“Geithner: Confidence has returned to markets - Associated Press” plus 4 more

Geithner: Confidence has returned to markets - Associated Press
Runaway tire wrecks car on I-71 - Cincinnati.com
MAUI NEI - Maui News
Teardown Reveals iPhone Camera Could Fit the iPod Touch — Barely - Wired
Treasury secretary says confidence has replaced last year's panic in ... - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Geithner: Confidence has returned to markets - Associated Press

Posted: 10 Sep 2009 02:23 PM PDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Citing emerging financial sector stability, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Thursday that a number of government rescue efforts in place since the Wall Street crisis are no longer needed and that banks will repay $50 billion in rescue funds over the next 18 months.

Geithner, testifying before a congressional watchdog panel, said the nation still has a ways to go before "true recovery takes hold." But he said improved conditions in the banking industry have prompted Treasury to begin winding down emergency support programs implemented after the collapse of Lehman Brothers last year.

"The financial system is showing very important signs of repair," Geithner said. He added later: "I would not want anyone to be left with the impression that we're not still facing really substantial enormous challenges throughout the US financial system."

The cautious but upbeat tone reflects a growing push by the administration to present the government financial rescue efforts as a success amid lingering public apprehension about the economy.

Geithner was testifying before the Congressional Oversight Panel that monitors Treasury's $700 billion financial bailout that President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama used to shore up not only banks but the auto industry as well.

Banks have already paid back $70 billion of the $250 billion that the government injected over the past year to boost their liquidity. Geithner noted that only $11 billion of that infusion has occurred since he became Treasury secretary earlier this year. He said dividends on those infusions and the repurchase by banks of warrants held by the government has also generated $12 billion for the government. Overall, he said, the government realized a 17 percent return from 23 banks that have paid back the government in full.

Geithner said a major Treasury program that had been used to guarantee up to $3 trillion in money market mutual fund assets would be closed down on schedule on Sept. 18. The program had no direct cost to taxpayers and actually earned more than $1 billion in fees paid by the mutual fund industry.

That program was established at the height of the financial crisis a year ago after a large money market fund called the Reserve Primary Fund "broke the buck" - meaning the value of its underlying assets fell below $1 for each investor dollar put in.

Still, unemployment stands at 9.7 percent and administration officials say it could rise to 10 percent in the coming months. Foreclosure rates are surging and the mortgage market remains tight. Geithner acknowledged that the economy would still face "more than the usual ups and downs."

"The classic mistake people make is they declare victory too soon," he said.

Given the still weak economy, Donald Kohn, vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, said it would be a while before the central bank dismantles all of its emergency lending programs.

"That time is not likely to come for an extended period," Kohn said in a speech to the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank in Washington.

The Fed has been developing "tools" to rein in the money it has pumped into the economy to spur lending and lift the economy out of recession, Kohn said. That's important to avoid a bout of inflation when the economy is on firmer footing.

The government's bailouts have not been popular with the public and Geithner's testimony emphasized the positive returns from the various measures.

Still, one protester sitting behind Geithner held up a pink sign asking: "Where did the $ go?"

Elizabeth Warren, the oversight panel's chairwoman, said: "Taxpayers still want to know how their money has been used and what difference their enormous investment has made."

The panel has been critical of government steps, arguing that in the past it has not received full value for repaid infusions of money into financial institutions. More recently, the panel contended that a significant portion of the government assistance to the auto industry will likely not be repaid.

Geithner pointed out that the number of large financial institutions has grown smaller since the economic crisis. But Warren cautioned that some of the remaining firms were larger than before.

"Are we more at risk on the question of concentration than we were a year ago?" she asked.

"I don't think so," Geithner replied. "But it depends largely on what Congress ultimately decides in terms of financial reforms."

The administration has called for a series of regulatory changes, including requiring large, intertwined institutions to have access to more money to cover their risks.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has pushed back his panel's consideration of the legislation from September until October.

Spokesman Steve Adamske said the committee wanted more time to hold hearings on the issues, as well as draft the bill, which includes more than a dozen major sections.

"The chairman believes the House is still on track to complete our work and get the White House a final product by the end of the year," Adamske said.

---

Associated Press writers Martin Crutsinger, Jeannine Aversa and Anne Flaherty in Washington contributed to this report.

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Runaway tire wrecks car on I-71 - Cincinnati.com

Posted: 10 Sep 2009 01:48 PM PDT

A runaway radial nearly ended Craig Gilbert's college career before it began.

The tire appeared to come out of nowhere as he traveled southbound on Interstate 71 on Monday night near the Montgomery Road exit. The rolling rubber smashed his car's roof and shattered his windshield, but it did not dash his spirits.

"I've heard of it raining cats and dogs," Gilbert joked, "but not tires."

An hour before the accident, Gilbert, 18, had left his home in Lebanon for his first taste of college life at Lincoln Technical Institute in Indianapolis. His major: car repair.

"I was running late and missed the exit for I-275," Gilbert said.

"Some people say I was in the wrong place at the wrong time," he added.

He disagrees. He believes he was in the right place at the right time. The hit his car took and his calm response may have saved a life or two.

The runaway tire flew off the right front side of a northbound Saturn driven by Herbert Murphy of Woodlawn, Tenn. The tire bounced across the interstate, over the concrete median barrier and on top of Gilbert's car. He was driving a rusty blue 1986 Chevy Celebrity, with two nicknames, the Tank and the Big Blue Beast, and 89,000 miles on the odometer.

"The tire looked like a Firestone radial," Gilbert said. "It looked pretty good."

The tire had some bounce to it. After bashing the Big Blue Beast, it rolled into the path of another car.

Witnesses and police at the scene told Gilbert's mom, Mary Gilbert, who drove from Lebanon as fast as she could after her son called her about the accident, that her son's car and his reasoned response to the emergency were life-savers.

"The Hamilton County Sheriff's Deputy, Rick Paquette, told me that had the tire hit the car behind my son's car - it was smaller and had a passenger in the front seat - he would have been reporting a fatality instead of an accident," Mary Gilbert said.

The accident produced no major injuries.

"My arms felt a little itchy from where the glass slivers hit," Gilbert said. "I had empty my pockets of my shirt to get the slivers out."

He was shaken. But not ready to call it quits and go back home.

"He wanted to go on to college," Mary Gilbert said. She told her son the accident might be a sign. He could go to school next semester. He didn't want to hear any of that.

Gilbert had waited long enough and worked hard enough to get on his life. He worked the past two summers flipping burgers - at the Beach water park concession stand and his local Burger King - to earn enough money to pay for and fix up the Big Blue Beast.

"I worked on it solid the last two month," Gilbert said of the now-totaled Tank. "It was running good. New tires. New wiper blades. And, a full tank of gas."

Diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Gilbert took his time learning to drive. At the time of the accident, he had only had his driver's license for five days.

"And that was after having to take over his driver's test," noted his grandfather, Larry Elliott of Mainville. "He knocked over a cone on his first test."

Gilbert's calm demeanor - "he's a very mellow young man," said his grandfather - and his driver's training, as well as that second driver's test, paid off. They took him safely to the safe of the side of the road.

That's where his mom picked him up Monday night, after the Big Blue Beast was towed to a junkyard, and took him to college. Gilbert showed up in plenty of time the next day to take his first class, one that he had already had a crash course: Introduction to Auto Collision.

Gilbert is determined to made all of his classes, even though he's careless and living five miles from campus. "I can take a bus or buy a bike," he said.

His roommates want him to have the Tank towed to Lincoln Tech.

"They said they could cut off the roof and turn it into a convertible," Gilbert said.

He'd rather have another car, another beater like the Big Blue Beast. But first, he has debts to repay.

"Craig has no financial aid," said his mother. "He's going to school on $13,000 in personal loans. He has to get a job while he's at school. He has to make his first loan payment in October."

Gilbert has five job interviews lined up for Monday. One interview will take him to a tire store.

As he applies for jobs, Gilbert plans to remind himself of the moral to his story:

"Don't let anything stop you."

Not even a runaway radial.

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MAUI NEI - Maui News

Posted: 10 Sep 2009 01:33 PM PDT

MAUI NEI

By RON YOUNGBLOOD, For The Maui News

Of course, two major appliances decided to quit at the same time. An old electronically controlled stove decided to get stupid. The washing machine would agitate but wouldn't rinse.

Had a grill. Making a frozen pizza edible with charcoal might be possible if you could figure out how to get the heat up to 400 degrees and keep it there for 24 minutes.

Going to the laundromat was a hassle, if a good place to people watch during the tumbling. Two or three machine loads of jeans, shirts and socks made a considerable bundle lashed on the back of The Dancer. Motorcycles are designed to haul people, not freight.

Time to find someone or some outfit to get personal maintenance back to a sane level. That can be a tall order when the rule of the day is replace rather than repair. "It'll cost you more than it's worth," is the usual refrain, but not necessarily true.

The solution popped up while looking through the back pages of my favorite newspaper. Years of reading newspapers as part of the job resulted in the ability to go through pages of newsprint without seeing a single advertisement. I've run into shoppers who can go from front to back without seeing a single news story - or column. Smart readers look at both.

The Maui News "Business Card Directory" is an eye-catcher. You name it and someone does it or sells it. On the left-hand side was the solution to the clean-clothes/hot-food problem: Kelly's Appliance Repair, LLC.

"I've got a washing machine that doesn't work. It might be the control switch. The stove's digital display just went blank and it won't work."

"I can come by Thursday. Will anybody be home?

"No." Take a deep breath but with no real anxiety. "I could leave the house open. The washing machine's in the garage, which is a mess." My frequent housekeeping lapses can prove embarrassing.

"OK. I'll take care of it," Kelly Asato said. In 25 years of business, he must have seen just about everything.

Phone call to the office Thursday afternoon: "I've worked on that stove before. You got mice?"

Strange to say with all the cats around, but the answer was yes. The wee beasties might be coming in from outside, but more likely are brought in for a bit of cat and mouse with the final score being mouse 1, cat 0, at least until extra innings. Mice like to hide in the stove, making nests out of insulation. I suspected a mouse might have chewed through a wire.

There was a hint of humor in Asato's voice. "That wasn't the problem. The stove just needed to be reset. You were right about the washing machine. I replaced the switch. I took the garden hose connection off the drain."

I'd been breaking Environmental Protection Agency regulations. The idea is to protect groundwater that might end up in someone's faucet. Didn't seem likely when the house is hooked to a supply line stretching back into East Maui and Upcountry was in the middle of a drought. The plants didn't mind a few suds. There's a long history of Upcountry houses draining water from showers and washing machines off into a pasture - mostly to prevent overloading cesspools.

"Hooking a garden hose to the drain isn't a good idea," Asato said. "It makes the machine's pump work too hard. The sink drain came apart. I found a can and propped it up so it doesn't leak, but you should get it fixed."

"Sounds great. What's the bill?"

"I'll leave on the kitchen table. You can mail me a check."

The bill was manini, less than most auto repair shops charge for an hour of labor with parts extra. Asato included the cost of the new washing machine switch.

After weeks of hitting restaurants for hot food and stuffing quarters into coin slots, it was a treat to eat and clean at home. Weeks? True. Check the definition of procrastination.

The check went in the mail the next day. I went around the office, telling anyone who would listen: "If you ever need a repair guy . . . "One reporter said, "Oh, that's my uncle. He used to work for Hamai."

It really shouldn't but it prompts a smile to think there are still Maui folks doing business the small-town, old-fashioned way. You trust me, I'll trust you. Some things should never change.

* Ron Youngblood is a former staff member of The Maui News. He can be reached at writer@clearwire.net.

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Teardown Reveals iPhone Camera Could Fit the iPod Touch — Barely - Wired

Posted: 10 Sep 2009 12:43 PM PDT

Apple could have put the iPhone's camera in the iPod Touch, but it would have been a very tight squeeze, according to a repair company that disassembles iPods and iPhones.

That's because the iPod Touch measures 8.5 mm thick, and the iPhone's camera measures 6 mm, leaving a mere 2.5 mm of wiggle room for the iPod Touch. By comparison, the iPhone measures 12.3 mm thick, leaving plenty of space for its auto-focus camera.

"Unlike the Nano, the iPod Touch could conceivably support an iPhone-sized camera, although it would certainly be an engineering challenge," said Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixIt.

Apple on Wednesday released updates for its iPod family, including a new iPod Nano featuring a video camera and an iPod Touch with a performance boost. However, many questioned why the Nano gained a camera while the iPod Touch did not. Prior to the event, dozens of photos of third-party iPod Touch cases containing camera holes surfaced on the internet.

Michael Gartenberg, a tech strategist with Interpret, said Apple likely left the camera out of the iPod Touch to create "segmentation" of the products. This move would make consumers desire both an iPod Touch and an iPod Nano, he said.

However, iFixIt's observations suggest that Apple may have left the camera out of the iPod Touch because it was technically too difficult to install. Prior to the event, a rumor report also said iPods with cameras might see a delay because of technical issues. This engineering challenge may have been the problem delaying a camera-equipped iPod Touch. That means an iPod Touch with a camera could be on the road map, and Apple's engineers are probably devising a way to cram that camera inside.

Another question that arose from yesterday's iPod event was why the iPod Nano can only capture video but not still images. iFixIt performed a teardown of the iPod Nano and discovered its low-resolution VGA camera is only 2.75 mm; the iPod Nano is 6.2 mm thick. The iPhone's 6 mm camera, which must also account for a rubber mount, is thicker than the entire iPod Nano. In short, the low-resolution (640-by-480) VGA camera — with no focusing capability — would produce poor-quality still shots, which is likely why Apple opted to leave a still-shot function out.

See Also:

Photo: Mike Rohde/Flickr

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Treasury secretary says confidence has replaced last year's panic in ... - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Posted: 10 Sep 2009 12:36 PM PDT

That program was established at the height of the financial crisis a year ago after a large money market fund called the Reserve Primary Fund "broke the buck" — meaning the value of its underlying assets fell below $1 for each investor dollar put in.

"The classic mistake people make is they declare victory too soon," he said.

Given the still weak economy, Donald Kohn, vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, said it would be a while before the central bank dismantles all of its emergency lending programs.

"That time is not likely to come for an extended period," Kohn said in a speech to the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank in Washington.

The government's bailouts have not been popular with the public and Geithner's testimony emphasized the positive returns from the various measures.

Still, one protester sitting behind Geithner held up a pink sign asking: "Where did the $ go?"

Elizabeth Warren, the oversight panel's chairwoman, said: "Taxpayers still want to know how their money has been used and what difference their enormous investment has made."