Thursday, 31 March 2016

Cruz and the Convention Chess Game

Armed with newfound, if tepid, support from unlikely sources over the past few weeks, Ted Cruz has touted himself as a Republican uniter whose campaign represents a broad and ideologically diverse spectrum of the party.

But with the GOP aiming for a contested convention in July, there are mixed signals as to whether Cruz is the consensus choice in that scenario or simply the party's vehicle to Cleveland, only to be ditched later.

While Donald Trump still has a viable path to securing the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination, a loss to Cruz in Wisconsin next week would make his road longer and rockier. For his part, the Texas senator has shown particular savvy when it comes to delegate strategy, as evidenced by his campaign's success in scooping up "free agent" delegates in Louisiana last week, catching the Trump team off guard.

Marco Rubio is still working to prevent Trump from the nomination by holding on to the delegates he earned while still in the race, also signaling he might have a role to play at the convention.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to give the Republican Party reasons to prevent him from becoming the official standard-bearer. During a televised town-hall gathering Wednesday, he advocated punishing women who have abortions if the procedure is banned, a statement that offended both opponents and supporters of abortion rights.

During a similar event the night before, the billionaire businessman suggested that Japan and South Korea should have weapons of mass destruction, saying, "It's going to happen anyway." And he identified education and health care as issues in which federal government should play a key role, before almost immediately reversing course. This all came as his campaign manager was charged with assaulting a reporter.

The moves and statements by Trump have cast a kinder light on Cruz in the eyes of Republicans, something that might have been unimaginable just months ago.

Cruz has a narrow path to winning the nomination before the convention and is preparing for a contest there. The first-term senator has maintained that only he himself and Trump would be qualified for the nomination by this summer, citing a 2012 rule that required the nominee to have won a majority in at least eight states, which would render John Kasich, or any other candidates, ineligible. Cruz has won majorities in four states thus far, but insists he will reach the threshold by June. Campaigning in Manhattan last week, he told reporters that if party leaders tried to put forth another candidate, "you would see the voters revolt, quite rightly."

But the rules for the 2016 convention have not been finalized. "The rules set by the 2012 Convention Rules Committee are a placeholder until the new convention rules committee meets in July," said Lindsay Walters, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee.

The RNC has largely stayed behind the scenes as the dramatic race for the nomination has unfolded. All of the remaining candidates have backed away from a pledge to support the eventual nominee, putting an even brighter spotlight on the convention scenarios and raising questions about the party's ability to unify.

"This is up to the voters and delegates elected by the grassroots to decide, but our nominee is likely to be one of the three candidates running for president now," Walters told RCP.

Half-hearted endorsements by Lindsay Graham, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush and others have raised questions about whether party leaders want Cruz to be president or whether they want to stop Trump from securing the necessary delegates. What's more, Cruz has not received much more support from his congressional colleagues. And while the floating of people such as Paul Ryan or Romney as possible convention saviors is but a pipe dream, it does speak to discontent within the GOP about its options.

Scott Walker garnered attention last week when he said that "if it's an open convention, it's very likely it would be someone who's not currently running." The Wisconsin governor seemed to walk back that possibility slightly when he endorsed Cruz this week ahead of his home state's all important primary-which figures to serve as a last stand for the Never Trump movement. "I wanted to make sure I was for someone, not just against someone," Walker said in announcing is support of Cruz.

Kasich might hope that Cruz is a mere vehicle and not a galvanizing force. The Ohio governor's only hope of becoming the nominee rests at the convention, as it is now mathematically impossible for him to secure the requisite delegates before then. His campaign argues that both Trump and Cruz would be unelectable in November, which would also have consequences for down-ballot GOP candidates.

"If you looked at the history of conventions," said Kasich spokesman Mike Schrimpf, "in the majority of the cases the delegate leader does not wind up with the nomination and it's often the most electable candidate who winds up with the nomination."

Kasich recently hired operatives Stu Spencer and Charlie Black, both former Ronald Reagan advisers, to guide his convention strategy. Spencer aided Gerald Ford in the contested party gathering of 1976. The campaign is eyeing unplugged and unbound delegates to the convention.

But the operation will have to contend with Cruz's proven infrastructure. The Texas lawmaker's ability to acquire additional delegates in Louisiana at the state party's convention after the primary demonstrated his prowess. Trump had won the state, but the campaign didn't account for rules that freed up delegates previously allocated to candidates who had dropped out. Trump threatened to sue, even though Cruz simply followed the rules. The real estate mogul then hired veteran GOP operative Paul Manafort to run his delegate effort, seen as an admission of the Louisiana mistake and the prospect of a contested convention.

There are similar opportunities to pick up delegates, like in state conventions in North Dakota this weekend and in Colorado next week. Cruz is planning to attend both in person, while his rivals are sending surrogates. The senator's plan underscores a dedication to the delegate hunt and foreshadows his capabilities at the convention.

"The Cruz people are better organized and more familiar with how to win actual contests within the Republican Party, so I think certainly that if there is a second ballot, Cruz is going to get considerably more votes than he would have received on the first ballot," said Morton Blackwell, an RNC member and longtime veteran of GOP conventions, and also a Cruz supporter.

Cruz and his backers would likely revolt if the committee did not keep in place the rule from 2012, which was proposed by Romney in an effort to prevent Ron Paul from contesting the nomination at the convention.

Blackwell fought against the rule at the time because he believed it to be overreach by the establishment and a disenfranchisement of voters who wanted someone else. After trying again earlier this year to change the rule, Blackwell now believes it's too late. "At this point it would be wrong to change the rules," he told RCP.

"I think it would be a horrible reaction, and I think it could split the Republican Party," Blackwell said of the prospect of another candidate being brought forth. He pointed to the irony that rules designed to promote the once-leading candidates such as Jeb Bush have helped non-establishment figures like Trump and Cruz.

Even if there were a consensus alternative to the current cast of contenders, it would require both Trump and Cruz to give in to someone who won fewer contests than they did, or even none at all.

There is also a sense within the party that biting the bullet and coalescing around Cruz is the best option at this point, especially where the party platform is concerned. Graham has justified his support by contending that Cruz, at least, is a conservative. Trump remains wildly unpredictable and holds views at odds with core tenants of the GOP.

"There's also a school of thought that if the Republican voters are intent on flying the plane into a mountain, let's do it with Cruz and not Trump," said Brian Walsh, a Republican strategist and former communications director for the party's Senate campaign arm.

Walsh said that while opinion within the party on how to proceed at the convention is still mixed, there is a belief that choosing Cruz could settle an argument over whether the GOP is better off with a nominee who is strictly conservative or one who carries broader appeal to some of the groups the party has been trying to court.

The convention has become something of a shifting chess board, with no good moves in sight.

"If it's an open convention, and we go through an arduous multi-ballot exercise to select our nominee, it's bound to be a problematic road to the White House," says Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union.

"If Cruz, Kasich and others can keep Trump from getting the required number of delegates and they emerge with a negotiated ticket, it is likely to leave [with a ticket] from a very divided convention."

Arizona’s primary was an utter disaster. But was it just a big mistake, or something more nefarious?

That's the question many of the thousands who waited for hours in the Phoenix area to vote last week are asking. Their answer largely depends on their politics and how much latitude they're willing to give Arizona's voting rights record.

The drama and finger-pointing about the much-maligned March 22 presidential primary in Arizona's largest county isn't likely to go away anytime soon. State officials are still investigating what went wrong and why it led to so much voter turmoil, and some are calling for a federal investigation. So let's quickly go through the arguments on both sides:

It was a mistake

The woman in charge of running the election for Arizona's Maricopa County said the decision to cut polling locations by 70 percent from 2012 was a miscalculation on her part about who would come out to vote and where.

"I made a giant mistake," Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell said in a heated hearing in Arizona's statehouse Tuesday as she accepted blame -- and peoples' scorn -- for what happened.

Purcell, a Republican, said she looked at numbers from the last contested presidential primary in 2008 and assumed many people would mail in ballots. She also blamed the legislature for not giving counties like hers enough money to properly hold elections.

The secretary of state's office attributed the long lines partly to voter confusion: They had been trying for a year to get the word out that independents couldn't vote in the March 22 primary since it's technically a presidential preference election for party members only; apparently that didn't work. (After the election, Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said Arizona should open the primary to independents, who can vote in every other primary.)

Those explanations didn't sit well with the dozens of voters and activists who showed up Tuesday to boo election officials and demand they to resign. One protester was even handcuffed. Some of the outcry has taken on a partisan nature, with Democrats saying this amounted to voter suppression and left-wing publications like Mother Jones focusing lots of coverage on the fallout.

State officials say they get why residents are so upset.

"When you combine a frustration about not being allowed to vote, that confusion about who can vote, and on top of that you have those folks wait in a line for hours, you have almost had this perfect storm of problems that exacerbated people's reaction to that frustration," said Matt Roberts, a spokesman with Secretary of State Michele Reagan's (R) office.

But they say this was a one-time mistake that they're doing everything possible to make sure won't happen again. Roberts added that Purcell has been running elections in Maricopa County since 1998 without similar trouble. And the secretary of state said she welcomed a federal investigation, like the one Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, a Democrat, called for.

It was something more

If the botched election happened in a vacuum, perhaps the long lines might not have become such an explosive political issue. But voting rights activists who were on the ground that day say there are too many parallels to past fudged elections in Arizona not to wonder whether there's something more sinister going on.

"We don't know if they were honest mistakes or not, but there's certainly a pattern of mistakes," said Shuya Ohno, director of the Right to Vote campaign at the nonpartisan civil rights organization Advancement Project.

Voting rights advocates say Latino voters didn't want to mail in their ballot because many recalled the bottleneck during 2012's heated election when controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio was on the ballot. People in minority communities waited in long lines, and eventually many had to cast provisional ballots that weren't counted until almost a month later. That same year, the county sent out a Spanish-language announcement that had the wrong voting day on it.

Going back to March 22's election, voting rights activists say they have evidence the poll closures were heaviest in the most disadvantaged areas of the county, like West Phoenix, which has a big minority population. They add they did not find nearly the volume of independent voters officials said there were.

They also argue that Arizona's voting laws don't suggest an openness to minority voters. Arizona's governor signed a bill making it a felony for third-party groups, like nonprofits, to collect and submit early ballots on behalf of voters. It's a move advocates say further discourages minority voters from participating. And Arizona is one of two states that required voters to prove their citizenship when applying to vote (though the courts recently said the states can't require a proof-of-citizenship document for voters registering via a federal form).

This is the first national election since a 2013 Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act meant that Arizona no longer has to review its changes to polling locations by the Department of Justice. Some wonder whether this would have happened if the federal government had a chance to intervene.

The bottom line: No one knows (yet)

Stepping back from the rhetoric, it's unclear what county and state officials would have to gain from trying to disenfranchise Phoenix-area voters. They or their colleagues weren't on the ballot, and you could argue that cutting polling locations by 70 percent would have been a pretty brash and conspicuous way to go about using this election for political gain.

It was also a primary, meaning disenfranchising certain voter groups like Latinos wouldn't necessarily have accrued to Republicans' benefit. The parties were simply picking their presidential nominees, after all -- not casting their electoral votes.

But suspicion will remain until Arizona officials give more definitive answers about what happened. Right now, there's not one person or action that frustrated voters can point to to explain what went wrong. The uncertainty only fuels partisan theories. Plus, there's still the fact that in the United States of America in 2016, thousands of people had to wait in line for hours to vote.

The nation's eyes will likely stay on Arizona for the near future, and not just on the potential legal and political fallout from Maricopa County's botched election: The state still has three more statewide elections to pull off this year.

This is where bad bankers go to prison

Kviabryggja Prison in western Iceland doesn’t need walls, razor wire, or guard towers to keep the convicts inside. Alone on a wind-swept cape, the old farmhouse is bound by the frigid North Atlantic on one side and fields of snow-covered lava rock on another. To the east looms Snaefellsjokull, a dormant volcano blanketed by a glacier. There’s only one road back to civilizationThis is where the world’s only bank chiefs imprisoned in connection with the 2008 financial crisis are serving their sentences, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its forthcoming issue. Kviabryggja is home to Sigurdur Einarsson, Kaupthing Bank’s onetime chairman, and Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson, the bank’s former chief executive officer, who were convicted of market manipulation and fraud shortly before the collapse of what was then Iceland’s No. 1 lender. They spend their days doing laundry, working out in the jailhouse gym, and browsing the Internet. They and two associates incarcerated here—Magnus Gudmundsson, the ex-CEO of Kaupthing’s Luxembourg unit, and Olafur Olafsson, the No. 2 stockholder in the bank at the time of its demise—can even take walks outside, like Kviabryggja’s 19 other inmates, all of whom were convicted of nonviolent crimes.

It may not be hard time, but it’s a far cry from the giddy days when the Kaupthing bankers hosted parties for clients aboard yachts in Monte Carlo and hired the likes of pop legend Tom Jones to serenade guests at London galas. In sentencing these financiers to serve terms of up to 5½ years, the Icelandic courts have done something authorities in the world’s two great banking capitals, New York and London, haven’t: They’ve made bankers answer for the crimes of the crash. “The Icelandic banks went overboard,” says Olafur Hauksson, the onetime small-town police chief who in January 2009 was appointed special prosecutor to investigate the banking cases. “They were basically bankrupt.”

Hauksson is still at it. In March his office indicted five others for market manipulation and fraud, including Larus Welding, former CEO of Glitnir Bank. In all, there have been 26 convictions of bankers and financiers since 2010. Welding declined to comment.

Holding its most powerful bankers accountable should have been a satisfying result for Iceland’s 333,000 residents. But a brewing scandal involving a secret share sale by the country’s biggest lender, Landsbankinn, has raised fears that the crony capitalism that marked the precrash era still lingers. The soaring popularity of an insurgent political movement called the Pirate Party, meanwhile, shows that anger continues to simmer beneath the surface of Iceland’s recovery. “The mood of society is still fairly dismal,” says Stefan Olafsson, a professor of sociology at the University of Iceland. “There is a loss of trust in politics, institutions, and parties. You could blame the nation for being ungrateful, because politicians have done some good things after the crisis. There is a contradiction.”

Iceland may be a faraway country with a population about the size of the Maldives, but it’s experiencing the same type of populist revolt that’s rocking governments across the West. In Spain the rise of the Podemos and Ciudadanos political movements has ended 40 years of two-party rule and prevented the formation of a government following the December general election. British voters will decide on June 23 whether to quit the European Union. And in America’s presidential contest, firebrands Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders—who favors prosecuting Wall Street bankers—won over voters fed up with the status quo.

Just a decade ago, the status quo in Iceland was very different. The country’s top three banks, having thrown off decades of fiscal discipline in a spasm of deregulation in the 2000s, tapped international debt markets like never before. Blessed with stellar credit ratings and access to the European Economic Area, the trio borrowed €14 billion ($15.7 billion) in 2005 alone, double their intake in 2004. But they only paid about 20 basis points, or 0.2 percent, over benchmark interest rates, according to the Icelandic Parliament’s Special Investigative Commission. It was an easy moneymaker. As the banks lent the funds back out at high interest rates, they raked in huge profits and recorded a whopping 19.7 percent return on equity in 2007. Flush with credit themselves, Icelandic households bought flats in London, took shopping trips to Paris, and jammed Reykjavik’s streets with Range Rovers. By 2008 the banks’ assets had swollen to 10 times the nation’s $17.5 billion economy.

Then came the fall of 2008 and paralysis in global markets. The banks lost their short-term funding and could no longer service their owndebts. The krona’s value fell, making loans denominated in foreign currencies far more expensive. Kaupthing and its two rivals, Landsbanki Islands and Glitnir, defaulted on $85 billion in debt in October of that year, and households lost more than a fifth of their purchasing power. Citizens pelted the 135-year-old stone parliament building with eggs and rocks. Birna Einarsdottir, a marketing executive at Glitnir, was named that month CEO of Islandsbanki, a new lender formed from the old bank’s domestic assets after receivers took control. Sipping tea in a conference room with a view of Faxafloi Bay, she winces when asked to recall what it was like in those days. “Do you have something to give me if I do? A gin and tonic?” she says.

Einarsdottir says she and fellow staff members cried at their desks, struggling to understand how Glitnir had failed and what was next. The new CEO called an all-hands meeting in a hotel banquet room that was part strategy session, part group hug. With security guards outside the doors in case of protests, she urged her 1,000 co-workers to be patient with customers who feared they’d lost their livelihoods and their ability to obtain credit. The bank would regain trust by serving them, she told the throng. “I know it sounds like I’m speaking from a textbook,” she says, “but it was important for staff to see one year ahead. The only way to get through that time was to be optimistic.”

On a pale February afternoon, there are signs of economic renewal throughout central Reykjavik. Laugavegur, the main drag through town, is bustling with window shoppers. In the last few years, numerous boutiques, art galleries, and restaurants offering Icelandic delicacies such as smoked puffin have opened to serve the locals and tourists taking advantage of the devalued krona. On the waterfront, a five-star hotel is being built next to the Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Centre, an angular structure with a honeycombed glass facade the color of the sea. Constructed during the crash, the $235 million complex used to symbolize the nation’s hubris. Now, a tour guide tells visitors, it’s become an “icon of resurrection.”

It’s a rebound other European nations would envy. Iceland’s gross domestic product is set to expand almost 4 percent this year, according to forecasts compiled by Bloomberg. The unemployment rate of 2.8 percent is about one-third the average of the European Union. As the state prepares to lift capital controls later this year, the banking sector continues to strengthen: State-owned Islandsbanki, the nation’s No. 2 lender with $8.4 billion in assets, boasts a common equity Tier 1 ratio of 28.3 percent. That’s more than twice the 12.7 percent average recorded by Europe’s 25 largest banks as of Dec. 31, according to Bloomberg data. “Before the crisis, the banks grew too fast and too much,” says Unnur Gunnarsdottir, director general of the Financial Supervisory Authority, which oversees the lenders. “That will not happen again.”

But a deal involving Iceland’s top bank and a relative of Bjarni Benediktsson, minister of finance and economic affairs, is marring this feel-good story. In November 2014, state-owned Landsbankinn sold a 31.2 percent stake in Icelandic payment processing company Borgun for 2.2 billion kronur ($18 million) in a private placement. A company controlled by Einar Sveinsson, the cabinet minister’s cousin, was part of a group that bought the shares. While there’s nothing unlawful about a private stock sale, crisis-weary Icelanders didn’t appreciate a bank—especially a state-owned one under the finance minister’s jurisdiction—executing a deal behind closed doors. Landsbankinn, which succeeded Landsbanki after it failed in 2008, has publicly disclosed similar share sales.

It didn’t help that Sveinsson’s company is domiciled in Luxembourg. Shell companies based in the secretive European duchy were a hallmark of the criminal cases Hauksson brought against the Kaupthing Four, court records show. “Why is there still such a lack of transparency about these sort of actions?” asks Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of the Althingi, Iceland’s parliament, and co-founder of the Pirate Party. “There’s been plenty of time to fix that.”

The plot thickened last November when Visa agreed to acquire Visa Europe in a deal valued at as much as €21.2 billion. Borgun is one of 3,033 banks and payment companies that own Visa Europe. That means Sveinsson and his fellow investors are poised to more than double the value of their stake, to $12 million, when Visa completes the deal later this year, according to Landsbankinn. Outraged citizens protested in front of the lender’s headquarters in central Reykjavik in January. Someone recently hung a sign on a highway overpass: “Borgun investors: Return what you stole!”

The government’s overseer of state-owned assets is also alarmed. On March 14, Icelandic State Financial Investments, which reports to Finance Minister Benediktsson, said the Landsbankinn board should report what steps it’s taken to “regain the trust” of the public. “The sale procedure cast a significant shadow on Landsbankinn’s results and the professional appearance of the bank and its executives has been damaged,” ISFI wrote in a letter to Benediktsson. Two days later, five of Landsbankinn’s seven board members said in a statement that they won’t seek reelection at the lender’s annual shareholders’ meeting on April 14.

Landsbankinn Chairman Tryggvi Palsson didn’t return calls for comment; he said in March 2015 that the share sale was lawful but the bank should have conducted it in a public auction. Benediktsson declined to comment for this article, as did Sveinsson. The Financial Supervisory Authority also declined to comment on the affair.

The Borgun affair is unfolding as Icelanders are flocking to the Pirate Party, a left-leaning organization whose symbol is a Jolly Roger flag sporting a filleted fish instead of a skull and crossbones. The three-year-old group won the support of 38 percent of prospective voters in a March opinion poll, 2 percentage points behind the ruling Independence-Progressive coalition. If the party’ssupport holds, it could win 26 seats in the 63-member parliament in the next election in April 2017. Pirate Party co-founder Jonsdottir, a Doc Martens-clad writer and activist who calls herself a “poetician,” could be in a position to block government plans to eventually sell Landsbankinn and Islandsbanki. “The same parties that ran this country into the ground during the privatization from 2000 to 2004 now want to privatize the banks again,” says Jonsdottir, who sits on the legislature’s Constitutional and Supervisory Committee. “I have a massive problem with that, and it won’t happen if I have anything to do with it.”

Meanwhile, Hauksson, a bear of man with a fighter’s jaw, is pressing ahead with a half-dozen more cases related to the crash. The former top lawman in Akranes, a port town up the coast fromReykjavik, Hauksson was one of only two applicants for the job of special prosecutor—and the only lawyer. “It was important for the country to look carefully at what happened in the months that led up to the banking collapse,” he says. Few expected him to succeed in untangling the web of self-dealing that stretched from Reykjavik to Luxembourg to London. “He was used to issuing parking fines and breaking up drunken brawls,” says Sigrun Davidsdottir, a journalist who writes about the bank cases on her website, Icelog. “It’s earth-shattering what he’s accomplished.”

Working with the Financial Supervisory Authority, his office found that the country’s top three banks routinely made huge loans to their biggest stockholders. Worse, the banks secured the debts with their own equity, which spelled doom when share prices nosedived in September 2008. That month, Kaupthing Chairman Einarsson and CEO Sigurdsson surprised investors by announcing that Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, a member of Qatar’s royal family, had acquired a 5.1 percent stake in the bank. The two bankers, with the help of Gudmundsson in Luxembourg and stockholder Olafsson, had directed Kaupthing to lend the sheik $280 million to buy the stake through a daisy chain of shell companies in the British Virgin Islands and Cyprus, according to court records. Arion Bank was formed from the domestic assets of Kaupthing after it failed in October 2008.

By misrepresenting Kaupthing’s true condition, the four men defrauded investors and manipulated the bank’s valuation, the courts ruled. In February 2015, Iceland’s Supreme Court called the actions “thoroughly planned” and “committed with concentrated intent.” The Kaupthing Four argued their actions were lawful and blamed the bank’s failure on the global financial crisis. Hauksson scoffs at that argument. “That was the reason for everything,” says the prosecutor in an office where virtually every inch of surface space is stacked with legal filings. “The verdicts stripped away their excuses.” Al Thani, who never commented publicly in the case, wasn’t charged. Contacted through prison administrators, Einarsson, Sigurdsson, Gudmundsson, and Olafsson declined to comment.

In contrast to the Icelandic saga, no bank CEOs in the U.S. or the U.K. have been convicted for their roles in the subprime mortgage crackup and related disasters. Bringing white-collar criminal cases may be easier in Iceland because courts don’t use juries. Rather, they employ neutral experts to help judges understand the intricacies of finance. In Britain’s highest- profile case stemming from the crash, the country’s Serious Fraud Office investigated London-based real estate magnates Vincent and Robert Tchenguiz in connection with their business dealings with Kaupthing. The brothers were never charged, and in 2014 the SFO even had to pay them £4.5 million ($6.4 million) in damages to settle their claims of malicious prosecution.

For its part, the U.S. Department of Justice has refrained from prosecuting individual bankers after a Brooklyn, N.Y., jury in 2009 acquitted two former hedge fund managers at Bear Stearns accused of securities fraud. “Washington wasn’t willing to take the risk of another stinging defeat, so they slowed down a host of other prosecutions,” says John Coffee, a professor of securities law at Columbia in New York.

In 2013 then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress that Wall Street banks are so big that prosecuting them might harm the economy. He later stressed no institution is above the law. Some watch-dogs are appalled the feds chose only to extract big civil fines from institutions. “There’s no justification over what appears to be a lack of effort to identify individuals engaged in misconduct and to bring charges,” says Phil Angelides, chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a bipartisan panel established by Congress. “It sends a signal that if you do wrong on Wall Street, there’s really no consequences. That’s bred cynicism about the justice system, and it’s bred anger.”

While Iceland’s leaders have meted out justice by jailing financiers, they still have work to do to repair the damage wrought by the crash. “The politicians did fail,” says sociology professor Olafsson. “They allowed this thing to happen, all the excesses and the greed and the debt accumulation. Something broke in terms of trust.”

Back at Kviabryggja Prison, the tumult in the capital seems worlds away. It’s dead quiet around the single-story barracks, and in the distance rise massifs that form Iceland’s western fjords. The Kaupthing convicts are marking time in different ways. A couple of them are tutoring fellow inmates. The subjects: math and economics.

To contact the authors of this story: Edward Robinson inLondon at edrobinson@bloomberg.net Omar Valdimarsson inReykjavik at valdimarsson@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anne Swardson at aswardson@bloomberg.net Stryker McGuire at smcguire12@bloomberg.net

Unarmed man killed by Arizona cop cried, begged for life

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An unarmed man who was shot and killed by an Arizona police officer in January cried, complied with police orders and begged for his life before the fatal firing, according to a newly released police report.

Mesa Police Officer Philip Brailsford has been charged with second-degree murder for the death of Daniel Shaver, a 26-year-old Texas man. Authorities have declined to release Brailsford’s body cam footage from the deadly encounter.

But a report released on Tuesday includes extensive description of the footage, detailing Shaver’s desperate final moments before Brailsford fired five shots at him with an AR-15 rifle.

Police confronted Shaver on January 8 after responding to reports of a man pointing a rifle out the fifth-floor window of a La Quinta hotel.

The night of his death, Shaver had invited a man and woman at the hotel to his room for drinks, according to the report.

After some shots of rum, the man asked Shaver about a case that appeared to hold a musical instrument. Shaver opened it to reveal a pellet gun and dead sparrow inside. Shaver told them he was on a business trip with Wal-Mart and “his job is to kill all of the birds that get inside the buildings,” according to the report.

Shaver then briefly pointed the pellet gun out the window.

When police found Shaver, they warned him that he “may not survive” if he did anything that could be considered a threat, the report says.

Brailsford’s body cam shows Shaver appeared to making small jerking motions while he had his hands behind his back., according to the report.

An officer yelled at him, “If you do that again, we are shooting you. Do you understand?”

“No, please don’t shoot me,” Shaver said.

The footage shows Shaver complying with all other orders, including a demand to crawl toward the officers, as he is “audibly heard sobbing.”

At one point, Shaver’s hand appeared to move toward his waist. An officer was heard yelling “Don’t” before Brailsford fired.

Shaver was not armed. His hand motion appeared to be him “attempting to pull his shorts up as they were falling off,” the report says.

Previous reports have indicated Shaver may have been drunk at the time of the shooting — despite telling officers he was not — and possibly did not understand police orders. Shaver’s autopsy report has not been released.

Brailsford was charged with second-degree murder and fired from the department. The new report reveals Brailsford had etched on his rifle: “You’re F---ed.”

Shaver’s widow and the mother of his two girls, Laney Sweet, posted a YouTube video this week saying prosecutors are considering a plea deal for the ex-cop. The Maricopa County Attorney has not commented on the case.

Monday, 28 March 2016

Bad Parenting actions you should avoid

Relationship tips for intimacy

Some couples believe falling in love is a passport to a relationship that will last a lifetime. The relationship tips we learn from TV and romance novels have made us believe that great relationships and lasting love happen effortlessly, yet the truth is that relationships take plenty of work.

Sometimes couples know something is off, something is seriously wrong, but they put off dealing with it until the problem becomes too big to ignore.

Take my friends, Sam and Abigail as an example. The beginning their relationship was full intimacy, laughs, touching, sharing, eye contact, lust and desire. Then their baby came and everything changed, including their sex life, especially their sex life.

Abigail says she’s just less interested in sex but desires intimacy. Sam is frustrated that Abigail doesn’t seem as interested in sex. Their biggest task now is to rebuild their sexual connection by taking little steps — touching, kissing, intimacy dates, and more dates — to reignite their sex life. Often couples fail to realize how little changes in how they interact can make big improvements in their relationships. Consider these few tips to keep your relationship healthy:

Don’t delay romance. People often postpone romantic overtures or sexy activities for special occasions such as date night or vacation. However, you shouldn’t postpone romance because you’re waiting for the “right” time. By making ‘everyday’ occasions special (such as wearing your “special” lingerie to bed or making out with your partner before your partner leaves for work), you will discover so much more pleasure and joy in your day-to-day life.
Don’t wait for your partner to fix your relationship. People often take a back seat in their relationships because they believe their partner should take the lead in fixing the relationship. “Why should I do all the work?” Although it is true that relationships are a two-way street, it’s damaging to be too comfortable simply because you want your partner to be romantic. If you want more romance, then you should be more romantic. Want more sex? Then, initiate sex more often. Your partner will see and enjoy your increased interest, and he will likely respond in turn.
Ask for what you want. You also need to be more upfront when telling your partner what you want. Women, in particular, are guilty of, not speaking up, as we assume our partners should be know what we want
Think small picture. When people want to improve their relationships, they tend only to look at the big picture, and they become overwhelmed. Instead, think small picture, such as: What can I do today to improve my relationship? What is one thing I can do today to show my partner how much I love him?
Daily appreciations. Couples tend to share negative feedback with one another more easily, but they don’t spend as much effort sharing positive feedback. Fix this quickly by giving your partner three daily appreciations.

Driver rescued from car hanging from power lines (photos)

A 56-year-old woman in Tennessee somehow managed to get her car trapped in power cables when she ran up a utility pole and became caught. She was left hanging at least 7ft above ground. Fire service chief, Jeff Rollins said:

“We had to call the power company and got them there [sic] because the pole that she was hanging from was connected to a high-voltage power line. I’ve been doing this for 38 years, and I’ve never seen this before."

Police say drugs, alcohol or medical issues weren't involved

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