Wall Street is laying people off; others pay 6g's to be interns!!

Students pay to take first steps on Wall Street

5:00AM Monday January 07, 2008
By James Doran

American university students used to get paid for spending three summer months in an office opening mail and making coffee for some of the world's richest bankers. Then some did it for free. But now a growing number are paying thousands of dollars to secure the best internships on Wall St.

The University of Dreams, an internship agency in California, charges as much as US$7999 ($10,380) to place university students in summer jobs on Wall St.

And if you want a cheaper option, you can pay US$6000 for an internship with an investment bank, such as Goldman Sachs or Merrill Lynch, in a lesser-known location. The organisation can even arrange to send students to Barclays in London.

A decent internship is crucial to securing a job at a top Wall St bank these days.

Indeed, working for free at a big-name firm is key to jump-starting a top-flight career in many industries, from media to technology or finance.

The University of Dreams, which has 46 staff and 1200 students, builds relationships with Wall St banks and other top companies, such as Google and General Electric, and claims that CVs sent in on behalf of its clients always make it to the top of the pile.

For the banks, the service helps human resources departments overcome the problem of sifting through millions of CVs sent every year by eager students.

And University of Dreams is not alone. For the budget-oriented, Fast Track Internships of Texas offers a similar service, costing just US$699 for unpaid work or US$999 for paid placements.

And if politics is your dream and you have US$3500, then the Washington Internship Program is the place to send your CV.

- OBSERVER

US now paying $15 billion a month for WAR, GOP Senator

Today's spelling lesson(s)

$15,000,000,000

war criminals

defense industry kickbacks

Ted Stevens investigation

insanity

Who's paying?

Value for money

political conundrum

State insolvency

outraged Americans

The WaPo doesn't tell the whole story about where the money is GOING!

or how much it cost$ per day to make the intere$t payment$

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 27, 2007; Page A07

The latest estimate of the growing costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the worldwide battle against terrorism -- nearly $15 billion a month -- came last week from one of the Senate's leading proponents of a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq.

"This cost of this war is approaching $15 billion a month, with the Army spending $4.2 billion of that every month," Sen. Ted Stevens (Alaska), the ranking Republican on the Appropriations defense subcommittee, said in a little-noticed floor speech Dec. 18. His remarks came in support of adding $70 billion to the omnibus fiscal 2008 spending legislation to pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, as well as counterterrorism activities, for the six months from Oct. 1, 2007, through March 31 of next year.

While most of the public focus has been on the political fight over troop levels, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported this month that the Bush administration's request for the 2008 fiscal year of $189.3 billion for Defense Department operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and worldwide counterterrorism activities was 20 percent higher than for fiscal 2007 and 60 percent higher than for fiscal 2006.

Pentagon spokesmen would not comment last week on Stevens's figure but said their latest estimate for monthly spending for Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terrorism was $11.7 billion as of Sept. 30, the end of fiscal 2007.

One reason for Stevens's larger cost figure may be that U.S. troop levels in Iraq peaked at 180,000 in November, which is part of the 2008 fiscal year, and will fall only slightly in the next three months. In addition, in its December report, the CRS noted that the Pentagon does not include intelligence operations and other classified activities in its cost estimates, nor does it tally congressional add-ons for the National Guard and reserve forces.

"Stevens is being realistic," said Gordon Adams, who served as the senior national security official at the Office of Management and Budget from 1993 to 1997, in the Clinton administration.

Pointing out that Bush's request comes out to $15.8 billion per month, Adams said: "Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror are not getting cheaper. . . . This will go down some, as the surge comes home, but not as much as people think."

He added:

"More and more of these so-called emergency funds are being used to repair and buy new military hardware,"

because "the Pentagon is worried that defense budgets will start to go down next year."

The CRS reports that a good part of the increased spending is not only for replacing lost equipment but "more often to upgrade and replace 'stressed' equipment and enhance force protection." It noted that a recent Congressional Budget Office study "found that more than 40% of the Army's spending for repair and replacement of war-worn equipment" was "spent to upgrade systems to increase capability, to buy equipment to eliminate longstanding shortfalls in inventory" and to convert new combat units to more flexible organizational structures.

Stevens made it clear that the $70 billion in the omnibus bill for the wars will cover only costs for the six months ending March 31, when Congress will again have to wrestle with a supplemental spending bill to pay for the wars. By then, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador, will have presented Congress with their update on the situation in Iraq.

Last Friday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that he hopes troop levels, which drive costs, could continue to go down in 2008. But he warned that they would continue only "if conditions on the ground" permit sustaining "the gains we have already made."

One indication of how fast costs are rising is that operations and maintenance costs for all of fiscal 2007 were $72 billion, and the entire fiscal year 2008 request was $81 billion, according to the CRS.

The Pentagon has anticipated rising war costs before. In January, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England told a House Budget Committee hearing that, nearly four years into the war, the Pentagon's war costs were rising because it had to replace big-ticket items such as helicopters, airplanes and armored vehicles, which were wearing out or were lost in combat. "We have a backlog and are seeing an increase," England told the panel.

At that time, 11 months ago, Pentagon spokesmen said the monthly costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007 would be $9.7 billion -- $2 billion less than their most recent estimate.

One relatively new cost is the $300 monthly payments to almost all Iraqis recruited as part of the "Concerned Local Citizens" (CLC) program, which arms neighborhood groups to provide local security. The latest quarterly Iraq report by the Pentagon puts the program total at 69,000 people.

Since more than 80 percent of the CLC participants are Sunni, the Shiite-led government has hesitated to integrate them into the police force. That means that the United States will need to continue paying them until the Iraqi government "assumes full responsibility for the program," according to the Pentagon report.

Much of the CLC money is coming out of the Commanders Emergency Response Program, which until now has been used mainly for small local assistance or development projects, such as school rebuilding, roads or sanitary systems. The omnibus spending package includes $500 million in these funds.

Another category Stevens identified in the spending bill was $587 million to reset pre-positioned stocks of military equipment taken from U.S. facilities around the world to support Iraq and Afghanistan. Replenishing such stocks, Stevens said, "enhances our nation's ability to respond to contingencies," noting that "we have forces in 141 different places."

Some of the bill's spending figures that Stevens described represent what the administration sought for the full 2008 fiscal year. For example, he listed "$4.3 billion for the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Fund, which will help our troops detect and defeat the number one killer of our troops in Iraq." That is only slightly less than the figure the administration sought for the full year.

Another category that appears to have been fully funded is the military intelligence program. The administration requested $3.7 billion for the full year, and Stevens said there is "$3.7 billion to continue to enhance our intelligence activities in the theater."

Tighten your Xmas giving this year? Wall Street did NOT.

Big bucks brighten Wall St

Leela De Kretser

December 25, 2007 12:00am

THE gloom and doom that has hung over Wall Street ever since the sub-prime mortgage fiasco cleared in time for Christmas after financial firms doled out holiday bonuses.

Despite fears that the US economy is plummeting into a recession, bankers and traders at the biggest banks and finance companies were able to splurge big for the holidays, safe in the knowledge that bonus cheques on average grew by 14 per cent on last year.

The four biggest banks, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, were estimated to be paying out about $US32 million ($36.8 million) in bonuses, about 60 per cent of the total compensation employees got in 2007.

At the top of the list of trendy gifts that have Manhattanites trying to keep up with each other this year are "once-in-a-lifetime experiences", and "extreme luxury" items on sale at upscale retailers.

A $7700 doghouse at department store Neiman Marcus and a $3 million diamond-encrusted Victoria's Secret bra are among the most lavish. At Saks, the Masters of the Universe wrestled each other for the chance to spend $100,000 on a day at the Super Bowl with an NFL player.

Thanks to holiday bonuses, retailers and restaurateurs in New York enjoyed another happy holiday shopping season as Wall Streeters lapped up the usual high-ticket items of Kobe steaks, diamond jewellery and plastic surgery gift certificates.

But many were treating this Christmas as their last chance to buy.

The healthy size of the bonus cheques was due mostly to record earnings in the first half of the year, before a credit squeeze caused M&A (mergers and acquisitions) activity to almost dry up and many banks were forced to writedown billions of dollars on sub-prime mortgage bonds.

Most analysts predict that the stockings of Wall Streeters will not be so stuffed with cash next year as problems in credit markets and in structured investment vehicles continue to bite at the US economy.

At least half of the analysts polled by Bloomberg believe the US is heading for recession.

Already, some on The Street are feeling the pinch. At investment firm Merrill Lynch, which is expected to take another $6 billion hit to its books due to collateralised debt obligations this quarter, bonuses are likely to be down 40 to 70 per cent when the company makes its offerings in January.

Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack and Bear Stearns chief Jimmy Cayne also announced that they would forego their holiday bonuses this year in light of the banks' problems with investments in CDOs and sub-prime mortgage-backed bonds.

In Battery Park City, however, Goldman Sachs workers were smiling all the way to the ATM machine, celebrating a record $US17 billion in holiday tidings.

Goldman Sachs was the only one of the big banks to correctly predict that the market for reselling sub-prime mortgage loans was about to hit trouble and sell its holdings before the summer hit.

The most generous bonus cheque will be made out to Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.

The Golden Boy will receive $US70 million extra after he successfully navigated the bank out of mortgage securities.

Goldman has offered a special charitable fund for well-minded workers to donate their holiday bonuses to this year.

Formerly Normal

Jim Kunstler

November 19, 2007
Venturing into the rural outlands of the upstate New York counties these days, you see new houses everywhere in what was, until about the 1970s, mostly farm country. Almost all of them are stand-alone houses; there are very few multiple-unit subdivisions up here, a la the vast beige housing monocultures found in the sunbelt. But they seem no less tragic to me.

These new houses all follow the "normal" programming of their time -- a time that is stealthily ending. The program is as follows: Each house occupies an out-parcel of an acre or so of what used to be a farm or a woodlot. The house is set in the middle of the plot, surrounded by an apron of decorative foundation shrubs and grass lawn. The scheme derives from the English idea of "a manor in a park." You can tell, because if trees remain (or get planted) on the lawn, they are always deployed arbitrarily, never in formal rows, as the French would do it. The idea is that every homeowner is the "lord of the manor."

Of course, a major feature of this is the asphalt pad-and-driveway where the household stores (and not incidentally displays) its collection of cars, one for each adult family member plus "training" models for the adolescent offspring. This part of the package is indispensable, the umbilicus that connects the household to all the necessities of life, from paychecks to Slim Fast bars. Its continuation is assumed. In fact, the value of the house depends on that assumption.

The appeal of this program is obvious in the consumer-democracy of recent times. The stupendous aggregate wealth ginned up at the climax of the cheap energy fiesta made everyone an aristocrat. As Tom Wolfe has pointed out, the average American roofer or insurance adjuster of these times has enjoyed a more comfortable life than Louis XIV. They certainly bathe more regularly, in sumptuous vinyl tubs, with motor-drive water jets, and possess refrigerated larders of delicacies from thousands of miles away (not to mention access to colonoscopies and periodontics).

This luxurious life is a fragile thing, though. The fragility is actually expressed in the houses themselves, which are uniformly constructed from materials that would not seem to have a glorious destiny: wood-chips, glue, and vinyl. Anyone who visits the Palatine Hill in Rome must be impressed by the way stone blocks and masonry walls melt away over time. Imagine what would happen to a box made of chip-board over fir studs after a few decades of poor maintenance. You can even state categorically that the vinyl cladding was not designed to be maintained, only replaced. And in as much as vinyl siding is made from petroleum byproducts, one can easily foresee future replacement problems.

There are also the things that you can't see: the furnaces and the mortgages. The expectation that it will be possible to get affordable heating oil or propane gas a decade or so into the future must be considered, shall we say, a crap shoot at best -- and in the climate of upstate New York, that can't be reassuring. As for the mortgages, we already know what is happening to them -- like the "transformer" entities of the movies, they are morphing into monsters that destroy everything in their path.

I guess what really gets me about these houses popping up in the former cornfields and meadows is that the owners have absolutely no idea what a problem they are creating for themselves and their families (and their society), especially now as we move into a critical period of post-peak-oil instability. It's both poignant and pathetic, and a little disgusting. Their expectations are plain to see: that the life of luxury and incessant mobility is so assured that they can invest everything, even their anticipated future earnings, to enjoy all that the program had to offer. But they have tragically missed the fact that the program has changed.

Of course, I am aware that my ability to venture easily into the outlands of Washington County, New York, is not something that I can take for granted much longer. A year or so from now, I may have to plan ahead, even make sacrifices, to travel so distantly from where I live. In the meantime, I wonder with the keenest curiosity what is going through the minds of the people who dwell out there. Surely they've noticed that gasoline is $3.25. One can easily imagine the granite countertop in the kitchen where the bills are piling up, the frightening invoices from Master Card and Discovery, along with dunning letters from the company that "services" the mortgage. One can imagine the feelings of despondency creeping up the veins of the household lord and his lady as they contemplate the distress sale of their motorboat, jet skis, snowmobiles, and RV -- and the futility even of trying.

I think we are entering a time when what has seemed utterly normal to us will suddenly appear alien and threatening. If there was ever a recipe for an extreme social response, this will be it. As the poet said, the center cannot hold.

November 19, 2007 in Commentary on Current Events | Permalink | Comments (30)