The Morning Wrap

Calm down The Fed stepped into the troubled financial markets this morning, lowering the discount rate, the amount it charges to loan money directly to banks. The half-point drop in interest, The Wall Street Journal reports, is its most aggressive effort to date to contain the chaos stemming from rising defaults in the subprime mortgage industry. The Journal suggests that, even with the Fed help, "[m]any economists believe these problems, including declining consumer confidence, could lead to a recession."

It's no dirty bomb conviction, but... The Justice Department has secured a conviction against Jose Padilla, the former Chicago gang member who then-Attorney General John Ashcroft accused in 2002 of working with al Qaeda to set off a radiological bomb in an American city. President Bush declared Padilla an "enemy combatant," but his case was passed to the federal courts in 2005, just as the Supreme Court appeared ready to intervene. The case against Padilla, which ultimately was stripped of dirty bomb allegations, will likely be seen by the Bush Administration as justification for unauthorized wiretaps, the Wall Street Journal suggests. But privacy advocates note that the surveillance in Padilla's case was authorized by a judge in the mid-1990's.

Utah mine rescue turns deadly Efforts rescue six Utah miners trapped deep underground claimed the lives of three rescuers. The New York Times reports the crew was digging a path toward where the men are believed to be trapped when a tremor caused a rib of the mine to burst, collapsing on the victims and some of their machinery.

Feeling their oats Even though his 93-page opinion is still sealed, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Friedman must not have thought American consumers faced a dire threat from the merging of two yuppie grocery stores. The judge denied a Federal Trade Commission request to temporarily halt the merger of Whole Foods and Wild Oats, which the FTC argued threatened to monopolize the health food industry, The Wall Street Journal reports. The merging companies, meanwhile, argued that the rest of the supermarket industry is competition enough. The feds have not said whether they will appeal.

Even better than a $1,000 toilet seat In a wonder of defense procurement, the owners of a small South Carolina company have pleaded guilty to charging the Pentagon nearly $1 million dollars for shipping two 19-cent washers to Texas. In a more modest transaction, they charged $3.93 for sending three screws to Iraq. The company got away with this for years, according to Bloomberg, by labeling its shipments "priority," which the Pentagon usually just pays automatically.

Comments

[TJ]

Jose Padilla was never sent to or held at Guantanamo. There has been so much coverage of his time in DoD custody, that I find it incredible that this kind of factual error is contained in your "Morning Wrap".