Stories I’d like to see

1. The IRS bureaucrat who could upend the campaign finance money flow:

Here’s an idea for a story about an obscure government bureaucrat whose decisions could have a major impact on the 2012 elections and on the entire issue of campaign finance reform going forward.

As this article in Roll Call, the Washington weekly, reports, there is increasing controversy surrounding super PAC-like groups that fashion themselves as coming under the Internal Revenue Service’s 501(c)(4) classification as a “social welfare organization.” Under IRS rules, 501(c)(4)’s are not only tax-exempt but also don’t have to disclose their donors. This means that they can spend unlimited sums on political advertising – including corporate contributions, following the Citizens United decision – but unlike super PACs, they can do so while keeping the sources of the money completely secret.

That’s why many of the big super PACS, such as Karl Rove’s American Crossroads – which are simply non-profits that engage fully and unabashedly in political activity but must disclose donors – operate companion 501(c)(4)’s that can take undisclosed donations. In the case of Rove’s super PAC,  the companion 501(c)(4) is called Crossroads GPS.

The sole catch is that under the IRS rules, a 501(c)(4) can only spend money on political activities so long as that is not its “primary activity.”

Ads paid for by a 501(c)(4) can advocate political positions. Thus, there have been Crossroads GPS TV ads that declare, “Tell Obama: Stop the spending. Support the New Majority Agenda,” and “Senator Claire McCaskill was a key Obama adviser in passing his failed $1.18 trillion stimulus.” But these ads cannot directly urge that someone be elected or not elected. And, again, even this slightly tailored political advocacy cannot be the group’s “primary activity,” which is supposed to be “social welfare.” In fact, the IRS regulations specifically state that “the promotion of social welfare does not include the direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.”

As the New York Times reported last week, Robert Bauer, a lawyer for the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee, has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission disputing Crossroads GPS’s claim to be a “social welfare” organization. “There has never been any doubt,” asserts Bauer’s complaint, “about its true purpose: to elect candidates of its choice to the Presidency and the Congress.”

Bauer told the FEC that under a recent federal court ruling, the commission was now empowered to determine the “true purpose” of the 501(c)(4) on a case-by-case basis. However, Bauer wrote, the Rove group seemed determined to “run out the clock,” hoping that its donors would be shielded well beyond Election Day because the FEC is so notoriously slow in making any decisions. “The Commission should act without delay,” Bauer urged, “to ensure that, before heading to the polls, voters are operating with full information about the political interests behind what they have seen on the airwaves.”

Given the FEC’s perennial paralysis, Bauer’s plea is unlikely to work. However, there’s another agency – the IRS – that could act to investigate whether groups like Crossroads GPS and similar 501(c)(4)’s from both parties are more involved in politics than social welfare. Losing a 501(c)(4) designation would force Crossroads GPS to disclose its donors.

Whatever else you think about the IRS as an impenetrable bureaucracy, when it comes to decisions like these designations for tax-exempt groups, it has proved to be far less political than the perpetually deadlocked FEC, whose six members are split between the two political parties.

Ever heard of Steven T. Miller? He’s the IRS deputy commissioner for services and enforcement, and he supervises the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division, run, according to the IRS website, by Acting Commissioner Joseph H. Grant.

I interviewed Miller in 2002 for a book I wrote about the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, because I was interested in the tax-exempt status of some of the charities accused of misusing money donated to help 9/11 victims. I recall Miller saying that he was not accustomed to talking to the press, which was obvious by how uncomfortable he seemed. I also recall him making no bones about his office’s power to revoke various IRS tax-exempt designations.

A Google search turns up some references to speeches Miller has given to audiences of tax professionals or lawyers, as well as rulings he has authored, but it doesn’t show any articles focusing on him, let alone on Grant, the person with presumably direct authority over 501(c)(4) status decisions.

So who are Miller and Grant? Has anyone complained to them about Crossroads GPS or any other super PAC-associated 501(c)(4)’s? Do they need a formal complaint to investigate? How quickly could they act if it’s clear to them that these are not really “social welfare organizations”? Can they conduct audits before the groups’ annual tax returns are due?

Would an appeal to the courts of any IRS decision to revoke 501(c)(4) status and order donor disclosure under FEC rules guarantee the same delay that Bauer claims Rove’s group is playing for at the FEC? Or could the government get a quick injunction ordering the disclosure, on the grounds that it is highly likely to win its case and that a delay of disclosure beyond the election would cause irreparable harm (the usual standard for getting such injunctions)?

What are the likely political implications of Miller and his staff acting, or not acting? The post-Nixon-era IRS has had a clean reputation for not politicizing its work. Could Miller and Grant act one way or the other without interference from Obama political appointees, and would the public accept that they are doing so purely on the merits? Or are people like Rove counting on exactly that kind of backlash?

With that in mind, what are Miller’s and Grant’s political backgrounds and leanings, if any? (When I met Miller he was working in the George W. Bush administration.)

This is anything but a tangential story. A report last week on the OpenSecrets.org website of the Center for Responsive Politics found that in the 2010 election cycle these groups raised more than $100 million for this kind of activity – and that was two years before the current and obviously more critical and expensive election cycle. (Publicly available tax records for these groups are typically a year or two old and must be searched manually.) It’s entirely possible that these groups will actually outspend the super PACS in many of the 2012 contests, with all the money coming from unknown sources.

2. What’s wrong with D.C. baseball fans?

The Washington Nationals are leading the tough National League East, and with Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper they boast two of the most exciting young players in baseball. So how come their attendance in a good-sized market is so relatively meager? They’re averaging just 29,482 fans per game, which is 14th out of 30 Major League teams. In fact, fans across the country seem more interested in the Nationals than the folks at home: The team’s attendance averages 33,463 on the road.

So what’s the matter with D.C. baseball fans or with their team’s promotional efforts?

PHOTO: Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove (L) and former Press Secretary Dana Perino chat after the unveiling of the official White House portraits of former U.S. President George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush in the East Room of the White House in Washington May 31, 2012. REUTERS/Larry Downing

1. Pinning the $ on the politicians:

Much of the press covering the testimony of Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s CEO, before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs last week about his bank’s $3 billion trading loss said Dimon got off easy. Some accounts, like this one in Politico cited a money connection: Dimon, Politico reported, “fielded mostly softball questions from a panel of senators who’ve taken thousands of dollars in contributions from his firm.”

Pointing out the money connection makes sense, but I wish the press would take the trouble to give us more. Why not put a parenthetical next to any senator who is mentioned in an article like this, detailing how much money he or she got from Dimon or JPMorgan-associated PACs in the last five years?

As in “said Tennessee Republican Bob Corker ($64,000)”?

Or: “explained Democrat and committee chair Tim Johnson of South Dakota ($38,995).”

There are several sources, such as Open Secrets.org, run by the Center for Responsive Politics, where this information can be gathered quickly, and from which I gathered these real Corker and Johnson JPMorgan-linked dollar tallies in about two minutes.

In fact, at a time when most Americans are appalled at the role money plays in politics, why not take advantage of these databases and post the dollar tallies whenever any politician is written about as taking one position or another on an issue? As a standard form, just have a parenthetical that reports the amount of contributions received from interests on one side or the other of the issue the senator or congressman (or maybe even a state legislator) is depicted in the article as addressing.

There could be a note added if the contribution was from an interest whose side the politician didn’t appear to take, and an additional note if he or she took money from both sides.

And if the newspaper or website lists the actual votes of legislators, why not put the same parenthetical dollar sign next to each vote?

At major news organizations, compiling this information – linking politicians and money from major interest groups, businesses and unions so that reporters covering these stories would have it at the ready – seems like a great job for a summer intern.

Would all these parenthetical dollar signs next to the names of our elected officials look smarmy? You bet. That would be the point.

2. Cancer Treatment Centers of America: Leading the way, or luring the vulnerable?

The Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) has been running a ubiquitous ad campaign pitching its hospitals as the best answer to the health crisis facing families that have been suddenly confronted with a C-word diagnosis.

Its website – featuring “Care That Never Quits” as a registered trademark and describing a network of “all-digital” hospitals, whatever that means – boasts on its “results” page a slew of impressive cure rates: for example, 88 percent for breast cancer detected within one year, versus a national average cure rate (according to the National Institutes of Health, the website says) of 60 percent. Or 30 percent versus 11 percent for pancreatic cancer.

Is that true? If it’s not true, or if the statistics are spun deceptively to CTCA’s advantage, what are the rules, if any, governing that?

The one relatively recent news clip I found about the company (at least, I think it’s a for-profit company) says that it features flat fees for treatment of major cancer types, such as $10,000 for prostate cancer and $14,500 for lung cancer.

That’s right: flat, manageable fees instead of the usual pile-it-on fee-for-service regime that is bankrupting patients and taxpayers. Plus, high cure rates. And thrilled patients, as evidenced by the testimonials that fill the website. If that’s all real, this could be a great story about a breakthrough in healthcare.

Another thread found in a Google search pointed me to a blog article saying that Cancer Treatment Centers of America founder Richard J. Stephenson is a member of the board of FreedomWorks, the conservative organization that helped propel the Tea Party, and that he is also the president of International Capital and Management, “an organization specializing in making hospitals more efficient and cost-effective.” A subhead in the same blog post says that in 1996 “CTCA Settled With FTC After Allegations Of Making ‘False and Unsubstantiated Claims’ About Treatments.” The blog’s link to an FTC press release appears to substantiate this account.

Again, if CTCA has truly cleaned up its act since then, that’s a story worth telling, especially given the prominence of its ad campaign. However, given the desperate mindset of people who are most likely to respond to those ads or other promotions, or come to this website, if some of its promises and success stories are not true, we need to know that, too. And either way, I’d love to know who the investors are behind this increasingly visible healthcare venture.

3. The European Union: What were they thinking?

Maybe it’s just me, but I remain confused about what political leaders and economic officials in Europe were thinking about their inconsistent economies and approaches to fiscal policy when they introduced the European Union’s common currency in 1999. How, if at all, did they address the possibility that some of the member countries would be so fiscally irresponsible (or economically challenged, depending on your view) that in a broad recession they could drag every other country down unless the strongest – in this case Germany – chipped in billions of its taxpayers’ money to rescue even the most recalcitrant of the weakest?

Can’t some smart newspaper or magazine (or maybe 60 Minutes or CNBC) go back to 1999 and tell us how these potential problems were discussed and who convinced everyone else not to worry.

With the euro crisis in mind and as an offshoot to the stories like this one over the weekend about banks holding “fire drills” to deal with the outcome of the Greek elections, I bet that last weekend there were also a half-dozen or so lawyers scattered at elite firms across the world whose arcane specialty is, or has become, currency provisions in loan documents and similar contracts. It would be fun to see a story of how they worked through the weekend huddling with hundreds of jittery clients, proving once again that even the worst events produce economic winners (usually the lawyers). Who are they? And who came up with the most creative potential solutions for clients worried about being stuck with drachmas?

PHOTO: JP Morgan Chase and Company CEO Jamie Dimon gestures during the U.S. Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on “A Breakdown in Risk Management: What Went Wrong at JPMorgan Chase?” on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 13, 2012. REUTERS/Larry Downing

1. Chen spy-versus-spy game:

I’m guessing there must be a fun, streets-of-New-York story about Chinese spies (maybe people from the Chinese U.N. delegation) following New York University’s most famous student, Chen Guangcheng, as he makes his way around Manhattan – and about how American security personnel are not only guarding Chen but also keeping tabs on those spies. This could, after all, be a good way of flushing out Chinese operatives in the U.S. And I’m wondering what steps and countersteps have been taken having to do with the security of Chen’s computer, cell phone and any other digital devices he uses to communicate with friends and followers.

2. Troop suicide surge: What happens to the families?

AP’s disheartening report that suicides among U.S. troops this year came at the rate of nearly one a day and outpaced combat deaths in Afghanistan raises the question of what benefits the families of these fallen soldiers get. Standard life insurance usually doesn’t cover suicides. What about death benefits for members of the military? What exactly are the benefits given to military families whose loved one dies while on active duty, whether through suicide or in battle?

And while we’re on the subject, if suicides are typically the result of mental illness, what are the policy arguments around whether they should be covered, in or outside the military?

3. The Big Board against Nasdaq:

I’ve been waiting to read a story about how the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE Euronext) is moving to take market share from Nasdaq in the wake of the Facebook IPO fiasco. Beyond attacking Nasdaq’s $40 million plan to make up for traders’ Facebook losses by offering trading discounts to clients – with the claim that it’s inadequate and will give Nasdaq a marketing advantage – is the Big Board sending its sales force out to claim it could never screw things up the way Nasdaq did? Or is it simply laying back, assuming it doesn’t need to dance in Nasdaq’s end zone?

With that in mind, Nasdaq has obviously decided that the best defense is a good offense; last week it announced in a triumphant press release that it had lured Kraft Foods into switching to Nasdaq from the NYSE. I’d love to know what goodies Kraft got for making the switch, let alone for announcing it in the midst of Nasdaq’s troubles. Was this switch in the works before the blowup of the Facebook IPO? If so, what, if anything, did Nasdaq then do to save the deal?

I’ve always wanted to see a story about how these exchanges compete over a service that seems like a commodity; the Facebook aftermath obviously presents a great hook.

4. Jockeying over debate rules:

Although aficionados of presidential politics tend to be mired in speculation over the mini-flap of the day (such as last week’s slip by President Obama that the private sector is “doing fine”), it’s time some reporter checked in on an infinitely more important story: What’s happening with the negotiations over the three scheduled presidential debates? With the first one scheduled for October 3 and the last for October 22 (with a vice-presidential showdown slated for October 11), and with the race likely to be too close to call by then, these debates, run by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, are almost certain to be decisive. So which side is pushing for what kind of rules aimed at favoring their guy, and what’s the likely outcome?

PHOTO: Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident and legal advocate who recently sought asylum in the United States, gives an interview in New York May 24, 2012. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

1. Looking in on the old money:

This and other articles last week reporting that the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers are joining together to expand their wealth advisory and asset management enterprises reminds me of a story I’ve wanted to see for a long time: In an age when we’re entranced by the wealth of twentysomething dot-commers, someone should look at some of the old-name American fortunes and see how much wealth remains today for the dozens, or hundreds, of their descendants.

We know from this story and others that the Rockefellers still maintain an office that manages the family’s wealth (and, in fact, has expanded to manage other families’ fortunes). But how are they doing? What’s a teenage or twentysomething Rockefeller worth today? What about the Morgans, the Goulds, the Vanderbilts, the Astors, the Flaglers? Or the Kennedys? Who’s still doing well? Who’s down and out, and why?

2. Why no bunts?

Unless you’re a baseball fan, or maybe unless you’re a Yankee fan, you may not care about this, though you should, because it could be a story about ego overwhelming pragmatism. With baseball teams overshifting their defenses this year more than ever to snag hard grounders and line drives from lefty pull hitters, why aren’t any of the power lefties simply bunting down the third-base line for an almost sure single or maybe even a double? After all, the best hitters only succeed 3 times out of 10, while this is probably a 9-out-of-10 proposition.

In the case of the Yankees, Mark Teixeira and Curtis Granderson are now routinely coming to bat with three infielders on the right side of second base and the third baseman playing shortstop. Yet they’re not bunting, even when, as I’ve seen recently, they come up in a close game with runners on first and second with no outs or one out. A bunt would almost definitely load the bases (plus lessen the chances of an overshift the next time they come to bat).

Sure, they’ve both got powerful bats, especially with Teixeira emerging from a two-month slump. But the next time they ground out or line out with one or two men on base, would some reporter please summon the gumption to stick a microphone in front of them or Joe Girardi, the manager of the lagging Yanks, and ask why they didn’t go for the sure hit? Is it ego? Is it that they can’t do something that most good high school ballplayers can do – lay down a bunt?

3. Veterans’ health insurance sweepstakes:

I’ve recently been seeing a banner ad on Politico headlined: “Congress Needs to Act Now to Protect Military Health Care Management.”

“Get the facts” at “SaveMyMilitaryHealthcare.com,” the ad continues, taking me to a collection of headlines and links to newspaper articles about how a company called TriWest Healthcare Alliance had just lost a renewal of a five-year, $20.5 billion Pentagon contract to administer health insurance benefits to 2 million veterans and service members and their families. The website (which, when you click “About Us,” makes no secret of the fact that it is produced and paid for by TriWest) also linked to several articles reporting on complaints and lawsuits having been filed against United Healthcare, which had won the contract away from TriWest. Among the “fast facts” highlighted on the website was this one:

UnitedHealth Group paid $350 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by the American Medical Association and union health plans alleging that inaccurate data in its Ingenix database resulted in failure to properly reimburse doctors and health plan members.

On the other hand, I’ve also been seeing text ads inserted in Politico’s “Playbook,” the popular daily electronic newsletter written by Mike Allen, from United Healthcare, declaring:

UnitedHealthcare wants the families of TRICARE West to know more about us. UnitedHealthcare is the trusted health care partner of more than 75 million Americans. And we are proud of our track record of quality service, including being ranked #1 in claims processing accuracy according to the American Medical Association’s ranking of the seven leading commercial health insurers in its 2011 Report Card. Our 115,000 people will work every day to put our unmatched provider network, industry leading innovations, and passion for service to work for you. Because helping military families isn’t just a job for us. It’s an honor.

So there’s obviously a big battle shaping up in Washington (Politico’s readership base) over what is now a pending appeal of the contract award, which one of the news articles on the TriWest Healthcare Alliance website says is “hotly contested” because it is “so lucrative.” Which side is right about United Healthcare’s record? How did it win the contract away after TriWest had it for 16 years?

More generally, what are the rules and strategies behind these big-money contract fights? Who’s the go-to lawyer, or lobbyist? Is this more about procurement law or political lobbying, or is it a combination of both? The rules for such contract awards seem to require that appeals go to the U.S. Government Accountability Office or the Pentagon, and that the appeal can only be about the process followed in evaluating the competing contract proposals. Indeed, there are squadrons of lawyers in Washington who specialize in the contract bid process and write reams of articles about the arcana surrounding it. But if both sides are advertising to Politico’s readership of politicians, there must be more to it than that. Twenty billion dollars – or 4 billion dollars a year just to process health insurance claims, not pay them – is more than half of the FBI’s entire annual budget. It would be nice to know how the decision to spend it is made.

Which brings to mind the ultimate question raised by those dueling Politico ad campaigns: What are the economics of this contract? My math indicates that the winner is going to be paid about $175 a year per beneficiary – again, just to administer the claims, not provide any care. That seems pretty high. What do big private-sector companies pay for the same services? This is one of those classic inside-the-Beltway stories that need sunlight.

PHOTO: New York Yankees’ Curtis Granderson successfully bunts to advance the runner against the Kansas City Royals in the fourth inning during their MLB American League baseball game in Kansas City, Missouri August 16, 2011. REUTERS/Dave Kaup

1. The Kennedys’ take on the Caro book:

Robert Caro’s stunning new volume on Lyndon Johnson has received enormous coverage, but one angle I haven’t seen is what the reaction to it is of John F. Kennedy family members and loyalists. Caro’s depiction of how LBJ was treated by JFK and his team (especially Robert Kennedy) during his vice-presidency and how he basically resuscitated the Kennedy administration’s domestic agenda – which seemed doomed in Congress had Kennedy lived, because of how JFK and his aides fumbled the ball on Capitol Hill – presents a pretty damning picture of the Age of Camelot. Are there any Kennedy people out there willing to argue otherwise?

2. Facebook: Race to the courthouse

The three suits claiming class action status that have been filed against Facebook, its underwriters and  Nasdaq charging various misdeeds in the run-up to its IPO would be great material for a fresh look at class action securities suits. More often than not such suits are an exercise in plaintiffs’ lawyers racing to the courthouse to file dubious claims to force defendants into making settlements that typically pay the lawyers handsomely while leaving little for their supposed clients.

The suits – one in Maryland, one in New York and a third in California – were filed within hours of news reports pinpointing Nasdaq’s screwups and the fact that analysts apparently warned some big clients, but not the rest of the buyers, that Facebook’s supplemental filing with the SEC just before the launch of the IPO might be a significant negative development. The filing noted the increasing use of mobile devices to access Facebook and explained that Facebook has so far not done well generating ad revenue from mobile traffic.

Forget the fact that anyone reading the filing would have known about Facebook’s vulnerability as its traffic moved to mobile; that’s the purpose of a public filing. Forget that brokerages and their analysts (as opposed to the company issuing the IPO) are not required to communicate their views with all clients equally. And forget that it’s probably going to be impossible to claim a legitimate “class” out of all Facebook buyers whose trades were delayed by Nasdaq’s snafus, because the facts surrounding each case (such as when they tried to buy and at what price) are, by definition, so different as to make litigating their claims as a group untenable. None of that matters. What usually matters to the lawyers is that they got to the courthouse first, which gives them a great argument for becoming the class’s lead lawyer, or at least part of the lead lawyer team – which can make them the prime recipients when the defendants pay the plaintiffs’ lawyers to go away.

So, how did these lawyers gather their clients? Why did they pick the venues they picked? Who’s likely to be competing with them with new suits in the coming days? What are the likely economics, based on past cases?

Another wrinkle to the story has to be the paparazzi-like profile of everything surrounding Facebook and its IPO. That could make the defendants want to settle to put the publicity behind them, which is what I’d bet Nasdaq will do, as might the bankers. But Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg have proved in the past to be tough defendants who don’t cave. (Ask the brothers Winklevoss.) And it’s nearly impossible to figure out what they did wrong, since it was their public filing of the supplement to the IPO that has generated the suit against them.

All in all, a great legal fight story.

3. Figuring out the judge in the Edwards case:

Catherine Eagles, the judge in the John Edwards campaign funds case, has made many seemingly ridiculous rulings that are likely to make any Edwards conviction a slam dunk to be overturned on appeal. So, I’d love to know more about her than can be found in this simple Wikipedia entry. (Here’s a summary of the shakiness of the case that I sketched on the eve of the trial.)

As this Washington Post article tactfully summarizing her miscues last week explained, Judge Eagles refused to allow a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission to testify for the defense about why the commission did not think the money channeled by key Edwards patrons to Edwards’ mistress was a campaign contribution. The judge also refused to allow Edwards’ former campaign treasurer to testify that an FEC audit had concluded that these were not campaign contributions. Nor did she allow testimony that the campaign finance law is confusing, ruling that “it just doesn’t seem complicated to me” – an assessment that the jury, which has now been deadlocked for a week, would probably not agree with.

Beyond that, I’m still hoping for some terrific reporter who covers the Justice Department (Charlie Savage of the New York Times would be my pick) to get the story of how and why Eric Holder’s Justice Department decided to prosecute this case in the first place. Criminalizing political conduct is always dicey, but this case is such an acrobatic stretch that everything about how it came to be begs to be put under the microscope. Someone might as well do it now – before there’s a race to do it if the Edwards jury follows the judge’s lead and convicts him but then the case is overturned with a stinging rebuke of Eagles from the appellate court.

4. Apple and volume discounts:

I recently noticed this article in a trade publication called Government Security News that says the Transportation Security Administration is seeking authority to buy 1,000 Apple laptops and 1,000 iPhones, iPods, or iPads for as much as $3 million. That computes to $1,500 per product, which not only seems high but clearly suggests that the TSA does not expect a volume discount.

The memo seeking that authorization suggests that the government doesn’t have much leverage with Apple no matter how much it spends. Because Apple products only use the iOS operating system, the memo explains, “there is no competition for Apple products.”

Which reminded me of stories like this one I’ve seen lately about school systems buying iPads in bulk, where, again, the math seems to suggest that Apple is bargaining hard. In this case, Education Week reports that San Diego is buying 27,500 iPads for $15 million – which would be $545 each. Assuming the devices don’t come with cellular connections, the middle range (32GB) new iPad lists for $599. Not much of a discount, and that assumes the school isn’t buying the lower capacity (16GB) version, which lists for $499.

So what’s the story with Apple’s volume pricing, especially for non-profits and government agencies?

PHOTO Monitors show the value of the Facebook, Inc. stock during morning trading at the NASDAQ Marketsite in New York, May 21, 2012. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

1. Printing drachmas?

What actually will happen if Greece leaves the euro zone and goes back to its own currency? How would that work? Is there a printing press somewhere busily churning out drachmas just in case? Or did they keep the old ones in storage? How will Greeks get new drachmas? Will they exchange their euros for them? How will the exchange rates be determined? How will all the software for cash registers and credit card and e-commerce transactions be reprogrammed?

2. Searching for Jimmy Hoffa’s assassins:

We’re approaching, in two months, the 37th anniversary of the disappearance of Teamsters Union leader Jimmy Hoffa. I wrote a book about the union three years after his disappearance that pinpointed how he was murdered and who did it. Although the FBI spelled out in an internal memo and in various affidavits seeking search warrants pretty much the same scenario and suspects that I reported, the feds were never able to make a case because no one would talk and Hoffa’s body was never found. (It was probably incinerated in a mob-connected sanitation plant near Detroit.)

However, the case is still officially open. In fact, I’m told there is at least one FBI agent still assigned to it. With almost all of the people involved in taking out Hoffa now dead, what does that agent do all day? A great story commemorating the anniversary would not only spend a few days with that agent but also check in on Hoffa’s son, James, who is now the Teamsters president. Portrayed in my book as a completely clean lawyer who did some union-related legal work, James took over his father’s old job in 1999. When I spent time with him in the years just after his father’s murder he was seethingly bitter about how the mob element that controlled the union in partnership with his father had turned on the elder Hoffa. But he was also understandably afraid to say much about it publicly. What’s he got to say all these years later?

3. Are gift cards the new currency?

Last month’s mammoth takedown in the New York Times of Wal-Mart’s alleged cover-up of allegations of corporate bribery in Mexico reported that one alleged method of spreading payments to local Mexican officials was by giving them Wal-Mart gift cards. That got me wondering how that kind of accounting was handled.

It’s one thing to disguise a bribe by recording it as a fee paid to a lawyer or other middleman, who passes it on to the corrupt official. But how would depleting the gift card inventory that way be explained? Or are controls on gift cards so lax that this can be done routinely? What about gift cards at other large retailers? Do they hand them out to “friends” this way? Again, this seems like an easier way to dispense illicit corporate funds than cutting a check or creating a cash stash.

And while we’re on the subject of gift cards and accounting, with the cards now proliferating so widely I’d love to see a story on how companies account for them when it comes to reporting profit and loss. If I give a corporation $50, the company counts that revenue against the cost of what I just bought for that $50 But if I buy a gift card, it has no costs to count it against, which should mean that until someone redeems my gift card by taking $50 worth of merchandise, under basic accounting theory the company should not record the revenue because it hasn’t earned it by supplying any merchandise. Is that the way it works uniformly? And if so, what happens if my giftee never redeems the card or never redeems it fully? When can the money paid for unredeemed cards be counted as revenue?

How much of a profit center have such unredeemed gift cards become? And what are the regulations governing how long someone has to redeem the cards?

4. If JPMorgan lost, who won?

Aside from this article in Reuters, which pieced together part of the mystery, as far as I can tell, with all that’s been reported about JPMorgan’s trading loss of more than $2 billion, there’s one part of the story that’s not been fully covered: If one party loses billions in a trade, another party – or, as seems to be the case here, many parties have to have made those billions.

So far, the most public reference to that side of the story I’ve seen is an offhand comment made by a politician who’s always looking at things from a business angle. According to the Wall Street Journal, when he was asked last week about the JPMorgan fiasco, Mitt Romney told a radio interviewer: “That’s the way … America works. Some people experienced a loss in this case because of a bad decision. By the way, there was someone who made a gain…” To be sure, if the Reuters piece is correct, this seems to be the way the world, not America, works: Those on the other side of the trade so far seem to include London-based hedge funds.

So who are the lucky winners? Does JPMorgan even know? What about the fact that the Reuters piece notes that at least two of the winners used to be traders at JPMorgan? And what more can we find out about the drama unfolding right now as these traders decide whether to push for more winnings against JPMorgan or take their money off the table? How does this poker game work?

PHOTO: A man makes his way past a replica of a one drachma coin outside the Athens Town Hall May 21, 2012.  REUTERS/Yorgos Karahalis

1. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner: How much for charity?

Two Sundays ago, Tom Brokaw used an appearance on Meet the Press to attack the increasingly over-the-top annual gathering of press, politicians and Hollywood stars and hangers-on known as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Brokaw called it “an event that separates the press from the people that they’re supposed to serve. It is time to re-think it.” Incoming correspondents’ association president Ed Henry of Fox News quickly tweeted back that the dinner, which featured among other celebs Kim Kardashian, “raises TON of $ for needy kids who might not get into journalism w/out help.”

Really? The association’s website lists just $78,000 for 15 scholarships in 2012, plus one scholarship whose amount is not listed. Assuming it’s about $6,000 (a bit above the average for the other 15 scholarships), that would be $84,000 in scholarships. Plus, there’s a $30,000 grant listed for a high school mentoring program. Yet this year’s dinner, according to an association board member, sold “nearly” 2,700 seats at $250 each to various media companies. That would raise over $650,000 for the dinner, compared with what, again, looks like $84,000 for scholarships and $30,000 for mentoring. That’s a total of $114,000.

Moreover, on the page where the website lists the scholarships, the correspondents’ association names 18 donors who are thanked for their “generosity.” The donors include Bloomberg, Time Inc and Thomson Reuters, and they seem to have given to the scholarship fund apart from buying dinner tables, or at least the website makes it appear that way. If so, wouldn’t these deep pockets have already come up with some or all of that $114,000 “TON of $” before the dinner was even held? That’s only a donation of about $6,000 each. Which would mean that the revenue from the dinner had little or nothing to do with the scholarships.

There could be lots of explanations for this, such as the possibility that this year’s dinner will pay for an expanded array of scholarships next year. But the numbers suggest that someone ought to look at exactly how much the party actually helps Ed Henry’s “needy kids.”

2. Dateline China

I’ve noticed that stories like this one in the New York Times reporting on the dramatic events surrounding the travails of Chen Guangcheng, the dissident blind lawyer, have multiple bylines as well as multiple names listed at the end of the story of Times people who contributed to the article. Which makes me wonder about the ins and outs of reporting and getting stories like this out of China. Who did which reporting among the 10 people credited with working on this story, and how did they do it? With some working from Beijing, others in Washington and one even in Portsmouth, Virginia, how does this all get put together?

More generally, what are the special challenges of getting news like this out? Assuming Chinese security people follow Western journalists, what do the reporters do to give them the slip? How successful are the authorities at monitoring reporters’ emails and phone conversations, and what steps do journalists take to evade them? Are communications ever blocked completely? What special measures must the reporters take to protect sources? Is anything ever self-censored out of fear for the journalists’ or sources’ safety? Do reporters from competing news organizations cooperate more and develop greater camaraderie under these trying conditions, or do they compete even harder?

Major news organizations have done a great job bringing this story (and that of the scandal around the fall of former Chongqing province mayor Bo Xilai and his wife) to the world. Their work seems far faster and more complete than what emerged in the immediate weeks following Tiananmen Square in 1989. Sure, there’s been a revolution in digital communications since then, but the police state’s own technology apparatus has similarly upped its game. It would be great to see the story behind what is probably the digital age’s most compelling cat-and-mouse contest.

3. Testing the testers

This story last week in the Wall Street Journal recounted how a slew of obvious, even hilarious, errors in the questions posed on English and math tests given to students in the third through eighth grades in New York State has “eroded trust in the statewide exams.” In one case, a now-infamous passage about a pineapple and a hare intended to test reading comprehension was so nonsensical that Gawker posted it and dared readers to answer the questions about it posed to eighth graders. If you want to see a great story begging to be written, click here and read the passage and the questions about it.

The company that wrote this test is Pearson, which is also a major force in text books, as well as the publisher of the Financial Times and co-owner of the Economist. Who at Pearson wrote this gibberish? (I’m assuming they didn’t borrow people from the FT or the Economist.) What’s the overall test creation process? One would have thought it would be quite elaborate given that this was part of a $32 million contract Pearson won from New York State to write the tests. What’s the profit margin on work like this? How many layers of approval did that reading passage go through? Who in the state school system vetted the tests and missed this and so many other screwups? Can the state get its money back? If not, why not? What did Pearson promise to get the testing contract in the first place?

For an ambitious news organization (I’d love to see it on 60 Minutes), all of this, in all its delicious detail, would be a lead-in to a broad-gauge overview of testing quality and the testing industry. At a time when the linchpin of the education reform movement sweeping the country is the push to use student progress on tests as an ingredient in evaluating teacher effectiveness, the quality of the tests – and their cost – has never been more important.

PHOTO: Actress Lindsay Lohan stands on the red carpet as she arrives for the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton in Washington, April 28, 2012. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

1. Protecting the Homeland….in New Zealand

Is Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano completely on the sidelines? And has she not gotten the memo about limiting government travel? How else to explain that on May 2 she began a trip to New Zealand and Australia? May 2 was the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death, when we were supposedly on high alert for possible al Qaeda attacks; and it was also when the prostitution scandal involving the Secret Service – which is part of Napolitano’s department – was raging. A Department of Homeland Security press release described the trip this way:

In Wellington [New Zealand], Secretary Napolitano will meet with Prime Minister John Key, and participate in bilateral meetings with New Zealand counterparts to discuss a variety of issues including information sharing, combating transnational crime and human trafficking.

In Australia, Secretary Napolitano will lead the Presidential delegation to the 70th Anniversary Commemoration of the Battle of the Coral Sea, the World War II battle that marked the start of the U.S.-Australia security partnership. While in Canberra and Brisbane, Secretary Napolitano will deliver remarks on security, privacy, and strong international partnerships at the Australian National University, and meet with Australian counterparts to discuss the ongoing partnerships to combat transnational crime, counter violent extremism, enhance information sharing, and work to ensure a more safe, secure, and resilient global supply chain.

Sure, some of this sounds vaguely relevant to her job, though it’s difficult to put the “Commemoration of the Battle of the Coral Sea” in that category. And while human trafficking is an important issue, as with a recent trip Napolitano took to Miami Beach to participate in a panel on the dangers of online dating, it’s probably not what comes to mind when most Americans think of the mission of the person running the country’s third-largest cabinet agency – the one that is supposed to be focused on protecting us from terrorism.

What did this New Zealand-Australia sojourn cost us? (Probably a lot, if she had to take a government plane equipped with secure communications. Did she?) How much has her travel cost us in the last year? What about overall travel and conferences for her and her agency this year? And can’t somebody demand a log of her schedule and tell us how many days in the last year she’s been out of town and what those trips tell us about how much she’s engaged in the job we hired her for?

2. De-routinizing the filibuster:

I wish someone would do a piece explaining that the most prominent artifact of today’s Washington gridlock – the 60 Senate votes now routinely required for anything to pass because it has to overcome a filibuster – wasn’t always routine. I remember how in the ’60s a filibuster was an extraordinary event, replete with photos of senators having to bring cots on to the Senate floor, because to prevent a cutoff of debate, some senator or another had to stay on his feet and keep debating, while the others had to be present for a potential vote to cut off debate.

In 1975, the rules were changed to reduce the number of votes necessary to cut off debate from 67 to 60, but the requirement that debate actually continue was also scrapped. Democrats made some encouraging noises about filibuster reform in late 2010 and early 2011, but those efforts fizzled.

At a time when it’s clear that politics are so polarized as to make it impossible for 60, let alone 67, senators to agree on anything, someone should ask the Democrats, as well as those Republicans who would like to restore the Senate to a working body, why they don’t want to ditch the cloture threshold altogether, or at least insist on that talk-till-you drop spectacle to dramatize the gridlock?

With that in mind, when bills now fail to pass because they do not get the 60 votes necessary for a real vote on the merits, the press should stop reporting that the bill “failed 58-42.” That’s not only confusing but also distorts what happened – which is that 42 senators voted not even to allow a vote and, therefore, to subvert the legislative process as it was originally intended by the founders. After all, the only voting rule embedded in the constitution says that bills pass in the Senate by a majority vote.

3. Does Big Labor own Big Management?

This report about the California state teachers retirement pension fund bringing a shareholders’ suit against Wal-Mart for the damage its executives did to Wal-Mart shareholders’ interests by allegedly bribing Mexican public officials reminds me of a story I’ve been expecting to see for a while. Unions, particularly teachers’ unions, are a bastion of the political left, and Wal-Mart is, of course, well known for its support of conservative causes, especially anti-union labor laws. Yet, according to news reports, this teachers’ union pension fund owns about $300 million in Wal-Mart stock.

Similarly, a flood of television advertising from Big Oil’s American Petroleum Institute has been reminding us lately that it’s the little guy – through pension funds and mutual funds – who actually owns Big Oil. As the organization’s website explains: “Contrary to popular belief, America’s oil and natural gas companies aren’t owned by a small group of insiders. Only 2.8 percent of industry shares are owned by corporate management. The rest is owned by regular Americans, many of them middle class, such as teachers, police officers and firefighters.”

Beyond being a reminder of how out of whack corporate governance is, given that those 2.8 percent in “corporate management” seem to be calling the shots, juxtapose this irony or conflict or whatever else you want to call it with the fire hose of corporate money now going into lobbying, political advocacy and super PACs favored by that 2.8 percent. A slew of intriguing questions become obvious: The California teachers clearly don’t, but do any union pension funds have rules against holding stock in companies whose political positions are glaringly adverse to those of their members? Have any union funds that are invested in companies like Wal-Mart or Big Oil tried to use shareholder votes or investor meetings to get the managers who supposedly work for them to toe a different line?

How aware are union workers that the value of their pensions may depend on the success of entities, like Big Oil or Wal-Mart, they do not typically consider to be their friends?

Conversely, does awareness of their stake in corporate America’s biggest players, to the extent they are aware, moderate any of the workers’ political views, or give a persuasive talking point to politicians who want to take the side of big business – which is something that the Petroleum Institute’s ads are clearly attempting?

PHOTO: U.S. Secretary for Homeland Security Janet Napolitano speaks at a public lecture at the Australian National University in Canberra, May 3, 2012.  REUTERS/Andrew Taylor

1. The $5 billion moving bill:

Reports last week that the U.S. had agreed with Japan to transfer 9,000 of its 19,000 troops out of Okinawa stated matter-of-factly that the move will cost $8.6 billion – that’s billion, or $955,000 per service member. Even with Japan paying $3.1 billion of the bill, that leaves the U.S. with $5.5 billion of the tab.

Someone please explain to us taxpayers how moving even that many troops can cost us $5.5 billion, which is more than the entire appropriation for President Obama’s much-celebrated four-year Race to the Top education reform program? (It’s also close to the cost being argued over this week for cutting all student loan interest rates in half.) And what are the profit margins of the defense contractors that are going to get the work involved?

2. Can you insure against a bad arm?

When the New York Yankees traded in the off-season for Michael Pineda, Seattle’s rookie fireballing pitcher, it seemed like a good deal even though they had to give up their most promising minor league hitting prospect, Jesus Montero. Now, one month into the season, the deal has become a disaster: Pineda, who showed up for spring training mysteriously bereft of his fastball, has had to undergo shoulder surgery and will be out for the season if not forever.

But is this the Yankees’ loss, or is some insurance company holding the bag? A quick Internet search yields this 2008 article from Sports Business Daily, generally summarizing the availability of insurance for teams wanting to hedge these kinds of bets on their superstars. However, the story refers to insurance that would cover losses from an injury that sidelines a player who had a long-term, multimillion-dollar contract – in this case Albert Belle of the Baltimore Orioles. Here the Yankees’ loss isn’t big dollars paid to Pineda while he sits on the sidelines but the loss of swapping the prized Montero for someone who turns out to be lame.

How about a story examining how or if teams can insure against these kinds of disasters? Does the market differ across the various sports? And how do insurers set their rates? Do they examine the players? In the case of a pitcher, do they have experts look at how he throws to see if his delivery might carry extra risks of elbow or shoulder injury?

And, as with the Orioles’ Belle, is the player always protected in these contracts? Or can an injury – especially one sustained off the field, such as Yankee Joba Chamberlain’s possibly season-ending trampoline accident while playing with his son – free the team of its obligation to pay the sidelined player?

3. Who could be against…curbing government travel?

One way to come up with great stories is to ask yourself: “Who could be against that?” The answer not only ferrets out the other side of an argument, when another side might not be apparent, but it also casts fresh, tangible light on how our democracy has become dominated by special interests of all kinds that will rise up to stop initiatives that seem in the public interest.

A great example playing out this week has to do with congressional efforts in the wake of the GSA travel scandal to limit the tens of millions the government wastes on conferences. Members of the Senate and House have each tacked on amendments to pending bills that would, among other things, limit what the government spends next year on conferences to 80 percent of what it spent in fiscal 2012; cap spending on any one conference at $500,000; and require all agencies to report all conference expenses, such as food and hotel bills, on the Internet.

With the government going broke and the GSA abuses suggesting, to put it mildly, that there’s room for economizing, who could be against that?

How about U.S. Travel – the D.C.-based travel-industry trade association that bills itself as promoting “industry-wide initiatives to grow and sustain travel and ensure the freedom to travel. Through our efforts, travel is better understood by opinion leaders, policymakers and media as essential to the economy, security, image and well-being of the U.S. and travelers.”

Last Friday, U.S. Travel CEO and President Roger Dow sent an email to his members sounding the alarm: “Needless to say,” Dow declared, after describing the looming threats, “these developments could have a significant impact on the federal government’s ability to host and participate in conferences. In addition, these amendments could impact private sector conferences that include government speakers or attendees, and discourage necessary dialogues between the public and private sectors.”

“We are working with all relevant Congressional offices in hopes the amendments can be revised as these bills move through the legislative process,” the email alert continued. “While supporters of the legislation argue the amendments on government conferences could save millions of dollars, this broad-brush approach to government meetings and conferences casts unjustified skepticism toward the value of all government travel. At the same time, the millions of travel employees who support meetings and events would undoubtedly be affected by the possible cutbacks.”

So who’s doing this lobbying, and what are their best arguments about what Dow’s email calls “the value of meetings, conferences and government travel”? Who are the go-to members of the Senate and House who are most sympathetic to the industry? (Dow’s email hints at one: Nevada Democratic Representative and Senate candidate Shelley Berkley, who, he reports, has introduced a bill to “ensure that Las Vegas is not blacklisted for future meetings and conferences,” whatever that means.)

And while we’re on the subject, the same email reported that U.S. Travel was partnering in its lobbying efforts with one group called the Society of Government Travel Professionals and another called the Society of Government Meeting Planners. What are their conferences like? And just finding out how many members they have (and which vendors, if any, buy sponsorships of their meetings) might also be a fun story.

PHOTO: New York Yankees starter Michael Pineda pitches during the first inning of a spring training baseball game against the Detroit Tigers in Tampa, Florida March 25, 2012. REUTERS/Steve Nesius

1. Where is Citi’s board?

In the wake of the shareholders’ stunning 55 percent vote against the 2011 compensation packages approved by the Citigroup Board of Directors for CEO Vikram Pandit ($14.9 million) and other top executives, why hasn’t anyone put a microphone in front of Citi’s blue-chip board members – who include former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, Rockefeller Foundation President and former University of Pennsylvania President Judith Rodin, and former Stanford business school dean Robert Joss – asking them to explain their decisions? Although the shareholder vote (which came because a provision in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law required it) is only advisory, it was meant to encourage exactly that kind of accountability for decisions made by board members, who in this case earned $225,000 to $612,500 last year, depending on their committee assignments. So far it seems that only outgoing Citigroup Chairman (and former Time Warner CEO) Richard Parsons has been put on the spot by the press.

2. What happened to boxing?

The New York Times has recently been doing a series of jaw-dropping enterprise stories related to sports (such as this one about horse racing) written by reporters from the paper’s sports and other departments (in this case the investigations unit, I think). I happened to read one of them the same night last week that I was watching a rerun of one of the old Rocky movies, and that’s when it hit me: Why doesn’t a team from the Times or from another major news outlet tackle an epic sports story that is obvious to anyone who remembers Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and Floyd Patterson, and then tries to name the current heavyweight champion. (Is it one of the Klitschko brothers or someone else I wouldn’t recognize if he passed me on the street?) Why haven’t we read the definitive tale of “The Decline of Boxing”?

Sure, Muhammad Ali was, and is, one of a kind. And some could argue that future Philippine presidential contender Manny Pacquiao, and maybe Floyd Mayweather, have star power in the lower weight classes that compares to that of Tommy Hearns, Marvin Hagler or Sugar Ray Leonard. But there’s no doubt that boxing occupies nowhere near the center ring in American or world sports that it once did. There’s no Norman Mailer or David Remnick writing about boxers, no large swath of the population awaiting the next big match.

How come? What changed in our culture? What changed in the business of boxing? Did wars between competing boxing leagues with different titles to award shred the sport? Did advances like pay-per-view at home drain the drama and spectacle out of hundreds of thousands of people going to arenas to watch a closed-circuit video feed? Has the generation of celebrated trainers and promoters – fictionalized in the Rocky series but true to life in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s – not been replaced? Was it lousy regulation of the sport, or overregulation? What can be done about it? Or should nothing be done, because it’s a dangerous, dehumanizing sport anyway?

3. What’s happening at the Peace Corps?

I recently had the chance to read a moving email that a family friend sent to his friends recounting how he and fellow Peace Corps volunteers had to leave Mali in an emergency evacuation following the recent coup there. “My heart is shattered,” he began, before describing the work he had done in a small village among people who lack the “opportunities that we take for granted in the West,” and then explaining how devastated he was to have to leave a country where “the coup completed the perfect storm, as it came in conjunction with a civil war that Mali has been fighting in the north.”

I haven’t read much about the Peace Corps lately. Its work in an increasingly troubled and interconnected world should be worth lots of attention, especially because it has just celebrated its 50th anniversary.

What kinds of jobs do the volunteers do? How has it changed? Are applications up or down lately? Have the enrollment demographics shifted? Is the work more dangerous in the post-9/11 world? And has the Corps been able to escape the polarization of domestic politics in the U.S. that has undercut other government programs?

4. Three follow-ups from the GSA road-trip scandal:

As more information emerges about the federal General Services Agency’s $800,000 boondoggle conference near Las Vegas, three related stories come to mind.

First, there’s the casual way the scandal was handled. According to the uncontested timeline that has now come to light, the lavish trip occurred in October, 2010, and the GSA civil servant who first raised questions about it did so in February, 2011. But it took the GSA inspector general until May, 2011 to issue an interim report about the expenditures. What took three months, especially given that there was a GSA internal website that contained obvious evidence, including videos, of the scandal?

More important, given that the interim report had most of the gory details about the expenditures, why didn’t anyone get fired last May?

Then it took until the following January – seven more months – for the resort to provide the inspector general’s office with all the bills and other documents related to the “conference.” How come? And if these were GSA’s own bills, why did the inspector general have to get them from the resort?

Finally, the inspector general drafted his report and sent it to GSA Administrator Martha Johnson for comment on Feb. 12, 2012, but it took GSA’s Johnson until Apr. 2 to respond, before which the inspector general could not release his report publicly. Why did that take so long?

Second, now that we’ve seen anew how important inspectors general can be in ferreting out government waste and misconduct, someone ought to hunt out the strongest and weakest among them across the government. The jobs and independence of the inspectors general in each federal agency were legislated by Congress as a post-Watergate reform in 1978. Who’s the bane of some Cabinet officer’s existence? And who are the lapdogs?

Third, the Washington Post reported last Thursday that Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill has introduced a bill that would, among other provisions, prohibit federal agencies “from paying bonuses to employees or supervisors under investigation by an agency inspector general or equivalent official, to those who have been found to have failed to follow contracting regulations or laws in awarding a contract, or to employees or supervisors who have taken, directed or supervised actions that led to fraud, waste or abuse of taxpayer dollars.” Is the Senator grandstanding, or does this kind of bonus abuse actually happen? Did it happen in the GSA case? Where else? If it does, someone ought to ask the Cabinet officer who’s responsible why federal legislation is necessary to prevent this kind of basic management incompetence in his or her shop.

5. Media hypocrisy:

Finally, because there’s nothing better than exposing self-interested hypocrisy, here’s a story I wish I had thought of.

Editor’s note: The Mar. 20 installment of this column asked for greater scrutiny of the unusual asylum request from the Chongqing police chief, Wang Lijun, made at a U.S. consulate. Last week several remarkable details emerged, including in this New York Times piece.

PHOTO: Vikram Pandit, Chief Executive Officer of Citigroup, speaks during the 2011 spring membership meeting organised by the Institute of International Finance (IIF) in New Delhi March 4, 2011. REUTERS/B Mathur