Slipped silently into the news hole

(in process)

Rebecca Christie and Jodie Shen of Bloomberg:

The two companies, the largest sources of mortgage financing in the U.S., are currently under government conservatorship and have caps of $200 billion each on backstop capital from the Treasury. Under the new agreement announced today, these limits can rise as needed to cover net worth losses through 2012.

The Obama administration is “beginning to realize it’s not getting better and it’s not likely to get better” soon in the housing market, said Julian Mann, who helps oversee $5.5 billion in bonds as a vice president at First Pacific Advisors LLC in Los Angeles. “They don’t want the foreclosures now, so they’re saying, we’ll pay whatever it takes to continue to kick the can down the road.”

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac now are using a combined $111 billion of the total $400 billion lifeline.

More thuggery from the US Dept. of State. Buenos Aires Herald:

Arturo Valenzuela, the US envoy, said Argentina lacked “legal security” [for investment] and had good words for the governments of the 1990′s in the country [cf. Carlos Saul Menem who left Argentina in such straits that it was forced to default on its bonds and who ran a scorched earth political campaign against the husband of the current president, i.e. the Kirchner quoted below].

The Peronist deputy [Nestor Kirchner] called the comments “regrettable” and “disrespectful” towards the country. Kirchner also accused him of “believing viceroys still exist.” In the same speech, Kirchner also blamed the US for “the dawnfall of the most important economies in the world.”

“We must tell this man Arturo Valenzuela that the lack of legal security was caused by them,” he said in reference to the United States.

State Dept. response, Colonel Crowley at the helm:

QUESTION: And what about the trip of Mr. Valenzuela to Argentina? There were some comments – they are not really very friendly from the Argentinian Government.

MR. CROWLEY: I think Arturo Valenzuela returned from a trip to multiple countries in the region over the past few days. I think he thought it was a very successful trip. He had, I think, lengthy public comments while he was in Argentina. There was one passage during those comments that got some significant attention, and we have been in touch with Argentina to clarify his comments since then.

QUESTION: May I ask something else? It is regarding the – some comments Secretary Clinton made last week regarding this country for having relations with Iran. What did she mean by that? She sent like a warning to those countries – Latin America. I don’t know. Could you please clarify the –

MR. CROWLEY: Well, I mean, I thought her comments spoke for themselves. We – I think we believe that countries should choose their friends wisely.

Again the schoolmaster.

The plane on which Bolivian president Evo Morales was flying was forced to land due to a hydraulic problem.

Via Honduras Oye, Flashpoints says that the death squads, led by Guy Philippe, are out with impunity in Haiti. Guy Philippe is a former police officer and cocaine trafficker whose forces–armed with brand new M16s strongly resembling those shipped by Bushco to the Dominican Republic– were used to massacre Lavalas officials and oust Aristide. He is now staying in a hotel leading his political party. He still has an open warrant for his arrest from the DoJ and DEA but is able to walk around freely. Lavalas is being barred from participation in the elections. Oh– and in the parking lot of the hotel were cars with diplomatic license plates, including some cars of the Rene Preval Administration. Bill Clinton is serving as the public face for all this.

From Eva Golinger:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez revealed today on his Sunday television and radio program, Aló Presidente, that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, have illegally entered Venezuela’s airspace during the past several days. “A few days ago, one of these military planes penetrated Venezuela as far as Fort Mara,” a Venezuelan military fort in the State of Zulia, bordering Colombia.

Honduras Coup, Act VI, Day 24

Billy Pena did an editorial in Tiempo that is way too long, but says what should be said. Here are excerpts.

…We are one of the poorest and underdeveloped countries of the continent…we go hand in hand with Haiti, where the poor eat cakes made of earth to survive. Haiti is also a democracy. After all, the population, sick and malnourished, goes to the polls to elect a president. The same happens in Honduras. And when we don’t like the one who the people elect, the solution is easy: a coup d’etat. This has also occurred in Haiti. But both countries are democracies. We live free of socialism and all dictatorship. We live in freedom…. This stuff about peace, democracy, and liberty is the most cynical we have heard– the biggest lie…. Tonight is Christmas Eve [literally, "The Good Night.]–the night will be good for few. For them, it will be a night of hunger and scarcity.
…
We think of the Americans who fill the soup kitchens in search of free food and used jackets to protect themselves from the cold. We think of those Americans who lack work, drowning in debt and hopeless– but president Obama announced that the worst of the crisis has passed and that one can see the light at the end of the tunnel….Those people, thousands of them, who tonight and tomorrow on Christmas will have to form a line to receive a plate of food and will sleep in their cars don’t believe that. At least they will have something to eat. Our poor have nothing. Here no one forms a line to receive nothing. We live in a democracy and are free to not receive, to not hope, to not aspire, to — nothing.

Regrettably, Honduras is not just a plutocracy, but a theocracy. And the United States is traveling on this same road because the conservatives are convinced that Obama has socialist ideas and, convinced that he’s a Muslim, view him with fearful distrust. In this great democracy that is the United States, only Christianity is permissible. All those who live in opulence and capricious abundance live in democracy, but the poor live in the same bowels of Hell.

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(Image by Gustavo Campos)

An article about historian Dario Euraque on Vos (director of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History):

With his departure, there are inklings of sadness in our hearts, because we know that IHAH lived through its golden age during these last three years, its greatest intellectual projection, following which we are certain that each positive action of Dr. Dario Euraque shall be imperishable in the collective imagination of the Honduran people and also, in the retrograde memory of the coupistas.

Doctor, in this collective memory, forgetting is forbidden!

Edwin Renan Fajardo Argueto, 22 and an active member of the resistance, was found strangled by wire tightened by a broomstick in the Barrio San Rafael of Tegucigalpa. The assailants tried to make it look like a suicide, but rifled his apartment, stealing his camera and computer. Edwin had told friends that he had received threatening text messages, and neighbors reported suspicious cars with tinted windshields driving through the neighborhood before his death. Apparently, none of the newspapers see fit to carry this news.

Christmas Eve Cat Blogging

The kitties are nestled all snug in their beds….