DealBook: U.S. Case Details Internal Tension at S.&P.

The subprime loans packaged as complex securities for Standard & Poor’s to rate were already failing at such a fast clip in the fall of 2006 that some analysts at the firm thought they must be seeing typographical errors.

At the time, the nation’s biggest rating agency was making record profits, attaching sterling ratings to mortgage-related securities that were increasingly going bad. Inside the firm’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan, tensions were escalating. Some executives pushed to revise the firm’s rating models in hopes of preserving market share and profits, while others expressed deep concerns about the poor performance of the securities, according to court records.

“This market is a wildly spinning top which is going to end badly,” one executive wrote in a confidential memo.

The account, culled from reams of internal e-mails, is part of civil fraud charges that the Justice Department filed late Monday against S.&P. in federal court in Los Angeles, accusing the firm of inflating ratings of mortgage investments and setting them up for a crash when the financial crisis struck.

The government is seeking $5 billion in penalties against the company to cover losses to investors like state pension funds and federally insured banks and credit unions. The amount would be more than five times what S.&P. made in 2011. S.&P. said it would vigorously defend itself against “these unwarranted claims.”

Sixteen states, including Iowa, Mississippi and Illinois, joined the federal suit, and the New York attorney general said he was taking separate actions. California’s attorney general, Kamala D. Harris, said the state pension funds lost nearly $1 billion on the soured investments. The Securities and Exchange Commission has also been investigating possible wrongdoing at S.&P.

“The action we announce today marks an important step forward in the administration’s ongoing effort to investigate — and punish — the conduct that is believed to have continued to the worst economic crisis in recent history,” said Mr. Holder. The Justice Department called its investigation “Alchemy,” after medieval alchemists’ attempts to turn lead into gold.

Standard & Poor’s defended its corporate practices on Tuesday, saying the civil lawsuit filed by the Justice Department was “meritless.”

“Claims that we deliberately kept ratings high when we knew they should be lower are simply not true. S.&P. has always been committed to serving the interests of investors and all market participants by providing independent opinions on creditworthiness based on available information,” the rating agency said in a statement on Tuesday.

The company said that at all times its actions reflected its best judgments about the investments at the heart of the suit — about 40 collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s, an exotic type of security made up of bundles of residential mortgage-backed securities, which in turn were composed of individual home loans.

“Unfortunately,” the company’s statement said, “S.&P., like everyone else, did not predict the speed and severity of the coming crisis and how credit quality would ultimately be affected.”

McGraw-Hill shares were down 5 percent to $47.51 in early afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange, and have lost 19 percent of their value over the last two days.

The case is the first significant federal action against the ratings industry, which during the boom years bestowed high ratings that made many mortgage-related investments appear safer than they actually were.

It was unclear whether the Justice Department was looking at the other two major ratings agencies, Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch. Mr. West said he would not discuss actions against other rating agencies. In addition to joining the suit against S.&P., James Hood, the attorney general in Mississippi, said his state had also filed lawsuit against Moody’s.

The joint federal-state suit against S.&P. claims that from September 2004 through October 2007, S.&P. “knowingly and with the intent to defraud, devised, participated in and executed a scheme to defraud investors” in certain mortgage-related securities. S.&P. also falsely represented that its ratings “were objective, independent, uninfluenced by any conflicts of interest,” the suit said.

Settlement talks between S.&P. and the Justice Department broke down in the last two weeks after prosecutors sought a penalty in excess of $1 billion and insisted that the company admit wrongdoing, several people with knowledge of the talks said. That amount would wipe out the profits of McGraw-Hill for an entire year. S.&P. had proposed a settlement of around $100 million, the people said. The government pressed for an admission of guilt to at least one count of fraud, said the people. S.&P. told prosecutors it could not admit guilt without exposing itself to liability in a multitude of civil cases.

On Monday, a spokesman for Moody’s declined to comment. A spokesman for Fitch, Daniel J. Noonan, said the agency could not comment on an action against Standard & Poor’s, but added, “We have no reason to believe Fitch is a target of any such action.”

The securities were created at the height of the housing boom, mainly for investment banks. S.&P. was paid fees of about $13 million for rating them. The firm gave the government more than 20 million pages of e-mails as part of its investigation, the people with knowledge of the process said.

Since the financial crisis in 2008, the ratings agencies’ business practices have been widely criticized, and questions have been raised as to whether independent analysis was corrupted by Wall Street’s push for profits.

A Senate investigation made public in 2010 found that S.& P. and Moody’s used inaccurate rating models from 2004 to 2007 that failed to predict how high-risk mortgages would perform, allowed competitive pressures to affect their ratings and failed to reassess past ratings after improving their models in 2006.

The companies failed to assign adequate staff to examine exotic investments, and failed to take mortgage fraud, lax underwriting and “unsustainable home price appreciation” into account in their models, the inquiry found.

“Rating agencies continue to create an even bigger monster — the C.D.O. market,” one S.&P. employee wrote in an internal e-mail in December 2006. “Let’s hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters.”

Another S.&P. employee wrote in an instant message the next April, reproduced in the complaint: “We rate every deal. It could be structured by cows and we would rate it.”

In its statement Tuesday, S.&P. said that “the e-mail that says deals ‘could be structured by cows’ and be rated by S.&P. had nothing to do with R.M.B.S. or C.D.O. ratings or any S.&P. model. The company added that “the analyst had her concerns addressed with the issuer before S.&P. issued any rating.” S.&P. said that there was robust internal debate about how a rapidly deteriorating housing market might affect the C.D.O.’s, “and we applied the collective judgment of our committee-based system in good faith.”

“The e-mail excerpts cherry-picked by D.O.J. have been taken out of context, are contradicted by other evidence, and do not reflect our culture, integrity or how we do business,” the credit rating agency said.

The three major ratings agencies are typically paid by the issuers of the securities they rate — in this case, the banks that had packaged the mortgage-backed securities and wanted to market them. The investors were not involved in the process but depended on the rating agencies’ assessments.

In a separate statement on Monday, S.&P. said it had begun stress-testing the mortgage-backed securities as early as 2005, trying to see how they would perform in a severe market downturn. S.&P. said it had also sent out early warning signals, downgrading hundreds of mortgage-backed securities, starting in 2006. Nor was it the only one to have underestimated the coming crisis, it said — even the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee believed that any problems within the housing sector could be contained.

The Justice Department, the company said, “would be wrong in contending that S.&P. ratings were motivated by commercial considerations and not issued in good faith.”

For many years, the ratings agencies have defended themselves successfully in civil litigation by saying their ratings were independent opinions, protected by the First Amendment, which guarantees the right to free speech. But developments in the wake of the financial crisis have raised questions about the agencies’ independence.

One federal judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, ruled in 2009 that the First Amendment did not apply in a lawsuit over ratings issued by S.&P. and Moody’s, because the mortgage-backed securities had not been offered to the public at large. Judge Scheindlin also agreed with the plaintiffs, who argued the ratings were not opinions, but misrepresentations, possibly the result of fraud or negligence.

The federal-state action is the first time a credit ratings agency has been charged under a 1989 law intended to protect taxpayers from frauds involving federally insured financial institutions, which since the financial crisis has been used against a number of federally insured banks, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Citigroup.

The government is taking a novel approach by accusing S.&P. of defrauding a federally insured institution and therefore injuring the taxpayer.

The lawsuit was filed in Central District of California, home to the defunct Western Federal Corporate Credit Union, among the largest corporate credit unions in the country. The credit union collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis after suffering huge losses on mortgage-backed securities rated by S.&P.

The Justice Department said it interviewed about 150 people in the investigation, including former S.&P. executives and analysts.

Read More..

At War Blog: Veterans in College: Share Your Stories

“Graduate, graduate, graduate,” the secretary of veterans affairs, Eric K. Shinseki, recently implored the audience at a conference of the Student Veterans of America. But what, exactly, will it take to ensure that veterans succeed in college?

Since the post-9/11 G.I. Bill took effect in 2009, about 877,000 people, mainly veterans and their dependents, have received tuition and other college benefits costing the government $23.7 billion. More than $10 billion is expected to be spent this year alone on veterans, plus about $560 million on tuition assistance for active-duty troops.

Yet just how those thousands of veterans in college are faring remains a bit of a mystery. Many colleges do not break out graduation and retention numbers for veterans, and the federal government has not tracked the numbers. Only last month, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced a partnership with the National Student Clearinghouse and the Student Veterans of America to collect and analyze data on veterans in school, with an eye to determining if they are succeeding — or failing — and why.

In the latest Education Life, The Times’s education supplement, two articles focus on programs intended to help veterans graduate.
One of them, “A Million Strong,” describes the panoply of programs that colleges have created to support veterans, including opening veterans centers, hiring specially trained counselors and creating veterans-only courses, orientation programs and even housing.

For traditional colleges like San Diego State University or the University of Alabama, creating brick-and-mortar centers where veterans can socialize, receive tutoring or meet counselors is one thing. But for online programs, both nonprofit and for profit, the challenge of assisting veterans and making them feel comfortable can be greater, as colleges like University of Maryland University College are finding.

The key for both traditional and online schools, says Travis L. Martin, a driving force behind a veterans studies program at Eastern Kentucky University and a veteran himself, is introducing students both to other veterans and to those who never served in the armed forces.

“I’ve learned that creating community was key for the veterans,” he said. “Those relationships will keep them in school.”

The second article, “Warrior Voices,” describes how writing workshops are providing many veterans with an alternative means of healing the psychological and spiritual wounds of war.

In writing about war, writing teachers explain, veterans must organize and analyze difficult memories, possibly gaining some control over their traumas along the way. Such was the case with Micah Owen, who served with Travis Martin in Iraq and later became his student at Eastern Kentucky.

Though Mr. Owen, who has post-traumatic stress disorder, says he has trouble talking about his war experiences, he has had no trouble writing about it. “Once the words started coming, I couldn’t stop them,” he said.

The Education Life supplement includes essays and poems from several veterans, including Mr. Martin and Mr. Owen.

Now it’s your turn.

If you are a veteran, send us your memories – about war, deployment, training or the transition to civilian life. The subject areas are wide open; we just ask that you keep your submissions under 700 words. We’ll then select some of the pieces to be published at nytimes.com.

To submit a piece, go to this site and fill out the form.

Read More..

Kuwait says backs free speech but must protect ruling emir






KUWAIT (Reuters) – Kuwait supports free speech but must act against illegal comments made about the Gulf state’s ruler, the government said on Monday, after a Twitter user was jailed for five years.


A Kuwaiti court sentenced a man to prison on Sunday for insulting the emir on the social networking site, a rights lawyer and news websites said, in the latest prosecution for criticism of authorities via social media.






“Kuwait has a longstanding proud tradition of open debate and free speech,” the Ministry of Information, which regulates the media, said in a statement to Reuters addressing the case.


“We are a country led by the rule of law and our constitution holds our Emir to be inviolable. If our citizens wish to amend the constitution there is a straightforward legal way to do this, but we will not selectively enforce our laws.”


In recent months Kuwait has penalized several Twitter users for criticizing the emir, who is described as “immune and inviolable” in the constitution.


Kuwait allows the most dissent in the Gulf Arab region and boasts a lively press and critical political debate. But the U.S. ally and OPEC member has been clamping down on politically sensitive comments aired on the internet in recent months.


Twitter is extremely popular in the country of 3.7 million inhabitants and well-known figures can have hundreds of thousands of followers.


In January, a court sentenced two men in separate cases to jail time for insulting the emir on Twitter.


In June last year, a man was sentenced to 10 years in prison after he was convicted of endangering state security by insulting the Prophet Mohammad and the Sunni Muslim rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on social media.


Two months later, authorities detained a member of the ruling family over remarks on Twitter in which he accused authorities of corruption and called for political reform.


Kuwait has avoided the kind of mass unrest that has spread across the Arab region in the past two years but in 2012 tension escalated between authorities and opposition groups ahead of a parliamentary election.


(Reporting by Sylvia Westall; Editing by Mark Heinrich)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





Title Post: Kuwait says backs free speech but must protect ruling emir
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/kuwait-says-backs-free-speech-but-must-protect-ruling-emir/
Link To Post : Kuwait says backs free speech but must protect ruling emir
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment




Read More..

Goodell: New Orleans 'terrific,' despite blackout


NEW ORLEANS (AP) — NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says New Orleans was a "terrific" Super Bowl host and that the Superdome power outage that delayed the game for 34 minutes will have no effect on the city's future bids to host the league's championship.


Goodell says, "The most important thing is to make sure people understand it was a fantastic week," and that it "will be remembered as one of the great Super Bowl weeks."


New Orleans has now hosted 10 Super Bowls. Officials have said they will bid to host an 11th in 2018 to coincide with the 300th anniversary of the city's founding.


Goodell says the outage is not of great concern going forward because it is "fixable," and the league will look forward to evaluating New Orleans' next Super Bowl bid.


Read More..

Really?: Really? When a Dieter Eats Can Influence Weight Loss

Really?

Anahad O’Connor tackles health myths.

THE FACTS

In The New England Journal of Medicine last week, a prominent researcher noted that much of the conventional wisdom about weight loss has little basis in science. But his article did not address one oft-asked question: Is your waistline affected by when you eat, or is a calorie always just a calorie whenever you eat it?

To seasoned dieters, the claim that eating late can spell trouble is nothing new. But the idea has lacked evidence from credible human studies. Most of the research to date has shown that eating late is linked to weight gain, but late eaters also tend to consume more calories over all.

In a new study, published in The International Journal of Obesity, researchers at Harvard and elsewhere followed 420 overweight men and women in Spain in a 20-week weight loss program.

The subjects were split into two groups. Each followed a similar diet, got equivalent amounts of sleep, and had similar caloric intakes and expenditures. They also showed no differences in two hormones that play a key role in appetite, leptin and ghrelin.

But there was a critical difference in the timing of their main meal of the day, which in this case, because of the Mediterranean setting, was lunch. In both groups, the meal comprised about 40 percent of their daily calories. But one group consistently ate it before 3 p.m. daily, while the other did so after 3 p.m.

By the end of the study, despite similar caloric intakes, the late eaters had lost significantly less weight. They also showed lower insulin sensitivity, which increases the risk of diabetes.

Weight loss strategies, the authors wrote, should focus not just on calories and nutrients, “but also the timing of food.”

THE BOTTOM LINE

The timing of your meals may not be everything when it comes to weight loss, but it does appear to play a role.

Read More..

DealBook: Suit to Accuse S.&P. of Fraud in Mortgage Bond Ratings

The Justice Department, along with state prosecutors, plans to file civil charges against Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service, accusing the firm of fraudulently rating mortgage bonds that led to the financial crisis, people briefed on the plan said Monday.

Up until last last week, the Justice Department had been in settlement talks with S.&P., these people said. But the negotiations broke down after the Justice Department said it would seek a settlement in excess of “10 figures,” or at least $1 billion, these people said, which would wipe out the profits of S.&P.’s parent, the McGraw-Hill Company, for an entire year. McGraw-Hill earned $911 million last year.

A suit against S.&P. would be the first the government has brought against the credit ratings agencies related to the financial crisis, despite continued questions about the agencies’ conflicts of interest and role in creating a housing bubble.

During settlement negotiations, the Justice Department held out the threat of a criminal case against S.&P., the people said. Ultimately, the government plans to bring a civil suit, which has a lower burden of proof than a criminal case.

The case is expected to be brought in California, these people said. The state suffered disproportionately during the housing bubble, and the government is hoping the venue will yield more sympathetic jurors.

The case is focusing on about 30 collateralized debt obligation, an exotic type of mortgage security. According to S&P, the mortgage securities were created in 2007 at the height of the housing boom.

Prosecutors, according to the people, have uncovered troves emails by S&P, employees, which the government considers damaging. Portions of those emails are likely to be disclosed in the government’s complaint against S&P, these people said.

In a statement on Monday, S.&P. said it had received notice from the Justice Department over a pending lawsuit. The ratings agency argued any such legal action would be baseless, since it downgraded plenty of mortgage-backed investments, including in the two years leading up to the financial crisis. It also contended that other observers of the debt markets, including government officials, believed at the time that any problems within the housing sector could be contained.

“A D.O.J. lawsuit would be entirely without factual or legal merit,” the agency said in its statement. “With 20/20 hindsight, these strong actions proved insufficient – but they demonstrate that the D.O.J. would be wrong in contending that S.&P. ratings were motivated by commercial considerations and not issued in good faith.”

Shares in McGraw-Hill were down 10 percent in late trading on Monday, at $52.60.

Read More..

IHT Rendezvous: Doctors to Prescribe Self-Help Books, Poetry for Mental Health Ills

LONDON — Doctors in England will soon be prescribing books as well as pills to patients suffering from anxiety and depression.

In a government-endorsed initiative supported by medical associations and librarians, physicians will be sending patients to their local libraries for a range of approved self-help titles targeted at those suffering from mild to moderate mental health problems.

Patients are also being encouraged to turn to what The Bookseller magazine described as “uplifting novels and poetry.”

Extolling the potentially curative powers of literature, the Reading Agency charity quoted research that showed reading reduced stress levels by 67 percent.

The charity, which is a partner in the new Books on Prescription program announced this week, quoted the New England Journal of Medicine as saying reading also cut the risk of dementia by more than a third.

The list of 30 approved self-help titles available on prescription from May includes page-turners like “The Feeling Good Handbook,” “How to Stop Worrying” and “Overcoming Anger and Irritability.”

“There’s growing evidence that shows that self-help reading can help people with certain mental health issues get better,” Miranda McKearney, the Reading Agency’s director said.

The sick often rely on the Internet to search for advice on symptoms and cures that can turn out to be unreliable. Doctors will now be able to write a prescription that gives patients immediate membership to their local library and access to recommended titles.

It is the first so-called bibliotherapy initiative to have received such high-level official backing from health authorities and librarians.

Campaigners for public libraries have applauded the program but worry that not enough is being done to protect the libraries themselves. Last year, 200 libraries were closed and another 300 are reportedly facing closure or being handed over to volunteers this year.

The Reading Agency meanwhile has come up with a core list of Mood-boosting Books designed to promote feeling good.

It includes proven classics such as “The Secret Garden,” by Frances Hodgson Burnett, but also upbeat titles from the likes of Bill Bryson, the best-selling U.S. humorist.

Development of the book prescription idea was paid for by the Arts Council England, which distributes public money to arts projects.

The Reading Agency has applied for funding from the government, which it says spends £14 billion, or $22 billion, a year treating mental health.

So, should sufferers of depression or panic attacks be advised to curl up with a good book? Or is this just a new health fad to find an alternative to costly medication and therapy.

The Reading Project is soliciting suggestions for stress-relieving books at the Twitter hashtag #moodboosting.

If you think there might be something in it, send us your own suggestions for therapeutic reading. And, while you’re at it, let us know any titles that are best avoided when we’re feeling low.

Read More..

Kuwaiti gets five years for insulting ruler






KUWAIT (Reuters) – A Kuwaiti court sentenced a man to five years in prison on Sunday for insulting the emir on Twitter, a rights lawyer and news websites said, in the latest prosecution for criticism of authorities via social media in the Gulf Arab state.


The court gave Kuwaiti Mohammad Eid al-Ajmi the maximum sentence for the comments, news websites al-Rai and alaan.cc reported.






In recent months Kuwait has penalized several Twitter users for criticizing the emir, who is described as “immune and inviolable” in the constitution.


“We call on the government to expand freedoms and adhere to the international (human rights) conventions it has signed,” said lawyer Mohammad al-Humaidi, director of the Kuwait Society for Human Rights, commenting on the case.


Courts in Kuwait generally do not comment to the media.


Amnesty International said in November Kuwait had increased restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly.


It urged Kuwait to ensure protection for users of social media, whether they supported or opposed the government, as long as they did not incite racial hatred or violence.


Kuwait, a U.S. ally and major oil producer, has been taking a firmer line on politically sensitive comments aired on the internet. Twitter is extremely popular in the country of 3.7 million.


In January, a court sentenced two men in separate cases to jail time for insulting the emir on Twitter.


In June 2012, a man was sentenced to 10 years in prison after he was convicted of endangering state security by insulting the Prophet Mohammad and the Sunni Muslim rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on social media.


Two months later, authorities detained Sheikh Meshaal al-Malik Al-Sabah, a member of the ruling family, over remarks on Twitter in which he accused authorities of corruption and called for political reform.


The recent Twitter cases have been carried out under the state security law and penal code. Last year Kuwait passed new legislation aimed at regulating social media.


Public demonstrations and debates about local issues are common in a state that allows the most dissent in the Gulf, but Kuwait has avoided the kind of mass unrest that unseated four heads of Arab states in 2011.


But tensions intensified between authorities and opposition groups last year ahead of a parliamentary election deemed unfair by opposition politicians and activists.


The opposition movement said new voting rules introduced by Sheikh Sabah by emergency decree in October would skew the December 1 election in favor of pro-government candidates. The emir said the old voting system was flawed and that his changes were constitutional and necessary for Kuwait’s “security and stability”.


(Reporting by Ahmed Hagagy, Writing by Sylvia Westall; editing by Sami Aboudi and Andrew Roche)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





Title Post: Kuwaiti gets five years for insulting ruler
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/kuwaiti-gets-five-years-for-insulting-ruler/
Link To Post : Kuwaiti gets five years for insulting ruler
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment




Read More..

What comes now for NFL after tumultuous season?


NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Super Bowl closes a tumultuous year for the NFL.


Suicides by former NFL players. Thousands of others filing concussion lawsuits. New studies linking football to brain disease. Still no testing for human growth hormone. The specter of other purported performance-enhancing products — deer-antler spray, anyone? — being peddled to players.


A pay-for-pain bounty scandal. A lockout of officials resolved only after a ludicrous game-ending call. Zero minority hires for 15 coach or general manager openings.


And yet the league is as popular as ever.


Advertisers paid nearly $4 million per 30-second television commercial for the right to reach the 100 million or so Americans expected to tune in to Sunday's Super Bowl between the AFC champion Baltimore Ravens and NFC champion San Francisco 49ers. Eleven of the 12 most-watched TV programs during the last 2½ years were NFL postseason games, according to the league.


Uncertain, though, is what the future holds for an NFL still coming to grips with the dangers of a brutal sport that makes it tremendously wealthy.


"The game has changed and keeps changing. ... It is such a violent game, and such a collision game, that careers are going to be kind of like not long at all. Because you take those licks — you've only got so many in your body, and at some point that's going to wear it out," said Ravens running backs coach Wilbert Montgomery, who played that position for the Philadelphia Eagles and Detroit Lions from 1977-85.


Montgomery said he got six concussions in one season alone, and others along the way, including one that knocked him out cold a few days before playing for the Eagles in the NFC title game at the end of the 1980 season.


"I know one thing: Back then, it didn't make any difference. They gave you smelling salts and then, after that, you went back in," Montgomery said. "I have headaches all the time. That's why I say my wife is always messing with me when I have outbursts, saying, 'You've been hit too many times upside the head.'"


Montgomery laughed for a moment. Then he rubbed his forehead and continued talking, mentioning former teammate and friend Andre Waters and opponent Dave Duerson. Both committed suicide; researchers studied their brain tissue and found signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative disease also found in boxers and often linked with repeated blows to the head. Former star linebacker Junior Seau, who shot himself in May, also was found to have CTE. Baltimore's starting center on Sunday, Matt Birk, has pledged to donate his brain for study when he dies.


"It's a serious thing," Montgomery said. "It's scary."


When the President of the United States refers to fans perhaps having a guilty conscience when watching a game and parents thinking twice before allowing a child to play — as Barack Obama did in a recent interview with The New Republic — it sends a strong signal about what confronts the NFL today.


"If I was worried about my health," 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick said, "I wouldn't be playing football."


So the league must figure out how to deal with "walking a fine line," as 49ers CEO Jed York described it: The two-sided task of making the game safer, which Commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledges is imperative, while not making it "too safe," thereby diminishing the popularity of an enterprise that is violent by its very nature.


"There's no question that that is a bit of a conundrum. But to me, we've got to place more weight on player safety," New York Giants co-owner John Mara said. "The rules changes that we've implemented over the past five or six years have not made the game any less exciting. If anything, the game is as exciting as ever, and I strongly believe that we can make additional improvements in the rules and we're not going to lose anything in terms of excitement on the field."


Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti is convinced the NFL will strike the proper balance.


"What did they do for boxing when they made them go from 6-ounce, to 8-ounce to 12-ounce gloves or whatever? Did it change boxing? Not really," Bisciotti said. "I believe that with every change, there will be a correction. ... And I believe that we as a league and the (players' union) will agree on things that don't take football out of football."


In a series of moves that began shortly after Goodell was grilled at a congressional hearing, the league has changed concussion return-to-play guidelines, adjusted rules for kickoffs — and floated the idea of eliminating them altogether — stepped up punishment of illegal hits, and stopped arguing against the players' wish for independent neurology specialists on the sidelines during games.


Even if there are some players who in one breath worry about whether their health is imperiled, and in the next say, "We're basically going to be playing two-hand touch in a while" — Baltimore nose tackle Terrence Cody's words this week — the head of their union points out that prudence and popularity do not have to be mutually exclusive.


"The reality of it is, 'football as we know it' has evolved over decades. ... Our job is to have an unqualified commitment to the health and safety of the people who play the game, and then to make those changes where we see necessary," NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith said.


"I don't think there is this thing of 'football as we know it.' What we have is football that has constantly developed," Smith said. "And even with all of the (recent) rule changes ... my guess is this Super Bowl will be the highest-rated of all time."


Indeed, while the concussion lawsuits mount — a U.S. District Court judge in Philadelphia will hear oral arguments in April on the NFL's effort to dismiss a group of cases — and questions arise about what insurers will charge the league moving forward, the money does keep rolling in. Revenues already topped $9 billion at the time of the last labor deal in 2011, and new TV contracts will only help increase it.


"At $10-to-$12 billion? It ain't going nowhere," said Warren Sapp, a retired defensive tackle elected Saturday to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and who now works for the NFL Network, another piece of the league's marketing machine. "We play a beautiful game. We hit each other. (Players) have to take care of each other better. Then it will be fine."


Meantime, the NFL continues to look for new ways to increase its cash flow.


During his state of the league address two days before the Super Bowl, Goodell did not rule out increasing the regular season from 16 to 18 games, and he reiterated the possibility of expanding the postseason, too. He announced that two 2013 games in London already are sold out, and there could be three in future seasons — down a path that, eventually, could lead to a franchise based in Britain.


"For you to be adding games to the season, are you looking out for player safety? Or are you trying to generate more player revenue?" 49ers receiver Randy Moss said. "If you're trying to look and protect the players, and keep it healthier and better every year, I don't think it's a good idea."


Several players in this year's Super Bowl were incredulous that the league would even consider more games. A handful voiced concern over a disconnect between players and owners.


The president of the NFLPA, former Ravens cornerback Domonique Foxworth, said he wonders how truthful Goodell and other NFL officials are being when they say — as they often do — that players' well-being is a priority.


"The league, their No. 1 focus — at least they say their No. 1 focus — is health and safety. And we say our No. 1 focus is health and safety. How come we have such a hard time moving the ball on some health and safety issues?" Foxworth said. "I believe health and safety is on their list of top five things, but it comes in well behind increasing the bottom line."


___


Follow Howard Fendrich on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HowardFendrich


Read More..

Concerns About A.D.H.D. Practices and Amphetamine Addiction


Before his addiction, Richard Fee was a popular college class president and aspiring medical student. "You keep giving Adderall to my son, you're going to kill him," said Rick Fee, Richard's father, to one of his son's doctors.







VIRGINIA BEACH — Every morning on her way to work, Kathy Fee holds her breath as she drives past the squat brick building that houses Dominion Psychiatric Associates.










Matt Eich for The New York Times

MENTAL HEALTH CLINIC Dominion Psychiatric Associates in Virginia Beach, where Richard Fee was treated by Dr. Waldo M. Ellison. After observing Richard and hearing his complaints about concentration, Dr. Ellison diagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and prescribed the stimulant Adderall.






It was there that her son, Richard, visited a doctor and received prescriptions for Adderall, an amphetamine-based medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It was in the parking lot that she insisted to Richard that he did not have A.D.H.D., not as a child and not now as a 24-year-old college graduate, and that he was getting dangerously addicted to the medication. It was inside the building that her husband, Rick, implored Richard’s doctor to stop prescribing him Adderall, warning, “You’re going to kill him.”


It was where, after becoming violently delusional and spending a week in a psychiatric hospital in 2011, Richard met with his doctor and received prescriptions for 90 more days of Adderall. He hanged himself in his bedroom closet two weeks after they expired.


The story of Richard Fee, an athletic, personable college class president and aspiring medical student, highlights widespread failings in the system through which five million Americans take medication for A.D.H.D., doctors and other experts said.


Medications like Adderall can markedly improve the lives of children and others with the disorder. But the tunnel-like focus the medicines provide has led growing numbers of teenagers and young adults to fake symptoms to obtain steady prescriptions for highly addictive medications that carry serious psychological dangers. These efforts are facilitated by a segment of doctors who skip established diagnostic procedures, renew prescriptions reflexively and spend too little time with patients to accurately monitor side effects.


Richard Fee’s experience included it all. Conversations with friends and family members and a review of detailed medical records depict an intelligent and articulate young man lying to doctor after doctor, physicians issuing hasty diagnoses, and psychiatrists continuing to prescribe medication — even increasing dosages — despite evidence of his growing addiction and psychiatric breakdown.


Very few people who misuse stimulants devolve into psychotic or suicidal addicts. But even one of Richard’s own physicians, Dr. Charles Parker, characterized his case as a virtual textbook for ways that A.D.H.D. practices can fail patients, particularly young adults. “We have a significant travesty being done in this country with how the diagnosis is being made and the meds are being administered,” said Dr. Parker, a psychiatrist in Virginia Beach. “I think it’s an abnegation of trust. The public needs to say this is totally unacceptable and walk out.”


Young adults are by far the fastest-growing segment of people taking A.D.H.D medications. Nearly 14 million monthly prescriptions for the condition were written for Americans ages 20 to 39 in 2011, two and a half times the 5.6 million just four years before, according to the data company I.M.S. Health. While this rise is generally attributed to the maturing of adolescents who have A.D.H.D. into young adults — combined with a greater recognition of adult A.D.H.D. in general — many experts caution that savvy college graduates, freed of parental oversight, can legally and easily obtain stimulant prescriptions from obliging doctors.


“Any step along the way, someone could have helped him — they were just handing out drugs,” said Richard’s father. Emphasizing that he had no intention of bringing legal action against any of the doctors involved, Mr. Fee said: “People have to know that kids are out there getting these drugs and getting addicted to them. And doctors are helping them do it.”


“...when he was in elementary school he fidgeted, daydreamed and got A’s. he has been an A-B student until mid college when he became scattered and he wandered while reading He never had to study. Presently without medication, his mind thinks most of the time, he procrastinated, he multitasks not finishing in a timely manner.”


Dr. Waldo M. Ellison


Richard Fee initial evaluation


Feb. 5, 2010


Richard began acting strangely soon after moving back home in late 2009, his parents said. He stayed up for days at a time, went from gregarious to grumpy and back, and scrawled compulsively in notebooks. His father, while trying to add Richard to his health insurance policy, learned that he was taking Vyvanse for A.D.H.D.


Richard explained to him that he had been having trouble concentrating while studying for medical school entrance exams the previous year and that he had seen a doctor and received a diagnosis. His father reacted with surprise. Richard had never shown any A.D.H.D. symptoms his entire life, from nursery school through high school, when he was awarded a full academic scholarship to Greensboro College in North Carolina. Mr. Fee also expressed concerns about the safety of his son’s taking daily amphetamines for a condition he might not have.


“The doctor wouldn’t give me anything that’s bad for me,” Mr. Fee recalled his son saying that day. “I’m not buying it on the street corner.”


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 3, 2013

An earlier version of a quote appearing with the home page presentation of this article misspelled the name of a medication. It is Adderall, not Aderall.



Read More..