Manhattan Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled against the central bank yesterday, rejecting the argument that loan records aren’t covered by the law because their disclosure would harm borrowers’ competitive positions.

"..It is hard to make sense of economic news in the best of times. These are not the best of times. Much of the "good" news pertains to a relatively small cross section of the US. Much of the "bad" news involves reporting on widely suffered pain. Housing market numbers perfectly illustrate this. We have been told for 4 months that we have/are turning the corner. Asset markets have been soaring. Spirits have clearly been lifted for many. The problem remains that improvement has been heavily concentrated in the upper tiers of the economy. These folks are over-represented in the media and public consciousness. Our celebrity worship, athlete obsession and overwhelming disinterest in real people's material conditions all speak to this. The bottom 80% of Americans are suffering, their children are suffering. People's lives and conditions are not getting better. Sooner or later, this produces disaster. The divergence of fortunes was a significant cause of the great crash from 2007-2009.."

US President Barack Obama has lost his messianic status in the row over health care reform, say German media commentators. The debate reveals the downside of America's ideological aversion towards government: Americans are ready to put up with an inferior health service in the name of freedom, it seems.

Hope comes from truth-telling, from authors like Eduardo Galeano who can break our frozen soul and revive our passion and curiosity.
"The owners of power have built a factory of fear. We become afraid of words, memory and the neighbor. The neighbor is a promise, not a menace."

"..The Obama administration erred in asking for too small a stimulus, especially after making political compromises that caused it to be less effective than it could have been. It made another mistake in designing a bank bailout that gave too much money with too few restrictions on too favorable terms to those who caused the economic mess in the first place – a policy that has dampened taxpayers’ appetite for more spending.
But that is politics. The economics is clear: the world needs all the advanced industrial countries to commit to another big round of real stimulus spending. This should be one of the central themes of the next G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh."

$5 billion in lobbying to Congress got the financial industry lucrative legislative favors that paved the way for Wall Street's devastating collapse.

In a SPIEGEL interview, outsted President Manuel Zelaya, 56, discusses the coup in his native Honduras, the lack of intervention from Washington, his political ties to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his hopes to unseat the regime by peaceful means.

"Medicare never gets between me and my patient. What does get in the way is the private insurance companies."
David L. Scheiner has been Obama's personal physician for 22 years.