FDIC Report: Quarterly Banking Profile, First Quarter 2008
Quarterly Banking Profile: "Provides the earliest comprehensive summary of financial results for all FDIC-insured institutions. This report card on industry status and performance includes written analyses, graphs and statistical tables." Updated 5/29/08
A recent settlement struck between the Department of Justice and the National Association of Realtors over an antitrust suit alleging that the NAR improperly controlled how home listings are displayed on the Internet might be a boon to home buyers and sellers. Or it might not.
The DOJ’s Deborah A. Garza, the deputy assistant AG for antitrust, called the settlement a win for consumers, certainly, who will now have the benefit of unrestricted competition.” But Laurie Janik, the NAR’s GC, told the NYT that the settlement would have no real impact on home buyers or sellers. I don’t think they’ll see anything different, she said. This lawsuit never had anything to do with commission rates, or discount brokerages. (Here’s another story from the WSJ.)
The 2005 suit, filed in federal court in Chicago, challenged Realtor rules that allowed brokers to block their listings of homes for sale from being displayed on the Web sites of other brokers that offer discounted commissions or flat-rate fees. Under the settlement, the Realtors agreed to adopt new rules that don’t discriminate against online brokers. The settlement says online brokers should be allowed to provide the same information via the Internet that conventional brokers offer to people who walk into their offices.
WSJ Law Blog May 28, 2008



FTC Permanently Halts Pretexting Scheme; Defendants Barred From Obtaining or Selling Consumers' Phone Records to Third Parties
News release: "The Federal Trade Commission has put a permanent halt to an operation that allegedly obtained consumers’ confidential phone records without their knowledge or consent and sold them to third parties. The defendants are barred from obtaining consumers’ telephone records without their consent and court orders impose judgments on the defendants totaling more than $600,000 – the estimated amount of their ill-gotten gains.
Federal Trade Commission, Plaintiff, v. Action Research Group, Inc., Joseph Depante, Matthew Depante, Bryan Wagner, Cassandra Selvage, and Eye in the Sky Investigations, Inc., Defendants. (United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida Orlando Division) Civil Action No.: 6:07-CV-0227-ORL-22JGG File No. 072 3021

New on LLRX
Commentary: Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007 Beth Wellington focuses on the issue of pay inequity through an exploration of the positions taken by the administration, Congress, the Supreme Court and various journalists.

Law Lexicon: stare decisis Latin for "to stand by that which is decided." Precedent decisions are to be followed by the courts.
http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/s065.htm
Merriam Webster: stare decisis a doctrine or policy of following rules or principles laid down in previous judicial decisions unless they contravene the ordinary principles of justice
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stare+decisis

Radiocarbon dating of cremated bodies excavated from Britain's Stonehenge have solved part of the mystery surrounding the 5,000-year-old site: It was a burial ground for what might have been the country's first royal dynasty. The new dates indicate burials began at least 500 years before the first stones were erected at the site and continued after it was completed, British archaeologists said on May 29th. Stonehenge, concentric circles of massive stones surrounded by a ditch and earthen bank, is aligned with sunrise at the summer solstice, and researchers have long viewed the monument as both an astronomical observatory and a cemetery.
Excavations at Durrington Walls, two miles northeast of Stonehenge, revealed a village that is now thought to contain as many as 1,000 houses and a wooden henge that is virtually identical in design to Stonehenge but is aligned with sunrise at the winter solstice. It was built at the same time as Stonehenge.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004447134_stonehenge30.html
Images of Durrington Walls
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=%22durrington+walls%22&gbv=2
Images of Stonehenge
http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&q=stonehenge
Note that not of all of Stonehenge survives—some of the stones were quarried, and some vandalized.

On May 31, 1790 Congress enacted the United States copyright law. The law gave authors exclusive rights to publish and sell maps, charts, and books for a period of 14 years, with a chance to renew the copyright for another 14 years. There have been many changes to the U.S. copyright law since 1790. In the 19th century, copyrights became available for photographs, paintings, drawings, and models. In 1909, musical rolls for player pianos became covered by the law. In the last 30 years, copyright law has expanded to include cable TV, computer software, tapes, CDs, DVDs, and, most recently, MP3s.
Copyright terms have also gradually gotten longer. Up until 1998, copyrights lasted for the life of the author plus an additional 50 years before they went into the public domain. But in that year, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act extended the duration of copyrights by 20 years. The act was supported by a group of large corporations, led by Disney. Most of Disney's famous characters were scheduled to enter the public domain between 2000 and 2004, but now other artists and companies won't be able to use them in their books and movies and songs until at least 2019 - which means that Disney has another 11 years of making money off Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and all the rest.

June 1 is the birthday of novelist Colleen McCullough, (books by this author) born in Wellington, Australia (1937). She went into neurophysiology, the study of the nervous system. She did all kinds of work in the laboratories at Yale, but because she was a woman, was paid about half as much as her co-workers. So, to try to make a little extra money, she decided to write a novel.
Her first novel, Tim, was published in 1974. That book sold well, but her first great success was The Thorn Birds (1977), an epic novel that tells the story of an Australian family across three generations. It became an international best seller and enabled McCullough to quit her job and devote all of her time to writing.

On June 2, 1865 the Civil War came to a formal end. Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of Confederate forces west of the Mississippi, surrendered, and the last Confederate army ceased to exist. The war that cost 620,000 American lives was over.

June 2 is the birthday of John Hope, born in Augusta, Georgia, (1868). He was an educator and an advocate of liberal-arts instruction for blacks. He publicly disagreed with Booker T. Washington's 1895 "Atlanta Compromise" speech, where Washington called for blacks to focus on technical training and to abandon, at least for the time being, the struggle for political and social equality. Hope became the president of Atlanta University, the first graduate school for blacks, and was one of the founders of the Niagara Movement, a forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He said, "We have sat on the riverbank and caught catfish with pin hooks. The time has come to harpoon a whale."
The Writer’s Almanac