Alfred Woody Wang's Kewl Blog [ 椼仁 ]

Fox on Greece

2012-01-29T14:27:00.000+08:00

05/07/10 Stockholm, Sweden – Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) was on Fox News yesterday, discussing Greece and describing how the financial crisis has become a currency crisis… which is much worse. He sees an attack on the dollar in terms of gold, and has no doubt that the currency crisis is a worldwide problem.

Referring to whether or not Greece-like riots could take place in the US he says:

“Absolutely, there’s going to be anger. There’s going to be riots in the streets as well. But this is all a consequence of the fact of why and how government could spend like this. It’s because they don’t have sound money.

“When we run up deficits, we tax, but never enough. We can’t tax, it would ruin the economy. Then we borrow, and we get away with that for a long time. But, we rely on printing presses from the Federal Reserve to create money and that’s where the problem is [...] we can’t have fake money, this is counterfeit.”

India abandons US dollar to purchase Iranian oil

2012-01-29T14:25:00.002+08:00

http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/money-madness/india-abandons-us-dollar-to-purchase-iranian-oil-.html

UK Treasury to take charge in next bank crisis

2012-01-29T14:24:00.002+08:00

(Reuters) - Britain's finance ministry will have the power from next year to take charge in any future banking crisis, including being able to tell the Bank of England (BoE) to pump money into the financial system.
Finance minister George Osborne published a draft law on Friday reforming the way Britain's financial system is regulated and setting out who has ultimate authority in a crisis.
The legislation is an attempt to draw a line under the regulatory failings that forced taxpayers to stump up hundreds of billions of pounds to shore up the banking sector in 2008.
It will scrap the Financial Services Authority from 2013 and hand power to supervise banks and insurers to the central bank.
"When taxpayers' money is at risk in a crisis this legislation gives the Chancellor (of the Exchequer) the power to direct the Bank of England to act," Osborne said in a speech to world political and financial leaders in Davos, Switzerland.
He said the Chancellor would direct specific funding help for individual entities, the system for winding up ailing banks as well as intervention "to preserve stability as long as the government is willing to take responsibility for the action and take the resulting risk on its balance sheet."
"There will be no ambiguity about who is in charge," Osborne said.
A failure of the 15-year-old "tripartite" system of financial regulation at the time of the 2008 financial crisis was a lack of clear lines of responsibility between the BoE, the FSA and the Treasury, which shared the role.
The tripartite committee did not meet for almost a decade and allowed the now majority state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland to take over Dutch bank ABN Amro when credit markets had already frozen up, Osborne said.
The finance ministry will have the power to direct the BoE only "if the direction is necessary to resolve or reduce a serious threat to the stability of the financial system of the United Kingdom," according to the Financial Services Bill.
Alistair Darling, finance minister during the 2008 crisis, said in his memoirs last year he had been frustrated at not being able to order the BoE to do what he felt was right.
"The Bank was independent and the Governor knew it. We did not agree on what to do," Darling wrote.
The British Bankers' Association, which represents lenders like Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, and RBS, said it "believes it is vital to bring the Chancellor into crisis management decisions at an early stage - and sooner than the current proposals suggest."
The FSA had no comment on the bill.
ONE-TERM GOVERNOR
The bill also said a future BoE governor should serve only a single eight-year term rather than the current renewable five-year term. Mervyn King's term is due to expire in mid-2013.
The bill confirmed that the Financial Services Authority would be scrapped next year and replaced by two separate bodies to end the pre-crisis regulatory "tick box" culture.
One body, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), will police markets and have power to regulate consumer credit, currently handled by the Office of Fair Trading.
The bill stops short of giving the FCA competition powers, which it had sought, but strengthens its remit to ensure there is enough competition in markets.
The FCA will have powers to be more intrusive in its supervisory approach and be able to ban harmful financial products, a reform which follows two decades of mis-selling scandals that cost the industry 15 billion pounds in compensation.
A second body, the Prudential Regulatory Authority, will be a subsidiary of the BoE and will concentrate on day-to-day supervision of banks, making the BoE one of the world's most powerful central banks, and raising concerns about its accountability.
The Bank's Governor also chairs the Financial Policy Committee (FPC) established a year ago on an interim basis, to identify risks to financial stability in the UK and direct regulators to take action.
To counter worries about a lack of accountability, the Bank of England's supervisory body, the Court of the BoE, proposed setting up an oversight committee for financial stability, made up of its non-executive members, to scrutinize the BoE's policymaking committees.
The Court suggested that the oversight committee should commission reviews of the process and implementation of policymaking from external authorities like the International Monetary Fund.
In addition, the legislation will oblige the oversight committee to commission internal reviews of financial stability policymaking, not only from the FPC but from other parts of the Bank with responsibilities relevant to financial stability.
(Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford and David Cowell)

California Jews Shake Down Mel Gibson For Reparations

2012-01-29T13:13:00.002+08:00

by Keith Johnson
Does it ever end? Get a load of this…
Congregation Beth Shalom in Corona, California has sent Mel Gibson a letter in hopes of guilting him into forking over some cash to bail them out of a bad investment they made on their local synagogue. Apparently, the group took out a giant loan that they can’t afford to pay back and are now facing foreclosure.
In a move reminiscent of something out of post-war Germany, the Southern California synagogue is looking to Gibson as though he should pay some kind of “Holocaust” style reparations for the so-called anti-Semitic tirade he made back in 2006.
I guess it’s not enough that Mel has already spent millions of dollars contributing to Jewish charities, including $5 million to the Jewish Cedars Sinai Hospital. Not to mention getting down on his knees and apologizing to the Jewish community on numerous occassions—only to have his career railroaded anyway.
Entertainment website TMZ apparently got their hands on the letter. Here’s what it says:
“Our proposal to you, Mr. Gibson, is since you have been cited as an Anti-Semitic, and have denied those allegations, what better way to prove to all your fans and the nay Sayers — than to endorse and help raise funds for our cause — SOS, Save Our Synagogue…“Mr. Gibson, we offer you to be a Mensch and make a sizable contribution to our cause.”
That’s what you call CHUTZPAH, folks!

Confessions of a Communist Taxi Driver in Laos: A Lesson in Free Markets

2012-01-29T13:12:00.002+08:00

Mekong River in Vientiane Loas
Bohemian Travelers image

Activist Post

While on our family adventure around the world, we had an interesting encounter with a taxi driver in the capital of Laos, Vientiane. This jovial local with excellent English aspired to move to America, and was ultra inquisitive of our first-hand experience as Americans.

First, our initial observations about Laos are important to help frame this story. After crossing into Laos from Thailand we noticed a distinct difference between the two countries. The rawness of Laos was evident. Not in a way that reeked of desperation, though, but in a way that is unspoiled by multinational corporations (you can always seem to get a Coca-Cola though).

Laos seemed every bit as peaceful and beautiful as Thailand, but Thailand was clearly more civilized, if that’s what you call having a 7-11 store on every other block. It’s almost the identical contrast experienced when crossing into Nicaragua from the more developed and “open” economy in Costa Rica.

Besides the similarity in the lush tropical landscape shared by Thailand and Costa Rica, they also share longer tradition of trading with the West than does Laos and Nicaragua. In short, they’d be considered “more developed.”

The other thing we noticed in Laos was the communist flag flying everywhere, including on the Best Western Hotel -- the lone Western hotel we saw in Vientiane. We could read all about the history of Laos to learn about what these labels like “communism” are supposed to mean, but we thought asking people in the trenches would be more enlightening.

So, in the taxi ride to visit the Buddha statue park, our driver was thrilled to practice his English and learn about America. His perception was that America was so free, and that everyone has an opportunity to make lots of money. He longed to move there to experience that which he’d likely learned on TV.

We then began to ask him about the system in Laos. “Can you vote for the leaders here?” He laughed heartily before replying “No.”

“How does healthcare and school work?” we asked. “The government provides it, and it’s good enough,” he answered vaguely. However, everyone told us that Thailand’s healthcare is far better -- much like Costa Rica’s is far superior to Nicaragua’s.

“We don’t notice much desperate poverty here,” we led with. He said, “Most have what they need and the homeless children are taken in by the monks.” To which he admitted he’d been a monk…for a week. “It’s really hard. They can only eat in the morning,” he complained. And it’s food that is donated as offerings when the monks parade the streets at dusk.

We asked him what he’d do if he was able to get America. “I don’t know. Maybe open a shop or a food stand.” And this is where the conversation got interesting.

We explained that you can’t open a food stand in America without a license, various permits, insurance, and a tax number from the government. He was flabbergasted. “Really! Anyone can open a stand here with none of that.”

He asked us what happened when businesses are caught operating without those things. We told him they’re shut down by the government, and sometimes their equipment is confiscated and they’re arrested.

He couldn’t believe that the U.S. government would be that controlling of small businesses. “People don’t need permission to survive in Laos.”

This became very noticeable as our journey in Laos progressed. There were countless makeshift food stands selling all sorts of cuisine including grilled bats, bugs, and fried baby chicks – the whole chick! We went to restaurants where we literally used the bathroom in the owner’s living room. There were no health department regulations, no business licenses framed on the wall, and never any taxes calculated on our bill.

Deep-fried baby chicks and grilled bats (Click to enlarge)

Choosing which restaurants or food stands are safe while traveling follows the golden rule of the free market; eat at places that are frequented by locals -- because a busy place is a proven place -- or get firsthand recommendations of a good place.

The ability to obtain licenses and permits or to meet mandatory regulations plays no role in food quality. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and spend a day or two on the toilet. But, ultimately, the free market weeds out the overpriced or unsanitary competition.

There were also dozens of makeshift taxi services without licenses, insurance or standardized meters. There are tuk-tuks powered by motorbikes; song thaew, which are pickup trucks with bench seats in the bed, and our personal favorite, the modified rototiller with a wagon.

Makeshift rototiller taxi crosses private toll bridge in Vang Vieng Laos

The rototiller taxi is an example of the how people can use ingenuity to figure out ways to survive in an unregulated marketplace. As cool as it is, though, the lack of conformity or insurance seems very unsafe to the conditioned mind of a Westerner. But just like with the restaurateurs whose livelihood depends on the quality of their vittles, the taxi driver’s livelihood depends entirely on keeping his vehicle clean, serviced, and out of accidents.

By the time we finished our brief taxi ride in Vientiane; we, including our driver, got the sense that the everyday individual in Laos has more freedom and flexibility to provide for themselves than people in the US, and that regulation is governed by the free market. Our driver’s deflated perception of economic freedom in America was evident. It’s an ironic conclusion to come to in a communist country.

Perhaps these regulations exist and the government simply doesn’t have the capacity or the will to enforce them unless a business becomes large enough to care about extracting protection money from. And perhaps the free market can only regulate quality when the vendor’s absolute livelihood is at stake.

Regardless, what we’d call the working class definitely appeared to have more freedom, and there was noticeably less desperation than their nominal poverty would suggest.

India to neglect sanctions on Iranian oil

2012-01-29T13:11:00.000+08:00

China And Japan Currency Swap: Nail In US Dollar’s Coffin – OpEd

2012-01-28T17:14:00.000+08:00

By Horace Campbell
On 25 December 2011, the government of Peoples Republic of China and Japan unveiled plans to promote direct exchange of their currencies. This agreement will allow firms to convert the Chinese and Japanese currencies directly into each other, thus negating the need to buy dollars. This deal between China and Japan followed agreements between China and numerous countries to trade outside the sphere of the US dollar. A few weeks earlier, China also announced a 70 billion Yuan ($11 billion) currency swap agreement with Thailand.
After visiting China, the Prime Minister of Japan Yoshihiko Noda went on to India and signed another currency swap agreement with the government of India. These currency agreements in Asia came in a year when the countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) were seeking to deepen ways to strengthen their firewall to protect their economies from the continued devaluation of the US dollar. In the year of the ‘Eurozone crisis’ when the future of the EURO as a viable currency was fraught with uncertainty, many states were reconsidering holding their reserves in the US dollar.
Moreover, in the face of the neo-liberal orthodoxy of the Bretton Woods institutions (especially the IMF) swap agreements were proliferating in all parts of the globe. The Latin Americans established the Bank of the South and are slowly laying the groundwork for a new currency, the SUCRE. As in Asia, the Bank of the South will be one of the fundamental institutions of the Union of South American Nations that has been launched in Latin America in order to guarantee the independence of the societies of Latin America. Not to be left as the only region holding dollars, the leaders of the oil rich states of the Gulf Cooperation Council have been buying gold while announcing as long ago as 2009 the intention to establish a monetary union with a common currency. In Africa there are plans for the strengthening of the financial basis of the African Union but so far there has not been the same kind coordinated regional plans for financial independence. During the period of the debate on the debt crisis in the USA, the Nigerian central bank governor Lamido Sanusi announced that Nigeria plans to invest 5 to 10 percent of its foreign exchange reserves in the Chinese currency – the Yuan also known as the renminbi (RMB).
These accelerated Swap agreements – (agreements between two or several countries (bilateral vs. multilateral) on exchanging currencies in times of crisis) – came a decade after the countries of ASEAN established the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI). In the aftermath of the Asian economic crash and the currency attack by speculators of the financial services industry, the CMI had been established to promote financial cooperation among the ASEAN countries with regional collaboration on currency issues high on the agenda. Initially when the CMI was launched, the government of China had been lukewarm to the goals of the CMI but over decade, especially after the 2007-2008 Wall Street crash, the preliminary partnership that was called ASEAN plus three (Viz ASEAN countries plus China, Japan and Korea) matured to the point where the ASEAN Swap Agreements have now been expanded to the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) agreement, and a set of rules with structured mechanisms for financial regionalism to work for the development of Asian bond markets. These three pillars of the new Asian economic cooperation – CMIM, Asian Bond Markets and bilateral swap agreements – mark a new stage in the international political order.
This week we will examine the implications of the Chinese/ Japan currency swap in the context of the internal discussions in China about the consolidation of socialism. In 2011, China overtook Japan as the second largest economy in the world, and every expansion increases internal and external pressures on the socialist goals of the People’s Republic of China. More importantly, it is crucial to recollect the competitive devaluations and currency wars of the last depression so that the decline of the dollar can be managed in a way that avoids the recourse to open confrontation of the last depression. It is worth remembering that one of the goals of the fascists in the last depression was to roll back socialism.
In our contribution this week we will examine the implications of the swap agreement between China and Japan and the pressures on other regions to delink from the dollar. The conclusion will argue that this swap is one more nail in the coffin of the dollar as the international reserve currency.

‘CHINA, JAPAN TO BACK DIRECT TRADE OF CURRENCIES’

This was the headline in the financial press as Bloomberg News and other news sheets of the financial world reported the agreement on settling trade between the two countries in Yen and RMB instead of dollar. With US $340 Billion of transactions in 2010 between the two countries, both being each other’s biggest trading partner, the deal is a clear break away from US financial domination. This Bloomberg Report stated,
‘Japan and China will promote direct trading of the Yen and Yuan without using dollars and will encourage the development of a market for companies involved in the exchanges, the Japanese government said. Japan will also apply to buy Chinese bonds next year, allowing the investment of renminbi that leaves China during the transactions, the Japanese government said in a statement after a meeting between Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing yesterday. Encouraging direct Yen- Yuan settlement should reduce currency risks and trading costs, the Japanese and Chinese governments said. China is Japan’s biggest trading partner with 26.5 trillion Yen ($340 billion) in two-way transactions last year, from 9.2 trillion Yen a decade earlier. The pacts between the world’s second- and third-largest economies mirror attempts by fund managers to diversify as the two-year-old European debt crisis keeps global financial markets volatile.
‘Given the huge size of the trade volume between Asia’s two biggest economies, this agreement is much more significant than any other pacts China has signed with other nations.’
Less than two weeks later, in the first week of January 2012, the President of South Korea Lee Myung-bak travelled to China to discuss a ‘bilateral strategic partnership.’ This discussion on bilateral partnership between South Korea and China took place in a context where the Republic of South Korea did not want to be left behind. Ostensibly the visit to China was to discuss the recent passing of Kim Jung IL of North Korea but Chinese media reported that China, Japan and South Korea were hammering out the basic framework for a free trade agreement between the three biggest economies in East Asia.
These agreements will have implications for the dollar as the global reserve currency and there will be increased pressures for the Chinese currency to be internationalized as other societies follow the lead of Japan and seek swap agreements outside of the dollar.

SLOW EROSION OF THE POWER OF THE DOLLAR AND MANAGING THIS NEW MULTIPOLAR CURRENCY ENVIRONMENT

Japan is one of closest allies of the United States. There are thousands of US troops stationed in Japan, but the Japanese, like all peoples of the world, have been losing money as the US dollar was devalued over the past three years. This devaluation has taken the form of what the US authorities called quantitative easing. There has been two such quantitative easings since the 2009 as the United States unloaded more fiat currency on the world. Whatever the name (devaluations or quantitative easing) all countries in the world were thinking of finding ways to escape being hostages to the US dollar and Central Bank governors from Brazil to India and beyond are working to protect their societies from these devaluations. Asian central banks together hold some $3,3 Trillion in reserves, amounting to an impressive 46 percent of the world’s total national reserves. The government of China has vowed to reduce its holding of US dollars and in 2011. The China Daily newspaper reported that,
‘According to data from the US Treasury Department, China’s holdings of US Treasury bonds stood at $1.1326 trillion by the end of November 2011, $1.5 billion down from the previous month. It was the second successive month that the amount had declined, and the lowest reserve level seen since July 2010. China made six monthly cuts of US debt in 2011, the department’s data showed, trimming its holdings by $27.5 billion from the end of 2010. Yet despite the reductions, China remains the top buyer of US Treasury securities.”
What was left unsaid was the plan of the political leadership of China for a deft management of the reductions so that the international political economy is not drastically affected leading to unforeseen circumstances. Over the past decade numerous officials from the National People’s Congress, the Central Bank and the commercial sectors have been stating that China has to reduce its holdings of US bonds and diversify into other currencies. When, over five years ago, Parliamentary vice-chairman Cheng Siwei, called for the diversification of Chinese reserves away from US bonds, the implicit assumption was that China would diversify and buy European bonds. This was before the full hollowness of the European project became manifest to the world.

PRESSURES TO INTERNATIONALIZE CHINESE CURRENCY

The Chinese economy has registered an average of over 10 per cent growth in the past thirty years. This has been the most successful transformation of an economy in the recorded history of political economy, but the pundits do not like to point to the socialist foundations of China and the sacrifices made by the Chinese people to transform their society. Mao Zedong called the currency of China, the Renminbi, and the people’s currency. Renminbi is the official name of the currency introduced by the Communist People’s Republic of China at the time of its foundation in 1949. The other name for the currency is the Yuan. Hence the Chinese currency is known by a number of names (including the Kuai).
As a low wage economy, the hard work of the Chinese producers has made the society a force to be reckoned with and the currency attractive to other countries seeking a refuge from the dollar. The political leaders in China have been careful about the pace and nature of the internationalization of the currency. The leaders have slowly allowed Hong Kong to become an offshore renminbi financial centre by allowing authorized institutions in Hong Kong to offer renminbi services such as deposit taking, currency exchange, remittance and trading in RMB denominated bonds. Since 2009 when the Chinese government opened this slight door to the internationalization of its currency, other financial centres such as Macau and Singapore have been hoping to get into the offshore RMB business.
These regional pressures for the internationalization of the RMB came up against the hard reality that for the full internationalization of the currency, for the RMB to become a global currency, the government of China would have to establish capital markets and ensure the full convertibility of capital account. The balance of forces within China would then shift in favour of the one per cent who would then privatise state assets at a faster rate. In the present international system, opening such capital markets beyond the tightly controlled stock exchanges would open up the Chinese currency to the kind of full scale attack and speculation that was witnessed in the Asian financial crisis in 1997. Thus far the Chinese state has held the line against the expansion of capital markets in ways that would undermine the stability of the society.
The economy of China is a mixed economy with the state-owned enterprises dominating the economy. Of the ten largest companies on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, eight are state owned. With the growth and power of the Chinese economy, the Chinese capitalists have expanded with a large number of billionaires. These billionaires do not control political power and the Chinese state continues to subsidise food, education and transportation services. There are many limitations to the nature of the Chinese political system, especially the hothouse of growth and accumulation that is creating a fundamental environmental hazard for the majority of the citizens. The growing inequalities and the massive push for the reversal of socialist gains since 1949 are now compounded by an alliance between capitalists in Singapore and the US who are calling for speeding the internationalisation of the RMB.
It is in this context where the December 25 agreement to allow Japan to ‘apply to buy Chinese bonds next year’ becomes significant. It is again worth quoting the press reports of the December 25 agreement. According to the British Broadcasting Corporation,
‘The two leaders also agreed to allow the Japan Bank for International Cooperation to issue Yuan-denominated bonds in China, the first time a foreign government body has been allowed to do so. At the same time Japan said it was also looking to buy Chinese government bonds, a move that analysts believe may prove to be mutually beneficial to both nations. ‘By adopting Chinese bonds as a part of official foreign exchange reserves, Japan is labelling Chinese bonds as an investable asset,’ according to Takuji Okubo of Societe Generale Tokyo.
‘This should encourage Japanese private investment into Chinese bonds, as well as into other Asian emerging currencies. Such a development in turn should help develop offshore currency trading in Japan.’
This new collaboration between China and Japan has been underlined by the Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba who on Tuesday said that ‘Japan will seek to take a less inward-looking stance when it comes to diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region.’ In the words of the China daily newspaper the Foreign Minister said that, ‘Japan will look to enhance diplomatic ties with China based on mutually beneficial goals. With China, this year marks the 40th anniversary of normalizing diplomatic ties, we will aim to deepen the mutually beneficial relationship based on common strategic interests,’ Gemba said in his first foreign policy speech in parliament.
He went on to say that Japan plans to proactively make ‘concrete efforts’ to strengthen its ties with China and establish more ‘open and multilayered networks’ in the best interests of both countries
Ever alert to these shifts in the global currency and financial markets, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, travelled to Hong Kong in January and offered London as the western base for the coming internationalization of the RMB. Osborne was vociferously making a plea to make London the leading centre for trading the Chinese currency. This conservative Chancellor was exposing the opportunism of the British and demonstrating the short memory of the British hoping that the Chinese have forgotten the Opium Wars.

UNITED STATES SENATE CURRENCY BILL

While the British were declaring their willingness to embrace the RMB, the US Senate has gone about increasing the war of words against China. In the failure to compete in the so-called ‘marketplace,’ sections of the US political leadership have for years been complaining that China should allow open markets for its currency and for its currency to appreciate more rapidly. There are two sections of the US political establishment pushing against the Chinese currency. The first are those allied to Wall Street and the currency speculators who want to be able to trade in the Chinese currency and to do to China what was done to Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand and other Asian economies in 1997. The second pressure is coming from those sections of capital who complain that China is flooding US markets. While these two sections do not agree they support the information war against China, this information war carries the refrain that the renminbi is undervalued by 25-30 percent against the dollar, which means Chinese exports to the US become 25-30 percent cheaper, while US goods exported to China are more expensive.
Even though China has allowed its currency to appreciate a little in the last two years, the two sections of capital in the US hostile to China have said that this is not enough. In October 2011 the US Senate passed S.1619, the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Act of 2011, and a bill to address China’s ongoing currency manipulation, by a vote of 63-35.
One year earlier one commentator for Time Magazine had noted correctly that the real challenge for the United States was to change its consumption patterns.
‘We’ve seen this movie before. From July 2005 to July 2008, under pressure from the US government, Beijing allowed its currency to rise against the dollar by 21 percent. Despite that hefty increase, China’s exports to the US continued to grow mightily. Of course, once the recession hit, China’s exports slowed, but not as much as those of countries that had not let their currencies rise. So even with relatively pricier goods, China did better than other exporting nations.
Look elsewhere in the past and you come to the same conclusion. In 1985 the US browbeat Japan at the Plaza Accord meetings into letting the yen rise. But the subsequent 50 percent increase did little to make American goods more competitive. Yale University’s Stephen Roach points out that since 2002, the US dollar has fallen in value by 23 percent against all our trading partners, and yet American exports are not booming. The US imports more than it exports from 90 countries around the world. Is this because of currency manipulation by those countries, or is it more likely a result of fundamental choices we have made as a country to favor consumption over investment and manufacturing?’

TRANSITIONS: END OF DOLLAR HEGEMONY AND THE NEW INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL ARCHITECTURE

This commentary on the need for the US to transform its economy and live within its means fell short of outlining a more fundamental problem, that of the military management of the international system and the outmoded imperial impulses that stem from the kind of militarism that now reflect US society. While the Japanese and the Chinese were deepening economic relations, the US political leaders were intensifying its bellicose rhetoric about Chinese military buildup in the South China Sea and pushing forward the idea of a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement. Japan was being wooed to become a key anchor of the US dominated TPP.
The China/Japan currency swap was a bold move on the part of these two economic giants in Asia. There are historic difference between the Chinese and Japanese, especially the experiences of the 1930’s Japanese occupation of China and the Rape of Nanking. Notwithstanding these historic differences the US debt of over US $ 14 trillion along with the inability of the US political leaders to effectively tackle the growing debt has awoken many that the US dollar as the international reserve currency is on its last legs.
In May 2009, Nouriel Roubini in a contribution to the New York Times on the Almighty Renmimbi summed up the decline of the dollar in this way,
‘This decline of the dollar might take more than a decade, but it could happen even sooner if the US did not get its financial house in order. If China and other countries were to diversify their reserve holdings away from the dollar — and they eventually will — the United States would suffer. It would take a long time for the renminbi to become a reserve currency, but it could happen. The resulting downfall of the dollar may be only a matter of time.’
Nouriel Roubini was writing this warning to alert the US rulers to shift gears because of the rise of China. He called for a strategy of investments to recover the US economy declaring, ‘Now that the dollar’s position is no longer so secure, we need to shift our priorities. This will entail investing in our crumbling infrastructure, alternative and renewable resources and productive human capital — rather than in unnecessary housing and toxic financial innovation. This will be the only way to slow down the decline of the dollar, and sustain our influence in global affairs.’
China and Japan have taken a decisive step to diversify their reserve holdings away from the dollar. What is more fundamental is the new rush by other states to join in this new regional currency arrangement. Republic of South Korea is knocking to become central to this swap arrangement while other members of ASEAN are watching these developments carefully. The Eurozone crisis has narrowed the ability of the US to respond negatively to the China/Japan currency swap. Importantly, the capitalist crisis in Europe has stiffened the spine of those elements of the Chinese society who proclaim that the principal task of China is to bail out its own people and transform the economy to benefit the 1.3 billion citizens. These left forces in China are calling for the consolidation of socialism and for vigilance to halt the power of those who are calling for a speedy internationalization of the RMB. These social elements understand the realities behind the call for opening capital markets in China.
It is the left and the progressive forces in China who agree with Mao that the RMB is the people’s currency and that the most important currency is the Chinese people. It is not usual for this writer to quote from Time magazine, but in the arguments of [url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2024220,00.html#ixzz1kXFiPwKO]
Fareed Zakaria[/url] on the question of overvalued currency, this author would concur, ‘The Real Challenge from China: Its People, Not Its Currency.’
‘China is beginning a move up the value chain into industries and jobs that were until recently considered the prerogative of the Western world. This is the real China challenge. It is not being produced by Beijing’s currency manipulation or hidden subsidies but by strategic investment and hard work. The best and most effective response to it is not threats and tariffs but deep, structural reforms and major new investments to make the U.S. economy dynamic and its workers competitive.’
And Zakaria might have added that the US cannot be competitive as long as it imprisons the best of the young people of colour in the prison industrial complex.
The lessons learnt from the last capitalist depression are that competitive devaluations, trade wars, currency disputes and new alliances sow the seeds of hostilities and provide the climate for incidents. Incidents then spin out of control beyond diplomacy. The contagion from the capitalist crisis will spread and the forces of socialist transformation will have to be even more alert and vigilant to balance the formation of a regional currency block while supporting the creation of the multipolar world to end the era of dollar and pound/sterling hegemony. Those regions of the world that have not awoken to the slow demise of the dollar need to pay closer attention. Planned diversification away from the dollar is preferable to rushed monetary unions. The African peoples have a lot of lessons to learn from both the capitalist crisis in Europe and the new financial arrangements between China and Japan.
Horace Campbell is professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University.

EU sent 50 MEPs to Congo for eight days at cost of £850,000

2012-01-28T17:13:00.000+08:00

The European Parliament spent over £850,000 sending 50 MEPs for an eight-day trip to the Congo in 2010, according to a list of its most expensive foreign delegations.

In July, 13 of the ACP-EU MEPs travelled to the Seychelles for a five-day trip that cost the taxpayer an £4,374 per head in travel, hotel and 'logistics' bills

MEPs were attending a meeting of the African-Caribbean Pacific and EU (ACP-EU) joint parliamentary assembly to discuss with MPs from the developing countries how to tackle poverty in the world's poorest regions.

At the November 2010 gathering in Kinshasa, MEPs racked up a bill of £17,067 per head – a sum that is 141 times the £121 that is the average annual income in Congo. The figures, revealed by The Daily Telegraph, were described by a Ukip MEP as “an affront to taxpayers”.

The same ACP-EU delegation of MEPs, a group of 64 this time, had previously gathered in Tenerife in January 2010. They ran up travel and hotel bills of £588,404, or £9,193 each, over the course of a week in the Spanish sunshine, according to the list revealed by The Daily Telegraph. A one week stay in a junior suite in London’s elite Ritz Hotel costs £3,928.

In July, 13 of the ACP-EU MEPs travelled to the Seychelles for a five-day trip that cost the taxpayer £4,374 per head in travel, hotel and “logistics” bills.

The costs of the first class flights and five star luxury hotels for the trips, totalling £230 million in 2010, have traditionally been shrouded in secrecy by an EU assembly that is wary of fuelling its “gravy train” image.

But following an investigation into spiralling costs by MEPs on the parliament’s budget committee, the EU assembly’s administration has compiled a list of the most expensive trips, breaking down costs for the first time.
The figures, seen by this newspaper, show the huge bills presented to taxpayers for keeping MEPs in the lifestyle to which they are accustomed.
A delegation of four MEPs to Argentina in March 2010 cost £21,878 in daily bills for each MEP. Seven MEPs on the parliament’s trade committee managed to rack up travel, hotel and other bills of £5,384 each over four days in springtime Rome.
Marta Andreasen, a Ukip MEP and the European Commission’s former chief accountant before she was sacked by Lord Kinnock for whistle-blowing in 2004, described the costs as “astonishing” at a time when the EU was imposing austerity programmes on the eurozone.
”Even as the eurozone crisis was starting to bite hard in 2010, MEPs were rewarding themselves with self-serving and largely pointless delegation visits,” she said.
”These figures are an appalling abuse of public money. They should hang their heads in shame.”
A parliament spokesman insisted that the figures include “global costs” such as accompanying staff and the cost of hiring rooms for meetings.
”The why of these meetings is that relations between the EU and third countries by necessity have a parliamentary dimension,” she said.
”These meetings provide the only way in which elected representatives of, for example, the ACP former colonies can make their wishes heard as regards EU policies.”
Other Brussels institutions and officials are increasingly concerned that spending by MEPs is in danger of damaging the EU during a period when national public budgets are being cut and living standards have been hit by a recession generated by the eurozone.
Earlier this week, Janusz Lewandowski, the European budget commissioner, wrote a letter to the parliament asking MEPs to show the public that the EU was tightening its belt and reducing the costs of administration.
”It is of utmost importance to continue to demonstrate that the European institutions are acting responsibly in the light of the difficult economic and budgetary conditions and to send a corresponding signal to European public opinion,” he wrote.

Spain's unemployment total passes five million

2012-01-28T17:12:00.000+08:00

Spain's unemployment figure passed the five million mark in the last quarter of 2011, official figures show.

The National Statistics Institute said 5.3 million people were out of work at the end of December, up from 4.9 million in the third quarter.
The rate rose from 21.5% in the third quarter to 22.8% - the highest rate in nearly 17 years.
Spain already has the highest jobless rate in the 17-nation eurozone and is expected to slide back into recession.

The 22.8% rate is more than twice the average unemployment rate of the eurozone, which stood at 10.3% in November, according to data released earlier this month.

The Spanish figures show almost half of all 16-24 year-olds in the country are jobless - 48.6% compared with 45.8% before.
Spain's new ruling Popular Party conservative government has pledged labour reforms to try to improve the jobs market.
On Thursday, public service employees staged a series of demonstrations across Spain to protest against unemployment and increasing austerity measures.
Budget cuts Spain has struggled since the property bubble burst in 2008.
In the years between 2004 and 2008, the average house price in Spain rose 44%, Construction represented about 16% of GDP by the end of the boom, and the unemployment rate was down to 7.95%.
However, rising house prices fuelled the sub-prime mortgage market, leading the Spanish to borrow more as they struggled to get on the housing ladder.

“Start Quote

There are millions without hope - some people I know have been without work for two years”

Marisol, Malaga

Spain unemployment - Your stories

The downturn has seen repossessions of Spanish properties rise 32% in the past year.

The range of austerity measures proposed by new Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government angered many ahead of this week's protests.
His measures include 8.9bn euros in new budget cuts, and tax increases designed to boost government coffers by 6.3bn euros.
However, there are concerns that Mr Rajoy will be unable to meet his pre-election pledge to cut the country's deficit to 4.4% of GDP in 2012.
The Bank of Spain predicts the country's economy will shrink by 1.5% this year, saying the eurozone debt crisis has destroyed business confidence and closed off bank credit, causing a large drop in domestic demand.

If The Economy Is Improving….

2012-01-28T16:48:00.002+08:00

Everywhere you turn these days, someone is proclaiming that the economy is improving. Barack Obama is endlessly touting the “improvement” in the economy, the mainstream media is constantly talking about “the economic recovery” and an increasing number of Americans seem to be buying into this line of thinking. A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 37 percent of Americans believe that the economy will improve over the next year, while only 17 percent of Americans believe that it will get worse. But is the economy actually improving? Not really. At the moment things are relatively stable. Some economic statistics are improving slightly and some continue to get even worse. However, it is very important to keep in mind that one of the biggest reasons why things have stabilized is because the federal government is pumping more than a trillion dollars a year into the economy that it does not have. The Obama administration is engaging in a debt binge unlike anything America has ever seen before, and yet many economic indicators are still in decline. So what is going to happen when the federal government stops injecting gigantic waves of borrowed money into the economy? That is a frightening thing to think about. The best efforts of our “leaders” in Washington D.C. are not accomplishing a whole lot. The Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates as low as they can go and the federal government is spending unprecedented amounts of money. But even with the federal government and the Federal Reserve pushing the accelerator all the way to the floor, the economy is still not improving much at all. Millions upon millions of Americans out there are anticipating some sort of a “great economic recovery”, and they are going to be bitterly disappointed.
But right now there are some “bright spots” in the economy, and you are bound to run into family and friends that will repeat to you the nonsense that they are hearing on the television about how the economy is recovering.
When they try to convince you that the economy is getting better, ask them these questions….
If the economy is getting better, then why did new home sales in the United States hit a brand new all-time record low during 2011?
If the economy is getting better, then why are there 6 million less jobs in America today than there were before the recession started?
If the economy is getting better, then why is the average duration of unemployment in this country close to an all-time record high?
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of homeless female veterans more than doubled?
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans on food stamps increased by 3 million since this time last year and by more than 14 million since Barack Obama entered the White House?
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of children living in poverty in America risen for four years in a row?
If the economy is getting better, then why is the percentage of Americans living in “extreme poverty” at an all-time high?
If the economy is getting better, then why is the Federal Housing Administration on the verge of a financial collapse?
If the economy is getting better, then why do only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012?
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of self-employed Americans fallen by more than 2 million since 2006?
If the economy is getting better, then why did an all-time record lowpercentage of U.S. teens have a job last summer?
If the economy is getting better, then why does median household income keep declining? Overall, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% since December 2007 once you account for inflation.
If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by 10 million since 2006?
If the economy is getting better, then why is the average age of a vehicle in America now sitting at an all-time high?
If the economy is getting better, then why are 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida currently sitting vacant?
If the economy is getting better, then why are 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 living with their parents?
If the economy is getting better, then why does the number of “long-term unemployed workers” stay so high? When Barack Obama first took office, the number of “long-term unemployed workers” in the United States was approximately 2.6 million. Today, that number is sitting at 5.6 million.
But there is some good news.
When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850. Today, the price of an ounce of gold is over $1700.
The era of great prosperity that America has enjoyed for so long is coming to an end.
In fact, our long-term economic decline is about to accelerate.
So enjoy this “bubble of hope” while you can, because it won’t last long.
As I have written about previously, many are warning that Europe is on the verge of a nightmarish financial crisis that could potentially plunge us into aglobal recession even worse than 2008.
So let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.
Just because the economy is about to go through hard times does not mean that you have to go through hard times personally.
Right now, you can decide to make an investment or start a business that will thrive in a tough economic environment.
Victory often goes to the most prepared. So don’t just sit there while the storm clouds gather. Instead, this should be a time when you are gathering resources and developing a gameplan for the coming economic chaos.
Those that choose to have blind faith in “the system” are going to be tremendously disappointed in the years ahead. Just because you have a job right now does not mean that it is always going to be there. Just because your stock portfolio is doing well right now does not mean that will always be the case.
Hopefully we all learned some important lessons from 2008. The global financial situation can turn on a dime. When markets fall apart, they tend to do so very rapidly.
Ultimately, the debate about whether the economy is improving or not is going to be ended very emphatically. When the next wave of the financial crisis hits, there will be no doubt about what direction things are going.
Don’t let the next wave catch you by surprise.
Now is the time to prepare.

Will Iran Kill the PetroDollar?

2012-01-28T16:47:00.003+08:00

The official line from the United States and the European Union is that Tehran must be punished for continuing its efforts to develop a nuclear weapon. The punishment: sanctions on Iran's oil exports, which are meant to isolate Iran and depress the value of its currency to such a point that the country crumbles.

But that line doesn't make sense, and the sanctions will not achieve their goals. Iran is far from isolated and its friends – like India – will stand by the oil-producing nation until the US either backs down or acknowledges the real matter at hand. That matter is the American dollar and its role as the global reserve currency.
The short version of the story is that a 1970s deal cemented the US dollar as the only currency to buy and sell crude oil, and from that monopoly on the all-important oil trade the US dollar slowly but surely became the reserve currency for global trades in most commodities and goods. Massive demand for US dollars ensued, pushing the dollar's value up, up, and away. In addition, countries stored their excess US dollars savings in US Treasuries, giving the US government a vast pool of credit from which to draw.
We know where that situation led – to a US government suffocating in debt while its citizens face stubbornly high unemployment (due in part to the high value of the dollar); a failed real estate market; record personal-debt burdens; a bloated banking system; and a teetering economy. That is not the picture of a world superpower worthy of the privileges gained from having its currency back global trade. Other countries are starting to see that and are slowly but surely moving away from US dollars in their transactions, starting with oil.
If the US dollar loses its position as the global reserve currency, the consequences for America are dire. A major portion of the dollar's valuation stems from its lock on the oil industry – if that monopoly fades, so too will the value of the dollar. Such a major transition in global fiat currency relationships will bode well for some currencies and not so well for others, and the outcomes will be challenging to predict. But there is one outcome that we foresee with certainty: Gold will rise. Uncertainty around paper money always bodes well for gold, and these are uncertain days indeed.

The Petrodollar System
To explain this situation properly, we have to start in 1973. That's when President Nixon asked King Faisal of Saudi Arabia to accept only US dollars as payment for oil and to invest any excess profits in US Treasury bonds, notes, and bills. In exchange, Nixon pledged to protect Saudi Arabian oil fields from the Soviet Union and other interested nations, such as Iran and Iraq. It was the start of something great for the US, even if the outcome was as artificial as the US real-estate bubble and yet constitutes the foundation for the valuation of the US dollar.
By 1975, all of the members of OPEC agreed to sell their oil only in US dollars. Every oil-importing nation in the world started saving its surplus in US dollars so as to be able to buy oil; with such high demand for dollars the currency strengthened. On top of that, many oil-exporting nations like Saudi Arabia spent their US dollar surpluses on Treasury securities, providing a new, deep pool of lenders to support US government spending.
The "petrodollar" system was a brilliant political and economic move. It forced the world's oil money to flow through the US Federal Reserve, creating ever-growing international demand for both US dollars and US debt, while essentially letting the US pretty much own the world's oil for free, since oil's value is denominated in a currency that America controls and prints. The petrodollar system spread beyond oil: the majority of international trade is done in US dollars. That means that from Russia to China, Brazil to South Korea, every country aims to maximize the US-dollar surplus garnered from its export trade to buy oil.
The US has reaped many rewards. As oil usage increased in the 1980s, demand for the US dollar rose with it, lifting the US economy to new heights. But even without economic success at home the US dollar would have soared, because the petrodollar system created consistent international demand for US dollars, which in turn gained in value. A strong US dollar allowed Americans to buy imported goods at a massive discount – the petrodollar system essentially creating a subsidy for US consumers at the expense of the rest of the world. Here, finally, the US hit on a downside: The availability of cheap imports hit the US manufacturing industry hard, and the disappearance of manufacturing jobs remains one of the biggest challenges in resurrecting the US economy today.
There is another downside, a potential threat now lurking in the shadows. The value of the US dollar is determined in large part by the fact that oil is sold in US dollars. If that trade shifts to a different currency, countries around the world won't need all their US money. The resulting sell-off of US dollars would weaken the currency dramatically.
So here's an interesting thought experiment. Everybody says the US goes to war to protect its oil supplies, but doesn't it really go to war to ensure the continuation of the petrodollar system?
The Iraq war provides a good example. Until November 2000, no OPEC country had dared to violate the US dollar-pricing rule, and while the US dollar remained the strongest currency in the world there was also little reason to challenge the system. But in late 2000, France and a few other EU members convinced Saddam Hussein to defy the petrodollar process and sell Iraq's oil for food in euros, not dollars. In the time between then and the March 2003 American invasion of Iraq, several other nations hinted at their interest in non-US dollar oil trading, including Russia, Iran, Indonesia, and even Venezuela. In April 2002, Iranian OPEC representative Javad Yarjani was invited to Spain by the EU to deliver a detailed analysis of how OPEC might at some point sell its oil to the EU for euros, not dollars.
This movement, founded in Iraq, was starting to threaten the dominance of the US dollar as the global reserve currency and petro currency. In March 2003, the US invaded Iraq, ending the oil-for-food program and its euro payment program.
There are many other historic examples of the US stepping in to halt a movement away from the petrodollar system, often in covert ways. In February 2011, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), called for a new world currency to challenge the dominance of the US dollar. Three months later a maid at the Sofitel New York Hotel alleged that Strauss-Kahn sexually assaulted her. Strauss-Kahn was forced out of his role at the IMF within weeks; he has since been cleared of any wrongdoing.
War and insidious interventions of this sort may be costly, but the costs of not protecting the petrodollar system would be far higher. If euros, yen, renminbi, rubles, or for that matter straight gold, were generally accepted for oil, the US dollar would quickly become irrelevant, rendering the currency almost worthless. As the rest of the world realizes that there are other options besides the US dollar for global transactions, the US is facing a very significant – and very messy – transition in the global oil machine.
The Iranian Dilemma
Iran may be isolated from the United States and Western Europe, but Tehran still has some pretty staunch allies. Iran and Venezuela are advancing $4 billion worth of joint projects, including a bank. India has pledged to continue buying Iranian oil because Tehran has been a great business partner for New Delhi, which struggles to make its payments. Greece opposed the EU sanctions because Iran was one of very few suppliers that had been letting the bankrupt Greeks buy oil on credit. South Korea and Japan are pleading for exemptions from the coming embargoes because they rely on Iranian oil. Economic ties between Russia and Iran are getting stronger every year.
Then there's China. Iran's energy resources are a matter of national security for China, as Iran already supplies no less than 15% of China's oil and natural gas. That makes Iran more important to China than Saudi Arabia is to the United States. Don't expect China to heed the US and EU sanctions much – China will find a way around the sanctions in order to protect two-way trade between the nations, which currently stands at $30 billion and is expected to hit $50 billion in 2015. In fact, China will probably gain from the US and EU sanctions on Iran, as it will be able to buy oil and gas from Iran at depressed prices.
So Iran will continue to have friends, and those friends will continue to buy its oil. More importantly, you can bet they won't be paying for that oil with US dollars. Rumors are swirling that India and Iran are at the negotiating table right now, hammering out a deal to trade oil for gold, supported by a few rupees and some yen. Iran is already dumping the dollar in its trade with Russia in favor of rials and rubles. India is already using the yuan with China; China and Russia have been trading in rubles and yuan for more than a year; Japan and China are moving towards transactions in yen and yuan.
And all those energy trades between Iran and China? That will be settled in gold, yuan, and rial. With the Europeans out of the mix, in short order none of Iran's 2.4 million barrels of oil a day will be traded in petrodollars.
With all this knowledge in hand, it starts to seem pretty reasonable that the real reason tensions are mounting in the Persian Gulf is because the United States is desperate to torpedo this movement away from petrodollars. The shift is being spearheaded by Iran and backed by India, China, and Russia. That is undoubtedly enough to make Washington anxious enough to seek out an excuse to topple the regime in Iran.
Speaking of that search for an excuse, this is interesting. A team of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors just visited Iran. The IAEA is supervising all things nuclear in Iran, and it was an IAEA report in November warning that the country was progressing in its ability to make weapons that sparked this latest round of international condemnation against the supposedly near-nuclear state. But after their latest visit, the IAEA's inspectors reported no signs of bomb making. Oh, and if keeping the world safe from rogue states with nuclear capabilities were the sole motive, why have North Korea and Pakistan been given a pass?
There is another consideration to keep in mind, one that is very important when it comes to making some investment decisions based on this situation: Russia, India, and China – three members of the rising economic powerhouse group known as the BRICs (which also includes Brazil) – are allied with Iran and are major gold producers. If petrodollars go out of vogue and trading in other currencies gets too complicated, they will tap their gold storehouses to keep the crude flowing. Gold always has and always will be the fallback currency and, as mentioned before, when currency relationships start to change and valuations become hard to predict, trading in gold is a tried and true failsafe.
2012 might end up being most famous as the year in which the world defected from the US dollar as the global currency of choice. Imagine the rest of the world doing the math and, little by little, beginning to do business in their own currencies and investing ever less of their surpluses in US Treasuries. It constitutes nothing less than a slow but sure decimation of the dollar.
That may not be a bad thing for the United States. The country's gargantuan debts can never be repaid as long as the dollar maintains anything close to its current valuation. Given the state of the country, all that's really left supporting the value in the dollar is its global reserve currency status. If that goes and the dollar slides, maybe the US will be able to repay its debts and start fresh. That new start would come without the privileges and ingrained subsidies to which Americans are so accustomed, but it's amazing that the petrodollar system has lasted this long. It was only a matter of time before something would break it down.
Finally, the big question: How can one profit from this evolving situation? Playing with currencies is always very risky and, with the global game set to shift to significantly, it would require a lot of analysis and a fair bit of luck. The much more reliable way to play the game is through gold. Gold is the only currency backed by a physical commodity; and it is always where investors hide from a currency storm. The basic conclusion is that a slow demise of the petrodollar system is bullish for gold and very bearish for the US dollar.

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MAKE VIRAL***USS Enterprise False Flag!

2012-01-28T16:47:00.000+08:00

日本‧文件曝光揭“宗教行為”面具‧日政府主導靖國供奉戰犯

2012-01-21T19:27:00.000+08:00

（日本‧東京21日訊）多年來引發亞洲國家強烈反彈的日本靖國神社問題，原來是由日本政府在背後主導！日本政府多年來表明，靖國神社供奉二戰甲級戰犯是宗教行為，亦是神社的決定，強調並無違反憲法中，政教分離的原則。

不過，左派大報《朝日新聞》週六揭發，該報調查衛生勞動部（日本稱厚生勞動省）的內部資料，發現了衛生部（衛生勞動部前身）於1950年代謀求靖國神社合祀二戰甲級戰犯靈位的相關文件。

靈位存入靖國為最終目標

這份舊政府文件顯示，衛生部在1953年（日本二戰後宣佈恢復主權的第二年）決定，先將二戰被判死刑的甲級戰犯的靈位，供奉於福岡等地的護國神社，最終以存入東京靖國神社為目標的方針。

衛生部並根據該方針，敦促各地“作為英靈合祀靖國神社的前提，各地護國神社該合祀的如未合祀要合祀”。

到1978年，前首相東條英機、前日軍特務頭目土肥原賢二等甲等14名甲級戰犯的靈位，得以集合在東京的靖國神社合祀供奉。這也證明了，日本政府一直宣稱靖國神社供奉二戰甲級戰犯靈位是“靖國神社的判斷”的答辯，與事實不符，實際上是舊政府官員經過長期的狡猾謀略的結果。

此後，除了中韓等鄰國抗議日本官員參拜靖國神社的外交糾紛外，日本天皇也絕跡靖國神社。不能干預政治的天皇雖從未公開表達，但一般相信這是天皇不滿靖國神社合祀甲級戰犯。

近年，政客參拜靖國神社在日本還有違反政教分離憲法等的內政爭議，甚至訴訟法庭。

中國‧“送我我不要”遏止官員收紅包‧粵設“35581”廉政帳戶

2012-01-21T19:26:00.002+08:00

（廣州21日訊）中國廣東省為了遏止官員收紅包，在銀行設立帳號為“35581”（送我我不要）的廉政帳戶，讓幹部把無法拒收的紅包（現金）存放到帳戶內。

《南方都市報》報導，中共廣東省紀律檢查委員會等單位已在工商銀行設立廉政帳戶，以便有關人員在規定的時間（1個月內）上繳無法拒收的紅包。

廣東先前已規定，領導幹部和國家工作人員對以各種理由贈送的紅包，應堅決拒收，當場退回；至於因各種原因無法當場退回的，應在1個月內把全額上繳同級紀檢監察機關或存入廉政帳戶，並領取相關憑證。

對於不能全額上繳或存入廉政帳戶的，或在收送紅包一方接受調查後才上繳或存入廉政帳戶的，則按違紀論處。

香港‧配合美國打擊網絡盜版‧凍結MU逾億資產

2012-01-21T19:24:00.002+08:00

（香港21日訊）香港海關配合美國司法部和聯邦調查局的全球性執法行動，搗破一個龐大跨境網絡儲存平台侵權集團，並凍結逾3億港元（約1億2千萬令吉）涉案資產。

美國司法部週四關閉以香港為基地、全球最大檔案分享網站Megaupload.com（簡稱MU），並透過紐西蘭警方拘捕有香港居留權的MU創辦人金德康等4人，他們被控侵權、串謀洗黑錢及詐騙等五罪，下週一會再次提堂，並將被引渡到美國受審。

香港海關配合採取行動，週五晨調動約100人搜查四處目標地點，包括酒店房間、辦公室和住宅，查獲大量電子證據，並凍結逾3億港元涉案資產。

FBI調查後發現，該網站管理人分布在不同國家及地區，主要伺服器在美國，專門複製及發佈侵權的盜版電影及音樂，又獎賞上載盜版內容的用戶，藉以獲利約5億4千300萬令吉，導致版權持有人損失約15億5千200萬令吉。金德康去年就賺了1億3千萬令吉。

紐西蘭警方亦撿獲鎗械、藝術品、逾2千484萬令吉現金及多輛名貴汽車，仍有3名涉案人士在逃。

MU有1億5千萬登記用戶，每日點擊率達5千萬次，更獲得多位樂壇巨星力撐。

“有沒拍拖？薪水多少？”‧拜年十大“毒舌”問題

2012-01-21T19:19:00.000+08:00

（中國‧北京21日訊）“有沒有拍拖？甚麼時候結婚啊？薪水多少？吃甚麼長這麼胖啊？”

春節到親友家中拜年，最怕就是被長輩問到這些尷尬問題，近日，中國互聯網流傳一份《親戚聚會發言大綱列表》，表中羅列出長輩們愛問的毒舌問題，還有網民總結出十大過年見面的禁忌問題，而對於男性網民來說，被問“有沒有買房”是致命傷。這張名為《親戚聚會發言大綱列表》的制圖以“不認識我了嗎？小時候抱過你呢”開始，列舉了親戚見面可能提起的第一句話。

緊接著，列表以“結婚了麼？”的問題作為出發點，對可能發生的兩種回答作為延伸，將話題擴展。其中列舉了如果已結婚，等待著的將是對另一半的所有信息（重點是收入）的拷問。闖過這一關又會迎來“生孩子沒？”的提問等等，諸如此類。

眾多網友圍觀後表示感同深受，並吐槽自己過年期間遇見過的各種尷尬問題。

也有一些網友則提出已想好應對這些“炮彈”的方法，如“反客為主、率先發問、聲東擊西、健忘一點兒”等策略。

來一回絕地反擊網民“卡多呢”厭倦了每年都被這樣盤問，今年，他準備來一回絕地反擊，總結三種方法來應對親戚們的嘮叨：“一、被念到時可以假裝蒙娜麗莎，但實際上認真貫徹左耳進右耳出原則。二、說理推卸，以“有沒有對象”這一問題為例，藉口有幾種：“其實有順眼的了，不過時間不久，等時機成熟了一定帶來給您過目”、“不是我的問題，是我周圍的男人們太噁心”……三、鴕鳥式逃避，減少回家次數。”

十大毒舌問題
1.交男女朋友了嗎？甚麼時候結婚啊？
2.小朋友考試第幾名啊？
3.去年賺了多少錢？工資多少？
4.吃甚麼長這麼胖啊？
5.工作怎麼樣啊？
6.怎麼還不叫人？長這麼大還不會叫人啊？
7.今年多大啦？（言下之意要給壓歲錢嗎？）
8.不打算再讀研究院了嗎？
9.不認識我了嗎？小時候抱過你呢！
10.啥時候買房啊？

SOPA and PIPA postponed indefinitely after protests

2012-01-21T18:41:00.003+08:00

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- When the entire Internet gets angry, Congress takes notice. Both the House and the Senate on Friday backed away from a pair of controversial anti-piracy bills, tossing them into limbo and throwing doubt on their future viability.
The Senate had been scheduled to hold a proceedural vote next week on whether to take up the Protect IP Act (PIPA) -- a bill that once had widespread, bipartisan support. But on Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he was postponing the vote "in light of recent events."
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives said it is putting on hold its version of the bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The House will "postpone consideration of the legislation until there is wider agreement on a solution," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith said in a written statement.
The moves came after several lawmakers flipped their position on the bills in the wake of widespread online and offline protests against them.
Tech companies, who largely oppose the bills, mobilized their users this week to contact representatives and speak out against the legislation. Sites including Wikipedia and Reddit launched site blackouts on January 18, while protesters hit the streets in New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) drew more than 7 million signatures for an anti-SOPA and PIPA petition that it linked on its highly trafficked homepage.
The tide turned soon after the protest, and both bills lost some of their Congressional backers.
"I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns," Smith said Friday in a prepared statement. "It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves."
PIPA and SOPA aim to crack down on copyright infringement by restricting access and services to sites that host or facilitate the trading of pirated content. (Click here for our explainer: What SOPA is and why it matters.)
Backed by media companies, including CNNMoney parent Time Warner, the bills initially seemed on the fast track to passage. PIPA was approved unanimously by a Senate committee in May.
But when the House took up its own version of the bill, SOPA, tech companies began lobbying heavily in opposition -- an effort that culminated in this week's demonstrations.
Reid hinted that PIPA may not be dead yet, saying: "There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved."
Meanwhile, alternative legislation has also been proposed. A bipartisan group of senators introduced the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN) on January 18 -- the same day as the Wikipedia site blackout.
Among other differences, OPEN offers more protection than SOPA would to sites accused of hosting pirated content. It also beefs up the enforcement process. It would allow digital rights holders to bring cases before the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), an independent agency that handles trademark infringement and other trade disputes.
California Republican Darrell Issa introduced OPEN in the House, and Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden introduced the Senate version. OPEN's backers had posted the draft legislation online and invited the Web community to comment on and revise the proposal.
Soon after SOPA and PIPA were tabled, Issa released a statement cheering "supporters of the Internet" for their protest efforts.
He wrote: "Over the last two months, the intense popular effort to stop SOPA and PIPA has defeated an effort that once looked unstoppable but lacked a fundamental understanding of how Internet technologies work."

Ron Paul This Speech Gave Me Chills

2012-01-21T18:41:00.000+08:00

URGENT - FOX News Caught Using Fake Video Of Riots HA, HA!

2012-01-21T18:40:00.000+08:00

Destruction Can't Create Jobs: The Broken Window Fallacy

2012-01-21T18:29:00.002+08:00

http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=17437

No, Rick Santorum, We Don't Need a Little Inflation

2012-01-21T18:28:00.002+08:00

http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=17436

How RON PAUL Would Fix the Economy Don't Bailout Banks No Corporate Welfare

2012-01-21T18:27:00.002+08:00

http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=17435

Obama Pushes Hard to Protect Big Banks from Fraud Prosecutions ... But We Can Stop Him

2012-01-21T17:54:00.002+08:00

Submitted by George Washington on 01/20/2012 12:07 -0500

As we've noted for years, the entire strategy of Washington towards the economy is to cover up the fraud which caused the financial crisis ... even though prosecuting fraud and re-establishing the rule of law is the only way to get out of this depression.

One major front in Washington's cover-up effort has been to settle fraud cases with the big banks for pennies on the dollar. This is a backdoor bailout for the banks, encourages them to commit more fraud, and fails to plug the basic holes in the economy which are preventing a recovery.

Why are we bringing this up now?

Because Obama is making a giant push to pressure the states attorneys general to settle all of their mortgage-related fraud claims against the banks for pennies on the dollar.
Yves Smith - who has an ear to the ground on this - warns that a settlement which hurts consumers and the economy will happen very quickly if people don't raise a ruckus.

Smith is asking people to call their state attorney general (not their elected reps) to oppose the settlement:

Here are some of the reasons to oppose a settlement:

1. There have been virtually no investigations, and the Administration has engaged in cover-ups rather than trying to get to the bottom of the mortgage mess

2. The big argument made in favor of the deal, that it will help borrowers, is patently false. Remember, Countrywide entered into a deal with attorney generals just like this, where they agreed to do mods in return for a settlement on abuses. Guess what? They didn’t do the mods. To add insult to injury, they actually abused homeowners who should have gotten mods. Nevada AG is suing Countrywide now over its failure to comply with the terms of its settlement. And even if some mods miraculously did get done, the settlement is designed to have banks hit a dollar amount. That means they will focus on the biggest loans, which means any relief will go to a comparatively small number of people in (originally) big ticket houses.

3. The Administration has only one chance to get this right. Now you might argue that Team Obama has no intention of getting the mortgage mess right, but the tectonic plates suddenly seem to be moving in elite circles. The Fed realizes that housing is a BIG problem and has even started making noise about it. Yet Obama is moving forward with a plan cooked up in late 2010 that is completely out of whack with the urgency and severity of the problem. Note that this settlement will NOT stop private actions, such as borrowers fighting foreclosures. And we will continue to banks refuse to take losses and drag out foreclosures to maximize fees. That will lead to continued pressure on housing prices in many markets as buyers stay on the sidelines, fearful of buying before a large shadow inventory clears.

Leaving the AGs free to investigate and increase the pressure that is already building up in the system is the best chance we have to deal with widespread fraud.

The attorneys general really need your support. It helps them to hear that their constituents appreciate them standing up to the banks and the Obama administration.

PLEASE call them TODAY. Here is a list of phone numbers. If you can’t get through, send an e-mail.

Please also sign this petition from Campaign for America’s Future (it has some talking points if you need them for the AG calls). Note you can opt out of being put on their mailing list (I know that has been a sore point with some past petitions). I know it is futile to ping Obama, but they will collect the number of people who sign, and that will in turn bolster the dissident AGs.

Please call today. Unlike Congresscritters, who get a lot of constituent mail and phone calls, AGs get much less in the way of messages from state citizens, so your calls will make a difference.

Smith tells me that it is especially important for residents of California, Virgina, Texas, Florida and South Carolina to call their attorneys general and tell them that they need to stand firm in the face of pressure from Obama.

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Government Lawsuit Says Bank Of America Mortgage Fraud Even WORSE Than Countrywide

2012-01-21T17:53:00.003+08:00

This story (from Sep. 2011) has never been published here. I've been saving it for the right time, and news earlier this week that BofA CEO Brian Moynihan has been named as a defendant in a federal foreclosure lawsuit, makes now a pretty good time for a BofA pile-on.
---
Marketwatch
By Al Lewis
Federal lawsuit says even Angelo Mozilo was shocked...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Bank of America Corp.’s story has long been that Countrywide did it. But a lawsuit filed last week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency tells a different tale.

The lawsuit claims that when former Countrywide Financial Corp. CEO Angelo Mozilo marveled at the dizzying recklessness of the mortgage-lending business, he was in fact looking at Charlotte-based Bank of America.
This is perhaps one of the most insulting claims ever leveled in a mortgage-fraud lawsuit. Bank of America would probably feel outraged if it weren’t so overwhelmed with its nauseating plunge on the stock market. Mozilo has easily eclipsed Enron’s brass as one of the most-hated executives of all time. He has become the poster child for the fraudulent mortgage-lending practices that torpedoed the U.S. banking system and the entire global economy.
But he was smart enough to sell Countrywide as it nearly collapsed in January 2008. And Bank of America was dumb enough to buy it for $4.1 billion.
Since then, Bank of America has been blaming Countrywide for a litany of problems.
You’ve heard the allegations before: These banks sold billions worth of mortgage-backed securities while lying about the thousands of funny little mortgages behind them.
Since Bank of America bought Countrywide, it will indeed pay for things Countrywide did. But it will pay for things it did, too.
The government is suing Bank of America for Countrywide, and it is suing Bank of America, separately, for things it did without Countrywide.
Bank of America issued a statement in response to the lawsuits, essentially saying Fannie and Freddie knew the risks of the securities they bought, and that the losses are due to a downturn in the housing market. But the United States of America would rather blame the Bank of America.
“BOA was one of the most aggressive competitors in the mortgage-origination market,” the government’s lawsuit reads.
And that’s where it hints that Bank of America was even worse than Countrywide:
“Even the top executives of Countrywide Financial Corp., the notorious mortgage lender ...complained to each other...that BOA’s appetite for risky products was greater than that of Countrywide,” the lawsuit reads.
“In a June 13, 2005, email, Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo wrote to President and COO David Sambol: “This is the third deal in the last 10 days that BOA has offered that is impossible to beat. In fact, the other two were substantially worse than this one. It appears to me that BOA is making an aggressive move into mortgages once again.’”
Imagine that. Bank of America doing mortgage deals that even Mozilo found shocking.
Read the whole thing at Marketwatch...

How to watch Press TV in UK

2012-01-21T17:53:00.000+08:00

Southgate pawnbroker says woman offered herself, daughter to pay debt

2012-01-21T17:27:00.002+08:00

A mother offered up herself and her daughter this week for sex to pay off a debt at a Southgate pawnshop, the owner of the shop said Wednesday.
Al Hassan, a co-owner of DaSilva's Pawn and Exchange on Eureka, said the mother, believed to be in her mid-30s, came into the shop Monday night and offered him sex with her and her daughter, who he estimated to be 9-11 years old, if he agreed not to sell a laptop she pawned a few weeks ago for $120.
A $25 payment was due to keep the laptop from being sold, Hassan said.
Hassan said he quickly notified police and reported the incident to Children's Protective Services.
Southgate police confirmed they are looking into the allegations.
"It's still under investigation," said Lt. Kasper Ohannasian.
David Akerly, spokesman for the state Department of Human Services, said confidentiality laws prevent the state from commenting on individual cases, and he couldn't confirm that the state is investigating.
WDIV-TV (Channel 4) said it interviewed the mother at her home in Monroe, and she said the offer was meant as a joke.
"I wasn't serious," said the mother. "I don't want to be considered a bad mother just because I needed some money for gas and groceries."
Hassan said he believes the woman may have a drug habit that drove her to desperation.
"I felt disgusted," Hassan said of his reaction to her offer. "I was sick."

HELL FREEZES OVER - Bank Of America CEO Moynihan Named As Defendant In Federal Foreclosure Lawsuit

2012-01-21T17:26:00.002+08:00

PHOTO - Brian Moynihan attempts a smile.
Foreclosure Fightclub attorney George Babcock strikes again. The devil is starting to shiver.
--
Hat tip to Foreclosure Hamlet for their coverage.
BAC CEO Named as Defendant in Federal Foreclosure Fraud Lawsuit
---
Compare these two assignments:
Document 1 Bogus Assignments of Mortgage
---
And Bank of America's useless response:
Bank of America Gratuitous Letter
Source:
http://www.foreclosurehamlet.org/profiles/blogs/bank-of-america-ceo-moynihan-to-be-named-as-defendant-in-federal

Dr. Marc Faber - US is in 50-100 trillion worth of debt!

2012-01-21T17:25:00.001+08:00

http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=17434

EI financing agency spends millions doing nothing

2012-01-21T14:43:00.002+08:00

A federal agency created by the Harper government with great political fanfare in 2008 is costing millions of dollars to achieve pretty much nothing.
The Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board has just about everything a budding government agency could want.
So far, it has spent over $3.3 million for new offices, computers and furniture, well-paid executives and staff, travel budgets, expense accounts, board meetings, and lots of pricey consultants.
All that's missing is a reason for it to exist at all.
Chairman David Brown: 'We haven't had to do nearly as much as our original mandate intended.' (CBC )The Conservative government set up the agency ostensibly to perform three main functions.
The first was to set the annual employment insurance contribution rates that determine how much Canadian workers and employers have to pay into the EI fund in a given year.
But in all three years the board has been in existence, the Harper government has simply capped EI rates to spare Canadian workers from potentially huge premium increases.
As a result, the rate-setting agency has yet to set a single rate.
The board's other main responsibility is to invest any surplus EI funds.
That has never happened, either.
Since the government started capping EI contribution rates, the employment insurance program has been running a deficit now totalling almost $9 billion.
There has simply never been a surplus dime for the board to invest.
Finally, the agency is charged with managing a $2 billion EI contingency fund the government promised to set up, but never did.

Not overwhelmed

In short, the board has no rates to set, no surplus to invest, no contingency fund to manage, and little chance any of that will change in the near future.
Executive director Phil Charko: about $150,000 a year to work part time. (CBC)The chair of the agency, Toronto lawyer David Brown, admits the organization isn't exactly overwhelmed with work.
"We haven't had to do nearly as much as our original mandate intended us to do," Brown said in an interview.
"So we've slowed down on some of our development activities until it is clear that we are going to be able to do some of the things that we will be asked in the future."
The head of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation is incensed.
"I think average taxpayers want to know what these people are doing with their time," Gregory Thomas tells CBC News.
"I think people need to call their MPs and let them know that they are tired of their money being wasted."

Raises for everyone

Mostly, the little agency that doesn't seems to have been keeping busy spending millions of dollars turning itself into a thoroughly modern bureaucracy.
Its published budget for the current year includes giving everyone raises, and moving the entire agency into new offices — all at an expected cost of $1.8 million.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tells Parliament about the new agency in 2008. (CBC)Compensation costs include stipends and expenses for the seven appointed board members, and $244,000 for a couple of executives.
The agency's executive director, retired senior public servant Phil Charko, is being paid about $150,000 a year to work part time.
The budget provides another $200,000 to pay an investment manager if the agency ever has any money to invest.
Another $300,000 is budgeted for "additional corporate services such as IT management, human resources management, and translation services."

'Improve corporate culture'

Despite so many having so little to do, the agency has earmarked over $250,000 to pay outside consultants, including public relations professionals to help produce the board's annual report showing what happened to all the money.
Finally, with two full-time employees on the payroll this year, the entire agency moved out of its former offices into larger space in a different building to "improve the corporate culture."
The total costs of the move are not shown in the agency's budget, although it mentions an estimated $89,000 just for new furniture.
Board chair Brown says the move was mainly to create enough space to accommodate financial experts on a temporary basis as needed, even though they all have permanent desks in various federal government departments.
Aside from spending money, what the agency seems to do best is create bureaucratic plans and policies for itself.

Fits in a minivan

Its planning report details many important "strategic priorities" for this year, including implementing "the communication and outreach strategy."
The agency's entire staff would fit into a minivan, but one of the priorities this year has been to "develop and implement formal HR (human resources) policies in such areas as staffing, staff relations and training."
Finally, the agency with no real purpose wants to develop "measures of corporate performance."
All of which may leave ordinary Canadians wondering what the Harper government was thinking.
The Conservatives passed legislation creating the new agency in June of 2008.
For years, the EI fund had been running huge annual surpluses that mainly Liberal governments had simply siphoned off to help pay down the country's debt and other uses.

$8.8B in the red

The new agency's primary role was to eliminate those surpluses in future by setting the annual EI contribution rate at break even, taking in just enough revenue from workers and employers to cover unemployment benefits and any deficits in the fund.
Five months later, the economic crash caused unemployment to soar and EI contributions to plummet.
By last year, the EI fund was swimming in $8.8 billion of red ink.
If the board had been allowed to exercise its mandate to set EI rates high enough to cover deficits in the fund, Canadian workers would have been hit with huge increases in annual employment insurance premiums. Instead, the Harper government used its own powers to simply freeze EI premiums for 2010, and then capped increases to relatively minor amounts in subsequent years.
Thomas of the Taxpayers' Federation says the government should cut its losses.
"I think they have to fess up that things didn't work out, and it's a waste of money."
Alyson Queen, a spokeswoman for Human Resources Minister Diane Finley, says the government has no intention of scrapping "an important stewardship group that oversees the integrity and transparency of EI financing."
The agency, Queen says, "is operating in a fiscally responsible manner," and will someday be fully operational.

Wall Street Lobbyist's Secret Plan To Squash The 99% Movement

2012-01-21T14:42:00.002+08:00

http://12160.info/video/object-moved?xg_source=shorten_twitter

INTRODUCING - THE LECTRO!!

2012-01-21T14:40:00.002+08:00

Michael Rivero

As the world financial markets watch as the Plunge Protection Team shovels US taxpayer dollars into the flames of reality, propping up the stock markets in a gravity-defying display (I would bet on gravity to win), it is becoming obvious to all that the debt-based currency system of the private central banks, while quite profitable for the bankers, is a dismal failure for civilization as a whole. Humans have labored under this failed experiment for almost 200 years while the media proclaims this is the only form of banking possible, leaders who say otherwise are assassinated, nations trying alternatives are invaded, and hotel maids assaulted. As a means to great wealth for little effort, private central banking using debt-based currency is a marvelous invention, although contrary to the devotees of Adam Smith, this elaborate exercise in personal greed has not advanced civilization along at all. Quite the contrary, any advances made have been in spite of the extreme hindrances and burdens placed on the world at large by the private bankers. Modern economic theory, usually bought and paid for by those bankers, strive to reconcile the revealed dogma with the ever-growing evidence that the system is deeply flawed and should be abandoned. In this, said economists are not unlike students of epicycles, who strove valiantly to reconcile Galileo's observations suggesting a heliocentric solar system with the church's enforced-by-torture geocentric dogma.
The fact is that this model of a private central bank creating money out of thin air to loan to the people and governments was the very economic system this nation fought a revolution to be free of. While our schools teach us of tea parties and stamp acts, they rarely mention the Currency Act any more, even though it was the primary reason for the revolution.
The American colonies issued their own currency, which existed in ample supply to ensure full employment and prosperity for all. But when Ben Franklin described this economic paradise while ambassador to London, the Bank of England panicked! England was even then in the grip of monumental poverty for the masses brought on by the predations of the bankers, and the Bank of England feared that if word of an alterative system reached the people, riots would be the result. So, the Bank of England lobbied King George III to pass the Currency act which ordered the colonists only to use banknotes borrowed at interest from the Bank of England. It took only a few years for this Currency act to reduce the American colonies to the same level of poverty and starvation as their English brethren.
"[It was] the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament which has caused in the colonies hatred of the English and . . . the Revolutionary War." -- Benjamin Franklin
Naturally our schools stopped teaching about the Currency act the same time the Federal Reserve system was brought into being, to obscure the fact that we had all been returned, courtesy of a corrupt Congress and a corrupt President, into the clutches of the very same sort of banker slavery we had fought a war to be free of.
"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is now controlled by its system of credit.We are no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." -- Woodrow Wilson 1919
More and more citizens everywhere cry for a return to the economic system that worked best for the people. They yearn for a government issued value-based currency such as this nation was started with. But should we return to a gold standard?
Throughout history, many materials have been used as a medium of exchange. Primitive people used shells, Arabs used salt (origin of the expression "the man is worth his salt.") , and during the last Great Depression a town newspaper printed up their own promissory notes good for free advertising in the paper and used them to barter goods in the town. These ad-based currencies came to be more trusted than the US issued dollars! Germany, when freeing itself from the private central bank imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, redeemed their value-based currency in units of labor. The result was the German Miracle that so terrified the private bankers they organized a boycott to destroy the new German economy before other nations decided to copy it.
Click for larger
World War 2 was the result.
More recently, Libya established a state-controlled bank issuing a value-based currency, the Gold Dinar, which was gaining in popularity across Africa. Invasion followed. Even in the United States, we have had three Presidents try to pry the nation's finances back form the grip of the private bankers, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy.
"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I will rout you out." -- Andrew Jackson
Of the three, only Andrew Jackson succeeded in shutting down the bank. He is also the only US President to pay off the National Debt completely. There was an attempted assassination shortly afterwards, with a confession that clearly indicated a financial motive for the attempt. Both Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy used Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution to issue government money free of interest to the private banks. Both men were assassinated and their interest-free money destroyed. In Kennedy's case, a banker, John J. McCloy, President of the Chase Manhattan Bank and President of the World Bank, was appointed to the Warren Commission that whitewashed the circumstances of the assassination.
So, should we return to the gold standard?
My reply is "no."
To be useful as money, the medium for exchange must be something that is universally agreed upon to have value while at the same time existing in enough supply to prevent manipulation by the money-junkies. In arguing about a new value standard for money one detractor argued that gold was the only possible basis for a new monetary system because only gold was universally valued. Obviously, that is not true. One could walk into any nation carrying a gallon of gasoline and find someone willing to trade for it. So clearly, other mediums of exchange are possible, even if we did not have prior history to assure us if their validity and success.
The problem with gold and silver as mediums of exchange is they exist in too small a quantity relative to the growing population. Gold and silver can be manipulated, hoarded, and shorted, to make the speculators rich at the expense of everyone else. Most of the existing gold and silver are already in the hands of the very same bankers who wrecked our present system, so moving to a gold standard merely trades one form of banker-slavery for another.
What is needed is a medium for exchange that increases in supply right alongside the population itself, in order to maintain stability and constant value.
So, my suggestion is to use electricity as the universal basis for a new value-based money system. For the purposes of discussion I call the new US monetary unit the "Lectro." It is redeemable for one kilowatt hour of electricity. The reason I think this is an idea worth pursuing are as follows.
1. While the US Government will have a motive to create electrical power in order to redeem the tokens (coins) and claim checks (Lectro certificates) issued for commerce, creation of electricity and hence money cannot be monopolized. There is no central issuing authority. Every home can have solar panels generating power to the grid, which is redeemable in Lectro notes. In a way we already do this when we pay for power for paper notes and for those able to sell power back to the utility, trade generated power for notes back. This is simply taking the idea to a national scale and making it the de-fact monetary system. and because everyone can generate electricity, artificial scarcity of supply cannot be created.
2. Because power is now the actual monetary system, this approach encourages efficient (and with the proper tax penalties for pollution) clean power generation as well as conservation at the consumer and factory levels.
3. Nobody can short the money supply because everyone can create their own power and monetize it through the treasury. Runaway inflation is impossible because all the coins and certificates in circulation are tied to the available power grid. As power is created, coins and certificates flow into circulation. As power is used, the coins and certificates are taken out of circulation.
4. In the long term, creation of an energy-based money system will smooth the transition from a human-labor to machine-labor society. At present, human labor precedes all capital, payable in a monetary system that pays primarily for human labor. In switching to a monetary system that pays for machine based power production, we evolve towards a society where machines become the primary creators of capital, and all humans shift towards the demand side of the economy. Instead of creating poverty, the push towards automation creates more wealth.

QuiBids.com Reviews – Legit or Scam?

2012-01-20T19:39:00.000+08:00

QuiBids.com is the largest penny auction website currently operating in the United States. Penny auctions have been around for awhile, but have only recently gotten lots of attention from people outside of the penny auction community.
Penny auction websites attract people to them by promising expensive, big ticket items at unbelievably low prices – for example, QuiBids shows a new iPad, which retails at $499 for the most basic model, selling for $22.54. But this winning bid of $22.54 is misleading. This isn’t the truth of how much it costs to win that iPad.
The way penny auctions work is that you are only able to bid a single penny at any time during the auction. However, at QuiBids.com, you must purchase each 1 cent bid for 60 cents. So an iPad that retails for $499 but was won for the grand total of 2,254 one cent bids (or $22.54) which actually cost 60 cents each means that the iPad just sold for $1352.40.
Though the person who wins the item usually has paid less than retail for what they have received, citing $22.54 as the winning bid is extremely misleading.

So is QuiBids a Scam?

All penny auctions, regardless of reputation, are a bad idea and should be avoided.
First of all, QuiBids.com and other penny auction sites require people to pay for the option to bid, but don’t allow them to bid in increments of their choosing. This means that QuiBids is forcing the price up and profiting all the while.

On eBay, the seller and buyer have the auction monitored by the website, which is the trusted third party. On QuiBids.com, there is no trusted third party. QuiBids is the seller and the auctioneer. It works in their favor – and their favor only – to drive the price up in these small 1 or 2 cent increments.
QuiBids attempts to redeem themselves by offering you the “By It Now” option, which is when you can take the total amount of your failed bids and apply that toward the retail price of the item you were bidding on. Say you bid $80 total on an iPod Nano that cost $150. For the remaining $70, Quibids will sell you a Nano. Well, $70 plus tax, fees, and shipping and handling.
With the added “fees,” tax, and S&H, that Nano will cost you more than it would at Apple, and usually much more than it would at a discounted retailer like Amazon.com or Target. In addition, QuiBids is not an approved retailer of Apple – or any major brand name – products.
This means that if you get the item from them, the manufacturer warranty is void – if it breaks within the first 60 days, you will not be able to get it repaired or exchanged. If you have a problem within the first 30 days, QuiBids will refund the final auction price you paid, but not a single dime of the bids it took to win the auction.
It’s much better to stick to legitimate auction sites like eBay, instead of spending lots of frustrating time and effort on penny auction websites like QuiBids.com.

Americans Still Have the Power to Save America

2012-01-20T19:38:00.002+08:00

Heather Callaghan
Activist Post

While mainstream economic reports continue their attempt to rally spirits with selective statistics about the decrease in unemployment, major companies are still laying off huge numbers, have frozen hiring altogether, or are now simply bankrupt and out of business.

However, most often it is the race to the bottom spurred by corporate globalization (outsourcing) that has eroded America's prosperity.

Faced with this reality, even ABC News showed how a typical American family could in fact meet all of their needs with only American-made products. So, how many American-made companies are there?

“Too many to count.”

Surprisingly, little tweaks in buying habits really can save the jobs of our fellow men and women. It is good news, because it shows that no matter how hopeless the job situation gets, some degree of recovery is possible with positive action. Just like the human body, some positive changes can lead to a recovery that is quicker than the time it took to develop ill health.

But is it to late?

It is never to late to support innovation! The upside of the recession/depression is the entrepreneurial fever that has swept America in the last decade.

Many small, independent businesses based from home and on the Internet have bypassed the typical red tape and overhead (thereby keeping things affordable). Supporting them, as well as American manufacturers, keeps things afloat and could create jobs.

Moreover, it may simply push companies and consumers in a different direction. Instead of large infrastructures with many middle men that eventually become outsourced, the near-future economy could be rife with alternative markets, micro businesses, and no-nonsense innovation.

Unfortunately, the corporate media is only now reporting information that would have been beneficial all along. But, luckily, many of you have adhered to the USA-made buying diet. Is it difficult and expensive? No, it just takes a little research; the same amount of research most people devote to other important purchases.

To simplify your USA-made pursuit, here is a site that showcases only American-made products: How Americans Can Buy American. This company provides an aggregate of tons of American manufacturers, saving lots of time in research.

To find out about manufacturing in your state and manufacturing strides and issues, visit Alliance for American Manufacturing.

The companies are there; Americans simply need to tune in to the right channel and support the companies who in turn support them, while boycotting those that don't.

Public Choice: Why Politicians Don't Cut Spending

2012-01-20T19:37:00.002+08:00

http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=17425

Photography pioneer Kodak files for bankruptcy

2012-01-20T19:02:00.004+08:00

(Reuters) - Eastman Kodak Co, the photography icon that invented the hand-held camera, has filed for bankruptcy protection and plans to shrink significantly, capping a prolonged plunge for one of America's best-known companies.
The Chapter 11 filing makes Kodak one of the biggest corporate casualties of the digital age, after it failed to quickly embrace more modern technologies such as the digital camera -- ironically, a product it invented.
Kodak once dominated its industry, and its film was the subject of a popular 1973 song, "Kodachrome," by Paul Simon.
The bankruptcy may give Kodak, which traces its roots to 1880, the ability to find buyers for some of its 1,100 digital patents, a major portion of its value. Kodak now employs 17,000 people worldwide, down from 63,900 just nine years ago.
"It is a very sad day even though we had anticipated it," said Shannon Cross, an analyst at Cross Research who has had a "sell" rating on the company since 2001. "If it emerges, it will be a much smaller entity."
According to papers filed with the U.S. bankruptcy court in Manhattan, Kodak had about $5.1 billion of assets and $6.75 billion of liabilities at the end of September.
In court documents, Chief Financial Officer Antoinette McCorvey said, without elaborating, that Kodak plans to sell "significant assets" during the bankruptcy. Non-U.S. units are not part of the Chapter 11 case.
Kodak also said it obtained a $950 million, 18-month credit line from Citigroup Inc so it can keep operating and avoid having to liquidate. It said it expects to complete the bankruptcy process in 2013.
"This is a necessary step and the right thing to do for the future of Kodak," Chairman and Chief Executive Antonio Perez said in a statement on Thursday.
Kodak's market value has sunk well below $200 million from $31 billion 15 years ago, when its share price topped $94.
The shares began trading on Thursday on the Pink Sheets. By the end of the day they were down 6 cents at 30 cents each.
WAY BEHIND
In recent years, Perez has steered Kodak toward consumer and commercial printers.
But that failed to restore annual profitability, something Kodak has not seen since 2007, and did not arrest a cash drain.
Kodak has struggled to meet its pension and other obligations to more than 65,000 workers, retirees and others who
participate in its employee benefit programs.
McCorvey said Kodak ultimately suffered from a "liquidity shortfall" as some vendors stopped shipping and providing services, and demanded shorter payment terms.
Kodak said in court papers it has about $820 million of cash and equivalents, but was down to just $56.7 million of cash in the United States.
"They got behind the curve on the analog-to-digital shift, and they were way behind for a long time," said Ananda Baruah, an analyst at Brean Murray who covers Kodak.
The company's downfall has also hit its Rust Belt hometown of Rochester, New York, with its workforce there falling to about 7,000 from more than 60,000 in Kodak's heyday.
Andrew Cuomo, New York's governor, on Thursday called the bankruptcy "difficult and disappointing news" for the city, whose population was about 211,000 in the last census.
Kodak named Dominic DiNapoli, a vice chairman at business turnaround specialist FTI Consulting Inc, as its chief restructuring officer.
The investment bank Lazard is also providing advice and has been helping Kodak look for a buyer for its digital patents. Kodak's law firm is Sullivan & Cromwell.
Last week, Kodak reorganized its business operations, creating a commercial unit and a consumer unit. It previously had units for consumer digital imaging; film, photofinishing and entertainment; and graphic communications.
Mark Zupan, dean of the University of Rochester's business school, said "there's still too much value" at Kodak for the company to be forced to liquidate. "Segments will be profitable enough to survive as a leader, as a smaller company."
LITIGATION STRATEGY
Perez, who has been chief executive since 2005, said the bankruptcy would help Kodak maximize the value of patents related to digital imaging, which Kodak said are used in virtually every modern digital camera, smartphone and tablet.
"I've talked to companies who will buy assets who said they were waiting for Kodak to go bankrupt to pay a better price," said Baruah, the Brean Murray analyst.
In the last few years, Kodak has used extensive litigation with rivals such as Apple Inc, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd, South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co and Taiwan's HTC Corp over those patents as a means to try to generate revenue.
Among Kodak's many creditors are retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Target Corp, and movie companies Sony Corp and Walt Disney Co.
Bank of New York Mellon Corp is the largest unsecured creditor, in its capacity as trustee for creditors, with more than $670 million of claims.
APOLLO 11
According to Kodak, George Eastman, a high-school dropout from upstate New York, founded the company in 1880 and began making photographic plates. To get his business going, he splurged on a second-hand engine to make the plates for $125.
Within eight years, the Kodak name had been trademarked, and the company had introduced the hand-held camera as well as roll-up film, where it became the dominant producer.
Eastman also introduced the "Wage Dividend" in which the company would pay bonuses to employees based on results.
Kodak went on to create famous cameras such as the Brownie, launched in 1900 and sold for $1, and the Instamatic in 1963.
The company on its website said a Kodak camera was used on the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. A Kodak camera was used by the astronauts to film the lunar soil from only inches away, according to NASA.
Kodak film has been used on 80 movies that have won Best Picture Oscars, according to the company.
Six years after Apollo 11, and not long after songwriter Simon told his mama not to take his Kodachrome away, Kodak invented the digital camera.
The size of a toaster, it was too big for the pockets of amateur photographers, whose pockets now are stuffed with digital offerings from the likes of Canon, Casio and Nikon.
But rather than develop the digital camera, Kodak put it on the back burner and spent years watching rivals take market share that it would never reclaim.
In 1994, Kodak spun off a chemicals business, Eastman Chemical Co, which proved to be more successful.
Kodak's final downfall in the eyes of investors began in September when it unexpectedly withdrew $160 million from a credit line, raising worries of a cash shortage.
PENSIONS IN FOCUS
It remained unclear how Kodak will address its pension obligations, many of which were built up decades ago when U.S. manufacturers offered more generous retirement and medical benefits.
Many retirees hail from Britain, where Kodak has been manufacturing since 1891. The company had promised to inject $800 million over the next decade into its British pension plan.
McCorvey, the chief financial officer, said in court papers on Thursday that she expects the trustee for the British pension plan to have a "significant" general unsecured claim against the company.
The case is In re: Eastman Kodak Co et al, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-10202.

Four South Carolina Senators Endorse Ron Paul for President 2012

2012-01-20T19:01:00.000+08:00

ONE OF THE GREATEST POSTS ON YOUTUBE SO FAR!

2012-01-20T19:00:00.000+08:00

Warning Signs That We Should Prepare For The Worst

2012-01-20T18:45:00.002+08:00

Warning Signs That We Should Prepare For The Worst

The warning signs are all around us. All we have to do is open up our eyes and look at them. Almost every single day there are more prominent voices in the financial world telling us that a massive economic crisis is coming and that we need to prepare for the worst. On Wednesday, it was the World Bank itself that issued a very chilling warning. In an absolutely startling report, the World Bank revised GDP growth estimates for 2012 downward very sharply, warned that Europe could be on the verge of a devastating financial crisis, and declared that the rest of the world better "prepare for the worst." You would expect to hear this kind of thing on The Economic Collapse Blog, but this is not the kind of language that you would normally expect to hear from the stuffed suits at the World Bank. Obviously things have gotten bad enough that nobody is even really trying to deny it anymore. Andrew Burns, the lead author of the report, said that if the sovereign debt crisis gets even worse we could be looking at an economic crisis that could be even worse than the last one: "An escalation of the crisis would spare no-one. Developed- and developing-country growth rates could fall by as much or more than in 2008/09." Burns also stated that the "importance of contingency planning cannot be stressed enough." In other words, Burns is saying that it is time to prepare for the worst. So are you ready?

But of course it isn't just the World Bank that is warning about these things. The chorus of voices that is warning about the next great financial crisis just seems to grow by the day.

Some of these voices were profiled in a Bloomberg article the other day entitled "Apocalypse How? Dire ’12 Forecasts". The following is just a sampling of quotes from that article....

-John Mauldin, president of Millennium Wave Advisors: "We've got a cancer. That cancer is debt"

-Mark Spitznagel of Universa Investments: "Too much malinvestment has been kept alive, and history shows an inevitable wipeout, which started in 2000."

-Michael Panzner of Financial Armageddon: "The fundamental outlook is even worse now than it was a few weeks ago, given (the lack of positive) developments in Europe and growing evidence that the economies of major countries around the world are deteriorating fast."

If you have time, you should go check out the rest of that article. It really is fascinating.

When this crisis is over, all sorts of people are going to be running around claiming that they predicted it. But it does not take a genius to see what is coming. All you have to do is open up your eyes and look at the flashing red warning signs.

So what should we all be looking for next?

March 20th is a key date to keep your eye on. That is the day when Greece will either makes its 14.5 billion euro bond payment or it will default.

Greece does not have a prayer of making that payment without help. If Greece can convince the EU and the IMF to release the next scheduled bailout payment and if Greece can reach a satisfactory deal with private bondholders, then the coming Greek default might be "orderly". But if something goes wrong, the coming Greek default might be quite "disorderly".

At this point, almost everyone in the financial world is anticipating a Greek default of one form or another....

-Edward Parker, the managing director for Fitch's sovereign and supranational group in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, recently declared that a Greek default is inevitable....

"It is going to happen. Greece is insolvent so it will default."

-Moritz Kraemer, the head of S&P's European sovereign ratings unit, made the following statement on Bloomberg Television on Monday:

"Greece will default very shortly. Whether there will be a solution at the end of the current rocky negotiations I cannot say."

-Richard McGuire, a strategist at Dutch bank Rabobank, was recently quoted by CNBC as saying the following....

"People often ask if Greece is going to default which ... is a misnomer because Greece is (already) defaulting"

-Diane Swonk, the chief economist at Mesirow Financial in Chicago, says that the default by Greece will probably be an "orderly" one but that the situation could change at any moment....

"It appears at the moment that the market is accepting a Greek default as inevitable, and it will be an orderly default. But that can change on a dime."

But whether there is a default or not, the reality is that Greece is already experiencing a full-blown economic depression. In Greece, 20 percent of all retail stores have already shut down. The unemployment rate for those under the age of 24 is now at 39 percent. Large numbers of Greeks are trying to get themselves and their money out of the country while they still can.

Pessimism regarding Greece is at an all-time high. Michael Fuchs, the deputy leader of Angela Merkel's political party, recently made the following statement....

"I don't think that Greece, in its current condition, can be saved."

But of course Greece is not the only declining economy in Europe by a long shot.

Italy has a much larger economy, and if Italy totally collapses it will be an absolute nightmare for the entire globe.

Right now, the Bank of Italy is forecasting a significant recession for the Italian economy in 2012. The following is from a statement that Bank of Italy has just released....

"The uncertainty that surrounds the medium-term perspectives of the Italian economy ... are extraordinarily high and are directly linked to the evolution of the eurozone debt crisis"

Italy's youth unemployment rate has hit the highest level ever, and nearly all sectors of the Italian economy are showing signs of slowing down.

Plus there is the looming problem of Italian debt. As I wrote about yesterday, when you add the maturing debt that the Italian government must roll over in 2012 to their projected budget deficit, it comes to 23.1 percent of Italy's GDP.

Originally it was hoped that the economic problems in Europe could be contained to just a few countries. But now it has become clear that is just not going to happen.

Trends forecaster Gerald Celente recently explained to ABC Australia that much of Europe is already essentially experiencing an economic depression....

"If you live in Greece, you’re in a depression; if you live in Spain, you’re in a depression; if you live in Portugal or Ireland, you’re in a depression,” Celente said. “If you live in Lithuania, you’re running to the bank to get your money out of the bank as the bank runs go on. It’s a depression. Hungary, there’s a depression, and much of Eastern Europe, Romania, Bulgaria. And there are a lot of depressions going on [already]."

The troubling news out of Europe just seems to keep coming in waves. Here are some more recent examples....

-Manufacturing activity in the euro zone has fallen for five months in a row.

-Germany's economy actually contracted during the 4th quarter of 2011.

-It is being reported that the Spanish economy contracted during the 4th quarter of 2011.

-Bad loans in Spain recently hit a 17-year high and the unemployment rate is at a 15-year high.

So will all of this economic trouble eventually spread to the United States?

Of course it will.

The global economy is more interconnected today than ever. Back in 2008 the financial crisis that started on Wall Street ended up devastating economies all over the planet. The same thing will happen during this next great financial crisis.

Only this time the U.S. is in a much weaker position. The U.S. debt problem has gotten much worse since the last crisis.

During 2008, our national debt crossed the 10 trillion dollar mark. Less than 4 years later, we have crossed the 15 trillion dollar mark.

So what are we going to do the next time large numbers of banks fail and unemployment skyrockets?

Where are we going to get the money to bail out all of those banks and to take care of all of those newly unemployed people?

Some people say that socialism is the answer, but the truth is that we are already a socialist welfare state. If you can believe it, nearly half of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of financial benefits from the U.S. government.

During the next great crisis, the number of people that are dependent on the government will go even higher.

If you don't want to end up dependent on the government, you should heed the warning signs and you should use this time to prepare for the hard times that are coming.

When even the World Bank tells us to hope for the best but to prepare for the worst, you know that it is late in the game.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people out there only believe what they want to believe. They don't want to believe that a great economic crisis is coming, and so when it does happen they are going to be absolutely blindsided by it.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/warning-signs-that-we-should-prepare-for-the-worst

Newt Gingrich’s Disgraceful Ignorance About Poor People

2012-01-20T18:44:00.005+08:00

This man is so repulsive in his attitudes toward the poor and the working poor that he makes Perry, Bachmann, and Santorum look like humanitarians. Today, The Hill reported his comments while campaigning in Iowa:

Start with the following two facts. Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works, so they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of “I do this and you give me cash” unless it’s illegal.

Jonathan Capehart:

A lot can be said about the plight of families unlucky enough not to make $60,000 for a half-hour of bloviation or about their equally unlucky children who are deprived delightful cruises through the Greek isles. But Gingrich’s blanket condemnation of “really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods” is unbelievably disgusting. And it’s disrespectful of the overwhelming majority of those children and their families who live their lives with far more integrity and far less cash than Gingrich ever will.

Translating Zero Hedge: Your Wages Will Be Cut In Half

2012-01-20T18:44:00.002+08:00

Yesterday Zero Hedge ran a story that most people will never see or really understand. Zero Hedge reported that the Russians have sold off half of their US Treasury bonds over the past year. China has been dumping their dollar holdings too but still have over a trillion dollars left. Other foreigners have been dumping their dollars too. The current US inflation rate is 12%. Ben Bernanke has been creating trillions of dollars to bail out banks in Europe, to buy worthless securities from US banks and to fund the US debt. That will accelerate inflation. Inflation will go from 12% to 15% and then 20% in less than a year. The media will no longer be able to repeat the lie that the inflation rate is only 3 1/2%. Inflation will become an issue in the 2012 races for congress, Senate and the presidency.
Accelerating inflation will force people overseas to dump any dollars they receive for selling Americans food, clothes, electronics, cars, oil and other raw materials as soon the transaction is completed. This phenomenon is called an increase in the velocity of money. It is a sign your economy is transitioning from an inconveniently high rate of inflation to hyperinflation. The US dollar is an international reserve currency which means that if France wants to buy food from Brazil they will likely have to use US dollars to make that transaction. In colonial America the colonists had to earn British pounds or gold to buy something from overseas. Michael Hudson in his book Super Imperialism described how the US was funding its wars by inflating the supply of currency used to settle trade. Since WW II we have been getting real goods like cars and clothes from foreigners in exchange for increasingly worthless paper. When Hudson explained this to the Pentagon, a general said, “Wow. We are ripping people off.”
I would define hyperinflation as beginning at 25% for an international reserve currency like the dollar. That is why when inflation surged in the latter part of the Carter presidency (1979-1980) Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker raised interest rates. Home mortgages went to 15 1/2%. Ben Bernanke cannot raise interest rates today. His only option would be to devalue the dollar which is what he said he would do in that now infamous speech he made in Washington DC on 11-21-2002.
That means after the 2012 elections the Russians, the Chinese, Iran, Venezuela plus their clients states and a few other nations can and will force a devaluation of the dollar by refusing to accept Federal Reserve Notes in international trade. If Americans balk, China just has to dump a hundred billion dollars and buy commodities driving the price of food out of the reach of WalMart shoppers. Of course I realize the Chinese will just be doing what the bankers want them to do.
An international conference will be held at which the dollar will be devalued by about 40% as predicted by Bernanke. This will complete that 50% pay cut I have been predicting.
The Chinese will have dumped most of their dollars before the conference so that their economy will not be harmed by a dollar devaluation. If Americans can’t afford to buy Chinese products, China will just sell them to people whose currencies were revalued upwards.
I would suggest you buy storable food, silver coins (not collectibles) and household items that will just increase in cost.
Of course this was all planned long ago by the bankers. I will conclude with this quote from a previous essay:
The Fundamental Fact of Your Existence as a modern man or woman is that the bankers of New York and London want to reduce you to Debt Slavery.
Accept that fact and move on to the solution.
And I also said:
That is their plan for you.
What is your plan for them?
Author’s Notes: These are related articles.
2012 Timeline: Assets Seizure, Hyperinflation And Debt Slavery
http://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/2012-timeline-assets-seizure-hyperinflation-and-debt-slavery/
America Is Now A Criminal Enterprise And That Is The Good News
http://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/america-is-now-a-criminal-enterprise-and-that-is-the-good-news/
The Mathematics Of Austerity: Proving Austerity Never Was Even Intended To Work
http://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/the-mathematics-of-austerity-proving-austerity-never-was-even-intended-to-work/
A Fractional Reserve Gold Standard: The Next Big Fraud
http://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/a-fractional-reserve-gold-standard-the-next-big-fraud/
Nine Myths And Misconceptions About Money That Can Literally Kill You
http://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/1054/
Reference: That Zero Hedge article is here:
China Brings US Treasury Holdings To One Year Low, Russia Cuts Treasury Exposure By 50% In One Year
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/china-brings-us-treasury-holdings-one-year-low-russia-cuts-holdings-50-one-year

Dr. Obama's Miracle Green Job Elixir Gives $737 Million To Solar Firm Linked To Pelosi's Brother-In-Law

2012-01-18T03:58:00.002+08:00

With Solyndra in the news again, these stories are worth another look.

MOST RECENT STORIES

New CNN Poll Shows Obama Tied With Romney And Ron Paul In November Showdowns, Gingrich & Santorum Trail Behind

2012-01-18T03:57:00.003+08:00

Despite the headline, this is not a surprise to anyone but establishment GOP insiders. This is the third poll in recent months showing Ron Paul competing favorably against Obama in a general election. Dr. Paul might not be able to win the Republican nomination, but he and Romney are the only 2 candidates with any chance against Obama. Moreover, when you consider that Romney is a Bush-Obama clone (both love bailouts, war, cronyism, Wall Street and the Federal Reserve), it becomes abundantly clear that Ron Paul is the only choice for fundamental change.
Perhaps that is why in New Hampshire last week, nearly half of ALL young voters voted for Dr. Paul.
Full details on the brand new CNN poll are below, plus a few Ron Paul stories you might not have seen.
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Source - CNN

Washington – Mitt Romney is all tied up with President Barack Obama in a likely general election matchup, with the president showing signs of weakness on the economy and Romney seen as out of touch with ordinary Americans, according to a new national survey.

And a CNN/ORC International Poll released Monday also indicates that Rep. Ron Paul of Texas is also even with Obama in another possible showdown this November. The survey also suggests the Republican advantage on voter enthusiasm is eroding, which could be crucial in a close contest.
According to the survey, if the November election were held today and Romney were the Republican presidential nominee, 48% say they'd vote for the former Massachusetts governor, with 47% supporting the president. Romney's one point margin is well within the poll's sampling error.
The poll also indicates Paul statistically tied with Obama, with the president at 48% and the longtime congressman at 46%. But according to the poll, the president is doing better against two other Republican presidential candidates. If Rick Santorum were the GOP nominee, Obama would hold a 51%-45% advantage over the former senator from Pennsylvania. And if Newt Gingrich faced off against the president, Obama would lead the former House speaker 52%-43%.
Continue reading...
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Sarkozy mocks S&P credit downgrade

2012-01-18T03:57:00.000+08:00

Occupy Boston Rally at the Federal Reserve

2012-01-18T03:50:00.000+08:00

Occupy Boston - Fuck the fed

2012-01-18T03:49:00.001+08:00

Blue Chip Companies Bailing Out Weak Eurozone Banks

2012-01-18T03:49:00.000+08:00

Role reversal Euro-style. With 2% yields in the cash markets, this makes sense intuitively for cash-rich lenders, but with the possibility of default looming large, the loans are now secured.
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Reuters
Blue-chip names like Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Peugeot are among firms bailing out Europe's ailing banks in a reversal of the established roles of clients and lenders.
One source with knowledge of the so-called repo deals or short-term secured lending, said the two U.S. pharmaceutical groups and French carmaker were the latest to sign up for them.
Europe's banks are struggling to secure the cash to fund their day-to-day business and have largely stopped lending to each other for fear Europe's sovereign debt crisis could land any of their peers in trouble.
As a result a group of well-known, cash-rich companies with solid cash flows has stepped in the repo market, which provides a form of lending so far almost exclusively in use between banks, and between banks and central banks.
One market participant said in one key area of lending companies now accounted for 25 percent of these deals.
Repos provide the new financiers with the strict guarantees they need before parting with their cash, answering worries that the crisis has weakened Europe's banks to the extent that they might not be able to pay the money back.
"Companies in the past were ... happy to deposit cash on an unsecured basis to a bank for an interest payment," said Frank Reiss, who oversees some of the repo business at Euroclear, the Brussels-based settlement house owned by a group of banks.
"Now following the crisis, we have seen that companies are engaging in repos secured with collateral against the cash they are lending," said Reiss. Euroclear is the largest administrator of repo trades in Europe.
Continue reading...

Protesters Ready Igloos To Occupy Davos

2012-01-18T03:11:00.005+08:00

A member of the Occupy WEF movement uses a shovel to extend the entrance of the first igloo at their camp site in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos January 16, 2012. The Occupy WEF members will stay in a camp of several igloos to protest during the World Economic Forum (WEF) which takes place from January 25 to 29.

Photo Credit: Reuters/Arnd Wiegmann

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Reuters
Occupy protesters with their sights set on the World Economic Forum, the annual gathering next week of the rich and powerful in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, unveiled their igloo accommodation on Monday.
When fully erected, Camp Igloo will include two heated teepees and a field kitchen alongside the ice houses to sleep about 50 people in sub-zero temperatures, activists said.
Davos, which brings together politicians, central bankers and business leaders, has become a byword for globalization.
The Occupy Wall Street movement burst onto the scene last year to focus attention on income inequality and the perceived greed of the rich and powerful. Copy-cat protests sprung up in cities around the United States and worldwide.
But authorities have cleared many tented encampments and the movement has lost some momentum during the northern hemisphere winter.
"It is the decisions of the few which have led us into the crisis of recent years and now the same people are posing as the solution to these problems," David Roth, president of the youth wing of the Swiss Social Democrats, told reporters at Camp Igloo, near the Davos train station.
"This is the wrong solution as it is undemocratic and cynical. Democracy is not only the right path for the Arab states but is also urgently needed again in the West."
Continue reading...

Financial Clearing Houses: The Next Casualty Of The Crisis?

2012-01-18T03:11:00.002+08:00

Reuters
Jan 16 (Reuters) - Clearing houses -- the plumbers of high finance -- could become the next casualties of the crisis as regulators insist that banks run their riskiest and private trades through them.
At the moment banks conduct over-the-counter trades between themselves: one to one dealings often involving multimillion-euro bets on differences in interest or other rates, the scale and complexity of which can be difficult to track.
But with the financial crisis still raging and banks, hedge funds and governments alike faced with unforeseen levels of debt, regulators are now forcing this shadowy, $600-trillion industry into the light.
The question being asked by industry insiders is whether the clearing houses, also known as central counterparties (CCPs), are any more secure.
"What happens if they go bust? I can tell you the simple answer: mayhem. As bad as, conceivably worse than, the failure of large and complex banks," Paul Tucker, deputy governor of the Bank of England, said in October.
Clearing houses, such LCH.Clearnet, Deutsche Boerse's Eurex Clearing and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's CME Clearing, sit between the parties at either end of a trade.
They protect companies from default because they hold collateral on behalf of their numerous members that can be used to reimburse individual firms if one member becomes insolvent -- a standard model used in various exchange-traded markets around the world.
But in taking on over-the-counter (OTC) products the concern is that the clearing houses will not have sufficient collateral to cover the scale of possible future positions.
In the view of International Monetary Fund economist Manhmohan Singh, the central counterparties dealing with over-the-counter derivatives need to hold $2 trillion in collateral if they are to successfully manage this kind of trading.
"The mandated clearing of OTC derivatives is a complex matter on many levels. Derivatives require a lot of collateral because the duration of the contracts can be very long," said Diana Chan, the Chief Executive of clearing house EuroCCP.
Clearing had been a largely overlooked feature of trading on exchanges for decades until it was thrown into the spotlight by the high-profile default of Lehman Brothers in September 2008.
In the aftermath of its collapse Lehman's trading positions in markets that used clearing houses were sorted out in a matter of days. Those in non-cleared markets took months if not years.
Mindful of this experience, regulators in the United States and Europe have urged many of the largest over-the-counter markets to start using clearing houses in order to mitigate against any other default by a large trading firm.
Continue reading...

Move Over Solyndra Here Comes Another Solar Energy Scandal - A $1.2 Billion Federal Loan, '10-15' Permanent Jobs And A New Facility In Mexico (SunPower)

2012-01-18T03:10:00.002+08:00

More American tax dollars down the rat hole of political cronyism.
All to create 10-15 permanent jobs. That's not some silly estimate, that's what the Department of Energy thought would result from the billion dollar loan. Now we know why they call it green energy.
Source - Big Government
The Department of Energy bragged about giving a $1.2 billion loan guarantee to SunPower, a politically connected solar energy company, to create “10-15 permanent jobs,” raising critical questions as to if California SunPower is the next Solyndra in the ongoing Crony-Gate scandal.
Unlike Solyndra, which went bankrupt after receiving the loan from the government leaving taxpayer on the hook, SunPower’s deal is more complicated. Many questions are being raised about how the company was able to obtain the loan and what they did after they got the money. Questions include:

How could the Department of Energy give a loan to a company that was under a shareholder suit alleging securities fraud and misrepresentations?
The son of Rep. George Miller (D-CA) who was paid $178,000 to lobby on behalf of the company represented SunPower as a lobbyist. Why did Rep. George Miller tour the SunPower facility – which is outside his congressional district – and what other official action did Rep. Miller take on behalf of the company that is represented by his lobbyist son?
Did the company’s hefty political contributions to the Obama campaign and the DCCC play a role in the deal?
Did U.S. taxpayers help pay for the company to open a facility in Mexico after the announcement of the loan?
Was the U.S. government aware that company executives were in the process of selling a portion of the company to a French company – an action that was undertaken two weeks after the loan was awarded? Did the loan allow insider’s to cash out leaving other investors holding on to the stock that has dropped by more than 60% since the loan was awarded?

LAW OFFICES OF DAVID J. STERN, CHERYL SAMONS, MERS, DJSP FORECLOSURE FRAUD

2012-01-17T14:09:00.002+08:00

Source - Fire Dog Lake

In 2010, the Law Offices of David J. Stern spun off the robo signing document mill part of his business into a separate, publicly traded company.

Stern pocketed some $60 million from that deal. The investors got the company and all its documents, internal procedures and everything you would need in order to find out what really happened within the Stern document mill.

The lawsuit is by the investors suing Stern for lying to them about the activities of the document mill and misleading them into believing they were buying a legitimate business instead of a criminal enterprise. Unlike a regular plaintiff or an Attorney General who is dependent on obtaining documents and information FROM the target of their ire via discovery of subpoena or search warrant, these plaintiffs apparently have all the info they need already in hand, because they bought the company.

Here are a few quotes from the Complaint to show what was found in the books and records of the Stern foreclosure mill.

32. The Seller Defendants’ fraudulent and illegal foreclosure practices prior to the Transaction, and the subsequent demise of the Seller Defendants’ law practice, have now been well documented and reported upon in the local and national media.

33. Prior to the Transaction, the Seller Defendants were at all times well aware that DS Law and the Target Business were intentionally perpetuating a fraud on the courts by, inter alia, systematically filing forged documents, forging signatures on such documents, fraudulently backdating documents, improperly notarizing and witnessing documents, fabricating documents, signing affidavits without reviewing or verifying the information contained therein, prosecuting foreclosure cases without obtaining proper service of process, and filing foreclosures with inaccurate and/or incomplete documents.

34. Indeed, the Seller Defendants directed employees of DS Law and the Target Business to purposefully overlook glaring inaccuracies in foreclosure pleadings and to essentially rubber stamp computer generated documents without reviewing or verifying the accuracy of the documents. New attorneys at DS Law were not only encouraged, but were even ordered to sign legal filings and pleadings without reading them. As a result, false and inaccurate documents were routinely executed and filed with the courts in an effort to hasten foreclosure proceedings and illegally obtain final judgments of foreclosure for the Seller Defendants’ clients.

Bill Gross Exposes "The New Paranormal" For Markets

2012-01-17T14:08:00.003+08:00

Wall Street, Washington and Gingrich

2012-01-17T14:08:00.000+08:00

Newt Gingrich and his consulting companies helped financial-services giant Credit Suisse Group gather exclusive Washington information and analysis, showing that the Republican presidential candidate benefited from a practice that has come under fire from lawmakers.
This "political intelligence" business—while legal—also risks muddying the campaign argument by the former House speaker that he has been a Washington outsider since he left Congress in 1999.

Newt Gingrich and his consulting companies helped financial-services giant Credit Suisse gather exclusive Washington information and analysis. Brody Mullins has details on Campaign Journal.

At a June 2010 lunch, Mr. Gingrich gave Credit Suisse and its clients his take on whether Republicans would back government spending on renewable energy. That fall, Credit Suisse analysts held conference calls with a top official at Mr. Gingrich's health-care consultancy, the Center for Health Transformation, to interpret changes to health-care policy.
And on May 26, 2011, Mr. Gingrich's health-care firm organized a day of private meetings between Credit Suisse analysts and senior Republican congressional health-care policy aides. Though held a few weeks after Mr. Gingrich left to run for president, it was planned while he was running the firm.
The Credit Suisse "D.C. Day" at the K Street offices of the Center for Health Transformation featured analysis from top Senate aides. Credit Suisse stock analysts used the information gathered at these events to help make stock recommendations to the firm's investor clients.
Information in this story comes from people invited to the meetings and from Credit Suisse research reports.

R.C. Hammond, a campaign spokesman for Mr. Gingrich, defended the work by calling the Credit Suisse events a standard element of the center's business. "This is what CHT is: It's information flow and an exchange of ideas," he said. "They weren't giving them investment advice; they were giving them policy analysis." He added: "Giving an update on what's going on in Washington is information analysis at its best."
In a statement, Credit Suisse said its "research analysts regularly tap appropriate experts from a broad array of disciplines, in an effort to help investors make informed decisions."
Wall Street firms increasingly are seeking an edge by trying to figure out how pending policy changes could affect stocks. To service this desire a crop of political-intelligence firms has sprung up. Unlike lobbyists, they face no requirement to register with the government or disclose their names or clients. The firms connect investors with Washington insiders, who pass on analysis based on their experience and contacts. In some cases, firms arrange face-to-face meetings for investors with officials writing laws.

Enlarge Image

Getty Images

Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich at a State Capitol rally for home ownership Thursday in Columbia, S.C.

Legislation introduced by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D., N.Y.) would require companies that sell political intelligence to disclose for the first time their activities and Wall Street clients. It has been embraced by a majority of House members, up from nine in November. House Republicans say they want to approve the bill early this year. It also would bar lawmakers and congressional aides from disclosing market-moving, nonpublic information about pending or prospective legislation if they believe the information will be used in stock trades.
In the Senate, Sen. Joe Lieberman, (I., Conn.) said he wants to hold a hearing on the political-intelligence business in the next few months.
Mr. Gingrich's Center for Health Transformation signed up dozens of health-care companies who paid as much as $200,000 a year to be members, with the goal of discussing and promoting free-market solutions to health-care issues. Member companies had access to a menu of services, including a speech by Mr. Gingrich, policy papers and regular conference calls. "Platinum" members receive twice-a-year meetings with members of Congress, key congressional aides and administration officials.

Enlarge Image

REUTERS

Newt Gingrich in Columbia, S.C.

The Center for Health Transformation declined to say who its members are and it was unclear if Credit Suisse was among this group.
According to a membership contract viewed by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Gingrich's group "will help host, twice during our annual partnership, a delegation of portfolio managers, client company executives, etc. for a visit to Washington DC." The day "can include meeting with key thought leaders in health care, elected officials or key staff from the Hill."
For Credit Suisse, there was the added benefit of taking advantage of Mr. Gingrich's insights and connections to gain an edge in its analysis of health-care stocks. It isn't known if other Wall Street firms were members of the center.
Companies join the center "because of our vast expertise on health policy issues and concepts we forged to transform health care," said Susan Meyers, a spokeswoman for the center. "We have been a very attractive place for anyone wanting to come to learn more about how to save lives and save money."

The May 26, 2011, event linked Credit Suisse executives with top Capitol Hill aides, including two Republicans from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and one from the Senate's tax-writing committee, which has jurisdiction over health-care policy. Others at the meetings included Charles Boorady, a top health-care analyst for Credit Suisse. The investment firm said Mr. Boorady wouldn't comment.
On June 1, Credit Suisse issued a report in Mr. Boorady's name predicting—based in part on information he cited from the "DC Day"—that managed-care companies such as UnitedHealth Group Inc. would likely benefit from a push by states and the federal government to reduce costs for Medicare and Medicaid patients.
Credit Suisse upgraded its outlook for UnitedHealth Group and raised its "target price" to $62 per share, up from $60 a share. The stock was then trading in the low $50s; it closed Thursday at $52.87 a share.
In September and October 2010, Credit Suisse analysts held two conference calls with Vincent Frakes, a top official at the Center for Health Transformation. The analysts asked Mr. Frakes for his take on how states would implement a piece of the health-care law that requires insurers to spend 80% to 85% of their revenue on medical care.
In the September conference call, Mr. Frakes said he didn't expect many states to change their insurance rules in a way that would hurt managed-care companies. He noted in a follow-up call in October that a move by a regulatory agency could make it more likely that states would ask for waivers from the rules, according to an Oct. 22 research report from Credit Suisse.
The research report said Credit Suisse's "top picks" were health insurers UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint Inc.
—Janet Adamy, Jon Kamp and Deborah Ball contributed to this article.

Top Contributors

2012-01-17T13:28:00.001+08:00

This table lists the top donors to this candidate in the 2012 election cycle. The organizations themselves did not donate , rather the money came from the organizations' PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.

Because of contribution limits, organizations that bundle together many individual contributions are often among the top donors to presidential candidates. These contributions can come from the organization's members or employees (and their families). The organization may support one candidate, or hedge its bets by supporting multiple candidates. Groups with national networks of donors - like EMILY's List and Club for Growth - make for particularly big bundlers.

Goldman Sachs	$367,200
Credit Suisse Group	$203,750
Morgan Stanley	$199,800
HIG Capital	$186,500
Barclays	$157,750
Kirkland & Ellis	$132,100
Bank of America	$126,500
PriceWaterhouseCoopers	$118,250
EMC Corp	$117,300
JPMorgan Chase & Co	$112,250
The Villages	$97,500
Vivint Inc	$80,750
Marriott International	$79,837
Sullivan & Cromwell	$79,250
Bain Capital	$74,500
UBS AG	$73,750
Wells Fargo	$61,500
Blackstone Group	$59,800
Citigroup Inc	$57,050
Bain & Co	$52,500

Percent of Contributions Coded

Coded	$20,882,176	(73%)
Uncoded	$7,846,560	(27%)
Total	$28,728,736

Why (and How) We Use Donors' Employer/Occupation Information
METHODOLOGY
NOTE: All the numbers on this page are for the 2012 election cycle and based on Federal Election Commission data released electronically on Monday, December 05, 2011.
("Help! The numbers don't add up...")

Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics. For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center.

An Open Letter to Family and Friends About Preparedness

2012-01-17T13:27:00.000+08:00

Gaye Levy, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Today, with permission from Todd at the Prepper Website, I am re-producing an open letter to friends, families and others in your circle who have not started to prepare. I discovered this letter after writing about Disaster Denial and, truly, I believe that one of the greatest gifts you can pass on to people you care about is this letter and some guidance in helping them achieve their preparedness goal.

An Open Letter to Family & Friends

I’m writing this letter because I care about you. Please take a few minutes to read it and think about what I’m saying.

Why the Letter?

Our lives are crazy. We take care of our family, work, eat, play chauffer, pay the bills, etc. When we have a little bit of free time, we like to just veg in front of the TV and watch some brain-numbing pictures flicker across the screen. We can go at it like this for days, weeks and even months, not knowing what is going on in the world outside our local community and just getting by with the talk around the water cooler.

And when we take life in these little chunks, separate blocks of our time and attention, it seems a little bit more manageable. We move from one task, event, errand, chore to the other.

The problem is when we look at our lives from a big picture perspective. What if our lives suddenly changed? What if the stress of the day came bearing down at you all at once? How could this happen?

This can easily happen during an emergency. I’m not talking about your son just stuffed his GI Joe down the toilet, or the dog is out of food emergency. I’m talking about the big stuff.

The Big Emergency

The big emergency is the one that stops you in your tracks. It can be personal, based in your local community, or worldwide. But it is the one that everything else stops and all resources and energy are put towards it.

The problem is that most people are not prepared for the big one.

Prepared?

Do you have an emergency fund for financial emergencies? Do you have insurance for medical emergencies? Do you have food and water if there is a food supply/transportation emergency? Do you have other means of cooking and preparing your food if utilities weren’t available? Do you have first aid supplies and extra medicine on hand? Do you have basic skills that could help you: fire starting, water purification, gardening, first aid, etc.?

This is the whole reason for my letter. I want to help you see the importance of being prepared and to start being more self-reliant. It’s not too hard, but it does take time, planning and effort. But then again, what would the time, planning and effort that you put in ahead of time be worth in the middle of an emergency? You’ll be glad you did!

Action Steps

Make a plan – What are you preparing for? What needs to be done? Don’t look at the magnitude of the plan; that can be overwhelming. Take it in chunks. In reality, you will never be “prepared.” You can be “not prepared” or “overly prepared,” but never “perfectly prepared.” Consider the basics: financial, medical, etc. but also keep in mind your region of the country; hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, fires, etc.

Set goals – When do you want _____ accomplished?
1. Get a 3-day supply of food. Then move to a 3-week supply.
2. Revisit insurance: house, vehicle, medical, life, etc.
3. Start an emergency fund – 3-6 months of expenses.
4. Start a garden.
5. Take a class: first-aid, sewing, gardening, firearm, wilderness survival.
6. Watch some videos on YouTube (search "preparedness").
7. Read blogs and articles on “preparedness” and “prepping.”
8. Get active – go meet your goals!

Warning

The world of preparedness/prepping can be an addictive one. It can suck you in, mess with your emotions and get you seeing the world in the fragile state that it is in. It is always best to approach preparedness within community. You should go it alone only if no one else is willing. Eventually, they will realize that you were right, even if that is in the midst of a storm.

Fragile

Non GMO Heirloom Seed Bank

It is not in the scope of this letter to discuss all possible emergency scenarios that you should prepare for. But outside of regional, natural disasters, it is important to me to briefly mention our global situation. Things outside our local community have gone from bad to worse! At first, we might not care about what is going on in some Asian or European country, but the fact is that we are all tied into each other now. What happens over there, affects us over here.

There are many “End of the World as We Know It” type scenarios out there. One such scenario is an economic collapse. Someone recently replied to me and said, “Yes, times can get hard, but we have been through it before during the Great Depression.” The fact is that it is way different this time. Our country didn’t have the debt that we have now. And, if for some reason the world loses faith in our government’s ability to pay its debts, we are up the creek. It really isn’t too far-fetched to imagine this happening if you’ll look into it. The concern has gone beyond the tin foil hat people. Just research it!

Do Something

Please take this letter seriously. If you prepare and don’t need it, the worst is that you have some food (food costs are going up/buy now at cheaper prices) and other supplies. But if you ever find you are in a position that you do need it, you and your loved ones will be glad you were prepared!

Once again, a gracious hat tip to the Prepper Website for providing all of us with this letter to share with our friends and family. A copy is available from download at the Backdoor Survival download site.

Enjoy your next adventure through common sense and thoughtful preparation!

Gaye Levy, the SurvivalWoman, grew up and attended school in the Greater Seattle area. After spending many years as an executive in the software industry, she started a specialized accounting practice offering contract CFO work to emerging high tech and service industries. She has now abandoned city life and moved to a serenely beautiful rural area on an island in NW Washington State. She lives and teaches the principles of a sustainable, self-reliant and stylish lifestyle through emergency preparation and disaster planning through her website at BackdoorSurvival.com. SurvivalWoman speaks her mind and delivers her message with optimism and grace, regardless of mayhem swirling around us. Enjoy your next adventure through common sense and thoughtful preparation!

Ron Paul Parade by South Florida Grassroots! (MASSIVE EXPOSURE!)

2012-01-17T13:26:00.000+08:00

The Foreclosure-to-Rental Screwjob

2012-01-16T17:55:00.000+08:00

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke wants US taxpayers to purchase more of the garbage loans and mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that the big banks still have on their books. (Cash for trash) That’s the impetus behind the Fed’s 26-page white paper that was delivered to Congress last Wednesday. The document outlines the Fed’s plan for ‘stabilizing the housing market’, which is a phrase that Bernanke employs when he wants to provide more buy-backs, giveaways, subsidies and other corporate welfare to big finance.
“Restoring the health of the housing market is a necessary part of a broader strategy for economic recovery,” Bernanke opined in a letter to the Senate Banking and House Financial Services committees.
Indeed. The housing depression continues into its 5th year with no end in sight, mainly because the people who created the crisis are still in positions of power. And, they’re still offering the same remedies, too, like handing the banks another blank check to save them from losses on their bad bets. That’s what this new “housing stabilization” boondoggle is really all about, bailing out the bankers. Here’s a summary from Bloomberg:

“Bernanke’s Fed study said “more might be done,” including eliminating entirely the reduced fees for risky loans, “more comprehensively” cutting lenders’ put-back risks; and further streamlining refinancing for other Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac borrowers. The U.S. also should consider having Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac refinance loans not already backed by the government, which would add credit risk for the companies, according to the report….” (Bloomberg)

First of all, Fannie and Freddie only return loans (“put-backs”) that don’t meet their standards and which the banks foisted on them so they wouldn’t have to face the losses. The idea that the publicly-funded GSE’s should just “eat the losses” is ridiculous.
And, why–in heaven’s name–would congress want to take on more risk when they can keep millions of people in their homes by simply reducing the principle on their mortgages to the present value of the house? (aka–”Cramdowns”) Naturally, the losses would have to be absorbed by the banks who–by everyone’s admission–were
responsible for the present crisis due to their lax lending standards and, oftentimes, fraudulent behavior. This would lead to a restructuring of the country’s biggest banks through a Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) so their toxic assets and backlog of foreclosed properties can be auctioned off as soon as possible.
This is a straightforward way to fix the housing market and it should have been done long ago. Bernanke’s solution is not only unreasonable, it’s also deceitful. Here’s more from the Fed’s paper: “Continued weakness in the housing market poses a significant barrier to a more vigorous economic recovery”..(without action)…“the adjustment process will take longer and incur more deadweight losses, pushing house prices lower and thereby prolonging the downward pressure on the wealth of current homeowners and the resultant drag on the economy at large.”
Did it really take Bernanke 5 years to figure out that housing is a “drag on the economy”?
No, of course not. So, what’s going on now that has suddenly spurred him to act?
Well, for one thing, the banks are losing a great deal of money on the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that they bought in the last few years. Here’s the story in the Wall Street Journal:

“After flickering to life early in 2011, the market for subprime- and other risky residential-mortgage bonds has returned to its comatose state. And many investors believe a revival could be years away.
Prices on some bonds, which are backed by mortgages that don’t meet the standards needed to get backing from government-controlled companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, plummeted as much as 30% last year. The ABX, an index that tracks the value of subprime bonds, ended the year at 43.44 cents on the dollar, down from 59.90 cents at year-end 2010 and a peak of 62.68 cents in February 2011
While that decline pushed yields up to as much as 17%—bond yields rise as prices fall—many fund managers have pulled out of the market due to worries about further price declines. Moreover, repeated downgrades have left too few investment-grade securities for them to own. Wall Street banks, which traditionally have played a key role in the market matching buyers and sellers, are backing away ahead of new regulations that will make it more expensive to hold riskier assets.” (Investors Sour on Subprime Bonds, WSJ)

So, Wall Street’s financial geniuses got back into the MBS-biz (for a second time) and got whacked again? That’s right; and now they want John Q. Public to pay for it with another bailout.
And, there’s more to this story, too. European banks own roughly $100 billion of these mortgage-backed turkeys which they’re presently shedding like crazy in order to meet new capital requirements. That means US bank balance sheets are dripping red as the value of their financial asset-stockpile continues to plunge. That’s why Sugar Daddy Bernanke has stepped in, because it’s time for another multi-billion dollar bank rescue.
Look, the Fed has already purchased over $1.25 trillion of these toxic MBS which represents humongous long-term losses for the taxpayer. Do we really need more of this sludge?
Bernanke promised that the first round of quantitative easing (QE1) would boost employment (It hasn’t) and improve housing sales (it never happened) The only uptick in sales occurred because the colluding banks deliberately reduced the supply of foreclosed homes they put on the market. The reduction has led to a massive 1.7 million backlog of housing units (shadow inventory) that will eventually be dumped onto the market triggering another sharp decline in housing prices. Bernanke wants to do something about the bulging inventory as well as prop up the value of sagging MBS. So, the Fed’s plan actually has two main objectives; in other words, it’s the double whammy. Here’s more from Bloomberg:

“Since the Fed started buying $1.25 trillion of mortgage bonds in January 2009, the value of U.S. housing has fallen 4.1 percent, and is down 32 percent from its 2006 peak, according to an S&P/Case-Shiller index. The central bank is poised to buy about $200 billion this year, or more than 20 percent of new loans, as it reinvests debt that’s being paid off. Some Fed officials have said they may support additional purchases that Barclays Capital estimates could total as much as $750 billion.”

Did you catch that? Taxpayers are going to get slammed for another $750 billion. That’s nearly as much as Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the fiscal stimulus that added 2 percent to GDP and kept unemployment from rocketing to 13 percent. Bernanke wants to throw that same amount down a Wall Street sinkhole.
So maybe you think this won’t happen, after all, could Congress really be so gullible as to fall for Bernanke’s fearmongering flim-flam again?
Maybe and maybe not. But there are some pretty wealthy and well-connected people who are betting that the Fed will do as it’s told and pave the way for another hefty bailout. In fact, the world’s largest bond fund (Pimco) has stumped up a mountain of cash betting that good buddy Bernanke will get the printing presses whirring sometime in mid-January. Here’s the story from Zero Hedge:

”….in December the fund (Total Return Fund or TRF) doubled down on its QE3 all in bet, by “borrowing” even more cash, or a record $78 billion, using the proceeds to buy even more MBS, as well as Treasurys, which hit a combined 31% of the TRF’s holdings. In other words, between MBS and USTs, Pimco holds a whopping 79% of total, mostly in very long duration exposure. In fact, this combination of long duration and pre-QE exposure has not been seen at PIMCO since late 2008, early 2009, meaning that as many banks have been suggesting, (Bill) Gross is convinced that the Fed will announce if not outright QE3 this January, then at least intimate it is coming.”(“Pimco Doubles Down On All In Bet Fed Will Monetize MBS”, Zero Hedge)

So what does Pimco know that we don’t know? More importantly, from whom are they getting their information?
And, there’s another thing, too. This whole deal about converting foreclosed homes into rental properties is another scam. Here’s the scoop from another article in the Wall Street Journal:

“The paper also signaled that the Fed…. will try to involve banks more directly in housing-revival approaches… One area involves efforts to turn foreclosed homes into rental properties….
Banking regulations typically direct banks to sell foreclosed homes quickly, although the rules do recognize this isn’t always practical and so these properties can be held up to five years. The Fed said it is now “contemplating issuing guidance” to banks and regulators that would possibly allow banks to turn some of these foreclosed homes into rental properties…..The hope is this may help stanch the flow of foreclosed properties into markets…” (“Fed Up With the Depressed State of Housing”, Wall Street Journal)

Bingo. The banks are not only sitting on 1.7 million shadow inventory of homes they’ve stockpiled to keep prices artificially high. They also have millions more in the pipeline when a settlement is finally reached on the robo-signing scandal. So, what are they going to do with all that backlog?
That’s easy. They’ll schluff it off on the taxpayer by creating a foreclosure-to-rental swindle where the government provides lavish incentives for banks and private equity scavengers to buy the homes (in bulk) for pennies on the dollar with loans provided by–you guessed it–Uncle Sam. Here’s a summary of what’s going on behind the scenes:

“As the Obama administration and federal regulators work on a program to sell government-owned foreclosures in bulk to investors, those investors aren’t wasting any time stockpiling cash and buying foreclosed properties at auction and from the major banks.
Oakland, California-based Waypoint Real Estate Group, a major acquirer of so-called “REO to Rental” (Real Estate Owned) just announced a partnership with a private equity firm, Menlo Park, California-based GI Partners, to buy foreclosed properties….
“Our approach to buying distressed single-family houses, renovating them, and leasing to residents who are committed to a path to future home ownership is a viable solution to our nation’s housing crisis,” said Colin Wiel, managing director and co-founder of Waypoint in a press release. “Our partnership with GI Partners ensures we can take the next step in our company’s evolution.”
GI is taking an increasingly popular bet on distressed real estate, closing on a $400 million fund with Waypoint, which has plans to purchase $1 billion in distressed real estate assets over the next two years, according to its release. (“Private Equity Readying a Run on Foreclosures”, Diana Olick, CNBC)

So, what do these guys know that we don’t know? And why are they plunking down big money when the details have not even been released yet?
None of this really passes the smell test, does it? The only thing we know for sure is that the “fix is in” and that Bernanke will do what he always does when the banks are in a pinch. Throw them a lifeline.
MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com

Hungarians hold anti-EU demonstration

2012-01-16T17:54:00.000+08:00

Protesters trample a burnt European Union flag during a demonstration in front of the EU Parliament and Committee headquarters in downtown Budapest, January 14, 2012.

Thousands of Hungarians have protested against the European Union, urging their country to pull out from the bloc while Budapest seeks EU's backing to evade insolvency.

People gathered in front of the European Commission offices in Budapest on Saturday in a street protest called by the rightist Jobbik Party -- the second biggest opposition party in Hungary's parliament.

“This week the EU declared war on Hungary in a very harsh and open way," said Csanad Szegedi, a Jobbik member of European Parliament, addressing the protesters.

Szegedi was referring to the bloc's threats of legal action against Hungary over a series of new laws passed by the two-thirds majority of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz party.

The EU says the law curtails the independence of the country's central bank, its judiciary and its national data protection authority.

The most disputed point of the legislation, which went into effect on January 1, is a plan to merge the central bank and the financial regulator, a de facto demotion for the country's central bank president.

Although Hungary made a set of changes to the central bank law to more closely comply with the criteria of the European Central Bank, some of the most controversial points, including new nomination procedures for senior central bank officials, were passed without change.

However, Hungarian protesters on Saturday urged the government not to bow to international pressure, insisting that Hungary should go its own way and keep its national sovereignty.

The EU is pressing Budapest to change controversial legislations on its central bank and judiciary, and even threatened to suspend vital EU funds to Hungary if Orban does not make budget deficit cuts sustainable.

Hungary will have to make significant changes to win the European Commission's green light for aid talks, as the EU's executive prepared to announce its verdict on some key Hungarian laws next week.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi said the government would examine the EU's concerns and pledged that Budapest will do its best to secure an agreement with the European Commission and International Monetary Fund.

MRS/YH/MB/MA

"Banned" Commercial: Ron Paul 2012 (Unofficial)

2012-01-16T17:52:00.000+08:00

Today's News only truthful

2012-01-16T17:44:00.001+08:00

JP Morgan

2012-01-16T17:44:00.000+08:00

Fat Promotion: Food giants push Congress to name pizza a veg

2012-01-16T17:42:00.000+08:00

Occupy campaigners angry at police arrests

2012-01-15T17:53:00.002+08:00

Protesters outside the police station after squatters were removed from the Railton Hotel, Lancaster and arrrested.

Published on Saturday 14 January 2012 14:00

PROTESTERS who occupied a disused hotel in Lancaster say they could make a formal police complaint after four were arrested.
Around 100 activists - under the Occupy Lancaster banner - took over the former Railton Hotel in Station Road on Sunday with plans to tidy up the property and garden with a view to it being opened up as community space.
However, up to 50 police later surrounded the property, forced entry and arrested three men and a woman.
They were released without charge after 20 hours in custody.
Supporters camped outside the police station overnight to protest against the arrests, and later celebrated outside the Railton Hotel following the group’s release.
One of the arrested protesters, 48-year-old David Fleet, said the group - dubbed the ‘Lancaster Four’ - will be looking into the possibility of making a complaint against the police after being arrested on suspicion of criminal damage.
See the Lancaster Guardian (12-01-12) for full story.

Voters Choice: Ron Paul or Bibi Netanyahu

2012-01-15T17:52:00.002+08:00

Americans who desire a return to George Washington’s admonition that American democracy can be destroyed by foreign entanglements have only Ron Paul as an option.

by William A. Cook

A curious glance at the current crop of presidential candidates makes it clear that Ron Paul stands alone when it comes to the issue of US engagement in foreign wars. He stands with George Washington against foreign entanglements while the rest of the candidates stand with Teddy Roosevelt and the attempted creation of America’s first empire one hundred and twelve years ago. Mark Twain responded to that effort by creating the Anti-imperialist society while he caustically satirized the effort in his depiction of the massacre of the Moros in the Philippines. Now we have more massacres, using drones instead of canons, on equally hapless civilians who are caught unawares or hiding from the wrath of America’s righteousness as we drive to bring virtue to a primitive world.
Today America has an estimated 700 military installations in about 140 nations around the world; its bases surround Iran as does its nuclear capability, and it is engaged in executive “wars” in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Palestine. All of this while carrying a debt that exceeds thirteen trillion dollars, cutting budgets in education, medical care and social security, and retaining a Pentagon budget that exceeds that of the 16 declared developed nations combined. And to top it all off, we are considering armed aggression against Iran that could plunge America into the biggest war since WW II. Why?

Each star represents a US military base in the Iran region. This does not include US forces on the bases of other nations such as Jordan, Georgia and Azerbaijan, nor does it include the US Special Forces operating inside Syria, Lebanon and Iran itself. Most Naval forces, Allied military forces and the forces waiting orders to bomb Iran from Diego Garcia, Europe and the USA are also not included in this presentation.

Why add Iran to the list of wars when we have succeeded in losing the “wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq? Let’s admit the truth, we do not control Afghanistan and, while we have ostensibly left Iraq, we have left it in chaos and disarray. The question persists, why?
Why invade Iran? Ask first, why did we invade Iraq? Why did we not object to Israel’s bombing in Syria? Why didn’t we object to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon or Gaza? The world’s nations objected in UN Resolution after Resolution. But America voted to support Israel’s illegal aggression. Why? It is America’s reputation that has been placed in the gutter; it is America that is ranked with Israel as the most dangerous nations on the planet; it is America’s democracy that has been diluted, nay emaciated, as our liberties have been eroded with ever increasing draconian delusions that they are purportedly designed to protect while they make the citizen fodder for the few in control. So the question persists, why?
Not long ago, the answer may have been provided when Netanyahu was interviewed by Piers Morgan about the Iranian threat. Relative to this discussion is a comment made by Netanyahu in his interview with Morgan, a comment that I have not seen mentioned in America’s press.
When pressed by Morgan about the Iranian threat constantly broached by Israel and its U.S. supporters and what Israel intends to do about it, the repartee always returns to Iran as not only a threat to Israel, it is a threat to “Europe and the United States.” Morgan asks again, “What is the answer, Prime Minister?” Having successfully avoided saying that Israel would attack Iran to rid it of this danger, Netanyahu resorts to “I’m talking about a credible military action.” “Lead by who,” asks Morgan. “Lead preferably by the United States,” replies Netanyahu. “Could you contemplate some kind of land invasion,” asks Morgan. “Well, I think the United States has proven great effectiveness and I’m going to divulge a secret to you about their capabilities. They’re greater than ours.”
So says the Prime Minister of Israel as he talks about using America’s military to take out the Iranian threat to Israel. Why not use American boys and girls to kill your enemy and save your own sons and daughters? Why not indeed. Mark the tone. It’s almost as though he is saying to this imported talk show host, “Why do you ask, Stupid, it’s so obvious.”
According to recent polls, Americans have fallen out of favor with our numerous wars in countries we neither know nor can spell: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Palestine and Syria. This fact seems to be of little interest to the candidates who appear committed to the military-industrial complex that funds their respective campaigns. Indeed all seem committed to the addition of Iran since it appears to threaten, existentially, our aborted child, Israel. In short, if an American believes that he or she should vote to end America’s foreign entanglements, he or she has only Ron Paul to vote for. All the others have stated unequivocally their support for the state of Israel and its drive to stop Iran from gaining nuclear power. A vote for Romney, Perry, Gingrich, Santorum, or Huntsman means a vote for Netanyahu and his expressed desire to have American boys and girls serve Israel in this cause, or so he says.
Consider these statements by our candidates:
* Romney on Israel:”I will reaffirm as a vital national interest Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. I want the world to know that the bonds between Israel and the United States are unshakable…If I'm president of the United States, my first trip, my first foreign trip will be to Israel to show the world we care about that country and that region.” Mark that Romney makes no reference to Palestine or Palestinians; how does one resolve a conflict if one does not recognize the second party?
* Now consider Perry’s comment: “We are going to be there to support you. And we are going to be unwavering in that. So I hope you will tell the people of Israel: Help is on the way." Perry makes no reference to Obama’s unequivocal support for Israel having outspent all previous administrations in dollars and military hardware.
*Not to be outdone, Santorum offered the following: He said more or less what Newt Gingrich stated last month, "All the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis. They're not Palestinian. There [are] no Palestinians. This is Israeli land.” What can one say, Santorum needs to read some history before opening his mouth.
“Gingrich has all but declared that under his presidency, the American position would be that of Netanyahu’s,” Andrew Sullivan recently wrote, and with his recent multi-million dollar support from Adelson, who is linked to Netanyahu by an umbilical cord, he is chained to Israel’s dictates should he be elected.
*And, finally, Jon Huntsman presented his views: “The United States should not pressure Israel to negotiate with terrorists, nor to enter into any negotiated deals that threaten Israel’s security. This is a particularly delicate moment. We are inspired by the “Arab Spring,” in which the Arab people are calling for an end to decades of dictatorial and corrupt leadership. These events also give the lie to the notion Israel is somehow the source of all problems in the Middle East.”
Note that Huntsman does not mention that Israel has occupied Palestine for 63 years, illegally according to international law and the charter of the UN that the US has agreed to. Moreover, the constantly reiterated cause of unrest in the mid-east is the occupation of Palestine by the Israelis. To say it is not so, is, to borrow Gingrich’s eloquent phrase, “baloney.”
*Since we know that our current president has bragged that his administration has outspent all previous administrations in support of Israel, there is no need to argue that he would change course now. Since we also know that Israel can count on close to 400 supporters in the House and virtually all 100 Senators, as votes in support these past twelve years attest, the choice for Americans who desire a return to George Washington’s admonition that American democracy can be destroyed by foreign entanglements have only Ron Paul as an option.
Ron Paul: Foreign Policy & Israel
Ron Paul on the Economy

Here is what Ron Paul says about American imperialism, a voice crying in the wilderness:

Islamists attacked us for US bases on Arab lands. (Sep 2011)
Neither Dems nor GOP will cut one nickel from militarism. (Aug 2011)
American Empire is big government war & militarism. (Apr 2011)
We can't keep troops in 135 countries & 900 bases forever. (Feb 2011)
We’re broke and we just can’t continue to police the world. (Feb 2008)
Stop policing the world and we can get rid of income tax. (Dec 2007)
Bring all troops home from abroad & save $100B’s every year. (Dec 2007)
9/11 resulted from blasphemy of our bases in Saudi Arabia. (Dec 2007)
Pre-emptive war policy is a grave mistake. (Jun 2007)
Pre-emptive war is not part of the American tradition. (Jun 2007)
Military aggressiveness weakens our national defense. (May 2007)
Jihadists attack because we have bases in their countries. (Jan 2006)
Costs of war always higher than expected & go on for decades. (Jun 2005)
Conscription is a trait of totalitarian government. (Dec 1987)

This is the choice presented to the American voter.
What we know clearly is that America has set out on a course of world domination that mocks the very concept of democracy where people are free to choose their government, not be told who will govern them by a foreign power. What we know tragically is that the American government is content to support and sometimes to create dictators that oppress their own people, if they obey America’s dictates, as the fall of Mubarak in Egypt attests. What we also know is that our government has been bought by a foreign power to secure its own ends regardless of the consequences to the people of the United States. What we know unfortunately is that any citizen wishing to run for the office of President must kowtow to the desires of the state of Israel by declaring his or her allegiance to that state or be declared a nut case.. What we know truly is that America is no longer the nation of the free citizen, since we are now subject to the fear that resides in the gut when threatened by unsubstantiated allegations of suspicion as a terrorist that can result in indefinite detention without trial or due process. Such is the decline of the once proud and free experiment that was the United States of America.

Brian Basham: Beware corporate psychopaths – they are still occupying positions of power

2012-01-15T17:51:00.002+08:00

Outlook Over the years I've met my fair share of monsters – rogue individuals, for the most part. But as regulation in the UK and the US has loosened its restraints, the monsters have proliferated.

In a paper recently published in the Journal of Business Ethics entitled "The Corporate Psychopaths: Theory of the Global Financial Crisis", Clive R Boddy identifies these people as psychopaths.
"They are," he says, "simply the 1 per cent of people who have no conscience or empathy." And he argues: "Psychopaths, rising to key senior positions within modern financial corporations, where they are able to influence the moral climate of the whole organisation and yield considerable power, have largely caused the [banking] crisis'.
And Mr Boddy is not alone. In Jon Ronson's widely acclaimed book The Psychopath Test, Professor Robert Hare told the author: "I should have spent some time inside the Stock Exchange as well. Serial killer psychopaths ruin families. Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies."
Cut to a pleasantly warm evening in Bahrain. My companion, a senior UK investment banker and I, are discussing the most successful banking types we know and what makes them tick. I argue that they often conform to the characteristics displayed by social psychopaths. To my surprise, my friend agrees.
He then makes an astonishing confession: "At one major investment bank for which I worked, we used psychometric testing to recruit social psychopaths because their characteristics exactly suited them to senior corporate finance roles."
Here was one of the biggest investment banks in the world seeking psychopaths as recruits.
Mr Ronson spoke to scores of psychologists about their understanding of the damage that psychopaths could do to society. None of those psychologists could have imagined, I'm sure, the existence of a bank that used the science of spotting them as a recruiting mechanism.
I've never met Dick Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers and the architect of its downfall, but I've seen him on video and it's terrifying. He snarled to Lehman staff that he wanted to "rip out their [his competitors] hearts and eat them before they died". So how did someone like Mr Fuld get to the top of Lehman? You don't need to see the video to conclude he was weird; you could take a little more time and read a 2,200-page report by Anton Valukas, the Chicago-based lawyer hired by a US court to investigate Lehman's failure. Mr Valukas revealed systemic chicanery within the bank; he described management failures and a destructive, internal culture of reckless risk-taking worthy of any psychopath.
So why wasn't Mr Fuld spotted and stopped? I've concluded it's the good old question of nature and nurture but with a new interpretation. As I see it, in its search for never-ending growth, the financial services sector has actively sought out monsters with natures like Mr Fuld and nurtured them with bonuses and praise.
We all understand that sometimes businesses have to be cut back to ensure their survival, and where those cuts should fall is as relevant to a company as it is, today, to the UK economy; should it bear down upon the rich or the poor?
Making those cuts doesn't make psychopaths of the cutters, but the financial sector's lack of remorse for the pain it encourages people to inflict is purely psychopathic. Surely the action of cutting should be a matter for sorrow and regret? People's lives are damaged, even destroyed. However, that's not how the financial sector sees it.
Take Sir Fred Goodwin of RBS, for example. Before he racked up a corporate loss of £24.1bn, the highest in UK history, he was idolised by the City. In recognition of his work in ruthlessly cutting costs at Clydesdale Bank he got the nickname "Fred the Shred", and he played that for all it was worth. He was later described as "a corporate Attila", a title of which any psychopath would be proud.
Mr Ronson reports: "Justice departments and parole boards all over the world have accepted Hare's contention that psychopaths are quite simply incurable and everyone should concentrate their energies instead on learning how to root them out."
But, far from being rooted out, they are still in place and often in positions of even greater power.
As Mr Boddy warns: "The very same corporate psychopaths, who probably caused the crisis by their self-seeking greed and avarice, are now advising governments on how to get out of the crisis. Further, if the corporate psychopaths theory of the global financial crisis is correct, then we are now far from the end of the crisis. Indeed, it is only the end of the beginning."
I became familiar with psychopaths early in life. They were the hard men who terrorised south-east London when I was growing up. People like "Mad" Frankie Fraser and the Richardson brothers. They were what we used to call "red haze" men, and they were frightening because they attacked with neither fear, mercy nor remorse.
Regarding Messrs Hare, Ronson, Boddy and others, I've realised that some psychopaths "forge careers in corporations. The group is called Corporate Psychopaths". They are polished and plausible, but that doesn't make them any less dangerous.
In attempting to understand the complexities of what went wrong in the years leading to 2008, I've developed a rule: "In an unregulated world, the least-principled people rise to the top." And there are none who are less principled than corporate psychopaths.
Brian Basham is a veteran City PR man, entrepreneur and journalist

'I’m a graduate, get me out of here!’

2012-01-15T17:44:00.002+08:00

Cait Reilly, who has a degree in geology, was told she would lose her jobseeker’s allowance if she did not stack shelves. She had to give up a volunteer job in a local museum

It’s been quite a week for 22-year-old Cait Reilly. After spending 18 months waiting in vain for her phone to ring with the offer of any one of the hundreds of jobs she has applied for since graduating in the summer of 2010 from Birmingham University, these past few days it hasn’t stopped. And all because of two weeks on a government unemployment programme in her local Poundland in King’s Heath, West Midlands.

A triumph for the scheme presented by ministers as giving 250,000 claimants on jobseekers’ allowance a helping hand back into the workforce? Not quite. For Reilly has made headlines because she is mounting a legal challenge to what she says was the “forced labour” of being made to stack shelves for free in the discount retailer, or lose her £53-a-week in dole. “I was told it was mandatory. There were five of us sent there. I was the only graduate. We were doing exactly the same work as the paid staff. It makes no sense. If the Government subsidises high street chains with free labour, they don’t have to recruit. It causes unemployment rather than solves it.”

What makes the mandatory placement more puzzling, adds Reilly, whose degree was geology, was that going to Poundland meant she had to give up a volunteer post she had at the local Pen Room Museum, part of her plan to gain the experience that would help her along her chosen career path as a curator.

“Right now, I would take any job. I have £18,000 in student debts to pay off and the interest is building all the time. That really worries me. But I have plenty of retail experience already on my CV. I didn’t need to go to Poundland. And I was never told I had a choice.”

Her adviser at the Job Centre has, she reports, been replaced. The Department of Work and Pensions, which oversees the scheme, has responded to her allegations by insisting that, within reason, such “sector-based work academy” schemes are optional. And Chris Grayling, the employment minister, has in the past robustly defended the programme, pointing out that “half of young people leave benefits after they have completed their placement”.

The problem in Reilly’s case seems to be that, as a graduate, her career expectations were different from many other claimants. But she is not, in reality, so unusual. Of those who graduated at the same time as her, in 2010, half were either jobless six months later, or in menial roles. Another survey reports that 38 per cent of graduates have been on the dole after leaving university. And longer-term data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency reveals that 28 per cent of 2006 graduates were not in full-time employment three years later, while, among those who were, only 16 per cent of the men were earning over £20,000, and 29 per cent of the women.
This last figure is particularly significant since, under new tuition fee arrangements, those embarking from this September on degree courses that will cost up to £9,000 a year will only have to start repaying their tuition fees once their income rises above £21,000. The Treasury, it seems, may be about to take a substantial hit.
Reilly remains phlegmatic about her joblessness. “Someone is getting the posts I am applying for, so I have to believe that one day that person will be me. That’s the logic.”
Does she regret not tackling something more vocational – law, medicine, engineering – rather than geology?
“I did think about that before I started, but I loved the subject and geology can provide a whole range of careers in civil engineering, mining, oil exploration and property. So it was a practical choice.” But of her cohort, she says, only one – “and he got a first” – has got a job that uses his degree.
Defending the hike in tuition fees, the Government argues that undergraduates are speculating to accumulate. By taking out loans to pay for a higher education, they are giving themselves the prospect of better-paid careers than school-leavers that will more than justify that investment. However, the Office of National Statistics reported last August that a quarter of graduates are earning less than contemporaries who joined the workforce after A-levels. And even with the other three quarters, the graduate pay premium is shrinking. One factor, it seems, is that the rapid expansion in higher education under Labour has seen the percentage of university-educated workers grow since 1993 from 12 to 25 per cent. And it continues to rise.
“I don’t regret going to university,” says Holly Jerreat, 22, who graduated last summer with a 2:1 in languages from Bath, “but with hindsight I might have done a more vocational course. I chose languages because it was a subject I loved and found intellectually challenging. But here I am, still looking for work.”
Jerreat, who has returned home to live with her parents in Kent, has filled in “endless application forms” for graduate posts in marketing, advertising and media, and has come very close several times to landing the job of her dreams, but the competition is stiff and openings few and far between. To pay
her way in the interim, she has applied “for every job going in our local Bluewater shopping centre. I write off, send in CVs, go in and ask face-to-face, and then get told I am over-qualified.” Currently she is doing a part-time administrative post she got through a family connection. “Basically I do the shredding.”
In these hard times for recent graduates, such family connections – much decried by the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, as “the exclusive preserve of the sharp-elbowed and the well-connected” – are one way to gain an advantage.
“I spent a year and a half doing various temping jobs,” says 25-year-old Howard de Podesta, who graduated in aerospace engineering from Bath, “before getting a job in product design in financial IT off the back of an internship. That is the route many graduates go down now.”
People like 24-year-old Kate Ross, who graduated in combined social sciences from Durham in 2009, and then landed a three-month paid internship with a hotel management company with the help of her sister who worked in recruitment. “Having that experience helped me impress my current employer, a property company. Without experience, no one will touch you, however good your degree or your university. You have somehow to find a way to get that experience.”
Unpaid internships, though, especially in London and big cities, depend on being able to rely on family for free accommodation and pocket money. Ross squared the circle by taking a part-time post as a live-in au pair, even though she had no formal training in caring for children. “I was actually better off when I was living for nothing there than when I started work properly and had to pay rent on a flat.”
And therein is another problem. Even when graduates find jobs, starting salaries are so low that it makes it very hard to stand on your own.
“It seems to take friends from university around a year to find a 'proper’ job,” recounts Jerreat, “but they rarely pay more than £18,000. Once you have stated paying back your student loans, which kicks in at £15,000 for my age group, and then pay rent, it really doesn’t leave anything to live on.”
The unpaid internship industry is, says Cait Reilly, pretty much a closed book for her. “I think it probably does skew the market against people like me. I live at home, but my parents can’t afford to support me. I have to make a contribution to my living costs. If I had the option of not signing on, I’d take it like a shot. It tars me with the same brush in the eyes of those who see anyone claiming benefits as lazy or scroungers. And yes, I would be prepared to travel and live somewhere else for work, but it would have to be paid for me to afford to be able to do it.”
So has her week of making headlines and taking calls helped her job search? “No,” she reports flatly. “Or not yet. Some of my friends think I am mad to go to court, that the legal action will mean that no employer will want anything to do with me, but for me it is an abuse that needs highlighting. The idea that any work experience, however irrelevant and menial, will be beneficial just doesn’t add up.”

Woman put in jail for being poor

2012-01-15T17:43:00.003+08:00

Woman jailedl for 10 days because she's too poor to pay fine

TAGS: Crisis, USA, Economy

The recession ruined Linda Ruggles’ business and she has been selling plasma twice a week since to make ends meet. The blood bank couldn’t bail her out from behind bars though, which is where she ended up after she couldn’t pay a $480 fine.
That fine, say cops in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, came about because Linda Ruggles had a messy yard.
Barely getting by in recent years, Ruggles, 53, has been stockpiling scraps to pawn off in order to make her bill payments. In her yard rests a pile of metal that she routinely cashes in to get by. Elsewhere outside her house is a shack of shingles. Paying to have her roof fixed, often a job that comes at a cost of several thousand dollars, has been out of the question.
So when cops ticketed her $480 for having a messy yard, Ruggles wasn’t exactly prepared to pay it.
“I told everyone, ‘If I had $480 to pay the fine, I'd fix the roof,’"' she told Charleston, South Carolina ‘s Post and Courier.
Ruggles couldn’t fix the roof, however, and she couldn’t pay the fine either. For being unable to do so, she was sentenced to serve 10 days in jail for failing to pay her “clean lot violation.”
“I feel like they want to make an example out of me,” Ms Ruggles tells the paper. “This should be an embarrassment for the town of Mount Pleasant. And it should be an embarrassment for my neighbors who called the code enforcement officer, because no one offered to help me – no one.”
Six days into her sentence, however, Ruggles was allowed home only to be greeted by an array of local residents who read about her plight and offered to help. That assistance came only after nearly a week in jail and legal complications which are surely only going to add onto the troubles (and scrap metal) which has already piled up.
“It didn’t change the situation,” she adds. “I just don’t think being handcuffed, photographed and fingerprinted is really a behavior-modification tool to keep me from being poor.”
On the bright side, the neighborhood grocery store that Ruggles works part-time at has allowed her to reclaim her position after her brief stint behind bars. On the bright side, that is, as long as she can forget about her last shift behind the register. It was on the job last month when the cops entered her place of business and hauled her off to jail.

Gerald Celente - Jeff Rense Radio Show - 13 January 2012

2012-01-15T17:43:00.000+08:00

Home Seizures May Jump 25% This Year as U.S. Foreclosures Resume

2012-01-15T17:40:00.003+08:00

Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Banks may seize more than 1 million U.S. homes this year after legal scrutiny of their foreclosure practices slowed actions against delinquent property owners in 2011, RealtyTrac Inc. said.

About 1.89 million properties received notices of default, auction or repossession last year, down 34 percent from 2010 and the lowest number since 2007, the Irvine, California-based data seller said today in a statement. One in 69 U.S. households received a filing.

While the seizure process has been “highly dysfunctional,” there were “strong signs in the second half of 2011 that lenders are finally beginning to push through some of the delayed foreclosures in select local markets,” RealtyTrac Chief Executive Officer Brandon Moore said in the statement.

The number of home repossessions is likely to rise about 25 percent from the more than 804,000 properties seized last year as lenders resume foreclosure actions, Daren Blomquist, a spokesman for RealtyTrac, said in a telephone interview. Settlement talks are continuing with state attorneys general over documentation flaws, known as “robo-signing,” that surfaced in October 2010.

About 400,000 additional homes would have been repossessed without the slowdown, Blomquist said. The ramp-up in foreclosure proceedings that began in 2011’s second half is likely to continue this year, Moore said in the statement.

Foreclosure filings totaled almost 2.7 million last year as some properties got multiple notices, RealtyTrac said.

Highest in Nevada

Nevada had the nation’s highest rate of foreclosure filings per household for the fifth straight year, at one in 16, while total filings were down 31 percent from 2010. A new state law that took effect in October requires lenders to file an additional affidavit before starting the foreclosure process.

Arizona had the second highest foreclosure rate, with one in 24 households receiving a notice, and California ranked third at one in 31. Georgia was fourth, with one in 37, and Utah fifth at one in 43, according to RealtyTrac.

Michigan, Florida, Illinois, Colorado and Idaho also ranked among the states with the 10 highest rates in 2011.

Las Vegas had the highest rate among metropolitan areas with populations over 200,000, at one foreclosure filing per 14 households. Stockton, Modesto, Vallejo-Fairfield and Riverside- San Bernardino, all in California, ranked second through fifth.

Phoenix; Merced, California; Reno, Nevada; Bakersfield, California; and Sacramento, California, rounded out the top 10, said RealtyTrac, which sells default data from more than 2,200 counties representing 90 percent of the U.S. population.

--Editors: Daniel Taub, Steven Crabill

Records: Federal Reserve Officials Foresaw, Joked About Housing Bubble in 2006

2012-01-15T17:40:00.000+08:00

SUMMARY

Newly released transcripts from the Federal Reserve's 2006 meetings reveal the extent of what Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues actually knew as the country was about to hit the cusp of the financial crisis. Ray Suarez discusses the board's detailed conversations with The New York Times' Binyamin Appelbaum.

Transcript

RAY SUAREZ: As the economy climbs back from one of the country's deepest recessions, it's now clear that a dragging housing market remains a pivotal part of the problem.
But, back in 2006, many economists didn't see big risks in a growing housing bubble or the potential body blow housing could give the economy. Yesterday, we learned the extent of that thinking at the Federal Reserve in 2006, on the cusp of the crisis.

The insights come from newly released transcripts detailing conversations between Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues at the Fed Board of Governors in 2006. They discuss the changing conditions surrounding an overheated housing market.
But, as Bernanke put it that march: "Strong fundamentals support a relatively soft landing in housing. I think we are unlikely to see growth being derailed by the housing market."
Binyamin Appelbaum has been reading these documents for The New York Times. And he joins me now.
And we had anything but a soft landing, but we can now see these deliberations, this new transparency. What did you learn about these meetings? What did you learn about the way a Board of Governors meeting works?

"[Chairman Ben Bernanke] holds the distinction of being, among that group of people, the one most cognizant of the downside possibilities, but it was a group of people who were all unaware of the cracks beneath their feet."

- Binyamin Appelbaum, The New York Times

BINYAMIN APPELBAUM, The New York Times: I think what was fascinating here, we knew the Fed has missed the crisis, right? We knew they didn't see it coming. We all lived through that.
But these minutes show us the extent of their misunderstanding of the health of the economy. They show us how badly they misunderstood the way that the economy was working, how badly they misunderestimated the impact of the housing crash.
And it shows, you know, a group of very intelligent, very thoughtful people, you know, talking about the economic situation in the country in a considered way, evaluating what might happen, and having a discussion that, it turns out in retrospect, was far removed from the reality of the actual situation.
RAY SUAREZ: It's not like they were totally blind. They were seeing steady supplies of intelligence about what was going on in the field.
Here's a quote from Federal Reserve Gov. Susan Bies. She says: "A lot of private mortgages that had been securitized during the past few years really do have much more risk than the investors have been focusing on."
But, often, they moved ahead as it they weren't seeing what they were seeing. Did they ignore the details they were getting?
BINYAMIN APPELBAUM: You know, it's so striking. If you kept reading from that quote, what you would see is that she went on to say, basically, but this is a small problem. The market as a whole is doing fine. The overall quality of these securities is very good. I'm not worried about the housing market.
In fact, at one point, she said that if there was a mild correction in housing, it would benefit the economy by moving resources to healthier sectors of the economy. You're right. They saw it. They saw that housing was crashing. They joked about the problems that home builders were having in selling homes. They would tell these stories about home builders giving away cars or dressing up empty properties so they looked occupied.
And they understood that there was a problem in the housing market. What they didn't understand was how important the housing market had become to the economy as a whole.
RAY SUAREZ: Early in the year, new chairman Ben Bernanke said at a meeting: "So far, we're seeing, at worst, an orderly decline in the housing market, but there still is, I think, a lot to be seen as to whether the housing market will decline slowly or more quickly."
Did Ben Bernanke not join in the rah-rah that many of the other governors around the table were indulging in?
BINYAMIN APPELBAUM: This -- these transcripts offer a really interesting look at Chairman Bernanke, because what does emerge in that, in the context of that board, he was the person who most frequently said, hey, this could be worse than we think. There is a possibility here that we're missing some of the consequences that could unfold, some of the damage that could be done to the real economy.
But it was a relative distinction. He did not see the crash coming. He didn't warn of the consequences that would unfold. You know, he holds the distinction of being, among that group of people, the one most cognizant of the downside possibilities, but it was a group of people who were all unaware of the cracks beneath their feet.
RAY SUAREZ: To be fair, a lot of other economists at the same time were talking about blue skies, soft landing, moderation in the coming years. It wasn't like there were just a bunch of clods sitting around this table, and everybody else could see it, right?
BINYAMIN APPELBAUM: No, absolutely.
This was a failure to some extent of the economics profession. Most economists, if you put them into this room, would have reached the same conclusions and said the same things. It should always be noted that there were people who were right, who saw this, who warned about it, but they were a minority. Most economists didn't see it.
But it should also be said that you know, it may be the case that any of us put into center field at Fenway Park wouldn't play center field very well, but we're not all the center fielders on the Red Sox. Some people are paid to do this. They're supposed to be doing it well. That's the role the Federal Reserve is supposed to be playing, and they didn't do it.
RAY SUAREZ: This was not only the cusp of the housing crisis. It was also the cusp between the Greenspan era and the Bernanke era.
The old chairman, Alan Greenspan, presides over the first meeting of the year. Now Secretary Tim Geithner, then the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, says into the record: "I would like the record to show that I think you're pretty terrific, too. And thinking in terms of probability, I think the risk that we decide in the future that you have been even better than we think is higher than the alternative."
The Greenspan reputation has not matched Geithner's predictions, has it?
BINYAMIN APPELBAUM: No, there are many fewer people who would probably subscribe to that view at this point.
This was a remarkable send-off for a man who was then regarded as sort of the iconic central banker, the person who had played that role better than maybe anyone else ever had. He had guided the economy through almost two decades of fairly steady growth. People thought the economy was still on an upward trajectory at that point.
And his colleagues praised him to the skies. One called him a Yoda-like figure. Another said that he had left behind for his successor an economy that was like a tennis racket with a giant sweet spot. And they thought he had -- they thought he'd been great.
RAY SUAREZ: One aspect of all of all this that is very interesting is the degree to which these professionals missed how enmeshed housing had become in the economy in the widest sense.
Kevin Warsh, a Federal Reserve governor, says in September 2006: "I would say that the capital markets are probably more profitable and more robust at this moment than they have perhaps ever been."
And they were about to unravel, weren't they?
BINYAMIN APPELBAUM: That's a remarkable mistake for him to have made.
This was the governor who was perhaps most closely attuned to Wall Street, the one who watched that part of the economy most closely. He was a former investment banker. And to have been standing there at that moment looking into financial markets, and to have thought that they were more robust than they had ever been, when, in fact, they were about as fragile as they'd ever been, really underscores how deeply the Fed had misunderstood the nature of what it was looking at.
RAY SUAREZ: For all that emerges in these 1,200 pages of transcript, what about the response that these same people around the table launched when it was clear that there were problems? Did they stop the freefall? Did they keep things from getting worse?
BINYAMIN APPELBAUM: Yeah, that's a very different story, and it's one that the Fed comes out looking much better in.
I think a lot of economists give them a lot of credit for having intervened decisively, for having moved really strongly to arrest the fall of the economy, to prevent what many people were concerned could become the first real depression in 80 years, to have prevented the collapse of financial markets through a series of unprecedented and massive interventions.
So, this story -- you know, we get one year of transcripts at a time. They are released on a five-year lag. So, right now, we're reading sort of the 2006 installment of this story. Next year, we'll get 2007, the year after that, 2008. And, frankly, the story starts to look a little bit better for the Fed in terms of how they were handling the economy as it moves forward.
RAY SUAREZ: Binyamin Appelbaum of The New York Times, thanks a lot.
BINYAMIN APPELBAUM: Thank you.

Celebrities Endorse RON PAUL, Clint Eastwood, Vince Vaughn, Kelly Clarkson

2012-01-15T17:39:00.000+08:00

Foreigners Sell Record $85 Billion In Treasurys In 6 Consecutive Weeks - Time To Get Concerned?

2012-01-15T16:39:00.002+08:00

Last week, when we pointed out what was then a record $77 billion in Treasury sales from the Fed's custody account, in addition to noting the patently obvious, namely that contrary to what one hears in the media, foreigners are offloading US paper hand over first, there was this little tidbit: "The question is what they are converting the USD into, and how much longer will the go on for: the last thing the US can afford is a wholesale dumping of its Treasurys. Because as the chart below vividly demonstrates, the traditional diagonal rise in foreign holdings of US paper has not only pleateaued, but it is in fact declining: a first in the history of the post-globalization world." Well as of today's H.4.1 update, the outflow has increased by yet another $8 billion to a new all time record of $85 billion, in 6 consecutive weeks, which is also tied for the longest consecutive period of outflows from the Fed's Custody account ever. This week's sale brings the total notional of Treasurys in the Custody account to just $2.66 trillion (down from a record $2.75 trillion) and the same as April of last year. And since the sellers are countries who have traditionally constantly recycled their trade surplus into US paper, this is quite a distrubing development. So while the elephant in the room could have been ignored 4, 3 and 2 weeks ago, it is getting increasingly more difficult to do so at this point, especially with US bond auctions mysteriously pricing at record low yields month after month. But at least the mass dump in Treasurys explains the $100 swing higher in gold in the past month.

The Worst Economic Recovery Since The Great Depression

2012-01-15T16:38:00.002+08:00

The record of President Obama’s first three years in office is in, and nothing that happens now can go back and change that.  What that record shows is that President Obama, with his throwback, old-fashioned, 1970s Keynesian economics, has put America through the worst recovery from a recession since the Great Depression.
The recession started in December, 2007.  Go to the website of the National Bureau of Economic Research (www.nber.org) to see the complete history of America’s recessions.  What that history reveals is that before this last recession, since the Great Depression recessions in America have lasted an average of 10 months, with the longest previously lasting 16 months.
When President Obama entered office in January, 2009, the recession was already in its 13^th month.  His responsibility was to manage a timely, robust recovery to get America back on track again.  Based on the historical record, that recovery was imminent, within a couple of months or so.  Despite widespread fear, nothing fundamental had changed to deprive America of the long term, world-leading prosperity it had enjoyed going back 300 years.
Supposedly a forward looking progressive, Obama proved to be America’s first backward looking regressive.  His first act was to increase federal borrowing, the national debt and the deficit by nearly a trillion dollars to finance a supposed “stimulus” package, based on the discredited Keynesian theory left for dead 30 years ago holding that increased government spending, deficits and debt are what promote economic growth and recovery. That theory arose in the 1930s as the answer to the Great Depression, which, of course, never worked.

That was the beginning of President Obama’s Rip Van Winkle act, pretending not to know anything that happened over the previous 30 years proving the dramatic, historic success of the new, more modern, supply side economics, which holds that incentives for increased production are what promote economic growth and recovery.  Indeed, that Rip Van Winklism pretended not to remember the 1970s either, when double digit inflation and double digit unemployment proved Keynesian economics grievously wrong.
As should have been long expected, Obama’s trillion dollar Keynesian stimulus did nothing to promote recovery and growth, and almost surely delayed it.  That is because borrowing a trillion dollars out of the economy to spend a trillion back into it does nothing to promote the economy on net. Indeed, it is probably a net drag on the economy, because the private sector spends the money more productively and efficiently than the public sector.
The National Bureau of Economic Research scored the recession as ending in June, 2009.  Yet, today, in the 49^th month since the recession started, there has still been no real recovery, like recoveries from previous recessions in America.
Unemployment actually rose after June, 2009, and did not fall back down below that level until 18 months later in December, 2010.  Instead of a recovery, America has suffered the longest period of unemployment near 9% or above since the Great Depression, under President Obama’s public policy malpractice.  Even today, 49 months after the recession started, the U6 unemployment rate counting the unemployed, underemployed and discouraged workers is still 15.2%.  And that doesn’t include all the workers who have fled the workforce under Obama’s economic oppression.  The unemployment rate with the full measure of discouraged workers is reported at www.shadowstats.com as about 23%, which is depression level unemployment.
Today, over 4 years since the recession started, there are still almost 25 million Americans unemployed or underemployed.  That includes 5.6 million who are long-term unemployed for 27 weeks, or more than 6 months.  Under President Obama, America has suffered the longest period with so many in such long-term unemployment since the Great Depression.

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24 Stats To Crush Anyone Who Thinks America Has A Bright Economic Future

2012-01-15T16:37:00.002+08:00

Beware of bubbles of false hope. Right now there is a lot of talk about how the U.S. economy is improving, but it is all a lie. The mainstream media can be very seductive. When you sit down to watch television your brain tends to go into a very relaxed mode. In such a state, it becomes easy to slip thoughts and ideas past your defenses. Sometimes when I am watching television I realize what the media is trying to do and yet I can still feel it happening to me.
In this day and age, it is absolutely critical that we all think for ourselves. When you look at the long-term trends and the long-term numbers, a much different picture of the U.S economy emerges than the one that is painted for us on television.
Over the long-term, the number of good jobs in America has been steadily going down. Over the long-term, the number of Americans living in poverty and living on food stamps has been steadily going up. Over the past couple of decades, tens of thousands of businesses, millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of our national wealth have gone out of the country.
Our debt is nearly 15 times larger than it was 30 years ago, and U.S. consumer debt has soared by 1700% over the past 40 years. Year after year the rate of inflation goes up faster than our incomes do, and this is absolutely devastating the middle class. Anyone who believes that we can keep doing the same things that we have been doing and yet America will still have a bright economic future is delusional. Until the long-term trends which are taking the U.S. economy straight into the toilet are reversed, any talk of a bright economic future is absolute nonsense.
In America today, we have such a short-term focus. We are all so caught up with what is happening right now. Our attention spans seem to get shorter every single year. At this point it would not be hard to argue that kittens have longer attention spans than most of us do. (If you have ever owned a kitten you know how short their attention spans can be.) Things have gotten so bad that most of our high school students cannot even answer the most basic questions about our history. If people are not talking about it on Facebook or Twitter it is almost as if it does not even matter.
But any serious student of history knows that is is absolutely crucial to examine long-term trends. And when you look at the long-term trends, it rapidly becomes apparent that the U.S. economy is in the midst of a nightmarish long-term decline.
The following are 24 statistics to show to anyone who believes that America has a bright economic future....
#1 Inflation is a silent tax that steals wealth from all of us. We continue to shell out increasing amounts of money for the basic things that we need, and yet our incomes are not keeping pace. Just check out the following example. Gasoline prices have been trending higher for several years in a row as one blogger recently noted....
January 2009           $1.65
January 2010           $2.57
January 2011           $3.04
January 2012           $3.29
#2 If you can believe it, the average American household spent approximately $4,155 on gasoline during 2011.
#3 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
#4 Health care costs continue to rise at a very alarming pace. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%.
#5 Getting a college education has also become insanely expensive in America. After adjusting for inflation, U.S. college students are borrowing about twice as much money as they did a decade ago.
#6 To get the same purchasing power that you got out of $20.00 back in 1970 you would have to have more than $116 today.
#7 To get the same purchasing power that you got out of $20.00 back in 1913 you would have to have more than $457 today.
#8 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added more than 30 million extra people to the population since then.
#9 The U.S. economy is bleeding millions of good jobs. Greedy CEOs are systematically shipping them overseas and our politicians are standing around and doing nothing about it. This has gone on year after year after year. The following is from a recent article by Paul Craig Roberts....

In the first decade of the 21st century, Americans lost 5,500,000 manufacturing jobs. US employment in the manufacture of computer and electronic products fell by 40%; in the production of machinery by 30%, in motor vehicles and and parts by 44%, and in the manufacture of clothing by 66%.

#10 Our economic infrastructure is being torn apart right in front of our eyes. In 2010, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day shut down in the United States. Overall, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have shut down since 2001.
We have made it legal for big corporations to send millions of jobs to countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages, where the tax burden is much lighter and where there are barely any regulations. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article posted on Economy in Crisis....

Back in the ‘80s, I called my friend Walter in California and asked: “On your next expansion we need a plant in South Carolina.” Walter replied: “We don’t produce anything in the United States. It’s all in China. China furnishes you the plant on a year-to-year basis. If your investment works out, you don’t have to pay any corporate tax; just reinvest it for another plant and more profit. If it doesn’t work out, you can walk away with no legacy costs. I send a quality controller to watch production. I check on it every day. I don’t have any labor, health, safety, or environmental concerns, and have time to play a round of golf.” The bleeding of jobs off-shore started in the ‘80s — now hemorrhages under Bush and Obama. Waiting for the economy to bounce back; calling this “the worst recession” is a bum rap. The reason the economy hasn’t bounced back since 2008 is because the economy is being off-shored.

#11 As a result of our insane economic policies, our trade balances are absolutely exploding. For example, the U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.
#12 As you read this, there are millions of Americans out there wondering why they can't find any jobs. According to Reuters, 23.7 million American workers are either unemployed or underemployed right now.
#13 The number of good jobs has been steadily shrinking in America. Since the year 2000, the United States has lost 10% of its middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.
#14 Over the last three decades, the percentage of low income jobs has consistently risen. Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
#15 The number of middle class neighborhoods also continues to decline. In 1970, 65 percent of all Americans lived in "middle class neighborhoods". By 2007, only 44 percent of all Americans lived in "middle class neighborhoods".
#16 A decade ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult. By 2010, the United States had fallen to seventh.
#17 Our incomes continue to go down. Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.
#18 Unfortunately, middle class Americans have been seeing their incomes decline for a very long time. According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.
#19 Since 1971, consumer debt in the United States has increased by a whopping 1700%. Unfortunately, U.S. consumers have still not learned how to stay out of debt. According to a recent article posted on Financial Armageddon, the rate of personal savings in the United States is rapidly falling right now at the same time that the total amount of consumer credit is absolutely skyrocketing.
#20 The number of children living in poverty in America keeps rising year after year. The percentage of children living in poverty in the United States increased from 16.9 percent in 2006 to nearly 22 percent in 2010.
#21 The number of Americans on food stamps continues to set new all-time records. Just check out the following progression....
October 2008: 30.8 million Americans on food stamps
October 2009: 37.6 million Americans on food stamps
October 2010: 43.2 million Americans on food stamps
October 2011: 46.2 million Americans on food stamps
#22 The U.S. debt problem has gotten completely and totally out of control. Recently, the debt of the federal government surpassed 100% of GDP for the first time ever.
#23 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.
#24 Barack Obama's proposed 2012 budget projects that the national debt will rise to 26 trillion dollars a decade from now. And his budget numbers are ridiculously optimistic.
Are you starting to get the picture?
All of the long-term economic numbers are progressively getting worse.
As the economy continues to crumble, large numbers of Americans are becoming really desperate. For example, a recent Mother Jones article detailed how large numbers of formerly middle class Americans are now actually growing marijuana in an effort to make ends meet.
As things continue to get worse, people will become even more desperate. There are millions of people out there that find themselves unable to pay the mortgage and put food on the table for their families. When people hit rock bottom, they often find themselves doing things that they never dreamed that they would do.
Meanwhile, the big Wall Street banks just keep getting larger and more powerful. We have allowed the "too big to fail" banks to become much bigger than they have ever been before. The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39 percent between September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011.
Wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated at the very top even as the overall economic pie in America continues to get smaller.
As our economic problems become worse, more Americans than ever are trying to find ways to "escape".
For example, according to one new government report one out of every six adults in America is a binge drinker.
Other Americans "tune out" by watching endless hours of television, by playing endless hours of video games or by indulging in endless hours of other forms of entertainment.
There are even some Americans that are giving up completely. For example, one elderly man actually robbed a bank just so that he could get arrested and be taken to prison where he would get free health care.
But as I have written about previously, now is not the time to give up. Instead, now is the time to prepare for the great challenges that are ahead.
Almost every generation in history has been faced with great challenges and great hardships at some point.
Yes, there will be some incredibly hard times ahead, but that also means that there will be a need for some great heroes.
Just because the U.S. economy is falling apart does not mean that life is over.
We are living during one of the most exciting times in all of human history. Instead of cowering in fear, let us embrace these times and focus on becoming the people that we were created to be.

Romney: Income Inequality Is Just 'Envy'

2012-01-14T19:08:00.002+08:00

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- According to Mitt Romney, the nation's growing focus on income inequality is all about envy.
"You know, I think it's about envy. I think it's about class warfare," the leading Republican presidential candidate said Wednesday on The Today Show.When asked if there are any fair questions about wealth distribution, Romney replied, "It's fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like."Romney has accused President Obama of promoting the "bitter politics of envy." The president is ramping up his talks about the nation's growing income divide and the shrinking of the middle class. He is focusing on the tax benefits afforded to millionaires and executives.Romney, who is one of those millionaires, is taking a different path. He says he's distancing himself from what he calls "a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach."Instead, he is talking about making America a merit-based society, rather than an entitlement society."I believe in a merit nation, an opportunity nation where people by virtue of their education, their hard work and risk taking and their dreams -- may be a little luck -- could achieve great things," he said Thursday at a campaign rally in Florida.A growing number of Americans are latching onto the idea of income inequality, which prompted thousands of people to participate in Occupy Wall Street-type protests around the nation last fall.About two-thirds of the public believes there are "very strong" or "strong" conflicts between the rich and poor, according to a Pew Research Center report released Tuesday. That's up 19 percentage points since 2009.

France loses AAA rating as euro governments downgraded

2012-01-14T19:06:00.002+08:00

France has lost its top AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor's and eight other eurozone governments have also been downgraded by the ratings agency.

Italy, Spain, Cyprus and Portugal were cut two notches, with the latter two given "junk" ratings. Germany kept its AAA rating, and with a stable outlook.
S&P blamed the failure of eurozone leaders to deal with the crisis, or even diagnose its causes correctly.
Rumours of S&P's move prompted stock markets to fall earlier in the day.
Misdiagnosis Austria, like France has lost its top AAA rating, and been downgraded to AA+. Its economy exports a lot to recession-struck Italy, while its banks are facing losses on subsidiaries they own in financially troubled Hungary.
S&P's rating of Italy - currently at the epicentre of the crisis - has been cut two notches from A to BBB+.
Spain was also cut two notches from AA- to A, as was Portugal, whose rating fell from BBB- to a "junk" rating of BB - indicating a very high level of risk for lenders.

“Start Quote

The downgrades increase the dependence of the big banks on finance from the ECB - and for the economic recovery of the eurozone, that's a very bad thing”

Robert Peston Business editor, BBC News

Read Robert's blog

Apart from Germany and lower-rated Slovakia, all the other countries being reveiwed were given a "negative outlook", meaning there is a 30% chance of a further downgrade.

"Today's rating actions are primarily driven by our assessment that the policy initiatives that have been taken by European policymakers in recent weeks may be insufficient to fully address ongoing systemic stresses in the eurozone," said S&P in its statement.
The agency said the plan currently being discussed by eurozone leaders - to limit governments' future borrowing - was based on a misdiagnosis of the cause of the financial crisis.
It said the crisis was more to do with trade deficits and a loss of competitiveness by "periphery" eurozone economies such as Italy and Spain, than excess borrowing by governments.
The agency also praised the ECB for taking action to stop a total collapse in market confidence in the eurozone late last year.
'No catastrophe' French Finance Minister Francois Baroin confirmed the news about his own country ahead of S&P's announcement on Friday night.

Analysis

Hugh Schofield BBC News, Paris

The French downgrade is terrible news for President Sarkozy, who has only 100 days before the elections to claw back his yawning poll deficit behind the Socialist Francois Hollande.
It may be that in the short term the economic effects of the downgrade are quite limited. The markets have long assumed this was coming, so may already have absorbed the impact on France's cost of borrowing.
But the political fall-out could be very disagreeable for the president.
His pitch ahead of the elections has been to tell the voters that - though he acknowledges they may not warm to him personally - he has what it takes to battle through the crisis.
France is in the midst of an economic storm, he is saying, so best to entrust the ship of state to a proven captain.
But this argument looks a little thin when the country has just lost its gold star status, and under his watch. And he can't say it doesn't matter that much - because for most of last year he was telling the French that safeguarding the triple-A was an absolute necessity.
To be fair, the French are not especially impressed either by the prospect of a President Hollande. But that is meagre comfort for Sarkozy.
It's the first rule of politics: if you're in charge, you take the rap.

Peston: Bad day for the euro

"It's not good news, but it's not a catastrophe," Mr Baroin said following emergency talks called by President Nicolas Sarkozy with the prime minister and other key ministers.

He said the French government was not planning any additional spending cuts or tax rises as a result of the downgrade: "It's not ratings agencies that decide French policy."
Meanwhile, European economic affairs commissioner, Olli Rehn, said that he regretted "the inconsistent decision [by S&P]... at a time when the euro area is taking decisive action in all fronts of its crisis response."
France is being downgraded just one notch by S&P, to AA+.
The country still has a top AAA rating from the other two main ratings agencies, Moody's and Fitch.
Spooked Earlier, the euro hit a new 16-month low against the dollar of $1.263 on rumours of the multiple downgrades, before rebounding.
It also dropped against the pound, hovering at about 82.9 pence.
Markets were also spooked by news that talks between Greece and its private sector lenders over a restructuring of its debts - including a 50% forgiveness - had broken down.
An agreement is a precondition for Greece receiving its next round of bailout money from the European Union and International Monetary Fund, without which it faces the risk of running out of money to repay its debts, and a possible exit from the eurozone, in the coming months.
London's FTSE 100 ended the day down 0.5% and Frankfurt's Dax 0.6%, while the Dow Jones in New York fell 0.4%, although it was widely expected that the ratings cuts were coming.
Borrowing cost Credit ratings are used by banks and investors to decide how much money to lend to particular borrowers.
The cut in the so-called sovereign ratings of governments is likely to lead to most other borrowers domiciled in the same countries - including banks and companies - being downgraded.

Crisis jargon buster

Use the dropdown for easy-to-understand explanations of key financial terms:

Credit rating

The assessment given to debts and borrowers by a ratings agency according to their safety from an investment standpoint - based on their creditworthiness, or the ability of the company or government that is borrowing to repay. Ratings range from AAA, the safest, down to D, a company that has already defaulted. Ratings of BBB- or higher are considered "investment grade". Below that level, they are considered "speculative grade" or more colloquially as junk.

Glossary in full

Although the move has been widely expected, it is still likely to make it somewhat more difficult and expensive for borrowers from those countries to raise money, including for the governments themselves.

Italy's 10-year implied cost of borrowing in bond markets jumped by a third of a percentage point after the rumours emerged, but ended the day largely unchanged at just over 6.6%.
France's borrowing cost rose slightly, from 3.03% to 3.07%. Germany - considered the safest borrower in the eurozone - saw its borrowing cost fall from 1.83% to 1.76%.
The downgrades may also have an impact on the eurozone's rescue fund.
The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) - which has already been used to rescue Portugal and the Irish Republic - is guaranteed by the eurozone governments.
The fund is supposed to contribute towards future bailouts of Greece.
It was already having trouble borrowing money needed to provide its rescue loans. S&P's announcement may make that task even harder.

Country	Old Rating	New Rating	Cut
Austria	AAA	AA+	One notch, loses top rating
Belgium	AA	AA	None
Cyprus	BBB	BB+	Two notches to junk
Estonia	AA-	AA-	None
Finland	AAA	AAA	None
France	AAA	AA+	One notch, loses top rating
Germany	AAA	AAA	None
Ireland	BBB+	BBB+	None
Italy	A	BBB+	Two notches
Luxembourg	AAA	AAA	None
Malta	A	A-	One notch
Netherlands	AAA	AAA	None
Portugal	BBB-	BB	Two notches to junk
Slovakia	A+	A	One notch
Slovenia	AA-	A+	One notch
Spain	AA-	A	Two notches

Palin Advises Romney On Bain

2012-01-14T19:05:00.002+08:00

The Romney campaign's "Bain problem," which is also now the Republican party's problem, doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon. Sure, Republicans are figuring out that this is not a winning issue for them. Thus they've circled their wagons around Romney, and even tried to get Newt to turn it down a couple of notches. Even the funder who gave Newt the money to green-light "When Mitt Romney Came To Down" is having second thoughts.

But never mind all that. The story has now gotten big enough to draw Sarah Palin out of an extended break from her bus tour, to advise Romney to open up the books on his tenure at Bain.

Republican star and Fox News political analyst Sarah Palin said criticism of Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital by some Republican rivals is fair game and that voters should get "proof" of the 100,000 jobs Mr. Romney said he helped create while he headed the private equity firm.

In an interview with Fox host Sean Hannity Wednesday, Ms. Palin was asked about Texas Gov. Rick Perry's comments that Mr. Romney had practiced "vulture capitalism" rather than venture capitalism at Bain. Fox and The Wall Street Journal are owned by News Corp.
"I don't agree with attacks on free-market capitalism at all but I don't believe this is really what is at the heart of Gov. Perry's criticism of Romney and his time at Bain," the former Alaska governor replied. "This isn't about a politician making huge profits in the private sector. I think what Gov. Perry is getting at is that Gov. Romney has claimed to have created 100,000 jobs at Bain and you know, now people are wanting to know is there proof of that claim."

In a similar vein, Palin called on Romney to (finally) release his tax returns.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin suggested Wednesday that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney should release his tax returns, as well as records from his time at Bain Capital.
"What I heard was a little bit what's going on today is some inoculation of the candidate himself, the frontrunner, and what it is that he's going to face when he comes up against Barack Obama. Nobody should be surprised that things about Bain Capital, and maybe tax returns not being released yet, and maybe some records not being as transparently provided to the public as voters deserve to see right now, don't be surprised that's all coming out today," she told Sean Hannity Wednesday on Fox News. "Let's get it out there, let's hear the defense of the candidates who are being charged with some of this. It's kind of like some come-to-Jesus moments for these candidates, and that's good, that's healthy."

The problem is, "free enterprise" is not on trial, and Bain isn't so much the representative of capitalism as the Frankenstein monster of capitalism stitched together and brought to life by conservative policy.

As a former manager at Bain made plain in an LA Time interview, job creation was never the mission at Bain Capital. So, there's very little evidence to support Romney's claim of creating 100,000 jobs at Bain. Bain won't release its overall record of jobs lost or created. Probably because it wasn't anybody's job to create jobs at Bain. Ask them about how much they returned to investors they can probably do that. Creating wealth was the job at Bain, not creating jobs. And we've already had a decade of the Bush tax cuts benefiting the wealthy, the rich getting richer, and zero job growth to teach us that creating wealth doesn't necessarily lead to job creation.

Warren Buffet, in a Time Magazine interview, made clear another reason why Romney couldn't follow Palin's advice if he wanted to.

When I ask whether Mitt Romney is a job creator or destroyer, Buffett says that while businesses shouldn't keep people they don't need, "I don't like what private-equity firms do in terms of taking out every dime they can and leveraging [companies] up so that they really aren't equipped, in some cases, for the future."

Even without a release from Bain, we what we know about one of Bain's acquisitions — in which Romney was a very hands-on manager — is exactly what Buffet described.

But an examination of the Dade deal, which Mr. Romney approved and presided over, shows the unintended human costs and messy financial consequences behind the brand of capitalism that he practiced for 15 years.
At Bain Capital’s direction, Dade quadrupled the money it owed creditors and vendors. It took steps that propelled the business toward bankruptcy. And in waves of layoffs, it cut loose 1,700 workers in the United States, including Brian and Christine Shoemaker, who lost their jobs at a plant in Westwood, Mass. Staggered, Mr. Shoemaker wondered, “How can the bean counters just come in here and say, Hey, it’s over?”

Why release records on jobs created or destroyed and risk confirming stories like the one above?
That brings me to why Romney can't exactly follow Palin's advice on taxes. Certainly not now, anyway, with a majority of Americans citing economic inequality as a source of conflict, Newt shining a spotlight on Mitt's vulture capitalism, and voters in the 99% steering clear of him.
If he releases his tax returns Romney runs the risk, in the current climate, of revealing just how rich he is. For the record, according to Wealth-X, he's one of the 10 richest people to run for president in the last 20 years. His net worth of $250 million makes him the third richest person to seek the oval office, after Ross Perot (#1) and Steve Forbes (#2).

Romney's wealth makes him one of the 3,140 wealthiest people in the country — that's the richest 0.001 percent of Americans. So, he's not just the candidate of the 1 percent, but the candidate of the 0.001 percent.

Releasing his tax returns would just confirm to many American voters that Romney got rich by practicing the very brand of vulture capitalism Buffet criticized, which is exactly what Newt accused him of.

Unfortunately for Romney, I think all of this is already but confirmed for a good many Americans.

Iran: a quickly evolving geopolitical imbroglio – part IV

2012-01-14T18:53:00.000+08:00

The USS Carl Vinson

Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Last night James Corbett and I discussed on his show Corbett Report Radio the situation with Iran and the Persian Gulf, which is progressing at a blinding pace.

Since then, a considerable amount has happened and that was less than 24 hours ago. It is nearly impossible for one person to round up all of these events for you but I am doing the best I possibly can if I miss something please do not hesitate to contact me at Admin@EndtheLie.com.

If this is the first part of the series you have come across, please take a few moments to go over parts one, two and three to get a better sense of what is going on here and the events leading up to what we are now witnessing. You also might want to read parts one and two of the “U.S. and NATO are on the march worldwide” series to get a better sense of the global scale of this geopolitical strategy.

Today, a significant step forward was taken (or backward, depending on your point of view) when a NATO Parliamentary Assembly member made some heated statements regarding Iran, Kuwait, and the region in general. The first jab at Iran in the piece published by Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) comes in the opening sentence in calling the Persian Gulf “the Arabian Gulf.”

The Deputy Chairman of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Defense and Security Committee Francesco Buzzi addressed the Iranian threats to close the critical Strait of Hormuz, which Corbett rightly characterized as a flashpoint, while telling Tehran “to observe international treaties and laws and to respect the sovereignty, territorial integrity and borders of its Gulf neighbors, ‘mainly the friendly State of Kuwait.’”

The following choice of words should be noted: “The veteran NATO MP voiced total solidarity with the State of Kuwait versus the Iranian move.”

This shows they are already creating the alliances and regional infrastructure required to wage war with Iran.

Furthermore, it clearly shows which side Kuwait is on, while highlihgting the fact that these individuals believe Iranian aggression is not only inevitable but already occurring.

Buzzi also pushed for a more aggressive political and diplomatic approach on the part of the European Union, in which the Italian government would take a more active role.

This shows just how divorced from reality these NATO bureaucrats are. With Italy’s immense domestic woes weighing heavily upon the Italian people, Buzzi actually thinks the government should be focusing on the non-threat that is Iran.

Buzzi is also apparently an advocate of European economic sanctions against Iran, which will likely be discussed in the meeting of European Union Foreign Ministers at the end of the month.

This – of course – is Iran’s red line, which they said would force them to close the Strait of Hormuz.

As I said on Corbett Report Radio, I find this prospect quite unrealistic, due to the fact that the Iranian government is well aware of the fact that they would be leaving themselves open to a massive attack from the United States.

When they first threatened to close the Strait, the United States Fifth Fleet, based out of nearby Bahrain, countered with threats of their own.

I do not believe the Iranian leadership is foolish enough to believe that the United States military would not make good on their threats, especially when it comes to a resource like oil.

Another Italian, Pieradrea Vanni, president of the Kuwaiti-Italian Friendship Society, expressed a similar sentiment to that of Buzzi in calling “on the Italian government to support an EU initiative for a decisive action against Iran, which he said is seeking to destabilize the Gulf region.”

I would counter Vanni’s claim that it is Iran destabilizing the region by asking him why the United States is moving even more naval forces into the region, making a concerted and public push to arm neighboring states and holding the largest joint Israeli-American drill in history at a time like this.

Is it really Iran that is seeking to destabilize the region, which is so critical to their infrastructure; or perhaps could it be that it is the United States, NATO and the West in general that is destabilizing the region in order to firm up their grip on the Gulf and exploit the unmatched oil resources?

An event which just served to reinforce the assertion that the United States is in fact the nation destabilizing the Gulf was the announcement of additional warship movement in the region.

Of course the United States is not alone. Indeed, as I previously mentioned, the British are moving their most advanced warship into the region as well, far from what this tense situation needs.

Unsurprisingly, like in the previous instances of American naval vessels entering the region, United States officials deny this has anything to do with tensions over the Strait of Hormuz.

Speaking of the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said, “Her deployment in that area is routine, long-planned – there’s nothing unusual about that.”

According to RT, the USS Carl Vinson has yet to go through the Strait of Hormuz and has a capacity of up to 80 planes and helicopters and is accompanied by a cruiser and destroyer.

The Pentagon says that the ships are “not in the Gulf,” but instead in the Area of Responsibility of the United States Fifth Fleet.

Other than the Persian Gulf, this includes the Gulf of Oman, the Red Sea and some of the Indian Ocean.

The United States is now claiming that the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier is not expected to return to the Gulf after it recently passed through the Strait of Hormuz – a move which infuriated Iran.

However, the American Navy has indeed stated that the USS Carl Vinson will be joined by the USS Abraham Lincoln, yet another aircraft carrier which is currently in transit from the Indian Ocean.

The United States is also stepping up the sanctions war against Iran, with Japan agreeing to adopt harsh sanctions against importing Iranian oil today.

“We plan to start reducing this 10 per cent share [of Iranian oil imports that make up the Japanese energy market] as soon as possible in a planned manner,” Japanese Finance Minister Jun Azume said.

One interesting piece in this international jigsaw puzzle I discussed with Corbett last night is the duality of India’s approach to Iran.

As I have been outlining in my series, “U.S. and NATO are on the march worldwide,” India is becoming increasingly close with the United States in the Western bid to control the Asia-Pacific region.

While India is growing closer to the United States and NATO by the day, they still have a considerably tight relationship with Iran.

According to RT, Reuters reports via sources in the Indian cabinet that their government is not looking “to waver” from the American approach to Iran.

India currently pours a whopping $12 billion per year into Iranian oil and is the largest purchaser of Iran’s oil after China.

However, India has chosen to deal with Iranian oil outside of the United States dollar, a move which the US has oddly left unaddressed.

Oddly enough, it is not just India that is now dealing with Iran outside of the dollar, indeed Russia, China and surprisingly even Japan have decided to make the same move, according to Iranian Fars News Agency.

It’s quite interesting that Japan would get on board with the Western oil sanctions against Iran seeing as they have opted to deal with the supposedly dangerous nation outside of the dollar completely.

There is also the matter of the Fujairah pipeline, the construction of which has been accelerated and is now slated for testing in May.

This pipeline is set to be able to move 1.4 million barrels per day of oil, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz bottleneck.

Interestingly, RT points to a possible spark which could ignite the flames of World War III as being the killing of an American citizen convicted of espionage in Iran.

They link this to the infamous assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 which many argue sparked World War I.

They also posit that the Strait of Hormuz might be the spark; something which I think is more likely, especially given the upcoming massive Israeli-American drills which might coincide with Iranian military exercises in the region as well.

They rightly point out, “Right now it is a war of words,” and I do not think that Iran will take the first step unless they are forced to do so or backed into a corner and truly feel threatened.

I believe that it is not Israel that should be speaking of an “existential threat,” instead it should be Iran which is becoming increasingly encircled, isolated and threatened by a massive navy and powerful group of allied nations.

Crow uses sequence of three tools

2012-01-14T18:51:00.000+08:00

Science in Action: Crow Intelligence

2012-01-14T18:50:00.000+08:00

Romney: Income inequality is just 'envy'

2012-01-13T15:13:00.002+08:00

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- According to Mitt Romney, the nation's growing focus on income inequality is all about envy.
"You know, I think it's about envy. I think it's about class warfare," the leading Republican presidential candidate said Wednesday on The Today Show.
When asked if there are any fair questions about wealth distribution, Romney replied, "It's fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like."
Romney has accused President Obama of promoting the "bitter politics of envy." The president is ramping up his talks about the nation's growing income divide and the shrinking of the middle class. He is focusing on the tax benefits afforded to millionaires and executives.
Romney, who is one of those millionaires, is taking a different path. He says he's distancing himself from what he calls "a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach."
Instead, he is talking about making America a merit-based society, rather than an entitlement society.
"I believe in a merit nation, an opportunity nation where people by virtue of their education, their hard work and risk taking and their dreams -- may be a little luck -- could achieve great things," he said Thursday at a campaign rally in Florida.
A growing number of Americans are latching onto the idea of income inequality, which prompted thousands of people to participate in Occupy Wall Street-type protests around the nation last fall.
About two-thirds of the public believes there are "very strong" or "strong" conflicts between the rich and poor, according to a Pew Research Center report released Tuesday. That's up 19 percentage points since 2009

Kalispell's Depression (Montana)

2012-01-13T15:12:00.001+08:00

Mitt Flop Romney vs Mitt Flop Romney

2012-01-13T15:12:00.000+08:00

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