The main controversy surrounding his appointment as the Obama administration's top intelligence analyst revolved around his financial and political ties to potential and actual US adversaries.

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Patrick Markee, a senior policy analyst at the New York coalition, said Mr. Bloomberg's administration in 2005 ended a policy that had been working since the 1990s, in which the city allocated a share of federal public-housing apartments and federal housing vouchers to homeless families.

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"Within his administration he gave opportunities to people who would never have had them otherwise, " said political analyst Carlos Romero.

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David Makovsky, an Israeli analyst at the Washington Institute, said the election is good news for the Obama administration, which has had prickly relations with the right-wing Netanyahu government.

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With Banharn's incapable and allegedly corrupt government on the way out, the troubled stock exchange experienced a short-term boost -- "went crazy, " as one analyst put it -- as traders harbored hopes for a new (and cleaner) administration led by the opposition Democrat Party.

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But one analyst of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cautioned against putting "dangerously high" expectations on the incoming administration.

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