VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS - GOP Tea Party Debate: Focus On Obama, The Federal Reserve & Social Security

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Highlight clip #1 - Memorable Moments
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Highlight Clip #2  - Federal Reserve Blasted
Five short clips inside.
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Highlight Clip #3 - Ron Paul on Executive Orders
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Highlight Clip #4 - Gingrich Moments
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Highlight Clip #5 - Gingrich with a great line on Obama


Read complete coverage of the Republican debate at the following link:

• CNN Live Blog

60 Minutes - Financial WMDs: Credit Default Swaps, The Bet That Blew Up Wall Street

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Outstanding segment from 60 Minutes that has not been posted previously.
Transcript is below.
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Anyone with more than a casual interest in why their 401(k) has tanked over the past year knows that it's because of the global credit crisis. It was triggered by the collapse of the housing market in the United States and magnified worldwide by the sale of complicated investments that Warren Buffett once labeled financial weapons of mass destruction.

They are called credit derivatives or credit default swaps.

As correspondent Steve Kroft first reported last fall, they are essentially side bets on the performance of the U.S. mortgage markets and some of the biggest financial institutions in the world - a form of legalized gambling that allows you to wager on financial outcomes without ever having to actually buy the stocks and bonds and mortgages.

It would have been illegal during most of the 20th century under the gaming laws, but in 2000, Congress gave Wall Street an exemption and it has turned out to be a very bad idea.
Read the rest of the transcript at CBS...

Cramer Gets Bearish - 'Short Financials NOW, European Lehman Moment Is Upon Us'

CNBC's Jim Cramer is a stock-picking buffoon, this is no secret to anyone beyond his call-in sycophants, who willingly scream 'booyah' for any chance to be on-air with their majesty, lord of all stupidity.  However, when Cramer gets bearish and tells readers to short financials, as he did today, even going so far as to recommend using the double and triple short financial etfs, well then it's newsworthy, to a certain degree, if only for the uncomprising laughter at the late-to-the-party clown.
Yes, Jim we are laughing at you, not with you.
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Cramer - Europe's Lehman Moment
Source - Real Money
NEW YORK -- At least it is no longer complicated. We know a European Lehman is upon us. Or, more like it, a European Lehman/Bear/Merrill/Washington Mutual/Wachovia/Citigroup.
That's the first proposition.
Second, we know that "they" have no plan to deal with it.
Third, we don't even know who "they" is anymore. Is it the Germans? The French? The IMF? The European Central Bank? Trichet?
Fourth, it is now too late for the banks to raise capital. As you recall, when the ratings agencies strike, it very quickly leads to Lehman. The banks can't get short-term funding and they collapse.
Fifth, the French banks in particular have been getting away with hiding their version of subprime debt, Greek debt, forever.
Sixth, our country isn't able to stop any of this. We are too weak and it is none of our business.
Seventh, because of how tightly correlated we are with Europe, individual stocks can't buck the trend, at least initially. Later on they will, because while our banking system won't collapse, it can't help but cause a worldwide recession if it all goes bad, which it looks like it is going to do.
So, the only battle plan is to brace yourself if you can't short. Raise some cash if you can. And short the S&P and double- and triple-short the financials -- the levered ETFs will certainly give you that chance.

Bank of America will cut 30,000 jobs

Bank of America will cut about 30,000 jobs over the next few years in a bid to save $5 billion per year. The cost-cutting drive is part of a broader effort to reshape and shrink the nation's largest bank as it copes with fallout from the housing bust.
The bank announced the job cuts in a statement shortly after Brian Moynihan, the bank's CEO, disclosed the cost-saving goals in an address to investors in New York. "We're a much simpler company than we were 24 months ago," Moynihan said.
Bank of America stock was up 2 cents at $7 at midday. The stock has lost half its value this year, largely over problems related to poorly-written mortgages it acquired with its 2008 purchase of Countrywide Financial Corp. The bank faces lawsuits from investors and regulators over the sales of mortgage-backed securities that lost value after the housing boom collapsed.
The job cuts follow a revamp of the bank's top management team last week. Two senior executives, wealth management head Sallie Krawcheck and head of consumer banking Joe Price, left the bank. The bank also elevated commercial banking chief David Darnell and investment banking head Tom Montag to co-chief operating officers, reporting to Moynihan.
The latest job cuts will lead to a 10% reduction in the bank's work force of 288,000. The cuts come on top of 6,000 positions the bank has already eliminated through the third quarter of this year.
The Charlotte, N.C. company said it expects many of the cuts to come through attrition and eliminating unfilled positions. The bank says the number of job cuts isn't fixed, but that it expects they will total 30,000. It hopes to save $5 billion in annual costs through 2014 under a cost-cutting plan dubbed internally as "Project New BAC."

Explosion Hits French MOX Nuclear Site

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Monday, September 12, 2011
An explosion at a French nuclear facility that processes dangerous MOX plutonium has killed one person and injured four others, provoking fear that radioactivity could be escaping into the atmosphere, although officials have played down such concerns.
However, the French government’s complicity in hiding the severity of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster will do nothing to assuage concerns about authorities being honest with the public about the scale of the problem.
“There were no radioactive leaks after the blast, caused by a fire near a furnace in the Centraco radioactive waste storage site, officials said,” reports BBC News.
“It produces MOX fuel, which recycles plutonium from nuclear weapons, but does not include reactors.”
French nuclear watchdog ASN has not explained the cause of the blast, but conceded that, “The furnace that exploded is used to melt waste with levels of radioactivity ranging from low to very high.”
As we highlighted during the Fukushima crisis, Plutonium is the most deadly radioactive isotope known to man, and MOX is two million times more deadly than normal enriched uranium. The Half-life of Plutonium-239 in MOX is 24,000 years and just a few milligrams of P-239 escaping in a smoke plume will contaminate soil for tens of thousands of years.
Although officials are saying that no radioactivity has escaped, a spokesman for France’s Atomic Energy Commission rather unreassuringly said, “For the time being nothing has made it outside,” authorities would be expected to play down the severity of such an event.
Nuclear power accounts for over 70% of France’s energy needs. Any crisis approaching Fukushima proportions would completely cripple the country’s economy.
However, it is important to note that unlike Japan, France is not recovering from a massive earthquake, therefore any necessary measures to secure the facility will be far easier to perform. In addition, France is the leading country in nuclear safety expertise and can call on a vast number of experienced professionals in the field.
France has painful memories of radioactive contamination, and the country’s government has a history of nuclear cover-ups.
During the Chernobyl disaster, French authorities “deliberately suppressed information about the spread of radioactive fallout.” In parts of France, thyroid cancer surged as the population didn’t take steps to protect itself having believed their government that the radiation cloud was harmless.
“Two independent physicists say in the report that the state-run Central Service for Protection against Radioactive Rays (SCPRI) knew of high levels of contamination in Corsica and southeastern France but kept the details under wraps,” reported Expatica.com.

9/11: A Conspiracy Theory

Blast at French nuclear site kills one, no leaks

MARCOULE, France (Reuters) - A worker was killed in an explosion at a French nuclear waste site on Monday, but officials said there was no radioactive leak and the authorities quickly declared the emergency over.
Four people were also injured, one with serious burns, in the blast at the Centraco site, owned by French power utility EDF and adjacent to the Marcoule nuclear research center on the river Rhone near the southern city of Orange.
The area no longer houses nuclear reactors. But supervisory bodies opened inquiries into the incident, which dented EDF's share price. In the wake of this year's Fukushima disaster in Japan, it was also likely to provide further arguments for opponents of France's heavy reliance on nuclear energy.
EDF, which a regulator said had improved safety at the site since being criticized in 2008, said the blast was contained within a furnace that was used to melt down scrap metal, from nuclear plants, which emitted only low levels of radiation.
"There was an explosion at the Marcoule site at 1306 (1106 GMT) causing one death and injuring four," an EDF spokeswoman said. "We don't know the cause."
Later, an executive from the plant operator, EDF subsidiary Socodei, called it a "classic industrial accident" which would most likely be classified as Level 1 on the seven-point international scale of nuclear incidents.
France's ASN nuclear safety watchdog declared the incident over but has launched an inquiry. The International Atomic Energy Agency, was seeking information from France and activated its incident and emergency center.
Data on previous fatal accidents at French nuclear plants were not available but officials said they could not recall one.
"NO CONTAMINATION"
Police cordons kept onlookers away on Monday. Journalists saw police and other emergency vehicles at the site. There was no obvious sign of damage or smoke.
Local emergency services said there were no traces of radiation on the four people injured: "The risk of fire is over and there is no radioactive or chemical contamination of either the interior or exterior of the site," a rescue worker said.
Police also said there was no contamination outside the Centraco complex, which has been in operation since 1999.
Employing some 350 people, it melts down scrap metal such as valves and pumps used in nuclear plants and burns combustible waste in an incinerator, according to Centraco's website.
France, which draws 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear plants, is carrying out stress tests on its 58 reactors in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, when the Japanese nuclear site was damaged in an earthquake and tsunami.
Kash Burchett, European energy analyst at IHS Energy, noted a poll in June found 77 of French voters opposed to building new nuclear plants. But she said trade unions, as well as businesses facing higher fuel costs, would be unlikely to accept any move by a future government to curb investment in nuclear power.
"Even if a government of any hue were to attempt to slow investment into new nuclear facilities, let alone phase out existing capacity ahead of schedule, they would come up against the powerful, militant French unions," she said.
"Equally, the loss of nuclear power would increase energy costs substantially for households and businesses alike."
In its 2010 annual report, the ASN said that in 2008 it identified some weak spots in the Centraco site that prompted it to ask for an action plan to improve safety. It said the situation had improved since then at the site.
Malcolm Sperrin, director of Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, England said: "It is unlikely that there will be significant, or any, releases of radiation into the wider environment but this will need to be confirmed in the next few hours or days."
(Additional reporting by Marion Douet, Mathilde Cru and Muriel Boselli in Paris and Kate Kelland in London and Scott DiSavino in New York; Writing by Catherine Bremer; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)