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Monday 08.13.2012

U.S. banks told to make plans for preventing collapse
By Rick Rothacker, Reuters - ChicagoTribune.com
(Reuters) - U.S. regulators directed five of the country's biggest banks, including Bank of America Corp and Goldman Sachs Group Inc, to develop plans for staving off collapse if they faced serious problems, emphasizing that the banks could not count on government help.
The two-year-old program, which has been largely secret until now, is in addition to the "living wills" the banks crafted to help regulators dismantle them if they actually do fail. It shows how hard regulators are working to ensure that banks have plans for worst-case scenarios and can act rationally in times of distress.

Are The Government And The Big Banks Quietly Preparing For An Imminent Financial Collapse?
By Michael Snyder - TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com
Something really strange appears to be happening. All over the globe, governments and big banks are acting as if they are anticipating an imminent financial collapse. Unfortunately, we are not privy to the quiet conversations that are taking place in corporate boardrooms and in the halls of power in places such as Washington D.C. and London, so all we can do is try to make sense of all the clues that are all around us. Of course it is completely possible to misinterpret these clues, but sticking our heads in the sand is not going to do any good either. Last week, it was revealed that the U.S. government has been secretly directing five of the biggest banks in America "to develop plans for staving off collapse" for the last two years. By itself, that wouldn't be that big of a deal. But when you add that piece to the dozens of other clues of imminent financial collapse, a very troubling picture begins to emerge.

HOAs foreclose on big banks
By Paul Owers, Sun Sentinel
South Florida homeowner associations are foreclosing on some of the nation's largest banks, accusing the lenders of failing to pay thousands of dollars in maintenance fees on repossessed properties.
The foreclosure filings are a growing trend as associations become more aggressive in going after delinquent fees that have crippled HOA budgets during the housing bust.
Banks owe a portion of the past-due maintenance fees and the full amount from the date they take title to the property, attorneys said. If the lenders fall behind, they're subject to foreclosure just as an individual owner would be.

Treasury's Secretive $2.4 Trillion Mutual Fund Guarantee
By: John Carney - CNBC.com
Details about a secretive government program to bail out money-market mutual funds are finally coming to light.
Acting without any explicit Congressional authority, the U.S. Treasury guaranteed in excess of $2.4 trillion of money market funds after the giant Reserve Primary Fund "broke the buck" following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. The program, which ended on Sept. 18, 2009, seems to have successfully prevented a panicked run by money-market fund investors.

Consumer bureau seeks sleuths for bad bankers
By Jim McElhatton-The Washington Times
The federal government's newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is recruiting investigators in ads that suggest the agency plans to go undercover to pursue cases against banks, credit card companies and other financial companies.
"As needed," one recent recruitment ad stated to potential investigators, "establish and conduct surveillance activity to develop both intelligence and evidence to further investigations. Utilize surveillance activities to identify subjects, their activities and their associates, corroborate source information and collect evidence."

Standard Chartered Case Casts a Chill Over Banks
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG - NYTimes.com
Money laundering accusations leveled against a British bank by New York's top banking regulator are causing global banks to worry that their New York operations could make them public targets for processing transactions already deemed legal by federal regulators, according to federal authorities with knowledge of the concerns.
Benjamin M. Lawsky, who leads the New York Department of Financial Services, upended the regulatory landscape on Monday by accusingStandard Chartered of scheming with the Iranian government for nearly a decade and hiding from regulators $250 billion in transactions through its New York branch. The bank, for its part, has said it "strongly rejects the position and portrayal of facts" by Mr. Lawsky's department.

What Goldman Sachs Did and the Justice Department Didn't
By Jonathan Weil - Bloomberg.com
The Justice Department won't be pursuing criminal charges against Goldman Sachs or its employees over its "big short" on the housing market several years ago. Fortunately, the details of Goldman's appalling behavior and role in the financial crisis will live on forever in the public record.
The department's investigation began last year after Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a Democrat and a Republican, released the findings of a two-year inquiryby the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations into Goldman's sales and trading practices.

Goldman and other big banks are not out of the woods
The lack of accountability during the financial crisis, which was a tear in the faith in governmental and banking institutions, is turning into a giant rip that may never be repaired.
By Eleanor Bloxham - Fortune.com
FORTUNE -- Goldman Sachs has come into a run of luck -- or so it seems.
The SEC has dropped its investigation into the bank's disclosures related to the sale of subprime mortgages. And the DOJ has dropped its criminal probe into allegations stemming from a 635-page Congressional report that described how Goldman profited by betting against clients and appeared to have misled customers.

Did We Just Find Someone to Take On the Banks?
By Jonathan Weil - Bloomberg.com
To see how the federal government has pursued money-laundering cases against big banks over their dealings with Iran and other countries under U.S. trade sanctions, consider what happened when Barclays Plc (BARC) and the Justice Department were required to file reports describing the U.K. bank's cooperation under a settlement in 2010.
The deadline came and went. Barclays and the Justice Department failed to comply, infuriating U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan of Washington, who had ordered that the reports be filed. "I am amazed that with all the legal talent before the court that no one opened the order to read it," he said. A Justice Department attorney, Kevin Gerrity, told the judge he couldn't explain the lapse. Before approving Barclays's deferred-prosecution agreement, Sullivan called it a "sweetheart deal." Barclays paid $298 million, its core business was unscathed, and no executives were charged.

11 Things That Can Happen When You Allow Your Country
To Become Enslaved To The Bankers
By Michael Snyder - TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com
Why are Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and so many other countries experiencing depression-like conditions right now? It is because they have too much debt. Why do they have too much debt? It is because they allowed themselves to become enslaved to the bankers. Borrowing money from the bankers can allow a nation to have a higher standard of living in the short-term, but it always results in a lower standard of living in the long-term. Why is that? It is because you always have to pay back more money than you borrowed. And when you get to the point of having a debt to GDP ratio in excess of 100%, you are basically drowning in debt. Huge amounts of money that could be going to providing essential services and stimulating your economy are now going to service your horrific debt. Today, citizens in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy are experiencing a standard of living far below what they should be because the bankers have trapped them in endless debt spirals. Sadly, the vast majority of the people living in those countries have absolutely no idea what is at the root cause of their problems.

OBAMANOMICS: BAILING OUT 'EVERY INDUSTRY' GM-STYLE WOULD COST $17 TRILLION
By Ben Shapiro - Breitbart.com
Yesterday, speaking in Pueblo, Colorado, President Obama uttered the following unbelievable paragraph:

I said, I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back. Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.

There are two problems with this statement. The first is factual. The second is ideological.
First, the facts. GM has not come roaring back. In fact, when GM relaunched with its November 2010 initial public offering -- after a government-shepherded bankruptcy process that saw the government destroy the pension benefits of non-union members at Delphi, screw creditors including outside union pension investment groups, and reward the auto unions that bankrupted GM in the first place – the stock sold for $33 per share. Now, the stock is trading at just above $20 per share. The American taxpayer is on the hook for some $35 billion. And there has been significant turmoil at the executive levels, with top marketing folks and others finding themselves on the golden-parachuted breadlines.

Fight The Fiat
Papering over U.S. debts and trade imbalances
will take more bills than we can print.
By LEWIS E. LEHRMAN - The American Spectator.org
THE CONSEQUENCES OF DISORDER
The Economic Crisis We Endure Today is only the latest chapter in the century-long struggle to restore financial order in world markets -- a struggle whose outcome is inextricably bound up with U.S. prosperity and the promise of the American way of life.
As we think through the consequences of financial disorder, what come to mind are the economic heresies of fascism and bolshevism, and the catastrophic world wars of the 20th century. These historical episodes compel us to remember that floating exchange rates and competitive currency wars became the occasion for violent social disorder and revolutionary civil strife in the first half of the 20th century. They remind us that natural resource rivalry, monetary depreciation, mercantilism, and war clouds have appeared together from time immemorial.

Five years on,
the Great Recession is turning into a life sentence
Five years into the Long Slump
it almost seems as if we are back to square one.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
China is sufficiently alarmed by the flint hardness of its "soft-landing" to talk up trillions of fresh stimulus. The European Central Bank is preparing to print "whatever it takes" to save Spain and Italy. Markets are pricing in an 80pc chance of yet more printing by the US Federal Reserve in September or soon after.
There is no doubt that the three superpowers acting in concert can launch a mini-cycle of growth early next year - assuming they deliver on their rhetoric - but the twin headwinds of debt-leveraging and excess manufacturing plant across the globe cannot easily be conjured away.

Tensions in European Credit Markets Ease
But Crisis Is Far from Over
BY CHRIS PUPLAVA - FinancialSense.com
Credit markets across the globe and particularly in Europe have improved over the last few weeks after ECB president Mario Draghi said the ECB would do "whatever it takes" to ease tensions in Europe. So far all we have are promises from Draghi and we have yet to see any concrete action but promises alone have been enough to bring down financial stress. That said, the Euro crisis is far from over as there are hundreds of billions of dollars of various governments in the Euro Zone that mature over the coming year and overall tensions remain elevated.

King Says Euro-Area's Debt Crisis Has 'No Obvious End In Sight'
By Fergal O'Brien - Bloomberg.com
Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said the U.K. must press on with reforms to the banking industry and repeated his gloomy outlook for the euro-area debt crisis, which is impeding Britain's economy.
"If the rest of the world were growing normally, the rebalancing and recovery of our economy would be much easier," King wrote in an article in the Mail on Sunday newspaper. "But it isn't. Even the rapidly expanding emerging-market economies are slowing, and the problems of the euro area continue with no obvious end in sight."

Portuguese head breaks ranks, urges ECB bond-buying
BY VALENTINA POP - EUObserver.com
BRUSSELS - Portugal's President Anibal Cavaco Silva has broken the government's tacit pro-German line and urged the European Central Bank (ECB) to start buying bonds from troubled eurozone countries.
"Why not have the ECB start applying now to public debt securities from Portugal and Ireland the orientation announced by its president," Cavaco Silva said in a message posted on his Facebook page on Thursday (9 August).

Merkel Returns To Crisis
As Leaders Squabble Over Bond Purchases
By Patrick Donahue - Bloomberg.com
German Chancellor Angela Merkel returns to the front line of the European debt crisis this week as the bloc's leaders squabble over measures including bond purchases to relieve concerns the single currency may fragment.
Merkel ends her summer vacation and travels to Canada Aug. 15-16 for talks with Prime Minister Stephen Harper as a spiraling euro crisis threatens to constrain the global economy. With the region's leaders awaiting a German high court decision on bailout funding next month, they're struggling to smooth divisions over a European Central Bank plan to buy the bonds of indebted nations.

Grilli Says Italy Doesn't Need Bailout Funds,
Repubblica Reports
By Elisa Martinuzzi - Bloomberg.com
Italian Finance Minister Vittorio Grilli said the country doesn't need to tap Europe's bailout funds, la Repubblica reported, citing an interview.
"The European Central Bank's toolbox, once operative, will substantially reduce tension on bond spreads," Grilli was cited as saying.
Grilli said he won't introduce more measures to reduce the nominal deficit this year as cuts would further weaken the economy, according to the newspaper.

Georgia to EU: Putin is more 'dangerous' than you think
BY ANDREW RETTMAN - EUObserver.com
BRUSSELS - Four years after a war which shocked Europe, Georgia's EU ambassador has said that Russia is becoming "more dangerous."
The Georgian envoy, Salome Samadashvili, spoke to EUobserver on Thursday (9 August), after Russian President Vladimir Putin endorsed an inflammatory film about the conflict.
The YouTube video, entitled Lost Day, says Putin phoned the then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, from China on 8 August 2008 to tell him to invade Georgia.

G20 plans response to rising food prices
By Javier Blas - FT.com
G20 countries are to step in to try and co-ordinate a response to surging food prices, after the worst US drought in half a century devastated crops in the world's largest agricultural exporter.
The conversations behind closed doors among senior G20 and UN agriculture officials about calling a session of a new emergency forum come after the cost of corn, or maize, surged to an all-time high, surpassing the level seen during the 2007-08 food crisis.
The US government on Friday stoked the fears of a price surge, saying the drought had forced the country's farmers to abandon cornfields covering a larger area than Belgium and Luxembourg combined. The Department of Agriculture slashed its forecast for the crop and predicted record prices over the next year.

How 'Everyday Low Prices' Are Costing Americans Their Jobs
By Adam J. Wiederman, The Motley Fool
As consumers, we welcome Walmart's (WMT) low prices.
But here's the thing about these low prices -- they're doing the U.S. more harm than good.
A new research report has found that low prices have actually caused unemployment to rise, and dealt a massive blow to the manufacturing sector.
Look no further than the 7 million manufacturing jobs the U.S. lost from 1980 to 2011, according to a recent research report from Demos. The report acknowledges this happened because of "a variety of complex factors." But Walmart had a bigger hand in this than most of us realize.

13-year-old hot dog vendor's business in jeopardy
after family enters Holland homeless shelter
By Garret Ellison | MLive.com
HOLLAND, MI — It's been a tough summer for Nathan Duszynski and his parents, Lynette and Douglas Johnson.
13-year-old Duszynski, who has become something of a local celebrity after his attempt to start a hot dog stand business was stymied by Holland City Hall, has checked into the Holland Rescue Mission with his mother for an indefinite stay.
"We don't have the money to move out," said Lynette Johnson. "It's embarrassing, but it's the truth."

The richest Indian tribe in America:
Casino profits pay $1MILLION a year to each member
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
America's richest Indian tribe has 99.2 per cent unemployment -- and it's all voluntary, tribal leaders boast.
There's little need for any member of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Tribe to work. Each adult in the 460-person American Indian nation receives more than $1million a year - for doing nothing.
The payouts are the windfall from lucrative casinos and resorts that the tribe runs on its reservation in Scott County - about 45 minutes southwest of Minneapolis-St Paul.

Alaska Governor Asks Salazar
To Expedite Point Thomson Decision
By Dan Murtaugh - Bloomberg.com
Alaska Governor Sean Parnell asked U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to help expedite an Army Corps of Engineers decision on permits to develop the state's Point Thomson oil and gas field after it was delayed.
The decision was delayed to as late as December from September, Parnell said in an Aug. 11letter to Salazar, which was e-mailed yesterday, Sharon Leighow, an Anchorage-based spokeswoman for the governor, said in an e-mailed statement.

Border Agents Accused in Smuggling Ring Convicted
AP - ABC News
Two former Border Patrol agents were found guilty Friday of smuggling hundreds of people into the U.S. in Border Patrol vehicles.
Raul and Fidel Villarreal were convicted of charges that they brought illegal immigrants into the U.S. for money and received bribes by public officials, and counts of conspiracy to launder money. Prosecutors said Raul Villarreal started a ring that smuggled in Mexicans and Brazilians and made Fidel Villarreal, his older brother and a fellow agent, one of his first recruits.

US navy destroyer USS Porter
damaged in collision in Strait of Hormuz
Oil tanker leaves a gaping hole in guided-missile destroyer late at night, but no injuries are reported on either vessel
AP in Manama - Guardian.co.uk
A US navy guided-missile destroyer was left with a gaping hole on one side after it collided with an oil tanker early Sunday just outside the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
The collision left a breach about 10 feet by 10 feet (three by three meters) in the starboard side of USS Porter. No one was injured on either vessel, the navy said in a statement.

RYAN SPEECH: 'IF YOU HAVE A SMALL BUSINESS,
YOU DID BUILD THAT'
Breitbart News
As prepared for delivery:
Mitt Romney is a leader with the skills, the background and the character that our country needs at a crucial time in its history. Following four years of failed leadership, the hopes of our country, which have inspired the world, are growing dim; and they need someone to revive them. Governor Romney is the man for this moment; and he and I share one commitment: we will restore the dreams and greatness of this country.

Ryan Pick Sharpens Romney Duel With Obama Over Budget
By Julie Hirschfeld Davis - Bloomberg.com
Mitt Romney moved a partisan split over budget cuts and government's size front and center in the presidential race by selecting Paul Ryan as his running mate, choosing a lawmaker seen by Republicans as a policy visionary and by Democrats as a fiscal extremist.
Along with energizing his base, Romney's vice presidential decision shifts a campaign he has sought to frame as a referendum on President Barack Obama's economic record into a contest between two radically different visions of government's role. The former Massachusetts governor's pairing with Ryan, the fresh-faced Wisconsin congressman who is the architect of Republican congressional budget plans, sharpens the ticket's contrast with Obama and promises a lively debate on whether and how to curb spending and overhaul U.S. entitlements, particularly Medicare.

The Next Election: High Stake Outcomes Based on Non-issues.
Paul Craig Roberts - PaulCraigRoberts.com
The election of the next puppet president of the "world's only superpower" is about two and one-half months off, and what are the campaign issues? There aren't any worthy of the name.
Romney won't release his tax returns, despite the fact that release is a customary and expected act. Either the non-release is a strategy to suck in Democrats to make the election issue allegations that Romney is another mega-rich guy who doesn't pay taxes, only to have the issue collapse with a late release that shows enormous taxes paid, or Romney's tax returns, as a candidate who advocates lower taxes for the rich, don't bear scrutiny.

THE BREITBART BIO: MEET PAUL RYAN
Tea Party Hero; Washington Wonk
By Tony Lee - Breitbart.com
In an age in which 24-hour cable news, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and talk radio have made the news cycle both incessant and insatiable, Paul Ryan's life -- and his family's -- will never be the same now that Mitt Romney has chosen him to be his running mate.
The white-hot spotlight -- and its glare -- will be on him and his past, but Ryan seems grounded and steady enough to withstand the coming storm, mainly because of the two people who have influenced him the most -- his late father and the late Jack Kemp. He is as focused on his physical well-being as he is about the country's fiscal health because of the influences of his late dad and Kemp, respectively.

TSA officers allege racial profiling
in security lines at Boston airport
Monitors are meant to watch for suspicious passengers, but agents at Logan airport say co-workers unfairly target minorities
By Matt Williams in New York - Guardian.co.uk
An initiative to flag potential terrorist threats at an Boston airport has led to to widespread racial profiling of passengers, it was reported Sunday.
A report by the New York Times found that more than 30 federal officers involved in the "behaviour detection" programme at Logan International Airport said that the operation targets black and Hispanic people as well as those of a Middle Eastern appearance.

Obamacare could make insurance unaffordable
Ambiguity in Health Law
Could Make Family Coverage Too Costly for Many
By ROBERT PEAR - NYTimes.com
WASHINGTON — The new health care law is known as theAffordable Care Act. But Democrats in Congress and advocates for low-income people say coverage may be unaffordable for millions of Americans because of a cramped reading of the law by the administration and by the Internal Revenue Service in particular.
Under rules proposed by the service, some working-class families would be unable to afford family coverage offered by their employers, and yet they would not qualify for subsidies provided by the law.

How big is Social Security's funding shortfall?
By Stephen Ohlemacher, AP - Yahoo Finance
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Social Security's long-term funding shortfall is big by any measure. How big? That depends on how you look at it.
Over the next 75 years, after Social Security drains its trust funds, the massive program is scheduled to pay out $134 trillion more in benefits than it will collect in tax revenue, according to agency data.
That's an immense number that could use further explanation. Three ways to look at $134 trillion spread out over 75 years:

Will Speculators Rescue Housing?
BY SY HARDING - FinancialSense.com
After the housing bubble burst there was sympathy for first-time home-buyers who had been enticed in by the easy loans and rising home prices and wound up in trouble.
But investors in single family homes came to be castigated as 'flippers', 'suckers', and worse. They had played a significant role in creating the bubble, signing contracts, often on multiple homes, making virtually no down payments, not intending to ever live in or even rent out the homes, but to simply flip them for a quick profit. Builders could hardly keep up with demand for a while, but wound up with wastelands of partially completed developments and condo projects, especially in the sun-belt states.

Food alert!
Ready Pac Apples Pulled From Shelves For Listeria Risk
By Anna Edney - Bloomberg.com
Ready Pac Foods Inc. is recalling apples shipped to 36 U.S. states for restaurants owned byMcDonald's Corp. (MCD) and stores including Wegmans Food Markets Inc. because of potential contamination from the bacterium listeria.
Ready Pac's Missa Bay unit voluntarily recalled 293,488 cases and 296,224 individual packs of fruit, vegetable and sandwich products containing the apples, according to a statement today from the closely held company. No illnesses have been reported, the Irwindale, California-based company said.

Oil companies desperately seek water amid Kansas drought
By Blake Ellis @CNNMoney
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Oil companies drilling in the drought-ridden fields of southern Kansas are taking desperate measures to get the water they need to tap into the state's oil reserves.
Huge amounts of water are required to extract oil, especially when companies use hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which requires millions of gallons of water to crack the shale rock and bring oil to the surface. But now that the entire state is in emergency drought status, with only 1.19 inches of rainfall last month -- the 10th driest July on record -- unprecedented water shortages are making it difficult for drillers to get the water they need.

U.S. gas prices spike; refinery problems cited
By Jonathan Fahey - AP - WashingtonTimes.com
NEW YORK (AP) — A surprise surge in gasoline prices is taking some of the fun out of summer.
The national average for a gallon of gas at the pump has climbed to $3.67, a rise of 34 cents since July 1. An increase in crude oil prices and problems with refineries and pipelines in the West Coast and Midwest, including a fire in California, are mostly to blame.

Research Shows that Injection Wells may Cause Earthquakes
By Tim Green - OilPrice.com
Most earthquakes in the Barnett Shale region of North Texas occur within a few miles of one or more injection wells used to dispose of waste such as hydrofracking fluids, according to new research.
"You can't prove that any one earthquake was caused by an injection well," says Cliff Frohlich, senior research scientist at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin. "But it's obvious that wells are enhancing the probability that earthquakes will occur."

How does it go?... No fool, like an old fool.
George Soros celebrates 82nd birthday
with engagement to Tamiko Bolton
40-year-old Bolton and 82-year-old billionaire investor met in 2008 and announced planned wedding at Hamptons party
By Reuters - Guardian.co.uk
Billionaire investor George Soroshad a lot to celebrate on Saturday evening: his 82nd birthday and the engagement to his much younger girlfriend Tamiko Bolton.
Soros and Bolton, who met in the spring of 2008, formally announced their engagement at a party at Soros' summer home in Southampton, New York, attended by a small group of friends and relatives, according to a person familiar with the trader.

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION PAVES THE WAY FOR SHARIA LAW
The most terrifying danger Americans face from a second Barack Obama term isn't the economy, which is scary enough.
by WILLIAM BIGELOW - Breitbart.com
The most harrowing prospect is the Obama Administration's passivity in the face of attempts to introduce aspects of sharia law into our legal system. Now there is strong and open evidence of the Obama administration collaborating with Islamist activists to ensure the path toward sharia law is accelerated.

Saudi Arabia plans new city for women workers only
Businesswomen behind 5,000-job scheme designed to give women greater independence while maintaining segregation
By Caroline Davies - Guardian.co.uk
A women-only industrial city dedicated to female workers is to be constructed in Saudi Arabia to provide a working environment that is in line with the kingdom's strict customs.
The city, to be built in the Eastern Province city of Hofuf, is set to be the first of several planned for the Gulf kingdom. The aim is to allow more women to work and achieve greater financial independence, but to maintain the gender segregation, according to reports.

Gauss virus: Stuxnet-like cyberweapon hits Middle East banks
Virus comes from the same 'factory' as Stuxnet and can wait to unleash attack till it reaches the right target, Kaspersky reports
Reuters in Boston - The Guardian
A new cyber surveillance virus has been found in the Middle East that can spy on banking transactions and steal login and passwords, according Kaspersky Lab, a leading computer security firm.
Dubbed Gauss, the virus may also be capable of attacking critical infrastructure and was very likely built in the same laboratories as Stuxnet, the computer worm widely believed to have been used by the US and Israel to attack Iran's nuclear programme, Kaspersky Lab said on Thursday.

Islamist takeover complete: Morsi Fires Top Defense Brass
Muslim Brotherhood consolidating power: Defense Minister and Chief of Staff sacked, military shaved of extra powers.
By Gil Ronen - Israel national News
Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi has sacked the entire leadership ofthe country's defense establishment.
Among the officials and officers fired are Defense Minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, and Chief of Staff Sami Anan.
Morsi appointed Abdul-Fatah al-Sessi as Defense Minister and Lieutenant-General Sidki Sayed Ahmed as Army Chief of Staff. A judge named Mahmoud Mekki was appointed vice president. Morsi also ordered theretirement of the commanders of the navy, air defense and air force. The retired navy commander, Lieutenant-General Mohan Mameesh, was named as chairman of the Suez Canal.

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