cryptogon.com

The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.

The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.

Either way, Wall Street would profit by pocketing sizable fees for creating the bonds, reselling them and subsequently trading them. But some who have studied life settlements warn that insurers might have to raise premiums in the short term if they end up having to pay out more death claims than they had anticipated.

The idea is still in the planning stages. But already “our phones have been ringing off the hook with inquiries,” says Kathleen Tillwitz, a senior vice president at DBRS, which gives risk ratings to investments and is reviewing nine proposals for life-insurance securitizations from private investors and financial firms, including Credit Suisse.

“We’re hoping to get a herd stampeding after the first offering,” said one investment banker not authorized to speak to the news media.

In the aftermath of the financial meltdown, exotic investments dreamed up by Wall Street got much of the blame. It was not just subprime mortgage securities but an array of products — credit-default swaps, structured investment vehicles, collateralized debt obligations — that proved far riskier than anticipated.

The debacle gave financial wizardry a bad name generally, but not on Wall Street. Even as Washington debates increased financial regulation, bankers are scurrying to concoct new products.

A sign bearing the letters ELF was found near the towers, said Andy Skotdal, general manager of KRKO Radio in Everett, about 25 miles north of Seattle. The group is a loose collection of radical environmentalists that has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks since the 1990s.

The towers were torn down because of health and environmental concerns, according to an e-mail to The Herald of Everett from the North American ELF Press Office, which has represented the shadowy group in the past.

“We have to weigh our priorities, and the local ecosystem in Everett, along with the local residents, do not need additional sports news radio station towers that come at the expense of reduced property values and harmful radio waves,” ELF press office spokesman Jason Crawford said in an e-mail.

The group’s Web site featured a picture of one of the towers lying on its site with the caption “Earth Liberation Front Topples Two Radio Station Towers in Snohomish County, WA,” followed by the words “Details coming soon.”

A call to ELF press office for comment Friday morning was not immediately returned.

Snohomish County sheriff’s office spokeswoman Rebecca Hover wouldn’t confirm that a sign was found.

A neighbor told a 911 operator that someone seemed to attacking the towers with a bulldozer at about 3:30 a.m., Hover told The Herald. A 349-foot tower and a smaller tower were found on the ground with heavy construction equipment nearby, but deputies and a tracking dog didn’t find any suspects, Hover said.

Deputies found other, unspecified evidence at the scene, she said.

The FBI has taken over the lead of the investigation, Hover said in a statement.

The family-owned station remained on the air Friday morning after shifting to other transmission equipment.

KRKO’s plans to increase its transmission capacity have been embroiled for more than a decade in appeals and litigation over issues ranging from trumpeter swan habitat to potential health hazards to humans.

The addition to the station’s existing towers in the town of Snohomish, east of Everett, were completed in February, allowing KRKO to boost its AM signal to where it could compete with larger broadcasters in the Seattle-Tacoma area. Neighbors have since complained of interference from radio signals on home telephone and intercom lines.

An ELF sign was left on March 3, 2008, at the scene of fires set at a number of houses in a Street of Dreams development at Echo Lake, north of Seattle. Street of Dreams is an annual showcase of new luxury homes in the Seattle area.

ELF also has claimed responsibility for other arsons in the region, including a fire that destroyed the Center for Urban Horticulture at the University of Washington in Seattle in 2001.

The Skotdal family also plans to build two 199-foot towers at the same site for a new 5,000-watt AM station that would cover Snohomish County on another frequency.

A hearing examiner denied a permit for the towers, based on claims that radio signals could be dangerous to humans. But the council voted to reverse the finding, saying it was based on shaky scientific evidence.

A King County judge upheld the council’s decision on Aug. 14.

“When all legal channels of opposition have been exhausted, concerned citizens have to take action into their own hands to protect life and the planet,” Crawford said in the e-mail.

It was the reception his story ultimately received in the United States.

“It was quite mysterious to me,” Anderson says. “All of a sudden, it became clear that they were going to run the article but they were going to try to bury it under a rock as much as they possibly could.”

Anderson, 50, is an accomplished reporter and novelist who has written previously for Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and Vanity Fair.

…

Authorities say Cramer helped a large-scale drug trafficking organisation move cocaine into the United States, according to a criminal complaint made public Friday.

The complaint says that Cramer provided members of a drug smuggling organisation with information from confidential law enforcement databases that told them whether one of their members was a government informant.

The complaint also says Cramer and the smuggling organisation invested about $400,000 in a 300-kilogram shipment of cocaine that was seized in June 2007.

An informant told DEA agents that Cramer had “very powerful friends” among DEA agents in Mexico and a strong relationship with one particular member of the smuggling organisation, according to the complaint.

The complaint also says that during an August 2007 meeting, a member of the smuggling organization convinced Cramer to retire from ICE and begin working directly for the organisation in drug smuggling and money laundering.

Illinois lenders InBank of Oak Forest and Platinum Community Bank of Rolling Meadows; Vantus Bank of Sioux City, Iowa; First Bank of Kansas City, Missouri; and First State Bank of Flagstaff, Arizona were shut by regulators, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was named receiver, the agency said in statements yesterday. Closing the lenders, with combined assets of $1.1 billion and deposits of $982 million, will cost the deposit insurance fund about $401 million.

The new squadron was established to provide each B-52 Wing with two active-duty combat coded squadrons, which will give the Air Force “bench depth” to rotate the squadrons across the mission sets as recommended in the Defense Science Board Report. The much anticipated stand-up was previously announced in 2008 and extensive studies were conducted to determine which base the unit would best fit. Minot was announced as the home and the 69th Bomb Squadron was designated for reactivation on Aug. 28.

“The activation of the 69th Bomb Squadron at Minot Air Force Base is a historic event that continues the legacy of the distinguished 69th Bomb Squadron. In World War II, the 69th Bomb Squadron deployed A-26 and B-26 bombers to Australia and the South Pacific. And during the Vietnam War, the 69th Bomb Squadron stepped up to the plate and deployed B-52 aircraft to Guam and Thailand,” said Maj. Gen. Floyd Carpenter, 8th Air Force Commander. “Now more than 65 years after its initial activation, the 69th Bomb Squadron returns to provide deterrence forces and help balance the demands of both the nuclear and conventional missions of the B-52 fleet.”

“The 69th has close ties with the 5th [Bomb Wing], and definitely a logical choice” said Lt. Col. Kevin J. Notari, 5th Operations Group Detachment 1 commander. “Both units fought simultaneously out of two different locations in the Southwest Pacific theatre during World War II. Furthermore, the unit was the first Air Force unit to fly night low level combat sorties during the first three days of Desert Storm” he added.

As a result, 10 B-52 aircraft from Barksdale AFB will flow to Minot between Oct. 09 and April 10. There won’t be a significant number of personnel that will flow with the aircraft, as personnel for the new squadron will flow in gradually through the normal PCS process and support from the 23rd BS.

“This activation is a measure of the confidence our nation has in the men and women of the Minot Air Force Base,” said N.D. Govenor John Hoeven. “The 69th Bomb Squadron will bring approximately 1,000 new military members and their families to the state and will be a major asset to the community, the Minot Air Force Base, and our nation,” he added.

The squadron is expected to mirror the other 3 currently established active B-52 squadrons. As the squadron builds up, many of the resources and functions from the 23rd Bomb Squadron will be shared including training, exercises and deployments.

“This adds flexibility to the Air Force Global Strike Command mission,” said Maj. William L. Byers 5th OG Det. 1, Chief of Standard Evaluations.”The 69th allows for an even distribution of operations tempo between the 2nd Bomb Wing and 5th BW, and at the same time supports the persistent presence in United States Pacific Command,” he added. This will help refine and focus nuclear mission training for B-52 units and is part of continued Air Force efforts to reinvigorate the Nuclear Enterprise.

The United States Air Force has a legacy of providing strategic capabilities as stewards of the nuclear enterprise, and is committed to conducting safe, secure and reliable nuclear operations.

The new squadron commander, Lt. Col. Michael R. Cardoza, echoed this sentiment in his remarks during the ceremony.

The State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) issued the license for Sinovac’s vaccine called Panflu.1 on Thursday, after it passed SFDA’s experts evaluation on Aug. 31.

“Clinical trials show that Panflu.1 is very safe and its immunogenicity factors reach international standards,” said Zhang Wei, director of SFDA’s registration department.

Panflu.1 could safely be given to people aged from three to 60 years old in a single shot, 15 microgram dose, according to the evaluation report.

Sinovac had the capacity to produce five million doses of vaccine before Oct.1, and 20 to 30 million doses per year, according to its president Yin Weidong.

The young student stated her aspirations in a televised interview that was posted on a southern China website, leading bloggers to describe her comments as “a reflection of social reality,” the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

“When I grow up I want to be an official,” said the girl, whose face was blurred to protect her identity.

“What kind of official?” the interviewer asked.

“A corrupt official because corrupt officials have a lot of things,” she replied.

Numerous other children appearing in the video were asked the same question, with many saying they wanted to become teachers, while others said they were not sure what they wanted to be when they grew up.

Many chatroom users praised the child for her “realistic” outlook on life, while others expressed cynicism over rampant corruption in China.

“Socialism has issued a new version of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’,” said one posting.

“The ugliness of life has already tainted the children – how are we ever going to educate the next generation?” another posting said.

A research group representing 16 companies, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., will spend four years developing technology to send electricity without cables in the form of microwaves, according to a statement on the trade ministry’s Web site today.

“It sounds like a science-fiction cartoon, but solar power generation in space may be a significant alternative energy source in the century ahead as fossil fuel disappears,” said Kensuke Kanekiyo, managing director of the Institute of Energy Economics, a government research body.

Japan is developing the technology for the 1-gigawatt solar station, fitted with four square kilometers of solar panels, and hopes to have it running in three decades, according to a 15- page background document prepared by the trade ministry in August. Being in space it will generate power from the sun regardless of weather conditions, unlike earth-based solar generators, according to the document. One gigawatt is enough to supply about 294,000 average Tokyo homes.

Takashi Imai, a spokesman for the Institute of Unmanned Space Experiment Free Flyer, which represents the 16 companies, confirmed the selection when reached by phone in Tokyo.

…

Far, Far Away

Transporting panels to the solar station 36,000 kilometers above the earth’s surface will be prohibitively costly, so Japan has to figure out a way to slash expenses to make the solar station commercially viable, said Hiroshi Yoshida, Chief Executive Officer of Excalibur KK, a Tokyo-based space and defense-policy consulting company.

“These expenses need to be lowered to a hundredth of current estimates,” Yoshida said by phone from Tokyo.

The project to generate electricity in space and transmit it to earth may cost at least 2 trillion yen, said Koji Umehara, deputy director of space development and utilization at the science ministry. Launching a single rocket costs about 10 billion yen, he said.

“Humankind will some day need this technology, but it will take a long time before we use it,” Yoshida said.

The trade ministry and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which are leading the project, plan to launch a small satellite fitted with solar panels in 2015, and test beaming the electricity from space through the ionosphere, the outermost layer of the earth’s atmosphere, according to the trade ministry document. The government hopes to have the solar station fully operational in the 2030s, it said.

Supplies rose 65 billion cubic feet in the week ended Aug. 28 to 3.323 trillion cubic feet, the Energy Department said. Inventories are the highest for that week since the department began publishing data in 1993. Stockpiles typically gained 64 billion cubic feet for the period in the past five years.

“We’re well supplied and there’s so little demand,” said Michael Rose, director of trading at Angus Jackson Inc. in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “Some people are starting to question the economic recovery and that adds more pressure to gas.”

Natural gas for October delivery fell 20.7 cents, or 7.6 percent, to settle at $2.508 per million British thermal units at 2:52 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest close since March 5, 2002. Gas has dropped 55 percent this year. Today’s decline was the largest in three months. Futures earlier touched $2.50.

Overall U.S. gas consumption may contract by 2.6 percent as the recession that began in December 2007 cuts demand, the Energy Department said in its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook on Aug. 11.

Gas use at factories is forecast to tumble 8.6 percent this year because of the recession, the department said.