20 Israel won't take orders from US: Netanyahu

(1) Goldman Greed: squabbling over buying back its stock Options after Treasury rescue
(2) Vanity Fair's 100 most powerful: 51 are Jewish
(3) Gambling with peace: how US bingo dollars are funding Israeli settlements
(4) Israel won't take orders from US: Netanyahu
(5) U.S. demand for East Jerusalem building freeze 'surprised' Netanyahu

(1) Goldman Greed: squabbling over buying back its stock Options after Treasury rescue

From: lenczner <atoyuma@yahoo.com> Date: 20.07.2009 01:04 PM

Goldman Sachs bites Uncle Sam's hand

The investment bank is fat and happy again, but you wouldn't know it from its squabbling with the Treasury over the warrants in the TARP deal.

By Allan Sloan, senior editor at large

Last Updated: July 19, 2009: 8:40 AM ET

http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/17/news/companies/goldman_sachs_tarp_ingratitude.fortune/

(Fortune) -- I've always thought that the guys running Goldman Sachs were really smart, not only about making money, but also about projecting a classy image to the world outside of Wall Street. Clearly, I overestimated them.

If there was ever a firm with the motivation -- and the money -- to be gracious to the U.S. taxpayers who kept it alive when the financial markets were imploding, it's Goldman. It had a chance to look good and do good for taxpayers and itself and Wall Street for a relative pittance -- and has blown it. Horribly.

As you have probably noticed, Goldman is getting attacked for posting record profits and setting aside a record amount for employee compensation about three seconds after it repaid its $10 billion of loans from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Repaying those loans freed Goldman from pay restrictions on its top honchos, who seem headed for record or near-record bonuses unless things go badly for the firm in the second half of the year.

What you probably don't know is that Goldman, flush with cash and profits, is squabbling with the Treasury about how much it should pay taxpayers to buy back the stock purchase warrants it gave the government as part of the TARP deal. Talk about tacky.

Had Goldman retained something it was once reputed to have -- a sense of short-term sacrifice in return for long-term profit -- it would have agreed to pay the government generously for the warrants. It could have announced that on Tuesday, along with its profits, and looked like a decent, concerned corporate citizen instead of Greedhead Central.

The warrants are very valuable, especially with the recent sharp run-up in Goldman's stock price. The warrants carry the right (but not the obligation) to buy 12.2 million Goldman (GS, Fortune 500) shares at $122.90 each. Goldman's closing price of $156.84 yesterday put the warrants "in the money" by a bit over $400 million. (That's the $33.94 difference between $156.84 and $122.90, multiplied by 12.2 million.)

Given that the warrants still have more than nine years to run, they're clearly worth more than $400 million, because its owner has years of upside. However, because there's no existing market for such long Goldman warrants, their value is in the eye of the beholder (and the pricing modeler).

Alas, no one would tell me what the government is asking for the warrants or what Goldman is offering for them. "We are in discussions with the Treasury on the buyback of the warrant," said Goldman spokesman Lucas VanPraag. "The purchase price has yet to be determined.... We believe that taxpayers should get a decent return, and we hope that our discussions with the Treasury will do just that." The Treasury declined comment.

My estimate -- okay, my SWAG (for scientific wild-assed guess) -- is that the Treasury is asking for $1 billion to $1.5 billion and Goldman is offering $500 million or so.

Under the law, Goldman, like other early TARP repayers, has the right to force the Treasury to sell back the warrants after a lengthy set of price arbitrations.

When I say that taxpayers kept Goldman alive, I'm not talking about the $10 billion of TARP money or the $12.9 billion of AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) bailout money that Goldman got. The $10 billion was nice, but not necessarily essential to Goldman's survival, and Goldman says it was holding enough assets and collateral to get all or almost all of the $12.9 billion had the government not bailed out AIG.

Rather, I'm talking about the way that U.S. and foreign governments -- in other words, taxpayers -- saved the world's financial system, saving Goldman in the process. Had many of the world's biggest institutions collapsed, which would have happened without taxpayer aid, Goldman would have been wiped out because the firms that owed it money wouldn't have been able to meet their obligations.

I'm also talking about the Federal Reserve Board moving with lightning speed last fall to allow Goldman to become a bank holding company. By giving Goldman access to vast amounts of money it was making available to bank companies, the Fed ended panicky demands from Goldman customers that the firm immediately return the cash and securities it was holding for them. That was the equivalent of a run on the bank, which no institution can survive. Stopping it saved Goldman.

Now this is how Goldman shows its gratitude. It could have shelled out a few extra bucks and done the right thing for taxpayers (and ultimately for itself) by exercising good business judgment and looking generous. Instead, it's behaving in a way that brings to mind one of my favorite Biblical verses, Deuteronomy 32:15: "So Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked...and spurned the Rock of his salvation." In these ultra-political days, filled with economic pain for so many Americans, that's not only the wrong way to act, it's foolish. A word I never thought I'd associate with Goldman.

With reporting by Mina Kimes

(2) Vanity Fair's 100 most powerful: 51 are Jewish

From: Kristoffer Larsson <kristoffer.larsson@sobernet.nu> Date: 20.07.2009 01:05 PM

Feel the power

By Joseph Aaron

Jewish World Review Oct. 10, 2007 / 28 Tishrei 5768

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/joe/aaron101007.php3

This kind of thing gives me a big thrill. And a big chill.

It's not that often that you find the entire state of Jewish life today encapsulated in one place. So when you do, it's worth taking note of and learning from.

The place of which I speak is the October issue of Vanity Fair magazine. Vanity Fair is one of the most fascinating magazines around, one that every issue features an amazingly eclectic collection of articles, from the very serious to the completely frivolous.

Indeed, while the October issue features such stories as "How $9 billion in cash vanished in Iraq;" "Inside Bush's bunker;" "How the Media Gored Al Gore in 2000;" and more, the cover features Nicole Kidman wearing a sailor cap and opening her shirt to reveal her nautical necklace and her brassiere.

Vanity Fair is nothing if not on the cutting edge of where society is and is going. Vanity Fair is definitely not a Jewish publication.

And yet, in this one issue, it tells us more about the Jewish world as it is today than any lecture or book or class out there.

It does that in two ways.

The first is its annual list of what it calls The New Establishment, the 100 most powerful, most influential people in American society <http://www.vanityfair.com/online/newestablishment>.

What is absolutely amazing, stunning about the list is how many Jews there are on it. Jews make up about 2.5 percent of the U.S. population so there should be two or three Jews on the list.

Guess again, bubeleh.

The list of the Vanity Fair 100 includes, get ready, 51, yes 51 Jews.

Minimum.

I say 51 because that's how many I'm sure are Jewish. There may be others on the list who are Jewish but who I don't know are Jewish and whose names are not obviously Jewish.

But let's say I got them all. That means that more than half the names on the list of the 100 people who are the most vital to this society are Jewish. And this is a list that includes Apple's Steve Jobs and Oprah and Bill Clinton and Warren Buffett, to name a few of the few non-Jews on the list.

That is absolutely nothing short of astounding.

Talk about us being accepted into this society, talk about us having power in this society, talk about anti-Semitism being a thing of the past, talk about Jews no longer needing to be afraid to be visible and influential.

And it doesn't stop there.

The magazine also has a separate list of what it calls The Next Establishment, younger people it believes destined to make the big list some year soon.

Of the 26 names on that list, 15 are Jews. That I'm sure of. 15 of 26. More than half.

And it doesn't stop there.

The magazine also has a separate list of what it calls The Pit-Stop Club, those who have made The New Establishment list in the past but who didn't make it this year but are fairly certain to make a comeback in a future year.

Of the nine names on this list, eight are Jews. Eight out of nine. Don Imus is the only non-Jew on the list.

I mean, it's just unbelievable.

This is a big country with lots and lots of very talented, highly educated, tremendously motivated people. And no one has its finger on the pulse of the people who make this country what it is more than Vanity Fair.

And when it came time to pick the 100 who most move and shake things in America, more than half - more than half - are Jews. And on the list of those who will one day be on that list, more than half - more than half - are Jews. Not to mention that almost 100 percent of those who were on the list and are poised to make a comeback are Jews.

Tells you so much about the place of Jews in this country, about the amazing people Jews are.

That's something we should never take for granted, something we should always be blown away by, feel very, very good about.

Instead, however, the Jewish world is so much about kvetching and worrying.

When will we learn to fight fights that matter. When will we learn not everything needs to be made a big deal of. Not everything we don't like is a threat, indeed some of the things we don't like only become a nuisance because we make a big deal out of it.

We are powerful, very powerful. We play a major, pivotal role in the life of this country. And yet we are always acting like scared little mice on the verge of annihilation.

And if you think how we are doesn't have consequences, please look at something else in this Vanity Fair issue, something that also tells us much about Jewish life today.

There is an article in the magazine called "Talk of the Town." It tells the story of the intense rivalry between two of the most powerful men on Wall Street, Henry Kravis and Stephen Schwarzman.

Both, as you may have guessed, are Jews. Both are at the very top of the private equity world, which is where the financial action is these days. Both control tens of billions of dollars worth of assets.

The first thing that struck me about the story is what jerks both are, each trying to top the other, destroy the other, outdo the other. Not to mention the abominable way that each treats their employees. Each acts in ways that are not very much in keeping with the teachings and values of Judaism.

That's sad, but that's not what got to me. What got to me is how much these two do, how much these two give, to all kinds of good causes - libraries and museums and hospitals and universities and on and on, all mentioned by name in the article. You read and see how much energy each puts into his charitable work, how much money each donates to charitable causes. Doing so, it is very clear, for the social status and clout it brings.

What is also clear is that it seems neither is involved in or gives to Jewish causes, at least not in any significant way.

That too tells you a lot about Jewish life today.

For they are not alone. The fact is that, as survey after survey has shown, most very wealthy Jews in this country do not give to Jewish causes. Certainly not the tens of million dollars they so eagerly give to a university or a museum.

The question is why they feel so little allegiance to their own community, their own people, why they so much look elsewhere to devote their resources and their energies.

I think it's because we have made Judaism such an unpleasant place.

Judaism has so many powerful people among us, as the Vanity Fair 100 list shows. We are such a part of this society, have such impact on this society and yet we're always unhappy, always feel victimized, always kvetch about this and that. It's always another Holocaust around the corner, there's always the next Hitler on the scene, Israel is always embattled, we're always worried, always scared, always sure the end is near.

Well, who the hell wants to join that little party?

Because we so squander all the good that has come our way, too many of us are simply opting to go their own way, to be part of things that don't involve guilt and neuroticism.

More than half those on the Vanity Fair 100 are Jews. And yet we don't feel powerful, indeed, the very fact of the list makes us even more nervous than we were before. Instead of being pleased and taking pride, we fret that it's not so good to be so visible, bad that the gentiles see how much influence we have. And so we take even an occasion for joys and make it one for oys.

Is it any wonder then that if we always make out that Jewish life, despite all evidence to the contrary, is a scary and dreary place, that those who have made it, want nothing to do with it?

Joseph Aaron is Editor of The Chicago Jewish News.  ==

Vanity Fair's 100 most powerful people from 2007: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/10/newestablishment200710

(3) Gambling with peace: how US bingo dollars are funding Israeli settlements

Chris McGreal

 Sunday 19 July 2009 21.21 BST

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/19/us-bingo-funding-israeli-settlements

For the winning punters chancing their luck at Hawaiian Gardens' charity bingo hall in the heart of one of California's poorest towns, the big prize is $500. The losers walk away with little more than an assurance that their dollars are destined for a good cause.

But the real winners and losers live many thousands of miles away, where the profits from the nightly ritual of numbers-calling fund what critics describe as a form of ethnic cleansing by extremist organisations.

Each dollar spent on bingo by the mostly Latino residents of Hawaiian Gardens, on the outskirts of Los Angeles, helps fund Jewish settlements on Palestinian land in some of the most sensitive areas of occupied East Jerusalem, particularly the Muslim quarter of the old city, and West Bank towns such as Hebron where the Israeli military has forced Arabs out of their properties in their thousands.

Over the past 20 years, the bingo hall has funnelled tens of millions of dollars in to what its opponents — including rabbis serving the Hawaiian Gardens area — describe as an ideologically-driven strategy to grab land for Israel, as well as contributing to influential American groups and thinktanks backing Israel's more hawkish governments.

But the bingo operation, owned by an American Jewish doctor and millionaire, Irving Moskowitz, has taken on added significance in recent weeks as President Barack Obama has laid down a marker to Israel in demanding an end to settlement construction, which the White House regards as a major obstacle to peace. "Moskowitz is taking millions from the poorest town in California and sending it to the settlements," said Haim Dov Beliak, a rabbi serving Hawaiian Gardens and one of the Jewish religious leaders in California who have campaigned to block the flow of funds to the settlers.

"The money Moskowitz puts in to the settlements has changed the game. Moskowitz has helped build a hardcore of the settler movement that may number 50-70,000.

"He's not paying for all of it but he puts the money up front for the vanguards that get things off the ground. That ties Israel's hands. That ties the hands of the Obama administration. If the administration wants to be serious about stopping the settlers it has to begin in Hawaiian Gardens."

Moskowitz is an 80-year-old retired doctor and orthodox Jewish millionaire who built a fortune buying and selling hospitals. In 1988 he also bought the faltering bingo hall in Hawaiian Gardens which, under California law, can only be run as not-for-profit operation so Moskowitz brought it under the wing of a charitable foundation he had established in his own name.

The foundation, which did not respond to requests for an interview, bills the bingo operation as of great benefit to the local community through donations to a number of groups, such as the Hawaiian Gardens food bank, as well as scholarships. It has also given money for disaster relief in Central America, Kosovo and parts of the US.

But tax returns show that the bulk of the donations go to what the foundation describes as "charitable support" to an array of organisations in Israel.

"The loss of many of Dr Moskowitz's relatives during the Holocaust strengthened his conviction that Israel must be maintained as a safe haven for Jewish people from all over the world. In Israel, the Foundation supports a wide array of religious, educational, cultural and emergency services organisations," the foundation says on its website.

What it does not say is that the focus of the donations is a number of Jewish organisations intent on claiming Palestinian territory for Israel and ensuring that occupied East Jerusalem remains in the Jewish state's hands.

Beliak calculates that the foundation has given Jewish settlers well over £100m, beginning with the construction 20 years ago of 133 houses on land confiscated from Palestinians by the Israeli government.

Beliak helped launch the Coalition for Justice in Hawaiian Gardens & Jerusalem to stop the flow of money from the bingo hall to the settlements. Its investigations of tax records show that the Moskowitz Foundation's donations include grants to Beit Hadassah, a militant Jewish settlement in the heart of the West Bank city of Hebron.

Thousands of Arabs have been forced from their homes and businesses around Beit Hadassah ostensibly for their own security after an American-born settler Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinians nearby in 1994. Goldstein was himself shot dead and his grave is regarded as a shrine by some settlers. Moskowitz has made excuses for Goldstein's actions by blaming Palestinians for pushing him too far.

The foundation has also given more than £3.5m to Ateret Cohanim, a right wing group that houses Jews in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem's old city. In other parts of East Jerusalem, Moskowitz has funded Jewish colonies situated to box in or cut off Palestinian neighbourhoods that fits in with a broader government strategy to ensure total Israeli control over the city.

"What Moskowitz pioneered was trying to break up the continuity of the Arab population centres in Jerusalem," said Beliak. "The consequences are radically different from just mom and pop buying a little piece of land. These are political statements and facts on the ground, and every [US] administration has allowed him to do this."

Among the most contentious of the organisations backed by Moskowitz is the City of David Foundation in the heart of an Arab neighbourhood of Jerusalem, where about 1,500 Palestinians are facing expulsion ostensibly in the name of archaeological preservation of a site where the organisation says King David established a city 3,000 years ago.

Four years ago, the City of David Foundation director, Doron Spielman, told the Guardian that "the goal of our organisation is to increase the presence of Jews in the neighbourhood as much as possible … We cannot trust that if this is an Arab neighbourhood, Jews will be safe here".

To that end Palestinians have been driven from their homes, sometimes at gunpoint, while others are fighting in the courts to cling on to their properties.

Moskowitz has made no secret of his hostility toward the Palestinians. He opposed the Oslo peace accords, likening them to the appeasement of the Nazis. In 1996 he told the Los Angeles Times that peace talks represented a "slide toward concessions, surrender, and Israeli suicide".

He was also an outspoken opponent of Ariel Sharon's removal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza strip four years ago and provided the settlers with funds to fight the pullout.

Now Moskowitz is building a much bigger bingo hall in Hawaiian Gardens which will increase the flow of cash.

Beliak is particularly angered that the fundraising takes place without interference from the American authorities. In contrast, he says, Muslim charities which raise money to help Palestinians have been targeted for investigation, shut down and some of their administrators jailed because providing welfare to Gaza indirectly helps Hamas.

"After 2001 there was a whole discourse about how supposedly Muslims [in America] used these charitable donations to support violence.

"There was never ever in the US anything substantially that made that case. But here they did have a case where somebody was using money to support settlers, money that fosters extremism and violence, and they completely ignored it," said Beliak.

(4) Israel won't take orders from US: Netanyahu

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/19/2630148.htm

By Middle East correspondent Anne Barker

Posted July 19, 2009 23:08:00

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected a US demand to stop building homes for Jews in East Jerusalem.

Mr Netanyahu was speaking after the US State Department summoned Israel's ambassador in Washington, Michael Oren, and told him Israel must suspend a plan to build 20 new apartments in East Jerusalem.

Israel annexed the area in 1967 and declared all of Jerusalem its capital.

But Palestinians want East Jerusalem as their capital in any independent state, and say Jewish settlements on Palestinian land are incompatible with peace.

Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will not take orders from the US, and will not accept the idea that Jews cannot live or buy homes anywhere in Jerusalem.

The US Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, is preparing to visit the region soon.

(5) U.S. demand for East Jerusalem building freeze 'surprised' Netanyahu

By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1101192.html

Last update - 11:17 19/07/2009

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he had been "surprised" by a recent U.S. demand that Israel halt a construction project in a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem.

"I was surprised by the U.S. move," the premier told his advisors. "In my conversation with [U.S. President Barack] Obama in Washington, I told him that I could not accept any limitations on our sovereignty in Jerusalem. I told him Jerusalem is not a settlement, and it has nothing to do with discussions on a freeze."

Netanyahu's comments came after both Israel Radio and Army Radio reported that the U.S. State Department summoned Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren over the weekend to advise him that the project, developed by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz, should not go ahead.

As of Sunday evening, the bureau has not received a response from U.S. officials to the report.

"I won't cave in on this matter," Netanyahu pledged Sunday during consultations at his bureau.

The prime minister added: "During my previous tenure I built thousands of housing units in the [East] Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa, and I went against the world. Therefore, it is clear that in the present situation I will not cave in, all the more so since this is a matter of 20 housing units only."

Netanyahu: Israel rule over Jerusalem not up for discussion

Earlier Sunday, Netanyahu said Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem was not a matter up for discussion.

Netanyahu told ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting that Jerusalem is the united capital of Israel and that all citizens are allowed to purchase property in any part of the city they choose.

"Imagine what would happen if someone were to suggest Jews could not live in or purchase [property] in certain neighborhoods in London, New York, Paris or Rome," he said.

"The international community would certainly raise protest. Likewise, we cannot accept such a ruling on East Jerusalem," Netanyahu told ministers.

This is the policy of an open city, he said, and Israel would not accept a stance that counters that civil right.

"Israeli Arabs are not forbidden from buying houses in west Jerusalem and Jews must be granted the same right in the eastern part of the city," he added.

Netanyahu said that he had made this stance clear to U.S. President Barack Obama, declaring that the issue of construction in Jerusalem could not be linked to the discussion on settlements.

Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat denounced the Israeli response, saying Netanyahu understands that a peace agreement is impossible unless East Jerusalem is deemed the Palestinian capital.

Peace and settlement activity are diverging paths that can never meet, he said.

Speaking Sunday in New Delhi, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the administration was trying to reach an agreement with the Israelis on settlements. "The negotiations are intense. They are ongoing," she said.

'U.S. tells Israel to halt East Jerusalem building'

Moskowitz, an influential supporter of Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem, purchased the Shepherd Hotel in 1985 and plans to tear it down and build housing units in its place. The hotel is located near a government compound that includes several government ministries and the national police headquarters.

The approval, granted by the Jerusalem municipality earlier this month, allows for the construction of 20 apartments plus a three-level underground parking lot.

In response, Oren told the State Department that Israeli construction in East Jerusalem was no different than in any other part of the country.

Jerusalem could not be considered along the same lines as settlements, he said, adding that Israel would not accede to this demand.

The Jerusalem municipality issued a statement following the report, saying the purchase was legal and it had acted with full transparency in granting building permits.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy had no immediate comment.

PA fears U.S. will let Israel keep up settlement construction

Meanwhile, Palestinian officials said on Saturday they were worried the U.S. administration was close to an interim agreement with Israel on settlement construction.

According to information that has reached the Palestinian Authority, Israel will not completely halt construction in the settlements but will limit it drastically to the point of almost stopping it. In exchange, Arab countries will implement previously discussed concessions - among them, allowing Israeli planes to cross their airspace and opening diplomatic missions.

The PA will discuss this with U.S. special Middle East envoy George Mitchell in Ramallah this week.

Sources in the PA said that "half-solutions" are unacceptable and that Israel must completely stop construction in the settlements.

The Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam reported on Saturday that Mitchell is to inform PA President Mahmoud Abbas by phone that the U.S. administration has been unable to obtain Israel's consent to stop construction completely.

Senior Palestinian officials have been following ambiguous statements made by Clinton, who has hinted that an agreement with Israel is in the offing.

Senior officials say American assent to even limited Israeli construction in the settlements would once again damage the American position as an honest broker in the Middle East. U.S. President Barack Obama told American Jewish leaders last week that his clear position against settlements has strengthened his position as an honest broker with the Arabs.

Over the past few days, Abbas has reiterated concerns over continued construction in the settlements, saying he would not renew negotiations with Israel as long as such construction persisted. However, senior Palestinian officials said that soon after the Obama administration reaches an agreement with Israel and the Arab countries, it intends to renew negotiations on a final status agreement. If the PA refuses to join, as Abbas apparently articulated, it will appear to be obstructing the peace process.

In any case, the PA will probably seek to postpone talks until after the Sixth Fatah Congress and general elections, scheduled for August 4. Sources in the PA said talks between Hamas and Fatah, which were to resume between July 25-28, would probably be postponed until after the Fatah Congress opens in Bethlehem.