Shorts (right)
Using New Math, Clinton Contends She’s Ahead
Seizing on her Pennsylvania primary victory, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her surrogates are renewing their efforts to have the disputed Michigan and Florida convention delegates seated and pushing the argument that she now leads in the total number of votes cast when the tallies in those two states are included.
The Democratic Party leadership does not recognize the results of those contests because the states broke party rules by holding early primaries. But on Thursday, a Michigan superdelegate supporting Clinton filed a complaint with the national Democratic Party demanding that at least half the state’s delegates be seated at the convention.
The complaint by Joel I. Ferguson, a developer in Lansing and a member of the Democratic National Committee, is similar to a plea from supporters of Clinton in Florida.
The DNC officials said they were reviewing the complaints, which will be considered by the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which punished the states for their early primaries by denying their delegations seats at the national convention in August.
The effort is the latest by Clinton to capitalize on her victory in Pennsylvania and convince the 300 uncommitted party leaders that she has a rightful claim to the nomination. Pushing those efforts, she also met privately Wednesday and Thursday with uncommitted superdelegates at Democratic Party headquarters in Washington, during a rare evening and morning off the campaign trail.
Credit Suisse Posts $2.1 Billion Loss
Credit Suisse Group, the Swiss banking giant, on Thursday reported a first-quarter loss nearly three times worse than analysts had expected as it wrote down $5.3 billion in soured investments.
The bank, based in Zurich, reported a net loss of 2.15 billion Swiss francs, or $2.1 billion, in the first quarter, compared with net income of 2.8 billion francs a year earlier.
“On balance, I was quite pleased” with the results, said Peter Thorne, an analyst with Helvea in London. “In this market, if an investment bank doesn’t report $20 billion of write-downs, you tend to be quite relieved.”
Credit Suisse shares, which have fallen about 30 percent over the last 12 months, rose 2.2 francs, or 4.2 percent, to 54.75 francs in Zurich.
Analysts surveyed by Reuters had expected a loss of about 857 million francs. But predicting bank earnings has become difficult in an environment where many financial institutions have found themselves with risky, hard-to-trade securities on their books.
The Credit Suisse chief executive, Brady W. Dougan, told investors in a conference call that the results were “clearly unsatisfactory,” but he said Credit Suisse’s capital position remained strong.