugins for transcoding tasks which makes it easy to adapt to new formats. Although many people use it for local streaming around their home network, you can access Subsonic remotely using the web-based interface or grab one of the Subsonic apps for Android and iOS devices. Subsonic is free, but in order to use it in conjunction with any of the mobile apps beyond the 30 day trial, you'll need to "donate" to the Subsonic project to get a license key; donations start at around $15 USD. Air Video (Windows/Mac/iOS, $2.99) Air Video is a dead-simple streaming solution for iOS devices. Rather than go through the hassle of re-encoding all your media for playback on your iOS device, Air Video transcodes it on the fly to turn your iPhone or iPad into a mobile media center. You install the server software on your Mac or PC, install the $2.99 application your iOS device, and enjoy easy file browsing and streaming media. If you want to try it out before dropping the $3, take it for a test drive with the free demo, which limits you to streaming the first 3-5 media files in each folder. Audiogalaxy (Windows/Mac/Android/iOS, Free) Unlike some of the other entries in this week's Hive Five that do double duty, streaming audio and video, Audiogalaxy remains completely focused on streaming music. You sign up for a free account at Audiogalaxy, install the server software on your Windows or Mac Machine, and get instant and organized music streaming to a remote web browser or your mobile device. Audiogalaxy includes drag and drop playlist creation, easy music search, and meta-data repair to help you clean up your sloppy music collection. As an especially nice perk, both the Android and iOS streaming apps are free. Orb Live (Windows/Mac/Android/iOS, $9.99) Orb Live is a hybrid solution for streaming to mobile devices. You install the Orb Live server software on your Windows or Mac computer, then you install the Orb Live streaming app on your Android or iOS device. All media accessible to your computer is then accessible to your mobile device: photos, music, movies—even live television if your computer has a tuner card. The server software is a free download and the mobile app for both Android and iOS is $9.99. Orb provides a demo version if you'd like to try it out before buying (Android/iOS), but the demo just picks three random media samples from your server to show off the technology, so it really is only good for testing purposes. PS3 Media Server (Windows/Linux, Free) PS3 Media Server was built to do exactly what it sounds like: transcode and stream media from your computer to a PS3 hooked up to your TV. Although that sounds fairly limited in scope, a lot of people like it for two principal reasons: It transcodes and streams video to the PS3 extremely well, but more importantly, the project very recently has branched out to other devices. People who have struggled with finding a good streaming solution for their PS3 units rave about how it's the best thing out there. Although the originally intended for just the PS3, as of earlier this year the PS3 Media Server beta releases have included support for other devices such as network-connected televisions. Read more at lifehacker.com

 

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Has America Become Corrupted by the Merger of Government and Finance?

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Matt Taibbi argues that America has been corrupted by the merger of government and finance

December 12, 2010

The epic failure of America's financial system in 2008 was, among other things, a sobering gloss on the American romance with technical expertise. The tidal onrush of securitized debt that kept the housing bubble afloat was more than the simple byproduct of decades of deregulation in the nation's financial sector; it was also the handiwork of a new generation of market analysts known as the Quants. These ingenious souls harnessed arcane financial instruments like collateralized debt obligations (CDO) and credit default swaps (CDS) to magically scrub bad housing debt of all apparent risk as it was traded up the Wall Street food chain. The rickety structure was bound to collapse, but the amazing thing is that even though the Quants and all their schemes have been exposed as fraudulent, the cult worship of market savants has gone on unabated. Look no further than the Obama administration, which met the challenge of leading the economy out of the worst recession in seventy years by retaining Ben Bernanke, the Fed chair who'd presided over the meltdown; promoting Timothy Geithner, a principal architect of the shoddy TARP bailout of Wall Street, to treasury secretary; and recruiting Larry Summers, a stalwart advocate of Clinton-era deregulation during his own treasury tenure, as its chief economic adviser. (Summers announced that he would decamp from his post at the head of the Council of Economic Advisers in September, only to return to that other citadel of technocratic hubris he had long ago captained and, not incidentally, helped steer into its own economic peril: Harvard University.) It was a bit like the government subcontracting all future deepwater drilling oversight to BP. When the idolatry of the market, and market expertise, becomes this perverse and unchecked, the value of a stubborn autodidact like Matt Taibbi stands out in high relief. Heeding the shifting tenor of the times, Taibbi, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, moved from the campaign beat into finance journalism shortly after the 2008 meltdown. At the outset, he muffed a few things. In his now (in-)famous July 2009 takedown of Goldman Sachs, which placed the investment house at the center of three signature market bubbles—the 1920s joint stock fiasco, the '90s Internet mania and the recent housing Guignol—he overstated the firm's power to drive markets while mischaracterizing crucial Goldman operations such as CDO exchanges as derivatives deals. But despite such missteps—which earned Taibbi the concerted scorn of most of the financial press—the brunt of his argument about Goldman's particular outsize role in the housing debacle has been proven correct, and has gained remarkable traction in our emerging and impressionistic understanding of the past decade of Wall Street larceny. When Taibbi quoted a hedge-fund operator as saying that Goldman's initiative to sell short on the same mortgage deals it systematically inflated in pitches to other investors was nothing less than "securities fraud," the same financial journalists derided Taibbi as an irresponsible naïf—until the SEC charged the bank with securities fraud for constructing just those kinds of deals, in a prosecution that eventually produced the largest civil settlement in the regulatory agency's history. After Goldman-brokered interest-rate swaps proved instrumental in the debt meltdown of the Greek economy in February, Atlantic business and economics editor Megan McArdle's earlier, airy dismissal of Taibbi's reporting on Goldman's hand in the interest-rate markets sounded like a grim joke: "No one, as far as I know, is now proposing that we need to curtail the use of interest-rate swaps." Well, perhaps someone should have. In Griftopia, Taibbi revisits the whole Goldman saga, and does cop, in very general terms, to his past oversights, noting that in retrospect he and his Rolling Stone editors "left out quite a lot, a problem I've tried to rectify here by adding some to the original text." Happily, though, the pugnacious Taibbi—whom, I should note, I've edited but never met, and have previously defended in my own autodidactic and regrettably imprecise way—doesn't confine his new book to Goldman score-settling. Rather than burrowing further into the financial-press turf wars, Taibbi builds an account of bailout America around a broad indictment of the way the political class and the investor class intersect and sometimes collude. "What has taken place over the last generation," he writes, "is a highly complicated merger of crime and policy, of stealing and government.... The financial leaders of America and their political servants have seemingly reached the cynical conclusion that our society is not worth saving and have taken on a new mission that involves not creating wealth for all, but simply absconding with whatever wealth remains in our hollowed-out economy. They don't feed us, we feed them." * * * It's a social contract that transcends the tedious partisan shadow play Taibbi dutifully recorded during the 2008 campaign, and at key points in Griftopia he underscores the painful irrelevance of our political process to the consolidation of a new political economy. The American electoral scene "grounds our new and disturbing state of affairs in familiar forty-year-old narratives," he observes. "The right is eternally fighting against Lyndon Johnson; the left, George Wallace." Meanwhile, "political power is simply taken from most of us by a grubby kind of fiat, in little fractions of a percent here and there each and every day, through a thousand separate transactions that take place in fine print and in the margins of a vast social mechanism that most of us are simply not conscious of." These fine-grained transactions lie at the heart of the mortgage fiasco. For example, the interest-rate swaps that upended Greece and were a key factor in our housing market's collapse also midwifed an ingenious investment tool called the "CDO squared"—that is, a debt instrument composed wholly of other debt instruments. These contrivances allowed substandard BBB or lower mortgages to get nudged back up into AAA territory; and in the heat of a bubble, all that a broker of fluid capital usually needs to hear is the simple "AAA" incantation to set the geysers loose. As Taibbi explains, the Quants' brave new parcels of repackaged debt were also appealing to international bankers because of their transaction fees, measured in hundredth-percentage "basis points." Taibbi brings home the dramatically out-of-kilter state of the bubble market by recounting the global investing adventures of an anonymous banker he calls Andy. (As Taibbi explains in a note on sourcing, he grants anonymity to sources in the financial industry in order to protect their professional standing. He uses anonymous sources mainly to confirm already reported details of the meltdown; in only one case—the back-room deal to bail out the moribund American International Group—does Taibbi rely on an anonymous source to break news.) As Taibbi sums up the process, CDO-squared transactions "allowed Andy's bank to take all the unsalable BBB-rated extras from these giant mortgage deals, jiggle them around a little using some mathematical formulae, and—presto! All of a sudden 70 percent of your unsalable BBB-rated pseudo-crap ('which in reality is more like B-minus-rated stuff, since [consumer lending] scores aren't accurate,' reminds Andy) is now very salable AAA-rated prime paper, suitable for selling to would-be risk-avoidant pension funds and insurance companies. It's the same homeowners and the same loans, but the wrapping on the box is different." At the crest of the bubble, another global banker, whom Taibbi calls Miklos, recalls fielding a bond deal offering him fifty basis points above the standard international borrowing rate, known as the London Interbank Offered Rate; he was then able to turn around and repackage the original bonds into a credit default deal with the now-infamous flamed-out-and-bailed-out AIG for ten points above the London rate. In other words, Miklos's bank would collect forty basis points—translating into millions in fees—for nothing more than rechristening debt instruments with different nomenclature. "It was so unreal, my bosses wouldn't let me book this stuff as profit," Miklos says now. "They just didn't believe it could be true." Miklos had lucked into the early part of a global run on these AIG-brokered deals—but it couldn't last. "Suddenly someone is buying like five hundred million dollars of this stuff and getting the same swap deal from AIG," he says. "I'm getting blown out of the water." It's worth remembering, in the thick of all this surreal detail, that these wild market lurches happened because credit default insurance was completely unregulated: no bank had to show underlying assets to any counterparty, let alone to the public. "Wall Street is frequently compared by detractors to a casino," Taibbi writes in summing up this asinine state of affairs, "but in the case of the CDS, it was far worse than a casino—a casino, at least, does not allow people to place bets they can't cover." The other deformed stepchild of deregulation in this set piece was, of course, AIG, the firm that became the CDS guarantor of first resort for profit-hungry investors. AIG was once a simple insurance company, but under the dispensation of the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley law, which wiped out New Deal prohibitions against the consolidation of insurers, investment banks and commercial banks, AIG soon morphed into an extremely shortsighted purveyor of securitized debt. (Whether credit default swaps can technically be viewed as insurance is, rather hilariously, still a subject of controversy among state and federal regulators.) The AIG Financial Products division is already a byword for bubble excess in the nation's new financial lexicon; under the deranged leadership of division head Joe Cassano, the financial products team leveraged some $500 billion into the CDS market (thereby permitting Cassano to pocket $280 million during an eight-year period of his twenty-year run of the shop) before the gradual collapse of the housing market caused a run of collateral claims on all the default-swap debt as borrowers defaulted. Leading the pack of collateral claimants was Taibbi's old nemesis, Goldman Sachs. What's more, as Cassano's division brutally unwound during the crazed 2008 run of Wall Street lenders on the firm, Goldman mounted a pincer-like assault on another troubled AIG division, Asset Management, whose woes jeopardized the health of the company's erstwhile core business of insurance—as well as the scores of state insurance and pension plans that were lashed to the mast of the sinking division. But as Taibbi explains in an illuminating account of the behind-the-scenes negotiations to rescue AIG from oblivion, the run on the company's Asset Management arm didn't really make sense, since its insurance securities, unlike the dismal CDS operation, still retained a good deal of underlying value. At the time, federal and state regulators urged caution on creditors holding Asset Management paper, but Goldman was having none of it. In the conclave of bankers frantically convened to help determine AIG's fate, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein insisted long and loudly, as one of Taibbi's informants put it, "that he wanted his fucking money." As a result, the deal's overseers faced a Hobson's choice: "Either the state would pour massive amounts of public money into the hole in the side of the ship, or the Goldman-led run on AIG's sec-lending business would spill out into the real world. In essence, the partners of Goldman Sachs held the thousands of AIG policyholders hostage, all in order to recover a few billion bucks they'd bet on Joe Cassano's plainly crooked sweetheart CDS deals." The ultimate reasons for Goldman's hardline stance are still inscrutable, like much of the detail involving the AIG bailout, though it's hard to dispute Taibbi's dour assessment. In his view, Goldman's AIG ultimatum was like the Mafia's neighborhood business model as laid out in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas: pump up a local restaurant or bar with supplies extorted from your protection-paying debtors, and when the thing is leached of its last profit, set it afire for the insurance money. "In the end, Blankfein and Goldman...did a mob job on AIG, burning it to the ground for the 'insurance' of a government bailout they knew they would get, if that army of five hundred bankers could not find the money to arrange a private solution." In this, Taibbi argues, Goldman was no different from the shakedown artists pumping out "no down payment" adjustable-rate mortgages to borrowers who had no earthly hope of making their adjusted ARM payments—"the kind of shameless con man who preyed on families and kids and whom even other criminals would look down on.... The only difference with Goldman was one of scale." Such rhetorical flourishes can often seem excessive, and Taibbi can be something of a Hunter S. Thompson 2.0, both in his exuberant way with profanity (his analytically spot-on chapter on former Fed chair Alan Greenspan, for instance, bears the frattish title "The Biggest Asshole in the Universe") and his penchant for colorful metaphor (thanks to his 2009 Rolling Stone article about Goldman, he and the firm will forever be yoked together on Google with the expression "vampire squid"). Yet Taibbi is correct to insist that at a moment of maximum crisis, when other bankers as well as government regulators were feverishly trying to work out a scheme to stave off a ruinous run on insurance and pension funds, Goldman's behavior in the AIG episode makes sense only as a textbook example of gangster capitalism. And it's hard to avoid the corollary conclusion that a federal economic team that has extravagantly rewarded this bottom-feeding operation with virtually free money at the Fed discount window is a hopelessly corrupt police force, of the sort moviegoers might recall from Serpico or Training Day. * * * It bears reminding that throughout the nation's history, the lords of finance have not hesitated to ransack the economy during a national emergency. In 1895, for instance, the nation was suffering an acute contraction of gold reserves, under the administration of Grover Cleveland—another stolid probusiness Democrat in the Clinton-Obama mold. As the nation's bankers hoarded their private reserves of gold, Cleveland grew increasingly desperate in his efforts to persuade investment titans to negotiate a gold-backed bond sale in order to prevent the already ruinous financial panic from escalating to a full-scale depression. Enter the financier J.P. Morgan—whose name lives on, fittingly enough, in Morgan Stanley, which together with Goldman is the only investment banking colossus left standing after the '08 calamity. Through his firm's extensive connections in London, Morgan assembled a syndicate of global bankers to rig a $65 million government-issued bond sale at what was then an unheard-of rate of 3.75 percent. When the hapless Cleveland staged an eleventh-hour meeting with the banking titan, a Treasury official informed him that, in the wake of the latest run, New York gold reserves had dwindled to $9 million. At that point, Morgan interjected: "Mr. President, the Secretary of the Treasury knows of one cheque outstanding for 12,000,000 dollars. If this is presented today it is all over." Cleveland promptly caved to Morgan's demands; the overnight yield on the deal for the Morgan syndicate was placed at somewhere between $5 million and $9 million—real money back in 1895. Plus, there was an abundance of longer-term returns, which in structural terms at least, closely parallel the sort of deal-making Taibbi describes at the dark heart of the housing bubble some 110 years later. The Morgan "syndicate borrowed exchange in London, on its own credit, and thus sold bills for American currency, pegging the world exchange rate of the dollar at a point favorable to their gold operations," wrote muckraking journalist Matthew Josephson in his chronicle of the episode. "Morgan also supervised and controlled for several months the gold reserve of the Treasury. Every banking house and exchange dealer in New York having important European connections was bound to the undertaking by being given an allotment of the syndicate's bonds at profitable rates." In retrospect, even Cleveland—a diehard gold bug—blanched at the scope of the shakedown. "I am afraid as we triumph our party loses and the country does not gain as it should," he confided to Thomas Bayard, the US ambassador to Britain. The insurgents within Cleveland's Democratic Party took a much harsher view. When the Morgan deal was announced, Nebraska Congressman William Jennings Bryan—a bitter foe of the gold standard who would supplant Cleveland as the party's national leader the following year—rose on the floor of Congress to denounce it as an illicit deal "with the representatives of foreign money loaners. It is a contract made with men who are desirous of changing the financial policy of this country...they come to us with the insolent proposition, 'we will give you $16,000,000, paying a proportionate amount each year, if the United States will change its financial policy to suit us.' Never before has such a bribe been offered to our people by a foreign syndicate." The chief distinction between the present Gilded Age and its nineteenth-century forerunner is that the lines of extortion are reversed. Whereas Morgan and other private bankers used their own ample access to credit and gold reserves to shore up the public treasury on the most favorable terms they could dictate, now capital-starved lending institutions turn on one another in the scrum for government bailout money. Also, Congress no longer harbors any crusading populist reformers like Bryan. Instead, we have the pasteboard populism of Tea Party conservatism, which tirelessly advertises its superior heartland virtues in pursuit of banker-friendly tax policies. As Taibbi dryly notes, one key bailout deal—the government-orchestrated merger of the failed Wachovia Bank with Wells Fargo—was announced on October 12, 2008, "the same day that Barack Obama had his infamous encounter with Samuel 'Joe the Plumber' Wurzelbacher in Ohio. When the last McCain-Obama debate took place three days later...there was plenty of talk about which candidate was a bigger buddy to middle America's plumbers, but neither man bothered to mention that week's sudden disappearance of the country's fourth-largest commercial bank." Nor did either man note the exceedingly generous terms that Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson used to induce Wells Fargo to swallow Wachovia's toxic debt: $25 billion in bailout funds, together with an alteration in the tax code to net Wells Fargo another $25 billion or so. In other words, Taibbi writes, "America's fourth-largest bank goes broke gambling on mortgages, then gets sold to Wells Fargo for $12.7 billion after the latter receives $50 billion in bailout cash and tax breaks from the government. The resulting postmerger bank is now the second-largest commercial bank in the country, and, presumably, significantly more 'systemically important' than even Wachovia was. Fattened by all this bailout cash, incidentally, postmerger Wells Fargo would end up paying out $977 million in bonuses for 2008." A populace habituated to a bubble economy and a political system fattened by its spoils isn't equipped to process a bubble's inevitable bursting. As Taibbi writes in the bleak concluding pages of Griftopia, the financial crisis briefly "forced a nation of people accustomed to thinking that their only political decisions came once every four years to consider, for really the first time, the political import of regular or even daily items like interest rates, gasoline prices, ATM fees, and FICO scores." And that, he rightly notes, isn't a thinkable outcome for the leaders of the American financial oligarchy. "If the people must politick," as he paraphrases their thinking, "then let them do it in the proper arena, in elections between Wall Street-sponsored Democrats and Wall Street-sponsored Republicans. They want half the country lined up like the Tea Partiers against overweening government power, and the other half, the Huffington Post crowd, railing against corporate excess. But don't let the two sides start thinking about the bigger picture and wondering if the real problem might be a combination of the two." If this deadlock is ever to be broken, Taibbi's angry, astute and detailed indictment is a great starting point for citizens looking to shake off the past decades of pseudo-populist stupor stoked by the leaders of both major parties. Should the mobbed-up status quo continue to hold, well, then we should all recall that Martin Scorsese's de facto sequel to Goodfellas was Casino. Read more at www.alternet.org

 

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Men Who Lack Female Supervision

Men who lack female supervision

PStart Review

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PStart Review

Since I am a great user of my USB drive and a huge lover of portable applications that I carry around I have been looking for some launchers that I can add to my USB drive so that I can boot my portable applications more easily. And since it took me quite a while before I found the right launcher I thought I would write up a review for all you portable geeks out there that are looking for a portable launcher. My favorite is PStart, and that is what I will be writing about. I will be judging PStart on a few factors which I deem very important for a launcher for all my portable apps. A few of those are an easy to understand User Interface, Simplicity (Who would want a launcher that is more complicated than looking up the app on your USB drive?) and most importantly (in my opinion) Customization. A quick quote from the PStart Website; PStart is a simple tray tool to start user defined applications. Designed to run portable applications (like portable Firefox & Thunderbird), you can start anything runnable from USB key devices or removable disks.

User Interface The user interface of PStart probably couldn’t get any easier. It is straight forward and easy to use. The Items tab allows you to add your portable applications (non-portable applications also work), folders on your usb-drive or groups to easily find your applications. And if you can’t find them through your specially created groups, there is always the Search tab that will allow you to search through your whole computer (not only your usb-drive). This makes it even better for XP users that don’t have the search bar that Vista and Win7 users have. Then there is the Notes tab. Have you ever gone to someone’s place and thought of a great idea, and you had to scribble it down on paper and take it with you to remember it? PStart thought that had to end, and that is what the Notes tab is for. You can simply scribble down anything you want to. Personally I keep a To-Do list for my development in my Notes tab, but I guess the sky is the limit on this one.

Features PStart offers numerous features that make it simple yet powerful. For example, you can choose the simple route by adding a program. However, you can also pass on command line parameters to the programs you launch from PStart. One example where I use the command line parameters is for starting a continuous ‘ping’ command to one of my servers which I can start straight from my PStart. Again, the possibilities with this program are huge! PStart also offers; Autorun Scheduled Execution Environment Variables for Applications Dual Monitor Support Search for Executables

Customization PStart offers a few interesting customization options. You can change the background image shown in the PStart panel, add a hotkey to open the PStart panel or even add a click-able area on your screen (for example the top left) that can activate the PStart panel. Aside from these easy to configure customizations there isn’t a lot you can customize about PStart. Personally I don’t need fancy menus to show me my portable programs. However, the opinions on this subject are split. It doesn’t affect the functionality of PStart, but for some it might influence the way they look at the program.

Conclusion Aside from the lack in design options I think PStart is a great program to use for all your Portable Application needs. No more digging into different folders to start all your necessary programs. The ability to add Environment Variables and Commandline Parameters is amazing! It adds so much power to the way you start programs compared to other Portable Application launchers out there. I can say I highly recommend PStart.

Ratings Finally, I will end off with some ratings; Appearance;  Quality;  Ease-of-use;  Features;  Overall –  Read more at www.geekstogo.com

 

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Advocates for 'True' Net Neutrality find 5 Flaws with Proposed FCC Ruling on Dec 21

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Group finds 5 main flaws with proposed Net Neutrality rules

A group of more than 80 advocacy groups including The Media Access Project, Reporters without Borders, Daily Kos, Common Cause, and Nonprofit Technology filed a letter with the Federal Communications Commission on Friday citing five main areas that need improvement in the Net Neutrality legislation coming up for vote on December 21.

"In announcing the circulation of his draft Order, Chairman Genachowski rightly noted that protecting the free market online means that users, not broadband service providers, must choose what content and applications succeed," the letter said. "If the current draft Order is adopted without substantial changes, Internet Service Providers will be free to engage in a number of practices that harm consumers, stifle innovation and threaten to carve up the Internet in irreversible ways."

The principle concern these groups have is the Order's omission of "Paid Prioritization," or the ability for service providers to set payment tiers for different types of services and allocate bandwidth accordingly. "Paid prioritization is the antithesis of openness. Any framework that does not prohibit such economic discrimination arrangements is not real Net Neutrality," the letter said. "Without a clear ban on such practices, ISPs will move forward with their oft-stated plans to exploit their dominant position and favor their own content and services and those of a few select paying partners through faster delivery, relegating everyone else to the proverbial dirt road." AT&T's Hank Hultquist openly mocked these groups' knowledge of such issues in August, calling them the "Church of Extreme Net Neutrality," who preach the "old time religion of the dumb network" without taking all facts into consideration.

The Group's subsequent gripes all follow along the same lines, asking for more adequate consideration of "full Net Neutrality" to wireless and mobile traffic, which includes the banishment of all economically-motivated traffic prioritization or blocking of applications, sites, and services; and for more comprehensive coverage that lacks loopholes.

"While some highly sensitive and truly specialized services might not be best provided over the open Internet, there is no reason for the FCC to create a specialized services loophole that would undermine Net Neutrality. Unfortunately, the draft Order apparently opens the door to specialized services without any safeguards," the group said.

Finally, the group calls Genachowski's rejection of Title II, and gravitation toward the Title I provisions that failed to hold up in the circuit court against Comcast an "unnecessary risk." Read more at www.betanews.com

 

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Ron Paul, Author of ‘End the Fed,’ to Lead Fed Panel (Update2)

Ron Paul, Author of 'End the Fed,' to Lead Fed Panel

Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Representative Ron Paul, Texas Republican and
author of "End the Fed," will take control of the House
subcommittee that oversees the Federal Reserve.

House Financial Services chairman-elect Spencer Bachus, an Alabama
Republican, selected Paul, 75, to lead the panel's domestic monetary
policy subcommittee when their party takes the House majority next
month, the committee chairman said today.

"This is the leadership team that crafted the first comprehensive
financial reform bill to put an end to the bailouts, wind down the
taxpayer funding of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and enforce a strong
audit of the Federal Reserve," Bachus said in a statement.

Paul, in an interview last week, said he plans a slate of hearings on
U.S. monetary policy and will restart his push for a full audit of the
Fed's functions.

"We are ready to hit the ground running, and I look forward to
continuing our work in the next Congress," Bachus said.

Paul, who has introduced legislation to abolish the Fed, became
nationally known during his 2008 presidential campaign. His campaign
to audit the Fed picked up steam as the central bank deployed
trillions of dollars in emergency loans in the midst of the worst
financial crisis since the Great Depression. Paul's bill gained the
support of 320 of 435 members of the House and a portion of the
measure ended up in the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul
enacted this year.

Attacks on Bernanke

Paul's assignment comes as the Republican Party has stepped up
attacks on Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and the central bank in the
wake of the Nov. 3 announcement that it would buy bonds in an attempt
to bring down unemployment and prevent inflation.

"Congress must act to rein in Chairman Bernanke and the Fed before
they destroy our currency and permanently damage our economy and
financial system," Senator Jim Bunning, a Kentucky Republican, said
in his farewell speech on the Senate floor today. "Public awareness
of what the Fed is doing is increasing while public opinion of the Fed
is falling."

Bunning's views are reflected throughout the country, according to a
Bloomberg National Poll that reveals deep skepticism about the Fed.

Americans across the political spectrum say the central bank
shouldn't retain its current structure of independence, according to
the poll. Asked if the central bank should be more accountable to
Congress, left independent or abolished entirely, 39 percent said it
should be held more accountable and 16 percent that it should be
abolished. Thirty-seven percent favor the status quo.

Other Subcommittees

Paul, who has been passed up twice before for the subcommittee
chairmanship, may cause a problem for Republicans who have
traditionally defended the central bank, Representative Barney Frank,
the outgoing chairman of the Financial Services Committee, said today
in a Bloomberg Television interview.

"I think you're going to see a significant dispute within the
Republican Party," said Frank, who was re-appointed by his party as
the senior Democrat on the committee. "I do not believe that Ron
Paul's views on the Fed represent the views of most Republicans."

Bachus will keep the senior Republicans on the panel in leadership
positions. Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas will take over as
the panel's vice chairman, replacing fellow Texas Republican Randy
Neugebauer, who moves over to lead the oversight and investigations
subcommittee.

Representative Scott Garrett of New Jersey will become chairman of the
capital markets panel, which would oversee any work done on government-
owned mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Representatives
Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Judy Biggert of Illinois
will take over the financial institutions and housing subcommittees,
respectively. Representative Gary Miller of California will take over
as chairman of the international monetary policy panel.

Grand Prix