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PBC News & Comment Friday, October 25

Hoooray! TSA quietly replacing intrusive body scanners at 7 airports; plus, billionaires in trouble all over the world, starting in Italy….    –former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi gets 4 years for tax fraud, and the “bunga bunga” charges of sex with underage prostitute haven’t reached a climax

NY Times delivers lengthy expose’ of the wealth of family members of China’s prime minister: Commie millionaires!

–blood on the floors of Citigroup executive suites: the brutal sacking of CEO Vikram Pandit, and today’s firing of an exec for the bungled Facebook IPO

–two groups of CEO’s signal approval of tax increases as part of deficit reduction plans, undercutting Romney and House GOP/Tea Party leaders

–Harvard Biz School polled CEO’s, who are pessimistic about recovery–PBC says “they should know–they are sitting on trillions in cash”

–presidential campaigns hit obscene new level: $2 billion plus this year

–in Michagan, Labor fights back with ballot measure to protect collective bargaining rights in state constitution, thumbing noses at ALEC

–Pentagon’s Panetta offers new explanations regarding Benghazi attack, still unexplained is Susan Rice’s continued claim that it was “spontaneous”

–Follow-up 1: Brad Friedman satirizes the smear from Think Progress earlier this week; read it here

–Follow-up 2:  former Sen. George Mitchell does the right thing, offers to withdraw as mediator in claims against rogue utility P G & E for 2010 gas pipeline explosion

–back to Italy, where a court bizzarrely convicted scientists and a government official for failing to predict a deadly earthquake