We Are The World 25 For Haiti - Official Video

Recorded on February 1st, 2010, in the same studio as the original 25 years earlier (Henson Recording Studios, formerly A&M Recording Studios) "We Are The World 25 For Haiti", in which Jones and Richie serve as executive producers and producers, was created in collaboration with executive producers Wyclef Jean, Randy Phillips and Peter Tortorici; producers Humberto Gattica and RedOne; and co-producers Rickey Minor, Mervyn Warren and Patti Austin to benefit the Haitian earthquake relief efforts and the rebuilding of Haiti.

Academy Award-winning writer-director Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby), whose own personal efforts as well as those of Artists for Peace and Justice have already saved countless lives in Haiti, filmed the private recording session to create the accompanying video and behind-the-scenes production, and serves as Film Director and as an Executive Producer with Jones, Richie, Jean, Phillips and Tortorici.

The 25th Anniversary recording features over 80 artists and performers. The recording of We Are The World 25 For Haiti embodied the same enthusiasm, sense of purpose and generosity as the original recording 25 years ago. Every one of the artists who participated, regardless of genre or generation, walked into the room with their hearts and souls completely open to coming together to help the people of Haiti.
...

We Are The World [Original] 1985
Relief for Africa

CME Group (the offical website)

I do not know anything about the Dow so the only question is this good for Main Street America.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc advised Dow Jones on the deal, now that scares me.  I mean are they not part of the group that got us into a market mess, and are they not paying out big bonuses.   I do not know if I would trust them in counseling.....



CME Group to Take 90 Percent Stake in Joint Venture Owning Dow Jones Indexes Business
CHICAGO, Feb. 10 CME Group, the world's leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, and Dow Jones & Company today announced that they have signed a definitive agreement in which CME Group will take a 90 percent ownership interest and Dow Jones will take a 10 percent ownership interest in a new joint venture that will own the Dow Jones Indexes, which includes The Dow Jones Industrial Average and approximately 130,000 index properties.  Pending approval by regulators and completion of customary closing conditions, the transaction is expected to close during the first quarter of 2010.
Click the link above to continue reading article.....

CME buys 90 percent of Dow indexes in joint venture

NEW YORK (Reuters) - CME Group Inc (CME.O) will acquire 90 percent of the Dow Jones' namesake indexes business in a debt-funded joint venture that values the century-old business at $675 million.Dow Jones will retain a 10 percent stake in the venture, called CME Group Index Services, which will raise some $613 million in third-party debt, the companies said on Wednesday. Dow Jones will get $607.5 million of the proceeds.
The Dow name will remain to preserve the familiar Dow Jones Industrial average .DJI brand, under the terms of the deal with Dow Jones & Co's owner News Corp (NWSA.O). The brand was created in 1896 by Charles Dow, a company founder.
The deal gives Chicago-based CME Group, the world's largest derivatives exchange operator, a key asset beyond 2014 when its exclusive right to offer futures on the Industrial average and other Dow indexes would have expired.
"We would expect to continue to have very, long-term license rights," CME Group Chief Executive Craig Donohue said on a conference call with reporters, adding 90 percent of the joint venture's earnings will flow directly to CME.
The growth and profit margins of the index business make it "very attractive," Donohue said.
CME Group will contribute a portion of its market data services, valued at $613 million, to the joint venture. Dow Jones will continue to own the brand.
The joint venture represents just 3 percent of CME Group's revenue and is a fraction of its $18 billion market cap.
"It is just not that exciting strategically given the size," said Mark Lane, a Chicago-based analyst at William Blair & Co.
Dow Jones Indexes creates and licenses indexes that investors and others use to measure the performance of markets, including stocks, bonds and real estate. The business offers more than 130,000 equity indices, according to its website.
The deal is expected to close in the current quarter.
While the shares of both CME Group and News Corp were little changed in post-market trading, some saw the deal as a way for the exchange operator to protect trading volumes and spark indexing growth.
"In combination with that brand and the recognition of the DJI, as well as market expertise put together, the CME will have a much larger global reach," said Joseph Cusick, senior market analyst at brokerage optionsXpress in Chicago.
CME Group currently pays Dow Jones licensing fees that let it offer futures and options contracts based on the Dow industrials. The deal gives it these rights and also represents yet another proprietary product for the company whose core business relies on products that cannot be transferred to other exchanges.
"The threat is that you wake up one day and realize that (Dow) negotiated with another exchange, and the index goes somewhere else and you lose volumes on those contracts," said Diego Perfumo, an analyst at Equity Research Desk.
The structure of the deal, which creates a so-called leveraged partnership, has been used more frequently of late as it comes with tax advantages for both sides. It was used by the Ricketts family when it took control of the Chicago Cubs baseball team in a $845 million deal.
Such a structure, however, works only in situations where the buyer has the capacity to effectively make the purchase with debt, as CME Group did in this case.
Barclays Capital (BARC.L) advised CME Group and Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) advised Dow Jones on the deal.
(Additional reporting by Ann Saphir, Paritosh Bansal and Angela Moon; editing by Robert MacMillan, Leslie Gevirtz)

The White House Blog

President Obama Responds to the Confirmation of 27 Nominees

Posted by Macon Phillips on February 11, 2010 at 09:07 PM EST

President Obama's statement following action by the Senate to confirm twenty-seven nominees:

Today, the United States Senate confirmed 27 of my high-level nominees, many of whom had been awaiting a vote for months. 

At the beginning of the week, a staggering 63 nominees had been stalled in the Senate because one or more senators placed a hold on their nomination.  In most cases, these holds have had nothing to do with the nominee’s qualifications or even political views, and these nominees have already received broad, bipartisan support in the committee process. 

Instead, many holds were motivated by a desire to leverage projects for a Senator’s state or simply to frustrate progress.  It is precisely these kinds of tactics that enrage the American people. 

And so on Tuesday, I told Senator McConnell that if Republican senators did not release these holds, I would exercise my authority to fill critically-needed positions in the federal government temporarily through the use of recess appointments.  This is a rare but not unprecedented step that many other presidents have taken.  Since that meeting, I am gratified that Republican senators have responded by releasing many of these holds and allowing 29 nominees to receive a vote in the Senate. 

While this is a good first step, there are still dozens of nominees on hold who deserve a similar vote, and I will be looking for action from the Senate when it returns from recess.  If they do not act, I reserve the right to use my recess appointment authority in the future.

eRead the Economic Report of the President

Posted by Dan Pfeiffer on February 12, 2010 at 12:20 PM EST

Yesterday the White House released the annual Economic Report of the President – a detailed analysis of actions taken by the Administration to address our Nation’s economic challenges over the past year and the President’s plans to rebuild and rebalance our economy for the future. As part of White House’s commitment to make government more accessible, the Economic Report of the President is now available as an eBook for your Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble nook, Sony Reader and a number of other devices. We are always looking for ways to bring people closer to their government through new technology.
The 2010 Report includes an overview by the President of the Administration’s economic policies and goals, a 300-page analysis of the Administration’s first year and over 100 pages of key economic statistics. Now the 2010 Report isn’t just more convenient, it’s also more environmentally friendly.
The full report is available for download as a free eBook through WhiteHouse.gov or through Amazon, Barnes & Noble or the Sony Reader store.


A Look In Side the Economic Report of the President
Posted by Christina Romer on February 11, 2010 at 9:00 AM ESTA very long WH blog with graphs.


Jobs and Economic Job Forum



The White House Forum - December 3, 20091
9 articles
Community Forums - through January 7, 2010
1 article
Remarks at the Brookings Institution- December 8, 2009
2 articles
Remarks On Jobs Through Retrofitting- December 15, 2009
2 articles

A Bipartisan Meeting on Health Reform: The Invites Are Out

Posted by Jesse Lee on February 12, 2010 at 4:35 PM EST

On Tuesday the President discussed the upcoming bipartisan meeting on health reform, saying "Let's get the relevant parties together; let's put the best ideas on the table.  My hope is that we can find enough overlap that we can say this is the right way to move forward, even if I don't get every single thing that I want."
Moments ago the invite (pdf) was sent out from Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius – here is the full text:

Dear Speaker Pelosi, Senator Reid, Senator McConnell, and Representative Boehner:
We are writing to ask that you join President Obama for a bipartisan meeting at the Blair House on February 25 to discuss health reform legislation.
We have seen again in recent days that when it comes to health care, the status quo is unsustainable and unacceptable. The proof is right in front of us: just last week, a major insurer, Anthem Blue Cross, announced plans to increase premiums for many of its policyholders in California by as much as 39 percent on March 1.
As the President noted this week, if we don’t act on comprehensive health insurance reform, this enormous rate hike will be "just a preview of coming attractions. Premiums will continue to rise for folks with insurance; millions more will lose their coverage altogether; our deficits will continue to grow larger."
Now is the time to act on behalf of the millions of Americans and small businesses who are counting on meaningful health insurance reform. In the last year, there has been an extraordinary effort to craft effective legislation. There have been hundreds of hours of committee hearings and mark-ups in both the House of Representatives and Senate, with nearly all of those sessions televised on C-SPAN. The Senate spent over 160 hours on the Senate floor considering health insurance reform legislation and, for the first time in history, both the House of Representatives and Senate have approved comprehensive health reform legislation. This is the closest our Nation has been to resolving this issue in the nearly 100 years that it has been debated.
The Blair House meeting is the next step in this process. The session will begin at 10:00 a.m. and be broadcast live in its entirety. Although it is impossible to include every House Member or Senator who has played a pivotal role in the health care debate, the President is inviting the most senior House/Senate bipartisan leadership, as well as the chairmen and ranking members of the committees that oversee health insurance reform legislation in both chambers. A complete list of this group is attached. The President would like each of you to designate an additional four Members to attend the meeting and be available to participate. It is also important that each of you have one staff member specializing in health care policy in the meeting.
We will have a representative from the Office of Management and Budget to provide technical assistance, and hope that representatives from the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation will also be able to attend.
In addition to the President, attending and participating on behalf of the Administration will be the Vice President, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Nancy-Ann DeParle, Director of the Office of Health Reform.
The President will offer opening remarks at the beginning of the meeting, followed by remarks from a Republican leader chosen by the Republican leadership and a Democratic leader chosen by the Democratic leadership. The President will then open and moderate discussion on four critical topics: insurance reforms, cost containment, expanding coverage, and the impact health reform legislation will have on deficit reduction.
Since this meeting will be most productive if information is widely available before the meeting, we will post online the text of a proposed health insurance reform package. This legislation would put a stop to insurance company abuses, extend coverage to millions of Americans, get control of skyrocketing premiums and out-of-pocket costs, and reduce the deficit.
It is the President’s hope that the Republican congressional leadership will also put forward their own comprehensive bill to achieve those goals and make it available online as well. As the President said earlier this week:
I’m looking forward to a constructive debate with plans that need to be measured against this test: Does it bring down costs for all Americans as well as for the Federal Government, which spends a huge amount on health care? Does it provide adequate protection against abuses by the insurance industry? Does it make coverage affordable and available to the tens of millions of working Americans who don't have it right now? And does it help us get on a path of fiscal sustainability?
These are priorities that we all share, and the President is looking forward to examining with you and your colleagues how we can best achieve the most effective reform possible.
Sincerely,
Rahm Emanuel
Assistant to the President

Kathleen Sebelius
Secretary of Health and Human Services

This is the full list of invitees

Bipartisan Health Reform Meeting
Blair House
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Members of Congress Invitation List:
Senator Harry Reid,D-NV, Majority Leader
Senator Mitch McConnell, R-KY,Republican Leader
Senator Richard Durbin, D-IL, Majority Whip
Senator Jon Kyl, R-AZ,Republican Whip
Senator Max Baucus, D-MT,Chairman of the Finance Committee
Senator Chuck Grassley, R-IA,Ranking Member of the Finance Committee
Senator Tom Harkin, D-IA,Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee
Senator Mike Enzi, R-WY,Ranking Member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee
Senator Christopher Dodd, D-CT,Member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA
Representative Steny Hoyer, D-MD, Majority Leader
Representative John Boehner, R-OH, Republican Leader
Representative James Clyburn, D-SC, Majority Whip
Representative Eric Cantor, R-VA, Republican Whip
Representative Charles Rangel, D-NY, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee
Representative Dave Camp, R-MI, Ranking Member of the Ways and Means Committee Representative Henry Waxman, D-CA, Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee Representative Joe Barton, R-TX, Ranking Member of the Energy and Commerce Committee
Representative George Miller, D-CA, Chairman of the Education and Labor Committee
Representative John Kline, R-MN, Ranking Member of the Education and Labor Committee
Representative John Dingell, D-MI, Chair Emeritus of the Energy and Commerce Committee