November 2, 2009 Oil, gold prices see gains 
 The price of crude oil rose Monday on new data which showed that manufacturing activity is expanding in both the United States and China and on a report from the National Association of Realtors that said pending home sales were up in September, raising hopes that fuel demand will rise. At just a few minutes before the close of trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange, December contracts for West Texas Intermediate had added 89 cents to $77.89 per barrel, while Brent crude was up $1.11 to $76.31 per barrel on the ICE Futures Europe exchange in London.


 
 Disgraced Texas financier R. Allen Stanford is being stripped of his knighthood in the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda, the head of the government panel that approves the awards said Monday. The National Honors Committee voted unanimously to revoke Stanford’s title for embarrassing the nation by running an alleged Ponzi scheme out of his Antigua-based offshore bank, Chairwoman Jacqui Quinn-Leandro said

Houston Chronicle : ST. JOHN’S, Antigua — Disgraced Texas financier R. Allen Stanford is being stripped of his knighthood in the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda, the head of the government panel that approves the awards said Monday.


 
 The financial advisory industry and their clients still may be struggling with the aftermath of the market crash — but investor plaintiff’s attorneys are doing just fine, thank you. “We’re seeing a lot of product-failure cases,” said Scott Shewan, the newly elected president of the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association, which represents plaintiff’s lawyers. “Product cases differ from [one-off] suitability cases,” he said, in that they affect all investors who buy a faulty product.


 
 Several Supreme Court justices seemed unsympathetic Monday to calls for the courts to get involved in reining in what investors are calling “excessive” fees on mutual funds, a popular investment vehicle for millions of Americans. Some of the justices suggested that a regulatory agency might be in a better position to determine if the fees are appropriate. They also said consumers always have recourse to switch to another fund if they aren’t happy with the fee amounts.

The National Journal reports that the lobbying effort over climate change could grow even more contentious than the fight for health care reform. The climate bill battle has fractured partisan, geographic and industry allegiances; thrown erstwhile enemies into strange-bedfellow partnerships; and sparked allegations of dirty tricks on both sides of the debate. And this is just the beginning

One year ago, in response to a Treasury Plan to rescue large banks without mandate for lending, I rose defiantly from my comfort area below the radar screen to speak my mind and deliver “truth” to America.  My fears, unfortunately since confirmed, was that Tarp-infused banks would use Treasury-injected capital to heal internal wounds left by lax controls, leverage upon leverage and abuse of synthetic instruments, leaving small and middle market businesses  without resources for recovery.  I argued that financial engineering had long distorted the value of our markets and seduced Americans into a false security of increasing GDP, dismissing the need for value creation through production of goods and delivery of services. I foretold that middle market manufacturers, the unsung heroes and hope for this nation, would be rendered prime casualties of the credit crisis and appealed for a national commitment to sustain the nation’s core economic base.  At the time, I had proposed a Provisional Federal Bank to lend directly to deserving businesses.  My call was early, my premise sound, my concerns verified but my solution ideologically rebuffed.  As such, unemployment became the defining force of our nation leaving the engine of job creation without fuel for production.