NEW YORK – The New York Yankees say star third baseman Alex Rodriguez is totally fine after having special treatment on his right knee and left shoulder in Germany earlier this month.
The 36-year-old Rodriguez had plasma-rich platelet injections following a recommendation from Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant. Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said Wednesday that the team gave its permission after vetting the process.
Rodriguez's treatment was first reported by the New York Post.
Cashman says Major League Baseball and WADA have approved the procedure, and that it is also performed in the United States. The Yankees say Rodriguez went to the doctor in Germany because he's at the top of this field.
Rodriguez had surgery on his right knee last July and saw his power drop in the second half and postseason. He played in 99 games and hit 16 home runs. He has 629 career homers.
Cashman says Rodriguez is "100 percent" right now and that there are "no red flags" going into spring training. Cashman says he expects Rodriguez to be able to play every day.
The Yankees also said they've reached agreement with 37-year-old lefty Hideki Okajima for a nonroster invite to spring training. Once a staple of the Boston bullpen, he spent most of last year in Triple-A for the Red Sox. The Yankees envision him as a possible lefty specialist.

NEW YORK – The holiday shopping season turned out to be two seasons split by a big lull.
A surge in buying in the two weeks before Christmas coupled with a record-breaking Black Friday gave retailers a solid season. The doldrums between the buying binges show how shoppers have learned to wait for the discounts they know will come.
For Dec. 1-24, spending rose 4.7 percent compared with the same period last year, according to research firm ShopperTrak. In November, it rose 4.1 percent. A 4 percent increase is considered a successful season. A combined figure for the whole season won't be available until after Dec. 31.
The increase is good news for the economy, because it shows shoppers were willing and able to fund a holiday splurge. Consumer spending, including major items such as health care, accounts for 70 percent of the economy.
Still, plenty of shoppers are pinched for cash in the slow economic recovery, and were seeking the best deals. Stores have trained even shoppers who are primed to spend to look for a discount.
In the week before Christmas, last-minute shoppers gave retailers a 4.5 percent increase in revenue at stores open at least a year with the same week last year, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers-Goldman Sachs Weekly Chain Store Sales Index.
The index estimates sales at 24 major stores including Macy's Inc. and Costco Wholesale Corp. Revenue at stores open at least a year is an important measurement of a retailer's performance because it excludes the effects of stores that open or close during the year.
Total retail revenue for the week ended Saturday rose 14.8 percent compared with the year ago, ShopperTrak estimates.
Gift buyers gained steam as the season went on. The store revenue figure rose 0.9 percent last week from the week before, building on a 3.4 percent increase the week before that.
"The downs and ups were much more accentuated," said Michael P. Niemira, chief economist at the trade group. "It just shows how cautious the consumer is. Consumers are bargain hunters more today than ever before."
The post-Black Friday lull was deeper than usual this year. The two weeks after Thanksgiving weekend showed the biggest percentage sales decline since 2000. Then, during the final two weeks before Christmas, sales surged again, by the highest rate since 2005, Niemira said.
"The holiday season was good but uneven," Niemira said.
Stores are expected to benefit when shoppers come back to spend their gift cards, because people often spend more than the cards' value. In addition, gift card sales are recorded only when shoppers redeem them.
People have more money on their cards to spend. According to an ICSC-Goldman Sachs survey of shoppers conducted Sunday, 18 percent of holiday spending went toward gift cards, up from 14.6 percent last year.
ICSC said it expects holiday sales for November and December to rise in line with its forecast of 3.5 percent.
The week after Christmas, which includes six shopping days, should be strong. But it's being compared with seven days last year because the week as retailers measure it ends on Saturday.
As proof that consumers are timing their spending to when they know they'll get the best bargains, Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, was the biggest sales day, as expected, generating sales of $11.4 billion, up 6.6 percent from a year ago, according to ShopperTrak.
But based on preliminary data, Christmas Eve and Dec. 26 were the second- and third-heaviest spending days of the season, according to ShopperTrak founder Bill Martin. He had originally expected Saturday, Dec. 17, to be the second-largest. Christmas Eve wasn't even forecast to be among the top 10 days.

"Shoppers are willing to spend when they know the biggest discounts are available," said Martin.

ShopperTrak measures foot traffic in 25,000 stores in the U.S. and blends those figures with economic data along with proprietary sales figures from merchants. The data excludes sales from auto dealers, gas stations, restaurants and grocery stores.

A fuller holiday spending picture will come Jan. 5, when stores including Target Corp. and Macy's will release December sales figures.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Confidential whistleblower documents that helped spark a massive state and federal investigation into how Bank of New York Mellon Corp charged pension funds for currency exchange, provide a rare window into how a bank insider aided a lawsuit against the bank.

The information provided by whistleblower Grant Wilson, who worked at BNY Mellon, included a detailed analysis of how the bank allegedly provided "fictitious" foreign-currency costs for pension funds.

The analysis included a step-by-step guide to how currencies were traded and internal profits generated by the bank, according to documents seen by Reuters. A memo detailing fellow employees also was provided.

Aided by Wilson's information, multiple states, including Virginia, Florida and New York, have sued BNY Mellon, alleging that the bank improperly charged state and local pension funds for foreign exchange. The Department of Justice also has sued the bank.

The allegations center on claims that BNY Mellon provided unfavorable currency-exchange rates for state and local pension funds for a decade. In a lawsuit in October, the New York attorney general alleged BNY Mellon earned $2 billion over the decade from the trading.

A bank spokesman said the bank believes that many comments detailed in the documents were taken out of context or not said at all.

"A handful of purported statements cherry-picked from millions of documents gathered over a decade do not reflect the way we do business or the value we provide our client," the spokesman said.

The documents illuminate why insiders with highly confidential information can be a potent force in whistleblower lawsuits. Much of the information a whistleblower provides remains confidential.

Wilson, for example, worked at the bank even as he secretly provided to his legal team -- lawyers in Boston and New York -- information about how BNY Mellon allegedly conducted foreign-exchange trading.

Wilson's information was provided to the legal team that filed whistleblower lawsuits against BNY Mellon in 2009 and then aided state attorneys general in subsequent probes. The legal team includes Boston lawyer Michael Lesser, and Philip Michael, a lawyer in New York, as well as Harry Markopolos, a fraud investigator best known for warning that Bernard Madoff was operating a fraudulent scheme.

Lesser, an attorney at Thornton & Naumes, said Wilson was not available for a comment.

The information then was provided by Wilson's lawyers to the Florida attorney general in 2009 and 2010. The attorney general at the time was weighing whether to intervene in an October 2009 whistleblower lawsuit against BNY Mellon. That lawsuit was based on Wilson's information.

In August this year, Florida Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi filed her lawsuit in Leon County.

A bank spokesman said the Florida lawsuit is "without merit."

The Wall Street Journal earlier this year identified Wilson as the whistleblower behind the state and federal investigations and reported the existence of the documents.

Wilson, according to the documents, worked as a foreign-exchange trader for 19 years. He joined a predecessor bank to BNY Mellon in 1997 and left this spring. He worked at BNY Mellon's Pittsburgh office.

The documents detail Wilson's experience at the bank, noting that the trader "possesses deep and sophisticated knowledge and personal experience in these businesses, particularly with regard to foreign exchange." The documents note that he "never received a reprimand" during his career.

Wilson's first-hand knowledge was crucial to the state lawsuits. Information provided in 2009 underpinned subsequent state claims. Wilson "can describe, step-by-step, how the fraud is committed against theffected funds and how the various departments of the Bank work to make the process as profitable as possible," one document alleges.


Wilson and his lawyers, for example, provide 11 chronological steps to explain how pension clients allegedly receive a "falsified trade price," documents show. Those clients used a so-called "standing-instruction" program in which they effectively give control of foreign exchange to the bank.


In one document, Wilson's lawyers provide a question-and-answer tutorial so the Florida attorney general's office knows the right questions to ask BNY Mellon employees.


The documents also show how Wilson aided the legal effort even as he continued to work at BNY Mellon. One memo was written by Wilson's lawyers in August 2010, some eight months before Wilson left the bank. In the memo, Wilson's lawyers tell the Florida attorney general that Wilson knows that efforts to obtain documents from the bank are being stymied with "claims of difficulty in production or other delays."


The memo, using Wilson's knowledge of the bank, states that the information actually could be easily obtained because it is "centrally stored."


"It is stored at a state-of-the-art facility that should hasten, rather than hinder, any document response from the bank."


A month later, in September 2010, Wilson's lawyers submitted another memo to Florida's attorney general, noting: "We would also like to remind you that (Wilson) continues in his employment at the bank. Specific information, documents and conversations mentioned here could be connected" to Wilson.


That memo alleges that BNY Mellon "is now actively and hurriedly formulating a strategy" aimed at preserving profits from the foreign-exchange business at the center of the state inquiries. The memo explains that BNY Mellon publicly wants to provide a supposedly more "transparent" foreign-exchange system.


Actually, the "Project Gateway" strategy provides "no true change," the memo claims.


The memo also claims that one BNY Mellon client had received better pricing on currency transactions even as the bank continued "to steal" from other clients.


The documents also show some inside BNY Mellon allegedly worried about the impact of the investigations and whether profits would soon disappear. One employee, having learned that probes were looking at how BNY Mellon traded currencies, said: "It's over, it's all over," according to a March 2010 document.


Another document describes two months later how a senior banker addressed FX traders and told them the bank had received 16 subpoenas. This employee told the traders, "We have not done anything wrong."


In a seven-page memo, Wilson and his legal team provided detailed biographies of fellow traders and employees at BNY Mellon to help determine whether they might be helpful in the whistleblower legal effort. One employee was described as "worried about job security ... Not financially secure. Scared and probably loyal to the Bank. But also would not be inclined to perjure herself ... She has a lot of information."


Another senior executive "likes to rant and rave ... Mr. Wilson assumes he will want to defend the bank." A sales executive "seems willing to push the envelope when it comes to producing profits."


(Reporting by Carrick Mollenkamp; Editing by Michael Williams and Maureen Bavdek)

MUSCATINE, Iowa – Mitt Romney and Rick Perry on Wednesday assailed Republican presidential rival Ron Paul for saying the U.S. has no business bombing Iran to keep it from acquiring a nuclear weapon, drawing a sharp contrast with their rising rival as he returned to Iowa to campaign before the lead-off caucuses.
"One of the people running for president thinks it's okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon," Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, said in this eastern Iowa city in response to a question from the audience. "I don't."
It was the first time Romney has challenged Paul directly since the Texas congressman jumped in polls. Neither Romney nor Perry, the Texas governor, named Paul, but the target was clear.
"You don't have to vote for a candidate who will allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Because America will be next," Perry said in Urbandale, reiterating a line of argument from a day earlier.
"I'm here to say: You have a choice," Perry added.
As if in rebuttal, Paul's campaign launched a new television ad describing him as "principled, incorruptible, guided by faith and principle" and the man to restore the economy. "Politicians who supported bailouts and mandates, serial hypocrites and flip floppers can't clean up the mess," it says as photos of Newt Gingrich and Romney appear on screen.
The stepped-up criticism of Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican, comes as surveys show he's in contention to win Tuesday's caucuses.
In recent days, conservative opponents including Perry and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann have increased their criticism of Paul on social issues, foreign affairs and inflammatory comments in his decades-old newsletter. By tearing him down, they hope voters will give their campaigns another, closer look after a season marked by candidates who have risen quickly in public standing only to fall back down.
Gingrich, whose slide in surveys over the past week has come as Paul has risen, said Tuesday he couldn't vote for Paul if he were to become the GOP nominee and called his views "totally outside the mainstream of every decent American" during an interview with CNN.
Gingrich, the former House speaker, began Wednesday, the second day of his Iowa bus tour with a speech to about 200 people in the atrium of the Southbridge Mall in Mason City. He plugged his support for supply-side economics favored by President Ronald Reagan.
Gingrich said the primary is giving voters a "choice between a populist supply side approach ... and a much more timid Washington-centered approach that will not create jobs."
Bachmann, who was on the 86th stop of her tour of Iowa's 99 counties, criticized both of her rivals from Texas. She accused Perry of spending "27 years as a political insider." He was a Texas legislator and agriculture commissioner before becoming governor in 2001.
Bachmann said Paul would be "dangerous as president" because of his hands-off views on national security.
Paul, for his part, was meeting with supporters near Des Moines, his first visit to the state since before the campaigns went dark for the Christmas holiday. He planned a series of events over the next two days as he looked to take advantage of a burst of momentum.
A conservative, Paul commands strong allegiance from his supporters but appears to have little potential to expand his appeal and emerge as a serious challenger for the nomination. Yet he could complicate other candidates' pathway to the nomination.
His opponents were spreading out across the state to woo potential caucus-goers, many of whom are still undecided amid a flood of television and radio ads.
In Independence, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum mingled with 25 people at a diner and touted his plan to give a tax break to businesses that bring their operations back to the United States.
He told diners: "Things are going great, we've got momentum." He began airing a new radio ad Wednesday that promotes his hardline opposition to abortion andescribes him as a "father of seven, a home-schooler and a devoted husband for 21 years."

Romney kicked off a three-day bus tour in the eastern edge of the state, in Muscatine, and shook hands with an overflow crowd at Elly's Tea and Coffee House. The line to get in stretched into the street.

Beginning the day, Romney told Fox News Channel that he was only joking Monday when he criticized Gingrich's failure to earn a spot on the Virginia ballot as something out of the sitcom "I Love Lucy."

"I hope the speaker understands that was humor, and I'm happy to tell my humorous anecdote to him face to face," Romney said.

Gingrich on Tuesday challenged Romney to make the "I Love Lucy" comparison to Gingrich's face.

Perry, looking to recapture the enthusiasm that greeted his entry into the race in August, railed against Washington and Wall Street insiders as he met with conservatives for breakfast near Des Moines.

"Why should you settle for less than an authentic conservative who will fight for your views and your values without apologies?" he asked, delivering the core rationale for his candidacy.

The packed crowd of conservatives in Urbandale applauded as he pledged to champion a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget, secure the border within a year and crack down on illegal immigration. He also said he would bring his faith with him into the Oval Office, a nod to the Christian conservatives who have strong sway in the nominating process.

___

Elliott reported from Urbandale. Associated Press writers Mike Glover in Independence, Brian Bakst in Creston, Shannon McCaffrey in Mason City and Charles Babington in Des Moines contributed to this report.

New York – The president may be tempted to make several appointments while Congress is on holiday, but doing so poses major political risks
Normally, a recess means that work gets put on hold. A holiday means a break from normal activity, even in Washington D.C. But as with most other quaint notions of normality, recesses and holidays in the beltway take on a partisan significance, especially when Republicans and Democrats believe they have an opportunity to score political points.

At the heart of this particular holiday rancor is Article II, Section II of the U.S. Constitution, which reads, "The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session." The original intent of this clause was to provide the president a way to fill sudden openings in the executive and judicial branch at a time in history when calling Congress into session immediately was impossible, given the transportation and communication limitations of the era. This rule prevented government from becoming paralyzed in the absence of the Senate, and was expected to be used only in pressing circumstances.
SEE MORE: The brainless use of pop psychology to diss Obama
 

Barack Obama has not exactly been a shrinking violet when it comes to recess appointments.

Of course, any power granted to an office without restriction will eventually get used and even abused. That's true no matter which party holds the presidency. Recess appointments have always been controversial, and that has become especially true in the last few decades. Thurgood Marshall was put on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals through a recess appointment by John F. Kennedy, after southern Democrats threatened to block Marshall's confirmation. Bill Clinton's recess appointment of Bill Lan Lee for assistant Attorney General for civil rights avoided a Senate rejection over Lee's support of affirmative action. George W. Bush had to use a recess appointment to get John Bolton installed as ambassador to the U.N. when Democrats opposed to Bush's foreign policy in general, and Bolton's hostility towards the U.N. specifically, threatened to reject him. Bush also used his recess appointment power to install two appellate judges, Charles Pickering at the 5th Circuit and William Pryor at the 11th Circuit, when Democrats blocked votes on nearly all of his appellate appointments.
SEE MORE: President Obama's rising approval rating: 4 theories
 

Barack Obama has not exactly been a shrinking violet when it comes to recess appointments. Last year, Obama installed James Cole as deputy Attorney General, despite concerns in the Senate over his performance as independent monitor of AIG from 2005 through 2009, a period in which taxpayers had to bail out the insurance giant to keep it from destroying the American financial sector. Obama also gave a recess appointment to Donald Berwick to run Medicare and Medicaid, even though Democrats had 59 seats in the Senate and Berwick hadn't bothered to complete his initial questionnaire for his Senate confirmation process. That was controversial enough to provoke fellow Democrat Max Baucus into publicly criticizing Obama.

Another recess has now arrived, and with it, the opportunity to bypass a more closely-held Democratic Senate. It may not be a question of if Obama will use his recess power, but when — and how often. Obama has a fight brewing over the National Labor Relations Board and its attempt to impose new union-friendly policies. The term of NLRB member Craig Becker, one of Obama's previous recess appointments to the NLRB, and one that caused a great deal of anger in the business community, has expired. Republicans in the Senate have held up two other appointments over the new regulations, which means that the NLRB board might not have a quorum. Unless Obama can get the Senate to act quickly to approve one or more of his nominees, the NLRB will not be able to do anything at all.
SEE MORE: Did Obama really call Americans 'lazy'?
 



There would be considerable political risk in the decision to use a recess appointment in this case. Obama's union allies want recess appointments that will allow the NLRB to promulgate those new, union-friendly regulations, and Obama needs unions to help organize the ground game for his re-election effort. However, the business community that Obama has tried to court all year wants the NLRB's regulatory adventurism curtailed, and will see a recess appointment as a signal that Obama wants to push the board further along its current anti-business trajectory. Obama risks losing important contributors, and worse, pushing them into the arms of the GOP.
SEE MORE: The many failures of Obama's Teddy Roosevelt speech
 

Obama has other opportunities for recess appointments as well. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has put holds on two FCC nominations in an attempt to force FCC chair Julius Genachowski to disclose communications between the agency, the White House, and LightSquared, a politically-connected firm that got a controversial waiver from Team Obama. Bypassing the Senate would cut Grassley out of the equation, but it would also contribute to the perception that Obama has something to hide on LightSquared.


Richard Cordray might be a candidate for a recess appointment. Republicans in the Senate blocked his confirmation a couple of weeks ago in a dispute over the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Earlier this year, Obama had to withdraw the name of his first nominee to run the CFPB, Elizabeth Warren, and the rejection of Cordray undoubtedly rankled the White House, which sees the fight over the CFPB as old news and the block on Cordray as illegitimate.  

SEE MORE: The 'creepy' Barack Obama mannequin

 


With the unlimited power to make recess appointments, why would Obama hesitate? For one, Obama needs to move legislation next year. Bypassing the Senate creates more hostility on Capitol Hill, even with members of one's own party, as the Berwick appointment proved. Voters might see it as a demonstration of leadership in response to an obstructionist Senate — perhaps more so with Cordray than with others — but they could also see it as executive arrogance, or even corruption.


Anticipating the temptation that all of these cases pose, as well as a few open judicial slots, Republicans forced Harry Reid to allow pro forma Senate sessions every three or four days for the five weeks of this current recess. The strategy is designed to argue that the Senate hasn't gone into recess at all, or at least not significantly enough to justify a recess appointment. A president hasn't made a recess appointment in the last 20 years during a period in which less than 10 days have passed between Senate sessions, say Republicans, and they believe this will keep Obama on the sidelines over the holidays. However, that relies heavily on tradition, not the law; the Constitution doesn't define the requisite length of a recess for the purpose of presidential appointments. Teddy Roosevelt made several recess appointments when the Senate went dark for just a day — and Obama has evoked TR more than once over the last few weeks. Perhaps the president really will start swinging that big stick soon.

View this article on TheWeek.comGet Obama and the 'road to serfdom'Opinion Brief: 5 theories why Obama is going on 'The View'Opinion Brief: Obama on 'The View': Unpresidential?Like on Facebook - Follow on Twitter - Sign-up for Daily Newsletter