Now that Citi and the financial industry are "good investments", another way to look at the current situation is as a "buying opportunity" for the US government. I am largely being facetious here, but here is one description of what the "Oracle from Omaha" said about bank stocks:

In a voice vote following cloture, the Senate this afternoon passed the $410 billion Omnibus Appropriations Bill. President Obama says he will sign the bill. Via Senator Chris Dodd on Twitter:

The voice vote followed the roll call cloture vote, passing 62-35. Since final passage would be identical, voice vote is sufficient

The legislation keeps the Government running until September 30, 2009. Then what?

Details of Bernard Madoff's expected guilty plea emerged today when he appeared in court for a hearing to waive any conflict of interest his lawyer might have from past representation of other clients.

Madoff will plead straight-up -- no plea agreement-- to 11 charges in the Criminal Information.

“There is no plea agreement,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Litt said at the hearing, meaning Madoff must plead guilty to 11 counts that he now faces in a criminal information filed today.

Madoff is charged with securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, false statements, perjury, false filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and theft from an employee benefit plan, Litt said.

The Government filed a letter with the Court today outlining its sentencing guideline calculations. (Available on PACER) [More....]

Not surprising:

The U.S. Treasury Department has promised opponents of changes to U.S.-Cuba policy that are tucked into a giant spending bill that some of the most controversial provisions will result in little change. The Senate was expected to vote later Tuesday on a $410 billion spending bill that contains provisions that would make trade and travel to Cuba easier. But letters from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has assured the lawmakers who helped block the bill last week that few of the provisions will actually change U.S.-Cuba policy.

(Emphasis supplied.) It was always window dressing. By the way, watch on agriculture subsidy cuts in the 2010 budget - they won't survive either. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and the pork too.

Speaking for me only

President Obama issued an order halting the military commissions trials at Guantanamo. Yet, the judge accepted the latest filing by the five detainees whose trials were halted. The ACLU reports:

In defiance of President Obama’s order halting the Guantánamo military commissions, a military judge accepted a legal pleading filed by the five 9/11 suspects. Judge Col. Stephen R. Henley ordered the immediate public release of the filed document despite the fact that all other legal filings have been kept sealed for months by the military commissions. Remarkably, the judge accepted the pleading from all five 9/11 defendants despite the fact that the competency of two of them has not been determined and their attorneys were not informed.

The New York Times reported on the pleading today. [More...]

Glenn Greenwald notes the irony of Fred Hiatt's WaPo lecturing anyone on the damage done to US diplomatic and human rights credibility. Hiatt writes:

In Saudi Arabia, Khamisa Sawadi, a 75 year old widow has been sentenced to 40 lashes and 4 months in jail for mingling.

Sawadi is Syrian but her late husband was Saudi. The court also ordered her to be deported after completion of her sentence.

The newspaper Al-Watan said the woman met with the two 24-year-old men last April after she asked them to bring her five loaves of bread at her home in al-Chamil, a city north of the capital, Riyadh.

[More...]

Former Vice President Walter Mondale has an op-ed in the Washington Post decrying the erosion of Gideon v. Wainwright, the landmark Supreme Court decision of 45 years ago promising counsel to indigent defendants in criminal cases.

A report published by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School last fall, "Eligible for Justice," found that if Gideon were to face criminal charges in Florida today, he might well be denied a public defender.

From Florida to Minnesota to New Hampshire and Virginia, the right is in jeopardy because eligiblility requirements are too stringent. Mondale also calls for the right to counsel to be extended to indigent civil litigants in some instances...such as when faced with losing their home.

More on Gideon here.

Your turn.

This is an Open Thread.

Here is the NYTimes with Citi CEO Vikram Pandit's memo to Citi employees:

The obvious answer to my question is, of course he will, in 2012 (Dems will probably own it in 2010.) Ezra Klein seems to believe ownership of the economy is escapable for Obama:

The nationalization conversation has, probably rightly, proceeded from the premise of what policy is most likely to work. But in the White House, the principals are also presumably considering the costs of failure. And the failure of a policy of nationalization is a scarier prospect than the failure of a toxic assets strategy. The Obama administration would own nationalization -- and its attendant effects -- in a way that they're unlikely to own a less aggressive intervention.

(Emphasis supplied.) I think the Obama political team might even believe that. I find it incredible. President Obama will own the economy (and the financial crisis) in 2012, irrespective of the policies he chooses. It is wishful thinking to believe that can be escaped. So he should adopt the policies he believes will work - not try to "minimize" ownership of the mess.

Speaking for me only

Joseph Stiglitz:

• Delaying bank restructuring is costly, in terms of both the eventual bailout costs and the damage to the overall economy in the interim.

• Governments do not like to admit the full costs of the problem, so they give the banking system just enough to survive, but not enough to return it to health.

• Confidence is important, but it must rest on sound fundamentals. Policies must not be based on the fiction that good loans were made, and that the business acumen of financial market leaders and regulators will be validated once confidence is restored.

[More . . .]