"On Wall Street and elsewhere, skittish investors are continuing to flee to the safety of gold and oil futures, and away from the U.S. dollar amid widespread concern that the United States has slipped into recession."Whole article is here
Asian stock markets went into a freefall after Bear Stearns, trading at $30 by Friday's close, announced a deal to be sold to JP Morgan for $2/share in a stock-swap transaction. Bear Stearns' price peaked at $170 in 2007. "The price is indicative that there were bigger problems at Bear than clients and the public realized," said Ron Geffner at Sadis & Goldberg.Whole article is here
By MARGOT PATRICK and RAGNHILD KJETLAND
March 6, 2008 11:50 a.m.
LONDON -- Carlyle Capital Corp., a listed investment company managed by a unit of private-equity firm the Carlyle Group, added to worries about forced liquidations of residential mortgage-backed securities after failing to meet margin calls on its $21.7 billion portfolio Wednesday.
Carlyle Capital said Thursday that it has received a notice of default from one of the banks that helps finance its portfolio of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae securities through short-term repurchase agreements, known as repos, and that it expects to receive at least one more default notice after falling short of margin requirements with four lenders.
It said seven repo counterparties had demanded an additional $37 million Wednesday to keep funding in place. It met the requirements of three of them, which it said had indicated "a willingness to work with the company during these tumultuous times."
Carlyle Capital as recently as Monday had reassured investors on its funding lines, saying it had $2.4 billion in undrawn repo lines and that it had increased a credit facility provided by the Carlyle Group by 50%, to $150 million. Its lenders as of Dec. 31 were: Bank of America Corp., Bear Stearns Cos., BNP Paribas SA, Calyon, Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse Group, Deutsche Bank AG, ING Groep NV, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. and UBS AG.
The repurchase agreements outstanding at that date had an average maturity of 20 days. Carlyle Capital's longest-dated repo line is for three months. The company leverages its $670 million equity 32 times to finance a $21.7 billion portfolio of residential mortgage-backed securities issued by U.S. housing agencies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. All of the securities are rated Triple-A and are considered to be implicitly guaranteed by the U.S. government.
Carlyle Capital said Thursday that it has been subject to margin calls and additional collateral requirements totaling more than $60 million over the past week, and had met all calls up until March 5.
By Charles Q. Choi
Special to SPACE.com
posted: 03 March 2008
10:03 am ET
Mysteriously, four spacecraft that flew past the Earth have each displayed unexpected anomalies in their motions.
These newfound enigmas join the so-called "Pioneer anomaly" as hints that unexplained forces may appear to act on spacecraft.
A decade ago, after rigorous analyses, anomalies were seen with the identical Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft as they hurtled out of the solar system. Both seemed to experience a tiny but unexplained constant acceleration toward the sun.
A host of explanations have been bandied about for the Pioneer anomaly. At times these are rooted in conventional science — perhaps leaks from the spacecraft have affected their trajectories. At times these are rooted in more speculative physics — maybe the law of gravity itself needs to be modified.
Now Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomer John Anderson and his colleagues — who originally helped uncover the Pioneer anomaly — have discovered that four spacecraft each raced either a tiny bit faster or slower than expected when they flew past the Earth en route to other parts of the solar system.
'Humble and perplexed'
The researchers looked at five deep-space probes — Galileo to Jupiter, the NEAR mission to the asteroid Eros, the Rosetta probe to a comet, Cassini to Saturn, and the MESSENGER craft to Mercury. Each spacecraft flew past the our planet to either gain or lose orbital energy in their quests to reach their eventual targets. (Galileo made two flybys.)
In five of the six flybys, the scientists have confirmed anomalies.
"I am feeling both humble and perplexed by this," said Anderson, who is now working as a retiree. "There is something very strange going on with spacecraft motions. We have no convincing explanation for either the Pioneer anomaly or the flyby anomaly."
More here
"Perfectly normal"
By KATHLEEN HARRIS, NATIONAL BUREAU CHIEF
Prime Minister Stephen Harper says it was "perfectly normal" for Conservative officials to offer a dying man financial assistance to wage a re-election campaign.
Under heavy fire from all opposition parties, Harper insisted the financial offer made to Chuck Cadman before a critical May 2005 vote was normal and permitted by law.
"We wanted Chuck Cadman to rejoin our party. The party was prepared to assist Chuck Cadman in securing his nomination and to ensure, financially and otherwise, that he was able to fight a successful election campaign," he said.
But Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe said it's just not credible that party officials would offer a terminally ill man financial help to hit the hustings.
"He had trouble getting to Ottawa, yet he would have had an election campaign in the condition he was in? That's the prime minister's actual answer?" he fumed.
Unanswered questions
Mar 05, 2008 04:30 AM
Why does this have to be so hard? Why can't Prime Minister Stephen Harper stand up in Parliament or go before the House of Commons ethics committee and provide clear answers to simple questions?
It's no secret that Conservative party officials back in 2005 tried to persuade independent Member of Parliament Chuck Cadman, who was dying of cancer at the time, to rejoin the Tory caucus and topple Paul Martin's minority Liberal government in a confidence vote.
But what exactly did the Conservatives offer for Cadman's support?
Three Cadman family members – his wife Dona, his daughter Jodi, and his son-in-law Holland Miller – all say Cadman told them, in separate conversations, that he was offered some kind of million-dollar "life insurance" deal. If so, that might constitute a bribe and a crime.
Harper fiercely denies any wrongdoing, and he has threatened to sue Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion and others who suggest as much.
Yet when asked two years ago about the policy by Cadman biographer Tom Zytaruk, Harper replied that party officials had "discussions" with Cadman about "financial issues" and "financial insecurity." He also said: "But the, uh, the offer to Chuck was that it was only to replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election, okay? That's my understanding of what they were talking about."
What offer, exactly? What financial issues? What insecurity?
Did anyone from the Conservative party, or claiming ties to it, offer Cadman a million-dollar benefit, with or without Harper's approval?
Instead of casting a libel chill over the Cadman affair, Harper should tell Canadians what he knows. What led him to conclude there was "no truth" to the insurance story when he looked into it? And party insiders Tom Flanagan and Doug Finley need to shed light on precisely what help they offered Cadman and on what terms.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been asked to look into all this by the Liberals. But Parliament needn't defer to a police probe. The ethics committee should be calling Flanagan, Finley and others to testify. If the Conservatives truly have nothing to hide, they should not be standing in the way of such an inquiry.
The Conservatives have not yet explained why they first denied any offer had been made, only to later say a repayable loan was offered to Cadman's local riding association to cover campaign expenses if he rejoined the party.
Repeated appeals to the Prime Minister's Office since the Chuck Cadman affair surfaced have failed to yield direct answers to the following questions:
1. Did anyone from the Conservative party, or connected to the Tories, offer Cadman a $1-million life insurance policy?
* Refused to directly answer the question. Tory MP James Moore has repeatedly said officials only offered to take Cadman back into the party.
2. What did Stephen Harper mean when he said in a 2005 interview that "an offer" that included "financial considerations" was made to Cadman?
* Conservative party spokesman Ryan Sparrow said Monday the offer Cadman mentioned in a TV interview was a repayable loan to the local riding association.
3. If Tory officials Tom Flanagan and Doug Finley offered a repayable loan, what was the amount and what were the terms of repayment?
* No answer.
4. Why did the Prime Minister's Office and the Conservatives first deny an offer had been made to Cadman, only to later say a repayable loan was offered?
* No answer.
5. Why didn't Harper reveal last week that he told Dona Cadman more than two years ago that he didn't know about the alleged life-insurance offer?
* No answer.
6. What motivation would Dona Cadman, a Tory candidate in her husband's former riding, have to fabricate a story about the life-insurance offer?
* No answer.
The interesting case of the former Tory candidate
Posted By Weston, Greg
In the category of stones flying from glass houses, Parliament Hill is definitely alive with the sound of some fine shattering today.
For the first time in history, the prime minister has hired a big-gun lawyer to go after those nasty opposition Liberals for unkind things they have been saying about Stephen Harper's alleged involvement in the Chuck Cadman affair.
This is not just any lawyer. Richard Dearden is arguably the top libel lawyer in the land, having cut his teeth defending journalists like me against intimidating legal actions by the rich and powerful like, well, you know.
Dearden has fired off an ugly note to the Liberals, warning that remarks about Harper on their party website are malicious, reckless, "false and devastatingly defamatory."
The offending statements, of course, relate to allegations Conservative party officials offered Cadman some sort of million-dollar deathbed deal in 2005 in return for his vote to defeat the then-Liberal government of Paul Martin.
Since Cadman was a sitting Independent MP at the time (he died of cancer weeks later), offering to buy his vote would have been highly unethical, if not a criminal offence.
Harper and the Conservative officials involved have denied any such deal was ever offered - ergo, the prime minister apparently feels compelled to sue the official opposition for suggesting he knew of a criminal act.
The prime minister's libel letter is not unlike the lawsuit filed two years ago by Ottawa lawyer and would-be Conservative candidate Alan Riddell - against Harper et al.
Riddell successfully sued Harper and the Conservative party for reneging on a deal to pay him up to $50,000 to step aside as the party's candidate in the riding of Ottawa South.
The party brass under campaign director Doug Finley wanted to hand the riding nomination to Allan Cutler, the former federal public servant who gained national attention as the first major whistleblower in the sponsorship scandal.
Riddell was reluctant to oblige, having spent much time and money to win the nomination.
On Nov. 25, 2005, Riddell and the Conservative party brass finally reached a formal agreement: he would stand aside in exchange for a party guarantee it would compensate him up to $50,000 for the costs he had already incurred.
But the deal didn't hold for a day before there were fireworks, and ultimately a few libel suits.
First, someone inside the party leaked the false story to the media that Riddell had been disqualified as a candidate by his own riding association.
In response, Riddell issued a press release saying he had voluntarily stepped down to clear the way for Cutler's candidacy.
But it was a subsequent news story about money changing hands that brought the most remarkable response of all.
On Dec. 4, fully 10 days after the deal was struck and with the 2006 election campaign in full swing, Harper was asked point-blank if the Conservative party had agreed to pay off Riddell as part of a backroom deal to clear the way for Cutler, the famous whistleblower. "In fact, there is no agreement and he hasn't been paid anything," Harper told reporters.
If Harper was misinformed, he stayed that way for the rest of the day. He was later asked the same question again.
"The party does not have an agreement to pay Mr. Riddell these expenses, and Mr. Riddell has not been paid anything to date," Harper replied.
The courts ultimately found that Riddell absolutely had a deal, and ordered the Conservatives to pay up.
Riddell also sued Harper and others for libel, and the case was settled out of court this past November, three months before it was due to go to trial.
Both sides agreed to say nothing.
- Greg Weston writes for Sun Media/Osprey Media.
(Reuters) - Integrated oil and gas company Chevron Corp. replaced only about 11% of the oil and gas it produced in 2007, as its total reserves slipped about seven per cent year over year.
The company's net proved oil and gas reserves, including affiliate companies, fell to 10.77 billion bbls of oil equivalent at the end of 2007, down from 11.62 billion bbls of oil equivalent at the end of 2006. The company reported the figure in its annual report with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.
That means the company only added around 103 million bbls of oil and gas reserves through exploration or acquisitions in 2007. Based on total production in 2007 of around 946 million bbls of oil, that means the company has a reserve replacement rate of about 11%. Industry analysts typically expect oil and gas companies to replace more than 100% of their annual production as a sign that they are growing.
On the company's fourth-quarter earnings conference call, Chevron had said the company's reserve replacement rate would be in the 10% to 15% range.
