Obama administration official: S&P move 'a facts-be-damned decision'

(CNN) -- A senior Obama administration official is calling Standard & Poor's move to downgrade U.S. credit "a facts-be-damned decision," saying the rating agency admitted to an error that inflated U.S. deficits by $2 trillion.

U.S. Treasury officials received S&P's analysis Friday afternoon and alerted the agency to the error, said the administration official, who was not authorized to speak for attribution.

The agency acknowledged the mistake, but said it was sticking with its decision to lower the U.S. rating from a top score of AAA to AA+.

"This is a facts-be-damned decision," the official said. "Their analysis was way off, but they wouldn't budge."

"The amount of cross-pollination and mutual admiration between the Administration and is striking:
Harold McGraw Jr. sits on the national grant advisory and founding board of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. McGraw in turn received the highest literacy award from President Bush in the early 1990s, for his contributions to the cause of literacy. The McGraw Foundation awarded current Bush Education Secretary Rod Paige its highest educator's award while Paige was Houston's school chief; Paige, in turn, was the keynote speaker at McGraw-Hill's "government initiatives" conference last spring <2001>. Harold McGraw III was selected as a member of President George W. Bush's transition advisory team, along with McGraw-Hill board member Edward Rust Jr., the CEO of State Farm and an active member of the Business Roundtable on educational issues. An ex-chief of staff for Barbara Bush is returning to work for Laura Bush in the White House — after a stint with McGraw-Hill as a media relations executive. John Negroponte left his position as McGraw-Hill's executive vice president for global markets to become Bush's ambassador to the United Nations."

Someone dropped a bomb on the bond market Thursday - a $1 billion Armageddon trade betting the United States will lose its AAA credit rating.

In one moment, an invisible trader placed a single trade that moved the most liquid debt market in the world.

The trade was for block trades of 5,370 10-year Treasury futures executed at 124-03 and 3,100 Treasury bond futures executed at 125-01.

The value of the trade was about $850 million dollars. In simple terms, if that was a direct bond buy, no one would be talking about it.

However, with the use of futures, you have to have margin capacity behind the trade. That means with a single push of a button someone was willing to commit more than $1 billion of real capital to this trade with expectations of a 10-to-1 return ratio.

You only do this if you see an edge.

WASHINGTON - Hours after two nonpartisan campaign-finance watchdogs filed complaints yesterday with federal election officials and the US attorney general, a mysterious $1 million donor to a political action committee supporting presidential candidate Mitt Romney came forward and identified himself.

The contributor, Edward Conard, is a former executive with Bain Capital, which was cofounded by Romney, and said last night that he did not intend to circumvent election laws when he created a company, W Spann LLC, which paid the contribution without Conard’s name attached.

“I did so after consulting prominent legal counsel regarding the transaction, and based on my understanding that the contribution would comply with applicable laws,’’ he told Politico in a statement last night.

The Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21, nonprofit organizations based in Washington, D.C., alleged in the complaints filed earlier yesterday that the contributor may have illegally sought to hide his identity by setting up a shell company, which formed and dissolved within weeks of making the contribution. Registration records for the company do not list its owners.

“This case deserves a good, hard look from the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice,’’ Paul S. Ryan, associate legal counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, said in an interview. “If violations are found, they should be prosecuted vigorously in order to deter future straw-contributor schemes that make a mockery of our campaign finance disclosure laws."

Quote by TriSec:
Romney mystery donor identified

WASHINGTON - Hours after two nonpartisan campaign-finance watchdogs filed complaints yesterday with federal election officials and the US attorney general, a mysterious $1 million donor to a political action committee supporting presidential candidate Mitt Romney came forward and identified himself.

The contributor, Edward Conard, is a former executive with Bain Capital, which was cofounded by Romney, and said last night that he did not intend to circumvent election laws when he created a company, W Spann LLC, which paid the contribution without Conard’s name attached.

“I did so after consulting prominent legal counsel regarding the transaction, and based on my understanding that the contribution would comply with applicable laws,’’ he told Politico in a statement last night.

The Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21, nonprofit organizations based in Washington, D.C., alleged in the complaints filed earlier yesterday that the contributor may have illegally sought to hide his identity by setting up a shell company, which formed and dissolved within weeks of making the contribution. Registration records for the company do not list its owners.

“This case deserves a good, hard look from the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice,’’ Paul S. Ryan, associate legal counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, said in an interview. “If violations are found, they should be prosecuted vigorously in order to deter future straw-contributor schemes that make a mockery of our campaign finance disclosure laws."