Saturday, October 2, 2010

Federal Reserve to Become Largest Holder of U.S. Debt in Just Over a Month?

Source: Zero Hedge

Probably the most interesting thing in this week's Fed balance sheet update is that Treasurys held by the Fed are now $812 billion, an increase of $7 billion from the week before, which those who follow the FRBNY's almost daily POMO liquidity explosion know all too well. Indicatively, Japan owns $821 billion and China, $847 billion. We believe that within one week the Fed will surpass Japan as the second largest holder of Treasurys, and China, the current top holder, in just over a month. Another notable item: Fed excess reserves were at $981 billion, a decline from $1.01 trillion at the beginning of the month, but most notably, in the past month this number hit a year low of $932 billion on September 15. One wonders just what securities the banks were buying up with these reserves? Keep in mind the stock market closed essentially at the level it hit on September 20, making one wonder just how much of a factor the nearly $80 billion decline in bank excess reserves in the first two weeks of the month may have been.

Securities held outright: $2,044 billion, a decline of $7 billion from the week prior.
- Total Treasury holdings increased from $805 billion to $812 billion, the reason for the increase being of course the continuing UST purchasing via QE Lite. The Fed has bought $25 billion in Treasuries in September
- MBS holdings declined by $13 billion to $1.08 trillion, meaning that as we expected the level of prepaying is accelerating, as this was the biggest one week decline in MBS notional outstanding on the Fed's balance sheet since QE1 began
- Agency holdings were also flat at $154 billion.
Net borrowings: declined by $7 billion at $53 billion.
Float, liquidity swaps, Maiden Lane and other assets: $187 billion, an increase of $1 billion. FX liquidity swaps are at $61 million as the same bank that is experiencing a USD funding crisis continues to have no EURIBOR/LIBOR acces. The "value" of Maiden Lane I was at $28.4 billion. Maiden Lane II was at $15.8 billion, Maiden Lane III at $23 billion while AIA Aurora was $25.7 billion.
The monetary base was $1.958 trillion (more on M2 later)
Reserve balances with banks: $982 billion, a slight increase of $2 billion from the prior week.
Foreign holdings of USTs and MBS at a new all time high of $3.23 trillion, a slight increase of just under $2 billion W/W.

Ireland reveals full horror of banking crisis

Taxpayers are being left with the bill and deeper austerity measures, but the government says the banks are too big to fail.

Overnight taxpayers learnt they will be shouldering an even bigger burden to bail out the Anglo Irish Bank - to the tune of $41 billion.

"The banks have actually got us into this mess. They should actually get us out," one person said.

"It is too shocking when you see people still on the side of the road homeless and yet there were these people smoking their big cigars and yachts out in the Mediterranean," another said.

With unemployment at a record high of 14 per cent, Macdara Doyle, from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, says citizens cannot afford the bailout bill.

"We started out at this place two years ago with what we were told was the cheapest bank guarantee or bank rescue scheme in the world," Mr Doyle said.

"[It] then went to $4 billion. It is now at about $29 billion or $34 billion depending on what scenario you believe. It is not working. It is killing the economy."

Irish finance minister Brian Lenihan says he understands the country's frustration, but says this should draw a line under the taxpayer's liability.

"The Irish people are entitled to be angry with the bankers who lent recklessly over a considerable period of time in the earlier part of this decade," Mr Lenihan said.

Irish government borrowing was heading to 12 per cent of its annual economic output.

This will now treble; a third of the Irish economy will now go towards supporting its banks.

Independent Irish senator Shane Ross says the astronomical costs will be reflected in the November budget, which was already set for cuts in public expenditure of $4 billion and tax hikes.

"I think we're probably going to have a property tax, which is totally an anathema to the Irish psyche. We'll probably also have a tax on water," he said.

Senator Ross says the Irish have to accept the party is over.

"We had a binge for so long that we are suffering from the hangover.

"We've had maybe a feeling of guilt and that we weren't doing too well that this was a bit of a false boom, so I think we have been very, very passive in accepting the last cuts."

Business editor David Murphy from Irish broadcaster RTE says Irish taxpayers are sceptical that pouring more money into the Anglo Irish Bank bailout is a smart move.

He says, however, there has been a heartening reaction on the international financial markets.

"The bond markets who wanted to charge the Irish government almost 7 per cent for borrowing money earlier this week, they've relaxed a little bit," he said.

Borrowing woes are also being felt by Spain, with a major ratings agency downgrading its triple-A credit rating overnight.

The one-notch drop is in anticipation of the Spanish government pushing through more radical spending reductions and is another reminder to markets that all the anxieties about the eurozone's financial instability are far from eased.

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"Growth" may sound like a good thing to the unenlightened, but in a debt-based economy, "growth" means "deeper in debt" - Mike Rivero clarifies a fundamental economic issue.

The entire Federal Reserve Bank System is a giant "Ponzi":

a pyramid scheme.

This nation fought a war with England to free itself from the predatory banking practices of the Bank of England, enforced on the colonies by King George III's 1775 Currency Act, which mandated the use of British Pounds for all commerce.

But pounds were only available as loans from the Bank of England, at interest. It took only a few years for this scheme to reduce the formerly prosperous and productive colonies down to the poverty and unemployment typical of London at the same time period.

While the state-run schools teach that the revolution was about the Stamp act and the Tea tax, it was the rage created by the enforced impoverishment of the Currency Act which fueled the revolution.

Following the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers reverted to the system which had worked so well before the British Currency Act: Government now issued the public currency and spent it into circulation where it was used by the public free of interest. Then the money was taxed back into the governments hands, then to be re-spent back into circulation. This is a system which has worked very well for the civil population throughout history and which, for obvious reasons bankers loathe to the point of starting wars to prevent it!

The US has been cursed with three private central banks issuing the public currency at interest and all three brought this nation to the edge of ruin. The mechanism is simple. Because all currency is the product of a loan, the moment that first bill goes into circulation, more money is owed to the Federal Reserve banking system than is actually in existence, and the population is trapped; sold into debt-slavery by their own government, as happened to us all in 1913.

The system perpetuates only so long as an ever-larger group of new borrowers can be found to create new money to pay the interest on the old money. That is what makes it a pyramid.

That is why the government and media always talk about the "growth" of the economy. "Growth" may sound like a good thing to the unenlightened, but in a debt-based economy, "growth" means "deeper in debt". And because it is a pyramid, if the economy does not grow, that is, if more new debt cannot be created to service the interest on the old debt, the pyramid collapses, which is what is happening now.

The Federal Reserve System is designed to suck the real wealth out of the nation and put it in the pockets of the bankers, and now that they have succeeded, the system is breaking down, too cash-poor to operate efficiently, just as it did in the colonies in the early 1770s. The system is broken because the bankers have all the wealth, and absent a new source of wealth to pay the bankers' interest charges and fees, the system is locking up.

Of course, it is all paper debts and make-believe obligations. The money owed to the bankers by the government never existed in the first place. It's just part of the scam by which the bankers enslave the world, which is the real essence of banking; to hold nations and people perpetually in debt-servitude or indentured service, with the government bribed to not take action to ameliorate the situation!

"This is the very essence of the banking industry,; to make us all, whether we be nations or individuals, slaves to debt!" -- mp3 clip from the film "The International"

The Arabs run Hollywood…and I can prove it!

by Keith Johnson

Has Hollywood become a staging ground for a radical Islamic takeover of America?

For years, motion pictures and television programs have been rife with pro-Muslim sentiment.

There can no longer be any denial of the fact that there is an obvious, deliberate and concerted effort by the Arab run media to win the hearts and minds of the American people.

Just take a look at this gallery of Hollywood production stills. Do you not see the blatant attempt to advance Islamic ideaology and portray Muslims as romantic and dashing role models for our young people to emulate?

Who can forget how audiences cheered on the Arab extremist who stood up against the evil Indiana Jones?

Or the Islamic fundamentalist who took on the sinister villain known as Iron Man?

And let’s got forget how our children applauded the Libyan terrorists who blew up a photomat in Back to the Future while in hot pursuit of the antagonistic Marty McFly.

Oh, boy.

By now, some of you have already picked up on my sarcasm. You instantly recognize the absurdity in suggesting that Arabs enjoy a fair measure of respect in the mainstream media.

But, for many Americans–who’ve been fed a steady diet of racist propaganda from birth–the idea that Muslims have been extended some kind of inordinate courtesy from Hollywood is not a far-fetched concept.

These people are idiots, and a basic analysis of the facts prove their hypothesis to be flat out wrong.

Consider this:

Our children’s earliest introductions to Arabic culture are often associated with stereotypical villains who wear turbans, horde treasures and have a general disdain for those around them.

In Disney’s Aladdin, one of the few characters to retain an Arabic name from the original story was the villain Jafer, who was given radically exaggerated and exotic facial features to annunciate how different these people are from the rest of us.

Other characters are obese, uncultured bullies with ferocious sexual appetites and bad dental hygiene.

In contrast, the heores are given more caucasian features and their names are changed to identify with western audiences. In Disney’s Aladdin, the name of the Princess was changed from the one in the original tale. “Buddir al Buddor” was renamed “Jasmine.” Notice how the heroes are drawn to look like white people with nice tans.

In the Star Wars series, desert-dwellers were assigned roles as evil villains. The full body garb worn by the Tuskan Raiders is an obvious reference to the traditional clothing often associated with Arab men.

In The Phantom Menace, the desert-dwelling, white slave trader Watto spoke with a Middle Eastern accent and sounded like a Brooklyn liquor store owner negotiating over the sale of a carton of cigarettes. He too had the exaggerated features of a bulbous nose and sloping forehead.

These things are intended to go unnoticed, but to the subconcious mind, the associations are none the less vivid.

The Klingons from the Star Trek series are yet another example of how Middle Easterners are used as models in the development of screen villains.

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry is said to have gathered his ideas for his fictional Klingon species during a trip to the Holy Land in the late 1960′s.

In an article entitled, Can the World of Star Trek Help Americans Understand Muslims and their Culture of Terror, racist, Christian Zionist preacher Deacon Fred says, “I’m not a big fan of Mr. Roddenberry, but our opinions are very similar when it comes to Muslims. Being a Jew, Mr. Roddenberry knew first hand what it was like to be persecuted by such a filthy, backward race of warmongers. My guess is that he couldn’t come right out and say what he felt in public, so he used the television series, Star Trek, to get his views across. Only an unsaved idiot would have a hard time seeing how obvious it is that Star Trek’s, Klingons, are actually Arabs in disguise. I understand it’s harder to tell with the new series, because they started to get politically correct and had to change the makeup so it wasn’t so obvious. Well, you don’t need a degree in Theology to see how clear it still is. In fact, I think the new makeup does an even better job of bringing out the demonic nature and character of the Arab people.”

If an idiot like this can find parallels between Klingons and Arabs, imagine who else is being compelled to draw the same conclusions.

Hollywood has a long held tradition of demonizing Arabs and Persians. There have been periods when they have been subtle, and others when their disdain has been open and without remorse. Never was this this more evident than during the 80′s and 90′s. Handsome action heroes like Arnold Schwarzeneggar and Chuck Norris were often pitted against the ugliest Arab stereotypes that central casting could muster up.

This image from Delta Force is perhaps one of the most disturbing examples of Hollywood sanctioned racism. Notice the contrast of the blue eyed, white haired blonde victim against the contrasting dark features of the greasy Arab terrorist.

The Arnold Schwarzeneggar actioner True Lies was one of the most successful films of the 1990′s, and helped fuel the anti-Muslim fervor that allowed the U.S. government to continue their war on Islam with full public support.

You can always tell when a villain is being used to advance a political agenda. Unlike artistic films–that portray villains as handsome rebels or devious seductresses–propaganda films always depict their villains as ugly outcasts with akward mannerisms and poor hygiene. The goal is to make the villain repulsive and unsympathetic.

Recent films, like Adam Sandler’s You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, pretends to be unbiased, but can’t help but portray Muslims in stereotypical roles. Is Rob Schneider’s depiction of a goofy Palestinian cab driver intended to bridge the gap between reality and fiction? What impression does this leave with your average American?

In America, The only true bias that exists is that which is perpetrated against the Islamic people. While fragments of other forms of racism still survive to a lesser degree, the institutionalized hatred being fermented towards peoples of Middle Eastern descent is contemporary and unprescedented.

And you don’t need a $10 box office ticket to become privy to this fact. Just tune in to your local cable network and you’ll find plenty of examples.

Ventriloquist Jeff Dunham’s Achmed the Terrorist is a very popular villain among the NASCAR loving Bible belters.

On the East and West coasts, audiences love laughing at the devious Pakistani restaurant owner Abu, who vows vengeance against the saintly liberal icon, Jerry Seinfeld.

In popular culture, Arabs never assimilate. They retain their traditional clothing, accents and old world traditions. Those who do integrate with the rest of us do so to advance some kind of Jihadist plot or to exploit our resources.

Dr. Jack Shaheen explores this issue in far more explicit terms in his film, Reel Bad Arabs. According to this synopsis:

“the film explores a long line of degrading images of Arabs–from Bedouin bandits and submissive maidens to sinister sheikhs and gun-wielding “terrorists”–along the way offering devastating insights into the origin of these stereotypic images, their development at key points in US history, and why they matter so much today.”

Since I started this piece out in a sardonic fashion, I might as well end it the same way. Here goes:

If we allow the Arabs to continue controlling our media, it will only be a matter of time before Sharia law is institutionalized in America. Beheadings and stonings will be conducted on a regular basis, and our daughters will be forced to cover their naked bodies. No more string bikinis! From now on, your girls will be compelled to cover their heads with burkas and hide their shapely figures with black shawls. Is this what you want, America?

We need to stop all of this glorification of Islam and get back to the Talmudic principals this nation was founded upon.

Otherwise, we may very well see magazine covers with headlines like this:

Rick Sanchez: Jon Stewart A 'Bigot,' Jews Run CNN & All Media

UPDATE: Rick Sanchez has been fired from CNN.

"Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company. We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well,' a CNN statement said.

UPDATE: Rick Sanchez did not appear on Friday's "Rick List," the afternoon after his controversial comments about Jon Stewart and Jews surfaced. Sanchez's regular substitute Brooke Baldwin filled in for him.

ORIGINAL POST: CNN's Rick Sanchez made controversial comments on a Sirius radio show Thursday, calling Jon Stewart a "bigot" and saying that CNN and the other networks are all run by Jewish people.

Discussing Stewart with radio host Pete Dominick, Sanchez said that the "Daily Show" host has a limited worldview, and called him a "bigot."

The conversation began with Sanchez decrying "elite, Northeast establishment liberals" who "deep down, when they look at a guy like me, they see a guy automatically who belongs in the second tier, and not the top tier.

"I think to some extent Jon Stewart and [Stephen] Colbert are the same way. I think Jon Stewart's a bigot," he said. "I think he looks at the world through, his mom, who was a school teacher, and his dad, who was a physicist or something like that. Great, I'm so happy that he grew up in a suburban middle class New Jersey home with everything you could ever imagine."

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Rick Sanchez: Jon Stewart A 'Bigot,' Jews Run CNN & All Media

First Posted: 10- 1-10 10:53 AM | Updated: 10- 1-10 06:09 PM

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UPDATE: Rick Sanchez has been fired from CNN.

"Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company. We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well,' a CNN statement said.

Discussing Stewart with radio host Pete Dominick, Sanchez said that the "Daily Show" host has a limited worldview, and called him a "bigot."

When asked who Stewart is bigoted against, Sanchez said "everybody else who's not like him."

Sanchez would eventually retract the "bigot" claim, settling instead on calling Stewart "prejudicial" and "uninformed."

But he made a larger point when Dominick suggested that Stewart could understand being part of an oppressed minority group because he is Jewish.

Sanchez scoffed at the claim, snickering and suggesting that CNN and the rest of the media is run by Jewish people (from the "Stand Up with Pete Dominick" blog):

Very powerless people... [snickers] He's such a minority, I mean, you know [sarcastically]... Please, what are you kidding? ... I'm telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they -- the people in this country who are Jewish -- are an oppressed minority? Yeah. [sarcastically]

Listen to Sanchez call Stewart a "bigot":

Listen to Sanchez talk about Stewart, Jews and the media:

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Scientists: 40 Times More Cancer-Causing Toxics in Gulf than Before Spill ... Dispersants to Blame

Scientists from Oregon State University have found a 40-fold increase in the amount of cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) near Louisiana's Grande Isle between May and June.

The Oregon team is looking at "the fraction of PAHs that are bioavailable – that have the potential to move into the food chain."

As I pointed out last month, PAHs are harmful to both human health and seafood safety:

McClatchy notes today:
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill still poses threats to human health and seafood safety, according to a study published Monday by the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association.

***

In the short term, study co-author Gina Solomon voiced greatest concern for shrimp, oysters, crabs and other invertebrates she says are have difficulty clearing their systems of dangerous polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) similar to those found in cigarette smoke and soot. Solomon is an MD and public health expert in the department of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco.

The Oregon researchers also believe:

The use of chemical dispersants during the oil spill coupled with the ultraviolet exposure in the Gulf may have increased the formation of OPAHs beyond expected levels.

And one of the researchers explained to the Huffington Post:

Based on the findings of other researchers, [Kim Anderson, an OSU professor of environmental and molecular toxicology] suspects that the abundant use of dispersants by BP increased the bioavailability of the PAHs in this case.

This is not particularly surprising. As I noted earlier this month about another team of scientists studying the effects of dispersant on pollution in the Gulf:

Scientists have found that when Corexit is applied to the actual crude oil from BP's well, it releases 35 times more toxic chemicals into the water column than would be released with crude alone.

As I noted in May, the crude oil released by BP is actually relatively low in PAHs compared to other crudes:

[NOAA says that the Gulf] oil is less toxic than crude oils generally because it is relatively much lower in polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). PAHs are highly toxic chemicals that tend to persist in the environment for long periods of time, especially if the spilled oil penetrates into the substrate on beaches or shorelines.

Given that the BP crude is much lower in PAHs than most crude oil, for there to be 40 times more PAHs than normal is even more dramatic, again showing how effective dispersants have been in releasing the most toxic elements from the oil into the environment ... in fairly high concentrations and pretty much all at once.

See this for more information on the harmful effects of dispersants, and their ongoing use in the Gulf.

FED Pushing Dollar Down

Click this link ...... http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=12768&title=fed-pushing-dollar-down

Terrorist Group Islam4UK With Alleged Ties To Al Qaeda Exposed As Intelligence Front

The Intel Hub
By Alexander Higgins

Evidence surfaces exposing Islam4UK, a supposed Islamic extremist group with ties to Al Qaeda that has been banned in the UK for promoting terrorism on the streets and online, as a British Intelligence front.

American’s and citizens of other nations around the world sit quietly as their fellow citizens’ rights are violated in the name of the “War on Terror”. Meanwhile Wall Street has become so corrupt the banks foreclosing on homes they don’t even have a mortgage against and the U.S Supreme court has legalized a whole array of civil liberties violations including the legalization of CIA abduction, overseas detention, and torture of innocent American citizens.

Why have we allowed the Government to kidnap us and torture us? Why have we allowed the courts to rule that private property is no longer private?

Because the media continues to run stories we know are lies and that we believe without even questioning. We have all seen that radical Muslims on CNN and other main stream media outlets.

For example, watch this video of group of Muslims known as Islam4UK protesting the Afghanistan war.

Britain banned the group and made it a criminal offense to be a member of or to even use the name of the group Islam4UK. I guess such a ban is one step above the pentagon buying and burning every copy of a book because it contained evidence that proved the Government covered up 9/11.

Islam4UK Islamist group banned under terror laws

A radical Islamist group that planned a march through Wootton Bassett will be banned under counter-terrorism laws, Home Secretary Alan Johnson has said.

Islam4UK had planned the protest at the Wiltshire town to honour Muslims killed in the Afghanistan conflict.

The government had been considering outlawing the group under its original name, al-Muhajiroun.

…

Under the Terrorism Act 2000, a group can be banned if it “commits or participates in acts of terrorism, prepares for, promotes or encourages terrorism or is otherwise concerned in terrorism”.

Groups can also be outlawed if they “unlawfully glorify the commission or preparation of acts of terrorism”.

…

Read the Original Article.

So just who is Islam4UK? According to the BBC:

Profile: Islam4UK

Al-Muhajiroun, also known as Islam4UK, was the group that claimed it would march through Wootton Bassett. Now the group faces a UK ban on grounds of national security.

Al-Muhajiroun, in its various forms, is an important part of the story of Islamist anger and the line between politics, protest and national security.

The organisation is made up of a small band of tight-knit young men who advocate a worldwide Islamist system of government and, at the same time, vehemently denounce the foreign policies of the US and UK.

It has had a knack of staging attention-grabbing stunts with its leaders adept at finding ways of provoking a backlash from the press and some politicians. Now that tactic of agitation and provocation has led to its ban under terrorism laws.

Al-Muhajiroun was originally formed by Omar Bakri Mohammed, the extremist preacher. He founded the organisation after quitting another Islamist group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, which wasn’t radical enough for his views. But what he took with him was its strategy of building a following by setting up cells of supporters in every town possible.

…

Read the Original Article

Here is press release taken from the Islam4UK website before it was banned and taken offline. The press release called for people to come up and protest at the event in the video above.

Press Release Sunday 10 Jan 2010

DECLARATION ON WOOTTON BASSETT PROCESSION

Having successfully highlighted the plight of Muslims in Afghanistan globally and having successfully engaged with thousands of ordinary people through our website and via blogs, phone calls, emails etc… on the reality of the conflict and our collective responsibility, we at islam4uk have decided, after consultation with others including our Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, that no more could be achieved even if a procession were to take place in Wootton Bassett and in light of this we would like to announce today that there will no longer be a procession through this market town.

This does not mean that we will remain silent on the atrocities being committed in Afghanistan under the guise of fighting for freedom and democracy and it also does not mean that we will not continue to highlight the true cost of this war against Islam and Muslims called fighting terrorism. Nor will we stop exposing the CIA and ISI agencies which are carrying out bombing raids in public places and then seeking to blame those defending the life, honour and wealth of the Muslims. Rather we will continue our responsibility as Muslims of enjoining good and forbidding evil wherever and whenever we see it.

In this respect we once again appeal to the British public and in particular the families and friends of soldiers who have died or are currently involved in Afghanistan to engage with us in an honest dialogue. There is common ground between us. Just as you grieve the deaths of your sons and daughters, we too grieve the deaths of thousands of ordinary Muslim men, women and children, just as many of you are aware of the injustice and oppression being carried out by the US led alliance in Afghanistan (of which the UK is a part) and do not agree with your children being in this war, we too demand the immediate withdrawal of all British troops from this Muslim land.

…

Just as Tony Blair has been exposed as a liar regarding Iraq and the so-called .weapons of mass destruction. for which he has the blood of hundreds of thousands of Muslims on his hands and for which he needs to pay, Gordon Brown wants us to believe that the security of the British public begins in Kabul and that the murder of people in Afghanistan will keep people here in the UK safe. Another blatant lie for which Gordon Brown must either immediately withdraw all British forces or resign for not being up to the job and for which the pen of history will record yet another Pinocchio.

…

As for the proscription of Al-Muhajiroun and Islam4uk, which we understand that the parliament will be considering this week, I would like to make it clear that we never called for Islam because either Blair or Brown liked it or allowed it but rather because it is a divine obligation upon Muslims to collectively call for Islam and to invite the societies in which they live to adopt Islamic law and order as a way of life, which cannot and will never stop. Hence even if proscribed another platform with a new name will arise to continue to fulfil these divine obligations until the Shari.ah has been implemented.

…

It seems that the government and media have begun to believe their own lies which they themselves invented about us. It.s a bit like creating Frankenstein and then becoming afraid of it. However, having already lost the debate on Afghanistan and been exposed on the concept of freedom and fighting .terrorism. the only option left for a bully who has no sound argument is to use force to ban and thereby try to silence his opponent.

Mr Anjem Choudary – UK Head of Al-Muhajiroun
Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad – Founder and Ameer of Al-Muhajiroun
www.islam4uk.com

Email: islam4uk@live.co.uk
Telephone: 07956 600 569 or 00961 70 209 335 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 00961 70 209 335 end_of_the_skype_highlighting for more details

So just to recap here, the group Islam4UK was banned for committing, participating, promoting, encouraging and/or unlawfully glorifying terrorists activities. Moreover, their protests and writings have been used repeatedly as a poster child for Islamic terrorist organizations in many corporate media propaganda pieces in the U.S. and Great Britain.

Take for example thjs CNN piece about Al Qaeda and Islam4uk.

Al Qaeda: A Global Threat?; Israeli/Palestinian Peace Process Still Stalled

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: The United States examines the accused Fort Hood gunman’s ties to a radical cleric in Yemen. Are al Qaeda and its allies trying to stage a resurgence in the U.S., and in Europe? Is this their new frontier?

I’m Christiane Amanpour, and welcome to our program.

The killings at the U.S. military base at Fort Hood, as well as the ongoing debate on Afghanistan, have put al Qaeda back in the headlines and in the minds of counter-terrorists.

We talked to the State Department’s ambassador at large for counterterrorism, Daniel Benjamin. It’s his first television interview since taking office.

We’ll also be talking with al Qaeda experts, Karen Greenberg and Thomas Hegghammer, who’ve been tracking global jihad for years.

…
In the United States anti-terror officials say that a suspect they arrested in September was planning attacks on the New York mass transit system. It’s an eerie reminder of the Madrid train bombings of 2004 that killed nearly 200 people. And the so-called 7/7 suicide bombings on the London transit system which killed more than 50 people.

We focus on al Qaeda. Is it weakening, or does it have a new lease on life? We start with this report from CNN’s Nic Robertson in London.

[Video Clip of Islam4K]

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They’re an angry minority. Their goal, nothing short of Muslim domination of the United Kingdom, if not the world.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This poster is basically showing how we will transform Buckingham Palace into a local mosque for the Muslims.

ROBERTSON (on camera): And what happens to the Queen?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, the Queen, she’ll have the choice. She can either become Muslim or she can leave the country.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): This man, Anjem Choudary, is their leader. He demands Islamic law known as Shari’ah to be the law of the land.

ANJEM CHOUDARY, ISLAM4UK: Drugs will be banned. Pornography will be banned. Gambling will be banned.

ROBERTSON: Choudary’s strategy is to pit Muslims against everyone else to create tension.

CHOUDARY: We do expect to enter into a struggle, if you like, of words, and maybe even more than that, before we can see the fruition of the Shari’ah on the state level.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Muslims are here to say!

CROWD: Muslims are here to say!

ROBERTSON: Like Muslim radicals, Yusef Qutab (ph) and Yunis Abdullah Mohammed in New York, Choudary supports Osama bin Laden and justifies the 9/11 attacks. In fact, Choudary claims he was spreading the message of jihad, or holy war, even before 9/11.

CHOUDARY: I’ve been to New York a couple of times before 9/11. And even to the bible belt, I think they call it, in the Midwest. And you know it’s about propagating Islam. I do believe that the Muslims of America are possibly five or 10 years behind in terms of the struggle that they’re engages in.

ROBERTSON (on camera): What Choduary is implying is that how radicalization evolves here in Britain and in Europe will in some part be a model for what the United States can expect. Here, terrorism officials say they’re tracking about 30 serious terror plots.

The rest of the article continues to say how much these people love and praise Al-Queda, Bin-Ladin and the 9/11 attackers. The article goes on to point out the Islam4UK’s connections with very popular Islamic Jihad sites online, that is sites that are pushing for Muslim holy war.

So… Islam4UK promotes terrorism and encourages others to take up the cause of killing innocent people and bomb public places.

But who are they? Is this even for real? If you were really engaging in such activities would you be bragging about it all over the internet, on CNN, BBC, and other news outlets were you are going to call attention to yourself from the authorities?

Absolutely not. So here’s the twist.

Islam4UK Exposed As British Intelligence Front

Summary:

http://wideshut.co.uk – After just a small amount of research it is my belief that the much hyped Islam4UK group that proposed a march on Wootton Bassett, is actually a British Intelligence group hired by our corrupt government in order to cause further conflict between Muslims and Brits, to keep support for the wars high and to continue the trumped up threat of terrorism. Anjem Choudary is a unislamic fraud linked to Al-Mujaharoun, a group created by British Mi6 to fight the Serbians in the Kosovo war. Either it came back to bite us on the ass or he is still controlled by our own government! BNP and EDL supporters, and Islam4UK supporters are both dupes, being played like puppets by the new world order (global governance) agenda.

So really all of this propaganda and scare tactics is being pushed out by the British Intelligence. British Intelligence encouraging members of the public to take up Jihad and engage in terrorism. To assume that everyone who reads the propaganda pushed by this front will join the group and be exposed is absurd. Surely many who take up the cause will do it elsewhere.

So what the hell are they doing? Looks to me like Western Governments are funding a perpetual war on both sides. You can argue that these are the steps needed to capture those partaking in these kinds of activities, but by funding and pushing these types of activities the intelligence agencies are creating a grassroots movement that it simply can not control. That is unless they plan on waging the 2nd holocaust against the 1.5 billion Muslims.

They banned this group and since the group was really an intelligence front they did not argue against the censorship and what we refer to in America as our first amendment rights. Now the ban, which surely has enraged the public over the censorship, sets legal precedence for the Government to censor and shut down any other group they want. Sound familiar?

This is non-sense. All of it.

Dwight Was Right

So...it turns out President Eisenhower wasn't making up all that stuff about the military-industrial complex.

That's what you'll conclude if you read Bob Woodward's new book, Obama's War. (You can read excerpts of it here, here and here.) You thought you voted for change when you cast a ballot for Barack Obama? Um, not when it comes to America occupying countries that don't begin with a "U" and an "S."

In fact, after you read Woodward's book, you'll split a gut every time you hear a politician or a government teacher talk about "civilian control over the military." The only people really making the decisions about America's wars are across the river from Washington in the Pentagon. They wear uniforms. They have lots of weapons they bought from the corporations they will work for when they retire.

For everyone who supported Obama in 2008, it's reassuring to find out he understands we have to get out of Afghanistan. But for everyone who's worried about Obama in 2010, it's scary to find out that what he thinks should be done may not actually matter. And that's because he's not willing to stand up to the people who actually run this country.

And here's the part I don't even want to write -- and none of you really want to consider:

It matters not whom we elect. The Pentagon and the military contractors call the shots. The title "Commander in Chief" is ceremonial, like "Employee of the Month" at your local Burger King.

Everything you need to know can be found in just two paragraphs from Obama's War. Here's the scene: Obama is meeting with his National Security Council staff on the Saturday after Thanksgiving last year. He's getting ready to give a big speech announcing his new strategy for Afghanistan. Except...the strategy isn't set yet. The military has presented him with just one option: escalation. But at the last minute, Obama tells everyone, hold up -- the door to a plan for withdrawal isn't closed.

The brass isn't having it:

"Mr. President," [Army Col. John Tien] said, "I don't see how you can defy your military chain here. We kind of are where we are. Because if you tell General McChrystal, 'I got your assessment, got your resource constructs, but I've chosen to do something else,' you're going to probably have to replace him. You can't tell him, 'Just do it my way, thanks for your hard work.' And then where does that stop?"
The colonel did not have to elaborate. His implication was that not only McChrystal but the entire military high command might go in an unprecedented toppling -- Gates; Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Gen. David H. Petraeus, then head of U.S. Central Command. Perhaps no president could weather that, especially a 48-year-old with four years in the U.S. Senate and 10 months as commander in chief.

And, well, the rest is history. Three days later Obama announced the escalation at West Point. And he became our newest war president.

But here's the question Woodward doesn't answer: Why, exactly, can't a president weather ending a war, even if he has to fire all his generals to do it? It's right there in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution: The President's in charge of the military. And so is Congress: the army can't just march over to the Treasury Department and steal the money for wars. Article I, Section 9 says Congress has to appropriate it.

In the real world, though, the Constitution's just a piece of paper. In the real world, a President who fired his top military in order to stop a war would be ruined before you could say "bloodless coup." The Washington Post (filled with ads from Boeing and Northrop Grumman) would scream about how he was the reincarnation of Neville Chamberlain. Fox and CNN (filled with "experts" who work for think tanks funded by Raytheon and General Dynamics) would say he was a girly-man who had to be impeached. And Congress (which experienced its own escalation in lobbying from defense contractors just as the Afghanistan escalation was being decided) might well do it. (By the way, if you want to listen to Lyndon Johnson talk in 1964 about how he might be impeached if he didn't follow the military-industrial complex's orders and escalate the war in Vietnam, just go here.)

So here's your assignment for tonight: Watch Eisenhower's famous farewell speech. And then start thinking about how we can tame this beast. The Soviet Union had its own military-industrial complex, which is one reason they got into Afghanistan...which is one reason there's no more Soviet Union. It happened to them.

Don't think it can happen to us?

Fed/Treasury Botch the Printing of Paper Money

This is getting comical. The government that hates gold has just announced that they have screwed up the printing of the new paper $100 bill.

Burying the news on a Friday afternoon, the Federal Reserve Board announced a delay in the issue date of the redesigned $100 note, which was originally scheduled for 2-10-11.

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing, a division of the Treasury, manufactures Federal Reserve notes and has identified a problem with sporadic creasing of the paper during printing of the new $100 note, which was not apparent during extensive pre-production testing, the Fed said. As a consequence, the Federal Reserve will not have sufficient inventories to begin distributing the new $100 notes as planned.

Failed Washington-Sponsored Ecuadorean Coup Attempt

Failed Washington-Sponsored Ecuadorean Coup Attempt - by Stephen Lendman

Post-9/11, Washington sponsored four coup d'etats. Two succeeded - most recently in Honduras in 2009 against Manuel Zelaya, and in Haiti in 2004 deposing Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Two others failed - in Venezuela in 2002 against Hugo Chavez, and on September 30 in Ecuador against Rafael Correa - so far. Two by Bush, two by Obama with plenty of time for more mischief before November 2012.

From his record so far, expect it. He continues imperial Iraq and Afghanistan wars and occupations. In addition, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Palestine, Lebanon, North Korea, and other countries are targeted, besides deploying CIA and Special Forces armies into at least 75 countries worldwide for targeted assassinations, drone attacks, and other disruptive missions.

More than ever under Bush and Obama, America rampages globally, Ecuador's Raphael Correa lucky to survive a plot to oust (or perhaps kill) him. September world headlines explained, including by New York Times writer Simon Romero headlining, "Standoff in Ecuador Ends With Leader's Rescue," saying:

"Ecuadorean soldiers stormed a police hospital Thursday night in Quito where President Rafael Correa was held by rebellious elements of the police forces, and rescued him amid an exchange of gunfire...."

AlJazeera explained more in an article headlined, "Ecuador declares state of emergency," saying:

Coup plotters shut down airports, blocked highways, burned tires, and "rough(ed) up the president." They also took over an airbase, parliament, and Quito streets, the pretext being a law restructuring their benefits, despite Correa doubling police wages.

In fact, Washington's fingerprints are on another attempt against a Latin leader, some (not all) of whose policies fall short of neoliberal extremism.

A tipoff was State Department spokesman, Phillip Crowley, saying we're "monitoring (not denouncing) the situation," much like it refused to condemn Zelaya's ouster, instead calling on "all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law, and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter." Most other Latin states demanded his "immediate and unconditional return," whether or not they meant it.

Washington opposes Correa for Ecuador's ties to Hugo Chavez and Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA) membership, a WTO/NAFTA alternative based on principles of:

-- complementarity, not competition;

-- cooperation, not exploitation; and

-- respect for each nation's sovereignty, free from corporate and outside control.

Though falling short of these goals, ALBA nations, in principle, pledged:

-- to benefit and empower their citizens;

-- provide essential goods and services; and

-- achieve real grassroots economic growth to improve the lives of ordinary people and reduce poverty.

ALBA membership, however, signals opposition to US hegemony, especially its neoliberal model, dominance, dismissiveness, and one-way trade deals for the Global North over the South, the curse Latin states have endured for decades, besides earlier US-sponsored coups and belligerency.

Fast Moving Developments

Before his rescue, police spokesman Richard Ramirez told AP that "the chief of the national police, Gen. Freddy Martinez, presented Correa with his irrevocable resignation because of Thursday's events."

On October 1, the Russian Information Agency, Novosti headlined, "Ecuador in chaos as police put president in hospital," saying:

Correa remained hospitalized....one person was killed and dozens injured during (street) riots." After Ecuadorean military and special police forces rescued him, Correa told the national radio in a phone interview:

"This is a coup d'etat attempt by opposition forces. They resorted to (violence) because they will not win the election. I call on the citizens to stay calm."

After being attacked by tear gas, he was hospitalized, then prevented from leaving when rebel police and coup supporters surrounded the building. Inside he said, "It seems that the hospital is under siege....(The) conspiracy (was) planned long ago," and he knows where. He added, "I will leave (the hospital) as president, or they will have to carry my corpse out of here."

His government declared a state of emergency. Flights from Quito's Mariscal Sucre International Airport were suspended, then resumed early October 1. In addition, scattered violence and looting was reported in several Ecuadorean cities, including the capital.

Freed by soldiers, a visibly angry Correa addressed a huge crowd of supporters from the presidential palace, saying:

"Ecuadorean blood, the blood of our brothers has been needlessly spilled. You have mobilized to support the national government....the citizens' revolution, democracy in our fatherland. When we realized we couldn't talk and wanted to leave, they attacked the president. They threw tear gas at us, straight at our faces. They had to take me to the police hospital where they held me hostage. They wouldn't let me leave. They shamed the institution (the police). They will need to leave the ranks."

While still captive, Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino urged supporters to "walk peacefully to the hospital, where the president is blocked by (rebel) police officers." On arriving, they shouted, "This is not Honduras. Correa is president. Down with the coup, down with the enemies of the people."

Ecuador remains in flux. As a result, new developments need close monitoring. Writing for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Andres Ochoa said:

Before the coup attempt, "Correa seemed an untouchable figure in Ecuadorian politics. However, his presidency might very well be defined by the outcome of this day, and his political projects may rest on the results."

A Final Comment

On October 1, AFP writer Alexander Martinez headlined, "Ecuador president rescued from police uprising," saying:

Correa "made a triumphant return to the presidential palace after loyalist troops rescued him from a police rebellion amid gunfire and street clashes that left at least two dead" and dozens wounded.

"We got him out, we got him out," Interior Vice Minister Edwin Jarrin told AFP.

"The rescue capped a dramatic day of violence and confusion that began early Thursday" when rebel police assaulted him.

After his rescue, Correa thanked the military and a police special operations unit, saying:

"If not for them, this horde of savages that wanted to kill, that wanted blood, would have entered the hospital to look for the president and I probably wouldn't (be) telling you this because I would have passed on to a better life." Supporters are grateful not yet.

Commenting on developments, Latin American expert James Petras explained that Ecuador's "ELITE MILITARY" put down the coup. In 2008, defense minister Javier Ponce "denounced" Washington "for subverting police."

At the same time, there's "legitimate protest by trade unions against Correa's austerity plan, which the right exploited, seeing the pro-Correa forces divided." In addition, some NGOs and "supposed Indian groups who tacitly supported the coup are on the take from America's National Endowment of Democracy (NED) and USAID," the usual suspects with a long disruptive history throughout the region and beyond.

Their operatives weren't on the streets visibly, but they expressed no opposition to coup plotters. Instead, "Their statement called for the government's replacement," meaning it's Obama administration policy - not for Correa's domestic policies, says Petras. It's for his "ties with US arch enemy Chavez and ALBA."

Events remain fluid and fast moving. Stay tuned for more updates.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

Navy to purchase $5.3 billion worth of combat aircraft

The U.S. Navy is purchasing 124 combat aircraft from defense contractor Boeing as part of a $5.3 billion multi-year contract, the company and the Naval Air Systems Command announced.

Boeing will deliver 66 F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and 58 EA-18 Growlers from 2012 to 2015, Boeing said in a news release Tuesday.

The Navy will have 515 Super Hornets and 114 Growlers by the end of the 2013 fiscal year, according to a Navy news release.

The F/A-18 fighter is a fixture aboard the Navy’s 11 aircraft carriers and is scheduled to remain in service beyond 2035, according to the Naval Air Systems Command.

The Growler, a variant of the F/A-18, is an electronic attack aircraft that adds newly developed jamming capability upgrades to the Super Hornet. The Growler is scheduled for its first combat deployment later this year, according to Boeing.

Advanced, easy to use, asynchronous-capable DNS client library and utilities.

adns is a resolver library for C (and C++) programs, and a collection of useful DNS resolver utilities.

C library

In contrast with the standard interfaces, gethostbyname et al and libresolv, it has the following features:

It is reasonably easy to use for simple programs which just want to translate names to addresses, look up MX records, etc.
It can be used in an asynchronous, non-blocking, manner. Many queries can be handled simultaneously.
Responses are decoded automatically into a natural representation for a C program - there is no need to deal with DNS packet formats.
Sanity checking (eg, name syntax checking, reverse/forward correspondence, CNAME pointing to CNAME) is performed automatically.
Time-to-live, CNAME and other similar information is returned in an easy-to-use form, without getting in the way.
There is no global state in the library; resolver state is an opaque data structure which the client creates explicitly. A program can have several instances of the resolver.
Errors are reported to the application in a way that distinguishes the various causes of failure properly.
Understands conventional resolv.conf, but this can overridden by environment variables.
Flexibility. For example, the application can tell adns to: ignore environment variables (for setuid programs), disable hostname syntax sanity checks to return arbitrary data, override or ignore resolv.conf in favour of supplied configuration, etc.
Believed to be correct ! For example, will correctly back off to TCP in case of long replies or queries, or to other nameservers if several are available. It has sensible handling of bad responses etc.

DNS utility programs

adns also comes with a number of utility programs for use from the command line and in scripts:

adnslogres is a much faster version of Apache's logresolv program.
adnsresfilter is a filter which copies its input to its output, replacing IP addresses by the corresponding names, without unduly delaying the output. For example, you can usefully pipe the output of netstat -n, tcpdump -ln, and the like, into it.
adnshost is a general-purpose DNS lookup utility which can be used easily in from the command line and from shell scripts to do simple lookups. In a more advanced mode it can be used as a general-purpose DNS helper program for scripting languages which can invoke and communicate with subprocesses. See the adnshost usage message for a summary of its capabilities.

Forthcoming:

I hope that future versions may also have the following features:

The library should be useable by threads in a multithreaded program in a natural way. It should multiplex many threads' queries through a single query socket.
IPv6 support.
Some kind of awareness of DNSSEC.
Possibly some very limited caching behaviour.
There was, at one point, a draft native Perl interface from Tony Finch.

Documentation

I'm afraid there is no manual yet. However, competent C programmers should be able to use the library based on the commented adns.h header file, and the usage messages for the programs should be sufficient.

Feedback

I'd be pleased if you would let me know if you're using my library in your project, and what you think of it.

If you are subscribed to adns-discuss please send feedback, including bug reports, there; otherwise send mail to adns-bugreports@chiark.greenend.org.uk. If you'd prefer that your message wasn't forwarded to the adns-bugreports list, send it to adns-maint@chiark.greenend.org.uk.

Mailinglists

I have set up mailinglists adns-announce and adns-discuss. The announcements list is moderated and will contain only announcements of important bugs, new versions, etc. The bug reports address mentioned above is also a mailing list; feel free to subscribe to it.

There are archives and subscription web pages, or you can subscribe by sending mail containing the word `subscribe' to adns-announce-REQUEST@chiark.greenend.org.uk or adns-discuss-REQUEST@chiark.greenend.org.uk.

Download

Available for download from chiark.greenend.org.uk are:

The current release as a gzipped tarfile.
adns.h API header file with comments, and usage message for adnshost (currently there is no manual, sorry).
All versions released so far are also available via anonymous FTP and HTTP.

You can also access the project CVS repositories:

A mirror of the source code repository is available via rsync from rsync.chiark.greenend.org.uk::ftp/users/ian/cvs-pub/adns (use FTP first to find your way around), or via cvsweb.
This web page is maintained in Savannah, where you can browse the webpage CVS.

adns is also available from the GNU Project FTP servers and their mirrors.

Technical note

adns requires a real nameserver like BIND or Dents running on the same system or a nearby one, which must be willing to provide `recursive service'. I.e., adns is a `stub resolver'. All properly configured UN*X and GNU systems will already have such nameserver(s); they are usually listed in /etc/resolv.conf.

References and related projects

There is a port to MS Visual Studio 6 C++ by Jarle Aase.

Copyright and licensing

Goldman seeks to kill off the 'vampire squid' with advert campaign

Goldman Sachs has launched a dramatic advertising campaign in a bid to improve its image. The company, described in the aftermath of the financial crisis as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity", ran its first adverts yesterday, that seem designed to show that an investment bank renowned for its multi-billion dollar deals also loves the small business community.

The campaign is the work of Young & Rubicam, which is owned by the UK advertising giant WPP, and is aimed at overhauling public perceptions of the bank. The adverts carry the strapline "Progress is everyone's business". The group was also keen to promote its "10,000 Small Businesses" plan.

It talks of its $3bn investment in clean energy since 2006 and its $27bn worth of support for not-for-profit institutions, including schools and hospitals, over the past decade. "At Goldman Sachs, we help make progress happen," the adverts also say.

A spokesman for Goldman said: "The adverts are meant to reflect the work we do for clients and the effect on the economy as a whole." While he declined to comment on suggestions the group was trying to "PR wash" its image, he admitted some would see it that way.

The campaign is focused on the US, and the spokesman said the large-scale print and internet drive "is not something we have done often", adding: "It was necessary to explain our business."

Advertising experts said the move would be seen as an act of contrition. "Goldman Sachs has taken the first step in putting up its hand and saying: 'We fouled up'," said Tom Blackett, the chairman of branding group Siegel+Gale UK. "The company is trying to present itself as socially useful, but there is a mountain to climb – people will be fairly sceptical about the motives, but if they achieve what they've set out to, it will be extremely laudable."

Anthony Edwards, the communications planning director at marketing group Euro RSCG, said: "This marks a pretty dramatic shift. Goldman's old image was cold and macho. It was all about success and money. Now it is using the language of inclusion."

Mr Edwards said the bank was clearly trying to focus on its efforts at real-value creation and growth rather than "just shifting money around". He added: "It wants to show it is getting involved with all levels of society."

Criticism of the bank, seen by some as a "poster boy" for investment banking excess, intensified last year when Lloyd Blankfein, its chief executive, said the bank was doing "God's work" in an off-the-cuff remark.

Goldman settled a civil fraud lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission in April and has been fined by the Financial Services Authority. "This is fairly pragmatic," Mr Edwards said, "Goldman Sachs was in the firing line."

Dave Roberts, the creative director of Fitch Design Consultants, said: "Goldman is trying to show a more human, more approachable image. The brand's logo is tiny, and instead they've brought forward the pictures of small business owners. Goldman is talking about communities and being a good corporate citizen. Two or three years ago, banks did not worry about this sort of thing."

Goldman is not the only bank to have revamped its image. Recently, German financial services group Deutsche Bank unveiled its new strapline "Passion to perform", accompanied by a video campaign on its website. The slogans of UBS, which advertised during Champions League football matches this week, is: "We will not rest," while rival Swiss group Credit Suisse's is "Working for your future".

What the experts think...

Tom Blackett, chairman, Siegel+Gale UK

"I like Goldman's new campaign. The idea that it 'brings people, capital and ideas together to help our clients and the communities we serve' is very laudable. To me, it is trying to position itself as 'socially useful'. This is an attempt to reverse the 'greed is good' image it acquired as a bulge bracket bank, as well as Lloyd Blankfein's 'doing God's work' quote. People will judge them on the evidence rather than the fine words and good intentions. It does, however, seem to be taking it seriously. The company says it has formed a business standards committee for corporate governance, and also mentions regulatory reform and risk management... We wait and see."

Jerry Della Femina, chief executive and chairman, Della Femina/Jeary

"It's like they're apologising for being bad boys," Mr Della Femina told Bloomberg. "The ad is too weak, too wimpy, too mealy-mouthed. The people who don't like them and the people who don't respect them are not going to have their opinion changed by looking at this – the people who do like them and respect them may see them as a bit diminished."

Dave Roberts, creative director, Fitch Design Consultants

Goldman Sachs wants to reposition itself as more approachable in the marketplace. The campaign is polished; it has clearly gone to an awful lot of effort. The branding is deep in look and feel, although it is a pretty vanilla approach. The tagline 'Progress is everyone's business' is not much of a differentiator. The other statements about being part of the community are more important. It gives more of an indication of what it believes and where it intends to go. It is important banks clean up their act, and they need to communicate that."

Former Fed Chief Volcker Says Financial System is Insolvent and Broken

Paul Volcker, former head of the American central bank Federal Reserve, announced last Thursday at a conference of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago that the US financial system is largely insolvent and "broken".

Volcker indicated that not only the banks are to blame for this situation, but also the federal regulators. During the last few years, they could have tried a lot harder to stop the investment banks from turning the global markets into a casino. The investment banks were also responsible for attracting large parts of the former core business of the commercial banks, which consequently led to major problems, as everyone could now see.

Thus, Volcker considered that the credit business generally had taken a negative path. The size of the losses from toxic assets so far hidden by banks would not be assessable anymore. Therefore it would not be hard to imagine that the present situation holds big risks for the future stability of the financial system as well as for the broader economy. He blamed the international central banks of overshooting the mark, when trying to acquire skills that were not part of their original fields of activity. Additionally, a lax monetary policy stirred up the existing problems instead of tackling them.

Volcker added that he was not sufficiently content with the new financial markets bill, since the legislation, known as Dodd-Frank, and the included Volcker rule, was strongly diluted by individual lobbies. Nowadays it was not the financial regulators, who provided the banks and lenders with rules that generally had to be observed. In fact, a major part of the market participants resented the financial authorities, since they find the regulations disruptive and bad for business. He lambasted a lack of respect that led to a refusal to obey the federal rules and to fully execute them.

Volcker described the American mortgage market as "completely broken". It would take a long time to get the problems of the housing market under control and to reinstall an economic equilibrium. This situation would weigh on the economic development for a long time, since it causes a big problem for the American consumer and has already led to huge wealth destruction.

This material is prepared for general circulation and may not have regard to the particular circumstances or needs of any specific person who reads it. The information contained in this report has been compiled from sources believed to be reliable, but no representations or warranty, express or implied, is made by GoldMoney, its affiliates, representatives or any other person as to its accuracy, completeness or correctness. All opinions and estimates contained in this report reflect the writer's judgement as of the date of this report, are subject to change without notice and are provided in good faith but without legal responsibility. To the full extent permitted by law neither GoldMoney nor any of its affiliates, representatives, nor any other person, accepts any liability whatsoever for any direct, indirect or consequential loss arising from any use of this report or the information contained herein. This report may not be reproduced, distributed or published without the prior consent of GoldMoney.

Ireland reveals full horror of banking crisis

A look at principles behind U.S. and European financial systems

Ireland revealed the full horror of its financial crisis on Thursday, saying massive debts run up by Anglo Irish Bank had threatened to sink the country.

The Central Bank warned that the state rescue of Anglo Irish could cost as much as 34.3 billion euros (46.6 billion US dollars) and will help push the public deficit to a record 32 percent of gross domestic product this year.

That would be the largest deficit for a eurozone member since the European single currency was created in 1999 and comes amid mounting investor concern about soaring levels of eurozone state debt.

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Finance Minister Brian Lenihan laid bare the full extent of state bailouts for the troubled banking sector -- the Anglo rescue bill alone equals the annual taxation revenues -- and insisted Ireland was coming to terms with the "nightmare."

"Anglo Irish developed to a size where its balance sheet, its annual turnover, was half the national wealth and it became in itself a systemic threat to the financial viability of the state," Lenihan said.

"That particular nightmare the government has had to live with, the Irish people have had to live with, and I've had to live with since September 2008. We're now bringing closure to that."

The news emerged the day after protesters drove a cement mixer into the gates of the Irish parliament as part of Europe-wide demonstrations over austerity cuts that are aimed at getting the public finances back under control.

Anglo Irish was one of the banks that fuelled Ireland's property boom but the banking sector was ravaged by the global financial crisis and a deep recession.

Leading banks became grossly over-extended in lending to the property market, especially to developers of commercial buildings.

Lenihan blasted the bankers. "The Irish people are entitled to be angry with the bankers that lent recklessly over a considerable period of time in the earlier part of this decade."

He said it was "clear" some banks went to great lengths to conceal losses.

Lenihan said the collapse of Anglo Irish would have pushed Ireland into insolvency, in remarks redolent of the recent crises in Greece and non-eurozone country Iceland, both of which needed outside help.

He added that he will deliver a four-year budget plan in November to show how the government will fix the public purse.

European Union competition chief Joaquin Almunia welcomed the "clarity" regarding the state aid provided to the Irish banks.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg who heads the eurogroup of finance ministers, said he believed Ireland can resolve the crisis without help from the European Union.

The Central Bank said the Anglo Irish bailout has cost about 29.3 billion euros and it could need an extra 5.0 billion euros under a worst-case scenario.

Another bank in difficulty, Allied Irish Banks, would need to raise an extra 3.0 billion euros by year-end. That move will mean that AIB will become majority state-owned.

A further 2.7 billion euros of state cash will be ploughed into the nationalised Irish Nationwide Building Society.

The government also announced that there will be no bond auctions for the rest of the year and that it was fully funded until June 2011.

Ireland is struggling to maintain investor confidence in its ability to control its huge public debt and deficit, amid similar fears over Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain.

Lenihan said it was an "urgent" priority to strengthen the banks and boost investor confidence in the former Celtic Tiger nation, with Ireland "fully committed" to reducing its deficit below 3.0 percent of GDP by 2014.

European governments and the International Monetary Fund have set up a trillion-dollar war chest to help any eurozone state in fiscal trouble following the financial rescue of Greece in May.

Ireland was the first eurozone member nation to plunge into recession in 2008. It returned to growth in the first quarter but then shrank by a huge 1.2 percent in the second quarter, stoking fears it could slip back into recession.

© 2010 AFP
This story is sourced direct from an overseas news agency as an additional service to readers. Spelling follows North American usage, along with foreign currency and measurement units.