Nicole Foss- On the Financial Sense Newshour this week, Jim Puplava is pleased to welcome back Nicole Foss. Nicole M. Foss is co-editor of The Automatic Earth, where she writes under the name Stoneleigh. She and her writing partner have been chronicling and interpreting the on-going credit crunch as the most pressing aspect of our current multi-faceted predicament. The site integrates finance, energy, environment, psychology, population and real politik in order to explain why we find ourselves in a state of crisis and what we can do about it. Prior to the establishment of TAE, she was previously editor of The Oil Drum Canada, where she wrote on peak oil and finance.
Foss runs the Agri-Energy Producers' Association of Ontario, where she has focused on farm-based biogas projects and grid connections for renewable energy. While living in the UK she was a Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, where she specialized in nuclear safety in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, and conducted research into electricity policy at the EU level.
Her academic qualifications include a BSc in biology from Carleton University in Canada (where she focused primarily on neuroscience and psychology), a post-graduate diploma in air and water pollution control, the common professional examination in law and an LLM in international law in development from the University of Warwick in the UK. She was granted the University Medal for the top science graduate in 1988 and the law school prize for the top law school graduate in 1997.
This week in her discussions with Jim Puplava, Nicole believes we will see the peaking of oil prices, the next bout of deflation and a looming depression. She sees resource wars as inevitable, given this deflationary scenario.
Bank of America Wins Dismissal From Countrywide Mortgage Securities Suit
By - Apr 23, 2011 4:35 PM ET
A Bank of America Corp. sign is illuminated outside a branch in Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S., on Friday, April 15, 2011. Photographer: Chris Keane/Bloomberg
Bank of America Corp. (BAC) was dismissed from a lawsuit brought by investors who bought mortgage-backed securities sold by Countrywide Financial Corp., the home lender Bank of America acquired in 2008.
U.S. District Judge Mariana Pfaelzer granted Bank of America’s request to dismiss the claim against it on grounds that it can’t be held liable for actions of a unit, according to an April 20 order filed in Los Angeles.
The investors failed to show that two separate transactions in 2008, whereby Bank of America, through a subsidiary, acquired and transferred the Countrywide assets, were a “de facto” merger, Pfaelzer said.
The judge had dismissed the lawsuit in November, saying the investors didn’t sufficiently demonstrate they suffered an injury for the securities they bought, and that the statute of limitations had expired for some claims. The judge allowed the plaintiffs to file an amended complaint to address these failings before she would rule on Bank of America’s Aug. 20 request to dismiss it from the complaint. The rest of the article shows the Maggots never lose. QB