Alfred Woody's Kewl Blog [ 椼森 ]: May 3, 2011

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

NYT's Louise Story On How Tim Geithner Convinced NY AG Andrew Cuomo To Back Off Wall Street Prosecutions

Video - Louise Story on PBS Need to Know - April 29, 2011

In Financial Crisis, No Prosecutions of Top Figures - NYT

By Louise Story and Gretchen Morgenson

It is a question asked repeatedly across America: why, in the aftermath of a financial mess that generated hundreds of billions in losses, have no high-profile participants in the disaster been prosecuted?

Answering such a question — the equivalent of determining why a dog did not bark — is anything but simple. But a private meeting in mid-October 2008 between Timothy F. Geithner, then-president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Andrew M. Cuomo, New York’s attorney general at the time, illustrates the complexities of pursuing legal cases in a time of panic.

At the Fed, which oversees the nation’s largest banks, Mr. Geithner worked with the Treasury Department on a large bailout fund for the banks and led efforts to shore up the American International Group, the giant insurer. His focus: stabilizing world financial markets.

Mr. Cuomo, as a Wall Street enforcer, had been questioning banks and rating agencies aggressively for more than a year about their roles in the growing debacle, and also looking into bonuses at A.I.G.

Friendly since their days in the Clinton administration, the two met in Mr. Cuomo’s office in Lower Manhattan, steps from Wall Street and the New York Fed. According to three people briefed at the time about the meeting, Mr. Geithner expressed concern about the fragility of the financial system.

His worry, according to these people, sprang from a desire to calm markets, a goal that could be complicated by a hard-charging attorney general.

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Video - Louise Story with CBS - April 25, 2010

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Here's one of Geithner's crimes...

Video - Max Keiser & Stacy Herbert

At issue is Tim Geithner's criminal behavior in orchestrating the AIG bailout to favor Goldman Sachs through counterparty payouts at par, and then the massive cover-up.

Rand Paul: Is There A Connection Between The Killing Of Bin Laden & Rais...

The Unfortunate Reality of Bin Laden’s Death

Wiki Commons -- US psyops leaflet

S. Paul Forrest
Activist Post

Many in America are cheering the reported death of Osama Bin Laden, as it has finally occurred after years of military action, trillions of American dollars and the deaths of thousands of our men and women serving in the military. Many believe it is justification for the expenditure and are vehemently waving their flags and cheering our President and our military in the fervor of renewed Patriotism. Prior to the news of his death however, some these same people were starting to demand our military budget be stripped and those monies dedicated to a seemingly losing battle be spent at home instead.  

They have told us Bin Laden was killed after months of strategy to storm the largest compound in an affluent town of Pakistan. They told us that when he was killed he was buried at sea to respect Islamic tradition. They told us all this at a time when We the People were ready to rebel against our government that was putting all of our economic interests into the War Chest while defunding domestic programs.  

At a time when we had had enough, and even some insiders in Washington were calling for the reduction of military expenditures to invest that money in our country, they kill Bin Laden. At a time when the Patriot Act and National Security’s intrusion into our lives was being considered as too much of an assault on our collective freedom; they kill Bin Laden. At a time when people truly began to question the wisdom of our government’s foreign policy around the world and our role as the Global Police Force; they kill Bin Laden.

On every news station and in every publication, the people are thanking our military for their efforts. They are telling us stories of 9/11 bravery and sacrifice and thanking our Government. The news agencies in force are heralding this action as a great day for Democracy and a day that was too long in the making. They say they now see the wisdom of the expenditures, the reasons for the intrusions of the Patriot Act and the deaths of our sons and daughters serving in the military. Now, with this wonderful news of the death of the 9/11 mastermind, we have finally fulfilled the promises of President’s Bush and Obama to avenge 9/11. Now, we have justification of all our efforts.   

These same news sources are telling us there will most assuredly be an effort to avenge the assassination of Bin Laden so we must be as vigilant as ever in our National defense. More efforts to rout out the remainder of Al Qaeda will be needed and will most assuredly be necessary to combat this blowback at home. As a result, the Patriot Act will be renewed without resistance so we can all sleep soundly at night and safe from it.   

Even if we assume that the news of Bin Laden's assassination is real, it is now serving as justification for trillions of our dollars already spent on war, and justification for the continuation of the policies of the Patriot Act and its intrusion into our private lives. With the death of Bin Laden, we can all look forward to more of our sons and daughters dying, our privacy further intruded upon, deeper national debt and more of our freedoms surrendered to those who would have us all in chains.   The very saddest part of all this is how some of the same people who have been standing in condemnation of our Government's military spending, while abandoning our poor and downtrodden, now salute them for their efforts; for the trillions of dollars spent on bombs instead of books for our children and homes for our poor. Now, they thank our government for being aware and resilient in their quest to destroy Bin Laden and, by proxy, Al Qaeda. Now, they understand the reason for the trillions of dollars gone to the War effort.  

The lies leading up to this moment are plentiful. The fact that (even in the official story) Bin Laden might have attacked us after our government bombed the hell out of Baghdad, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians seems to have escaped the storyline in the congratulatory parade of misguided patriotism post-9/11 and that which we are seeing today on the news.

I commend and salute those men and women who put their lives on the line every day across this world, but it is a sacrifice only to propel the corrupt policies of our current government.

America’s reckless money-printing could put the world back into crisis

Traders took these words to mean that the Federal Reserve won’t hike rates until the first few months of 2012 at the earliest.

Bernanke also pledged to do whatever is required to keep America’s economic recovery on track – confirming that the second programme of “quantitative easing”, or QE2, would be completed. These two related announcements – the “reprieve” and the “sugar rush” – sent Wall Street into renewed spasms of synthetic joy.

In the real world, US growth is slowing sharply. Annualised GDP rose just 1.8pc during the first three months of 2011, down from 3.1pc the quarter before. America remains mired in sovereign, commercial and household debt.

Yet as the Fed chairman spoke, US stocks hit their highest level since before the sub-prime crisis. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, incredibly, closed at a 10-year peak.

So the Fed will keep on “printing” virtual money – at least for now. By the end of June, it will have purchased $600bn (£363bn) of longer-term Treasuries, with the US government effectively buying its own debt from funds created ex nihilo. That’s on top of the original $1,750bn (£1,048bn) QE scheme, launched in late 2008.

America’s base money supply – the bedrock of the world’s reserve currency – has doubled in little more than two years. Despite consternation among many US voters, and dismay – rapidly turning to anger – across the world, most of America’s political elite refuse even to debate QE. Such is the state of democracy in the “land of the free and the home of the brave”. And America is not alone.

Bernanke’s utterances caused gold to jump another 2pc. Silver – known as “poor man’s gold”, another “inflation hedge” – spiked 6.5pc. But the real story was the plunging dollar. Against a basket of five major global currencies, the US currency fell sharply and is now at its weakest since July 2008. The Fed’s “real broad dollar index”, a 26-currency composite and adjusted for inflation, is testing levels not seen since 1979.

Osama bin Bogeyman? 'CIA getting rid of old asset'

U.S. Treasury: China Has Decreased Its Holdings of U.S. Debt

(CNSNews.com) – Mainland China has decreased its holdings of U.S. Treasury securities since last October, according to a report updated today by the U.S. Treasury Department.

Since September 2008, when they eclipsed Japan, entities in mainland China have been the largest foreign owners of U.S. government debt. But, as indicated by the Treasury Department chart linked here, Chinese ownership of U.S. Treasury securities peaked in October 2010 and has declined in each of the four most recent months reported by the Treasury Department.

At the end of October 2010, China owned 1.1753 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities. That dropped to $1.1641 trillion by the end of November, $1.1601 trillion by the end of December, $1.1547 trillion by the end of January, and $1.1541 trillion by the end of February 2011.

February is the latest month for which the Treasury has estimated foreign holdings of U.S. debt.

Back in February 2001, according to historical data reported by the Treasury, the mainland Chinese owned only $63.7 billion in U.S. debt. In the ensuing decade, the Chinese massively increased their holdings of U.S. Treasury securities, and especially in the past five years. In February 2006, China owned $318.4 billion in U.S. debt and Japan owned $656.4 billion.

In September 2008, the Chinese moved ahead of the Japanese in their U.S. debt holdings. At the end of that month, the mainland Chinese owned $618.2 billion in U.S. government debt and the Japanese owned $617.5 billion.

Sands of Sorrow (1950)

http://wideeyecinema.com/?p=832

On this video, Dorothy Thompson speaks on the refugee problem. Refugees live in tents in the Gaza Strip, are given blankets and food by Egyptian soldiers, and receive flour from UNICEF. A Lebanese priest conducts services. Refugees work as plumbers, carpenters, tailors, and shoemakers in the city of Jerusalem. Doctors vaccinate refugees against disease. Shows the squalid living conditions in refugee camps, starving children, and emphasizes the hopeless condition of the refugees.