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Bernanke: Fed ready to act if economy worsens
Business Law Info |
2011/07/13 18:43
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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told lawmakers Wednesday the Fed is ready to act if the economy gets weaker. He warned them that allowing the nation to default on its debt would send "shock waves through the entire financial system."
Underscoring how fragile the economy remains two years after the Great Recession, Bernanke laid out three new steps the Fed could take, including a fresh round of government bond purchases designed to stimulate economic growth.
"We have to keep all the options on the table. We don't know where the economy is going to go," Bernanke told the House Financial Services Committee.
The Fed chairman stopped short of promising anything, but Wall Street appeared comforted that the central bank was poised to act. The Dow Jones industrial average was up more than 150 points during his testimony to Congress, and closed up 45.
But some of the early stock gains were lost after Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said in a speech that the Fed had already "pressed the limits of monetary policy."
The nation was creating about 200,000 jobs a month this spring. But hiring slowed almost to a standstill in June, with 18,000 new jobs. It takes about 125,000 a month just to keep up with population growth.
While Bernanke made his twice-yearly appearance before Congress, lawmakers and the White House were trying to salvage talks on how to reduce the federal deficit and whether to raise the limit on what the government can borrow. |
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Montana Supreme Court hires new administrator
Legal Career News |
2011/07/13 17:44
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The Montana Supreme Court has a hired a new court administrator for the state's judicial branch.
The court named Beth McLaughlin, who had been the director of court services, as the replacement for Lois Menzies, who retired last month.
In her new position, McLaughlin will be the top administrator for courts throughout the state.
She was selected from a field of five finalists.
Chief Justice Mike McGrath said Tuesday that McLaughlin has worked with district courts and courts of limited jurisdiction across Montana, making her well qualified for the position. |
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Feds eye CIA officer in prisoner death
Legal Career News |
2011/07/13 17:19
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A CIA officer who oversaw the agency's interrogation program at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and pushed for approval to use increasingly harsh tactics has come under scrutiny in a federal war crimes investigation involving the death of a prisoner, witnesses told The Associated Press.
Steve Stormoen, who is now retired from the CIA, supervised an unofficial program in which the CIA imprisoned and interrogated men without entering their names in the Army's books.
The so-called "ghosting" program was unsanctioned by CIA headquarters. In fact, in early 2003, CIA lawyers expressly prohibited the agency from running its own interrogations, current and former intelligence officials said. The lawyers said agency officers could be present during military interrogations and add their expertise but, under the laws of war, the military must always have the lead.
Yet, in November 2003, CIA officers brought a prisoner, Manadel al-Jamadi, to Abu Ghraib and, instead of turning him over to the Army, took him to a shower stall. They put a sandbag over his head, handcuffed him behind his back and chained his arms to a barred window. When he leaned forward, his arms stretched painfully behind and above his back. |
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Florida man pleads guilty in Idaho abduction, rape
Criminal Law Updates |
2011/07/13 15:17
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A Florida man has pleaded guilty to kidnapping and raping an Idaho woman in 2003.
Prosecutors say 27-year-old Douglas James Steinemer participated in the attack with his father, a long-haul trucker who has already been sentenced to life in prison. Steinemer will be sentenced Oct. 4.
Police say he approached the woman outside a Mountain Home store and used a knife to force her into a semitrailer truck where he and his father raped her several times as the men drove west. She was dropped off on the side of Interstate 84 near the Oregon border.
The Idaho Statesman reports Steinemer became a suspect last year after he was arrested in Florida and a DNA sample matched the Idaho case. Steinemer named his father, Hans Holsopple, as an accomplice. |
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Biesecker named to NC investigations, court beats
Lawyer Blog News |
2011/07/12 16:21
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Michael Biesecker, an award-winning reporter and investigative journalist for The News & Observer of Raleigh, has been hired by The Associated Press to cover federal courts, investigations and politics in North Carolina.
Biesecker is a North Carolina native and has spent his 15-year-career in his home state. He worked at the Winston-Salem Journal in a variety of positions including as a columnist and reporter before going to work for The News & Observer in 2003. He has covered the state capital for the newspaper since 2009.
His work probing the failings of North Carolina's mental health care system in 2008 uncovered more than 80 questionable deaths in state mental hospitals. The newspaper's series "Mental Disorder: The Failure of Reform" led to new policies on how state facilities report deaths and monitor care. He has won numerous awards from the North Carolina Press Association, including for general news and for investigative reporting. In 2008, he was part of a team that won an Associated Press Managing Editors Association First Amendment Award for reporting on access to email written by public officials.
The appointment was announced Monday by South Editor Lisa Marie Pane, Chief of Bureau Michelle Williams and Carolinas News Editor Evan Berland.
"Biesecker has some serious reporting chops and we're looking forward to his using those to cover the vitally important federal courts beat and being involved in some important investigative projects," Pane said. |
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Legal questions raised on NY's gas-drilling rules
Business Law Info |
2011/07/12 13:21
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While an energy industry economist says New York's proposal to place large areas off-limits to gas drilling is overly restrictive, an environmental lawyer says the proposed watershed protections don't go far enough.
The Department of Environmental Conservation posted its 700-plus-page blueprint for hydraulic fracturing in the lucrative Marcellus Shale region on its website on Friday, allowing industry and environmental groups to start dissecting the proposed plan to allow gas drilling in an area where it's been on hold since 2008.
More than 3,300 gas wells have been drilled since 2005 across the border in Pennsylvania, bringing new jobs and economic benefits as well as environmental problems such as accidental chemical spills, gas-tainted well water and river pollution. New York state regulators have upheld permitting for three years while they conduct an environmental review and draft new regulations.
The proposed New York rules include a section describing several gas-drilling operation accidents in Pennsylvania and outlining New York's measures designed to mitigate such incidents.
"Our biggest concern is the restrictions that have been added," said John Felmy, chief economist for the American Petroleum Institute. "In particular, the New York City and Syracuse watersheds, and taking state lands off the table. Those are big areas."
Felmy said natural gas development in New York's economically depressed Southern Tier would bring billions of dollars in economic activity, thousands of jobs, and new tax revenues. But a coalition of 47 health and environmental groups has called for a statewide ban on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, saying it poses unacceptable risks. |
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