An Iowan is among five people killed in a military chopper crash. Staff Sergeant Steven P. Blass, 27, of Estherville, Iowa died when the chopper he was riding in went down in Kandahar, Afghanistan on Monday. There's no word on services for him at this time.
Source: http://www.facebook.com/kgancbs2/posts/130766260439272
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?I approve.? With the discovery of those two words that Jamie Dimon, the chairman and C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase, wrote in an email on January 23, 2012, the most prominent banker on Wall Street has been directly tied to the burgeoning ?London Whale? trading scandal, which has returned to the headlines in sensational fashion. In a hearing in Washington Friday, the scandal took another twist, with a senior government official asserting that, in the months leading up to the bank losing billions of dollars, Dimon ordered his underlings not to give the bank?s regulators information they had requested.
The escalation in the scandal started with Thursday?s publication of a three-hundred page report by a Senate subcommittee, which said Dimon not only signed off on a strategy that understated the risks being taken by the bank?s traders, including Bruno Iksil, a derivatives trader known as the Whale, who worked out of the bank?s tower at Canary Wharf in east London. After Iksil?s losses were revealed, last April, the report said, Dimon misled investors and the public about their nature.
On Friday, the Times reported that a criminal probe of the Whale affair by the Justice Department and the F.B.I. has reached an advanced stage. While the Times report says Dimon isn?t himself suspected of any wrongdoing, there can be no doubt that his career is on the line. For years now, he has been Wall Street?s untouchable: the magazine-cover star who, when many of his rivals were crashing and burning during the financial crisis, guided his bank through it all, mostly unharmed. He?s been invited to the White House (several times); Warren Buffett said he would be an excellent Treasury Secretary; he?s even been (largely) forgiven for whining about people criticizing bankers and their humungous pay packages.
But he won?t necessarily get through this one. If the feds were to indict any senior JPMorgan executives on charges arising from the Whale?s trades, which generated more than six billion dollars in losses, Dimon?s position could rapidly become untenable.
In a statement on Thursday, a spokeswoman for JPMorgan said: ?While we have repeatedly acknowledged significant mistakes, our senior management acted in good faith and never had any intent to mislead anyone.? That didn?t put an end to it: not nearly. Following the release of its report, the Permanent SubCommittee on Investigations held a lengthy hearing Friday. One of the first witnesses, Ina Drew, the bank?s former chief investment officer, who lost her job as a result of the Whale scandal, put the blame squarely on the bank?s London office:
Since my departure I have learned of the deceptive conduct by members of the London team, and I was, and remain, deeply disappointed and saddened to learn of such conduct and the extent to which the London team let me, and the Company, down.
Senator Carl Levin, for one, isn?t buying that story. As early as January of last year, he pointed out in his opening statement, the trading book of the Chief Investment Office, the division of JPMorgan that Iksil worked for, and which Drew oversaw, grew so large that it breached the risk guidelines established for the entire bank. ?That four-day breach was reported to top bank officials, including C.E.O. Jamie Dimon, who personally approved a temporary limit increase, and voil?, the breach was ended,? Levin said in his opening statement.
It was in okaying the temporary increase in risk-taking that Dimon sent the fateful e-mail, which has now turned up. At first glance, the strategy he approved was designed to reduce the dangers to the bank rather than increase them. While the temporary rise in risk limits was in effect, the bank?s traders and their supervisors were meant to bring down the level of risk, which is usually accomplished by selling off positions in the market. But rather than doing this, the Chief Investment Office merely changed the mathematical model it used to measure the risks attached to its portfolio, a sleight of hand that?on paper, anyway?lowered the estimate of its potential losses by fifty per cent.
According to Levin, that was just the beginning of the deception and negligence on the bank?s part. ?JPMorgan executives ignored a series of alarms that went off as the bank?s Chief Investment Office breached one risk limit after another,? he said. ?Rather than ratchet back the risk, JPMorgan personnel challenged and re-engineered the risk controls to silence the alarms. It is difficult to imagine how the American people can trust major Wall Street banks to prudently manage derivatives risk when bank personnel can readily game or ignore the risk controls meant to prevent financial disaster and taxpayer bailouts.?
Even when news of Iksil?s losses started to leak out, in April last year, JPMorgan ?misinformed regulators and the public,? Levin went on, and he said Dimon was one of those who did the misleading. All along, JPMorgan has said Iksil?s trades were ?hedges??investments designed to offset risks being taken elsewhere in the bank?rather than speculative punts. But the Senate investigators, who examined more than ninety thousand documents and conducted more than fifty interviews, couldn?t identify the assets that Iksil?s trades were supposed to be hedging, or how his trades were meant to reduce risk. In fact, rather than taking their cue from exposures elsewhere in the bank, Iksil and his colleagues ?doubled down? on their own losses in March of last year, acquiring another forty billion dollars worth of credit derivatives.
And yet, Levin noted, ?As late as May 10, bank C.E.O. Jamie Dimon repeatedly described the synthetic credit trades as hedges made to offset risk, despite information showing the portfolio was not functioning as a hedge. The bank also neglected to tell investors the bad news that the derivatives portfolio had broken through multiple risk limits, losses had piled up, and the head of the portfolio had put management of the portfolio into ?crisis mode.??
If all that wasn?t bad enough for Dimon?s reputation, one of the witnesses at the meeting, Scott Waterhouse, a senior regulator at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, recalled how, at a meeting in late 2011, just months before the trading scandal blew up, Dimon berated Douglas Braunstein, Chase?s Chief Financial Officer, for giving regular profit and loss reports to the O.C.C. Here, courtesy of the Huffington Post, is part of what Waterhouse said:
Levin: So apparently he [Dimon] had decided to stop the reports?
Waterhouse: I took it that way, yes, sir.
Levin: So he would be the one to restore the flow?
Waterhouse: Yes, sir.
Levin: Did he raise his voice?
Waterhouse: He did.
It isn?t just Levin, a longtime bugbear of Wall Street, who is making life uncomfortable for Dimon. The investigative report was a bipartisan one, and it was issued under the name of John McCain, the ranking Republican on the committee, as well as Levin. In his opening statement at yesterday?s hearing, McCain criticized ?top officials? at JPMorgan for permitting the bank?s traders to breach its risk limits, and he singled out Dimon for describing the furor over the Whale?s losses as a ?tempest in a teapot.? ?The truth of the matter is that six billion dollars, some of which is federally insured, is an inexcusable amount of money to be gambled away on risky bets,? McCain said. And he went on: ??Let me be clear: JPMorgan completely disregarded risk limits and stonewalled federal regulators.?
As long as JPMorgan?s share price doesn?t suffer too much?yesterday it closed down about a dollar?Dimon can probably survive being excoriated in Congress. But with the Justice Department eager to show it isn?t a Wall Street patsy, the prospect of criminal charges can?t be dismissed. Over the coming weeks, the bank?s high-priced lawyers will be desperately trying to persuade the feds that Ina Drew was right when she suggested that any deliberate deception, if there was some, was confined to Chase?s London office. For Dimon, the former golden boy, everything depends on this story holding up.
Jamie Dimon arrives at an investors meeting at company headquarters in New York, on February 26, 2013. JPMorgan Chase & Co., the biggest U.S. bank, expects headcount to decline by about four thousand in 2013 as Dimon targets mortgage operations for cuts. Photograph by Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg/Getty.
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Myer to chair interior design program at Athens Tech
Interior designer Phillip Myer recently joined Athens Technical College as chair of the community college?s interior design program on the main campus.
Myer has a master of fine arts degree in interior design from the Savannah College of Art and Design. He also has a bachelor of fine arts degree in illustration from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
He has taught college and high school students in the greater Atlanta area and has conducted seminars in Tokyo and Buenos Aires. Additionally, he has been the seminar instructor at a number of trade shows in the United States and Canada.
Myer owns PCM Interior Design and has been involved in the interior design and art industry since 1982. He is a member of the American Society of Interior Designers, and the International Interior Design Association, and serves on the International Interior Design Association Georgia Chapter board of directors. He also serves on the education committee for Atlanta Center for Creative Inquiry, which mentors minority high-school students in the fields of the building arts such as architecture, interior design, engineering and construction.
UGA prof named Outstanding Scholar
University of Georgia College of Education professor Laura Bierema has received the 2013 Outstanding Scholar Award from the Academy of Human Resources Development for her feminist research.
Bierema, a professor in the department of lifelong education, administration and policy, is one of the first scholars to do feminist research in the field of human resources development and exploring women?s development in organizations.
Bierema also contributed to human resources development through both research-related service and building research-related infrastructures. She has written 27 scholarly journal articles, 29 book chapters, authored a book, co-authored another, edited and co-edited books, and has another book in press.
As the vice president of research for the Academy of Human Resources Development, she conducted a comprehensive study of research and publications within the field through the AHRD Journal Task Force.
Costantino joins Athens law firm
Athenian M. John Costantino has joined Lewis, Frierson and Grayson as an associate attorney.
He will focus on trust, estate, and health law as well as civil litigation with the general practice firm located at 279 Meigs St.
He is a native Athenian who attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., New York University, and Brooklyn Law School. In addition to his work with the firm, John is earning a master?s degree in public health policy and management from the University of Georgia School of Public Health. Prior to joining the firm, John worked in entertainment and civil litigation in New York and Los Angeles.
SBDC course on managing business
The University of Georgia Small Business Development Center is presenting a four-part training course on how to use QuickBooks to manage business.
Once the hands-on computer lab course is finished, a SBDC consultant will help implement QuickBooks into the client?s small business.
The schedule is basic accounting and company set-up, April 3; everything about customers, April 5; everything about vendors, April 10; and everything about employees, April 12.
Each class is from 9 a.m. until noon at the Chicopee Complex, 1180 E. Broad St. It is $199 for the four-part series. Pre-registration is required at www.athenssbdc.org or by calling (706) 542-7436.
Source: http://onlineathens.com/business/2013-03-16/athens-tech-names-new-chair-interior-design-program
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Mar. 15, 2013 ? Secondary school students who follow an in-class mindfulness programme report reduced indications of depression, anxiety and stress up to six months later. Moreover, these students were less likely to develop pronounced depression-like symptoms. The study, conducted by Professor Filip Raes (Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven), is the first to examine mindfulness in a large sample of adolescents in a school-based setting.
Mindfulness is a form of meditation therapy focused on exercising 'attentiveness'. Depression is often rooted in a downward spiral of negative feelings and worries. Once a person learns to more quickly recognise these feelings and thoughts, he or she can intervene before depression sinks in.
While mindfulness has already been widely tested and applied in patients with depression, this is the first time the method has been studied in a large group of adolescents in a school-based setting, using a randomised controlled design. The study was carried out at five middle schools in Flanders, Belgium. About 400 students between the ages of 13 and 20 took part. The students were divided into a test group and a control group. The test group received mindfulness training, and the control group received no training. Before the study, both groups completed a questionnaire with questions indicative of depression, stress or anxiety symptoms. Both groups completed the questionnaire again directly after the training, and then a third time six months later.
Before the start of the training, both the test group (21%) and the control group (24%) had a similar percentage of students reporting evidence of depression. After the mindfulness training, that number was significantly lower in the test group: 15% versus 27% in the control group. This difference persisted six months after the training: 16% of the test group versus 31% of the control group reported evidence of depression. The results suggest that mindfulness can lead to a decrease in symptoms associated with depression and, moreover, that it protects against the later development of depression-like symptoms.
The study was carried out in cooperation with the Belgian not-for-profit Mindfulness and with support from the Go for Happiness Foundation.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/kyGQJdoL4zM/130315095916.htm
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'I feel there's no other artist on the street hotter than him, making the type of music he makes,' he tells MTV News of Alley Boy.
By Rob Markman, with reporting by FLX
Alley Boy and Master P
Photo: MTV News
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1703791/master-p-alley-boy-louie-v-mob-no-limit.jhtml
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Penelope Cruz is putting her baby belly on display! Plus, check out more pics of your favorite stars on the scene!
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