30 Stupid Things The Government Is Spending Money On

                                                              endoftheamericandream.com

If you want to get paid for doing something stupid, just turn to the U.S. government.  The U.S. government is paying researchers to play video games, it is paying researchers to study the effects of cocaine on Japanese quail and it has spent millions of dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly.  The amount of money that the government wastes is absolutely horrifying.  Do you remember all of that political wrangling over the debt ceiling deal last year?  Do you remember how our politicians told us that there were cutting spending as much as they possibly could?  Well, it was all a giant lie.  As you will see below, the U.S. government is spending money on some of the most stupid things imaginable.  What makes all of this even worse is that we are going into enormous amounts of debt in order to pay for all of this.  We are borrowing billions of dollars a day in order to pay for stupid stuff that no government on earth should ever be paying for.  Trust me, you are going to find it hard to believe some of the stuff in this list.  It is almost inconceivable what our politicians are doing with our tax dollars.

The following are 30 incredibly stupid things that the federal government is spending money on....
#1 The U.S. government is spending $750,000 on a new soccer field for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.
#2 The Obama administration plans to spend between 16 and 20 million dollars helping students from Indonesia get master's degrees.
#3 If you can believe it, the U.S. government has spent $175,587 "to determine if cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior".
#4 The U.S. government spent $200,000 on "a tattoo removal program" in Mission Hills, California.
#5 The federal government has shelled out $3 million to researchers at the University of California at Irvine to fund their research on video games such as World of Warcraft.  Wouldn't we all love to have a "research job" like that?
#6 The Department of Health and Human Services plans to spend $500 million on a program that will, among other things, seek to solve the problem of 5-year-old children that "can't sit still" in a kindergarten classroom.
#7 Fannie Mae is about to ask the federal government for another $4.6 billion bailout, and it will almost certainly get it.
#8 The federal government once spent 30 million dollars on a program that was designed to help Pakistani farmers produce more mangos.
#9 The U.S. Department of Agriculture once gave researchers at the University of New Hampshire $700,000 to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows.
#10 According to USA Today, 13 different government agencies "fund 209 different science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education programs — and 173 of those programs overlap with at least one other program."
#11 A total of $615,000 was given to the University of California at Santa Cruz to digitize photos, T-shirts and concert tickets belonging to the Grateful Dead.
#12 China lends us more money than any other foreign nation, but that didn't stop our government from spending 17.8 million dollars on social and environmental programs for China.
#13 The U.S. government once spent 2.6 million dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly.
#14 One professor at Stanford University was given $239,100 to study how Americans use the Internet to find love.
#15 The U.S. Postal Service spent $13,500 on a single dinner at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse.
#16 The National Science Foundation once spent $216,000 to study whether or not politicians "gain or lose support by taking ambiguous positions".
#17 A total of $1.8 million was spent on a "museum of neon signs" in Las Vegas, Nevada.
#18 The federal government spends 25 billion dollars a year maintaining federal buildings that are either unused or totally vacant.
#19 U.S. farmers are given a total of $2 billion each year for not farming their land.
#20 The U.S. government handed one Tennessee library $5,000 for the purpose of hosting a series of video game parties.
#21 A few years ago the government spent $123,050 on a Mother's Day Shrine in Grafton, West Virginia.  It turns out that Grafton only has a population of a little more than 5,000 people.
#22 One professor at Dartmouth University was given $137,530 to create a "recession-themed" video game entitled "Layoff".
#23 According to the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. military spent "$998,798 shipping two 19-cent washers from South Carolina to Texas and $293,451 sending an 89-cent washer from South Carolina to Florida".
#24 The U.S. Department of Agriculture once shelled out $30,000 to a group of farmers to develop a tourist-friendly database of farms that host guests for overnight "haycations".
#25 The National Institutes of Health paid researchers $400,000 to find out why gay men in Argentina engage in risky sexual behavior when they are drunk.
#26 The National Institutes of Health also once spent $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.
#27 The National Institutes of Health loves to spend our tax money on really bizarre things.  The NIH once spent $800,000 in "stimulus funds" to study the impact of a "genital-washing program" on men in South Africa.
#28 According to the Washington Post, 1,271 different government organizations work on government programs related to counterterrorism and homeland security.
#29 The U.S. government spent $100,000 on a "Celebrity Chef Fruit Promotion Road Show in Indonesia".
#30 The feds once gave Alaska Airlines $500,000 "to paint a Chinook salmon" on the side of a Boeing 737.
How in the world can our government be so foolish?
Anyone that claims that there is not a lot of stuff that can be cut out of the federal budget is lying to you.
All of this crazy spending is going to get us into a massive amount of trouble eventually.  Already, on a per capita basis the U.S. national debt is worse than the national debts of Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Spain.
We have accumulated the biggest debt in the history of the world and we are adding to it at a rate of about 150 million dollars an hour.
Our politicians strut around as if they are the smartest and wisest leaders in the history of the world, but the truth is that someday people will look back in horror at the decline of our once great society.
The federal government needs to stop spending so much money on stupid things and needs to stop pushing our national debt to nightmarish new levels.
Unfortunately, the corruption in Washington D.C. is so deep and so pervasive that it is going to be almost impossible to turn it around.

America is BANKRUPT!

http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=18064

Military Industrial Complex - The Rise of the War Economy

http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=18065

Now they want to put Union Picketers in Prison...

Mistreated workers are screwed in Georgia, where the Peach State has opened a new front in the war on working people. This week – legislation was passed by a state Senate Committee that would criminalize union picketing outside places of business. The new law would definite union picketing as, “interfering with the resident's right to quiet enjoyment," and hits union picketers with jail time. The law also applies ONLY to unions and labor organizations. One of the main opponents of the legislation is Fulton County Sheriff Ted Jackson who said the law would, “overburden an already stressed prison system,” and that the role of the police shouldn’t be to, “police free speech.” The war against workers is getting truly nasty – first they cut the right to bargain, then they cut wages and pensions, and now they want to put union picketers in prison. Welcome to the Plutocracy.

Share Traders More Reckless Than Psychopaths, Study Shows

Getty Images

UBS trader Kweku Adoboli, shown leaving a London court on Sept. 22, allegedly made unauthorized trades that cost the Swiss investment bank billions.

What makes individual stockbrokers blow billions in financial markets with criminal trading schemes? According to a new study conducted at a Swiss university, it may be because share traders behave more recklessly and are more manipulative than psychopaths.

Two weeks ago, yet another case of rogue trading shocked the financial world when UBS trader Kweku Adoboli was arrested for allegedly squandering some $2.3 billion with a risky and unauthorized investment scheme. The 31-year-old, who had been based in London for the Swiss bank, remains in jail. The bank's chief executive Oswald Grübel, meanwhile, has resigned over the scandal -- the third major embarrassment to rattle the institution in just a few years.

The situation mirrors a similar scandal at French bank Société Générale, where another young "rogue trader," Jérôme Kerviel, gambled away billions in 2007 and 2008. But why do these situations keep arising in the financial world? According to a new study at the University of St. Gallen seen by SPIEGEL, one contributing factor may be that stockbrokers' behavior is more reckless and manipulative than that of psychopaths. Researchers at the Swiss research university measured the readiness to cooperate and the egotism of 28 professional traders who took part in computer simulations and intelligence tests. The results, compared with the behavior of psychopaths, exceeded the expectations of the study's co-authors, forensic expert Pascal Scherrer, and Thomas Noll, a lead administrator at the Pöschwies prison north of Zürich.
Appetite for Destruction
"Naturally one can't characterize the traders as deranged," Noll told SPIEGEL. "But for example, they behaved more egotistically and were more willing to take risks than a group of psychopaths who took the same test."

Particularly shocking for Noll was the fact that the bankers weren't aiming for higher winnings than their comparison group. Instead they were more interested in achieving a competitive advantage. Instead of taking a sober and businesslike approach to reaching the highest profit, "it was most important to the traders to get more than their opponents," Noll explained. "And they spent a lot of energy trying to damage their opponents." Using a metaphor to describe the behavior, Noll said the stockbrokers behaved as though their neighbor had the same car, "and they took after it with a baseball bat so they could look better themselves."
The researchers were unable to explain this penchant for destruction, they said.

--SPIEGEL Staff

Global oil prices may hit $200 if Israel attacks Iran: Energy expert

 

An Indian energy expert says global oil prices could hit USD 200 per barrel in case of a possible Israeli attack on Iran.

 

An Indian energy expert says global oil prices could hit USD 200 per barrel in case of a possible Israeli attack on Iran over the latter country’s nuclear energy program.

In an interview with the NDTV Profit network, Amrita Sen, a commodity strategist at Barclays Capital, noted that the price hike would have a powerful negative impact on Europe’s ailing economies which are already suffering from a euro weak against the dollar.

The expert added that there are other factors at work which may further worsen the negative effects of such an oil shock.

She stated that some smaller oil-producing countries like Yemen, Sudan and Nigeria, have already lost a total of a million barrels per day of their output while the energy demand in big Asian economies like India and China is rapidly soaring.

As a result of a combination of these factors, Sen said, “oil inventories have been drawing down despite the output being above 10 million barrels per day.”

Asked whether Saudi Arabia can compensate for the absence of Iran's oil from global markets, the expert stated that Riyadh’s surplus capacity was not high enough to serve such a purpose.

“The replacement [for Iran oil] has to come from Saudi Arabia and there is the problem. We reckon overall global spare capacity is around 1.6 to 1.7 million barrels per day (mbpd), but that’s clearly not enough to offset 2.3 mbpd exports that Iran gives to the world,” Sen said.

She noted that in addition to the situation in Iran, the crises in two other major oil producers, namely Iraq and Nigeria, have reduced the global surplus oil production capacity to below one million barrels a day.

“It is not just Iran; there is Iraq, there is Nigeria. Anytime you go down to spare capacity, which is less than one mbpd, automatically the prices will rise. You should have at least a five-percent buffer. Inventories have been low as well. So there is not enough buffer in the oil market at present,” she added.

After the European Union imposed new embargoes on oil imports from Iran, Tehran responded by announcing on February 15 that it was cutting oil exports to six EU countries.

Following the announcement, global oil prices reached their highest levels in nine months with Brent crude for delivery in April hitting USD 124.31 per barrel.

Meanwhile, the world's largest oil trader, Vitol, has also warned that crude prices could spike to above USD 150 per barrel if tensions with Iran escalate further.

SS/HJL/IS

Stockman: If We Want to Bring Oil Prices Down, We Should Stop Beating the War Drums

Stockman: War Drums Are Driving Up Oil Prices and Hurting the Economy

While Nouriel Roubini says that attacking Iran would lead to global recession (and see this), Ronald Reagan’s budget director – David Stockman – points out that even beating the drums of war is driving up oil prices and hurting our economy:

I think you can address this decisively by stop beating the war drums right now. And Obama could do that, and he could say the neocons are history.
The policy that they’re talking about right now is the same thing we heard in 2001, 2002, and 2003. And he needs to clearly say that we’re not going to attack Iran. We’re not going to permit Israel to attack Iran. They are not part of the axis of evil. They’re part of the axis of medieval.
In other words, these are backward people that aren’t going to threaten the western world, and we need to get into a serious process of negotiation. If we do that, the price of oil will drop $30 within a few months, and all the speculators who are on the wrong side of the ship would learn a good lesson.
But as long as the war drums continue to beat, as they are now, we’re going to see this kind of speculative fraud. It’s not real. It’s not supply and demand world today.

This is not Stockman’s first anti-war statement. Last year, Stockman – who has proved himself to be a true conservative – said:

We are now at a historical inflection point at which the time has arrived for a classic post-war demobilization of the entire military establishment,” David Stockman said in an exclusive interview.
“The Cold War is long over,” he continued. “The wars of occupation are almost over and were complete failures — Afghanistan and Iraq. The American empire is done. There are no real seriously armed enemies left in the world that can possibly justify an $800 billion national defense and security establishment, including Homeland Security.”
Short of that, he suggested, the United States has “reached the point of no return” with its artificial creation of wealth, and will eventually face a sharp economic decline.
***
This is a profound disappointment that there’s not even a debate — a serious debate about dramatic change in our imperialist foreign policy and war-making establishment in this administration — allegedly the most left-wing administration that we’ve had in modern time.”
“I don’t have much hope that what needs to be done will be done until it’s finally forced on us by a world bond market crisis, which will happen sooner or later,” Stockman added.
***
That’s why we’re just at the beginning of solving this massive financial collapse we had in 2008 and not in the process of healthy recovery as some of the pals in the White House or on Capitol Hill or on Wall Street would have you believe.”

The Dollar is Seeking its True Value of ZERO

http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=18059&title=the-dollar-is-seeking-its-true-value-of-zero

Spain's unemployment rate hits 22.9%

The number of people claiming unemployment benefit in Spain rose by 112,269 in January, taking the overall figure to 4.7 million.

Spain's unemployment rate stands at 22.9%, the highest in the 17-nation eurozone.

The Spanish economy posted negative growth in the fourth quarter of last year and is expected to enter recession this quarter.

The new right-leaning Popular Party government has introduced a series of reforms in a desperate attempt to shake up the economy but it acknowledges that unemployment is likely to continue rising throughout this year.

The employment ministry said today that the total number of people claiming benefits was up by more than 400,000 from February last year.

Next Leg Of The Ponzi Revealed - Foreign Central Banks To Begin Buying US Stocks Outright Starting Today

Source: Zero Hedge

We were speechless when we read this from Bloomberg.

The Bank of Israel will begin today a pilot program to invest a portion of its foreign currency reserves in U.S. equities.
The investment, which in the initial phase will amount to 2 percent of the $77 billion reserves, or about $1.5 billion, will be made through UBS AG and BlackRock Inc. (BLK), Bank of Israel spokesman Yossi Saadon said in a telephone interview today. At a later stage, the investment is expected to increase to 10 percent of the reserves.
A small number of central banks have started investing part of their reserves in equities. About 9 percent of the foreign- exchange reserves of Switzerland’s central bank were invested in shares at the end of the third quarter, the Swiss bank said on its website.
The investment will be made in equity index trackers and will include between 1,500 to 2,000 shares, among them stocks like Apple Inc. (AAPL), Saadon said.

More from Globes:

The Bank of Israel today began investing a small part of its $77 billion in foreign currency reserves in US stocks. The central bank's latest Markets Division report states that the new Bank of Israel Law (5770-2010) allows the Bank of Israel to make equity investments, and that it began to do so today.
The Bank of Israel will invest $1-1.5 billion in US stocks, 2% of its portfolio. The report adds that the Bank of Israel has been investing in public bodies in developed countries since 2010.
The Bank of Israel said that the investments in US stocks would be made through UBS AG (NYSE; SWX: UBS) and BlackRock Inc. (NYSE: BLK) The Bank of Israel's Markets Division, which specializes in bond investments, will not be handling the equity investments. It added that the traders will have very limited discretion, and that they may only quote leading indices, in order to reduce the risk.
"We have almost no exposure to countries with big problems. We constantly examine where we invest the foreign currency reserves, and I can promise you that you can relax," Governor of the Bank of Israel Prof. Stanley Fischer said at a closed conference in mid-January.
"The Bank of Israel does not disclose the currency composition of its portfolio, especially not the composition of its equity portfolio," says the Bank of Israel. At the January conference, Fischer said, "Imagine if we were to begin publishing where you invest, so when you stop buying the bonds of a particular country, and this is published, we'll get complaints. That is why we do not publish." He added, "We have an external committee that conducts the examinations. You can assume that we're aware to the fact that there are problems in certain countries."

In other words, while the Fed's charter forbids it from buying US equities outright, it certainly can promise that it will bail out such bosom friends as the Bank of Israel, the Swiss National Bank, and soon everyone else, if and when their investment in Apple should sour.
Luckily, this means that the exponential phase in risk is approaching as everyone will now scramble to frontrun central bank purchases no longer in bonds, but in stocks outright, leading to epic surges in everything risk related, then collapse and force the Fed to print tens of trillions to bail everyone out all over again, rinse repeat, until this chart becomes asymptotic. We say luckily, because it means that the long overdue systemic reset is finally approaching.

Google privacy changes streamline personal info

Nigel Farage: Mass anger could trigger Euro's Greek Spring