Citigroup reportedly is looking to raise additional foreign capital:
Citigroup is putting the final touches to its second big capital-raising effort in as many months, seeking up to $14bn from Chinese, Kuwaiti and public market investors.Under the proposal being discussed, the bulk of the money roughly $9bn would be most likely to come from China, people familiar with the negotiations say. The Kuwait Investment Authority would contribute about $1bn, while $2bn to $4bn would be raised through a public placement of shares.
The article, from the Financial Times, notes that Citigroup's attempt to shore up its finances by ...
Continue readingCongress to meet new patrons?
The New York Times reports that Merrill Lynch and several other big financial firms are seeking foreign investment to offset their losses brought on by their heavy betting on the subprime mortgage market, a development that may be troubling some in Congress:
To shore up its deteriorating finances, Merrill is now in discussions with investors in the United States, Asia and the Middle East, including American private equity firms, to raise about $4 billion in the coming days, these people said.The developments underscore the rising toll that the mortgage crisis is taking on many once-proud Wall Street banks. In ...
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Sunlight for Senate Campaign Contributions
For the past year, the Sunlight Foundation has worked to get a bill passed that would require Senators to file their campaign finance contribution reports electronically, allowing that information to be more readily available before elections than it is now. Passage of the bill has been blocked by Republicans, specifically Sen. John Ensign, for this same amount of time. We aren't going to give up on our fight to get S. 223 passed and intend to keep the pressure on this year. To kick things off we've made this video to explain the issue and keep the attention on Sen. Ensign and his unreasonable hold on the bipartisan bill:
Continue readingAnother One Bites the Dust
The era of Abramoff appears to be nearing conclusion in Washington. Bob Ney is serving time behind bars; Tom DeLay forced to resign; Sen. Conrad Burns and Reps. Richard Pombo and J.D. Hayworth defeated in the 2006 elections; numerous lobbyists and officials now have prison records. Today, under pressure from Republican leaders, Rep. John Doolittle will drop out of his race for reelection in his northeastern California district. Rep. Doolittle was one of the few remaining members of Congress suspected of making illegal deals with the convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and is under investigation by the FBI. Let's recap Doolittle's history as an Abramoff apparatchik with a little help from Congresspedia.
Continue readingElectronic Filing in Connecticut
The Hartford Courant editorializes today about Connecticut's elections commission's new website that promises significant gains in regard to political transparency for the state. The commission was given the responsibility of designing an electronic campaign reporting system for candidates for state office, PACs and party committees. Now, seeing who has donated money to state candidates will be as simple as online shopping, as The Courant reported last week. "Disclosure is meaningless if the information is not readily accessible, searchable, sortable and easily understood," as the commission's director was quoted. Amen. Their new database enables candidates, PAC and political party committee chairs and treasurers to electronically submit campaign finance statements and other required information.
The Courant called on the commission to take further steps for transparency. The current law requires only statewide candidates who raise more than $250,000 have to file electronically. Those who do not meet that high threshold, which includes most of the members of the state legislature, are required only to file paper reports. And the editors called the General Assembly to amend the state's campaign finance law, passed legislatively in 2005, to require electronic filing by all serious candidates for state office and PACs.
Continue readingWatch Washington
All of us at the Sunlight Foundation want to congratulate our grantee Jim Harper for the success of WashingtonWatch.com, a very useful site for citizens eager to follow and impact federal governmental policy. The web traffic of the site has grown 350% over the past 12 months with a half-million citizens visiting the site in 2007. WashingtonWatch.com gives us a unique way to access and share information about individual bills being considered by the Congress and regulatory changes being considered by the federal bureaucracy. The site uses government predictions on the costs or savings from proposed bills and regulations, and then calculates what that means to individual Americans in dollars and cents. With an increasingly Web-enabled citizenry, Jim's site is a valuable tool to not only keep tabs on our nation's business, but allows each of us to have our say. Over the past year, WashingtonWatch.com has added tools which expand its usefulness, including a wiki function allowing the public to post comments on individual bills and federal policy, and a widget that allows bloggers to post vote totals on bills they care about on their blogs.
Continue readingStay-at-home Servers
Microsoft propoganda targets our most vulnerable citizens - our children!
Continue readingForgive Us For Bragging
We are absolutely delighted to have been profiled in the Chronicle of Philanthropy's edition this week (sub. required, but here's a link on our site) and we wanted you to know about it. The article highlights our distributed research projects, as well as other elements of our work and grant making. It also gives a glimpse of some of our esteemed citizen researchers and some of our grantees. We couldn't do it without both of them.
Continue readingFormer Staff Members: We Know Where Two More Are
Thanks to Craig Newmark, we now know where two more former staffers of resigned, retired or defeated members of Congress are now. Wayne Palmer, the former chief of staff to Sen. Rick Santorum, now lobbies for Astrazeneca Pharmaceuticals LP, while Tim Berry, the former chief of staff for Rep. Tom DeLay lobbies for Time Warner. We now have four lobbyists verified, only 44 to go!
Continue readingEthics Reforms in Action
The hedge fund industry is courting U.S. Rep. Richard Baker (R-La.) to head their lobbying efforts, according to a report over the weekend from The Washington Post. Baker said he has not decided to take the position as president of the Managed Funds Association (MFA), but did admit that the nearly million-dollar-a-year job did "look very interesting." He informed the House Ethics Committee Friday of his talks with MFA as members of Congress are now required to do as a result of the lobbying law passed last year. Baker is the first member to meet this new requirement.
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