From our Pulitzer Prize-winning friends at ProPublica.org, by Jeff Gerth:

Backers of financial regulatory reform are gearing up for the final stretch in a yearlong effort to construct a new, streamlined architecture. But recent reports and testimony about the financial crisis suggest a crucial ingredient in any new structure is in short supply: cooperation among the watchdogs.

A proposal to eliminate one regulator seen by many as particularly weak—the Office of Thrift Supervision—could alleviate some friction. A soon-to-be-released federal examination of the Washington Mutual collapse found that OTS resisted efforts by a more skeptical regulator, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, to take a closer look at WaMu, according to an account in The New York Times.

Reform legislation pending in the Senate (PDF) would also create new agencies, including a financial stability council to assess risk and a consumer protection watchdog. To work as envisioned, the agencies would need new levels of information sharing and decision making. By contrast, history suggests agencies can be stingy with what they know and eager to point blame at sister regulators.

Lehman Brothers, the investment bank that collapsed in September 2008, presents a case in point.

A lengthy examiner’s report for the judge overseeing Lehman’s bankruptcy found that the Federal Reserve Board and the Securities and Exchange Commission kept crucial data from each other even though they had “overlapping” functions. The heads of the Federal Reserve and the SEC reached a formal sharing agreement in July 2008, but the two regulators “did not share all material information that each collected about Lehman’s liquidity.”

The SEC, asked by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to provide data on Lehman’s commercial real estate exposure and liquidity, “affirmatively declined to share” the information because it was still in draft form, the bankruptcy report found. The reserve bank never turned down an information request from the SEC, but bank officials “did not perceive any duty to volunteer” information about a $7 billion shortfall in Lehman’s liquidity they uncovered in August 2008.

The reason? The report says it was “because the SEC did not always share information” with them. One official at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York told the examiner “there was not a warm audience” for information sharing between the New York Fed and the SEC.

Lehman fell under the scrutiny of the Fed after it was allowed to tap Fed lending facilities, normally reserved for banks, in the spring of 2008.

Ironically, examiners at the Office of Thrift Supervision, which regulated Lehman’s bank subsidiary, concluded in July 2008 that Lehman had violated its own risk limits by placing an “outsized bet” on commercial real estate. But the OTS appears as a bit player in the autopsy of Lehman’s collapse; top Federal Reserve officials “considered the SEC to be Lehman’s regulator,” the bankruptcy report found.

One of those officials, Timothy Geithner, was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2003 until early 2009, when he became secretary of the Treasury. Shortly after he joined the cabinet, Geithner was asked by a senator about the Fed’s supervisory responsibility in connection with the collapse of institutions like Lehman and the insurance giant AIG.

“I just want to point out,” Geithner told the Senate Finance Committee, “the Federal Reserve was not given responsibility for overseeing investment banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, nonbank financial systems that were a critical part of making this crisis so intense.”

The Fed is responsible for supervising bank holding companies, such as Citigroup. Those holding companies include investment banks and, as a sister regulator quietly pointed out last week, the Fed shared responsibility with the SEC for overseeing the risky practices of Citigroup’s broker dealer.

John C. Dugan, who oversees nationally chartered banks as comptroller of the currency, told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (PDF) last week that most of the problems that led to a massive bailout for Citigroup took place under the umbrella of the weaker holding company regulated by the Fed—not at Citibank, the banking subsidiary under Dugan’s authority.

Most of the losses, Dugan said at the end of a lengthy report to the commission, were in subprime lending, leveraged loans and the structuring and warehousing of CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) that are supervised, either all or in part, “by the Federal Reserve.”

Geithner has acknowledged that he could have done a better job of supervising Citigroup during his tenure at the New York Fed.

If the Senate bill becomes law, Geithner would sit atop the new financial stability council, whose members will include representatives of several different agencies—including the Fed, the SEC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Further reading: Lincoln Proposes To Push Banks Out of the Derivatives Trade

Sounds like things got testy. In other news, Twitter again allowed people to sit in on a government hearing.

Bottom line, the coal industry — which is propped up by government subsidies that enable them to offer "cheap" energy — isn't interested in changing how they do things or in preserving the earth (our only earth, mind you). What they are interested in are political games and making money.

So, essentially, nothing new came out of this hearing.

Several coal industry executives withstood some heat today during a hearing before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. "The Role of Coal in a New Energy Age" hearing featured a slate of four speakers who attempted to defend their industries -- with one denying anthropogenic global warming -as part of the clean energy future of the U.S.:

• Gregory Boyce, President and CEO, Peabody Energy Corporation
• Steven F. Leer, Chairman and CEO, Arch Coal, Inc.
• Preston Chiaro, Chief Executive for Energy and Minerals, Rio Tinto
• Michael Carey, President, Ohio Coal Association

We had some folks tweeting from inside the hearing, and here are two choice quotes from the testimony of the coal industry representatives:

"All that we're asking is that the (Environmental Protection Agency) step back and reconsider its endangerment finding... There needs to be another independent review of the data to put to rest all of those issues." - Gregory Boyce

"The role for coal in the new energy age is greatly hampered by the regulatory assault waged by the Obama Administration and in particular, the Environmental Protection Agency." - Michael Carey

There was extensive "rah-rah-ing" for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology during the hearing, but even Michael Carey of the Ohio Coal Association admitted that "CCS is 15-20 years away from commercial deployment."

Reps. Markey and Inslee did a phenomenal job taking the coal industry to task for their global warming doubts and for the industry's accusations that the government is assaulting them via regulation - when Congress has in fact been including billions for CCS in its recent energy and climate bills.

"If there is a 'war' being waged here, it's being waged by your industry against our grandchildren," said Inslee at one point. "Is it fair for the coal industry to be able to put CO2 in the atmosphere at zero cost?"

Read the rest of this Grist.org article, by Bruce Nilles, here.

In related Charlotte's-a-green-energy-hub news: Magazine cites Duke Energy exec as wind innovator (Charlotte Business Journal)

I'll tell you a secret: We only buy organic, antibiotic-free meat in my household. (Of course, there's no telling where the food in restaurants comes from ...)

Why do that when organic, antibiotic free meat is more expensive? Because my husband and I had a little problem with MRSA a couple years ago. MRSA is an antibiotic resistant super bug that can kill. (Anyone who has seen me in person, that's where the scar on my neck comes from.)

When we were first diagnosed, our doctors suggested we may have abused antibiotics. These doctors didn't know us very well because that simply wasn't true.

At the same time, we couldn't seem to get rid of the bug. Either I had it or my husband had it for a period of about six months. MRSA is embarrassing, gross, painful and definitely something to avoid. I knew it could be deadly, but I didn't get really scared until I heard UNC Charlotte's Dr. Michael Hudson on WFAE's "Charlotte Talks" program. (Listen to Dr. Hudson's interview here.)

I called Dr. Hudson, who is now deceased, and told him about our struggles. He was one of the world's premier MRSA experts. With the benefit of his expertise, I wrote an article for UNC Charlotte's NinerOnline titled "Throw your soap away right now." In that article, one of the suggestions Dr. Hudson offered for avoiding MRSA is this: "Avoid foods that have antibiotics in them (livestock are often fed feed that contains antibiotics)."

Since then, I have thrown our antibacterial soap away and we have, whenever possible, stopped eating meat containing antibiotics. And, guess what? We are no longer besieged by MRSA.

Before Dr. Hudson died, I promised him I would continue to share his warnings. With that, I ask that you read this:

Beef containing harmful pesticides, veterinary antibiotics and heavy metals is being sold to the public because federal agencies have failed to set limits for the contaminants or adequately test for them, a federal audit finds.

A program set up to test beef for chemical residues "is not accomplishing its mission of monitoring the food supply for … dangerous substances, which has resulted in meat with these substances being distributed in commerce," says the audit by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of Inspector General.

The health effects on people who eat such meat are a "growing concern," the audit adds.

The testing program for cattle is run by the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), which also tests meat for such pathogens as salmonella and certain dangerous strains of E. coli. But the residue program relies on assistance from the Environmental Protection Agency, which sets tolerance levels for human exposure to pesticides and other pollutants, and the Food and Drug Administration, which does the same for antibiotics and other medicines.

DOCUMENTS: Read the audit report

Limits have not been set by the EPA and FDA "for many potentially harmful substances, which can impair FSIS' enforcement activities," the audit found.

Read the rest of this USAToday article, by Peter Eisler, here.

Who cares? I don't know about you, but it will only take milliseconds before my ad-avoiding sensors blind me to the proposed interruptions in my Tweet stream.

Kinda like we fast forward through ads thanks to TiVO and DVRs. Kinda like we change the channel on the radio or TV when obnoxious, often too-loud, ads break into our favorite shows. Kinda like we don't notice the billboards along the side of the road. Kinda like we trash the junk mail.

In my rarely humble opinion, I'd like to suggest to advertisers that the best way to reach potential customers on Twitter is to engage them and act like you genuinely give a crap about them and what they care about. And, here's the key: Don't try to sell anything. Answer questions and complaints, offer an insiders view into your company's inner workings, throw out a coupon on occasion, talk about how you're excited about a new product. But, for chrissake, don't aggressively try to sell anything. Seriously. Don't do it.

Instead, hire a conversationalist who loves your company and then set them free in the social media world. Try it for one year. If it doesn't work out, quit. What I believe you'll find instead, however, is that people want to be engaged and become more brand-loyal than ever because they enjoy being treated like individuals instead of lumped under the "customer" label.

About those ads:

Twitter announced Tuesday that it is introducing advertising by allowing companies to pay to have their messages show up first in searches on its site.

The debut of "Promoted Tweets" comes as Twitter increasingly faces questions about how it can turn its wide usage into profits.

The ads will be rolled out gradually, with fewer than 10 percent of Twitter's users likely to see them Tuesday. The company says the ads should be appearing in all relevant searches within the next few days.

Twitter has grown quickly in popularity since it started in 2006, with celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Ashton Kutcher "tweeting" messages of 140 characters or less alongside everyday users. About 69 million people worldwide used Twitter.com last month, up from roughly 4 million at the end of 2008, according to comScore Inc.

Read the rest of this MSNBC/Reuters article here.

In other tech news, from The Charlotte Business Journal, Cisco: E-mail has to change.

For those of you still resisting Twitter, you'll appreciate these videos:

Could it really be this simple?

The Charlotte Business Journal's Frank Vinluan reports:

A new study finds that “aggressive adoption” of energy-efficiency programs in North Carolina could lower utility bills by $3.8 billion and create more than 30,000 jobs by 2020.

The report from Duke University and Georgia Tech, dubbed “Energy Efficiency in the South,” also found that energy efficiency would conserve water by cutting the amount of water that power plants require for cooling.

Across the South, energy efficiency would save $41 billion and create 380,000 jobs, the study says.

Policies that could improve energy efficiency include revamped building codes and appliance standards, as well as the creation of incentives to retrofit buildings. The study says the greatest potential for savings from energy efficiency would come from commercial buildings. Job creation would come from construction and manufacturing related to the energy-efficiency projects.

Read the rest of this article here.

You know what else energy efficiency will help us out with? Reducing the waste produced by electricity production. How about the lives of miners? How about our mountains?

Though it seems as simple as flipping a switch, the truth is energy production is a complex process that, for most energy users in our area, begins with the extraction of coal from our beautiful Appalachian mountains. It's then hauled by the train load — not train car load, train load — to coal plants.

In Charlotte, we are virtually surrounded by coal plants. There's the Allen station in Belmont. There's the 80-year-old Riverbend station just down the road from Uptown. There's the Marshall station on Lake Norman. There's Cliffside station 50 miles to the west, or upwind as some might say.

In order to limit air pollution, scrubbers are installed at those plants. The scrubbers trap some of the dangerous particles released when coal is burned by adding water. The water weights down the polluted particles so they drop instead of fly through the smoke stacks into our air.

That slurry is then pumped into holding ponds often held in place by earthen dams. The coal ash ponds associated with the coal plants listed above sit on the edge of the Catawba River. Most notably for Charlotte-Mecklenburg, the two high-hazard coal ash ponds behind the Riverbend coal plant are just upstream from our main drinking water intake on Mountain Island Lake.

The U.S. Environmental Agency has been trying to classify coal ash as a hazardous waste for more than 30 years. But, you can read all about that in a recent Charlotte Magazine profile I wrote about our Riverkeeper, David Merryman.

The Charlotte Observer's Bruce Henderson also wrote a recent article about coal ash detailing the Sierra Club's concerns: Report: N.C. ignores coal ash threat

There is nothing clean, easy or cheap about coal. Just ask the people in West Virgina: Bodies of all dead W.Va. miners recovered (AP)

So, what can you do? First of all, you can turn off and unplug all of the electronics you don't need in this moment. (There's nothing wrong with working by sunlight.)

Second, you can contact your state and national representatives and let them know that you want to see more renewable energy options. While you're at it, tell Duke Energy you're tired of seeing our mountains destroyed, our air polluted and our water compromised.

The upside: Renewable energy = jobs for Charlotte.

P.S. Coal is not a renewable resource.

Yep. WePad. (Editor's Note: Groan.) A German company is ready to go head to head with Apple. In fact, at a recent launch party, they handed out Apples with their logo on them.

The German maker of a new tablet PC is setting out to rival Apple's iPad with the promise of even more technology such as a bigger screen, a webcam and USB ports.

It is not, however, an "iPad killer" as it has been dubbed by some blogs but an alternative to its bigger rival, Neofonie GmbH's founder and managing director Helmut Hoffer von Ankershoffen told reporters on Monday in Berlin.

Ankershoffen stressed the system's openness: Two USB ports allow users to connect all kinds of devices with the WePad, from external keyboards to data sticks.

People who want to put music on their WePad do not have to have any particular software, Ankershoffen said — a blow at Apple's devices that require particular Apple software like iTunes.

The WePad's basic version, which comes with Wi-Fi and 16-gigabyte storage, is set to cost €449 ($600), the larger 32-gigabyte version with a fast 3G modem is €569.

Read the rest of this MSNBC/ Associated Press article here.

From the press conference:

In a huge blow, yesterday ...

A federal court threw the future of Internet regulations and U.S. broadband expansion plans into doubt Tuesday with a far-reaching decision that went against the Federal Communications Commission.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the FCC lacks authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks. That was a big victory for Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable company, which had challenged the FCC's authority to impose such "network neutrality" obligations on broadband providers.

The unanimous ruling by the three-judge panel marks a serious setback for the FCC, which is trying to adopt official net neutrality regulations. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a Democrat, argues such rules are needed to prevent phone and cable companies from using their control over Internet access to favor some kinds of online content and services over others.

The case centers on Comcast's actions in 2007 when it interfered with an online file-sharing service called BitTorrent, which allows users to swap big files such as movies over the Internet. But public interest groups stressed that the ramifications of Tuesday's ruling are much broader. That's because it undercuts the FCC's ability to prevent broadband providers from becoming gatekeepers for many kinds of online services, potentially including Internet phone programs and software that runs in a Web browser.

"Today's appeals court decision means there are no protections in the law for consumers' broadband services," Gigi Sohn, co-founder of Public Knowledge, said in a statement. "Companies selling Internet access are free to play favorites with content on their networks, to throttle certain applications or simply to block others."

Read the rest of this Associated Press article, by Joelle Tessler, here.

This is a big deal. Why? As more and more of our formerly printed processes — filled out a job application lately? — our news and governmental information seems to be available exclusively online, people's access to the Internet is becoming an issue of must-have vs. luxury.

From last month, a great summary of the issue:

No, really. Just say no when your doctor suggests the most expensive prescription in his or her arsenal ... the one you already tried that didn't work so great. Just say no when they want to run one more test ... the one you think is unnecessary. Just say no to that little extra thing they say they're doing as a favor ... that thing that shows up on your bill later with more zeros than necessary.

For whatever reason, we — and I'm no exception — have a difficult time saying 'no' to doctors. However, in order to bring the cost of health care down we have to work together and we have to work smart.

Instead of nodding in agreement every time your doctor suggests a test, pill or procedure, educate yourself and make the choice that's best for you instead of following along with the doctor's wallet padding inclinations. There are plenty of resources at the library and on the Internet to help you help yourself. When in doubt, you can always ask a librarian to point you in the right direction — they are exceptional aides when it comes to research.

Here's more on the power of no from The New York Times:

Deep down, Americans tend to believe that more care is better care. We recoil from efforts to restrict care.

Managed care became loathed in the 1990s. The recent recommendation to reduce breast cancer screening set off a firestorm. On a personal level, anyone who has made a decision about his or her own care knows the nagging worry that comes from not choosing the most aggressive treatment.

This try-anything-and-everything instinct is ingrained in our culture, and it has some big benefits. But it also has big downsides, including the side effects and risks that come with unnecessary treatment. Consider that a recent study found that 15,000 people were projected to die eventually from the radiation they received from CT scans given in just a single year — and that there was “significant overuse” of such scans.

From an economic perspective, health reform will fail if we can’t sometimes push back against the try-anything instinct. The new agencies will be hounded by accusations of rationing, and Medicare’s long-term budget deficit will grow.

So figuring out how we can say no may be the single toughest and most important task facing the people who will be in charge of carrying out reform. “Being able to say no,” Dr. Alan Garber of Stanford says, “is the heart of the issue.”

It’s not just CT scans. Caesarean births have become more common, with little benefit to babies and significant burden to mothers. Men who would never have died from prostate cancer have been treated for it and left incontinent or impotent. Cardiac stenting and bypasses, with all their side effects, have become popular partly because people believe they reduce heart attacks. For many patients, the evidence suggests, that’s not true.

Read the rest of this article, by David Leonhardt, here.

In 2002, the state passed a law meant to curb acid rain. The new law meant coal plants had to figure out how to trap sulfur in their smoke stacks, preventing it from entering the air. Eight years later, Charlotte's Shaw Power Group and Alstom Environmental Control Systems, of Tennessee, are working to help Duke Energy meet the state's 2013 deadline at its coal plants. There are at least three coal plants in the Charlotte area, one in Belmont, one on Lake Norman and another on Mountain Island Lake.

The Mecklenburg Times' Sam Boykin reports:

Duke Energy’s four largest plants in North Carolina, which operate around the clock, needed radical filtering implants.

In 2003 Shaw Power Group formed a consortium with Alstom Environmental Control Systems of Knoxville, Tenn. The consortium won Duke Energy contracts to retrofit the four with flue gas desulfurization units, known by a much less lofty title: scrubbers. They are designed to reduce such harmful emissions as sulfur dioxide.

Jim McCarthy, Shaw Power Group’s chief mechanical engineer, said the company opened its Charlotte offices in 2004.

“Initially it was because we had contracts with Duke Energy, but Shaw Power realized there would likely be other opportunities and projects,” McCarthy said. “There was a lot of potential in the power industry in general, not just in the environmental retrofit sector.”

That project will bring Duke Energy into full compliance with the CSA 2013 deadline, Thompson said. “Overall,” he said, “we expect by the end of 2010 to reduce our system (sulfur dioxide) emissions by 70 percent in our five-state territory, and total (sulfur dioxide) reduction for North Carolina will be 75 percent by 2013 over 2000 emission levels.”

Read the entire article here.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, acid rain is harmful because it can make it difficult for people with asthma or other respiratory issues to breathe. It can also corrode buildings, statues, monuments and cars, peel paint, damage waterways and forests and cause ground-level ozone.

Yesterday, Charlotte experienced it's first Code Orange day of the year due to elevated levels of ozone.

Get daily updates on Charlotte's air quality on Twitter from the North Carolina Division of Air Quality.

How burning coal leads to acid rain:

No yard? No problem. Welcome to Agriculture 2.0.

Take AeroFarms. The New York company builds aeroponic farms that fit inside containers -- soil and sun not required. The containers, which can be stacked on top of each other in warehouses and old buildings, have the potential to transform blocks of abandoned structures in places like Detroit or Newark into agri-lofts tended by urban farmers.

"This puts buildings back into play with a technology that would do something productive and employ people," Ed Harwood, AeroFarms' founder and chief executive, told prospective investors at the conference.

Here's how it works: Leafy greens -- say, arugula or lettuce -- are planted in a cloth bed and irrigated with a nutrient-infused mist that is applied directly to the plants. Light is provided by LED lamps, which are more energy efficient than conventional lighting and can be placed closer to the beds. The LED lamps also provide pest control, says Harwood, because they can be set to emit certain wavelengths that disrupt insects' breeding.

Harwood said AeroFarms is about to sign its first order -- a deal worth between $1.5 million and $2 million. The startup has raised $500,000 from the investors 21 Ventures and the Quercus Trust.

Verdant Earth Technologies, meanwhile, wants to recycle all those shipping containers currently used by industrial agricultural to ship produce from continent to continent and turn them into seedbeds for a local food production system.

Racks of vegetables or herbs would be stacked inside the shipping containers. Josh Hottenstein, co-founder and chief executive of the Tucson, Ariz., startup, says one standard container can grow the equivalent of an acre's worth of crops.

"We control the humidity ratio inside the container, the temperature, the air flow, the wavelength of the light, and alter how the plants grow," he told investors at the conference. "We're capable of increasing the uniformity of the crop when it comes out and the plants are ready for market."

A centralized system can control multiple containers.

"The only labor involved is seed and harvest," said Hottenstein, whose company, which was spun out of the University of Arizona, is looking to raise a relatively paltry $750,000 to get its product to market.

Read the rest of this Grist.org article, by Todd Woody, here.

See AeroFarms in action: