Some More Laurent Kerviel Stories

French Bank Offers Details of Big Loss

By DAVID JOLLY and NICOLA CLARK

Published: January 27, 2008

PARIS — The French bank Société Générale offered greater detail on Sunday about how it said a low-level former trader carried out fraudulent trades that led to more than $7 billion in losses.

The release of the five-page document came as the accused trader, Jérôme Kerviel, 31, spent a second day in police custody. (Text of the Report click here)

Société Générale said Sunday that Mr. Kerviel had misappropriated other people’s computer access codes, falsified documents to enter fictitious trades and employed other methods to cover his tracks helped by his years of experience working in offices that monitor traders.

Until now, the bank, one of Europe’s largest, has insisted that Mr. Kerviel was the lone architect of elaborate trades that involved betting tens of billions of dollars of the bank’s money on European stock index futures. But during a conference call with reporters on Sunday, Jean-Pierre Mustier, chief executive of the bank’s corporate and investment banking arm, said: “I cannot guarantee to you 100 percent that there was no complicity,” The Associated Press reported.

So far, there has been no suggestion that Mr. Kerviel personally profited from the trades.

Talking to reporters Sunday in Paris outside the headquarters of the French financial police, Jean-Michel Aldebert, head of the financial section of the Paris court, said the questioning of Mr. Kerviel had so far been “extremely fruitful.”

He declined to give details of the interrogation, other than to say the trader addressed “the operations that Société Générale described as fictitious.” Mr. Kerviel, he said, had been explaining “what had happened in very interesting ways.”

Mr. Aldebert added that Mr. Kerviel’s state of mind seemed stable. “According to what he told me, he’s doing fine.”

Mr. Aldebert said the court had decided a decision to continue to hold Mr. Kerviel. On Monday, the trader is to be transferred to the main financial judiciary office in Paris, where he will see a judge. Under French law, Kerviel must either be released or face preliminary charges by Monday afternoon.

The Paris prosecutor’s office formally opened an investigation of Mr. Kerviel on Friday after Société Générale filed a complaint accusing him of falsifying bank records and computer fraud. The bank, which says it first uncovered the deals on Jan. 18, was ultimately forced to undo Mr. Kerviel’s trades early last week, leading to losses of 4.9 billion euros, or $7.2 billion, and requiring Société Générale to seek 5.5 billion euros in fresh capital.

The bank’s efforts to release new information appeared to be an attempt to quash widespread speculation that Mr. Kerviel had either exploited weaknesses in the bank’s internal controls or had had an accomplice.

French investigators on Saturday began examining documents and computer files obtained during two raids late on Friday, at Mr. Kerviel’s residence and at the bank offices where he had worked.

A lawyer for Mr. Kerviel, Elisabeth Meyer, could not be reached Sunday for comment. She did not return e-mail messages or answer her phone.

Laura Schalk, a Société Générale spokeswoman, said officers of the financial police had searched the bank’s offices in La Défense, a business district west of Paris, on Friday night. “They were there mostly to collect data from the trader’s electronic files,” she said.

The bank’s management has come under increasing pressure from French officials to come forward with a more detailed accounting of how Mr. Kerviel could have amassed such enormous losses by himself, over the course of a year, without raising any red flags among supervisors or internal auditors.

Daniel Bouton, Société Générale’s chief executive, has said Mr. Kerviel used in-depth knowledge of the bank’s risk-control software systems that he had gained from a previous back-office position. In an interview published Saturday in the French newspaper Le Figaro, Mr. Bouton described Mr. Kerviel’s efforts to hide his activities as being like a “mutating virus.” Mr. Bouton said, “The nature of his fictitious and fraudulent operations were constantly evolving.” He added, “And when the control systems detected an anomaly, he managed to convince control officers that it was nothing more than a minor error.”

At the financial police headquarters in Paris, there was an unusual amount of activity for a Sunday, with police cars coming and going, some with sirens blaring. There are bars on the fourth floor, on the left hand side, on windows of the 10-story building where Mr. Kerviel was being interrogated.

Michel Histel, 62, a retiree who lives nearby and who, like many French people has been avidly following the story, described the scene as “very exceptional.”

“What’s so surprising about this to me is that they brought this young man so quickly to the financial police headquarters,” Mr. Histel said. “What is a little bit revolting to me is that people are attacking this young man.”

“But this bank has been playing with fire for a long time,” he said, referring to Société Générale’s leadership in financial derivatives products.

What Top American Private High Schools Look Like

At Elite Prep Schools, College-Size Endowments

By GERALDINE FABRIKANT

Published: January 26, 2008, NY Times

EXETER, N.H. — When Curtis Thomas, a 14-year-old from a poor family living in St. Rose, La., arrived here two years ago to attend Phillips Exeter Academy, he brought little more than a pair of jeans and two shirts. That would hardly do at a 227-year-old prep school where ties are still required for boys in class.

So Curtis’s history teacher, armed with Exeter funds, took him shopping for a new wardrobe.

That outlay was just a tiny fraction of what Exeter spends on its students. With its small classes, computers for students receiving financial aid, lavish sports facilities and more, Exeter devotes an average of $63,500 annually to house and educate each of its 1,000 students. That is far more than the Thomas family could ever afford and well above even the $36,500 in tuition, room and board Exeter charges those paying full price.

As a result, like the best universities to which most of its students aspire, Exeter is relying more and more on its lush endowment to fill the gap.

Despite Exeter’s expanding commitments, which include a new promise to pay the full cost for any student whose family income is less than $75,000, the school’s endowment (dotation) keeps growing. Last year — fueled by gifts from wealthy alumni and its own successful investments — it crossed the $1 billion mark, up from just over $500 million in 2002.

At the nation’s richest colleges and universities, endowments are now coming under increased scrutiny. On Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee, concerned about the rising cost of higher education, requested data from the nation’s wealthiest colleges on several issues, including how they spend their endowments.

Endowments have soared because “there has been a lot of easy money,” said Thomas Hudnut, president of Harvard-Westlake School, an independent day school in Los Angeles. Even as many private schools have done more to provide scholarships to poor and middle-income students, the advantages they enjoy over public schools have widened. To some experts, it is but another indication of America’s growing wealth disparity.

“Having a big endowment permits all the wonderful touches: computers in the classroom, trips, enriched curriculum,” said Susan Fuhrman, president of the Teachers College of Columbia University. Students at many private schools “get a much richer array of opportunities than most public schools can afford.”

Average expenditures per student for public schools, not adjusted for inflation, rose 28 percent, to $8,809, between the 1999 and 2004 fiscal years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The independent schools may be well financed, but even middle-class families today often cannot afford the tuition.

Over a recent breakfast in Exeter’s cafeteria, Tyler C. Tingley, Exeter’s principal, said the school had commissioned a report showing that in 1980, 40 percent of American families could afford to pay tuition at Phillips Exeter, but by 2004 that number had declined to just 6 percent.

The ability of Exeter and other wealthy institutions to underwrite students helps explain why they may enjoy an advantage over other independent schools in competing for the best students.

“There is so much money out there and the schools want to take advantage,” said Sandra Bass, editor of Private School Insider, which tracks New York private schools. “Every private school is looking for a competitive edge so they can attract the top tier of kids.”

Exeter now has nearly $1 million in endowment assets for each of its students. Stunningly, that is about 60 percent of what Harvard, with its $34.9 billion endowment, holds for each of its 20,000 undergraduate and graduate students.

According to the most recent statistics, Exeter, which a year ago held $800,000 per student, was already among the 25 richest private schools in endowment per student, measured not just against other prep schools but also against universities and colleges. A growing number of endowments at the nation’s independent schools have become so big that trustees have hired full-time money managers, sometimes alumni, to manage their money.

Generally the older, best-known schools have the largest endowments. Phillips Exeter, founded in 1781, is the nation’s third-oldest school after Governor’s Academy in Byfield, Mass., and Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., which now has $800 million. Choate’s endowment has reached $267 million.

Indeed, fund-raisers at both day and boarding schools find that graduates feel more loyalty toward their secondary schools than to their colleges.

“I always tell people I was educated at Exeter and went to Yale,” said James H. Ottaway Jr., a former board member of Dow Jones & Company, whose most recent gift to Exeter was $10 million for its scholarship fund. “I have always given more money to Exeter because I felt it was the most educational experience and character-forming experience of my life.”

Most private schools, of course, are not so rich. Of the 179 independent schools for which Commonfund, an investment group, manages money, 73 percent have endowments under $50 million.

But some prep schools can seem as luxurious as the nation’s top universities. Exeter’s 619-acre campus boasts two swimming pools, two hockey rinks, the largest secondary school library in the world, a cafeteria with made-to-order omelets for breakfast and classes with a typical student-teacher ratio of no more than 12 to one.

Andover has a world-class art gallery; Lawrenceville, near Princeton, N.J., has its own nine-hole golf course.

Through scholarships and a greater effort to diversify student bodies, independent schools are sharing their wealth more widely. But access to the best schools remains limited to a relatively tiny group that qualifies on the basis of educational attainment, which is still largely shaped by family background.

A little more than half of the students at Exeter, for example, pay the full tuition and other charges. And roughly 13 percent of the students are “legacies,” the children or grandchildren of alumni.

Exeter’s effort to broaden the economic diversity of its classes was partly prompted by its research showing that the middle class was being squeezed out of private education.

“If your selection pool is only 6 percent of the population,” Mr. Tingley, the principal, said, “that is a small percent to draw from. We are trying to create a level playing field. It used to be that we gave financial aid to 34 percent of the student body. Now it is 46 percent. We anticipate it will increase further as a result of the changes.”

Less-wealthy schools are trying to keep up. Sarah Daignault, chairwoman of the investment committee at the Madeira School, a girls’ prep school in McLean, Va., said her school allocates 11 percent of its $18 million operating budget to financial aid, which she feels is too little. “It is important that our student body be diverse because today’s kid is going to function in a very diverse world,” she said.

“Private school is a luxury, and rich families want the best facilities,” said Michael Gary, director of admissions at Exeter. “All too often fund-raising is about the buildings and the sports facilities. The schools need them to attract the wealthy families. They don’t have high on their priorities providing access to kids who can’t afford it.”

The Price of Oil

Yes, it's $ 0.33 in Teheran, and $ 6. 65 in London :)

Candidate Guide by Tom Toles (NYT Cartoonist)

Methods of Mayhem

A Spiral of Losses by a ‘Plain Vanilla’ Trader

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

Published: January 25, 2008, the NYTImes

PARIS — On the elite trading floors here, where France’s brightest minds devise some of the most complex instruments in global finance, few people noticed Jérôme Kerviel.

The Société Générale chief executive, Daniel Bouton, flanked by co-chief executives, Philippe Citerne, left, and Didier Alix.

He was lucky to be there at all. Many of his colleagues had been plucked from the prestigious Grandes Ecoles — the Harvards and M.I.T.’s of France — and wielded advanced degrees in math or engineering. Mr. Kerviel arrived from business school and started out shuffling paper in the back office.

But on Thursday the world came to know Mr. Kerviel, 31, as the most dangerous accused rogue trader ever, a young gambler who found himself sucked into a spiral of losses that left a $7.2 billion hole in Société Générale, one of France’s largest and most respected banks.

While Société Générale executives maintained that he had acted alone, many questioned how that was possible given the scope of the losses.

“There are plenty of excellent brains at Société Générale, consequently I find it hard to believe the risk management systems and all the auditors did not indicate anything at any level,” said Hélyette Geman, a professor of mathematical finance at ESSEC, a leading French business school, as well as professor at the University of London.

It is a remarkable turn of events for Société Générale, which since the mid-1980s has built itself into a global powerhouse in trading derivatives like futures and options.

“In France we considered Société Générale a magic bank,” Ms. Geman said.

Until now Société Générale, unlike many Wall Street banks, had seemingly sailed through the turmoil in the financial markets with its reputation intact. The January issue of Risk, a monthly magazine about risk management and derivatives, named the bank its “Equity Derivatives House of the Year.”

But Mr. Kerviel, described by bank executives as a shy junior trader, did not fit the mold at Société Générale. The bank lures its top talent from the country’s premier science and engineering schools in Paris. Mr. Kerviel grew up in Brittany, in western France, and attended the University of Lyon. He joined Société Générale in 2000 as what was effectively a clerk, processing and recording the trades made on the trading floor.

By 2006, Mr. Kerviel had worked his way up to the trading floor, where he specialized in arbitrage, or making bets on small difference between various European stock market indexes such as the CAC in France and DAX in Germany.

A senior banker at Société Générale described Mr. Kerviel “as a very junior trader, not a star.” As far as his superiors knew, this banker said, “he was starting to work on a small portfolio. He’s more of a shy person than an extrovert.”

All the same, covering the billions in market positions would have taken considerable skill. “Hiding it was a full-time job because you needed to know exactly what do,” this banker said.

The chief executive of Société Générale’s corporate and investment banking unit, Jean-Pierre Mustier, insisted that the bank’s own investigation showed what they termed the rogue trader to have acted without the knowledge or cooperation of his superiors.

“We’ve been going through the positions for four days,” Mr. Mustier said. “The research we have made has not shown any link with anyone else at Société Générale.”

Mr. Kerviel’s bad bets in the markets came to light a week ago. According to bankers familiar with the situation who asked for anonymity because the investigation was continuing, risk control specialists at the bank first discovered the suspicious trades on Friday. After combing through trading records all day Saturday, the executives discovered the extent of the fraud.

Mr. Mustier returned to Paris from London to oversee the investigation at Société Générale’s headquarters over the weekend. Mr. Kerviel was summoned and was questioned there Saturday night.

Among financial veterans of other trading floors as well as financial experts across Europe on Thursday, there was widespread incredulity that a junior employee like Mr. Kerviel could have racked up such huge losses without the knowledge of his superiors.

Like Nick Leeson, the trader who brought down Barings bank by making huge secret bets on Asian markets in 1995, Mr. Kerviel was something of an anomaly on Société Générale’s trading floor.

“I had students who have a hard time getting jobs at top French banks because of this elite system we have in France,” said Ms. Geman. “In the U.K. and U.S., it’s less of a club based on where you went to school when you were 19 or 20.”

According to officials at the bank, Mr. Kerviel’s losses came from bets made on what they termed “plain vanilla products,” relatively simple futures tied to major European stock indexes.

He had made bullish bets, a senior banker said, which were gradually unwound over the first three trading days of this week. The banker insisted that the closing of those positions had not contributed to the huge losses on European bourses Monday and Tuesday.

Adding to the mystery is the conclusion by Société Générale executives that Mr. Kerviel had not profited from his trades.

“We have no explanation for why he took these positions, and we have no reason to believe he benefited from a financial point of view,” the banker said. “We don’t understand why he took such a massive position.”

Beloved Heath Ledger Passed Away.

Actor Heath Ledger found dead

Email Picture

By Matea Gold and Paul Lieberman, Los Angeles Times
January 23, 2008

Heath Ledger, whose chiseled good looks made him a heartthrob to millions and who won movie fame for playing a tragic homosexual cowboy, was found dead in a Manhattan apartment today, police said.

The body of the Australian actor, who won an Academy Award nomination for the 2005 movie "Brokeback Mountain," was found hours after this year's Oscar picks were announced.

Ledger, 28, was found unconscious at 3:26 p.m. and pronounced dead minutes later by emergency medical personnel, said Det. Madelyne Galindo, a spokeswoman for the New York Police Department.Police did find prescription sleeping pills in a container in the bedroom and other pills in containers in the bathroom, but Browne said it was too early to establish a cause of death.

Minutes after the news of Ledger's death broke, a crowd of several hundred people gathered outside the SoHo apartment where his body was found. TV crews and residents were quickly joined by fans from around the city, including a trio of acting students from Brooklyn who took the subway over as soon as they learned of his death.

"It's sort of like James Dean died in this age," said Daniel Lonsbury, 18.

"Definitely, that's why we ran down after we heard about it," said John Payne, 20, who added that he feels like he grew up with Ledger.

"So many actors get stuck in one image," Payne said. "He wouldn't let that happen. It was kind of inspiring, just seeing him grow. And talk about risks -- 'Brokeback Mountain.' "

The apartment where Ledger was found is in a posh section of SoHo known for its sprawling, high-ceilinged lofts. A listing for a 4,400-square-foot unit in the building at 421 Broome St. is on the rental market for $23,000 a month, according to a listing on Corcoran.com, which describes the unit as "a perfect evolution in modern luxury living."

Ledger was born to romance in Perth, in western Australia. His engineer father and French-teacher mother named him for the hero in Emily Bronte's classic "Wuthering Heights."

He got his first acting role playing Peter Pan at age 10 at a local theater company. After several independent films, Ledger moved to Los Angeles at age 19 and costarred opposite Julia Stiles in "10 Things I Hate About You," a teen comedy reworking of "The Taming of the Shrew."

"People just love to bash L.A.," Ledger told NW Magazine in 2000, according to IMDB, an online data base.

"People say it's so pretentious, so arrogant, so this and that. But it's truly a wonderful place. You don't have to go to the places where that stuff goes on. You don't have to go to Beverly Hills, you don't have to go to the parties," he was quoted as saying.

"You can live up in the lower canyon and live such a perfectly healthy, beautiful, fun life with all your friends. You can drive two hours one way and be at the Joshua Tree desert, two hours one way you're skiing at Big Bear. Sure, it can get full-on and that's why it's good to get out. But it's too easy just to say: 'Nup, I hate it. I'm not living there anymore.' "

Ledger's fame will always be tied to "Brokeback Mountain," the tender film of two cowboys and their tragic love.

Along with the Oscar nomination, Ledger won the love of costar Michelle Williams. They lived in Brooklyn with their daughter, Matilda.

They separated last year.

Ledger will appear as the Joker this year in "The Dark Knight," a sequel to 2005's "Batman Begins."

"The Dark Knight" is one of the most anticipated movies of 2008, and for months Batman fans have been debating the film's biggest wild card: the choice of Ledger as the Joker, a role that comes with the considerable challenge of filling the clown shoes so memorably worn by Jack Nicholson in 1989.

"The studio is stunned and devastated by this tragic news," said Alan Horn, president and chief operating officer of Warner Bros., and Jeff Robinov, president of Warner Bros. Pictures Group, in a statement. Warner produced "The Dark Knight."

"The entertainment community has lost an enormous talent. Heath was a brilliant actor and an exceptional person. Our hearts go out to his family and friends," they said.

MME 2 - HK Reminder

Hey class,

Hope you had a great week-end. Just a few words for Tue:

• Text “Wall Street gets lift from CEO changes” – read and be ready to discuss in class.
• The vocab on the back of the article
• A & B p. 93 : on a separate sheet so I can pick up some of them and check you’ve all done your HK. (Yes, we are back in middle school ;)

I also need to know the subjects chosen by the following groups:
*Latdara & Caroline
* Antoine & Louis
* Hilaire & Cyril
Make sure you can on Tue with an idea so I can give you a Go. I also need the names for Hilaire and Cyril’s appointed students for the board.

The following students have ALREADY been chosen by their peers: Alex H, Alex, Patrick, Clarisse, Caroline, Marie, Coralie, Margaux, JB & Milena.
I also need to announce to JB & to Marie that they will be my appointed students for the board on Jan 29^th.

Best,

CJ

Civil War

Probably one of the most beautiful songs on war.... was initially written in Post-Vietnam era by the Guns 'n' Roses. Many major events of American modern history are mentioned: Vietnam war of course, JFK and MLK's assassination... So you young pacifists enjoy this old goodness... and whoever said that there was no poetry in Metal Rock was completely wrong.

"My hands are tied
The billions shift from side to side
And the wars go on with brainwashed pride
For the love of God and our human rights
And all these things are swept aside
By bloody hands time can't deny
And are washed away by your genocide
And history hides the lies of our civil wars"

Candidates on War: from Exit to Victory - as if either could be achieved.

War, Meet the 2008 Campaign

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

Published: January 20, 2008, NYTimes

THE BIG QUESTION Impatience with the war frames the political debate. Aidan Kittredge waits in Nashua, N.H., to ask Mitt Romney her question.

FOR the past year, I have led a double existence, dividing my time between military reporting assignments in Iraq and tracking the campaign debate in the United States.

Those were parallel universes, in which the discussion of the taxing road ahead and potential fall-back options were often so divergent that the generals and the politicians seemed not to be talking about the same war.

The American officers I met were hardly of one mind on how to proceed in Iraq, but they were grappling with decisions on how to try to stabilize a traumatized country with a hard-headed sense that although there have been significant gains, a long and difficult job still lies ahead — a core assumption that has frequently been missing on the campaign trail.

The politicians, on the other hand, seemed more intent on addressing public impatience with an open-ended commitment in Iraq, either by promising prompt withdrawal (the Democrats) or by suggesting that victory may be near (the Republicans).

Anthony Cordesman, a military specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who regularly visits Iraq, put it this way: “You have to grade all the candidates between a D-minus and an F-plus. The Republicans are talking about this as if we have won and as if Iraq is the center of the war on terrorism, rather than Afghanistan and Pakistan and a host of movements in 50 other countries.

“The Democrats talk about this as if the only problem is to withdraw and the difference is over how quickly to do it.”

“Unless you are suppressing insurgents the way the Romans did — creating a desert and calling it peace — it typically can take the better part of a decade or more,” said Andrew Krepinevich, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

“The paradox,” he added, “is that counterinsurgency requires convincing the Iraqis of our staying power. At the same time, the American people view success in terms of how quickly we can pull out.”

The politicians are suggesting they can produce faster results. But the candidates who have lambasted President Bush for failing to ask the tough questions about what might happen the day after Saddam Hussein was swept from power often don’t fully address hard questions about what might happen the day after the American military gets out.

Senator Hillary Clinton has advocated that the United States rapidly draw down forces while retraining a residual force to fight terrorists, protect the Kurds, deter Iranian aggression and possibly support the Iraqi military. But it is striking that those assignments do not include the core mission of the counterinsurgency doctrine: protecting Iraqi civilians from sectarian violence, which she sees as involving American forces in a civil war: “This is an Iraqi problem — we cannot save the Iraqis from themselves.”

Senator Barack Obama has pledged to withdraw combat forces, but perhaps not counterterrorism units or trainers, within 16 months of taking office. Mindful of the risk that such a wholesale withdrawal might lead to an escalation in sectarian killings, he has said that he would be prepared to send American troops back into Iraq as part of an international force to stop genocidal attacks. (That is hardly a far-fetched scenario; a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq issued in January 2007 by American intelligence agencies warned that the quick withdrawal of all American forces would probably lead to “massive civilian casualties and forced population displacement.”)

And fighting their way back into Iraq in the middle of a raging civil war might well be far more difficult and dangerous for American forces than their current operations.

John Edwards has said he would remove all troops from Iraq within 10 months of taking office, save for a small force to protect the United States Embassy and possibly humanitarian workers. But he has also stressed that he would keep a counterterrorism force in neighboring Kuwait or perhaps Jordan; it could swoop into Iraq to operate against militants inside the country.

But that raises the issue of whether such a force could respond in a timely way to terrorist threats from such a distance, and without the sort of intelligence that is gathered through regular interaction with Iraqi civilians.

An argument that Mr. Edwards and other Democratic candidates have made is that the withdrawal of American combat troops will force Iraqi political leaders to make the hard decisions on political reconciliation that they can otherwise avoid if the American military keeps propping them up. But if the Iraqis know that American forces are on their way out regardless of what they do, would they be more likely to respond by overcoming their differences or by preparing for the sectarian blood bath that might follow?

Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who argued that the United States lacked sufficient troops well before Mr. Bush sent the 30,000 reinforcements, has declared the military “surge” a success while acknowledging that the Iraqi political progress that it was intended to stimulate has been slow.

Looking at the second possibility, some analysts like Stephen Biddle, a military expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, say they believe that security might, arguably, be maintained by arranging for Sunni volunteers to protect their home areas while assigning American and other foreign troops to police a Bosnia-style cease-fire. But such suggestions seem to be debated more by the experts than the candidates.

Rudolph Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee have discussed Iraq in less detail than Senator McCain. In a November appearance in New Hampshire, Mr. Giuliani summed up his strategy in one word: “victory.” But victory seems an almost irrelevant concept in a conflict that entails a commitment to nation building and has more in common with the effort to suppress ethnic killings in the Balkans than with the decisive battles of World War II.

In the meantime, some senior officers seem utterly puzzled by the debate at home. “The one thing that befuddles is I have not heard any candidate describe what their short and long term goals are for Iraq, how it fits into their regional goals for the Middle East and transnational terrorism,” said the American officer. “Is their goal just to withdraw troops as fast as possible?”

Americans' Notion of Relationship is A Tiny Special Thing.

This is how far as the NYTimes goes.... A friend of mine sent this over after a penultimate discussion on Facebook's social status uselessness and the drama burgeoning around those who go from "in a relationship" to the "single" label... Ultimately, there's a noun for everything in American Relationship language, the terminology differs from one country to another because the way people interact differs from one country to another. You hook up, you date, you "pacs" yourself in French, or sortir avec like "go out with so" (go out like in outside ? weiiird), you flirt, you're FWB, and so on so forth... So here's the NYTimes' point of view on the situation. Funny, interesting, scientifically disturbing.

Friends With Benefits, and Stress Too

By BENEDICT CAREY October 2, 2007

To some, it may seem like an ideal relationship, less stressful than an affair, longer lived than a fling or that elusive one-night stand. You can even sit around in your sweats and watch “Friends” reruns together, feeling vaguely reassured.

Yet relationships in which close friends begin having sex come with their own brand of awkwardness, according to the first study to explore the dynamics of such pairs, often called friends with benefits, or F.W.B..

The relationships tend to have little romantic passion, but stir the same fears that stalk lovers: namely, that one person will fall harder than the other.

Paradoxically, and perhaps predictably, the study suggests, these physical friendships often occlude one of the emotional arteries of real friendship, openness. Friends who could once talk about anything now have an unstated taboo topic — the relationship itself. In every conversation, there is innuendo; in every room, an elephant.

The research, conducted among Michigan State University students, confirmed previous findings that most college students report having had at least one such relationship. Although that is undoubtedly true of many couples throughout history, “friends with benefits” have become a cultural signature of today’s college and postcollege experience.

“The study really adds to the little we know about these relationships,” said Paul Mongeau, a professor of communications at Arizona State University who was not involved in the research. “One of the most interesting things I get from it,” he said, “is this sense that people in these relationships are afraid to develop feelings for the other person, because those feelings might be unreciprocated.”

In the study, appearing in the current issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior, Melissa Bisson, a former graduate student at Michigan State, and Timothy Levine, a professor in the communications department, surveyed 125 young men and women and found that 60 percent reported having had at least one friend with benefits.

One-tenth of these relationships went on to become full-scale romances, the study found. About a third stopped the sex and remained friends, and one in four eventually broke it off — the sex and the friendship. The rest continued as friends-with-benefits relationships.

In a follow-up study, the researchers gave 90 students who reported having at least one such relationship a battery of questionnaires asking about passion, commitment and communication.

“We found,” Dr. Levine said, “that people got into these relationships because they didn’t want commitment. It was perceived as a safe relationship, at least at first. But also that there was this growing fear that the one person would become more attracted than the other.”

Yet, he added, the overall qualities of the relationships appeared to be true to the name. On standard psychological measures, they appeared more like friendships than romances.

Friends with benefits scored in the middle on a scale assessing intimacy and low on passion and commitment, the study found. “When scores were compared to previous findings with romantic couples, scores on all three dimensions were lower, with the largest differences observed in commitment followed by passion,” the authors wrote.

The relationships may be less common than reported. “Friends with benefits” appears to have become an umbrella term for a wide variety of sexual arrangements, some of which are quite familiar, Dr. Mongeau said.

In addition to budding romances, he said, the “friends” may also be former lovers who occasionally see each other or they may be people who hang out at the same places and now and then end up wrapped around each other, even though they are not really friends.

Dr. Mongeau said the study seemed to have captured the dissonant, circular thinking that characterized what it felt like for a friendship to enter treacherous territory.

“There’s clearly a strong desire to be with this other person, who fills important needs,” he added. “But at the same time, it’s as if I’m saying, ‘O.K., I’m not going to get passionately involved — because then it’s at risk of being a real romance.’”

On Why You Shouldn't Download Music

1,500 Job Cuts Expected at EMI.

by ERIC PFANNER

NY Times January 15, 2008

LONDON — Terra Firma, the private equity firm that recently acquired the music company EMI Group, plans to announce a reorganization Tuesday, including the elimination of close to a third of EMI’s staff, according to people briefed on the plans.

Terra Firma plans to dismiss more than 1,500 employees, out of about 5,500, as it moves to streamline marketing operations at EMI and focus on the discovery of new artists.

The cuts have unnerved managers of artists signed to EMI, including Robbie Williams and the Verve, who fear that support for their works will falter.

EMI, which Terra Firma acquired last year for £3.2 billion, or $6.4 billion, is perhaps the most troubled of the major record companies, which include the Universal Music Group, Sony BMG and the Warner Music Group, all of which are suffering from a continuing steep decline in sales of compact discs. EMI’s share of album sales in the United States fell to 9.4 percent last year from 10.2 percent a year earlier, according to Music & Copyright, a research service.

EMI and Terra Firma declined to comment. But a person briefed on the plans said reports of up to 2,000 job cuts were “probably a little bit on the high end of the range,” saying 1,500 was more likely. In any case, that would still represent a big share of employment at EMI Music, the recording division, which was expected to bear the brunt of the cuts. EMI’s music publishing unit, which has performed well, is expected to be affected less.

People briefed on the plans said EMI might shut down some of its record labels and some marketing might be consolidated.

The cuts would be the second overhaul for EMI in the last year. In January 2007, the company merged its two main American labels, Capitol Records and Virgin Records.

Still, industry analysts say more wrenching changes may have been delayed at EMI as the company spent the last few years in dead-end discussions with a rival, Warner Music, over a possible merger.

Job cuts are a common consequence of private equity takeovers; what is unusual, analysts say, is that Terra Firma has taken several months to detail its plans. When private investors led by Edgar Bronfman Jr. acquired Warner Music in 2003, they announced a reorganization plan, including job cuts, almost immediately.

Now Warner, with a slightly larger global market share of recorded music — 13.8 percent in 2006, to EMI’s 12.8 percent — has a smaller staff than EMI, having reduced workers to 4,000.

Something Too American to Cross the Atlantic

you think you know American music? think again:) tons of real American hip-hop, rap, country, pop, rock music never reach Ellis Island and all you know about American musical culture is old stuff from the 70's, Beyoncé and Kanye West. Don't get me wrong, that's still awesome... but here are 3 very very different pieces worth the while.

MME 2 - HK Reminder

Hello class,

As you know, we’re going to kick off semester 2 tomorrow so here are a few things:

* you have to write your application letter for tomorrow (ohhhh, I can hear a few “oh $$$$ we completely forgot”….) Well get to it and bring it with you in class tomorrow.

* I hope TOEIC went ok.

* I’ll see you all tomorrow, up & running, and on time :)

Best,

CJ

and the Home of The Brave

This article from the War Torn Special Section of the NYTimes offers a very interesting evaluation of the situation of US military as they return from the middle east front. I have to say though that all my military friends are dear to my heart and that I can't wait to see them back home, alive and kicking.

Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles

By DEBORAH SONTAG and LIZETTE ALVAREZ January 13, 2008

Late one night in the summer of 2005, Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a 7-Eleven (a franchised supermarket) in the Las Vegas neighborhood where he had settled after leaving the Army.

This particular 7-Eleven sits in the shadow of the Stratosphere casino-hotel in a section of town called the Naked City. By day, the area, littered with malt liquor cans, looks depressed but not menacing. By night, it becomes, in the words of a local homicide detective, “like Falluja.”

Mr. Sepi did not like to venture outside too late. But, plagued by nightmares about an Iraqi civilian killed by his unit, he often needed alcohol to fall asleep. And so it was that night, when, seized by a gut feeling of lurking danger, he slid a trench coat over his slight frame — and tucked an assault rifle inside it.

“Matthew knew he shouldn’t be taking his AK-47 to the 7-Eleven,” Detective Laura Andersen said, “but he was scared to death in that neighborhood, he was military trained and, in his mind, he needed the weapon to protect himself.”

Mr Sepi, who was still legally under-age, paid a stranger to buy him two tall cans of beer, his self-prescribed treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. As Mr. Sepi started home, two gang members, both large and both armed, stepped out of the darkness. Mr. Sepi said in an interview that he spied the butt of a gun, heard a boom, saw a flash and “just snapped.”

In the end, one gang member lay dead, bleeding onto the pavement. The other was wounded. And Mr. Sepi fled, “breaking contact” with the enemy, as he later described it. With his rifle raised, he crept home, loaded 180 rounds of ammunition into his car and drove until police lights flashed behind him.

“Who did I take fire from?” he asked urgently. Wearing his Army camouflage pants, the diminutive young man said he had been ambushed and then instinctively “engaged the targets.” He shook. He also cried. Nonetheless, Mr. Sepi was booked, and a local newspaper soon reported: “Iraq veteran arrested in killing.”

Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: “Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.” Pierre, S.D.: “Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.” Colorado Springs: “Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.”

Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings.

About a third of the victims were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives, among them 2-year-old Krisiauna Calaira Lewis, whose 20-year-old father slammed her against a wall when he was recuperating in Texas from a bombing near Falluja that blew off his foot and shook up his brain.

A quarter of the victims were fellow service members, including Specialist Richard Davis of the Army, who was stabbed repeatedly and then set ablaze, his body hidden in the woods by fellow soldiers a day after they all returned from Iraq. And the rest were acquaintances or strangers, among them Noah P. Gamez, 21, who was breaking into a car at a Tucson motel when an Iraq combat veteran, also 21, caught him, shot him dead and then killed himself outside San Diego with one of several guns found in his car.

Few of these 121 war veterans received more than a cursory mental health screening at the end of their deployments, according to interviews with the veterans, lawyers, relatives and prosecutors. Many displayed symptoms of combat trauma after their return, those interviews show, but they were not evaluated for or received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder until after they were arrested for homicides.

“He came back different” is the shared refrain of the defendants’ family members, who mention irritability, detachment, volatility, sleeplessness, excessive drinking or drug use, and keeping a gun at hand.

“You are unleashing certain things in a human being we don’t allow in civic society, and getting it all back in the box can be difficult for some people,” said William C. Gentry, an Army reservist and Iraq veteran who works as a prosecutor in San Diego County.

The troubles and exploits of the returning war veteran represent a searing slice of reality. They have served as a recurring artistic theme throughout history — from Homer’s “Odyssey” to the World War I novel “All Quiet on the Western Front,” from the post-Vietnam-era movie “The Deer Hunter” to last fall’s film “In the Valley of Elah.”

At the heart of these tales lie warriors plagued by the kind of psychic wounds that have always afflicted some fraction of combat veterans. In an online course for health professionals, Capt. William P. Nash, the combat/operational stress control coordinator for the Marines, reaches back to Sophocles’ account of Ajax, who slipped into a depression after the Trojan War, slaughtered a flock of sheep in a crazed state and then fell on his own sword.

Unlike during the Vietnam War, the current military has made a concerted effort, through screenings and research, to gauge the mental health needs of returning veterans. But gauging and addressing needs are different, and a Pentagon task force last year described the military mental health system as overburdened, “woefully” understaffed, inadequately financed and undermined by the stigma attached to PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder).

Although early treatment might help veterans retain their relationships and avoid developing related problems like depression, alcoholism and criminal behavior, many do not seek or get such help. And this group of homicide defendants seems to be a prime example.

Suggested reading: Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s “On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society”; Dr. Shay’s “Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming.”

Here's the Headline for the NY Times's Europe Section

Hello students,

After reading on my favorite all-time gossip site news from President Sarkozy, I realized the buzz around it in foreign politics and I decided to check out the Europe section of the NY Times, and here it is... The very moderate newspaper talks about the "dangerous liaison"... Check it out below...
Just so you know, I wanted to include the "break down" video by Sen. Clinton that French press (and worldwide press) is talking about, just so you see it's not a break down.....

Best

CJ

A Politically Dangerous Liaison for France’s President

By ELAINE SCIOLINO
January 8, 2008

PARIS — It is called the “Carla effect,” and it helps explain President Nicolas Sarkozy’s sudden decline in popularity.

Far from endearing Mr. Sarkozy to his people, his paparazzi romance with the model-turned-singer Carla Bruni has fueled criticism that he is ignoring the country and spending too much time having fun.

On top of that, Le Journal du Dimanche, a weekly owned by one of Mr. Sarkozy’s best friends, reported on its front page on Sunday that the couple would wed early next month.

According to a nationwide survey by the polling group CSA published Sunday, only 48 percent of the French surveyed said they trusted the president to run the country — a fall of seven points in a month. Since last July, his approval rating has plunged by 17 percentage points.

“President Sarkozy is exposing his flamboyant personal life at the moment the French want him to deliver on his promises to improve the economy,” said Stéphane Rozès, CSA’s director, in a telephone interview on Monday. “He has eliminated the line between public and private life, between his success in his personal life and his promises for the French people to succeed.”

The decline in Mr. Sarkozy’s approval rating was particularly significant among older people; in the past month, it fell nine points among those surveyed from ages 50 to 64 and 15 percentage points among those over 65.

Indeed, while the French faced the New Year with higher retail prices and a decline in their buying power, Mr. Sarkozy, 52, was photographed with Ms. Bruni, 40, touring the pyramids of Egypt and archaeological sites in Jordan. There, in the Middle East, was Ms. Bruni, a beatific look on her face, as she leaned her head on his shoulder; there he was holding her waist, his fingers touching her exposed midriff.

Dubbed by some commentators President Bling-Bling, the twice-divorced Mr. Sarkozy, is said to have given her a heart-shaped diamond engagement ring designed by Victoire de Castellane at Dior; she is said to have given him a Swiss-made Patek Philippe watch.

Mr. Sarkozy’s spokesman, David Martinon, has refused to confirm or deny the marriage reports, and the Élysée Palace has ordered a news blackout on the subject. Mr. Sarkozy is expected to address his love life at a two-hour news conference on Tuesday, the first of his presidency.

The exceptionally tolerant French did not seem at all perturbed that Mr. Sarkozy’s 11-year marriage ended in divorce in October, after his wife, Cécilia, left him for the second time. But for some commentators, opposition politicians and ordinary Frenchmen, the tabloid photos of Mr. Sarkozy and Ms. Bruni in love lack taste — and are disrespectful of the citizenry.

“The exhibition of the private life of the head of state is without doubt linked to the fall in his approval ratings,” said an editorial on Monday in the newspaper L'Alsace. “The glitter makes many French people dream, but it also irritates many others — especially those who have a hard time making ends meet.”

An editorial in Monday’s L'Est Républicain said, “The French people did not elect him to be a rock star,” adding, “He forgot that he should have a romance with France and not with himself and his paramour.”

The centrist daily newspaper Le Monde ran a front-page cartoon in its Monday afternoon issue of a grimacing Mr. Sarkozy pushing a guitar-strumming Ms. Bruni in a supermarket shopping cart; the headline on its editorial read, “The king is naked.”

Interviews on the street in Le Parisien on Sunday posed the question, “How do you explain the decline?” referring to Mr. Sarkozy’s popularity, and one respondent, Anne-Marie Camez, 65, a retiree, replied, “Carla Bruni — the French are shocked that he displays himself with this girl who doesn’t at all have the image of a first lady of France.”

Mr. Sarkozy and Ms. Bruni, an Italian-born heiress to a tire-manufacturing fortune, met at a dinner party in November. While such a swift wedding might strike some as reckless, it would be politically expedient.

France historically tolerates extramarital sex by its public officials, but other cultures can be less forgiving. Mr. Sarkozy came under fire in Egypt, for example, for sharing a bedroom with Ms. Bruni. “Even if Bruni were Sarkozy’s fiancée, not mistress, church traditions do not allow her to live in his bedroom,” Gamal Zahran, an independent legislator, said in the Egyptian Parliament.

With Mr. Sarkozy set to visit India in two and a half weeks, some of the news media there are predicting a protocol crisis if Ms. Bruni goes along. “The top model cannot receive the same consideration as the president because a girlfriend is not treated like a wife,” the daily newspaper Indian Express quoted an anonymous Foreign Affairs Ministry official as saying.

But The Telegraph, of Calcutta, called for calm, saying in an editorial on Sunday, “There should have been a perfect fit between the French, the best-known lovers of the world, and the Indians, who gave the world that locus classicus of erotic literature, the Kama Sutra.”

The French press, meanwhile, continues to poke fun at Ms. Bruni, who has a son from her relationship with the philosopher Raphaël Enthoven. For two weeks running, the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchainé has run a fictional “Carla B. journal.” “Already four weeks of monogamy!” she exclaims in one entry.

The comment apparently referred to an interview that Ms. Bruni gave to the magazine Figaro Madame last February in which she declared: “I am faithful — to myself! I am bored to death by monogamy.”

US Primary

As I guess you all know by now, the American primary elections have started, and it seems that so far Obama & Huckabee are leading the way. This is a short summary from last night's caucus in Iowa, the first and symbolically relevant one. It's not final, though.

Obama Takes Iowa in a Big Turnout as Clinton Falters

By ADAM NAGOURNEY January 4, 2008

DES MOINES — Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, a first-term Democratic senator trying to become the nation’s first African-American president, rolled to victory in the Iowa caucuses on Thursday night, lifted by a record turnout of voters who embraced his promise of change.

The victory by Mr. Obama, 46, amounted to a startling setback for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, 60, of New York, who just months ago presented herself as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. The result left uncertain the prospects for John Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, who had staked his second bid for the White House on winning Iowa.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards, who edged her out for second place by less than a percentage point, both vowed to stay in the race.

“They said this day would never come,” Mr. Obama said as he claimed his victory at a packed rally in downtown Des Moines.

On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas who was barely a blip on the national scene just two months ago, defeated Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, delivering a serious setback to Mr. Romney’s high-spending campaign and putting pressure on Mr. Romney to win in New Hampshire next Tuesday.

Mr. Huckabee, a Baptist minister, was carried in large part by evangelical voters, who helped him withstand extensive spending by Mr. Romney on television advertising and a get-out-the-vote effort.

“Tonight we proved that American politics is still in the hands of ordinary folks like you,” said Mr. Huckabee, who ran on a platform that combined economic populism with an appeal to social conservatives.

Mr. Huckabee won with 34.4 percent of the delegate support, after 86 percent of precincts had reported. Mr. Romney had 25.4 percent, former Senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee had 13.4 percent and Senator John McCain of Arizona had 13.2 percent.

On the Democratic side, with 100 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Obama had 37.6 percent of the delegate support, Mr. Edwards 29.8 percent and Mrs. Clinton had 29.5 percent. Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico was fourth, at 2.11 percent.