Government Surveillance Of American Citizens Goes Far Beyond What You Are Being Told

By Michael

Every single day, the U.S. government gathers and stores more than a billion phone calls, emails, text messages, photographs and Internet searches.  Just about every form of electronic communication that you can possibly imagine is being harvested.  In fact, it has been reported that NSA personnel gather2.1 million gigabytes of data every hour.  This is being done even though it is a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution.  Sadly, most Americans do not even know what the Fourth Amendment actually says.  For those that do not know, the Fourth Amendment says the following: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”  Unfortunately, our leaders have totally abandoned the Constitution.  They seem to believe that they have the right to look through our electronic communications any time they want and that we should not complain about it.  As you will see below, workers at the NSA have even eavesdropped on very intimate conversations between soldiers serving in Iraq and their female loved ones back home.  What kind of sick person would do such a thing?  Sadly, the truth is that we have allowed ourselves to become a “Big Brother society”, and we are an utter disgrace to the millions of brave men and women who have died to defend our freedoms.
There was an explosion of outrage on Thursday when the Guardian reported on a leaked document that shows that the Obama administration is collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers every single day…

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.
The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian,requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

The White House responded by calling this program “a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats”, and White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters the following…

“The intelligence community is conducting court-authorized intelligence activities pursuant to public statute with the knowledge and oversight of Congress”

So obviously the Obama administration sees nothing wrong with this at all.
Will some of our other “leaders” step forward and condemn this blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution?
Sadly, so far most of our politicians are rigorously defending the program.  Just check out how some prominent members of Congress responded to this story…
Senator Dianne Feinstein: “There is nothing new in this program. The fact of the matter is, that this was a routine three-month approval under seal that was leaked”
Senator Lindsey Graham: “If we didn’t do it, we’d be crazy”
Senator Saxby Chambliss: “This is nothing particularly new. This has been going on for seven years under the auspices of the (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) authority and every member of the United States Senate has been advised of this”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: “Everyone should just calm down and understand this isn’t anything that is brand new. It’s been going on for some seven years. And we’ve tried often to try to make it better, and we’ll continue to do that”
But the collection of phone call metadata is just the tip of the iceberg.
The truth is that government surveillance of Americans citizens goes far beyond what you are being told.
In fact, the Washington Post has just come out with an article about a highly classified program known as PRISM that involves the federal government “tapping directly into the central servers” of nine top Internet companies…

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.
The highly classified program, code-named PRISM, has not been disclosed publicly before. Its establishment in 2007 and six years of exponential growth took place beneath the surface of a roiling debate over the boundaries of surveillance and privacy. Even late last year, when critics of the foreign intelligence statute argued for changes, the only members of Congress who knew about PRISM were bound by oaths of office to hold their tongues.

So what Internet companies are involved?  Most of the names will be extremely familiar to you…

The technology companies, which participate knowingly in PRISM operations, include most of the dominant global players of Silicon Valley. They are listed on a roster that bears their logos in order of entry into the program: “Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” PalTalk, although much smaller, has hosted significant traffic during the Arab Spring and in the ongoing Syrian civil war.
Dropbox , the cloud storage and synchronization service, is described as “coming soon.”

The capabilities of this system are apparently awesome.  Fortunately, one “career intelligence officer” was so disgusted with how our privacy rights were being violated that he decided to leak information about PRISM to the Washington Post…

Firsthand experience with these systems, and horror at their capabilities, is what drove a career intelligence officer to provide PowerPoint slides about PRISM and supporting materials to The Washington Post in order to expose what he believes to be a gross intrusion on privacy. “They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” the officer said.

Another whistleblower, former NSA code breaker William Binney, has come forward with some astounding details about what is actually happening over at the NSA.  The following is from a recent Business Insider article…

Binney — one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in NSA history — worked for the Defense Department’s foreign signals intelligence agency for 32 years before resigning in late 2001 because he “could not stay after the NSA began purposefully violating the Constitution.”
He’s detailed how, ever since 9/11, the NSA has run a top-secret surveillance program that amasses electronic data — phone calls, GPS information, emails, social media, banking and travel records, entire government databases — and analyzes the information “to be able to monitor what people are doing” and who they are doing it with.

So exactly how much information are we talking about?
Overall, Binney claims that the NSA has gathered approximately “20 trillion transactions” involving U.S. citizens.
And other NSA whistleblowers claim that the agency “has the capability to do individualized searches, similar to Google, for particular electronic communications in real time through such criteria as target addresses, locations, countries and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email.”
But this is not supposed to be happening.  The NSA is not supposed to be spying on U.S. citizens and it is a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution.
But they are doing it.  In fact, they are gathering so much information on all of us that they needed to build a brand new data storage center out in Utah.  According to Fox News, it will have the capability of storing 5 zettabytes of data…

The NSA says the Utah Data Center is a facility for the intelligence community that will have a major focus on cyber security. The agency will neither confirm nor deny specifics. Some published reports suggest it could hold 5 zettabytes of data. (Just one zettabyte is the equivalent of about 62 billion stacked iPhones 5?s– that stretches past the moon.

Why do they need so much storage space?
Well, after you start putting the pieces together, it becomes very clear.
They are illegally spying on all of us, and the American people need to be told the truth.
But of course there are always numbskulls out there that say things like this…
“I don’t have anything to hide so I don’t care if they watch everything that I do.”
Really?
If you think that way, perhaps you will change your mind after you read what some NSA employees have been doing.  The following is from an article posted on theatlanticwire.com…

And the NSA would never abuse its awesome surveillance power, right? Wrong. In 2008, NSA workers told ABC News that they routinely eavesdropped on phone sex between troops serving overseas and their loved ones in America. They listened in on both satellite phone calls and calls from the phone banks in Iraq’s Green Zone where soldiers call home. Former Navy Arab linguist, David Murfee Faulk described how a coworker would say, “Hey, check this out… there’s good phone sex or there’s some pillow talk, pull up this call, it’s really funny, go check it out.” Faulk explained they would gossip about the best calls during breaks. “It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, ‘Wow, this was crazy.’”

We live during a time when government agencies are massively abusing their powers.  We have seen this recently with the IRS, the Justice Department and now with the NSA.
But so far, most Americans don’t seem too upset by all of this abuse of power.  Most Americans are so apathetic that they seem content to let the government get away with almost anything.
In the end, America will get the government that it deserves.  If Americans do not stand up now and speak out, it will be a signal to the government that this kind of behavior is okay and we will see even more of it.
So what do you think about all of the government corruption that has been exposed lately?  Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below…

Maine Doctor cuts costs by 50% by dropping insurance/gov't overhead

Overhead road link to 2nd Penang Bridge collapses

Firemen at the scene of the collapse near Batu Maung. Photo by Sim Tze Tzin taken from Facebook.

GEORGE TOWN: A section of the overhead road under construction near Batu Maung here which is supposed to be the link road to the 2nd Penang Bridge has collapsed.
Details are still sketchy but one unconfirmed report said one or two cars are buried under the rubble. The incident happened at Lebuhraya Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu near Batu Maung.
Firemen were seen at the scene trying to clear the rubble. The collapse occurred at about 7.15pm.

The portion of the overhead road under construction that collapsed. Photo by Andrew Chong from Twitter.

Incentives encourage us to rip off customers, admit bankers as three quarters say excessive pay can encourage them to break the law

• More than 1,000 finance workers were surveyed about pay in the industry
• 75% said some bankers are  'still paid excessively'
• Two-thirds say they 'inappropriate behaviour' is encouraged

Cash: Five years after the financial crash banks admit they are still being paid excessively

Three quarters of bankers say some colleagues are paid an excessive amount that can encourage them to break the law, a damning study revealed yesterday.
Nearly five years after the financial crisis began in 2008, the report interviewed bankers themselves to highlight how little discredited working practices had changed.
It follows a devastating few years for an industry that the taxpayer was forced to bail out, only to see banks hit by a series of self-inflicted scandals including manipulating interest rates, ripping off vulnerable investors and mis-selling loans to small firms.
The report, from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, suggested some of this unethical or illegal behaviour was a direct result of profligate salaries that ‘incentivise inappropriate behaviour’.
Despite such high-profile failures, the report says 75 per cent of bankers agreed some colleagues were ‘still paid excessively’.
According to the Office for National Statistics, the average salary of a man working full-time in the City of London is nearly £100,000, compared to the £36,000 average for men in full-time work across the whole of Britain.
The CIPD, which quizzed more than 1,000 finance workers, including nearly 500 bankers, said: ‘Almost two-thirds [65 per cent] of employees agree that some people in their organisations are still rewarded in a way that incentivises inappropriate behaviour.’

 

One in five bankers said they had ‘felt bullied or put under excessive pressure to behave in ways that are counter to their personal ethics or the interests of customers within the last two years’.
But it is the money, more than anything else, that made so many bankers chose to work in the industry in the first place.

Survey: More than 1,000 finance workers were quizzed about their work, and two-thirds said pay deals caused people to behave inappropriately

When asked why they went into banking, the most popular answer – given by a third of respondents – was the high salary and bonus.
Peter Cheese, chief executive of the CIPD, said: ‘For too long, many of our financial institutions had been built on cultures that encouraged and rewarded excessive risk-taking and singular focus on short-term financial gain.’
But nearly half of bankers said there had not been ‘any initiative’ over the last year to change the culture.

Former Barclays Chief Executive Bob Diamond (left) claimed two years ago that the time for 'remorse and apology' was over while Sir James Crosby, the former chief executive of Halifax, is one of the few senior bankers to apologise

Few top bankers have apologised, with former Barclays boss Bob Diamond criticised for claiming in 2011 that the time for remorse was over.
A spokesman for the British Bankers’ Association said: ‘Pay practices have been completely transformed. Since 2007, the total bonus pool has dropped by 55 per cent and bankers in London are now paid less than they are in rival financial centres such as New York, Singapore or Hong Kong.
‘Banks are rewarding staff for high levels of customer service and not sales volumes.’

U.S. And Canadian Mint Sales: All Of Domestic Silver Supply Used Solely For Bullion

Seeking Alpha – by Hebba Investments
GLD, PHYS, PSLV, and SLV investors may want to start following the North America bullion markets because demand is so strong that it is using up all of domestic mine supply. We will get into that in a little bit, but for now let us look at U.S. bullion sales for the month of May.  
Analyzing the US Mint Sales Numbers
When analyzing sales numbers it is important that investors go past the headlines and dig deep into the true nature of the sales. For brevity we are only showing the last few years of sales, but for doing comparisons we have used data from the beginning of the current bull market in 2001. We also use the average monthly London price fix to calculate the dollar value of the month’s bullion sales.
To start, let’s take a look at the U.S. Mint sales numbers for silver and gold for May and compare them to the same month in previous years. We are doing a year-over-year comparison because coin sales are very seasonal in nature and to get a fair read we have to compare May to May.

(Click to enlarge)

We know that last month’s April sales broke all sorts of sales records, so we were expecting a little bit of a slowdown in gold and silver sales. May sales came down from the previous month’s totals, but still are at exceptionally high levels. Richard Peterson, the acting director of the U.S. Mint, commented that ”Demand right now is unprecedented. We are buying all the coin (blanks) they can make,” – that comment was made in June or two months AFTER the record-breaking April.
As investors can see from the table above, May sales continue to be exceptionally high for gold and silver. Silver once again surpassed 3 million ounces sold for the month and gold was fairly strong at 70,000 ounces sold. On a year-to-date basis, gold and silver sales are still breaking records and gold sales are 8,000 ounces higher than any other previous year, while silver sales are almost 2 million higher than the second highest silver sales year.
Canadian Mint Sales
Silver sales were also strong in Canada, as the Royal Canadian Mint (RCM) issued its first quarter report showing that it is also seeing record breaking sales. Unfortunately, the RCM does not issue monthly statistics, but on a quarterly basis (January through March of 2013) it has sold 269,000 gold ounces (96% higher than the 2012 first quarter) and 6.6 million silver ounces (65% higher than the 2012 first quarter). These sales numbers were before the major price drop in April, so we expect that second quarter sales numbers will be significantly higher than even this stellar first quarter.
US and Canadian Silver Mine Supply
Another interesting thing about these sales numbers is when investors compare them to the mining statistics from these two countries. According to the USGS in 2012, the U.S. mined around 34 million ounces of silver, while Canada mined around 17 million ounces of silver.
Let us now extrapolate U.S. and Canadian sales numbers to forecast how many ounces of silver will be sold by the end of the year. Since a linear calculation would be inaccurate (bullion sales are not linear in nature), we will simply compare our year-to-date sales totals with the next highest year and then forecast our number based on the comparison year’s ending total.
Year-to-date U.S. sales are 21.7 million ounces of silver sold, which is around 15% higher than the second highest year-to-date sales for this period (in 2011). It would be fair to expect that if we run at the current pace we will end 15% higher than 2011 totals (39.8 million silver ounces sold in 2011) – which would put our 2013 forecast of silver sales at 46 million ounces.
For 2012, the Royal Canadian Mint sold 18.1 million silver maples and if we also extrapolate our first quarter numbers (65% higher than first quarter 2012) out for the rest of 2013 based on this total, they come out to a forecast of around 30 million ounces of silver. Again, this completely ignores the month of April – where we expect sales were record-breaking.
Based on year-to-date numbers, we forecast that the U.S. Mint will sell 46 million ounces of silver, while the RCM will sell 30 million ounces of silver – both significantly higher than their expected silver mine production amounts for 2013. In fact, if sales stay at these elevated levels, these two countries will be around 25 million ounces SHORT of silver - which means silver will have to be imported to satisfy mint demand.
Remember that we are exclusively talking about mint demand for silver to produce U.S. American Silver Eagles and Canadian Silver Maple coins – these demand totals assume absolutely no industrial or alternative investment (bars, rounds, etc) demand whatsoever. What happens if North American industry actually needs to use silver?
Finally, our mine production forecasts were based on 2012 USGS totals and as we know many primary silver miners are struggling to produce silver economically at current prices. In fact based on our exhaustive 2012 true all-in cost data, most silver miners are already below their all-in production costs for silver – which will lead to significant cost-cutting and cuts in exploration and silver supply. This probably will result in much lower silver production for 2013 as production is cut – so our 25 million ounce silver deficit for bullion production may be much higher if mines produce less silver than in 2012.
Conclusion
If investor physical demand stays at current levels, we think that the silver market can provide investors with a spectacular opportunity because the supply and demand picture is so bullish for silver. The fact that all U.S. and Canadian silver mine production will go to solely satisfy domestic demand for government issued coins (and supply will still be 25 million ounces short), should make investors turn their heads.
Industrial demand and alternative bullion suppliers will have no physical silver supply to use, and their silver needs will have to come from imports of silver. Additionally, low silver prices will cause many miners to cut production because their costs are above current silver spot prices, and so we also expect a drop in mine production. Finally, silver scrap supplies, which make up around 25% of silver supply, will definitely be impacted by low silver prices and we expect this source of supply to also drop. Throw in the exceptionally large short position that hedge funds and retail investors have taken in silver, and you have all the ingredients for an explosion in the silver price.
Investors should consider adding to positions in SLV, PSLV, SIVR, and CEF to get exposure to silver because we believe that the physical markets will be the source of a significant turnaround in the silver price. Also, investors should make sure they hedge their paper silver positions with physical silver bullion – this will not only hedge them from calamities in the financial markets, but it will also add to the physical pressure on the silver market and thus benefit their positions.
The supply and demand picture is about to get extremely tight in silver and we believe there will be a significant jump in the price as investors and shorts realize this – we think it is prudent to have an oversized position in both the silver ETFs and physical silver when the market realizes this.
Disclosure: I am long SIVR, PSLV, PHYS, SGOL. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
http://m.seekingalpha.com/article/1484701

Mali bets new mines will help double gold output by 2018

(Reuters) - Mali, Africa's third-largest gold producer, expects to double gold output over the next five years to 100 tonnes, hoping for a boost as projects being explored and developed begin to pour bullion, its mines minister said on Thursday.
Despite the chaotic aftermath of a military coup last year that allowed militants to seize control of northern regions, Mali produced just over 50 tonnes of gold in 2012 - a 15 percent increase. It hopes to expand output this year to 57 tonnes.
"For obvious reasons, Mali has not been an easy destination to promote," Amadou Baba Sy told a briefing in London. That is, he said, despite the concentration of gold mines in the country's south, away from fighting between government troops and Tuareg separatists in the north.
"Gold mines have been spared the impact of recent turbulence ... our plan is to support smaller players with a view to getting to 100 tonnes within the next half-decade."
Sy said Mali was conscious of spending cuts hitting producers across the mining industry in the face of cooling prices, as large players face investor pressure to cut back on new developments and smaller producers struggle to raise cash.
He said there would be support from unspecified Gulf banks which could provide loans to junior mining companies operating in Mali - backing a segment Mali expects will be key.
"These private banks came to us, contacted us, and said they had the means to support gold production," Sy said, declining to specify the lenders in question. "They would make loans directly to the small producers."
Sy said there would be over a dozen new mines coming into and towards production over the next five years, naming players such as South African producer Gold Fields.
Gold Fields has a majority stake in the Yanfolila exploration project in Mali, on which it hopes to make an investment decision by the end of the year. That means it has not yet set a date or made a final decision on whether to build a mine, though it is "positive" on the prospect and the region.
Other miners active in the country include Randgold and AngloGold Ashanti.
Mali, which has sought to attract investors with a mining code providing for tax breaks and other perks, is also aiming to diversify away from gold, hoping to encourage investment in bauxite, aluminium, and iron ore.

UCLA Report: US 'Great Recovery' Isn't 'Even Normal Growth - It's Bad'

The expected U.S. "Great Recovery" hasn't materialized and the economy has fallen short of even normal growth, according to a new forecast.

The second-quarter UCLA Anderson Forecast said the growth of real gross domestic product — meaning the inflation-adjusted value of goods and services produced — is too small to help the nation climb out of its slump.

The figure was 15.4 percent below a "normal" growth trend, forecast director Edward Leamer wrote.

Editor’s Note: Put the World’s Top Financial Minds to Work for You

"To get back to that 3 percent trend, we would need 4 percent growth for 15 years, or 5 percent growth for eight years, or 6 percent growth for five years, not the disappointing twos and threes we have been racking up recently," he said.

"It's not a recovery. It's not even normal growth. It's bad," he wrote.

A real GDP growth rate of just 1.9 percent is expected for this year, only rising to 3 percent in 2015, according to the forecast.

The figures will get a boost from a recovering housing market, forecasters said, with housing starts jumping from the historic low of 550,000 in 2009 to 1.5 million by 2015.

Unemployment should fall to 6.9 percent next year and 6.6 percent by 2015, according to the forecast — partly due, however, to discouraged workers dropping out of the labor force.

Leamer said that while jobs are being created, "the tepid growth continues to obscure the nation's most fundamental problems: too much government spending funded with too much borrowing, too little national savings to cover late-in-life health care issues and too many workers lacking the skills to compete in the modern economy," according to a University of California, Los Angeles press statement.

In addition, the jobs being created may not provide workers with a secure future and the education system is failing to provide skills such as analytical thinking that will be crucial for future workers, he wrote.

"Regrettably we reward teachers if their students can regurgitate the information on standardized tests," Leamer wrote.

California, meanwhile, outperformed the nation in job growth during a 12-month period that ended in April. Only Utah's growth rate was greater, the forecast said.

The forecast for all of 2013 is for total state employment growth of 2.6 percent, slightly higher than predictions for national growth.

However, the state's current unemployment rate of 9 percent is still higher than the overall U.S. rate of 7.5 percent. UCLA forecasters predicted the state figure will drop to 8.8 percent by the end of the year and 7.7 percent by the end of 2014.

The state's technology sector was a big contributor to job increases, along with the construction industry, which benefited from rising demand for housing, the UCLA forecast said.

Editor’s Note: Put the World’s Top Financial Minds to Work for You
© Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

The Real World of Statistical Probabilities, Historical Facts and Expert Opinion Are Predicting Another Stock Market Crash In 2013

13-year cycle about to turn the market around again?

CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE
What does the 1974 low, 1987 crash and 2000 dot.com highs have in common?  They are some of the most important highs/lows in the past 40 years and they are 13-years apart!
13-years from the 2000 high is 2013! Will this 13-year cycle influence the markets with the Dow hitting dual resistance lines from 1987 and 2000 coming into play right now???
One of my favorite quotes is….“It’s not the odds of something happening, its the impact if it does!”
Odds may be low that this 13-year cycle impacts the markets this year…if it does, the impact could be big sinceMargin debt levels are into the DANGER ZONE again! (See Margin debt)  First time margin debt levels were the highest in history? 13-years ago!!!
Stay tuned to see if the 13-year cycle has an influence this year!
http://blog.kimblechartingsolutions.com/2013/06/13-year-cycle-about-to-turn-the-market-around-again/

Feeling Confident? Just Two Charts
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-05/feeling-confident-just-two-charts
The Sell-off Is Spreading: Markets Now In Triple-Digit Loss Territory; UBS CIO Warns Of Japanese “Abegeddon” Scenario!!! DOW -200!!! Dow Jones Drops Under 15,000!!!
http://investmentwatchblog.com/the-sell-off-is-spreading-markets-now-in-triple-digit-loss-territory-ubs-cio-warns-of-japanese-abegeddon-scenario-dow-190-dow-jones-drops-under-15000/

Nikkei back below 13,000 first time since April

Japan stocks slide further on exporters, utilities

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/japan-stocks-slide-further-on-exporters-utilities-2013-06-05
UBS CIO Warns Of Japanese “Abegeddon” Scenario

BERNANKE LOSING CONTROL
Bernanke is losing control. His theoretical solutions have failed. He has created bigger bubbles. He has painted himself and the American financial system into a corner with no escape. Fisher is being honest. This is unheard of for a central banker or politician. He is the Paul Volcker of our time. A President with courage, fortitude and concern for future generations would name Fisher to be the next Fed Chairman. Obama is not that President. He will name another Keynesian lackey and Fisher’s tragic vision of our future will be realized.
http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=55432
Fed’s Fisher: We Cannot Live in Fear of ‘Monetary Cocaine’
“We cannot live in fear that gee whiz, the market is going to be unhappy that we are not giving them more monetary cocaine,” he said”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100790357

Bernanke Has Losing Control Over The Economy – Bill Gross

Pimco’s El-Erian: ‘Walk Away From Risk’

Fleckenstein – We Are Staring At Economic Collapse
Today Bill Fleckenstein gave his most powerful interview ever as he warned King World News that we are now going into a depression, or we will have massive inflation.  Fleckenstein also warned that either way this will end in a financial disaster that will be worse than what the world witnessed in 2008.  Below is what Fleckenstein, who is President of Fleckenstein Capital, had to say in this powerful and exclusive interview.
Eric King:  “You are saying we are either going to tumble into a depression here, or have some kind of serious inflation.”
Fleckenstein:  “That’s been the dilemma ever since the stock bubble burst.  We would have had something close to a depression in the wake of the financial crisis, but they pursued this policy (of reckless money printing).
 http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/6/5_Fleckenstein_-_We_Are_Staring_At_Economic_Collapse.html
There Is Now A Huge Risk Of A Collapse In Major Countries

…the financial world is in an incredibly precarious position and that for major countries “there is a big risk of a collapse.”
Eric King: “The Germans have now admitted that more money printing is on the way and they support it.”
Eveillard: “Well, you know the Germans they have repeatedly accommodated the French, Italians, Spaniards, and others. Every now and then they complain, but in the end they more or less capitulate.
I’m not even sure if the German public is aware of the fact that Germany, and accordingly the German taxpayer, is already on the hook for a substantial amount of money. I’m also not surprised that Mario Draghi would be pressuring the Germans, and that the Germans then decided to print….
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/6/5_There_Is_Now_A_Huge_Risk_Of_A_Collapse_In_Major_Countries.html

Marc Faber: QE Unlimited, Will Never Gonna End, But The Impact Is Diminishing

Doomsday poll: 87% risk of stock crash by year-end

10 predictions point to worse plunge than 2008

…The warnings are again accelerating. And so is the happy talk from Wall Street casino insiders, about rallies, housing recoveries, perpetual cheap money. Don’t listen. The next crash will happen by year-end.
Yes, there’s a 13% chance the next Fed chairman will keep printing cheap money into 2014. But on New Years Eve our aging bull will be 4½ years old, well past Bill O’Neill’s “average” 3.75 years for putting this bull out to pasture.
So unless you’re shorting, all bets on Wall Street casinos for 2014 are megarisk, like 2008. Like a Stephen King horror film, you feel it coming. Could happen anytime, even tomorrow, says Siegel’s research, or the unpredictable logic in Nassim Taleb’s “Black Swan.”…

Here are 10 other predictions adding credibility to a crash by the end of 2013:

1. Warren Buffett ‘guaranteed’ new bubble, new recession four years ago

Actually he saw it coming early. Shortly after the 2008 crash Warren Buffett was asked: “Do you think there will be another bubble leading to a huge recession?” Yes, “I can guarantee it.” Cycles happen.

Next question: “Why can’t we learn the lessons of the last recession? Look where greed has gotten us.” Then with the impish grin of a Zen master, Uncle Warren replied, “Greed is fun for a while. People can’t resist it.” But “however far human beings have come, we haven’t grown up emotionally at all. We remain the same.”

Yes, one of world’s richest men was personally guaranteeing another bubble, another “huge recession.” Now, four years later, that time bomb is ticking louder, closer.

2. Federal Reserve’s Council: ‘Unsustainable bubble in stocks, bonds’

The International Business Times just reported on the minutes of the Federal Reserve Board Advisory Council’s mid-May meeting. Members expressed “strong concerns over the Fed’s low-interest-rate policies and its bond-purchase program, which they say could trigger unmanageable inflation and an ‘unsustainable bubble’ in the stock and bond markets.” Some “pointed out that near-zero interest rates could not be sustained in the long run.”

Why? “A spike in inflation could force the Fed to hike interest rates, hurting business confidence and consumer spending, and prove disastrous to the U.S. economy, which is still clawing its way back from the debilitating effects of the 2008 financial crisis.”

Get it? The Fed and Wall Street insiders hear something’s dead ahead.

3. Peter Schiff is ‘doubling down’ on his ‘doomsday’ prediction

Euro Pacific Capital CEO Peter Schiff, author of “The Real Crash: America’s Coming Bankruptcy,” is “not backing away from doomsday predictions about the U.S. economy,” wrote MarketWatch’s Greg Robb last week. He sees the no-win scenario: “Either the Fed stops QE and starts selling the Treasurys and mortgage-related assets on its balance sheet, thus triggering a recession, or else faces an inevitable, even-worse, currency crisis.”

The “idea that the U.S. economy is in recovery is based entirely on rising asset prices … Asset prices are only rising because rates are low. As soon as rates go back up, asset prices will” fall.

Last year on Fox Business Schiff warned: “We’ve got a much bigger collapse coming.” Then last week: “I am 100% confident the crisis that we’re going to have will be much worse than the one we had in 2008.” His 100% beats our 87%.

4. Bill Gross: ‘Credit supernova’ turning 2013 bull into big bad bear

Yes, Gross sees a ‘credit supernova’ dead ahead. His firm has $2 trillion at risk when the Federal Reserve cheap money finally explodes in America’s face, brings down the economy, again. Gross warns: “Investment banking, which only a decade ago promoted small-business development and transition to public markets, now is dominated by leveraged speculation and the Ponzi finance.”

Bernanke’s Ponzi finance is self-destructive, lethal and massive. Endless cheap money upsets the balance between credit expansion and real economic growth, resulting in diminishing returns. Very bad news.

5. Gary Shilling predicts the ‘grand disconnect’ will trigger ‘shocker’

Yes, economist Gary Shilling predicts a “shocker” before the end of the year. Worse because investors are “paying little attention to weak and declining economies around the world, and concentrating on the flood of money being created by central banks.”

The “grand disconnect” is driving up stocks “while the zeal for yield, amidst low interest rates, benefited junk bonds and other low-quality debt.” Wall Street’s blowing a nasty new bubble, repeating the run-up to the 2008 crash.

6. ‘Kaboom ahead,’ an ‘ominous third phase’ of 2008 Meltdown

“Bond guru buying stocks. Sees ‘Kaboom’ Ahead,” shouted the Bloomberg Market headline about Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of Doubleline Capital. Earlier he predicted the 2008 meltdown. But now he says the real damage is yet to come.

“The first phase of the coming debacle consisted of a 27-year buildup of corporate, personal and sovereign debt. That lasted until 2008.” Then cheap money “finally toppled banks and pushed the global economy into a recession, spurring governments and central banks to spend trillions of dollars to stimulate growth.” Next, an “ominous third phase,” a bigger crash, whose impact will far exceed the damage of 2008.

What’s he buying? Hard assets. Plus “sitting on cash,” waiting to scoop up more at “fire-sale” prices, “it’s worth waiting.”

7. ‘Tick, tick … boom!’ InvestmentNews sees bond crash dead ahead

A few months ago InvestmentNews front page is so powerful you can hear sirens on a flashing, warning in huge bold type: “Tick, tick … boom!” Their readers: 90,000 professional advisers who trust INews forecasts.

This was the biggest warning since 2008: “What will your clients’ portfolios look like when the bond bomb goes off?” Not “if” but “when.” Yes, they expect the bond bomb to explode soon.

Wake up, INews sees extreme dangers for millions of Americans who have “no idea what’s about to happen to them … Tick, tick … boom!”

8. Reagan’s budget director sees an ‘apocalypse … get out now’

Recently David Stockman warned of an economic “apocalypse” dead ahead, “arising from a rogue central bank that has abetted the Wall Street casino, crucified savers on a cross of zero interest rates and fueled a global commodity bubble that erodes Main Street living standards through rising food and energy prices … get out of the markets and hide out in cash.”

Stockman’s not merely warning of a crash ending the bull rally since 2009. This “grand bubble” has been building for 32 years since the Reagan revolution. He’s atoning for a generation of politicians with no moral compass: “Capitalism has morphed into a monopoly ruled by politicians who are serving a wealthy elite. Competition is a joke.”

9. Nouriel Roubini: ‘Prepare for the perfect storm’ in an unstable world

Yes, prepare, prepare, prepare. Roubini told Slate.com: Our world is a game of dominos, any one of which could put in motion a global collapse: “Sooner or later, another ugly fight” over debt, markets will “become spooked” with “a significant amount of drag … on an economy that has grown at barely a 2% rate.”

Scanning the world’s hot-button triggers in the euro zone, China, BRICs, Iran, Middle East, Pakistan, oil markets, Dr. Doom warns, the “drums of actual war will beat harder.” Any one of these trends “alone would be enough to stall the global economy and tip it into recession.”

10. Jeremy Grantham: America’s growth and prosperity ‘gone forever’

Grantham’s GMO firm manages $100 billion. He focused on Richard Gordon’s disturbing research: “Is U.S. Economic Growth Over?” Yes, says Grantham, “the U.S. GDP growth rate … is gone forever.”

For centuries before the Industrial Revolution growth was under 1%. Then the growth trend till “1980 was remarkable: 3.4% a year for a full hundred years,” driving the American dream. “But after 1980 the trend began to slip,” says Grantham,“ by over 1.5% from its peak in the 1960s and nearly 1% from the average of the last 30 years.” By 2100, America’s GDP growth will fall back to where it started before the Industrial Revolution, to an annual rate less than 1%.

Buffett guarantees … Schiff doubles down … Gross sees supernova … Shilling’s grand disconnect … Gundlach’s ominous third phase … Stockman’s apocalypse … InvestmentNews tick, tick, boom … Roubini’s perfect storm … Grantham’s growth gone forever … place your bets at Wall Street’s casinos … the risk’s only 87% … or is it 100%?

Paul B. Farrell is a MarketWatch columnist based in San Luis Obispo, Calif. Follow him on Twitter @MKTWFarrell.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/doomsday-poll-87-risk-of-stock-crash-by-year-end-2013-06-05?pagenumber=2

IMF admits: we failed to realise the damage austerity would do to Greece

 

Athens officials react to report with glee, saying it confirms that the price extracted for country's bailout package was too high

 

IMF chief Christine Lagarde. Greek media recently quoted her describing 2011 as a 'lost year', partly because of IMF mistakes. Photograph: Stephane Mahe/Reuters

The International Monetary Fund admitted it had failed to realise the damage austerity would do to Greece as the Washington-based organisation catalogued mistakes made during the bailout of the stricken eurozone country.
In an assessment of the rescue conducted jointly with the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European commission, the IMF said it had been forced to override its normal rules for providing financial assistance in order to put money into Greece.
Fund officials had severe doubts about whether Greece's debt would be sustainable even after the first bailout was provided in May 2010 and only agreed to the plan because of fears of contagion.
While it succeeded in keeping Greece in the eurozone, the report admitted the bailout included notable failures.
"Market confidence was not restored, the banking system lost 30% of its deposits and the economy encountered a much deeper than expected recession with exceptionally high unemployment."
In Athens, officials reacted with barely disguised glee to the report, saying it confirmed that the price exacted for the €110bn (£93bn) emergency package was too high for a country beset by massive debts, tax evasion and a large black economy."
Under the weight of such measures – applied across the board and hitting the poorest hardest – the economy, they said, was always bound to dive into an economic death spiral.
"For too long they [troika officials] refused to accept that the programme was simply off-target by hiding behind our failure to implement structural reforms," said one insider. "Now that reforms are being applied they've had to accept the bitter truth."
The IMF said: "The Fund approved an exceptionally large loan to Greece under an stand-by agreement in May 2010 despite having considerable misgivings about Greece's debt sustainability. The decision required the Fund to depart from its established rules on exceptional access. However, Greece came late to the Fund and the time available to negotiate the programme was short."
But having agreed that there were exceptional circumstances that warranted the biggest bailout in the Fund's history, officials were taken aback by the much bigger than expected slump in the Greek economy. The country is now in its fifth year of recession and the economy has contracted by 17%. The IMF thought it would contract by just 5.5%.
In the evaluation of the package provided in 2010, the IMF said: "Given the danger of contagion, the report judges the programme to have been a necessity, even though the Fund had misgivings about debt sustainability.
"There was, however, a tension between the need to support Greece and the concern that debt was not sustainable with high probability (a condition for exceptional access).
"In response, the exceptional access criterion was amended to lower the bar for debt sustainability in systemic cases. The baseline still showed debt to be sustainable, as is required for all Fund programmes."
In the event, the report added, the Fund was open to criticism for making economic projections that were too optimistic."
While the report says a deep recession was unavoidable, it is critical of senior officials in Brussels and European capitals who said Greece would fare better outside the euro. Concerns that Greece could be ejected from the euro and return to the drachma intensified an already febrile situation.
"Confidence was also badly affected by domestic social and political turmoil and talk of a Greek exit from the euro by European policymakers," it said.
Brussels also struggled to co-ordinate its policies with the ECB in Frankfurt, according to the report.
"The Fund made decisions in a structured fashion, while decision-making in the eurozone spanned heads of state and multiple agencies and was more fragmented."
The Greek media recently quoted IMF managing director Christine Lagarde describing 2011 as a "lost year" partly because of miscalculations by the EU and IMF.
The authoritative Kathimerini newspaper said the report identified a number of "mistakes" including the failure of creditors to agree to a restructuring of Greece's debt burden earlier – a failure that had had a disastrous effect on its macroeconomic assumptions.
"From what we understand the IMF singles out the EU for criticism in its handling of the problem more than anything else," said one well-placed official at the Greek finance ministry.
He added: "But acknowledgement of these mistakes will help us. It has already helped cut some slack and it will help us get what we really need which is a haircut on our debt next year."

Irish town erects fake shop fronts for G8 summit

I shit you not. Apparently the G8 leaders and their entourages are such delicate flowers that they can’t bear to see the effect of the global recession on the towns they drive through, such as upcoming host Enniskillen in Northern Ireland.
Via RTÉ, the Irish national broadcaster:

Local councils in Northern Ireland have painted fake shop fronts and covered derelict buildings with huge billboards to hide the economic hardship being felt in towns and villages near the golf resort where G8 leaders will meet this month.
Northern Ireland’s government has spent £2m (€2.3m) tackling dereliction over the past two years, the environment department said. Some buildings have been demolished and others have been given a facelift in an attempt to make areas more attractive.
Almost a quarter of “dereliction funds” were freed up for local councillors in Co Fermanagh in anticipation of Britain hosting the annual Group of Eight leaders’ summit there on 17-18 June. More than 100 properties have been spruced up. In the one-street town of Belcoo, the changes are merely cosmetic.
At a former butcher’s shop, stickers applied to the windows show a packed meat counter and give the impression that business is booming. Across the street, another empty unit has been given a makeover to look like a thriving office supply shop.
Locals are unimpressed. “The shop fronts are cosmetic surgery for serious wounds. They are looking after the banks instead of saving good businesses,” said Kevin Maguire, 62, an unemployed man who has lived all his life in Belcoo.

Full story here.

Libor oversight may be transferred from UK to France

Image LIBOR

The European Union is considering the transfer of control of the London Interbasnk Offered Rate (Libor) from the UK to France. It is to restore trust in the key interbank lending rate after the rigging scandal.
Under the EU plan, Libor oversight should be handed to the Paris-based European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) from its current watchdog - the London-based UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Libor is a benchmark interest rate representing the average that London banks are paying to each other to borrow money in the short term.
The draft regulation suggests oversight of “certain critical inter-bank interest rate benchmarks” by a national regulator “will not be efficient and effective in terms of addressing the risks that the critical benchmark poses,” according to Bloomberg News. It goes on to say that “authorization and supervision is most effectively carried out by ESMA.”
The need to either find an alternative to Libor or change its regulator was largely recognized after US and UK officials unveiled attempts to manipulate Libor to benefit trading positions. Such banking giants as Royal Bank of Scotland Group, UBS and Barclays have been fined a total of about $2.5 billion, with at least a dozen firms remaining under investigation.
Distorting the real state of a banks’ health added to the mess within the global financial system. Estimates suggest Libor related financial instruments and transactions are worth more than $300 trillion worldwide.
Libor is calculated by a poll carried out daily by Thomson Reuters on behalf of the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) that asks firms to estimate how much it would cost to borrow from each other for different periods and in different currencies.
The first regulatory report and huge fine against Barclays for alleged Libor rigging was made in June 2012.

Abbotsford, B.C., sorry for using manure to drive out homeless

'War on the homeless' treats homeless like 'animals,' local advocate says

CBC News

Video Content

City uses manure to deter homeless1:50

 

 

The City of Abbotsford has apologized for spreading chicken manure over a popular gathering place for the homeless in an apparent bid to drive them out of the city.
"I am deeply sorry for our actions," city manager George Murray wrote in an email obtained by CBC News.
"As city manager, I take this situation very seriously and retain full responsibility for the manner in which we dealt with this incident."
The practice of using chicken manure to drive away the homeless came to light after local advocate James W. Breckenridge wrote a column titled "This Stinks" in the Abbotsford Today community newspaper.
According to Breckenridge, the city has waged an "ongoing war on the homeless," driving people "from spot to spot around Abbotsford like nuisance animals."
Meanwhile, the city has failed to provide a viable housing alternative to camping for the homeless, Breckenridge says.
The City of Surrey used a similar tactic in 2009 — spreading chicken manure outside a busy resource centre for the homeless — but was forced to remove it following outrage from community members.

• Surrey, B.C., probing who hatched chicken manure scheme

In Abbotsford, Murray has vowed the city will remove the manure from the site and work with the community to resolve the issue.

Government £6,000 per year per desktop spend a frightening insight into public sector IT

The government has always faced criticism that its IT is slow, unwieldy, inflexible, unnecessarily complex and overpriced. It’s one thing when you face this criticism from your rivals, the press or members of the public – but you know you’ve reached a dire point when it’s your own chief operating officer (COO) twisting the knife.

At a government spending review attended earlier this week by V3, the government’s new COO Stephen Kelly shed some light into the world of technology at Whitehall and across the public sector.

“I came into the office and I pressed my PC and it took me seven minutes to boot up,” he told attendees. “That’s government in the old world, that’s three days of the year I waste of my time booting up.”

As soon as I heard these remarks I was reminded of another example of ‘government in the old world’, as highlighted at the Department of Work and Pensions, where anyone wanting to claim certain benefits has to use a PC running nothing newer than Microsoft Windows XP or Internet Explorer 6.  So the reliance on slow-running and old machines within other areas of government is nothing surprising.

Aside from the huge waste in productivity outlined by Kelly, the government seems to be throwing huge amounts down the drain maintaining this outdated kit. The COO said he thought the cost of a single desktop PC was around £6,000 per year – for which he could go and buy 10 Apple iPads.

Far be it for V3 to quibble in affairs of the state, but I feel that either Kelly is misinformed over real-world IT costs or has got his sums mixed up. Firstly there’s the minor point that for £6,000 you could actually get hold of as many as 22 iPads if you went for the mini version, or 15 of the cheapest full-size tablets, if you opted for 16GB WiFi-only models. I’m guessing the government’s COO has more expensive tastes though, and takes the attitude that only a £579 32GB WiFi+4G model will suffice.

But then there’s the more concerning issue of the £6,000 a year Kelly thinks is being spent on each public sector PC per year. This is a ludicrous amount, unless the government happens to be providing all staff with a 3D-enabled desktop and printer, or their very own IBM Watson.

According to my estimations – verified by a CIO – this figure should be less than £1,000 per year taking into account the cost of the hardware, office suite, and support and server costs over a three-year period, so it looks like the government is getting completely swindled by their PC supplier – or Kelly needs to go back and re-sit his maths GCSE. 

Kelly went on to say that as the government is such a big spender, it should be demanding a better service, and hence lower costs, from its suppliers. I couldn’t agree more with this sentiment, but have to question whether Kelly is best placed to lead this charge. Surely the UK government needs someone who puts a £600 figure on annual desktop costs and let suppliers try to work up from there, rather than downwards from £6,000.

Rick Santelli: The Trouble With Artificially Low Interest Rates

No ‘great recovery’ for US – study

Despite the US government’s efforts to boost growth a forecast from the UCLA Anderson School of Management said the anticipated “Great Recovery” hasn’t come true and even normal growth is hard to achieve.
The second-quarter UCLA Anderson Forecast released on Wednesday
said the growth real GDP is still not enough to help the economy
recover from recession, the Associated Press reports.
The government’s extreme monetary easing has boosted growth on
the US markets this year; however returning to a normal growth
pace will take time. Edward Leamer, Director of the UCLA Anderson
Forecast, argues that the “Great Recovery” hasn’t materialized.
He writes that normally the country’s total economic output or
GDP grows at 3 percent, however during this year’s first three
months the US GDP grew at 2.4 percent. The current growth pace is
15.4 percent below what’s considered a “normal” growth trend,
Leamer wrote.
“To get back to that 3 percent trend, we would need 4 percent
growth for 15 years, or 5 percent growth for eight years, or 6
percent growth for five years, not the disappointing twos and
threes we have been racking up recently,” he said. “It’s
not a recovery. It’s not even normal growth. It’s bad,”
Leamer argues.
It’ll take two more years for US GDP to return to the “normal”
growth rate of 3 percent. The UCLA Anderson Forecast predicts it
will happen in 2015. GDP growth for this year is expected at just
1.9 percent.

The forecast also predicts a decline in unemployment to 6.9
percent next year and to 6.6 percent by 2015. Also the forecast
foresees a boost in the US housing market, also pointing to
better economic health. The US housing market has been struggling
to rise from the depths of recession for several years. The
recent rebound in demand has once again lifted the sector.
In the forecast Leamer also highlights the problems the US is
still facing despite efforts to boost growth and fight
unemployment.

“The tepid growth continues to obscure the nation’s most
fundamental problems: too much government spending funded with
too much borrowing, too little national savings to cover
late-in-life health care issues and too many workers lacking the
skills to compete in the modern economy,” the UCLA press
statement said.
The study also found that the State of California is feeling much
better than the rest of the country. It has displayed better
results in job growth in the year since April 2012, with only
Utah beating California.

This article originally appeared on: RT

The REAL Reason Housing Prices Have Skyrocketed. How Another Housing Bubble Was Blown … And Why

we showed that mortgage applications are down, and it is really institutional investors driving the housing boom. Part 2 explains why.

Housing prices have boomed because:

(1) Lenders are artificially keeping vacant houses off of the market
and
(2) The Obama administration has thrown all sorts of artificial incentives at institutional investors to pump up prices

Artificially Suppressed Housing Inventory

Naked Capitalism reported last August:

Two trends are apparent. One is that banks are delaying foreclosures, or not foreclosing at all despite long-term delinquencies. The other is that private equity firms – flush with cash thanks to Tim Geithner’s religious devotion to trickle-down economics and the resulting cascade of corporate welfare – have been bidding up and holding foreclosed houses off the market. These two factors have artificially limited supply and, combined with cheap mortgages rates, driven up prices. While we can debate whether these strategies represent the best public policy, these policies are obviously not long-term sustainable.
***
Lenders argue the drop in foreclosures is caused by delays in the court system. However, Judge Jennifer D. Bailey, lead foreclosure judge in Miami-Dade County – epicenter of the foreclosure crisis – solidly rebuts that argument. “Here in Miami-Dade County’s Eleventh Circuit, there has been no delay in foreclosure case hearings for nearly two years,” Judge Bailey said in an Aug. 19, 2012 interview with the Miami Herald. “If you want to see a judge to hear your trial or summary judgment, you get a prompt court date.” This coincides with my own observations in foreclosure court, where judges rail at bank lawyers for repeatedly delaying their cases, even when borrowers are in no way contesting their foreclosures.
Holding back inventory means that the houses that are put on offer sell faster and at higher prices. That creates an incentive to delay foreclosures or not foreclose at all even when a home is delinquent.

Indeed – in the real world -  12.6 million houses are vacant … 1.5 million more home than are underwater. In other words, without artificial scarcity created by banks, there would be more available houses than there are underwater homeowners having problems paying their mortgage.  There would – in a word – be a glut.

Government Is Secretly Helping Financial Companies to Snap Up Housing

There are realistic ways to help the economy. For example:

But instead, the government’s entire strategy is to try to paper over all of the real problems with the economy by artificially propping up asset prices  in an attempt to hide the fact (which has been obvious for years) that the big banks are insolvent.
Stocks, for example, are largely being driven by insiders and government policy.
Indeed, we’ve pointed out for years that all of the Obama administration’s “homeowner relief” programs are really just back-door bailouts to the big financial companies … and are not even intended to help homeowners.
Mike Whitney explained last September:

Private Equity firms are piling in to the housing market to take advantage of bargain basement prices on distressed inventory. The Obama administration is stealthily selling homes to big investors who are required to sign non-disclosure agreements to ensure that the public remains in the dark as to the magnitude of the giveaway. Aside from the steep discounts on the homes themselves, the government is also providing “synthetic financing to reduce the up-front capital required if they agree to form a joint venture with Fannie Mae and share proceeds from the rental or sale of properties.” (Businessweek)
In other words, US-taxpayers are providing extravagant financing for deep-pocket speculators who want to reduce their risk while maximizing their profits via additional leverage. The plan resembles Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s Public-Private Partnership Investment Program …. Speculators are getting lavish incentives (gov financing, low rates, and severe discounts) in secret deals to buy distressed inventory which should be available to the public at market prices. If that’s not a ripoff, then what is?
***
Obama’s preferred customers are getting discounts of up-to 60 percent of the home’s peak value and generous gov-backed financing to boot!
***
As the article above indicates, there’s no shortage of delinquent homes that will eventually be foreclosed. That means the process is being dragged out so the banks don’t have to fess-up to the losses on their fetid pile of nonperforming loans Here’s a little more background from an article in Businessweek: 

“About 6 million U.S. borrowers will lose their homes in the next five years because of inability to pay their mortgages, creating demand for as many as 4 million new rental households, according to Scott Simon, head of mortgage bonds at Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach, California….
Single-family rentals are priced to deliver unlevered total returns in the range of 7.5 percent to 8 percent, or about 0.5 percentage point to 1 percentage point higher than institutional-quality apartments, according to a June 8 report by Ray Huang, senior associate at Green Street Advisors in Newport Beach, California.  (“Colony Said to Win Foreclosed Homes Sold by Fannie Mae”, Businessweek)[Link.]

If “6 million homeowners” will lose their homes in the next five years, then why are clownshoes media dupes touting a “bottom” in prices and a “market rebound”?
It’s all hype. And look at how calculatingly fiendish Obama’s foreclosure-to-rental program really is. The big boys have figured out the nearest penny how much they can make by throwing people out of their homes. (7.5 percent to 8 percent) Talk about heartless. And, of course, this whole process is being orchestrated by President Fairydust and his Wall Street Pranksters to keep prices artificially high and preserve the illusion that the banks are solvent.
It’s infuriating!

And if that isn’t hard-hitting enough for you, Jim Quinn writes:

The contrived elevation of home sales and home prices has been engineered by the very same culprits who crashed our financial system in the first place. This has been planned, coordinated and implemented by a conspiracy of the ruling oligarchy – the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, U.S. Treasury, NAR, and the corporate media conglomerates. Ben’s job was to screw senior citizens and drive interest rates low enough that everyone in the country could refinance, attract investors & flippers into the market, and propel home prices higher. Wall Street has been the linchpin to the whole sordid plan.
They were tasked with drastically limiting the foreclosure pipeline, therefore creating a fake shortage of inventory. Next, JP Morgan, Blackrock, Citi, Bank of America, and dozens of other private equity firms have partnered with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, using free money provided by Ben Bernanke, to create investment funds to buy up millions of distressed properties and convert them into rental properties, further reducing the inventory of homes for sale and driving prices higher. Only the connected crony capitalists on Wall Street are getting a piece of this action. The Wall Street big hanging d[!@#*] have screwed the American middle class coming and going. The NAR and media are tasked with what they do best – spew propaganda, misinform, lie, cheerlead and attempt to create a buying frenzy among the willfully ignorant masses.
The chart below reveals the truth about the strong sustainable housing recovery. It doesn’t exist. Mortgage applications by real people who want to live in a home are no higher than they were in 2010 when home sales were 33% lower than today. Mortgage applications are lower than they were in 1997 when 4 million existing homes were sold versus the 5 million pace today. The housing recovery is just another Wall Street scam designed to bilk the American middle class of what remains of their net worth.

Of course, economist Michael Hudson would put it a little differently: banks are trying to roll back all modern laws and make us all into serfs.
In other words, the giant financial service companies are attempting to privatize public resources, socialize losses, scam people out of their homes and other private property … and then rent back to us what we used to own for a hefty price.
Do you understand the game now?

This article originally appeared on: Global Research

India’s Latest Anti-Gold Moves “Won’t Be Effective” as European Central Banks Stick, Equities Bounce

India’s Latest Anti-Gold Moves “Won’t Be Effective” as European Central Banks Stick, Equities Bounce 
The WHOLESALE price of gold flipped yet again either side of $1400 on Thursday in what dealers called “choppy” trade ahead of tomorrow’s much-anticipated US jobs data for May.

Asian stock markets followed Wall Street’s overnight loss to finish lower, but European equities rallied as major government bonds held flat.

Commodities slipped even as the Dollar fell to new 4-week lows after the Bank of England and the European Central Bank both left monetary policy unchanged at their June meetings.

Silver ticked higher to $22.65 per ounce.

“On any downside below $1400 per ounce,” said Standard Bank analysts in a note, “we still feel that physical demand should once again return and thereby limit moves lower.

“Since April this support from the physical market has prevented gold from pushing significantly below $1360 per ounce.”

Officials in India – the world’s No.1 – today urged banks to deter consumer demand for gold after raising import duty to 8% on Wednesday.

In China – the world’s second-largest gold buying nation – “The ongoing Shanghai arbitrage is the main attraction for demand,” says a trader in Sydney, quoted by Reuters.

Prices of Shanghai gold futures held some $20 about international benchmarks on Thursday. China’s markets will be closed for the first three days of next week for the Dragon Boat Festival.

In the United States – world No.3 for gold jewelry and investment purchases – demand for American Eagle gold coins remains “unprecedented” according to US Mint acting director Richard Peterson.

“We are buying all the coin blanks [which suppliers] can make.”

Anti-government protests meanwhile continued in Turkey, the fourth-largest market for gold in 2012.

“While [India's] duty hike may make bullion more expensive,” writes HSBC analyst James Steel, “it is important to note that gold prices in local currency terms are currently lower than at any time in the last year”

Prices to buy gold in Indian Rupees “are still at attractive levels,” says Steel.

A day after imposing new blocks on legal gold imports, the Indian government yesterday hiked bullion import duty from 6% to 8% by value – an 8-fold increase from the start of 2012, when New Delhi began blaming gold jewelry and investment purchases for India’s large balance of trade deficit.

“This shows that the Indian government is very serious about reducing gold imports,” says one bullion dealer.

While the immediate impact will be higher prices for Indian households, “The nature of demand at the retail level is such that restricting supply will not be effective in the long run,” says India’s managing director at market-development organization the World Gold Council, P.R.Somasundaram.

“[It's] likely to lead to…demand being met increasingly through unauthorised channels, which will not be positive for either the economy or for society.”

Also known as the “parallel market”, smuggling may account for 20% or more of India’s total imports in 2013, according to one estimate quoted by the Economic Times.

Called “wasteful expenditure” by one senior official this morning, household gold demand should be further deterred by advising customers against buying gold coins, finance minister P.Chidambaram told the same banking conference in Mumbai.

The new import duty should be positive for the Indian Rupee, albeit short term, agree analysts at Societe Generale, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch and Kotak Mahindra Bank.

Thursday morning however the Rupee fell, down to 57 per US Dollar for the first time in 12 months and very near its all-time record low.

Adrian Ash

We DID make Greece's debt crisis worse with brutal cuts and tax hikes, IMF admits as Greeks say they 'can't forgive' officials for making recession worse

IMF report admits fund forced austerity measures on Greece too quickly

Fund also failed to restructure country's debts at the start of crisis

Greek politicians welcome IMF's confession and call for change of course

A war of words broke out between the International Monetary Fund and the EU yesterday over its  bungled bailout of Greece.
The IMF admitted to ‘notable failures’ in the handling of the Greek crisis and accused European officials of being more concerned with saving the euro than  rescuing the debt-ridden country.
The Fund, headed by Christine Lagarde, said it was forced to break its own rules for providing financial assistance to bankrupt countries because EU leaders refused to take action to solve the crisis.

Blunder: The IMF has admitted mishandling the Greek debt crisis, leading to violent anti-austerity protests like this demonstration in Athens last November

The IMF report, drawn up by staff at the watchdog’s headquarters in Washington, triggered a furious response in Brussels where the European Commission said it was ‘plainly wrong and unfounded’.

A spokesman for Olli Rehn, European commissioner for economic affairs, said: ‘We  fundamentally disagree.’

Britain was forced to find more than  £1billion to prop up Greece, and in turn the euro, through the UK’s membership of the IMF. Matthew Sinclair, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Taxpayers were roped into bailing out Greece via the back door. Now it turns out they botched even that. The eurozone built itself on a debt bubble and it’s scandalous that hard-pressed families are shouldering even a penny of that bill.’

The IMF and the EU granted Greece a £93billion bailout in May 2010.

The Fund now admits there were serious mistakes in the way it and EU officials handled the bailout.

Street battles: Protesters and police have repeatedly clashed as the country's economy has shrunk

The report said the catalogue of errors – including harsh austerity measures on Greece – plunged the country deeper into crisis.

Greece is in its sixth consecutive year of recession with unemployment at 27 per cent and youth unemployment at 62.5 per cent – meaning more than six in ten young Greeks who want a job cannot find one.
The IMF said the ‘dramatic contraction’ in the Greek economy was driven by the refusal of European officials to consider writing off the country’s debts as early as 2010.

The debt burden was eventually restructured last year – meaning investors were paid less than what they were owed as the burden on Greece was partially lifted.

‘Not tackling the public debt problem decisively at the outset or early in the programme created uncertainty about the euro area’s capacity to resolve the crisis and likely aggravated the contraction in output,’ said the IMF report.

Fury: Many Greeks blame outsiders such as German chancellor Angela Merkel for the deep recession

‘An upfront debt restructuring would have been better for Greece although this was not acceptable to the euro partners.’

The IMF said the rescue packages were nothing more than a ‘holding operation’ to give the eurozone ‘time to build a firewall to protect other vulnerable members’ – in other words, an attempt to save the euro whatever it meant for Greece.

‘Market confidence was not restored, the banking system lost 30 per cent of its deposits, and the economy encountered a much deeper than expected recession with exceptionally high unemployment,’ said the IMF.

The EU insisted that writing off Greek debt as suggested by the IMF would have led to ‘devastating consequences’ as investors fretted about losses in other eurozone countries.

A spokesman said: ‘With hindsight we can go back and say in an ideal world what should have been done differently.

The circumstances were what they were. I think the Commission did its best in an unprecedented situation.’