Friday, March 16, 2012

Egypt is looted, and the U.S. press calls it ‘reform’

by James North at mondoweiss.net

Joseph Stiglitz

One of the more annoying and dishonest features of the mainstream American media over the past couple of decades has been its use of the word “reform,” without quotation marks, as shorthand for a set of controversial economic policies the United States and global institutions like the International Monetary Fund have imposed on the poor nations in the global south.

The word “reform” is biased; no right-thinking person could be against it. If the New York Times and the Washington Post had followed their own rules about objectivity, they would have instead used neutral terms, like “neoliberalism,” or “the Washington Consensus,” and they would have pointed out that distinguished economists like Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, along with large, vocal masses of people in the poor countries themselves, have warned for years that the “reform” policies are a slow-motion disaster.

The latest evidence for the failure of neoliberalism comes from Egypt, and even the mainstream press is finally recognizing it. In the Washington Post recently, Stephen Glain blamed the U.S government, the IMF and the World Bank for pushing policies that severely damaged Egyptian agriculture, to the point where the country now has to waste precious foreign exchange to import nearly all of the wheat it needs for bread, the staple food.

An earlier Post article showed how the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) funded a Cairo think tank that vigorously promoted the “privatization” of state-run companies, public resources, and lands. Privatization, one of the tenets of the neoliberal orthodoxy, is supposed to foster competition, efficiency and economic growth.

In fact, the privatizations were rigged by Gamal Mubarak, the deposed dictator’s son, and his cronies, who gained control of companies worth billions of dollars at fractions of their true value. (The Post reported that the Chicago-based international law firm Baker & McKenzie arranged many of the deals.) The biggest of Gamal’s shady partners, Ahmed Ezz, inherited a state-owned steel company, which he turned into an inefficient monopoly.

Instead of wasting $10 million on their think tank, U.S. AID could have simply stopped any adult Egyptian in the street and asked them how privatizations conducted by the Mubarak regime would turn out.

Professor Joe Stiglitz uses the terms “market Bolsheviks,” or “market fundamentalists,” to describe the zealots who have imposed neoliberalism across the global south. His choice of words is brilliant. The unelected apparatchiks at U.S. AID or the IMF who have pressured the governments of Egypt or Bolivia or Zambia over the past 20 years or so, without caring about or even knowing the reality in those places, are the spiritual descendants of the Soviet central planners who coldly treated human beings as statistics.

Meanwhile, a small group of thieves stole billions of dollars of public property that had been built up by the Egyptian people. At the very least, the mainstream press should stop calling this colossal robbery “reform.”

Scan business cards into Outlook with CogniCard

If you are using Microsoft Outlook as your Personal Information Manager you probably already receive all your E-Mails with Outlook, manage your appointments and calendar and also organize all your contacts with the software. Outlook has clearly become on of the most popular Tools for Personal Information Management and it is therefore that we have to take a closer look at the application how it can do even more.
CogniCard is such an extension for Outlook that allows you to scan business cards into Outlook. This is very straightforward and works with your smartphone, your webcam and your flatbed scanner. CogniCard is a business card scanner in the cloud, this means you can access it very easily from every computer. If there is a webcam installed you can just start scanning your business cards.
The unique differentiator of CogniCard to other solutions to scan business cards is that it is e-Mail based, that means it is possible to scan business cards and the cards are returned as VCF attachments in an email that can be easily imported in every Personal Information Manager and of course also into Microsoft Outlook.
The following image shows you how CogniCard works and how the images are then send to your account.

Now the main question is: Why should you use CogniCard instead of another solution on a smartphone or with an additional device. First of all, I am sure you don’t want to buy another hardware device if you already have several devices. Hardware based business card scanners usually costs several hundred dollars. With CogniCard you can start just by spending $9 USD to get started with scanning your business cards.
The other option are smartphones with a special software to scan your cards. You can use CogniCard also on your smartphone, you just take a picture of a business card and send it to CogniCard and the transcribed business card is returned to you again. If you use a specialized application you can scan business cards but the truth is that scanning usually takes around 1-2 minutes including recognition. If you then have to correct some mistakes, it takes easily around 3 minutes to scan one business card.

Don’t trust us, try it yourself!

But of course we are not completely unbiased, therefore we suggest that you sign up with CogniCard and start with the free trial and you can experience yourself how the solution works and how you can benefit from this solution.

Fed States JPM Might Lose 0.0000043% Under Worst Case Scenario

Bloomberg reports that JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs had an estimated $27.7 billion and $27.1 billion in projected trading losses under the stress test scenarios, leading all 19 firms 'tested'.
With $61.53 TRILLION in OTC swap derivatives, who in their right mind can possibly believe that JP Morgan's trading losses under the worst possible scenario would be a mere $27.7 billion!?!
$27.7 billion in losses on an OTC swap position of $61.53 TRILLION is 0.0000043%! The Fed expects us to believe that a 0.0000043% trading loss is the worst possible outcome JP Morgan might face!?!
JP Morgan's maximum trading losses are estimated by Bernanke to be $27.1 billion when The Morgue requires $71 billion in bonds DAILY simply to hedge its IR swap book!?!

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), which produced the most trading revenue among Wall Street firms last year, had the highest trading and counter-party losses of the biggest U.S. banks under the Federal Reserve’s stress scenario.
JPMorgan had an estimated $27.7 billion in projected losses from mark-to-market changes, credit valuation adjustments and counterparty default losses, according to the Fed results released yesterday. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) had an estimated $27.1 billion of such losses in the testing.
The Fed is requiring the nation’s largest lenders to show they have credible plans for maintaining capital and continuing lending in an economic downturn. The six largest U.S. banks had a projected $116 billion in trading and counter-party losses, larger than the 19 banks subjected to Fed’s stress tests had in any lending area.
“The relative size of losses across firms depends not on nominal portfolio size, but rather on the specific risk characteristics of each BHC’s trading positions, inclusive of hedges,” the Fed said in the report. BHC stands for bank holding company.

Gerald Celente - An Economic 9/11 Is Coming!

http://www.revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=18156&title=gerald-celente---an-economic-9-11-is-coming

Gold & Silver Post FOMC Statement Raid Continues

Gold and silver both continued their massive post-FOMC statement raids today, with gold down another 2%, and silver down another 4% to $31.95!
Yesterday, the Fed stated that its ZIRP policy will continue until AT LEAST late 2014, and left the door wide open for QE3 as well. Obviously this is massively bullish for precious metals, as a negative interest rate environment is locked in for another 3 years MINIMUM. The fact is that the Fed is trapped at 0%, and cannot EVER raise interest rates again without the system imploding.
Naturally as this is massively bullish news for PM's, the cartel raided both metals beginning with yesterday afternoon's globex session.
While silver looks like it could trade as low as $30-$31, setting up a large inverse head and shoulders formation on the charts, sentiment indicates we are nearing a low.
During the last week of December, the Doc called the bottom at $26 within an hour of the actual low- based only on the spiritual levels of negativity throughout the PM community. While we have not reached those bearish levels yet, the negativity of PM investors has greatly increased over the past 48 hours.
Absolutely NOTHING HAS CHANGED folks. If anything, a risk of conflagration has increased substantially with the ISDA's decision that a CDS triggering event has occurred in Greece- and the risk is high enough that the CME no longer wishes to clear derivatives in London.
Please also understand that we have options expiry, as well as 3 major bond sales this week, and GOLD & SILVER MUST BE SUPPRESSED IN ORDER TO ENTICE INVESTMENT FLOWS INTO TREASURY BONDS RATHER THAN PRECIOUS METALS!

Silver has now corrected $5.50 from highs as recently as last Wednesday morning. Gold is now offering a $150 discount from a week ago levels. Price discounts of this magnitude MUST BE BOUGHT PROFESSIONALLY INTO PRICE WEAKNESS!!
STACK THE SMACK, AND FORGET ABOUT YOUR PURCHASE! NOTHING HAS CHANGED REGARDING PRECIOUS METALS FUNDAMENTALS!!!

Cartel waited till today to launch the major silver raid: