The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep the Bubble Going. The hedge fund Magnetar helped create mortgage-based securities, pushed for risky things to go inside them and then bet against the investments, resulting in billions in losses for investors and ultimately making the financial crisis worse. It’s a story of the perverse incentives and reckless behavior that characterized the last days of the boom. Update June 21, 2011: JP Morgan Chase has agreed to pay a $154 million penalty [1] to settle SEC charges that the bank misled investors about a complex mortgage-securities deal during the waning days of the housing boom. The SEC charged that JP Morgan neglected to tell investors that the hedge fund Magnetar helped create the deal and was betting against it. This story was the first to detail Magnetar's role.
Update Oct. 29, 2010: This story has been corrected in response to a recent letter from Magnetar. Read their letter, along with our response [2]. In late 2005, the booming U.S. housing market seemed to be slowing. Chicago police shooting: Tribune investigation with Columbia College casts doubts on police account. On a summer night in 2004, two Chicago police officers chased an alleged gunman up to the front door of a West Side two-flat.
There, according to the officers, the suspect tried to get inside the building by ramming his shoulder against the door while simultaneously turning and pointing a pistol at them. One of the officers took cover behind a tree, then stepped out and opened fire. Moments later, police learned they had seriously injured the man as well as a 13-year-old girl hiding in the building's vestibule with several other bystanders. Although police did not find a gun on the man or near the two-flat, law enforcement officials cleared the two officers of wrongdoing just 10 hours after the shooting. Based largely on the officers' statements, the suspect, Seneca Smith, was arrested and eventually convicted of attempted murder of a police officer. Smith, now 30, faces up to 80 years in prison.
Court and police records reveal other examples of evidence contradicting police statements. News | TROUBLED LIFE, BRUTAL DEATH — Baton Rouge, LA. Firing tenured teachers can be a costly and tortuous task - The eighth-grade boy held out his wrists for teacher Carlos Polanco to see. He had just explained to Polanco and his history classmates at Virgil Middle School in Koreatown why he had been absent: He had been in the hospital after an attempt at suicide. Polanco looked at the cuts and said they "were weak," according to witness accounts in documents filed with the state. "Carve deeper next time," he was said to have told the boy. "Look," Polanco allegedly said, "you can't even kill yourself. " The boy's classmates joined in, with one advising how to cut a main artery, according to the witnesses.
"See," Polanco was quoted as saying, "even he knows how to commit suicide better than you. " The Los Angeles school board, citing Polanco's poor judgment, voted to fire him. But Polanco, who contended that he had been misunderstood, kept his job. It's remarkably difficult to fire a tenured public school teacher in California, a Times investigation has found. Among the findings: SF Gate: Chronicle Homeless Special. Globe / Spotlight / Abuse in the Catholic Church. Salem Pension Gamble | Statesman Journal.
EDUCATION INC_ __8211_ Part I_ Private company skirts public boards in running tax_funded charter schools | The Journal Gazette, Fort Wayne, Ind. FORT WAYNE, Ind. – The local school board was about to spend almost $100,000 of taxpayer money on a busing service for students. But there was no discussion of bids to ensure taxpayers got the best deal. There were no questions about cost, insurance or alternatives to this contract awarded to a southern Indiana trucking company. Most importantly, there was no vote. Despite spending millions of tax dollars a year, the board of this public school votes on almost nothing. Not the $87,510 a year to operate school buses. All those decisions and many more were made by a private company from Virginia, though Internal Revenue Service regulations say tax-exempt organizations such as this one must have independent, local control.
Welcome to Imagine charter schools. When Imagine board members do make major decisions, they often do so by signing papers outside of public meetings, with no public debate and no public vote. Local school officials deny any wrongdoing. Who’s in charge? ‘An advisory body’ Special Report - Shell Game. Affixing value to beds a slippery affair Worth is murky under water By Jeffrey Meitrodt and Aaron KuriloffStaff writers/The Times-Picayune If there's one oyster lease in Louisiana worth more than $20,000 per acre, industry leaders say it's Nick Skansi's property near Port Sulphur, a lease so productive it has earned the nickname "Skansi's Gold Mine. " But Skansi said he'd be happy to part with his cash cow for $2,000 an acre.
"It is hard to put a price tag on something you built over 43 years," said Skansi, 73, who retired from the oyster business three years ago. Such deals have been hard to come by since the jury's ruling, with state officials, economists and industry leaders advocating wildly different formulas for appraising underwater oyster farms. Soaring prices In depositions and trial transcripts, no plaintiff testified to buying or selling a lease for more than $1,000 an acre. "We were just trying to win our case," Fox said. In St. Unusable acres The Davis formula.
East Valley Tribune | Tribune special report: Five day series about Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office anti-human smuggling unit | Daily Arizona News for Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, Tempe, Scottsdale. Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. Altered Oceans - Muslims in America: A Series by Andrea Elliott. On March 5, 2006, The New York Times began publishing Andrea Elliott's Pulitzer Prize-winning three-part series on the inner life of a mosque in Brooklyn, and the dynamic, creative, conflicted and fearful imam at its center: Sheik Reda Shata.
Through study and conversation, persuasion and persistence, Elliott achieved an intimate, tough-minded exploration of the lives of immigrant Muslims after 9/11. The series is part of a wider body of work, including a series on Muslims in the U.S. military, that has opened up a hidden world to readers. Highlights From the Archives An Imam in America Tending to Muslim Hearts and Islam's Future By ANDREA ELLIOTT Nothing brings one Brooklyn imam more joy than guiding Muslim singles to marriage, his way of fashioning a future for his faith.
March 7, 2006nyregionNews To Lead the Faithful in a Faith Under Fire A Brooklyn imam is under pressure to help fight terrorism. March 6, 2006nyregionNews. Two-Year College Corruption - al.com - al.com. Trashing the Truth (Evidence project) The Shipbreakers. Who Knew? Bud Selig had many reasons to feel good about baseball as he spoke to the press gathered in a Detroit hotel ballroom for his State of the Game address during the 2005 All-Star break. Major League Baseball would bring in an estimated $4.5 billion in revenues in 2005, nearly triple the amount from 1992, when Selig had first taken office. The overachieving White Sox and Nationals were surprise division leaders. The Red Sox and Yankees were in the midst of another epic battle.
Fans everywhere were talking about Dontrelle Willis and Derrek Lee and Roger Clemens. Philadelphia Online | Blackhawk Down. Table of Contents Chapter 1: Hail Mary, then doom Background: A defining battle leaves lasting scars Chapter 2: Dazed, blood-spattered and frantic Chapter 3: A terrifying scene, then a big crash Chapter 4: An outgunned but relentless enemy Chapter 5: 'My God, you guys.
Chapter 6: Trying to get in sync amid the chaos Chapter 7: Another grenade, another chopper hit Chapter 8: A second crash, and no escape Chapter 9: Alone and at the mercy of an angry mob Chapter 10: At the base, bravery and hesitation Chapter 11: Besieged, disoriented as the bullets fly Chapter 12: Left, right, left - lost and bloody Chapter 13: No cover from the flying grenades Chapter 14: Hammered, and still no sign of help Chapter 15: Ambush after ambush; Fighting just to stay alive Chapter 16: Furious attacks on a second convoy Chapter 17: At first helicopter crash, more bodies Chapter 18: Rescue team comes under fierce fire Chapter 19: A desperate battle to hold the crash site Chapter 20: Uneasy partners under heavy fire Photo Galleries.