Weekday NEWS to Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.
Mon 06.01.2009
Main Street takes a hit in GM bankruptcy The loser in a General Motors Corp. bankruptcy would be Main Street, not Wall Street, said a lawyer who represented Chrysler LLC’s dissident lenders and is trying to organize bondholders who hold up to $7 billion in GM’s debt. What’s being offered is the U.S.-backed plan to give the American and Canadian governments as much as 69 percent of the equity and a 17.5 percent trust for unions, while bondholders only get 10%. GM plans to file for bankruptcy on June 1, people familiar with the matter said. The difference with GM is that, whereas the ‘bad guys’ in Chrysler were hedge funds, who Obama called ‘speculators,’ here they’re Main Street -- individual retirees who bought bonds when bankruptcy was unthinkable.
Gerald Celente on The Greatest Depression 31 May 2009
It's Official: It's Barack Obama's Economy Now With the stock market now up solidly since Obama's inauguration, consumer confidence nearing pre-crisis levels, and the banking crisis now in the rear-view mirror, the economy is Obama's to own. If we'd just kept going down and down, then it'd still be on Bush, and anything bad that happened could be laid at the feet of the prior administration. But with even Austan Goolsbee comparing the actions of the government to heroic fire fighters, it's clear who'll be taking the blame from here on out.
'Gold price to touch $1,400 in six months' . . . . I’m saying that in the next six months the realization will kick in that the world has changed in a significant way and the United States is losing its role as the overwhelming economic superpower and will continue to do so over the next 20 years as other countries such as China and India come into their own and pick up the slack that’s created by the collapse of consumption right now. If it breaches $1,000, I think it’ll very quickly go to $1,300-$1,500 and establish that as a new base.
Gold sense in high places Maybe the fact that central banks, banks and governments around the world are acting like monetary idiots explains why gold is shooting up in price; or maybe that it is going up in price explains why there is such a new interest in gold; or maybe it just explains why people are as disrespectful of the dollar, as am I.
If cash is king, Gold is Emperor . . . The Great Credit Contraction The global economy is built on a derivative illusion. As the great credit contraction grinds on, the importance of performing accurate mental calculations of value will become more and more important. Every major country, including the United States, uses a fiat currency illusion as its legal tender.
The Curious Problem of Gold and Silver Coins as Legal U.S. Tender The idea that gold and silver coins are still legal tender in the U.S. has always struck me as one of the more intriguing aspects of our monetary system, a system that appears to teeter a bit more each and every year, its fate sure to be the same as all prior fiat money systems throughout history - they never end well. The notion that a quarter or a dime from the 1950s or early-1960s that contains 90 percent silver might be worth ten times its face value seems like more of an oddity than anything else since the values are so small.
Silver shines and will continue to out perform gold Silver had its best monthly gain in 22 years in May, and ended at $15.70 an ounce, still considerably shy of the $20 the metal reached when gold passed $1,000 in March 2008. That there is still some immediate upside in the silver price is thus evident with gold finishing the week at $980, tantalizingly close to its former March 2008 high. Indeed, while performing well over the past couple of weeks silver has actually lagged behind the recovery in gold, hence it is still short of its recent high.
On Gold and Civil Liberties Decades ago Ludwig von Mises wrote in The Theory of Money and Credit, It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights. There is a simpler way to state the rule: He who has the gold makes the rules. One of the reasons, if not the chief reason, for the excessive government encroachment on civil liberties is the abandonment of sound money. Contained within the United States Constitution are very specific monetary powers and disabilities. This constitutional violation is the chief cause the world has become a very dangerous place. Governments and their central banks are able to engage in legalized counterfeiting which is confiscation through inflation and a form of taxation without representation or due process of law.
Our Exploding Deficit Will Kill The Economy In its own inimitable language, S&P warned last week that a debt-to-GDP ratio of 100% is "incompatible with" a Triple A rating. What it meant is that the United States is rushing headlong toward a ratings downgrade--and, in the opinion of some, disaster. In a much-discussed piece in the FT this week, John Taylor echoed many others in clanging the alarm bells.
Exploding debt threatens America Standard and Poor’s decision to downgrade its outlook for British sovereign debt from “stable” to “negative” should be a wake-up call for the US Congress and administration. Let us hope they wake up. Under President Barack Obama’s budget plan, the federal debt is exploding. To be precise, it is rising – and will continue to rise – much faster than gross domestic product, a measure of America’s ability to service it. The federal debt was equivalent to 41 per cent of GDP at the end of 2008; the Congressional Budget Office projects it will increase to 82 per cent of GDP in 10 years. With no change in policy, it could hit 100 per cent of GDP in just another five years.
Another Reason Obama's Mortgage Mods Aren't Working There are two problems with Obama's attempts to stave off foreclosures through mortgage modifications. First, the program is a drop in the bucket (at best, a couple of million mortgages will be modified out of tens of millions that are underwater). Second, even homeowners whose payments are reduced usually go on to default. Why? Because they can't afford ANY payment, not even a smaller one. And also because many homeowners see no reason to keep making payments on houses when they owe more on the house than its worth.
US economy contracts at rate of 5.7% The US economy continued to contract in the first quarter of this year, but at a slower pace than previously thought, as the pain of the recession spread from consumers to businesses in the face of eroding global demand. Revised commerce department figures showed on Friday that US gross domestic product declined by an annualised rate of 5.7 per cent in the first three months of the year, compared with last month’s estimate of 6.1 per cent. The decline was less severe than original projections due to slower liquidation of inventories and the narrowing trade gap.
Geithner to Reassure China U.S. Will Control Deficits Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner arrived in Beijing with a pledge that the Obama administration will control its borrowing as he sought to reassure China its holdings of U.S. government debt are safe. “No one is going to be more concerned about future deficits than we are,” Geithner told reporters on the way to two days of meetings that start today in China’s capital. Geithner will meet with Premier Wen Jiabao, who in March called for the U.S. to “guarantee the safety of China’s assets.” China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt, which so far this year has handed investors the worst loss since at least 1977 on forecasts for ballooning federal budget deficits.
Treasuries, Dollar ‘Only Game in Town’ as China Buys For all the hand-wringing over the dollar’s slide, the expanding U.S. deficit and the nation’s AAA credit rating, the bond market shows international demand for American financial assets is as high as ever.
Dangers of a Dollar Collapse As the Federal Reserve continues to monetize the money supply (quantitative easing) at a breakneck pace, nations around the world have become very concerned about their holdings of US dollars and dollar backed assets. The dollar at this point in time looks like it's virtually guaranteed to lose its status as the international reserve currency. It's estimated that dollar holdings of foreign governments as exchange reserves totals $5,385 billion. From the CIA's World FactBook, the United States' holdings of foreign currencies is around $71 billion. Therefore, the US would not be able to counteract a mass exodus from the dollar. If this were to happen, the dollar's value would collapse to a mere fraction of its present worth.
Troubled Bank Loans Hit a Record High OVERALL loan quality at American banks is the worst in at least a quarter century, and the quality of loans is deteriorating at the fastest pace ever, according to statistics released this week by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The report highlighted that even as the government and major banks have scrambled to deal with the impaired securities the banks own, the institutions have been plagued by an unprecedented volume of old-fashioned loans going bad.
Record demand, record angst The bond market vigilantes are (supposedly) back. And this time, they aren’t just Wall Street traders. America’s foreign creditors are no longer willing to provide endless amounts of long-term credit to the US at low rates. So argues Mark MacQueen of Austin, Texas- based Sage Advisory Services (via Bloomberg): “The vigilante group is different this time around … It’s major foreign creditors. This whole idea that we need to spend our way out of our problems is being questioned.” From all this talk, you would never know that the world is actually still buying record amounts of US Treasuries. In fact, Treasuries are the only US financial asset that the rest of the world is still buying in large quantities. Demand for Agencies — and asset backed securities — has fallen off a cliff. Demand for equities has been anemic (though the last data point comes from March). By contrast, the 52 week increase in the New York Fed’s custodial holdings is way, way up.
Bond Vigilantes Confront Obama as Housing Falters For the first time since another Democrat occupied the White House, investors from Beijing to Zurich are challenging a president’s attempts to revive the economy with record deficit spending. Fifteen years after forcing Bill Clinton to abandon his own stimulus plans, the so-called bond vigilantes are punishing Barack Obama for quadrupling the budget shortfall to $1.85 trillion. By driving up yields on U.S. debt, they are also threatening to derail Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s efforts to cut borrowing costs for businesses and consumers.
Niall Ferguson: No One Has The Faintest Idea When The Economy Will Recover Barrons sits down with Harvard/Oxford professor Niall Ferguson. He thinks Obama's economic forecasts are as much of an outlier possibility as another Great Depression. He's also concerned, as we are, that there's just not enough money in the world to finance all the borrowing the U.S. and other big countries will be doing over the next few years. Barron's: Is the worst over for the global stock markets and the economy? Ferguson: It may look that way, but appearances can be deceptive. . . .
Paul Krugman, Please Call Ben on This 'Printing Money' Thing So Extreme Left Wing Hack Paul Krugman came up with this one in a May 28th article about those concerned with the possibility of inflation. In it he claimed "I suspect that the scare is at least partly about politics rather than economics." He later went on to say: So if prices aren’t rising, why the inflation worries? Some claim that the Federal Reserve is printing lots of money, which must be inflationary, while others claim that budget deficits will eventually force the U.S. government to inflate away its debt.
Ben Bernanke Interview Part 1 (March 17, 2009) It's a repeat, but worth remember Bernanke's objectives
Ben Bernanke Interview Part 2
Ben Bernanke Interview Part 3
Ben Bernanke Interview Part 4
Bernanke Has Lost Control On Thursday evening CNBC broke into their regular programming to have Steve Liesman announce that The Fed "is not targeting interest rates on the long end." This, of course, was in response to the action in the market Wednesday, and the widespread expectation that The Fed would intervene immediately - but it did not. This statement from "people with knowledge of the matter" is rather curious given the March FOMC Statement in which it was said: To provide greater support to mortgage lending and housing markets, the Committee decided today to increase the size of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet further by purchasing up to an additional $750 billion of agency mortgage-backed securities, bringing its total purchases of these securities to up to $1.25 trillion this year, and to increase its purchases of agency debt this year by up to $100 billion to a total of up to $200 billion. Moreover, to help improve conditions in private credit markets, the Committee decided to purchase up to $300 billion of longer-term Treasury securities over the next six months.
How economists can misunderstand the crisis By Niall Ferguson On Wednesday last week, yields on 10-year US Treasuries – generally seen as the benchmark for long-term interest rates – rose above 3.73 per cent. Once upon a time that would have been considered rather low. But the financial crisis has changed all that: at the end of last year, the yield on the 10-year fell to 2.06 per cent. In other words, long-term rates have risen by 167 basis points in the space of five months. In relative terms, that represents an 81 per cent jump. Most commentators were unnerved by this development, coinciding as it did with warnings about the fiscal health of the US. For me, however, it was good news. For it settled a rather public argument between me and the Princeton economist Paul Krugman. It is a brave or foolhardy man who picks a fight with Mr Krugman, the most recent recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics. Yet a cat may look at a king, and sometimes a historian can challenge an economist.
Federal Rescue: Unthinkable Trillions Here’s a pie chart that puts into perspective the size of the Fed’s involvement in the financial crisis. The entire circle represents approximately 8 trillion dollars. Yes, $8,000,000,000,000. The blue quadrant represents federal lending including expansion of swap lines to the tune of about $2 trillion. The purple quadrant comprises housing related purchases ($1.45 trillion) and buying $1.8 trillion of commercial paper. You can see a more itemized breakdown here…
Max Keiser On the Edge - 29 May 2009 pt 1 / 3 US toxic debts (sovereign debt in form of government issued bonds) are about to go belly-up
Max Keiser On the Edge - 29 May 2009 pt 2 / 3
Max Keiser On the Edge - 29 May 2009 pt 3 / 3 Michael Hudson, guest on China's bilateral deal with Russia and Brazil; countries are reversing free ride for US military overseas
Is Larry Summers Taking Kickbacks From the Banks He’s Bailing Out? Last month, a little-known company where Summers served on the board of directors received a $42 million investment from a group of investors, including three banks that Summers, Obama’s effective “economy czar,” has been doling out billions in bailout money to: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley. The banks invested into the small startup company Revolution Money, right at the time when Summers was administering the “stress test” to these same banks. A month after they invested in Summers’ former company, all three banks came out of the stress test much better than anyone expected—thanks to the fact that the banks themselves were allowed to help decide how bad their problems were. (Citigroup “negotiated” down its financial hole from $35 billion to $5.5 billion.)
A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of Immorality When a new crop of future business leaders graduates from the Harvard Business School next week, many of them will be taking a new oath that says, in effect, greed is not good. Nearly 20 percent of the graduating class have signed “The M.B.A. Oath,” a voluntary student-led pledge that the goal of a business manager is to “serve the greater good.” It promises that Harvard M.B.A.’s will act responsibly, ethically and refrain from advancing their “own narrow ambitions” at the expense of others. What happened to making money? That, of course, is still at the heart of the Harvard curriculum.
THE MBA OATH As a manager, my purpose is to serve the greater good by bringing people and resources together to create value that no single individual can create alone. Therefore I will seek a course that enhances the value my enterprise can create for society over the long term. I recognize my decisions can have far-reaching consequences that affect the well-being of individuals inside and outside my enterprise, today and in the future. As I reconcile the interests of different constituencies, I will face choices that are not easy for me and others. Therefore I promise:
I will act with utmost integrity and pursue my work in an ethical manner.
I will safeguard the interests of my shareholders, co-workers, customers and the society in which we operate.
I will manage my enterprise in good faith, guarding against decisions and behavior that advance my own narrow ambitions but harm the enterprise and the societies it serves.
I will understand and uphold, both in letter and in spirit, the laws and contracts governing my own conduct and that of my enterprise.
I will take responsibility for my actions, and I will represent the performance and risks of my enterprise accurately and honestly.
I will develop both myself and other managers under my supervision so that the profession continues to grow and contribute to the well-being of society.
I will strive to create sustainable economic, social, and environmental prosperity worldwide.
I will be accountable to my peers and they will be accountable to me for living by this oath. This oath I make freely, and upon my honor.
Ireland set to go bust, claims economic historian A dire warning that the Republic is a prime candidate to go bust has come from one of the world's leading economic historians. "The idea that countries don't go bust is a joke," said Niall Ferguson, Harvard professor and author of The Ascent of Money. "The debt trap may be about to spring" he said, "for countries that have created large stimulus packages in order to stimulate their economies." His chosen prime candidate to go bust is "Ireland, followed by Italy and Belgium, and UK is not too far behind". Argentina is top of his list of shaky countries but "the argument that it can't happen in major western economies is nonsense".
Fed Mortgage Efforts Prove Costly Securities Purchases 'Under Water,' Seem to Have Transitory Effect on Rates The U.S. Federal Reserve's program to keep mortgage rates low by buying securities and Treasury bonds so far has been costly and seems to be having a fleeting impact. An analysis of the timing of the Fed's purchases of mortgage-backed securities by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. shows the Fed is "under water" on its portfolio by about 10%, and it would have to take about $5 billion in losses if it were to mark its portfolio to the market.
Schwarzenegger Plan Would Close 220 California Parks Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget cuts could mean the closing of up to 220 state parks, among them the home of the world's tallest tree and other attractions that draw millions of visitors. Schwarzenegger this week recommended eliminating $70 million in parks spending through June 30, 2010. An additional $143.4 million would be saved in the following fiscal year by keeping the parks closed. "This is a worst-case scenario," said Roy Sterns, a spokesman at the state parks department. "If we can do less than this, we will try. But under the present proposal, this is it."
Obama Should Tell California to Drop Dead by Peter Schiff During the height of New York City's financial crisis in the 1970's, President Gerald Ford had the good sense to turn down Mayor Abe Beame's request for a federal bailout. The refusal prompted the famous New York Post headline, "Ford to City: Drop Dead." More than 30 years later, as California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger makes a similar plea to Washington, I hope President Obama will show similar restraint. Unfortunately, given Obama's recent string of unwise economic decisions, it's hard to imagine that his judgment will suddenly improve. A federal bailout would spare California from having to make spending cuts needed to bring its budget into balance. The matter has become urgent since California voters rejected several tax-hiking ballot initiatives. Rather than taking the vote as a signal to dramatically curtail spending, the state turned to the feds. If they get a free pass, the politicians can avoid fixing any of their past mistakes or preparing California for the future.
Mark Klein - AT&T WhistleBlower Mark Klein, a previous AT&T worker concerned for the privacy of millions of Americans, blows the whistle on AT&T's illegal wiretapping and internet surveillance tactics. He is interviewed by Keith Olbermann of MSNBC.
Unemployment in U.S. Probably Surpassed 9% in May Unemployment in the U.S. probably surpassed 9 percent in May for the first time in more than 25 years, underscoring forecasts that the economy will be slow to pull out of the worst recession in half a century, economists said before a report this week. The jobless rate climbed to 9.2 percent, the highest level since September 1983, according to the median of 59 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey before the June 5 Labor Department report. Other data may show manufacturing and service industries shrank at a slower pace and consumer spending dropped.
G.M. Bankruptcy Plan Clears Bondholder Hurdle General Motors’ bondholders finished voting Saturday on the company’s plan to exchange their debt for an ownership stake as high as 25 percent in G.M., the final obstacle to an orderly bankruptcy for the ailing carmaker. Bondholders with slightly more than 50 percent of G.M.’s $27.2 billion in bond debt agreed to support the plan by the deadline of 5 p.m., according to people briefed on the matter. Among the backers was a committee of large investors holding about 20 percent of G.M.’s outstanding bonds.
Industry Fears U.S. May Quit New Car Habit For all the drastic cuts and financial overhauls that are meant to secure a future for General Motors and Chrysler, their prospects in coming years will be determined more by the answer to a simple question: Can American drivers live without that new-car smell? In recent years Americans appeared to be hooked on it and took advantage of home equity loans, easy credit and cheap short-term lease deals to send new-car sales to levels of more than 17 million a year.
Doctor Who Performed Abortions Is Shot to Death WICHITA, Kan. — George Tiller, a Wichita doctor who was one of the few doctors in the nation to perform late-term abortions, was shot to death on Sunday as he attended church, city officials in Wichita said. Dr. Tiller, who had performed abortions since the 1970s, had long been a lightning rod for controversy over the issue of abortion, particularly in Kansas, where abortion opponents regularly protested outside his clinic and sometimes his home and church. In 1993, he was shot in both arms by an abortion opponent but recovered.
Boston Police Being Equiped With High Powered Assault Weapons
Pentagon Plans New Arm to Wage Cyberspace Wars The Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace, administration officials said Thursday, stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare. The military command would complement a civilian effort to be announced by President Obama on Friday that would overhaul the way the United States safeguards its computer networks.
U.S And Canada Sign New Border Security Agreement Part 1 Of 2
U.S And Canada Sign New Border Security Agreement Part 2 Of 2
U.S.-Cuban immigration talks resuming Cuba is ready to resume talks with the United States over the legal immigration of Cubans to the U.S. and postal service between the two nations, the Associated Press reports today. The Communist government notified the Obama administration on Saturday that it had accepted a May 22 overture restart immigration talks suspended by former President George W. Bush in 2003, the AP's Matthew Lee reports, citing a State Department official requesting anonymity because the time and place of talks have not been determined yet. Cuba also has expressed a willingness to cooperate with the U.S. on combating terrorism and stemming drug trafficking as well as hurricane preparedness.
If the EU seems intent on a putsch then UKIP should give it a shove The European Union has slipped the leash of democratic control. It is one thing to advance the Monnet Project by treaty creep and stealth directives. It is another to put questions of sovereignty to a popular vote and then refuse to abide by the outcome. Europe's elites have crossed a political line by reviving the EU Constitution under the guise of the Lisbon Treaty and ramming it through without referendums, after it had already been rejected by French and Dutch voters. To continue a second time after rejection by the Irish – alone in voting – amounts to a putsch.
Obama steps into diplomatic minefield Ahead of two critical elections, in Lebanon and Iran, United States President Barack Obama's visit to the Middle East next week is a delicate matter that may even prove to be a litmus test of his foreign policy orientation. The trip is unlikely to have any major impact on the parliamentary elections in Lebanon on June 7 or the Iranian presidential elections on June 12. Nonetheless, the visit to the region's two leading Sunni Arab powerhouses - Egypt and Saudi Arabia - may be interpreted as a sign of foreign policy continuity with the past. That is, a return to former president George W Bush's Cold War-style politics that encouraged an alliance of Arab moderates versus Iran-led radicals.
Dr. Ron Paul on North Korea Dr. Paul discusses the NPRK's detonation of an atomic device and how they achieved that technology using subsidies from the Clinton Administration.
Gates Issues Warning to North Korea SINGAPORE — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned North Korea on Saturday that the United States would not accept it as a nuclear weapons state, as Asian security officials struggled to find a new way to deal with the isolated Communist nation. “We will not stand idly by as North Korea builds the capability to wreak destruction on any target in Asia — or on us,” Mr. Gates told a major defense conference here that has been dominated by North Korea’s test this week of a nuclear device and the firing of at least six short-range missiles, all in defiance of international sanctions.
Pyongyang shakes up pacifist Japan TOKYO - An increasingly belligerent North Korea is reawaking hawkish sentiments in Japan, still one of the world's most powerful nations and equipped with ultra-modern weaponry. Prompted by Pyongyang's recent provocations - including an underground nuclear test, short-range missile launches and a long-range missile test - normally pacifist Japan is considering acquiring the capability to make pre-emptive strikes to destroy enemy bases, such as those in North Korea. More than a few government officials and lawmakers have reservations about making the leap, as it would be a huge departure from Japan's exclusively defense-oriented, post-World War II policy. The strong pacifism enshrined in the United Stated-imposed "peace constitution" would be a thing of the past.
World powerless to stop North Korea North Korea's decision to carry out its second nuclear test on Monday could have far-reaching consequences, if South Korea and Japan conclude that nothing can be done to persuade Pyongyang to denuclearize. Under such circumstances, developing their own nuclear weapons might become increasingly desirable for Seoul and Tokyo.
Niall Ferguson - British Empire Debate (1/4) (odd global mix of debaters but sheds light on globalism)
Gold to Rise on Dollar 'Weakness,' Deutsche Bank's Lewis Says Gold will rise this year as investors seek a haven from a slumping U.S. dollar, said Michael Lewis, head of commodities research at Deutsche Bank AG. Investors concerned they may lose their savings as banks go out of business are also paying a premium to hold gold certificates through Exchange-Traded Funds, Lewis, based in London, said yesterday in an interview in Lima. "The interest rate, exchange rate and equity environment still remains quite constructive for gold, particularly in the short term," he said. "We may see a bit more dollar weakness, and the appeal of gold will continue for inflation-hedging."
Hitmen Contracts to Bust Comex Major dislocations are coming. Tremendous disruptions are coming. Price discontinuities are coming. Price chart patterns might be rendered useless soon. Last week, the case for a grand Paradigm Shift was made, covering many elements in order to paint a mosaic. Taken in isolation, any one point is important in its own right, but not enough to convince of a structural change. Taken in entirety, the many points create a full picture that is more easily recognized. The ruinous events of the Wall Street banks last September and October surely served as an extreme event loaded with profound disruption. The Chinese have proceeded with a transition to yuan-based domestic banking, with an installation of yuan swap facilities around the world, with an ASEAN regional fund again supplied by yuan for flexible purposes, with permission granted to two Hong Kong banks to sell yuan-based bonds, with an admitted rise in significant gold bullion reserves, and with continued verbal battles over legitimacy of the USDollar as the global reserve currency. These Chinese initiatives in recent weeks, occurring rapidly, are serving as a collective extreme event with the potential for profound disruption. A gold-backed yuan currency would surely cause massive disruption in a climax merger of events.
A Myth Concerning Gold Confiscation Gold confiscation is a subject that divides gold investors. Some say it won't happen again and others say it will happen again. The one thing they tend to agree on is that they don't want it to happen again. I wrote on this subject three years and I just want to reiterate one myth about the previous Roosevelt confiscation that needs to be buried lest anyone think a government seizure would leave you bereft of gold. . . . . . . . . "White House Statement on Returning Gold to Federal Reserve Banks. -- April 5, 1933
In the past weeks the country has given a remarkable demonstration of confidence. With the reopening of a majority of the banks of the country, currency in excess of $1,200,000,000, of which more than $600,000,000 was in the form of gold and gold certificates, has been returned to the Federal Reserve Banks.
Many persons throughout the United States have hastened to turn in gold in their possession as an expression of their faith in the Government and as a result of their desire to be helpful in the emergency. There are others, however, who have waited for the Government to issue a formal order for the return of gold in their possession. Such an order is being issued today."
The anti-confiscation contention is that the people who were waiting for the government to issue a formal order were not for turning their gold in. As can be seen from the above release, $600m or roughly the equivalent of 30 million ounces of gold in coin and certificate had been returned to the banks prior to the executive order.
Now it can be conceded that the people waiting for an official order may have ultimately held onto their gold, but a reading of the order suggests that illegally held gold was probably not going to happen in any great measure. The reason for this is the following section of Executive Order 6102:
"All persons are hereby required to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, to a Federal Reserve bank or a branch or agency thereof or to any member bank of the Federal Reserve System all gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates now owned by them or coming into their ownership on or before April 28, 1933, except the following:
(b) Gold coin and gold certificates in an amount not exceeding in the aggregate $100.00 belonging to any one person; and gold coins having recognized special value to collectors of rare and unusual coins."
Peter Schiff and Marc Faber on The Glenn Beck show
The PPIP Is Dead! We've had a deathwatch on Tim Geithner's Public-Private Investment Partnership practically since it was first announced. The whole program -- which was just another giant subsidy to the banking system -- was always riddled with controversy, and though there were always plenty of buyers eager to use government cash to lever up purchases of toxic assets, there has never been an eager seller. Now it looks as though a substantial part of the program will be killed, while another part will be scaled back. The part that's being killed is the Legacy Loan Program
Growing Accustomed to Fed Stupidity . . . . Whatever the reason, in total, the Federal Reserve has issued (since the inception of the Federal Reserve when it was tragically born alive in 1913, spewing as it did out of the very cesspool of hell), $2.165 trillion in credit to the banks, of which (and I warn you to sit down and hold onto something before proceeding), a whopping $1.293 trillion appeared in the last twelve months! Gaaahhh! Twelve Freaking Months (TFM)! We are so doomed by the idiots in charge! Hahaha! In that selfsame heroic "laughing in the face of death" bon vivant attitude, I note that the Federal Reserve is a bunch of secretive banker trash who have taken over the US government, and who actually now have a "dot gov" suffix to their Internet address, when in fact they are not connected with the government at all, but are, instead (referring back to the beginning of the sentence) a bunch of secretive banker trash who have taken over the US government and have ruined everything with their corruption and greed.
$65 Oil Will Kill The Economic Recovery Dead Swiftly rising oil prices threaten to sap the buying power of U.S. consumers who are essential to ending the longest recession since the Great Depression. Oil has been on a tear in the last five weeks, rising 48 percent since April 21 to hit a 2009 intraday peak above $65 per barrel Thursday. Part of that reflects hopes that the global economy is inching out of a deep slump, but it may also have something to do with investors seeking an inflation shield as the U.S. dollar weakens and government spending grows.
Oil Flies Over $65 Oil keeps on creeping up. It neared $65 dollars today, on the surprise news that oil stocks fell by 5.4 million barrels from the week prior. Refiners used lots of oil last week to quench the thirst of Memorial Day drivers. Add in the fact that OPEC doesn't plan on increasing production, and would like to see $75 barrels of oil, and boom, you've got a mid-day pop to $64.41. Reuters: Oil jumped 3 percent to top $65 a barrel Thursday after OPEC decided to keep output unchanged and government data showed a steep drop in U.S. crude inventories.
Your Field Guide To The Mortgage Collapse The housing market is crashing, and it's taking us, our banks, our economy, and our government down with it. Why? Because of the debt! The value of our houses is plummeting, but the value of our debt is staying just the same. You knew that already. What you didn't maybe know, or at least fully appreciate, is exactly what's happening in the mortgage market that's causing all this hideousness.
The Second Crash - On the Way and Unstoppable . . . . in April, resets began to increase and will reach an intermediate peak in June. After that, they tail off a little, going basically flat for the next ten months. It's not until May of 2010 that the next wave really hits. From there to October of 2011, the resets will be coming fast and furious. That's 18 months of further turmoil in the housing market, and the beginning is still nearly a year away! (Although the months in between are likely to be no picnic, either.) . . . . . But make no mistake about it, the second crash is coming. It can't be prevented, no matter what desperate measures Obama and his hapless financial advisors come up with. All we can hope for is that, with a little luck, it won't be as severe as the first one. But it will last longer. We aren't even in the middle of the woods yet, much less on the way out.
Borrowers with good credit fuel foreclosures in 1Q Cream of the crop home loans take center stage in foreclosure crisis as recession deepens The mortgage crisis is spreading and hitting new heights: Borrowers with good credit now make up the largest share of foreclosures as job losses and pay cuts exact their toll. A record 12 percent of homeowners with a mortgage were behind on their payments in the first quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Thursday. And the trend is predicted to continue until the end of next year, about six months after unemployment is expected to peak. The genesis of the recession -- risky adjustable-rate loans made to borrowers with bad credit -- remains a significant factor in foreclosures. Today, almost half of all subprime ARMs are past due or in foreclosure. In Florida, New Jersey and New York the number is above 55 percent.
Housing: The Bubble That Hasn't Burst (Yet) While economists and real estate investors "celebrate" the slight deceleration in the pace of home price declines in the recent data, a quick look at home price trajectories over the past 100 and 50 years reveals little to cheer about and much to be feared. More significant than small month-to-month changes is the flow of home price patterns over decades. In his book Irrational Exuberance, Robert Shiller determined that in the 100 years between 1900 and 2000, home prices in the U.S. increased by an average of about 3.4% per year. These figures have not been adjusted for inflation. If they had, home prices would have outpaced inflation by only the slimmest of margins.
The greatest swindle ever sold On October 3, 2008, as the spreading economic meltdown threatened to topple financial behemoths like American International Group (AIG) and Bank of America and plunged global markets into freefall, the US government responded with the largest bailout in American history. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, better known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), authorized the use of US$700 billion to stabilize the nation's failing financial systems and restore the flow of credit in the economy.
Ron Paul on CNN American Morning 5-27- 09
The Move Into Hard Assets China is aggressively jumping to hard assets again, they are seeking to unwind their position in the US dollar or at the very least hedge themselves against the upcoming hyperinflationary phase that is going to hit the entire world in the not to very distant future. Their move into copper and sugar clearly illustrates that this is the beginning of trend and that many cash rich nations (Japan, Russia, several countries in the Middle East, etc) will soon follow China's lead.
China says 'no thanks' to G-2 At the Sino-European Union (EU) summit in Prague last week, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao rejected the concept of a Group of Two (G-2) comprising China and the United States, saying "it is totally ungrounded and wrong to talk about the dominance of two countries in international affairs". It was the first time a Chinese leader has publicly commented on the notion of a G-2, though Wen and a number of Chinese officials and think-tanks had cast doubt on the practicability of past notions of a "Chimerica". The idea of a G-2 was first forwarded by US academic circles in 2006, but it was raised again by Zbigniew Brzezinski, an influential specialist in international relations and national security advisor to former US president Jimmy Carter, in Beijing in January as the two countries celebrated the 30th anniversary of establishing formal diplomatic ties.
The Final Conquest...Corporate Frankensteins by Ralph Nader Once upon a time early in the 19th century, corporations came into existence by state legislatures approving charters, which were granted for a limited period of time and for limited purposes. These corporations - producing textiles and other products in New England - raised capital in part because their investors had limited liability. That meant they could not lose any more than their investment if things went wrong. Since corporations were artificial legal entities and not human, these lawmakers feared that without some strong leashes, they could be creating Frankensteins.
Sotomayor Ruled That States Do Not Have to Obey Second Amendment Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor ruled in January 2009 that states do not have to obey the Second Amendment's commandment that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. In Maloney v. Cuomo, Sotomayor signed an opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that said the Second Amendment does not protect individuals from having their right to keep and bear arms restricted by state governments. The opinion said that the Second Amendment only restricted the federal government from infringing on an individual's right to keep and bear arms. As justification for this position, the opinion cited the 1886 Supreme Court case of Presser v. Illinois.
Sonia Sotomayor 'La Raza member' American Bar Association lists Obama choice as part of group As President Obama's Supreme Court nominee comes under heavy fire for allegedly being a "racist," Judge Sonia Sotomayor is listed as a member of the National Council of La Raza, a group that's promoted driver's licenses for illegal aliens, amnesty programs, and no immigration law enforcement by local and state police. According the American Bar Association, Sotomayor is a member of the NCLR, which bills itself as the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S. Meaning "the Race," La Raza also has connections to groups that advocate the separation of several southwestern states from the rest of America.
Questions Delay Sale Of Toxic Bank Assets FDIC Adds 53 Firms To Its Watch List A top banking regulator said yesterday that a federal initiative to relieve financial firms of troubled assets is being held up while the Treasury Department drafts rules to guard against fraud in the program and audit its investors. Sheila C. Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., said the Treasury is still trying to address the concerns of possible participants in the program, which would provide up to $1 trillion in financing to help hedge funds and other investors buy bad loans and securities from banks.
U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve. Federal Reserve holding over $2 trillion in the Darkest Balance Sheet in Financial History The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve have arguably two of the least transparent balance sheets known to humankind. This wouldn't be such a big issue if the amount of money funneled into these organizations was small. That is not the case. The Federal Reserve since October of 2008 has held on its balance sheet over $2 trillion in reserve bank credit and also, Federal Reserve Holdings of U.S. Treasuries. This of course is the biggest bait and switch in history because in exchange for U.S. Treasuries, banks can offload practically any collateral (i.e., mortgages, auto loans, credit card loans, etc). The U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve are creating the biggest put option in the history of the world and the American taxpayer stands to lose big.
Anyone Got 2 TRILLION Dollars I can Borrow?
Fed May Buy More Assets to Bolster Balance Sheet The Federal Reserve may step up asset purchases to prevent its balance sheet from contracting until policy makers are convinced an economic recovery has taken hold, Fed officials and analysts said. Demand for some of the Fed's emergency programs has waned as the grip of the credit crunch loosens, with loans to banks shrinking 48 percent since Jan. 1. The main tool to keep the central bank's holdings from falling from the current $2.08 trillion would be more purchases of Treasuries, said analysts including former Fed Governor Laurence Meyer.
U.S. Weighs Single Agency to Regulate Banking Industry Plan Is Key Facet of Sweeping Overhaul Senior administration officials are considering the creation of a single agency to regulate the banking industry, replacing a patchwork of agencies that failed to prevent banks from falling into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, sources said. The agency would be a key element in the administration's sweeping overhaul of financial regulation, which officials hope to unveil in coming weeks, including the creation of a new authority to police risks to the financial system as well as a new agency to protect consumers, according to three people familiar with the matter. Most of the proposals would require legislation.
"Abrupt Downside Risk" Fund manager John Hussman is too smart to ever actually predict anything, but he also always gives you a good sense of where he stands. And where does he stand now on the stock market? In a bomb-shelter. John Hussman: [O]ur measures of market internals have somewhat unexpectedly broken down in recent sessions, partly as a result of hostile interest rate action, as well as reversals in a number of sensitive measures of "distribution" (largely driven by price-volume behavior) in an environment where overall price-volume behavior was already tepid. Breadth as measured by advances versus declines is still the clear bright spot in the market's action.
Reboot… . . . . Gold has gained 4% through the past week. The yellow metal is moving from its recent to role as a fear barometer back into its traditional pastime of trending in opposition to the US$. We expect that to continue, and we watch the strengthening Indian Rupee as an important harbinger of gold's price potential. India has long been the most important physical market for gold and silver. It was the destocking of gold out of India that held its price in check during the first quarter despite the increased investment buying of the metal in other markets.
China 'caught in US money trap'
Geithner Prepares to Meet With Chinese Leaders Timothy F. Geithner, who before his confirmation as Treasury secretary unintentionally charged that China was "manipulating" its currency, will make his first trip to that country since taking office and meet with its leaders next week amid rising concern about China's willingness to continue buying United States debt. The Treasury announced on Wednesday that Mr. Geithner had meetings scheduled with President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and Vice Premier Wang Quishan. He will also promote American business interests and press the case for both countries, which are the world's biggest emitters of the heat-trapping gases that contribute to climate change, to work to limit the pollution.
Geithner to focus on trade in China Plans to meet with top leaders Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner will meet top Chinese officials next week as part of high-level talks designed to strengthen economic ties between the United States and China - a move that holds broad political ramifications. Mr. Geithner's visit to Beijing, which includes meetings with Chinese President Hu Jintao, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and Vice Prime Minister Wang Quishan, also will focus on efforts to end the current global economic recession, the Treasury Department said Wednesday.
Crisis China: Gold, Dollar & Runs on Chinese Banks . . . . recent reports, from Asia...specifically Korean news sites, that for the past several months...there have been large number of Chinese citizens...making large withdraws and closing accounts (in addition to this...there has been billions pulled from Chinese banks by foreign institutions and wealthy individuals).
This Time, Treasuries Push U.S. Markets Higher The stock market is again taking its cues from the bond market. Stocks turned higher Thursday after solid demand at a Treasury auction eased fears that demand for United States debt would dry up and force the government to pay higher interest rates to entice buyers. Higher rates could choke the economy's recovery by making loans on everything from homes to cars more expensive. It was the second consecutive day that interest rates tugged at the market. The relief after a $26 billion auction of 7-year notes Thursday was in contrast to fears that followed Wednesday's sale. While the results of that auction were decent, traders grew nervous that the government would eventually exhaust buyers with an unprecedented level of debt sales.
Mortgage Delinquency Reaches Record High Job Losses Offset Government Efforts Rising unemployment levels helped push record numbers of homeowners into delinquency or foreclosure during the first quarter, according to industry data released yesterday. Government efforts to cut foreclosure rates have not been enough to offset the impact of the recession on struggling borrowers, the data from the Mortgage Bankers Association showed. And borrowers once considered reliable are now helping drive the foreclosure crisis, which looks likely to extend into next year.
More Homeowners Facing Foreclosure More homeowners than ever before are falling behind on mortgage payments and sliding into foreclosure, according to figures released Thursday, a sign that the housing crisis is spreading through the ranks of previously stable borrowers. About 5.4 million of the country's 45 million home loans were delinquent or in some stage of the foreclosure process in the first three months of the year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. About 12.07 percent of all mortgages were delinquent or in foreclosure, up from 11.93 percent at the end of 2008.
Food Safety Bill Imposes New Regulations, Fees on Food Industry A food safety bill making its way through the House of Representatives will result in higher costs for consumers, says a food industry group. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has scheduled a June 3 hearing on the bill, which -- according to Democrats -- gives the Food and Drug Administration the authority and money it needs to better ensure the safety of the nation's food supply.
Health care for uninsured boosts premiums $1,000 The average family with health insurance shells out an extra $1,000 a year in premiums to pay for health care for the uninsured, a new report finds. And the average individual with private coverage pays an extra $370 a year because of the cost-shifting, which happens when someone without medical insurance gets care at an emergency room or elsewhere and then doesn't pay. The report was being released Thursday by advocacy group Families USA, which said the findings -- which it calls a "hidden tax" -- support its goal of extending coverage to all the 50 million Americans who are now uninsured. Congress and the Obama administration are working on a plan to do that.
Deathaid The Looming Disaster of "Medicare for All" America's Left/Liberals, and their spokesman Barack Obama, insist that everything about health care would be wonderful if only the government would take it over. Their preferred plan, embraced by Obama, is to throw Medicare open to everyone, and then over time force everyone into it. They say if you have employer-provided insurance, you can keep it. But that choice will be up to the employer, not you. As the government forces costly regulatory burdens, like guaranteed issue and community rating, onto private insurance, employers facing the soaring premiums will just dump their workers into Medicare. These costly regulatory burdens, plus the taxpayer subsidies for Medicare, will eventually drive out all private insurance alternatives.This is what the left has been proposing for many years now. They have called it "Medicare for All." No point in denying that now, when they have got the President and Congressional majorities to pass it. The question to consider is, "Is Medicare for All a good idea?" Medicare Is Already Bankrupt
Painful Concessions Made To Keep GM Alive UAW Members Reluctantly Vote To Ratify Pre-Bankruptcy Agreement In Bid To Salvage Future At union halls across the country, UAW members like third-generation GM employee Brian Yarbrough are casting votes they never imagined. "I don't think any of us even two years ago could have believed we're in the situation we are in now," Yarbrough told CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers. He said he voted "yes" because he says keeping GM alive is the only way to keep a roof over his family's head.
U.S. to Wield Significant Sway Over Reorganized GM Administration To Take Influential Role in Shaping Firm's Board The government would retain significant control over the restructured General Motors under an Obama administration plan that would allow U.S. officials to directly name or influence the appointments of the vast majority of a new 13-member board that would oversee the company, sources familiar with the discussions said. The plan calls for federal officials to directly appoint five or six members to the board after GM emerges from its expected bankruptcy, the sources said. Another six would roll over from GM's existing board, but even these directors would reflect the government's influence since GM is reconstituting its board under government direction.
New G.M. Plan Gets Support From Key Bondholders As General Motors moved closer to a bankruptcy filing, possibly early next week, attention on Thursday turned again to the bondholders, the most important group that the company has yet to win over for its efforts to start fresh. Early Thursday, G.M. proposed a deal in which bondholders would receive up to a 25 percent stake - a bigger share than G.M. offered the autoworkers union - if they do not oppose its bankruptcy reorganization, and then said that a group representing many of the largest bondholders had accepted the offer.
Chrysler's 'hit list' targets GOP donors Dealers who give to Republicans much more likely to be shuttered President Obama has said the bankruptcy will give the company "a new lease on life," after his administration spearheaded a plan requiring the company sell to Italian automaker Fiat. Chrysler's stronger operations will be owned by Fiat, labor and the U.S. and Canadian governments. The sale could close as early as this Friday. Obama said the bankruptcy would be a "quick" and "efficient" step toward Chrysler's "survival." "The necessary steps have been taken to give one of America's most storied automakers, Chrysler, a new lease on life," Obama said. "This is not a sign of weakness." But WND reviewed the list of 789 closing franchises and databases of political donors and found that of dealership majority owners making contributions in the November 2008 election, less than 10 percent gifted to Democrats while 90 percent gave substantial sums to Republican candidates.
Tesla Recalls More Than 75% Of Its Roadsters Tesla is recalling 345 of its Roadsters, made between March 2008 and April 22, 2009 due to an issue with the rear hub. The recall affects a significant chunck of Tesla's Roadster sales, as this press release from May 12 says the company has delivered over 400 Roadsters thus far. "The rear hub flange bolts may be under-torqued and may become loose," says the notification. That leads to poor handlng, and a rubbing noise from the back of the car. If it's not addressed properly, then, "The driver could lose control of the car, which could lead to a crash."
US to Host Next G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh Pittsburgh is known for steel. For sports. For smoke and smog. For a spectacular downfall. But not often for recovery. For years, political leaders, community activists and ordinary residents tried to convince the world beyond its three rivers that this former industrial powerhouse was on the rise with an economy built on higher education, medicine and new technology. From Sept. 24 to 25, it will get a chance to prove its point to the world leaders representing 85 percent of the world's economy. On Thursday, the White House announced that President Barack Obama decided to host the next Group of 20 economic summit in Pittsburgh as a way of illustrating what success can look like.
Pelosi Says China, U.S. Must Tackle Climate Change Together U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged Beijing on Thursday to cooperate on climate change, calling a safe environment a basic human right. Speaking at Beijing's elite Tsinghua University, Pelosi continued the theme of her five-day China trip -- that combating global warming represented a new challenge that both governments must tackle jointly. "We are all in this together," Pelosi told an audience of about 200 students and faculty who applauded enthusiastically throughout the 45-minute session. "The impact of climate change is a tremendous risk to the security and well-being of our countries."
Obama Calls for Swift Move Toward Mideast Peace Talks President Obama called on Israelis and Palestinians on Thursday to move swiftly toward peace talks, as his administration embarked on its first public dispute with Israel. Speaking to reporters at the White House after talks with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, Mr. Obama said that the absence of peace between Israelis and Palestinians was clogging up other critical issues in the Middle East. "Time is of the essence," Mr. Obama said. "We can't continue with the drift and the increased fear on both sides, the sense of hopelessness that we've seen for too many years now. We need to get this thing back on track." Mr. Obama reiterated his call for a halt to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and said he expected a response soon from President Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
Obama: halt to new Israeli settlements is in America's security interests Increasingly fractious relations between the US and Israel hit a low unseen in nearly two decades yesterday after the Jewish state rejected President Obama's demand for an end to settlement construction in the West Bank, and the president responded by suggesting that Israeli intransigence endangers America's security. The dispute, which blew in during the open hours before Obama met the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, reflects the depth of the shift in US policy away from accommodating Israel, and towards pressuring it to end years of stalling negotiations over the creation of a Palestinian state as it continues to grab land in the occupied territories.
A test of Washington's resolve The United States appears to have no real game plan for dealing with North Korea's increasingly bold threats, other than attempting to lead the rest of the world towards a meaningless "condemnation" of the North's underground nuclear test and launching of several short-range missiles. The White House, like the Blue House, the center of presidential power in Seoul, has accused North Korea of "saber-rattling" while keeping a score card of countries scolding North Korea for its defiance. However, there is no certainty on what the US will do if the North goes a significant step beyond its nuclear test on Monday and stages an actual incident against South Korean or American forces, the two most likely targets.
South Korean and US troops placed on high alert US and South Korean forces raised their military alert level today, a day after North Korea renounced the 55-year-old truce on the peninsula and threatened war if its ships are searched for weapons of mass destruction. Three days after North Korea carried out an underground nuclear test, the US-South Korea combined forces command moved its level of surveillance to the second-highest level on its scale of five, the highest since North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006.
U.S. has forces to fight N. Korea The United States could fight an old-fashioned war against North Korea if necessary, even while newer forms of conflict against terrorists and extremists continue, the Army's top officer said Thursday. Asked whether the United States would be prepared to fight if war broke out between South Korea and North Korea, Gen. George Casey replied, "The short answer is yes," then added that "it would probably take us a little bit longer to shift gears" away from the type of counterinsurgency fighting that now occupies the Army.
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Thurs 05.28.2009
Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. - Winston Churchill
Once Considered Unthinkable, U.S. Sales Tax Gets Fresh Look Levy Viewed as Way to Reduce Deficits, Fund Health Reform With budget deficits soaring and President Obama pushing a trillion-dollar-plus expansion of health coverage, some Washington policymakers are taking a fresh look at a money-making idea long considered politically taboo: a national sales tax. Common around the world, including in Europe, such a tax -- called a value-added tax, or VAT -- has not been seriously considered in the United States. But advocates say few other options can generate the kind of money the nation will need to avert fiscal calamity. At a White House conference earlier this year on the government's budget problems, a roomful of tax experts pleaded with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to consider a VAT.
***** Excellent! False Confidence "Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy," said Winston Churchill. Although it inevitably lowers living standards, socialism feels good - at least at the outset - as "free money" flows in great abundance. Keep this in mind as we examine the "good news" about consumer confidence. Last week, it was reported that consumer confidence has seen an unexpected lift. In response, the sluggish stock market saw a manic 196-point rally. This mania overrode losses from the week's other big news: Great Britain was put on negative credit watch by Standard & Poor's; the U.S. markets tanked on expectations of a similar downgrade domestically; and, Case-Shiller reported an unrelenting slide in home prices. In other words, the economic decline continues. So, why are consumers so confident? They are being deceived by "free money" into believing in the power of socialism.
N. Korea threatens actions over warships North Korea threatened military action Wednesday against U.S. and South Korean warships plying the waters near the Koreas' disputed maritime border, raising the specter of a naval clash just days after the regime's underground nuclear test. In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that Pyongyang faced unspecified consequences because of its "provocative and belligerent" acts. Pyongyang, reacting angrily to Seoul's decision to join an international program to intercept ships suspected of aiding nuclear proliferation, called South Korea's decision tantamount to a declaration of war.
Can North Korean Nukes Rattle Global Markets? North Korea threatened military action against American and South Korean warships in the waters near Korea's' disputed maritime border, raising the specter of a naval clash just days after Pyongyang's underground nuclear test. "Now that the South Korean puppets were so ridiculous as to join in the said racket and dare declare a war against compatriots, North Korea is compelled to take a decisive measure. Seoul's decision comes at a time when the state of military confrontation is growing acute and there is constant danger of military conflict," the statement warned. Still, what global traders failed to recognize, is that North Korea and Iran are closely and secretly coordinating their nuclear weapons programs. Most of the missile guidance technology in Iran's long-range Seijl-2 surface missile, tested by Tehran on May 20th, with its bull's-eye accuracy, came from Pyongyang. Iran's Seijl-2 missile test was carried out less than a month after North Korea's internationally condemned missile test launch on April 5th, and the reopening of its plutonium reactors.
North Korean Threat Shapes Gates Talks at Asia Defense Summit North Korea’s nuclear test and bellicose rhetoric are raising the stakes for the U.S. and its Asian allies as defense officials head to Singapore for an annual security conference this week, Pentagon officials said. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will consult on potential responses to North Korea in a meeting with counterparts from Japan and South Korea, his spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters in Washington. Gates is also set to confer with China’s deputy chief of the general staff for the People’s Liberation Army, Lieutenant General Ma Xiaotian.
Prediction: Gold price will zoom from $1224 to $3000 Here is a set of [9] gold predictions from noted global bullion analyst Jim Sinclair: . . . . . . . . Should I be correct in the gold price action going into late June, it will fit Armstrong’s criterion for a move to $5000. Alf’s work permits an over-run of the gold price to $3500 in the major 3rd phase, indicating overruns into the major 5th.
Gold, silver are on a tear these days Gold and silver have been on a tear as of late (for reasons we’ve discussed at length in these pages, and will address in further detail soon). To give you the quick and dirty version, the yellow metal has been bid up as more traders and investors anticipate a loss of faith in government assets – and a coinciding return of inflation. Where gold hasn’t gotten much respect, at least in recent months, is as a form of crisis insurance. Gold is not only the asset du jour in a time of rampant currency debasement... it’s also one of the last, best stores of value in a world gone mad.
Gerald Celente The bailout bubble The Mother of all bubbles 27 May 09
Gold Pares Gains in New York as Dollar Rises; Silver Advances Gold prices were little changed in New York, paring an earlier gain, after demand for the metal as a store of value eased as the dollar rose. Silver advanced. The U.S. Dollar Index, a six-currency gauge of the greenback's value that includes the euro and yen, climbed after North Korea provoked international condemnation by exploding an atomic device on May 25 and test-firing missiles. The index fell 3.7 percent last week to a 2009 low, while gold increased 3 percent. The metal typically moves inversely to the dollar. "The market is overbought," Jon Nadler, a senior analyst at Kitco Metals Inc., said by e-mail. "Where are the jitters? North Korea did not do the trick," he said. "Add it all up, and we see profit-taking as imminent.
Gold’s share in foreign exchange reserves is 10% . . . . Gold’s share by value of global foreign exchange reserves is currently about 10%. This is not co-incidentally similar to what is often said to be the right amount of gold and just 5% lower than what the European Central Bank decided its gold holdings would be as a percentage of total reserves when it was formed, the only recent example of a central bank deciding on a gold share. Gold’s share has declined sharply since the 1950s and 1960s, but has stabilised in the last decade, despite a huge increase in foreign exchange reserves. After the US dollar and the euro it is easily the third largest asset by value. And there would be enough gold to go around, even if every country wanted to have 10% of its foreign reserves in gold.
What Moves Up 3 Times Faster Than Gold? The dollar is out. The U.S. dollar index has fallen 5% last week. Treasury bonds are quickly falling out of favor. The yield on 10-year Treasury bonds has climbed from 2.5% to almost 3.5% since March signaling inflation fears and an unwillingness to fund ballooning government borrowing. Gold is hot. Gold prices are back on the rise and gold stocks have done even better. . . . . . . despite the strong interest in gold at the moment, I encourage you to continue to look for value in the sector. Right now, there seems to be some exceptional value in an asset which is so undervalued, it could outpace gold by 400% or more. I’m talking about Silver.
Buy Commodities, Pay Off Debt as Inflation Looms The fallout that has irradiated highly leveraged Western economies has started a King Kong versus Godzilla battle. To avoid getting trampled, you will need to finesse your credit options and hedge against inflation.
Dollar Headed Way Down The dollar, which has dropped 5 percent against the euro over the past month, has a lot further to fall, says Stephen Gallo, head of market analysis at Schneider Foreign Exchange. He told Bloomberg TV that the German economy, which shrank 3.8 percent in the first quarter, has probably hit bottom. Economic indicators in both the United States and Europe have stabilized, he points out. "The market is pretty much convinced that in terms of economic contraction, we're already through the worst."
China: No Dethroning Dollar Despite Risks BEIJING -- The global financial crisis has tarnished the dollar and will prompt reserve managers to diversify, but the U.S. currency will retain its dominant international role, a senior Chinese official said in remarks published on Wednesday. Guan Tao from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, which invests China's $1.95 trillion in currency reserves, likened the risk of U.S. inflation and dollar depreciation to "blocked dams" that threatened the stability of the global monetary system in the medium term. The phrase, 'My dollar, your problem' vividly captures the capacity of the United States to exploit the current international monetary system to palm off this crisis," he said.
Hyper-Inflation Ahead, Fed to Blame John Hussman says the government has crowded out $1 trillion of private investment and virtually guaranteed double-digit inflation by insisting on bailing out bank bondholders to the tune of 100-cents on the dollar. "Any incipient recovery will be cut short, because the only reason that our economy is able to absorb the present supply of government liabilities is extreme risk aversion that creates a demand for default-free instruments," Hussman, of Hussman Strategic Growth Fund, writes in his weekly note to investors.
U.S. Inflation to Approach Zimbabwe Level, Faber Says The U.S. economy will enter "hyperinflation" approaching the levels in Zimbabwe because the Federal Reserve will be reluctant to raise interest rates, investor Marc Faber said. Prices may increase at rates "close to" Zimbabwe's gains, Faber said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Hong Kong. Zimbabwe's inflation rate reached 231 million percent in July, the last annual rate published by the statistics office.
Marc Faber hyperinflation in the US like Zimbabwe pt 1/3
Marc Faber hyperinflation in the US like Zimbabwe pt 2/3
Marc Faber hyperinflation in the US like Zimbabwe pt 3/3
Slumping Treasury bond prices send stocks lower Stocks tumble as 10-year note yield jumps on worries about borrowing costs; Dow falls 173 The stock market put its rally back on hold as investors worried about rising borrowing costs. The Dow Jones industrial average fell almost 175 points Wednesday, erasing most of the previous day's rally as a jump in government bond yields fanned concerns that higher interest rates will sap strength from the economy. A steep drop in the price of the benchmark 10-year Treasury note pushed its yield up to 3.75 percent from 3.55 percent late Tuesday and to the highest level since November. Bond investors were selling on concerns that the huge amount of debt the government is selling to fund its bailout programs will ultimately keep Treasury prices down.
More Banks Under Stress as Recession Wears On Despite signs that the nation's biggest banks are stabilizing, a growing number of small and midsize institutions are coming under stress as the recession wears on. The F.D.I.C. said Wednesday that it had placed 305 banks on its list of "problem" institutions, the most since 1994, and up from 252 at the end of 2008. From January through March, 21 small or medium-sized banks failed, and 15 more went under in the second quarter. The findings underline the toll the credit crisis continues to take on America's smaller banks, which are weighed down by souring commercial real estate loans and mounting losses.
U.S. ‘Problem’ Banks Rise to 15-Year High, FDIC Says U.S. “problem” banks climbed 21 percent to the highest total in 15 years in the first quarter as provisions set aside for loan losses weighed on earnings, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said. The FDIC classified 305 banks as “problem” and their total assets rose 38 percent to $220 billion, the highest since 1993, the agency said without identifying any lender. The FDIC said its insurance fund slumped 25 percent to the lowest level in 15 years.
U.S. will eventually adopt 'bad bank' plan The U.S. government will eventually adopt a "bad bank" plan to purchase toxic assets from struggling lenders, despite avoiding such a solution so far, accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers said Wednesday. A government "bad bank" should be set up quickly and be focused on the largest institutions, the firm explained, noting that Germany, Switzerland and Ireland have already taken this approach. "The crisis is about to enter a new phase where efforts to remove troubled assets from bank balance sheets must be accelerated," PWC said. "U.S. government interventions to date have stabilized individual institutions, but have not created a functioning market and pricing mechanism and therefore have had little impact on reviving the broader markets."
Banks Face $1 Trillion of Losses Ahead Whitney Tilson, managing partner of money manager T2 Partners, says banks aren't nearly out of the woods yet, as the credit crisis continues to evolve. "As of a month ago, worldwide there was $1.3 trillion in bank writedowns," he told FT.com's video site. "Our estimate is that total losses, looking out many years, will be at least double that, could be triple that." As a result, "While we're … maybe halfway through the bursting of … (the housing) bubble, we're probably not even halfway through the overall unwinding of this great debt bubble."
Number of US banks at risk to rise again The number of “problem banks” in the US rose by 21 per cent in the first quarter of the year to the highest level since 1994 and more are set to struggle, says the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The collective net income of the 8,200 banks that the FDIC insures slumped by 60.8 per cent year on year to $7.6bn as the recession savaged their loan books. One in five made no profit at all. “The first-quarter results are telling us that the banking industry still faces tremendous challenges and that, going forward, asset quality remains a major concern,” Sheila Bair, who chairs the FDIC, said on Wednesday. “Bank failures continued to mount and they will continue to do so.”
Greenspan Flunks Test, Bush Falls Into $15 Trillion Pit Let’s pause for a minute and think about $15 trillion. That’s roughly how much money the U.S. has committed toward rescuing the economy from the credit meltdown, housing collapse and recession, according to the number-crunching of Barry Ritholtz, chief executive officer of research firm FusionIQ. Find that figure hard to grasp? Ritholtz has some handy comparisons: In inflation-adjusted terms, $15 trillion is more than the U.S. spent on the Louisiana Purchase, he says. It’s bigger than the Marshall Plan. More money than the government paid for the Race to the Moon, the savings-and-loan crisis, the Vietnam War -- or all of the above combined, he says.
Stocks Whacked, As Bears Pray They've Finally Got Their Selloff As we've been noting, there have been a lot of very unhappy bears out there lately, who have been forced to suffer through this trashy, low-volume, short-covering sucker's rally. No amount of questioning the green shoots has done them any good, as bulls have trampled over them every time they dare make a stand.
JPMorgan warns on credit card woes Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase chief executive, warned on Wednesday that loss rates on the credit card loans of Washington Mutual, the troubled bank acquired last year by JPMorgan, could climb to 24 per cent by the year end. In the past, credit card loss rates have tracked the unemployment rate but that relationship has been breaking down for more troubled credit card portfolios, such as the $25.9bn in WaMu credit card loans.
Geithner Prepares to Meet With Chinese Leaders Timothy F. Geithner, who before his confirmation as Treasury secretary unintentionally charged that China was "manipulating" its currency, will make his first trip to that country since taking office and meet with its leaders next week amid rising concern about China's willingness to continue buying United States debt.
Roubini: Bottom of Recession Not Here Yet Economist Nouriel Roubini on Wednesday said the end of the global recession is likely to occur at the end of the year rather than the middle, and that U.S. growth will remain below potential afterwards. "We are not yet at the bottom of the U.S. and the global recession," said Roubini. "The contraction is still occurring and the recession is going to be over more toward the end of the year rather than in the middle of the year." "There is still too much optimism that a recovery is just around the corner," said Roubini, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business and chairman of RGE Monitor, an independent economic research firm.
Dr.Doom Nouriel Roubini "Yuan will become a reserve currency" Part 1/3
Dr.Doom Nouriel Roubini "Yuan will become a reserve currency" Part 2/3
Dr.Doom Nouriel Roubini "Yuan will become a reserve currency" Part 3/3
U.S.'s AAA Credit Rating Is Stable, Moody's Says he U.S. government's Aaa credit rating is stable "even with a significant deterioration" in the nation's debt, Moody's Investors Service said, signaling confidence in a rebound from the recession. The U.S. rating is supported by "a diverse and resilient economy, strong government institutions, high per-capita income, and a central position in the global economy," New York-based Moody's said in a statement. At the same time, the firm warned that any "reassessment" of long-term growth prospects could put pressure on the rating.
Treasuries Fall on Concern Record Sales Will Overwhelm Demand Treasuries fell for a fourth day, pushing the difference in yields between two- and 10-year debt to a record amid concern record supply will overwhelm investor demand as the economy begins to show signs of stability. The slump in Treasuries is helping to send yields on mortgage bonds higher, prompting holders of the securities to sell government debt used as a hedge to protect portfolios against rising interest rates. ‘We are in a bit of a freefall,’’ said Kevin Giddis, head of fixed-income sales, trading and research at the brokerage Morgan Keegan Inc. in Memphis, Tennessee. “This is the beginning of a lot of sales.” The decline pushed 10-year note yields to a record 2.75 percentage points more than two-year securities, surpassing the record of 2.74 percentage points set in August 2003.
Sotomayor reversed 60% by high court With Judge Sonia Sotomayor already facing questions over her 60 percent reversal rate, the Supreme Court could dump another problem into her lap next month if, as many legal analysts predict, the court overturns one of her rulings upholding a race-based employment decision. Three of the five majority opinions written by Judge Sotomayor for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and reviewed by the Supreme Court were reversed, providing a potent line of attack raised by opponents Tuesday after President Obama announced he will nominate the 54-year-old Hispanic woman to the high court.
Mortgage-Bond Yields Jump, Jeopardizing Fed's Housing Effort Yields on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage bonds rose for a fourth day, after exceeding for the first time yesterday their levels before the Federal Reserve announced it would expand purchases to drive down interest rates on new loans. Yields on Washington-based Fannie Mae's current-coupon 30- year fixed-rate mortgage bonds climbed to 4.55 percent as of 3:15 p.m. in New York, the highest since Dec. 5 and up from 3.94 percent on May 20, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The California Bailout Next on Obama's Spending Agenda When the Tax Day Tea Party protests happened on April 15, the idea of government spending us into bankruptcy seemed hard for some to grasp. A month-and-a-half later, they have a perfect example - California. California is the Golden State no more. If Sutter's Mill were still a major mining operation, the state would sell it to Chinese investors for quick cash. The Golden Gate Bridge would be next. Thanks to years of screwed up government, California is $21 billion or more in debt. That's nearly $600 for every man, woman and child in the state - in addition to their usual tax over-burden.
Next in Line for Bailouts - Cities and States Municipalities are the latest entities to beg the federal government for a bailout. Large spending obligations and shrinking tax revenue are sending state and local budget deficits soaring, so the localities need money to fund their debt. And thanks to the credit crisis, the municipal bond market isn’t as open to state and local governments as in the past. California, where voters rejected government efforts to trim the deficit, has even asked for money from the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), created to assist troubled banks.
U.S. Home Sales Remain Sluggish as Supply Soars A glut of unsold homes continued to grow last month, fed by a new wave of foreclosures, even though sales of existing homes rose, a national real estate trade association said Wednesday. The National Association of Realtors reported that the inventory of unsold houses, townhouses and condominiums rose to 3.97 million in April, the highest level since November. At the current rate of sales, it would take 10.2 months to exhaust those unsold properties.
Niall Ferguson Financial crisis and international change: historian Niall Ferguson on past financial emergencies and whether the current crisis in American credit markets will result in power flowing from West to East. Monday September 29 2008
GM's Demand for Additional $415 Million Stalls Talks on Opel General Motors Corp., facing a potential bankruptcy filing, asked for an additional 300 million euros ($415 million) for its Opel unit, stalling talks with Fiat SpA and Magna International Inc., the German government said. The parties will resume negotiations and the government hopes to reach a solution by Friday, German Economy Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg told reporters in Berlin. “We were once again confronted with new numbers,” said Guttenberg. “We do not have the assurances we need in order to extend a bridge loan.”
GM all but certain to file for bankruptcy GM moves to the brink of bankruptcy; Chrysler hopes to emerge quickly General Motors, the company that put tail fins on a Cadillac and was once America's largest employer, moved to the edge of bankruptcy Wednesday as debtholders refused a last-ditch deal. Crosstown rival Chrysler hoped to pull off a quick exit from bankruptcy and prove there is hope yet for a leaner Detroit.
GM: Startups Aren't Better At Making Electric Cars Than We Are There's no reason to think that pishers like Tesla and Fisker are going to be better at making electric cars than GM. At least not in GM's opinion, anyway. Frank Weber, GM's Global Electric Vehicle Development Executive, took to the blogosphere to defend his company against attacks being lobbed its way from people like Elon Musk, and Dave Letterman.
IRS tax revenue falls along with taxpayers' income Federal tax revenue plunged $138 billion, or 34%, in April vs. a year ago — the biggest April drop since 1981, a study released Tuesday by the American Institute for Economic Research says. When the economy slumps, so does tax revenue, and this recession has been no different, says Kerry Lynch, senior fellow at the AIER and author of the study. "It illustrates how severe the recession has been." For example, 6 million people lost jobs in the 12 months ended in April — and that means far fewer dollars from income taxes. Income tax revenue dropped 44% from a year ago. "These are staggering numbers," Lynch says. Big revenue losses mean that the U.S. budget deficit may be larger than predicted this year and in future years.
Americans' credit scores fall as they struggle to pay bills As more consumers struggle with bills, their credit scores are paying a price. From the third quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2009 - the latest data available - the average TransUnion credit score dropped 6 points to 651, the credit bureau says. Scores fell more dramatically in states hardest hit by the housing bust: California saw a 10-point drop, for example, and Arizona, 11.
Antitrust Laws a Hurdle to Health Care Overhaul President Obama’s campaign to cut health costs by $2 trillion over the next decade, announced with fanfare two weeks ago, may have hit another snag: the nation’s antitrust laws. Antitrust lawyers say doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and drug makers will be running huge legal risks if they get together and agree on a strategy to hold down prices and reduce the growth of health spending.
Catholic Obama Campaign Adviser Wants to Replace All Legal 'Marriages' with 'Civil Licenses' A top constitutional law professor who served as a surrogate for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama told CNSNews.com that he would like to see "marriage" replaced in the legal sense with a neutral "civil license." "As awkward as it may be, I think the way to untie the state from this problem is to create a new terminology that they would apply to everyone--straight or gay-call it a 'civil license,' said Douglas Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University and author of "Can a Catholic Support Him?'
Working Out the Details of Guns in National Parks ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, Colo. - Guns tend to bring out a black-or-white, yes-or-no stridency in American policy debate. Guns are bad. Guns are good. Guns are dangerous. Guns keep you safe. The National Parks evoke equally deep emotional feelings - about place. Setting aside specific spots for the celebration of nature, or history, or spirituality, is an old tradition - as old as the Second Amendment. Now those emotions are colliding.
The climate change debate is not a simple battle of good and evil These issues are more complicated than some would have us believe, says Thomas Crowley Your list of key members of the US committee considering Barack Obama's global warming legislation included a number from conservative districts (2,500 lobbyists, $45m on PR – but just 12 views count, 13 May). Some readers may be inclined to stereotype the attitudes of such people. But is it really wrong for a person to reflect the interests of his or her voters? "Turn on the radio in a blighted town in America's rust belt, and a new advertisement paid for by a lobbying group with close ties to oil industry giants claims that ordinary families could be worse off by thousands of dollars," you report. I despise the distortions of science by some groups resisting the proposed law changes, but economic concerns are by no means trivial.
Europe tightens regulatory noose on City The European Commission has seized on the financial crisis to bring the City under closer EU control and clip the wings of Britain's Financial Services Authority, unveiling far-reaching plans for a new EU regulatory machinery with binding powers. "It's now or never," said Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. "If we cannot reform the financial sector when we have a real crisis, when will we?" Three new bodies are to be created with a permanent staff and powers to impose decisions on member states: a European Banking Authority in London; a European Insurance Authority in Frankfurt; and a European Securities Authority in Paris.
In the southern Italian port city of Palermo, home to bustling outdoor markets and Arab-influenced architecture, prosecutor Roberto Scarpinato has hunted Mafia money for two decades. Now, as the rest of the world tightens its belt in the global recession, he's tracking how the mob is profiting by lending and investing what's become a scarce commodity these days: a growing hoard of cash.
A little mockery from Axis of Evil Two of the peace-loving republics formerly known as the Axis of Evil threw a frightful scare into anyone paying attention Monday, with North Korea exploding a nuclear bomb as powerful as the one that destroyed Hiroshima and Iran telling Barack Obama to get lost (and take his teleprompter with him). Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he wouldn't accept an invitation to freeze work on his own nuclear weapon and he's not interested in talking to Mr. Obama or anyone else about it. But not to worry. The United Nations Security Council postponed its afternoon tea to hold an "emergency session" to consider options for dealing with developments in Korea. The world is considerably less worried about Iran, since Mr. Ahmadinejad appears to be mostly interested in only killing Jews.
Middle-class Pakistanis awaken to Taliban threat Khalid Mahmood is a graduate of Northwestern University and runs a flourishing marketing consultancy firm in Karachi. He speaks English fluently, leads a charmed life crammed with parties and globe-trotting, and regularly reads U.S. newspapers on the Internet. At heart, however, Mr. Mahmood, 38, is a man of the Swat Valley: His grandfather was the army commander of the last wali, or ruler, of the region now under the control of Islamist Taliban militants. Mr. Mahmood has vowed to restore the Switzerland of Pakistan to its former glory. "Swat is where my heart and soul is," he said. "And I will do everything in my power to bring back the valley."
N. Korea threatens U.S., S. Korean ships North Korea threatened military strikes on U.S. and South Korean ships Wednesday and renounced a 1953 truce halting the Korean War fighting -- an escalation of tensions in the wake of Pyongyang's nuclear test. The threats, which follow Seoul's decision to join more than 90 nations in stopping and inspecting ships suspected of transporting banned weapons, raised the prospect of a naval clash off Korea's west coast. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton responded by saying North Korea faces consequences for its nuclear and missile tests and denouncing its "provocative and belligerent" threats. She also underscored the firmness of the U.S. treaty commitment to defend South Korea and Japan, which are in easy range of North Korean missiles.
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Wed 05.27.2009
Gold May Target $1,250 Peak, Standard Says Gold may target a record $1,250 an ounce as a continuation head-and-shoulders pattern may be forming within a longer-term trend, Standard Bank Group Ltd. said, citing trading patterns. A break and close above $1,050.40 "provides warning that an important breakout" has occurred, Darran Grabham, the bank's technical analyst, wrote in a note yesterday. A head-and- shoulders pattern is formed when a commodity makes three consecutive peaks, with the middle being the highest. It forms during a series of increases over time.
Dubai to get back gold reserves from London banks All the gold of Dubai that is held in the vaults of various banks in London is coming back to the City of Gold. The Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) has opened new vaults to store the gold reserves in Dubai, currently being looked after by central banks in London. DMCC officials disclosed that DMCC vaults will be a home to the gold allocated to the Dubai Gold Securities (DGS) Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). The vault may also become a natural choice for storage of gold reserves by central banks in the Middle East bullion market.
Gold bugs at last have their perfect trinity China has doubled its bullion reserves and left us in no doubt that it will spend more of its $40bn monthly surplus on hard assets rather than the toxic paper of Western democracies. The world's top hedge fund manager John Paulson has built a gold position of at least $5.5bn, the biggest such move since George Soros and Sir James Goldsmith bet on Newmont Mining in 1993. Britain has become the first of the Anglo-Saxon "AAA" club to face a downgrade. As feared, the cancer of bank leverage is spreading to sovereign cores. Gold prices tend to slide in late May and languish through the summer, because of the seasonal ups and downs of jewellery demand. The trader reflex would be to short gold at this stage after its $90 vault to $959 an ounce over the past month. They may think again this year.
Gold - Headed to $200 or $10.000 - part III . . . . When experts claim gold to be trading in record high territories these days they always refer to gold's 1980 peak of $850. Now comparing current gold prices of $950 with the old $850 high of 1980 doesn't make much sense since even a chimpanzee can understand that one single dollar represented more purchasing power in 1980 than it does today. 10 fundamental reasons to own gold
Gold remains ultimate form of payment - No counter party risk
Currency debasement - US Dollar losing status as world reserve currency
Gold crawling back into the monetary system
Negative real rates
Falling gold supply vs increased investment demand
Gold & Historic averages - gold should be trading above $2500 these days
DOW/GOLD ratio points to $5.000+ gold before 2015
Gold & US public debt - gold prices required to counter balance all US public debt held in foreign hands exceed the $10.000 mark
Large short positions - half of all central bank's gold has been leased into the market. (about 15.000 tons). Covering these short positions is not possible without catapulting gold prices to unimaginable highs.
Gold acting as safe haven in times of rising geopolitical tensions
A Case for Hedging with Gold Against Inflation or Deflation An interesting analysis of the prospects for gold from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard this week. Along the way to his conclusion he does a nice job of stating the cases for inflation and deflation. He starts out by noting that the Chinese have substituted gold for some of the paper they could be buying from the West and also touches on John Paulson's big move into gold and his new real estate-oriented fund. Evans-Pritchard sees Paulson's moves as a reflation play. Others have made the same observation and it probably is an accurate depiction.
U.S. Treasury Owned Gold: What Can It Buy? Some Thoughts On The Value Of US Owned Gold The United States Treasury Department recently issued a report on the total amount of US Treasury-Owned Gold. As of April 30, 2009 the US Treasury held a total of 261.5 million fine troy ounces of gold. The Treasury report uses a book value of $42.22 per troy ounce to calculate the total value of gold held at approximately $11 billion. Based on the current market price, total gold holdings of the US Treasury amount to approximately $238.5 billion.
When in Commodities, Do What China Does If China is increasing protein in their diets and buying more soybeans, then maybe you should be long soybeans. If China is stockpiling copper to have an ample supply for building an infrastructure, then maybe you should be long copper. If rumors circulate that China is diversifying their reserves from US dollars by buying precious metals, then maybe precious metals should be in your portfolio. China has become a major energy user so there is a logical potential for energies to bid higher for years to come. The moral of the story here is to view what China does as to what the smart money is doing and maybe investors should follow their lead.
Fed's Next Task: Reeling In Lifelines As Recession Eases, Expanded Lending Could Stoke Inflation As if the worst recession since World War II, the near collapse of the financial system, and the prospect of double-digit unemployment weren't enough to deal with, the Federal Reserve now has something else to worry about: success. Lately, a steady stream of economic data has suggested that while the economy is still shrinking, the pace of the decline is slowing. That, in turn, has stoked fears that the Fed's efforts to steer the economy away from a 1930s-era depression would push the country toward '70s-style inflation.
Secret Bank - Excellent! Federal Reserve Bank is owned by a foreign secret cartel. We pay interest to this private company because of our unconstitutional 'income' tax. This secret collection of families owns the US government. This secret cartel has been historically diabolical and evil in its tactics.
The Illusion of Safety Unfortunately, the fun part of the bubble is over. Today's governments have (or believe that they have) no choice but to ramp up the printing presses to prevent a cascade failure of the global financial system. This will accelerate the decline in fiat currency values beyond the power of official obfuscation. The markets will catch on, and traders will dump the dollar, yen, and euro. Because bonds pay a fixed amount each year, they depend on the value of their underlying currency. Destroy the currency through excessive borrowing and printing, and bonds cease to be safe. Soon, even "risk-free" bonds like U.S. Treasuries will come to be seen as a trap, a sort of financial roach motel in which your savings check in but don't check out.
Get Ready For America's Double-Dip Recession The U.S. economy appears destined for several years of weak growth and high unemployment that leave it vulnerable to a recession relapse after the massive dose of government stimulus wears off. While tepid growth looks likely to resume late this year and build modestly into 2010, the credit bust has left households and businesses unable or unwilling to borrow and spend as freely as they did before the crisis. The U.S. government has stepped in as lender and spender of last resort, but its deep pockets are not bottomless. Waning political and investor appetite for taking on more debt could stand in the way of any additional big spending plans.
Regional Fed banks worried by outlook in April Concern over the economic outlook prompted the directors of all 12 regional Federal Reserve banks to vote to keep the discount rate unchanged at 0.5 percent in April, according to documents released by the Fed on Tuesday. Minutes of discount rate requests reviewed by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors showed that directors supported the continued provision of monetary stimulus to the economy to support growth, and viewed inflation as under control.
2007 all over again? The dollar, central bank reserves and US bonds Lower interest rates in the US than in much of Europe and most emerging economies Slower expected growth in the US than in the emerging world Rising oil prices Falling dollar. That describes the past week. But it also describes most of 2007 and the first part of 2008. In the last WEO (Box 1.4), the IMF argued that the world’s imbalances weren’t at the heart of the recent crisis, as the trigger for the crisis wasn’t a withdrawal of foreign financing to the US. The credit crisis, in other words, wasn’t a dollar crisis. That argument was a bit overstated. The Bretton Woods 2 system was central to the ability of the United States to sustain a large deficit in the household sector – just as the expansion of the US household deficit was central to the ability of many emerging economies to grow their exports. Absent central bank demand for dollars, the natural circuit breakers would have kicked in earlier, before so much risk accumulated in the financial sector.
Peter Schiff: Is the Financial Media Freezing Him Out? The main issue with Schiff seems to be that he hasn’t changed his tune–and it isn’t a pleasant tune to listen to. He thinks the “phony economy” of the U.S. is headed for even harder times. He believes that the crisis-fighting measures coming out of Washington are merely delaying the inevitable, debasing the dollar and loading future taxpayers with huge debts.
Peter Schiff Vlog Report 26 May 2009
China's Yuan: The Next Reserve Currency? Skeptics have dismissed Beijing's talk of de-emphasizing the U.S. dollar, but China is making moves that could soon lead to a convertible yuan Are the Chinese finally getting serious about loosening their ties to the dollar - and even replacing the greenback with the yuan as the global economy's reserve currency? The evidence is mounting that they are. For the last two months, China's leadership has been complaining about the country's dangerous dependence on the dollar. Beijing holds $2 trillion in dollar assets, accumulated through years of exports to America and massive purchases of Treasuries by the Chinese government. If Washington can't rein in its mounting budget deficit, both Treasuries and the greenback could weaken considerably-and the Chinese could be big losers as a result.
China warns Federal Reserve over 'printing money' Better watch out. Interesting article. A good example of how journalism mushes together free-market analysis alongside "mushy" analysis, in our opinion. It is a reason why informed readers have to pick and chose their facts and read between the lines when it comes to financial matters. Let's unpack this. The main issue is an intriguing one: Why does China press the United States so hard about inflating away the debt that country holds? We came across a recent article in the Financial Times arguing that China is caught in a dollar trap - that if China does not continue to buy dollars, then the price of US debt could collapse further, damaging Chinese holdings. We tend to think, to a degree anyway, that it may also be personal. China is run by a single party, and the purchase of American debt was approved one way or another by those individuals, most of whom are elderly, if skilled, infighters. We have a feeling -- if dollar debt degrades, as it is likely to -- that more than a few careers and necks are be on the chopping block. Two trillion dollars (if it is that much and the figures seem to vary widely) is a lot of money to lose. Even one trillion is more than pocket change.
China Is Now in Firm Control of U.S. Debt Markets It is hilarious listening to the propagandists try to "spin" the events in bond and currency markets to make it sound like the U.S. government is still operating from a position of strength. While there are many Western, corporate-media outlets spouting such drivel, I'll use the Financial Times as my example."China stuck in dollar trap", crows FT on May 24th. Then, later "...[Beijing] has little choice but to keep pouring the bulk of its growing reserves into the U.S. Treasury". What somehow escaped this "analysis" by FT is that China won't touch any U.S. dollar asset except Treasury bonds. The monthly flows of capital into (or out of) the U.S., which is known as the Treasury Department's "TIC" report, tell a clear story. So far, in the three months of data which have been reported for this year (Jan., Feb., March), the net result was an outflow of capital from the U.S. totaling $211.4 billion.
China speeds up investment spending to aid economy China's central government has already spent more than 60 percent of its 2009 investment budget, frontloading spending on everything from infrastructure to education in order to boost growth. The central government has so far allocated 555.3 billion yuan ($81.32 billion), or 61.2 percent of the investment budget, the official Xinhua news agency quoted Vice Finance Minister Zhang Shaochun as saying.
A Look At The Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet Always good to keep things in perspective. The most recent Fed Balance Sheet reading of $2.16 trillion is a doozy and is only getting higher, and a couple hundred bucks away from the highest ever recorded of $2.17 trillion a month ago. This is just the beginning: Bernanke at Co. have committed to monetizing $1.75 trillion of securities this year, of which $1.21 trillion remain to be purchased still. This means that the chart will likely pass the $3 trillion mark at some point over the next 3-6 months. As to the yield on these securities once the total is over $3 trillion, if the current trendline of UST pounding is any indication, look for something north of 5%. Just as a reminder, the total foreign central bank holdings of Treasuries and Agencies is $2.7 trillion. Very soon America's largest creditor will be... America.
Ron Paul "U.S. Government Hypocritical On Torture" 5/25/09
Step Back and Take a Big Picture Look at the U.S. Dollar he case for a severe weakening, and perhaps even total collapse, of the US dollar is something I've been making for some time here on SeekingAlpha and on my blog. As the dollar has begun experiencing some deeper bouts of weakness and has given back all of its gains since October 2008, I wanted to step back and take a big picture look at where we are on the path to dollar collapse -- and re-evaluate whether or not we will stay on this path. The first big picture event we should look at is the price of gold. A new bull market in gold began in 2001. This is a long-term trend, I believe the next leg of this trend will start shortly.
Purchase Accounting Rules Set to Deliver $29 Billion Profit Windfall to JP Morgan and Other Banks "It's Not the People Who Vote that Count; It's the People Who Count the Votes." -- Josef Stalin One of the many benefits of being a leading citizen of the Potemkin economy and a silent partner with the Treasury and Federal Reserve. There is an analog to this in the tech sector, in which some companies may choose to write down the value of their components and subassembly inventories in fat quarters, and then take them as an improvement to their Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) in lean quarters, to boost EPS even as the top line revenues are flat to down.
JPMorgan likely to reap $29 Bln windfall on WaMu bad loans purchase JPMorgan Chase & Co. stands to reap a $29 billion windfall due to an accounting rule that lets JPMorgan transform bad loans it purchased from Washington Mutual Inc. into income, the Bloomberg reported Tuesday. Last year, the Seattle-based Washington Mutual, or WaMu, collapsed after it faced $19 billion of losses on soured mortgage loans and its credit rating was slashed, leaving it with insufficient liquidity to meet its obligations.
Consumer confidence soars, but wallets still shut Consumer confidence reaches highest since September, but don't expect big spending surge Even with unemployment still rising and home prices still slumping, Americans are getting their confidence back in the economy. A widely watched barometer of confidence unexpectedly rose to the highest level since September, buoyed by an unexpected surge in the stock market, hopes that the job market might turn around and the belief that the worst of the recession is behind us.
Bond Market to Bernanke: Take Your Foot Off the Accelerator The message to the Fed is clear: It's time to start taking back all the money that has been injected into the banking system over the past 8 months. Deflation risk has all but vanished. The economy is getting back on its feet (see previous post on consumer confidence). Swap spreads are almost back to normal. Liquidity is returning to the bond market. Equity prices are improving. We've most likely seen the worst of the housing market. The yield on 10-year Treasuries is up to 3.46%, and is closing in on the 4% level which I would consider a good sign that the economy has achieved recovery mode.
Hasta La Vista, Arnold!: What California's Budget Mess Means for America
Greenspan and the Housing Bubble: Has He Successfully Absolved the Fed? Judge Richard Posner, whose policy interests extend to economics, jousts with former Federal Reserve chieftain Alan Greenspan about Federal Reserve interest rate policy and its responsibility for the housing bubble and burst. Greenspan is saying that mortgage interest rates were more in thrall to dollars flowing in from China than from the short-term "federal funds" interest rate directly targeted by the Fed in the past decade; Posner thinks not.
Delaying the Inevitable Re-Default Fitch Ratings is joining a growing chorus of voices that say the recent refi deluge will not likely stave off an eventual mortgage re-default for the majority of takers. Auction companies HousingWire is speaking to for its July 2009 feature on the topic are predicting the same outcome. Fitch’s conclusion is outlined in a just-released report citing “information from servicers” as well as data from First American Loan Performance, which finds that re-defaults, 60 days or more, on U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) may hit 75% after 12 months.
Fed Funds Rate May Be Near Zero for Years The U.S. main interest rate may need to stay near zero for several years given the recession's depth and forecasts that unemployment will reach 9 percent or higher, said a researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Members of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee have held the federal funds rate, the overnight lending rate between banks, in a range of zero to 0.25 percent since December to revive lending and end the worst recession in 50 years. They're now expecting a deeper U.S. contraction than first anticipated, with unemployment of at least 9 percent through the end of 2010.
Fed's Credibility Hurt by Rising Yields The Federal Reserve's credibility is at risk because banks aren't properly capitalized and rising Treasury yields may undermine economic recovery, according to Credit Suisse Group AG. The 10-year Treasury yield may trade between 3.5 percent and 4 percent and the difference between nominal securities and inflation-protected government debt can widen further, even as the spread between government debt and mortgage securities continues to narrow, wrote New York-based strategists Dominic Konstam, Carl Lantz and Michael Chang, in a May 22 report.
Credit cards still have plenty of pitfalls Grace periods likely casualty The new credit card law is receiving widespread kudos as a victory for cardholders over the lenders that impose "gotcha" fees and penalties with scant justification and little notice. Indeed, an industry that has been virtually unregulated will now be reined in - to customers' benefit - in many ways. Interest rates no longer will be allowed to be raised retroactively if you pay your bills. Terms will be clearer, over-the-limit fees curtailed and rates fairer.
Gas Prices Hit a Seven-Month High U.S. drivers dug deeper in their pockets over the last week to fill up at the pump, as the price for gasoline jumped 13 cents to hit a seven-month high of $2.44 a gallon, the Energy Department said Tuesday. The national price for regular unleaded gasoline has soared 36 cents since the beginning of May, but the pump price is still down $1.50 from a year ago, the department's Energy Information Administration said in its weekly survey of service stations.
Chavez: Oil Is Going To $80 World oil prices are moving to $75 to $80 per barrel, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Tuesday, citing statements by Saudi Arabia that those prices would represent a fair price for oil. "King Abdullah has said the fair price of oil is between $75 and $80 per barrel -- that's where oil prices should be heading," Chavez told reporters after a meeting with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Chrysler Seeks $224 Million For Electric Cars Chrysler is in deep trouble, what with its bankruptcy, and bondholder battles. That doesn't mean it's taking its eyes off the prize, so long as the prize is grabbing more taxpayer money. This time it's under the auspice of funding electric vehicle research.
Chrysler submits $448 million electric car plan U.S. automaker Chrysler LLC said on Tuesday it submitted proposals totaling $448 million to the U.S. Department of Energy to research and develop electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid models. Chrysler and its "partners," plus the Department of Energy, would pay $224 million each should the proposals be approved and would include an investment of up to $83 million to build a new technology and manufacturing center in Michigan to help develop and assemble these vehicles. That complex should be functional by 2010 and produce more than 20,000 vehicles a year, Chrysler said.
U.S. Expected to Own 70% of Restructured G.M. In better times, many employees of General Motors called their company "Generous Motors" because of its rich benefits. Now G.M. may stand for something else: Government Motors. The latest plan for the troubled automaker, which is expected to file for bankruptcy by Monday, calls for the Treasury Department to receive about 70 percent of a restructured G.M. The government will also provide G.M. $70 billion to $90 billion, including the more than $20 billion that has already been spent, to get through Chapter 11, people with direct knowledge of the situation said Tuesday.
Why a GM Bankruptcy Would Be a Disaster Obama isn't just ruling on the fate of a single company. A GM bankruptcy could devastate the very economy he is attempting to stabilize President Obama is nearing the most important decision a President has made in modern times regarding the American economy. On or about June 1, he will push General Motors (GM), the nation's largest industrial company, into bankruptcy. The key trigger may be on May 26, when GM's offer to bondholders to accept 10¢ on the dollar fails to win acceptance from 90% of them, a criterion that Obama has set for continued loans to GM.
GM bondholders reject offer Source says few GM bondholders were interested in a proposal to swap debt for stock - virtually guaranteeing a bankruptcy filing in the next few days. General Motors has fallen far short of the bondholder support it needed for its proposed debt-for-stock offer, according to a source familiar with the matter, virtually guaranteeing that the nation's largest automaker will be forced to file for bankruptcy court protection within the week. The bondholders own $27 billion in corporate notes. GM needed owners of 90% of those bonds to accept stock in return for the debt in order to reduce its interest expenses to a more manageable level.
Home Prices in 20 U.S. Cities Fall More Than Forecast Home prices in 20 major metropolitan areas fell more than forecast in March as foreclosures surged, threatening to extend the housing slump. The S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index decreased 18.7 percent from March 2008, matching the drop in the year ended in February. The measure declined 19 percent in January, the most since data began in 2001.
Housing Hitting Bottom Means Fewest Starts Since 1945 The slump in the U.S. housing market that caused the median value of homes to decline 24 percent since 2006 may bottom next month without any prospect of a rebound for another year, according to estimates from chief economists at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Mortgage Bankers Association and national realtors and homebuilder groups. Existing home sales probably won't reach pre-boom levels until the third quarter of 2010 and housing starts won't surpass 1 million until 2011, a barrier last broken six decades ago, the economists said.
Socialism? Hardly, Say Socialists Under Obama, socialism chatter has permeated the media in 2009. But beyond sound bites, what is socialism? The first months of the Obama Administration have given rise to abundant talk about a U.S. drift into socialism. "We Are All Socialists Now," a Newsweek cover declared in February. On May 20 the Republican National Committee approved a resolution calling on Democrats to "stop pushing our country toward socialism." The resolution was predicated on the idea that, under Obama, Democrats are following the path of Western European countries in advocating expansive social safety nets and deeper government involvement in the economy.
CFR: Squam Lake Papers A collection of papers on financial reform from 15 financial economists who first met at Squam Lake, NH, in November 2008.
CFR: A Systemic Regulator for Financial Markets Financial regulations in almost all countries are designed to ensure the soundness of individual institutions, principally commercial banks, against the risk of loss on their assets. This focus on individual firms ignores critical interactions between institutions. Attempts by individual banks to remain solvent in a crisis, for example, can undermine the stability of the system as a whole. The focus on individual institutions can also cause regulators to overlook important changes in the overall financial system. The solution to this narrow institutional focus is simple: One regulatory organization in each country should be responsible for overseeing the health and stability of the overall financial system. This Working Paper, the fourth in the Squam Lake Working Group series distributed by the Center for Geoeconomic Studies, argues that the central bank should be charged with this important new responsibility.
White House Merging National, Homeland Security President Barack Obama announced Tuesday he is combining White House staffs dealing with international and homeland security, predicting the change will make Americans safer. Obama also is creating a new office intended to communicate more effectively with other countries about U.S. security policy. The Homeland Security Council, created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, will be kept as a venue for discussing issues relating to domestic security, including terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, natural disasters and pandemic influenza. Its staff will be integrated into the National Security Council.
Sonia Sotomayor on Gun Rights and Racial Preferences Why libertarians - and everyone who believes in limited government - should worry about Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee President Barack Obama's announcement that he wants federal appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter comes as something less than a shock. For months, Sotomayor's name has topped most lists of potential candidates. With her compelling personal story, which stretches from a Bronx, New York housing project to Yale Law School to the federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Sotomayor's likely appointment as the Court's first Hispanic justice nicely complements Obama's own "only in America" narrative. But when it comes to her judicial philosophy, there are some real causes for concern. In particular, on the hot-button issues of affirmative action and Second Amendment rights, her record suggests a decidedly illiberal vision of constitutional law.
Sonia Sotomayor: Courts make policy
Obama Emulating Jimmy Carter in Portraying U.S. As Soft President Obama is on track to accomplish in his first year of office what President Carter took three years to achieve - portray the United States as a "confused and soft power," an Asian security expert charged after North Korea reported a nuclear weapons test Monday. Citing its approach to North Korea, Iran, South Asia, the Middle East, China and Burma, veteran India-based analyst Bahukutumbi Raman said the new administration was giving the impression that it lacks the will to respond decisively if "problem states" act in ways detrimental to U.S. interests and international peace and security.
Tension builds as Pyongyang fires 3 missiles North Korea reportedly tested another missile Wednesday -- following the launch of two short-range missiles Tuesday, a day after detonating a nuclear bomb underground -- pushing the regime further into a confrontation with world powers despite the threat of U.N. action. The latest short-range missile was fired into the East Sea/Japan Sea, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unidentified government official. "Intelligence authorities are now closely monitoring the situation," the source said.
North Korea Test-Fires New Short-Range Missile, Yonhap Says North Korea fired another short-range missile off its eastern coast last night, South Korea's Yonhap News reported, after the communist regime carried out a nuclear test and launched missiles earlier in the week. The latest firing of a land-to-ship missile occurred around 9:10 p.m. local time, the Korean-language report said, citing a South Korean government official it didn't identify. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff are looking into the matter and can't confirm the new launch yet, a military official who requested anonymity said today in Seoul.
North Korea: US warns regime will 'pay a price' for aggression The US has given warning to North Korea that it will 'pay a price' for its aggression after it launched two more missiles a day after an underground nuclear test. Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations, issued the warning amid an increasingly bitter stand off between Washington and Pyongyang and as the UN Security Council discussed what further action could be taken to stem North Korea's belligerence. A surface-to-air missile and a surface-to-ship missile were fired from North Korea's east coast on Tuesday, just hours after President Barack telephoned the leaders of South Korea and Japan to reassure them that he would protect them in the event of any attack.
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Tues 05.26.2009
Obama Vows to 'Stand Up' to North Korean Nuclear-Arms Threat The Obama administration sought to rally China and Russia behind a response to North Korea's nuclear test and missile launches yesterday and may seek options for direct talks with the reclusive regime. The U.S. may also contemplate moves to stiffen international sanctions on North Korea's Stalinist government as well as unilateral pressure on foreign entities aiding the regime.
Gold Battle Lines Drawn at $1,000 Again Here we go again. The forces of legitimate money versus the incumbent purveyors of the candy floss economy squared off at the $1,000 an ounce line over which yet another battle will be fought. Arrayed against either side are formidable new elements and tried and true old ones. As usual, the first volley has been catapulted over the walls of the hucksters by the defenders of the essential timeless truth of gold's naturally stored value against the counterfeit paper currencies. The liabilities of the enemy have increased, and the short positions in the COMEX market are sufficiently stacked that the big bank defenders simply cannot allow gold to win decisively. G7 governments are allied against gold to a man, while emerging economic behemoths China and Russia stand in opposition.
Gold to touch $1,000 per ounce soon: UBS Swiss bank UBS says that it is maintaining its one and three-month Gold Price forecasts as the yellow metal continues to find support among investors. The Swiss bank, which is the world's largest manager of private wealth assets, is keeping its one-month prediction at $950 per ounce and its three-month prediction at $1,000 per ounce.
Will Gold Pass $1,000 An Ounce Next Week? With gold closing at $957 and silver $14.70 an ounce last week there was cause for celebration among precious metal investors. Traders are pointing to overbought signals and cautioning that the market could pull back. But a peak price on Friday of $961 left gold just a tantalizing $39 below the $1,000 barrier. Market gurus like Jim Sinclair have noted that these round numbers are always a big issue in markets, and he says gold will make it past and stay past $1,000 on its third attempt - that is where we sit today.
Gerald Celente on Fox & Friends the 2012 Economic Apocalypse
Gold on verge of historic breakout? Is this it for gold? After a good week, gold watchers of all stripes think it may be. Again. After Friday's $956.50 close, Martin Pring - decidedly not a gold bug - set the tone in his Weekly InfoMovie Report: "Gold could be on the verge of a historical breakout. Watch that $990-1,000 area like a hawk." Pring has always laid very heavy emphasis on the predictive power of gold shares.
The Goldsmiths-Part LXXXII Do the Rothschild Cabal players think that we are all idiots--to include Americans, Europeans, Chinese, Japanese, Russians and others? The Cabal's work for the last couple of years suggests that indeed they do believe that we all are too stupid to oppose their plans to steal the rest of the wealth of the world and establish world government under their control. In their view, they will successfully continue to steal from us and rip us off as they have been doing for the last 250 years. This Goldsmiths article will expand upon on how they are transferring the last vestiges of wealth in the world to their own big banks and holding companies. Once this process reaches a satisfactory level, they will be ready for WWIII to bring about the Cabal's real hope of ruling the world through its own controlled World Government.
These Commodities Will Have a Great Summer A Perfect Storm for Agriculture That commodity is food. This summer has the potential to be a very big one for agriculture commodities. The price of everything - wheat, corn, barley, sunflower, etc. - are on the verge of going much, much higher. . . . . . . . . Another bumper crop this year is highly unlikely. And it has nothing to do with farmers getting financing, fertilizer shortages, or anything which can be compensated for. The problem is completely out of control of the agriculture industry. The Sunspot Cycle
China Just Can't Quit The Dollar From time to time, China likes to talk about a post-dollar world or how they're concerned about the US' ability to pay it back. But they're not doing too much to put their money where their mouth is. As the FT puts it, China is stuck in a dollar trap, at least for now: In March alone, China's direct holdings of US Treasury securities rose $23.7bn to reach a new record of $768bn, according to preliminary US data, allowing China to retain its title as the biggest creditor of the US government.
Beijing is caught in 'trap' over dollar China's official foreign exchange manager is still buying record amounts of US government bonds, despite Beijing's increasingly vocal fear of a dollar collapse, according to officials and analysts. In recent months, senior Chinese officials, including Premier Wen Jiabao, have repeatedly signalled their concern that US policies could lead to a collapse in the dollar and global inflation. But Chinese and western officials in Beijing say China is caught in a "dollar trap" and has little choice but to keep pouring the bulk of its growing reserves into the US Treasury, which remains the only market big enough and liquid enough to support its huge purchases.
Obama's Economics Brains Trust is Still Getting it Wrong on the US Economy What to start with this week? The destructive Waxman-Markey "Cap-and-Trade" bill, the one guaranteed to savage American living standards? Perhaps the Obama-Axelrod proposal to regulate away the boom-bust-cycle away? Why not Obama's decision to run the car industry and dictate to the banks? See my dilemma? There is so much that is ridiculous about Obamanomics that it really is difficult to know where to start. So I thought I would begin with Alfred Marshall, one of the Greats of British economics. He warned that
Fed Inflates 'Bailout Bubble As the Federal Reserve throws more and more money at the economic crisis and holds interest rates down at historic lows, it could be inflating a devastating ‘bailout bubble,’ Gerald Celente, director of Trends Research Institute, told CNBC. “We’re looking at a bailout bubble that’s way bigger than the dotcom bubble before it and the real-estate bubble that we’re now getting out of, or attempting to,” Celente said. “This is unprecedented; the economic system is being restructured,” he said. The real-estate bubble was born out of the aftermath of the dotcom bubble because the Fed slashed interest rates and made more funds available, according to Celente.
Gerald Celente The bailout bubble is the mother of all Bubbles
China warns Federal Reserve over 'printing money' China has warned a top member of the US Federal Reserve that it is increasingly disturbed by the Fed's direct purchase of US Treasury bonds. Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, said: "Senior officials of the Chinese government grilled me about whether or not we are going to monetise the actions of our legislature." "I must have been asked about that a hundred times in China. I was asked at every single meeting about our purchases of Treasuries. That seemed to be the principal preoccupation of those that were invested with their surpluses mostly in the United States," he told the Wall Street Journal.
FDIC shifts failure cost burden to big banks Agency to collect added fee based on an institution's assets to help replenish insurance fund. Big U.S. banks will have to shoulder a larger portion of a one-time industry fee to replenish the fund used to resolve bank failures, according to a rule approved Friday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The FDIC will charge U.S. insured depository banks a 5 basis point assessment based on each institution's assets, minus its Tier 1 capital. It would be collected in the third quarter.
US issues guidance on gold & diamond US trade association Jewelers of America (JA) has revised its member guidance documents on conflict diamonds and responsible gold. The materials provide the latest information on each issue, encourage store owners to keep up-to-date on how each can impact their business and offer talking points. The conflict diamonds member guidance includes a "Conflict Diamonds Self-Assessment Checklist" to help retailers quickly assess their adherence to the chain of warranties; the association's sample letter to suppliers to help members communicate to suppliers about their obligations to the Kimberley Process; and a sample conflict diamonds policy statement, which they can cut and paste onto their own letterheads and give to consumers, display in-store or post to their websites.
Zombie banks still walk among us Small banks facing severe loan losses and in need of capital continue to operate, indicating a reluctance on behalf of regulators to shut them down. Maybe the so-called "zombie" banks didn't die after all. As recently as two months ago, many on Wall Street speculated that the nation's largest financial institutions -- banks like Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and Bank of America -- were only operating as a result of extensive aid from the U.S. government. Now, many experts wonder how so many small regional and community lenders that are capital starved and overwhelmed by escalating loan losses are able to stay in business.
DOLLAR IN DISTRE$$ The greenback tumbled to its lowest level of the year on global fears that Uncle Sam is borrowing too much with credit that's already stretched too thin. Investors around the world dumped their hoards of dollars in favor of other currencies and under-priced stocks and corporate bonds, as they moved away from the belief that the dollar remained a haven for investors.
Peter Schiff on stocks, bonds, and the dollar Major change in markets -- bonds and dollar both fall with stocks --flight to quality now means flight from dollar and treasuries. This may well be the start of the next leg of the economic collapse --stay tuned. Also more nonsense from government on GMAC and mandatory paid vacations.
Wishes, Hopes, Fantasies Something like a week remains before General Motors is reduced to lunch meat on industrial-capital's All-You-Can-Eat buffet spread. The wish is that its deconstructed pieces will re-organize into a "lean, mean machine" for producing "cars that Americans want to buy," and that, by extension, the American Dream of a Happy Motoring economy may be extended a while longer.
Romer, Bernanke, and the Flying Donkeys In 1992, Christina Romer published an article titled "What Ended the Great Depression?" in The Journal of Economic History. In her introduction, Roper explains how America recovered from the Great Depression: This paper examines the role of aggregate-demand stimulus in ending the Great Depression. Plausible estimates of the effects of fiscal and monetary changes indicate that nearly all the observed recovery of the U.S. economy prior to 1942 was due to monetary expansion [emphasis mine]. A huge gold inflow in the mid- and late 1930s swelled the money stock and stimulated the economy by lowering real interest rates and encouraging investment spending and purchases of durable goods. That monetary developments were crucial to the recovery implies that self-correction played little role in the growth of real output between 1933 and 1942. Mrs. Romer is now the chair of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors and was the co-author the administration's economic recovery plan.
America's governance reform must not be ducked The winds of change that brought President Barack Obama into office will soon blow through US boardrooms. Unfortunately, executives are not welcoming this as a breath of fresh air but see it rather as a dangerous intrusion into their affairs. Storm clouds are gathering at the US Business Roundtable, while the US Chamber of Commerce and Republican commissioners on the Securities and Exchange Commission are straining to hold back corporate governance reforms that will tip the balance of power away from managers to owners - the shareholders. The financial crisis exposed many boards as weak and incompetent. If boards failed to exercise effective oversight, why did shareholders not simply replace them? The answer is that US law and practice make it an uphill struggle for shareholders who want to hold boards to account.
It's Decision Time in the USA Last week Standard and Poor's announced that the AAA credit outlook of the United Kingdom was lowered to "negative" from "stable." The action caused many in the US, including Bill Gross, to impugn the United States' AAA credit rating and wonder if the same devaluation should be applicable here. If the reasoning behind S&P's decision to call into question Britain's ability to repay debt is due to their budget deficit this year being 175 billion pounds ($273 billion), or 12.4% of gross domestic product for this year alone, then America's budget deficit ($1.84 trillion and approaching 13% of GDP) should yield the same result. Investors agreed with that reasoning and sent the yield on the 10 year note soaring to 3.43% during Friday's trading session, up over 90 bps from the Fed's March 18th announcement to purchase $300 billion in treasuries.
US bonds sale faces market resistance The US Treasury is facing an ordeal by fire this week as it tries to sell $100bn (£62bn) of bonds to a deeply skeptical market amid growing fears of a sovereign bond crisis in the Anglo-Saxon world. The interest yield on 10-year US Treasuries - the benchmark price of long-term credit for the global system - jumped 33 basis points last week to 3.45pc week on contagion effects after Standard & Poor's issued a warning on Britain's "AAA" credit rating. The yield has risen over 90 basis points since March when the US Federal Reserve first announced its controversial plan to buy Treasury bonds directly, a move designed to force down the borrowing costs and help stabilise the housing market.
Thoughts on Austrian Economics The Austrians, following von Mises, have been too much the gentlemen not realizing that they have been dealing with goons and thugs like John Kenneth Galbraith and John Maynard Keynes. These people were leading the world back toward the system of the Middle Ages. And their first goal was to legalize stealing, meaning to legalize the counterfeiting of money by the commercial bankers. Today this is the policy of both Democrats and Republicans (called "stimulation of the economy"). Once the bankers have become dependent on the wealth they steal from us, they will have to start chipping away at our legal/political freedoms. If you study the way in which the will of the people was overridden by the bank bailout bill of October 2008, you realize that there is an irreconcilable conflict between the people who create the wealth and the counterfeiters who steal it.
Peter Schiff The Schiff Report Video Blog May 22 2009
Obama's ambitious agenda President's own party could cause his undoing Not long after President Obama was sworn into office, he faced a monstrous $1.8 trillion budget deficit that analysts said would force him to sharply curtail his big-spending agenda. But Mr. Obama saw the economic recession he inherited as another Great Depression (which it's not) that demands enactment of a long list of new social programs, the costs of which will drive total federal spending to more than $3.7 trillion in 2010 and add more than $9 trillion to total government debts over the coming decade.
Obama to Government Motors: "Let's Roll" The last remnants of the American free-market system are experiencing a quick death by strangulation. Perhaps the most disturbing casualties of government intervention are General Motors and Chrysler, two disgraced automakers that have gone from private ownership to the public trough virtually overnight. The US government has effectively grabbed a financial stake in each company while attempting to control the reorganization process without any constitutional authority to commence such actions.
G.M. Bankruptcy Would Be History's Most Complex The decline of General Motors may be putting thousands of auto workers and managers out of work, but it will be putting a lot of lawyers to work. How many lawyers will end up working on G.M.'s expected bankruptcy case still is not clear, but in legal circles, the joke is that there may not be enough experienced bankruptcy lawyers available to handle the filing. In part, that is because so many top lawyers are already running up lots of billable hours working on the Chrysler bankruptcy case, while others have been hired by the government, which is financing the way through bankruptcy for Chrysler and, presumably, G.M.
EPA: Cap-and-Trade Bill Could Hurt U.S. Manufacturing, Send Factory Jobs Overseas According to an analysis of climate legislation performed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the cap-and-trade system favored by President Barack Obama and many congressional Democrats could potentially damage the U.S. manufacturing sector and force jobs to move overseas. The policy, under certain scenarios, for example, "can cause domestic production … to shift abroad," reads the EPA analysis, and result in greater greenhouse gas emissions in countries that do not have similar cap-and-trade rules.
Amid Housing Bust, Phoenix Begins a New Frenzy PHOENIX - Every weekday morning, Lou Jarvis drives the sun-baked suburban streets looking for investment gold: a family that will lose its house in a foreclosure auction within a few hours. If the property looks promising, Mr. Jarvis puts in a bid on behalf of any of his dozens of clients eager to become landlords. When he wins, he offers to let the family stay in the house and rent for much less than their mortgage payment. With this sweltering desert city enduring one of the largest tumbles in housing prices for any urban area since the Depression, there is an unrelenting stream of foreclosures to choose from. On some days, hundreds are offered for sale at the auctions that take place on the plaza in front of the county courthouse.
Phoenix Fixing Its Own Housing Market As Foreclosure Sales Go Crazy In Phoenix, the real-estate market is fixing itself with no help from the government. How? Houses owned by folks who can't afford to own them are being sold at auction. In some cases, happily, the buyers are then turning around and renting the houses to their previous owners with at rents that are much lower than the previous mortgage payments. This is the free-market at work. And it's better than any solution that has so far been floated by the government.
Why Are Long-Term Rates Going Up? Because Lenders Think We're Screwed? The whole world is deflating, but long-term interest rates are moving up. (See the chart for the 10-yr Treasury at right). Why? Tim Geithner thinks it's because traders are recognizing that the economy's beginning to recover. That's one happy theory. And it's possible (fingers crossed). But here are two less-happy theories:
First, long-term rates are going up because traders are getting nervous about future inflation
Second, long-term rates are going up because traders are realizing that the world's big economies will need to issue trillions of dollars of new debt to pay for all their deficit spending...and there's just not enough dumb money in the world.
Democrats Are Fast-Tracking Nearly 1,000-Page 'Cap-and-Trade' Bill That Would Increase Electricity Bills Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee put their cap and trade global warming bill--that would increase U.S. energy prices, including electricity bills--on the fast track Monday. Republicans, meanwhile, are complaining that the expedited process is designed to avoid well-informed public debate about what the bill will do and its consequences for American consumers.
Saudia Arabia: $200 Oil In 2 Years Saudi Arabia warned oil prices could spike to beyond the near $150 record high of 2008 within two to three years, as energy leaders on Monday decried a blow to investment in expanding capacity due to the financial crisis. Energy ministers and officials at the Group of Eight energy summit in Rome are meeting as oil prices hover at a six-month high of over $60 a barrel, but below the $75 a barrel level producers say is needed to spur investment in new production.
Recession hurts pension, benefit plans worldwide The global economy's troubles are unraveling public and private social-security networks worldwide, and programs in wealthy nations are the most threatened, international experts say. Potentially crippling financial losses will require mending the social-security nets that cover millions of people with a combination of pensions, disability, family benefits, injury and compensation, unemployment and sickness insurance.
Spam sales soar as buyers seek value Spam luncheon meat and canned chilli have joined Kraft macaroni and cheese, Jell-O desserts and Kool-Aid powdered drinks as the recessionary foods of choice as the global downturn grips US households. Hormel, the meat products company that launched Spam in 1937, said on Thursday it had seen double-digit increases in sales of the canned meat during the quarter ending on April 26, continuing a trend that started late last year.
Unemployment 20% higher in Democrat strongholds Latest jobless figures in states Obama won bode ill for administration Unemployment in April remained 20 percent higher in states won by Democratic candidate Barack Obama in last fall's presidential election than in states won by Republican candidate John McCain, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics released yesterday. Nationwide, the unemployment rate went from 8.5 percent in March to 8.9 percent in April.
Job Losses Push Safer Mortgages to Foreclosure As job losses rise, growing numbers of American homeowners with once solid credit are falling behind on their mortgages, amplifying a wave of foreclosures. In the latest phase of the nation's real estate disaster, the locus of trouble has shifted from subprime loans - those extended to home buyers with troubled credit - to the far more numerous prime loans issued to those with decent financial histories. With many economists anticipating that the unemployment rate will rise into the double digits from its current 8.9 percent, foreclosures are expected to accelerate. That could exacerbate bank losses, adding pressure to the financial system and the broader economy.
Early retirement claims increase dramatically Instead of seeing older workers staying on the job longer as the economy has worsened, the Social Security system is reporting a major surge in early retirement claims that could have implications for the financial security of millions of baby boomers. Since the current federal fiscal year began Oct. 1, claims have been running 25% ahead of last year, compared with the 15% increase that had been projected as the post-World War II generation reaches eligibility for early retirement, according to Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security Administration.
Realtors are abandoning a listing ship The housing crunch and Internet are shrinking the ranks of agents. Marco Huerta and Youngmin Bae bought their Burbank home without ever meeting their real estate agent. Instead, they scoured listings for their favorite neighborhoods, haggled over prices and even wrote their offer using Marco's cellphone. There was no housewarming plant on the porch when they moved in, but the couple aren't complaining: They received a $10,000 check as a "rebate" from their agent's 3% commission.
Californians revolt, slash governor's pay Schwarzenegger to cut 5,000 state jobs, deport illegals from prisons California voters have rejected five budget measures in a special election, forcing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to face a $21 billion deficit, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports. Just to drive the point home, the day after state voters rejected Schwarzenegger's spending ballot measures, the California Citizens Compensation Commission voted to slash pay for the governor, legislators and statewide officeholders by 18 percent.
State of Paralysis California, it has long been claimed, is where the future happens first. But is that still true? If it is, God help America. The recession has hit the Golden State hard. The housing bubble was bigger there than almost anywhere else, and the bust has been bigger too. California's unemployment rate, at 11 percent, is the fifth-highest in the nation. And the state's revenues have suffered accordingly. What's really alarming about California, however, is the political system's inability to rise to the occasion.
Secret billionaire club seeks population control Gates, Rockefeller, Turner, Oprah, Buffett, Soros, Bloomberg attend meeting Some of the richest men and women in the world met secretly recently in New York to conspire on using their vast wealth to bring the world's population growth under control. The meeting included some of the biggest names in the "billionaires club," according to the London Times - Bill Gates, David Rockefeller, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffett, George Soros and Michael Bloomberg. The meeting at the home of Sir Paul Nurse, a British Nobel Prize-winning biochemist and president of Rockefeller University, was the inspiration of Gates and took place three weeks ago.
Crisis spurs spike in 'suburban survivalists' Six months ago, Jim Wiseman didn't even have a spare nutrition bar in his kitchen cabinet. Now, the 54-year-old businessman and father of five has a backup generator, a water filter, a grain mill and a 4-foot-tall pile of emergency food tucked in his home in the expensive San Diego suburb of La Jolla. Wiseman isn't alone. Emergency supply retailers and military surplus stores nationwide have seen business boom in the past few months as an increasing number of Americans spooked by the economy rush to stock up on gear that was once the domain of hardcore survivalists.
Home: No place for Bible study County demands pastor spend thousands on 'Major Use' permit to host friends A San Diego pastor and his wife claim they were interrogated by a county official and warned they will face escalating fines if they continue to hold Bible studies in their home. The couple, whose names are being withheld until a demand letter can be filed on their behalf, told their attorney a county government employee knocked on their door on Good Friday, asking a litany of questions about their Tuesday night Bible studies, which are attended by approximately 15 people. "Do you have a regular weekly meeting in your home? Do you sing? Do you say 'amen'?" the official reportedly asked. "Do you say, 'Praise the Lord'?" The pastor's wife answered yes. She says she was then told, however, that she must stop holding "religious assemblies" until she and her husband obtain a Major Use Permit from the county, a permit that often involves traffic and environmental studies, compliance with parking and sidewalk regulations and costs that top tens of thousands of dollars.
Climate change summit hijacked by biggest polluters, critics claim A vital meeting in Copenhagen this weekend that will help shape the agenda for the most important climate change talks since the Kyoto protocol has been hijacked by some of the biggest polluters in the world, critics claimed today. Among those attending the World ?Business Summit on Climate Change is Shell, which has just been named by environmentalists on the basis of new research as "the most carbon-intensive oil company in the world". There is concern that the big energy companies will be pushing carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a way of keeping the oil-based economy running. At the meeting yesterday, the United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, and Nobel prize winner Al Gore urged more than 500 business leaders - including the chief executives of PepsiCo, Nestlé and BP - to lend their corporate muscle to reaching a global deal on reducing greenhouse gases.
Obama climate change bill defies Republicans to pass key committee Bill weakened on its way to full House of Representatives, but still regarded as tough on fossil fuel emissions New laws to impose the first limits on US greenhouse gas emissions took a significant step forwards late on Thursday, clearing a key House of Representatives committee in the face of strong Republican opposition. The Energy and Commerce Committee approved the sweeping climate change bill 33-25 after repeatedly turning back Republican attempts to kill or weaken the measures during four days of debate. After the vote on the legislation, President Barack Obama said: "We are now one step closer to delivering on the promise of a new clean energy economy that will make America less dependent on foreign oil, crack down on polluters, and create millions of new jobs all across America."
China and US held secret talks on climate change deal A high-powered group of senior Republicans and Democrats led two missions to China in the final months of the Bush administration for secret backchannel negotiations aimed at securing a deal on joint US-Chinese action on climate change, the Guardian has learned. The initiative, involving John Holdren, now the White House science adviser, and others who went on to positions in Barack Obama's administration, produced a draft agreement in March, barely two months after the Democrat assumed the presidency. The memorandum of understanding was not signed, but those involved in opening up the channel of communications believe it could provide the foundation for a US-Chinese accord to battle climate change, which could be reached as early as this autumn.
US troop surge in Afghanistan 'could push Taliban into Pakistan' Joint chiefs of staff chairman concedes risk but tells US Senate that troop increase is the right move The buildup of US troops in Afghanistan could force more Taliban fighters into neighbouring Pakistan, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff conceded last night. Admiral Mike Mullen told the US Senate's foreign relations committee: "We can't deny that our success may only push them [the Taliban] deeper into Pakistan." Mullen said military planning was under way to overcome that risk. He said the increase of 21,000 US forces in Afghanistan was "about right" for the new strategy of trying to quell the insurgency and speed up training of Afghan security forces. "Can I [be] 100% certain that won't destabilise Pakistan? I don't know the answer to that," Mullen told the committee.
Britain looks to the land of the rising sun with envy Loss of "AAA" status is not in itself a death sentence. A string of rich countries have been ejected from the club over the past decade without calamitous results, and most have clawed their way back in after a few years of penance. It is less clear whether Britain can hope to muddle through so easily if Standard & Poor's pulls the trigger, given its reliance on foreigners to fund its debt and deficits. Norway lost its AAA in 1987, Finland in 1990, Sweden in 1991, Canada in 1994 and this year Spain and Ireland, both acutely vulnerable since, as eurozone states, they cannot devalue their way out of trouble or print money. The risk does not go away in a currency union: it shifts from debasement to default.
OIC Role Reportedly Proposed as Battle for Jerusalem Heats Up As Israelis marked “Jerusalem Day” Thursday, local media reported that the Palestinian Authority was considering favorably a proposal for control of the Temple Mount – the most bitterly contested piece of land in the Mideast conflict – to be handed to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) as part of a future peace deal. The Ha’aretz daily cited Palestinian sources as saying the P.A. would accept a proposal that would divide sovereignty of Jerusalem’s Old City between Israel and the government of a future Palestinian state, with the OIC managing the Temple Mount.
Ahmadinejad Calls Predecessor’s Agreement to Freeze Nuclear Activity Disgraceful Iran's hard-line president criticized as "disgraceful" a 2003 deal his predecessor reached with Europe to freeze the country's nuclear program, saying his own decision to stand up to the West restored Iran's dignity. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been touting Iran's nuclear achievements ahead of the June presidential election, hoping to offset criticism from his opponents that he has spent too much time slamming the West and not enough focused on the country's faltering economy.
Legal jihad in Europe Extremists gain ground daily No doubt about it - in Europe, Islamic lawfare gains ground day after day. The following sentence patently explains the reason why it is proper to call this lawfare "Islamic" and why we have to be very careful with it. "The term we translate [as] 'oppressed people' refers to those who could not listen to a correct exposition of the Islamic doctrine and, since they are ignorant, they easily came to believe to the oppressors' lies against Islam. Oppressors are orientalists, authorities of religions other than Islam, journalists and all those people who contribute to the campaign of misinformation about Islam and Muslims. All those people will receive bitter punishment."
Obama admin sees Jerusalem divided 'He told us city will never be united under Israeli sovereignty' The Obama administration told the Palestinian Authority that Jerusalem will never be united under Israeli sovereignty, a top Palestinian Authority official told WND today. "Americans said an open Jerusalem - yes. But a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty - no," Hatem Abdel Khader, the PA's minister for Jerusalem affairs, said in comments to both WND and Israel's Ynetnews website. "(The Obama administration) has made clear that Jerusalem must be accessible to everyone - but not united under Israel's rule," Khader said. Khader claimed the U.S. is cooperating with the PA to "thwart Israel's plans in Jerusalem."
International community condemns North Korea nuclear test As the international community condemned North Korea's nuclear test and missile launch today, analysts said the tests signaled Pyongyang's growing disillusionment over the U.S. refusal to conduct bilateral talks. North Korea's ailing leader Kim Jong Il, determined to seek more drastic measures to bring the Obama Administration to the bargaining table, could even carry out more nuclear tests as a way to bully the U.S. and its allies, experts said today.
Obama issues statement of "grave concern" over North Korea The White House issued a statement today on behalf of President Obama regarding the urgent situation in North Korea. The president calls the situation on the Korean Peninsula a matter of "grave concern." The statement calls North Korea's announced nuclear test and suspected missile test "blatant defiance" of the U.N. Security Council that "directly and recklessly" challenges the international community, increasing regional tensions and deepening North Korea's isolation.
Obama: NKorea 'recklessly challenging' the world President Barack Obama assailed North Korea Monday for new missile tests, saying the world must "stand up to" Pyongyang and demand that it honor a promise to abandon it nuclear ambitions. Appearing on the White House steps, Obama said that its latest nuclear underground test and subsequent test firings of short-range ground to air missiles "pose a grave threat to the peace and security of the world and I strongly condemn their reckless action."
North Korea tests nuclear weapon 'as powerful as Hiroshima bomb' Country risks further international isolation as underground nuclear explosion triggers earthquake North Korea today risked further international isolation after it claimed to have successfully tested a nuclear weapon as powerful as the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The test comes less than two months after the North enraged the US and its allies by test firing a long-range ballistic missile. The KNCA news agency, the regime's official mouthpiece, said: "We have successfully conducted another nuclear test on 25 May as part of the republic's measures to strengthen its nuclear deterrent."
Timing of Test Hints at Succession Issues SEOUL, South Korea - When North Korea suddenly announced Monday that it had conducted a second nuclear test, the initial view across the region was that this was yet another defiant gambit by Pyongyang to extract more concessions from Washington. That has been the oft-repeated pattern in the past, and is likely one motivation now as well, say North Korea watchers. But this time around, North Korea's primary audience may not be the United States but its own population, many experts believe.
Iran's Ahmadinejad rules out nuclear talks Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday that the Islamic republic will not hold nuclear talks with the group of world powers known as 5-plus-1. "The nuclear issue is over for us. The talks outside the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) will only be about participation in the management of the world and bringing peace to the world," he told journalists from international news organisations.
Iran sends six warships to international waters Iran has sent six warships to international waters, including the Gulf of Aden, to show its ability to confront any foreign threats, its naval commander said on Monday. Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, quoted by the ISNA news agency, made the announcement five days after Iran said it test-fired a surface-to-surface missile with a range of 2,000 km (1,200 miles). Iran said on May 14 it had sent two warships to the Gulf of Aden to protect oil tankers from the world's fifth-largest crude exporter against attacks by pirates but ISNA did not make clear whether they were among the six Sayyari talked about. Iranian waters stretch along the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Sea of Oman. Iran has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 40 percent of the world's traded oil is shipped, if it were attacked over its nuclear programme.
Max Keiser on the new on The Edge 1/2
Max Keiser Interviews Marc Faber 2/2 U.S. is on its way to a banana republic; in long run it will be an inflationary environment
We'll be back next Tuesday with News and a the Patriot Radio News Hour with Eric and Joe. Enjoy your holiday.
NATIONAL MEMORIAL DAY CONCERT 2009 | PBS
Rolling Thunder not expecting Obama greeting The last time Rolling Thunder roared into Washington, the president welcomed them in the White House driveway with a smile on his face and heartfelt personal greeting. This year, maybe not. "We initially got a call this year saying the president wasn't going to greet us," said Artie Muller, founder of the group that is marking its 22nd annual patriotic motorcycle ride through Washington to draw attention to policy issues influencing veterans, active-duty military, prisoners of war and those still missing in action.
Rolling Thunder 2008 Ride to the Wall Ride to the Wall 2008, Rolling Thunder 2008. Ride from Daytona to Washington DC and then Pentegon to Washington Monument and the Vietnam Wall.
'Dollar has died. Gold is the new currency king' I bring to you the following with the specific permission of Alf Fields. I have suggested to you often in the past that once the price of gold reaches into its maximum potential it will not repeat the fall of the 1980s. I foresee gold re-entering the system in a new and unique form that does not include convertibility. It will not be tied to interest rates as it once was in its previous form. I have written to you various times about the Federal Reserve Gold Certificate ratio, modernized and revitalized, which now may well be associated with an SDR form of an International Central Bank. The tie between the ratio and gold would be a measure of international liquidity considered zero or 100 on the day of adoption. The following is Alf’s statement yesterday, with his permission to post: “Gold cannot decline from its highs as it will be incorporated into the national and international monetary systems at that time.”–Alf Fields, May 20, 2009
Bilderberg Group Orders “Total” Destruction Of US Dollar A new Kremlin report on the shadowy Bilderberg Group, who this past week held their annual meeting in Greece, states that the West’s financial, political and corporate elite emerged from their conclave after coming to an agreement that in order to continue their drive towards a New World Order dominated by the Western Powers, the US Dollar has to be “totally” destroyed. Even worse, a new US report on these secret Bilderberg meetings states: “Investigative journalist Daniel Estulin, whose information from inside Bilderberg has routinely proven accurate, states that the global elite’s plan to completely destroy the economy and ultimately lower global population by two thirds has stoked fears even within Bilderberg itself that the fallout from such chaos could ultimately result in the globalists losing their control over the world.”
The Weimar Hyperinflation: Time to get out the wheelbarrows? "It was horrible. Horrible! Like lightning it struck. No one was prepared. The shelves in the grocery stores were empty.You could buy nothing with your paper money."– Harvard University law professor Friedrich Kessler on on the Weimar Republic hyperinflation (1993 interview) Some worried commentators are predicting a massive hyperinflation of the sort suffered by Weimar Germany in 1923, when a wheelbarrow full of paper money could barely buy a loaf of bread. An April 29 editorial in the San Francisco Examiner warned: "With an unprecedented deficit that's approaching $2 trillion, [the President's 2010] budget proposal is a surefire prescription for hyperinflation. So every senator and representative who votes for this monster $3.6 trillion budget will be endorsing a spending spree that could very well turn America into the next Weimar Republic."
Gold continues its rise on weak dollar and short covering The gold price is continuing its recent rise as the US dollar continues to dip, while traders scuttle to cover short positions. Gold rose for the third straight day to hit a new eight-week high above $942 per ounce on Thursday, buoyed by firmness in oil prices and the dollar's recent slide to its lowest level in nearly five months. But gains were mainly driven by funds buying U.S. gold futures, resulting in arbitrage cash gold purchases, while a rise in Asian currencies against the dollar capped the price of gold denominated in regional currencies, traders said. "It's up mainly because of short-covering in the market,"said Ronald Leung, director of Lee Cheong Gold Dealers in Hong Kong. "The dollar is weakening again and the oil price is up,which favours gold for a little while."
America lost 94% physical silver in 50 years Everyone has been bullish on gold. Experts are these days saying that the US dollar has died and gold is the new global currency king. But following silver in this global bullish rally is its white brother silver. . . . . . . Silver has been on a tear lately, rising 30% since the start of the year. And according to a World Silver Institute survey, there's still room for the price to move upward. The survey says, "Given strengthening concerns of mounting inflation it is likely that investment demand and therefore silver prices will be robust." As industrial demand for the metal picks up - which is 50% of its total demand - prices could shoot skyward of $20 an ounce.
Could President Obama ban U.S citizens from holding gold? Back in 1933, at a time of economic crisis, President Roosevelt forced U.S. Citizens to sell their gold at $20 an ounce - and then subsequently revalued the metal to $35. Could President Obama, a Roosevelt disciple, have similar plans in mind. Whether one believes in the GATA premise that the gold price is being held down by a gigantic conspiracy between the World's Central Banks, Governments and some major banking institutions or not, there is little doubt that governmental-initiated currency manipulation does occur, and if one looks at gold as money then it is logical that some degree of manipulation here also takes place at Central Bank level. Whether one can call this a global conspiracy, or part of the general process of stabilising currencies and exchange rates, depends perhaps on which side of the fence you are sitting. In a way this is similar to the terrorist/freedom fighter debate! But, history does tell us that the US government, in the days of a fixed gold price, did intervene in a very direct manner with President F.D. Roosevelt banning the "hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates" and thus forcing US citizens to sell to Federal Reserve at $20 an ounce. Subsequently the Fed raised the price of gold to $35 an ounce.
Death Watch . . . . The world economy is now on the verge of a total systemic breakdown. The mechanism underlying the present credit-based system is now broken; for its two critical underpinnings, banks and government are not just broken - far more importantly, both are now literally flat broke. I'm broke, no bread, I mean like nothing, from Busted, lyrics by Ray Charles Prior to the Great Depression, the collapse of the 1920s bubble unleashed a cascade of defaulting debt that buried lenders and borrowers alike. Then, governments were not bankrupt; today, governments are as broke as those they are attempting to save. The siren's call of credit lured both the innocent and greedy alike to wager what instead should have put aside for a rainy day.
The REAL Maverick: Present Economy worse than Depression 0/21/08: PBS NEWS HOUR Interview with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, famous economist and author of "The Black Swan" and Dr. Mandelbrot, professor of Mathematics. Both say that the present economy more serious than the Great Depression, and the economy during the American Revolution.
Dollar Falls to 4-Month Low Versus Euro on U.S. Credit Outlook The dollar fell to a four-month low against the euro and dropped versus the yen on speculation the U.S. government's creditworthiness is weakening, sapping demand for the U.S. currency. The yen climbed to a nine-week high versus the dollar after Japan's Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano said the government isn't planning to intervene in the currency market. The dollar headed for its biggest weekly loss in two months versus the euro after Standard & Poor's lowered its outlook on the U.K.'s AAA credit rating to "negative" from "stable," raising concern that the same may happen to the U.S. The New Zealand dollar advanced to a seven-month high.
Day of reckoning looms for the U.S. dollar The greenback may be headed for a tumble as intense selling is underway The U.S. dollar's day of reckoning may be inching closer as its status as a safe-haven currency fades with every uptick in stocks and commodities and its potential risks - debt and inflation - are brought under a harsher spotlight. Ashraf Laidi, chief market strategist at CMC Markets, said Wednesday a "serious case of dollar damage" was underway. "We long warned about the day of reckoning for the dollar emerging at the next economic recovery," Mr. Laidi said in a note.
China is preparing for a world where the yuan trumps the dollar Do you know what a yuan looks like? If not, you had better find out. The reason is sometime in the next few years there's a decent chance you might need or want to have some. The yuan - or renminbi - is the currency of China. As China rises to become one of the giants of the world economy - likely to overtake Japan to become number two in the next couple of years - it is inevitable that its currency, not the euro, is going to challenge the dollar. It looks to me as though China is preparing the ground for the yuan to be used more freely by both the Chinese and the rest of us.
IMPORTANT reading! Loud Paradigm Shift Rumblings Numerous events have taken place of global importance. Alone, each story seems of some significance. Together, they paint a mosaic of extreme change in a very dangerous sequence of events that fit together. The greater aggregate story is that a tremendous paradigm shift is underway, with early steps and major moves by global players in clear view. The Western analysts and pundits and mavens are missing it. A PARADIGM SHIFT HAS BEGUN, WITH BANKING POWER SHIFTING TO THE CREDITOR NATIONS AS THE USDOLLAR IS SUPPLANTED, MADE POSSIBLE BY SEVERAL NEW INSTITUTIONAL PILLARS AS WELL AS NEWLY FORGED ALLIANCES. . . . . . . . The Chinese are clearly the spearhead to dethrone the USDollar as global reserve currency. . . . . . . . . Beijing is gradually subjugating the USGovt as a vassal in debt, the risk to the US being a transition toward servitude to their credit master. We are in the midst of an historical global paradigm shift, to date a quiet process. Power is shifting from WashingtonDC and New York City and London directly to Beijing.
PARADIGM SHIFT? A simple grid shows how the USD and the Stock Market have moved together in different ways during different economic times. Today we saw the USD down in a huge way with the Stock Market Weak.. Are we seeing the pendulum shift once again as the stress of derivatives and Insolvent municipalities hatch out. Are we a bailout nation? And Will the world bail us out?
The Goldsmiths -Part LXXXI The Rothschild Cabal has had to alter some of its plans on stealing the up to $100 trillion needed to cover its toxic assets, as discussed in the Goldsmiths, Part LXXX. It is this reality which seems to account for the efforts to show some improvements in the US economy, starting in April 2009. Cabal team members and their prostitute politicians have been making speeches right and left about economic improvements and the allegation that the current recession will be over this year. The Cabal controlled government agents have been pumping out improving statistics for weeks now. Cabal banks and controlled businesses are reporting better earnings and balance sheets.
US economy to contract 2pc this year, says Fed The US will sink deeper into recession this year, as unemployment hits almost 10pc and the economy contracts deeper than first expected. New Federal Reserve forecasts predict that the world's biggest economy will contract by as much as 2pc this year, an increase from the 1.3pc contraction previously estimated. In addition, recovery in 2010 and 2011 will also be slower than first thought, increasing by up to 3pc next year, from an earlier forecast by as much as 3.3pc, and by up to 4.8pc in 2011, from an earlier estimate of up to 5pc.
The Toll Booth Economy It looks like bookstores are about to be swamped this summer and fall by advisories which publishers commissioned a year ago, as the economy was going off the rails. The preferred marketing strategy is to offer advice by celebrity insiders on how to restore the happy 1981-2007 era of debt-leveraged price gains for real estate, stocks and bonds. But the Bubble Economy was so debt-leveraged that it cannot reasonably be restored. For the time being we are being fed Wall Street defenses of the Bush-Obama (that is, Paulson-Geithner) attempt to re-inflate the bubble by a bailout giveaway that has tripled America’s national debt in the hope of getting bank credit (that is, more debt) growing again. The problem is that debt leveraging is what caused our economic collapse. A third of U.S. real estate is now estimated to be in negative equity, with foreclosure rates still rising.
Obama Insists That Not Only Can We Detect Bubbles We Can Also Deflate Them In case you've ever wondered what it must have been like to read Pravda, reading the American media's treatment of the financial crisis and our wise leaders' expert management of it all has given everyone a wonderful opportunity. For instance, check out this headline from a piece from several days ago on Politico: "Obama Would Regulate New 'Bubbles.'" Yes, you read that right. "Bubbles" just occur spontaneously. They have no cause or explanation. We need government to identify and destroy them. Sometimes I wish our overlords would get their stories straight.
Treasuries Rise as Fed's Rosengren Says Recovery to Be 'Slow' Treasuries rose, trimming a weekly loss, after Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Eric Rosengren said the U.S. recovery from the most severe economic recession in at least 50 years may be muted. Notes gained as the comment bolstered the view among bond bulls that the U.S. economy isn't strong enough to justify keeping 10-year yields at the highest level in six months.
Geithner Pledges to Cut Deficit Amid Rating Concern Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the Obama administration is committed to reducing the federal budget deficit after concerns rose that the U.S. debt rating may eventually be threatened with a downgrade. "It's very important that this Congress and this president put in place policies that will bring those deficits down to a sustainable level over the medium term," Geithner said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. He added that the target is reducing the gap to 3 percent of gross domestic product or smaller, from a projected 12.9 percent this year.
Alan Greenspan's fears ring true as Florida's BankUnited collapses Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan's warning that the US banking sector remains under-capitalised came to fruition as regulators presided over the biggest collapse of an American bank so far this year. Mr Greenspan said on Wednesday night that the global financial crisis was far from over and that US banks must still raise "large" amounts of money before recovery can begin. "There is still a very large unfunded capital requirement in the commercial banking system in the United States and that's got to be funded," he said, adding that the future direction of the US housing market remains uncertain. His prediction proved to be prescient on Thursday night as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) shut down Florida's BankUnited.
BankUnited Shuttered, Assets Sold to Kanas-Led Group BankUnited Financial Corp., the ailing Florida lender, was shut by federal regulators and its assets were sold to private-equity firms including WL Ross & Co. and Carlyle Group in the largest U.S. bank failure this year. The group's purchase of the bank, deemed "critically undercapitalized" by the Office of Thrift Supervision, was the "least costly" resolution, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said today in a statement. The closing will cost the insurance fund $4.9 billion, pushing the total cost of 34 seizures so far this year to more than $10 billion.
Private Equity Firms Win Auction For BankUnited BankUnited FSB, the biggest independent bank in Florida, was seized and sold to a consortium of private equity firms on Thursday afternoon in the largest bank failure this year. Under the deal, which was brokered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the private equity firms will inject $900 million of new equity into BankUnited and assume $12.7 billion in assets and $8.3 billion in deposits. The F.D.I.C. has also agreed to share in any losses on $10.7 billion of the bank's assets, which mainly consist of loans to risky borrowers.
BankUnited Fails in Year's Biggest Bust Federal regulators seized Florida's BankUnited FSB on Thursday, the biggest bank failure this year, one that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. estimates will cost its weakened insurance fund $4.9 billion. BankUnited, which was owned by holding company BankUnited Financial Corp., is the second-costliest bank failure of the financial crisis, trumped only by IndyMac Bank, which failed in July at an estimated cost to the FDIC of about $11 billion.
Public insurance plan to reject illegals Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Thursday that he supports "a version" of a public, or government-run, insurance plan, but that it won't cover illegal immigrants. "I do support a version" of a public option, he said, adding that's it's a "hot-button" issue. "There's going to be a lot of trade-offs," said Mr. Baucus, Montana Democrat and chairman of the committee that is expected to write the Senate's health care reform plan. "This is just so large."
Tracking Stimulus Spending May Not Be as Easy as Promised Shortly after the economic stimulus bill was signed, Vice President Biden was talking up the administration's Web site to track the spending, Recovery.gov, when he accidentally directed people to Recovery.org. As slip-ups go, this one had an upside: Unlike the government site, the privately run Recovery.org is actually providing detailed information about how the $787 billion in stimulus money is being spent.
Geithner says AIG bailout 'complicated' Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told a Senate panel Wednesday that the economy is showing convincing signs of a comeback but government intervention still is needed to help struggling financial institutions, including American International Group Inc.
SEC objects to shared authority Obama weighs new watchdog The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission is objecting to a plan being weighed by the Obama administration to create a new financial watchdog for consumers that would assume oversight of mutual funds. The SEC chief's split with the administration shows how hard it may be for a broad overhaul of financial rules to overcome turf wars among various regulators and for a consensus to be reached on Capitol Hill.
White House Rolls Out Web Site, Initiatives to Boost Transparency On his first full day in office, President Obama issued his first executive order directing federal officials to come up with ideas for making government information more visible and accessible to the public within 120 days. Today -- the 120th day since the edict -- the White House is rolling out a host of online initiatives intended to foster more dialogue and collaboration between citizens and bureaucrats. The launch includes the debut of a site called http://Data.gov, where agencies will post data that can be culled by Web developers to make new Web and cellphone applications. Also starting today, the http://WhiteHouse.gov homepage will become a repository for citizen suggestions and discussion regarding new open-government policies.
In Dueling Speeches, a National Security Debate Obama Says Bush Set Aside Principles in Terrorism Fight President Obama and former vice president Richard B. Cheney yesterday gave the country the national security debate it never had during last year's campaign, with the two outlining starkly divergent views of American power and the presidency in the fight against terrorism. In an extraordinary set of speeches, the still-new president, who refers often to the problems he inherited from his predecessor, and the previous administration's most forceful spokesman laid out their positions just minutes apart in locations separated by barely a mile. The virtual debate touched on Congress and the courts, interrogation tactics and truth commissions, and competing assessments of the nation's post-Sept. 11 history that are currently informing the debate in Washington over how best to balance public safety and civil liberties.
Barack Obama and Dick Cheney clash on terror Former Vice President Dick Cheney accused Barack Obama of putting American lives at risk in a disdainful broadside just minutes after the president gave an impassioned defence of his anti-terror policies. Americans were offered startlingly contrasting visions of how to deal with the threat of militant Islamists in rival addresses by the two men, who were speaking less than a mile from each other in Washington. Each laid out, in at times bitingly personal language, opposite interpretations of the eight-year record of President George W. Bush.
Economic Reality Check Sends Markets Lower Another bad signal from the job market and concern over a possible downgrade of British government debt sent stocks sharply lower Thursday. Major stock indicators slid more than 1.5 percent, cutting nearly 130 points off the Dow Jones industrial average, after continuing claims for unemployment benefits were worse than analysts had expected. A report from Standard & Poor's said Britain might have its rating cut because of rising debt levels, which added to recent anxiety that the market may have moved too high too quickly on early signs of economic recovery.
Failure of the bankers: Millions face 'impoverished old age' Millions of Britons face an "impoverished old age" as the entire British pensions system is based on a "bet" on the stock market, Ros Altmann, a governor at the London School of Economics, has warned. Ros Altmann: She said the credit crisis and falling stock markets have resulted in a man with a £50,000 pension pot being 27 per cent or £20 a week worse off if he retired today compared to last year. Dr Altmann, a pensions expert, said the credit crisis had "hugely damaged" Briton's pension system and had left retirement savers "disillusioned". In a special report released on Tuesday, she suggested that stock markets have returned an average of just 1.2 per cent during the past decade compared to 16.1 per cent in the previous 10 years. - UK Telegraph
U.S. Is Said to Be Weighing Financial Consumer Agency The Obama administration is considering a new agency to better protect consumers from practices like those that led to the current financial crisis, the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, said on Thursday. Testifying before a House Appropriations subcommittee, Mr. Geithner said a broad set of regulatory change proposals should be ready to unveil soon, and a new entity to protect consumers of financial products could be part of that effort. "We are examining the merits of setting up a new independent commission or agency to help provide stronger rules to protect consumers and better enforcement of those rules," he said in response to questions.
Why Unions Have Failed, and Obama Should Let Them We're being told it's going to be a new and better day for union workers in America. The Republicans are out, and a union friendly Democratic administration is in. Union leadership is heard in the progressive media asserting that unions and union workers supported Barack Obama, that Obama would not have been elected to the presidency without their support, and that President Obama owes the unions. Progressive talk show hosts like Thom Hartmann and Ed Shultz, who I often agree with, sing the union praises on a daily and weekly basis. However, the truth is, for a great many American workers labor unions have either been irrelevant or a source of interference and oppression. In particular, for minorities, women, and disabled workers.
Chrysler Dealers to Face Difficult Battle As Objections Mount Over Closures Plan, Legal Costs Dissuade Many From Joining Court Fight The move by Chrysler LLC to eliminate about a quarter of its dealerships through a bankruptcy-court filing is running into opposition from lawmakers and franchise owners, but the objections are unlikely to derail the company's efforts to put dealers out of business in the coming weeks. A number of members of Congress voiced concern midweek over the closures.
GMAC Gets $7.5 Billion in Federal Funds for Car Loans GMAC LLC, the auto and home lender bailed out in December, received $7.5 billion from the U.S. Treasury to expand auto lending at Chrysler LLC and was cleared to sell government-backed debt for the first time. The investment includes $4 billion for GMAC to originate loans to Chrysler buyers and sellers, the Treasury said today in a statement. The remaining $3.5 billion will help Detroit-based GMAC meet capital needs that resulted from the government stress tests. The Treasury said it expects to hold a 35.4 percent common equity interest in the company.
U.S. to Steer GM Toward Bankruptcy Filing Expected as Chrysler Set to Emerge The Obama administration is preparing to send General Motors into bankruptcy next week under a plan that would give the automaker tens of billions of dollars more in public financing as the company seeks to shrink and reemerge as a global competitor, sources familiar with the discussions said. The move comes as the administration prepares to lift the nation's other faltering car company, Chrysler, from bankruptcy as soon as next week, industry sources said. The shifts into and out of bankruptcy are landmarks in the Obama administration's attempt to broker a historic restructuring of the American auto industry in the space of months.
A Foreign Buyer Could Put Saturn's Image Into Orbit Dealer Network, Built by Deep Roots In America, Rouses Interest Abroad General Motor's sale of Saturn could put an end to the brand's American-made image. A few potential buyers are considering tapping Saturn's strong dealer network to distribute vehicles made by foreign manufacturers into the United States. Such a move would transform a brand that was designed to reinvent how Americans built and sold cars. And it could add to concerns about American auto jobs shifting overseas. Already the United Auto Workers and some lawmakers have protested GM's plan to import more cars built in such low-wage countries as Mexico, China and South Korea.
California, Out of Money, Reels as Voters Rebuff Leaders Direct democracy has once again upended California - enough so that the state may finally consider another way by overhauling its Constitution for the first time in 130 years. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger returned home from a White House visit on Wednesday to find the state dangerously broke, his constituents defiant after a special election on Tuesday and calls for a constitutional convention - six months ago little more than a wonkish whisper - a cacophony.
Unemployment rises, initial claims drop The number of first-time claims for unemployment insurance decreased last week by 12,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. Unemployed workers filed 631,000 state claims in the week ending May 16, compared to the previous week's revised number of 643,000.
Bill Changing Credit Card Rules Is Sent to Obama With Gun Measure Included Congress on Wednesday sent President Obama a set of new rules governing credit card companies, completing a trio of consumer-related measures that Democrats had raced to get signed into law by Memorial Day. But the credit card victory came at a cost that angered some backers of the legislation: approval of an unrelated provision allowing visitors to national parks and wildlife refuges to carry loaded weapons if they are otherwise licensed to possess guns.
House Clears Bill Easing Unionization of FedEx The U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill that would make it easier to unionize FedEx Corp. workers, prompting the company to renew its threat to hold off buying billions of dollars of new planes if the bill becomes law. Supporters of the bill, including the Teamsters and FedEx's biggest rival, United Parcel Service Inc., applauded Thursday's vote. But the measure faces a difficult climb in the Senate. A similar bill passed the House in 2007 but died in the Senate.
GOP condemns 'socialist' Obama, Democrats Toned-down measure seen as Steele win The Republican National Committee passed a resolution at a special session Wednesday condemning President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress for leading the United States toward socialism, a victory for the party's beleaguered chairman who sought the toned-down language in the measure. RNC Chairman Michael S. Steele adamantly had opposed the initial version of the resolution that had - presumptuously, some Republicans thought - called on the Democrats to rename themselves "the Democratic Socialist Party."
Obama says he's undoing 'mess' left for him President Obama on Thursday defended his counterterrorism policies from critics on the right by appealing to the nation's founding values in a speech delivered in front of the Constitution that was by turns fiery, analytical and sober, and also defended his left flank by arguing he is not continuing President Bush's policies as much as untangling a "mess" he inherited. "Every now and then, there are those who think that America's safety and success requires us to walk away from the sacred principles enshrined in this building. And we hear such voices today," Mr. Obama said, moments before Vice President Dick Cheney delivered a speech in a downtown building several blocks away that rebutted much of the president's message.
US Doctors' association calls for Moratorium on GMO Foods The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) has just issued a call for an immediate moratorium on Genetically Manipulated (GMO) Foods. In a just-released position paper on GMO foods, the AAEM states that 'GM foods pose a serious health risk' and calls for a moratorium on GMO foods. Citing several animal studies, the AAEM concludes 'there is more than a casual association between GMO foods and adverse health effects' and that 'GM foods pose a serious health risk in the areas of toxicology, allergy and immune function, reproductive health, and metabolic, physiologic and genetic health.' The report is a devastating blow to the multibillion dollar international agribusiness industry, most especially to Monsanto Corporation, the world's leading purveyor of GMO seeds and related herbicides.
A PROPHET IN OUR OWN TIME DR. JOHN COLEMAN Did you know? Public Law 87-297 calls for complete disarmament so the UN can "maintain internal peace". 51 million American acres are now UN designated! Military capacity of US is 65% and UN is 800% of our 1991 levels. The UN Children's Rights takes responsibility away from parents and gives it to the state. No mention of God in the UN Charter. AIDS was UN-induced for population control (House Bill 15090.) HB 666 crushes our 4th Amendment Rights. UN command of US troops (PDD 25).
Most Important video you'll see all year . . . Wake up America! - Dr. John Coleman
OBAMA SAID, “THE LINES OF TRIBE SHALL SOON DISSOLVE”. A DECLARATION OF WAR? Rahnatakias, “the village destroyer”, as the U.S. Presidency is called, in his inaugural speech said, “the lines of tribe shall SOON dissolve”. He is referring to the extensive covenants between indigenous nations on Great Turtle Island . The bankster thugs want to get the rightful custodians out of their way. Our powerful ancient covenants make us of one blood and inseparable. Each party has to look out for the interests of the others. These are enduring compacts between friends, family and nation. We symbolically intermingle our blood witnessed by Kasatstensera kowa sa oiera, the great natural power. The tie cannot be dissolved. The original plan was to unite all indigenous nations. Over 200 nations joined this covenant. Obama, an African, understands covenant relationships between ‘tribes’. He is going to try to shatter the ties that bind our people on Great Turtle Island. Nobody has been able to do that for 400 years. Several approaches are being used. One is the PBS series of five so-called history films called “We shall remain” that started on April 12, 2009 [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/weshallremain/]. We are portrayed as losers.
Bilderberg Fears Losing Control In Chaos-Plagued World Investigative journalist Daniel Estulin, whose information from inside Bilderberg has routinely proven accurate, states that the global elite’s plan to completely destroy the economy and ultimately lower global population by two thirds has stoked fears even within Bilderberg itself that the fallout from such chaos could ultimately result in the globalists losing their control over the world.
In a telephone interview, Estulin re-iterated his original points about Bilderberg’s 2009 agenda, which were released in a pre-meeting booklet to members. These include the notion that investors, whipped up into a false state of euphoria by the belief that the economy is recovering, are being suckered into ploughing their money back into the system as a set up for “massive losses and searing financial pain in the months ahead” as the stock market reverses its uptrend and plummets to new lows. One of Bilderberg’s main topics of conversation at this year’s meeting was whether to oversee a long period of economic stagnation or to quickly sink the economy with a rapid depression.
Estulin called the “bank stress tests” recently conducted as being “little more than a shameless hoax based on the irrational assumption that the economy wont get as bad as it already is.”
Is It too Late to Save Our Nation? I said way back in the early 70's when groups such as the Tri-lateral Commission, Bilderbergers, Council on Foreign Relations, (primarily one in the same, but who's counting) began talking of a "New World Order" that in order for this to be accomplished the standard of living in the United States would have to be lowered in order for the masses to remotely accept it.
How could these power freaks expect people to lower their ambitions and the goals for their children when they were living in relative comfort? They had to be lowered to levels of the third world nations whose main ambition was that of survival, not advancement.
We have seen the formation of Phase One of the global plan with the European Union which has reduced countries into nothing more than "states" and it is time for Phase Two - the North American Union, but how can it be "sold" with the living standards of the United States and Canada being that much above that of the other countries? Of course you can't raise the standards for those other countries and expect them to fall in line, so lower those standards of life to be in accord of the third world. It is easier to control those who are struggling for survival than it is for those who are striving for improvement.
What You Don't Know Makes You Nervous . . . . As it turned out, Americans had a great deal more to fear than that, and their innocent belief that money buys happiness was entirely correct. Psychologists and economists now know that although the very rich are no happier than the merely rich, for the other 99 percent of us, happiness is greatly enhanced by a few quaint assets, like shelter, sustenance and security. Those who think the material is immaterial have probably never stood in a breadline. Money matters and today most of us have less of it, so no one will be surprised by new survey results from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index showing that Americans are smiling less and worrying more than they were a year ago, that happiness is down and sadness is up, that we are getting less sleep and smoking more cigarettes, that depression is on the rise.
Shoppers change to swappers The turtleneck from designer Marc Jacobs costs hundreds of dollars at Neiman Marcus or Saks Fifth Avenue. But at one Brooklyn bar, the charcoal-gray sweater was free for the taking - along with jeans, belts and shoes. The neighborhood watering hole called Sycamore will never be mistaken for a department store, but for some recession-battered consumers, it's serving a similar purpose. It's a chance to update their wardrobes and capture the adventure of shopping without having to open their wallets. "It's guilt-free shopping," said Shannon McDowell, a bartender and swapper.
U.S. Pullout a Condition in Afghan Peace Talks KABUL, Afghanistan - Leaders of the Taliban and other armed groups battling the Afghan government are talking to intermediaries about a potential peace agreement, with initial demands focused on a timetable for a withdrawal of American troops, according to Afghan leaders here and in Pakistan.
Netanyahu insists Jerusalem to be 'ours' JERUSALEM | Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted Thursday that all of Jerusalem will always remain under Israeli sovereignty, taking a hard line on a key Israeli-Palestinian peace issue just hours after his forces removed an unauthorized settlement outpost in the West Bank. The twin moves came a day after Mr. Netanyahu returned from talks in Washington, where President Obama backed creation of a Palestinian state and urged an end to Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank, setting up a potential confrontation between Israel and the U.S.
Lindsey Williams on Alex Jones Tv (HD) 1/4:The Hour is Near!
Lindsey Williams on Alex Jones Tv (HD) 2/4:The Hour is Near!
Lindsey Williams on Alex Jones Tv (HD) 3/4:The Hour is Near!
Lindsey Williams on Alex Jones Tv (HD) 4/4:The Hour is Near!
Physical Gold In The Hands Of The People GOLD AND CIVIL LIBERTIES Decades ago Ludwig von Mises wrote in The Theory of Money and Credit, "It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights." There is a simpler way to state the rule: He who has the gold makes the rules. One of the reasons, if not the chief reason, for the excessive government encroachment on civil liberties is the abandonment of sound money. Contained within the United States Constitution are very specific monetary powers and disabilities. This constitutional violation is the chief cause the world has become a very dangerous place. Governments and their central banks are able to engage in legalized counterfeiting which is confiscation through inflation and a form of taxation without representation or due process of law.
Taking Delivery of Physical It is said that if everyone would just take delivery on the gold contracts they buy, then the price of gold would shoot the moon. This is because there is not enough gold in the warehouse to cover all the outstanding contracts. And the reason there are more contracts than gold is because the banks like to sell contracts "short", meaning they will sell you a contract for some gold they do not have because they know you will not take delivery. They do have some gold for the small percentage of people that take delivery. And they will gladly tell you all about this gold to prove to you that your contract is backed by the real thing. But this is still very much like "fractional reserve banking".
Gold to go Automatic teller machines (ATMs) - 500 of them - dispensing pieces of gold will be available around Germany, Switzerland and Austria by the end of this year. That at least is the plan of German precious metals online trading company TG-Gold-Super-Markt.de. The ATMs, to be located at airports, railway stations and shopping malls, are intended to accustom ordinary people to the idea of investing in a physical asset such as gold, the thinking goes.
Gulf ETFs, nations may take their gold back from London Much of the region's gold that has so far been held in London may soon return. The new vaults of the Dubai Multi Commodities Center [a United Arab Emirates government enterprise] will be a home to the gold allocated to the Dubai Gold Securities (DGS) exchange-traded funds. The vault may also become a natural choice for storage of gold reserves by central banks in the regional market, analysts said. While the gold allocated to DGS is kept at HSBC's vaults in London, the gold reserves held by the Gulf Cooperation Council's central banks are held by various other vaults in London, market sources said. Gold vaults have existed in London for more than 150 years.
America's Sovereignty For Sale? Obama Has Not The Best Interest Of America At Heart! / 1 of 3
Hyperinflation and the changes it is going to generate Why this hyperinflationary cycle is going to be different? Prices of commodities and anything that needs to be grown or dug out of the ground is going to increase in price significantly, but at the same time this credit crunch has destroyed the economies of many nations and the net result is that millions of individuals have lost their jobs on a worldwide basis; the overall job outlook in not going to improve. While we are going to have inflationary forces kicking into full gear in the commodities' sector, deflationary forces will kick in (at least at the beginning) in terms of salaries (reason too many workers, too few jobs). This means that those that did not prepare are going to be in for extremely painful experience; it also means that those that were prepared are going to be able to pick up incredible bargains; again this will be the initial stage, once we enter the hyperinflationary stage, expect everything to rise in value. We will not be surprised one day if used cars start to sell for more than their original sticker value; this often occurs in third world countries due to inflation.
The "silent rally" in gold How much of gold's rally is a function of future inflation expectations? That's difficult to assess and we're still too early in the financial recovery process to be able to answer this. The consensus among financial pundits is that gold is a "sure shot" to take off from here and eventually reach $1,000/oz. based on the multi-trillion dollar stimulus package. Some commentators are calling for even more liberal upside targets. It's a common assumption that the stimulus will inflate commodities and spark another round of global inflation for hard assets. I would caution that this is far from a foregone conclusion, however.
Beware of Exchange Trade Funds (ETFs) Bearing Gold Gold Bullion Unique as No Counter Party Risk Gold is unique among asset classes as it is the only asset class not dependent on the performance of auditors, management, corporations, financial institutions, banks, politicians and governments. Nor should physical gold be dependent on the performance of trustees, custodians and or sub custodians. Gold does not depend on the performance and health of the wider economy and as importantly when you buy gold in its physical form there is no third party liability or credit risk. Or at least there should not be. Gold has an intrinsic value in and of itself that is not contingent on someone else's or some entities performance or mere promise to pay.
Gold Targets Record After $950 Gold may rise to a record, possibly driven higher by weakness in the dollar, should the precious metal first "hold clearly" above $950 an ounce, Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd. said, citing trading patterns. A rise to more than that level would take gold above a so- called resistance point, according to a note and table yesterday from Nicole Elliott, London-based senior technical analyst at Mizuho. Resistance prices, listed by Elliot in the table, may identify clusters of sell orders. "While we continue to favor an eventual break to new record highs, only when it holds clearly above $950 per ounce will bullish momentum kick in," she wrote, without giving a timeframe. "This may be due to generalized U.S. dollar weakness, courtesy of U.S. government largesse, rather than renewed appetite for precious metals."
Gold ETFs, scrap supplies drive bullion trade Price hardiness continued to be manifest in gold overnight, following Tuesday's partial repair of Monday's selling damage. The yellow metal continues to hover near $930 as dollar weakness and equally resilient oil values continue to validate short-term speculative inflows. Technicals offer a mixed picture, with gold above moving averages still - but also having entered overbought territory. In the broader sense, the $850/$950 channel is still the one within which gold remains confined. Fresh news on the macroeconomic or geopolitical front is needed in order to break above or below these markers.
Dollar tumbles to multi-month lows as recovery seen Dollar tumbles to multi-month lows vs euro, pound as Geithner, Lewis see econ. recovery, growth The dollar tumbled against the other major currencies Wednesday, touching a fresh low against the pound for the year and a 4-month low against the euro as signs of a resolution to the financial crisis drove investors to riskier investments. Equities in Europe and the U.S. rose, as did oil prices, as cheered investors moved their cash into commodities and stocks. Since last summer, the dollar has tended to trade inversely to stocks, as fearful investors deserted their positions in emerging markets and commodities and jumped to the buck's "safety" lure. When stocks and oil prices trend higher, that pattern tends to reverse.
America's Sovereignty For Sale? Obama Has Not The Best Interest Of America At Heart! / 2 of 3
22 reasons Obama will raise your taxes ... soon! 'Tax Bomb' dead ahead: Former GAO chief says your taxes will double Yes, taxes will go up. Must. Why? Debt: federal, state, corporate, bank, pensions, personal. The hole just keeps getting deeper, bigger. Well over $100 trillion of debt is being piled on future generations, while our GDP is only $15 trillion annually. Reagan was right, "government is the problem," both the GOP and the Dems. Imagine doubling your taxes: That's what David Walker, the former U.S. comptroller general and GAO chief, recently said on CNN: "The federal government has spent more money than it takes in at an increasing rate. Total federal debt almost doubled during President George W. Bush's administration and, as much as we needed some stimulus spending to boost the economy, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office now estimates total debt levels could almost double again over the next eight years based on the budget recently outlined by President Obama," with our "tax bill doubling over time."
Obama Is Leading Us Down The Road To Economic Hell Brock thinks Obama's agenda is almost the opposite--slow growth, more regulation, permanent spending increases, and the wrong kind of spending (on entitlements and social programs, not infrastructure). He thinks this could eventually lead to disaster. . . . . Below is a long but persuasive analysis written by Woody Brock of Strategic Economic Decisions
Senator Says More Oversight Is Needed at Federal Pension Agency The rapidly deteriorating financial health of the federal agency that guarantees 44 million Americans' pensions is raising alarms in Congress, where key lawmakers are demanding tougher rules to insure vigilant oversight of its multibillion-dollar investment portfolio. The recession is forcing into bankruptcy an increasing number of companies with underfunded pension plans, leaving the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. with billions of dollars more to pay out in pension checks to retirees in the future. Its long-term deficit tripled in the past six months to a startling $33.5 billion.
Bankruptcies Swell Deficit at Pension Agency to $33.5 Billion The deficit at the federal agency that guarantees pensions for 44 million Americans more than doubled in the last six months to a record high, reaching $33.5 billion, largely as a result of the surging number of bankruptcies among companies whose pensions it must now take over. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, as of October, had faced a shortfall of $11 billion. But the combined effect of lower interest rates, losses on its investment portfolio and the increase in the number of companies filing for bankruptcy protection resulted in a deepening of its estimated deficit, officials said Wednesday.
SEC head objects to Obama financial watchdog plan SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro objects to Obama plan to create new financial watchdog The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission is objecting to a plan being considered by the Obama administration to create a new financial watchdog to protect consumers. SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said such a new entity, which was discussed Tuesday night by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and other officials, would reduce the SEC's authority and damage government protection of investors. "I question pretty profoundly any model that would try to move investor protection functions out of the Securities and Exchange Commission," Schapiro said Wednesday. That couldn't be done "without really damaging the fabric of the entire investor protection regime," she told reporters.
Elizabeth Warren's Dream Is Becoming Reality The Obama administration is in the planning stage of introducing an entirely brand new regulatory body, whose job it would be to monitor consumer-facing financial products, like mortgages and credit cards. This is seen as a pretty big black hole right now in the regulatory structure, and given how many consumers have found themselves up to their neck in debt, with products they didn't understand, this makes some sense. Plans for a new body remain fluid, but it could be granted broad powers to make sure the terms and marketing of a wide range of loans and other financial products are in the interests of ordinary consumers, sources said.
GOP Struggles with Push to Rename Dems 'Socialist' Republican Party leaders are trying to avoid a public confrontation over a GOP-led effort to rename the Democratic Party the "Nationalist Socialist Democrat" party. The Republican National Committee is slated to vote on several resolutions Wednesday. Leaders already have softened one that would have pointedly criticized Republicans who supported recent billion-dollar bailouts.
America's Sovereignty For Sale? Obama Has Not The Best Interest Of America At Heart! / 3 of 3
A market solution to secure banks' future How long will the US economy live with a banking system in which some institutions are too big to fail? Not long, we should all hope, because large banks today, under federal protection, can raise short-term funds more cheaply than their smaller competitors, which are allowed to fail. "Too big to fail" is an unstable system. Politically inspired constraints on large banks leave them not knowing what will come next out of Washington, while there is no way of knowing whether any given bank is just small enough to be let go or will be bailed out if it gets into trouble.
U.S. May Strip SEC of Powers in Regulatory Overhaul The Obama administration may call for stripping the Securities and Exchange Commission of some of its powers under a regulatory reorganization that could be unveiled as soon as next week, people familiar with the matter said. The proposal, still being drafted, is likely to give the Federal Reserve more authority to supervise financial firms deemed too big to fail. The Fed may inherit some SEC functions, with others going to other agencies, the people said. On the table: giving oversight of mutual funds to a bank regulator or a new agency to police consumer-finance products, two people said.
Revival hopes push down dollar The US dollar fell to its lowest level of the year on Wednesday as Tim Geithner hailed signs of healing in financial markets and minutes showed the Federal Reserve had seen indications of economic stabilisation at its April policy meeting. Traders said the decline in the US currency was associated with hopes of financial and economic recovery. Such expectations are encouraging investors to buy riskier assets and abandon risk-aversion strategies that favoured US Treasury bills. Mr Geithner, US Treasury secretary, said there were "important indications that our financial system is starting to heal" - citing declining corporate bond yields and other market measures of financial stress.
Is the US-Dollar headed for a Mighty Crash? Each month, the US Treasury publishes its International Capital account, (TIC) which foreign currency traders and bond dealers use to gauge the flows of money from around the world, into and out-of the US-capital markets. The demand for a nation's bonds and stocks, combined with international trade flows for goods and services, plus behind the scenes intervention by central banks, all act in concert to influence the foreign exchange market which handles $4-trillion per day. A surplus in TIC inflows is generally seen as a positive for the US-dollar, because it signals that foreigners are willing to increase their holdings of US-securities, displaying greater confidence in the currency. On the other hand, a TIC deficit is generally interpreted as bearish for the US-dollar, because it means that foreign inflows into the US aren't sufficient enough to fund government borrowing.
ECB Said to Have Debated 125 Billion-Euro Asset Package in May The European Central Bank's Governing Council discussed a package of asset purchases worth about 125 billion euros ($170 billion) this month, more than twice the amount finally agreed upon, people briefed on the talks said. The package proposed at the May 7 council meeting included buying commercial paper and corporate bonds, said the people, who declined to be identified because the discussions were private. After the meeting, President Jean-Claude Trichet announced plans to acquire 60 billion euros of covered bonds, low-risk securities backed by mortgages and public-sector loans. An ECB spokeswoman declined to comment.
David Walker on CNBC 2009-05-13
Greenspan Says Banks Still Have a 'Large' Capital Requirement Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan signaled that the financial crisis has yet to end even as borrowing costs tumble, warning that U.S. banks must raise "large" amounts of money. "There is still a very large unfunded capital requirement in the commercial banking system in the United States and that's got to be funded," Greenspan said in an interview today in Washington. He also said that "until the price of homes flattens out we still have a very serious potential mortgage crisis."
Fed Considered Increasing Its Purchase of Debt Seeking to keep interest rates in check and heal the credit markets, the Federal Reserve last month debated whether it should expand a program to buy mortgage and Treasury securities, according to minutes of the meeting released Wednesday. The Fed also lowered its outlook for this year and 2010, saying that the American economy would contract more sharply and unemployment would rise higher than the central bank originally projected in January. Some economists called the earlier expectations too rosy, considering how quickly businesses were shedding jobs and slashing investments.
Geithner Says Treasury May Move 'Quickly' to Sell TARP Warrants Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said he's inclined to "quickly" sell warrants the government got when injecting capital into banks, offering prospects of a speedy exit to lenders seeking to retire government stakes. "In general, our objective will be to sell these warrants as quickly as we can," Geithner told the Senate Banking Committee today. "What I'm reluctant to do is have the government be in a position where we hold these investments for a long period of time, longer than is desirable, in the hopes that we're going to maximize value."
The Sleepwalkers Rally . . . . There is once again a serious disconnect between stock prices and economic reality. Perhaps these sleepwalking investors think that the 50 percent sell-off in 2008 was overdone and great bargains are now available. To believe this is to misunderstand the economic hurricane of last October, and the gaping holes in America's hull that it exposed. In the last quarter of 2008, investors faced a meltdown of the banking system. World governments injected trillions of dollars into their economies and changed accounting rules to ensure that a systemic banking failure was averted. Though the system has stabilized, investors seem to forget that none of the fundamental problems have been solved. We may have survived the initial heart attack, but the system remains wrought with clots.
Fed mulled increasing debt purchases in April The Federal Reserve said on Wednesday it saw modest improvements in the U.S. economy last month, but it still saw big risks and left open the possibility of increasing its purchases of mortgage-related and government debt to keep credit flowing and spur recovery. Despite a pickup in household and business confidence that Fed officials saw helping to steady spending when they met in late April, they viewed the evidence as too tentative to erase risks facing the recession-mired economy.
Fed Hopeful But Downgrades '09 Forecast The Federal Reserve expects the economy to improve in coming months, even as policymakers downgraded their outlook for all of 2009 and said the unemployment rate could approach 10 percent. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues continue to believe that business sales and factory production will begin to recover gradually during the second half of this year as President Barack Obama's stimulus package and the Fed's aggressive efforts to lift the country out of recession take hold. They also pointed to signs that the recession's grip was easing in the current April-June quarter, according to documents released Wednesday.
Why Treasury Is Plowing $7.5 BILLION More Into GMAC As first reported by the Detroit News this morning, the Treasury is plowing $7.5 billion more into auto lender GMAC, the Wall Street Journal now confirms. Yep, after all that hardball about the auto bondholders and forcing them to take a haircut, the bondholders in GMAC are getting a straight up bailout.
Welch Criticizes Obama on Handling Chrysler Bankruptcy Jack Welch, former chief executive officer of General Electric Co., criticized the government- backed bankruptcy of Chrysler LLC for favoring unions at the expense of creditors and said President Barack Obama's economic stimulus programs will cause budget deficits. "I don't particularly like where he's taking us," Welch said, referring to Obama, during an interview yesterday at the Boston Convention Center. Welch, 73, who led GE from 1981 to 2001, was a guest speaker at the New England Business Xpo.
Ron Paul "Prepare For Revolutionary Changes" 05/19/09
Oil Prices Push About $60, a Six-Month High Oil prices rose to their highest level in six months on Wednesday as some optimism swept into the market amid signs that the economy may be improving. Oil futures in New York rose above $60 a barrel, a level not seen since November, after a weekly report from the Department of Energy showing a drop in commercial oil stocks suggested a pick up in consumption. A pair of refinery fires in the United States and concerns about fresh violence in Nigeria helped push prices higher.
Output cuts, fresh demand could tighten oil supplies again Failure for oil production to keep up with a rebound in demand from China could throw a noose around global oil supplies, driving up prices and threatening a nascent economic recovery, two energy economists said Wednesday. The same factors that drove up oil prices past $147 a barrel last year could easily return, posing a new round of challenges to a global economy on the cusp of recovery, said an energy economist from the University of California, San Diego, Wednesday. In remarks prepared for testimony to the Joint Economic Committee, Professor James Hamilton said his research showed high oil prices last year contributed to the U.S. economy's recent troubles.
Obama warns U.S. may face long-term joblessness Americans could face higher unemployment for some time to come, President Barack Obama warned on Wednesday, underscoring the tough challenges the country faces even as the economy shows signs of stabilizing. Obama, speaking to a meeting of his 16-member Economic Recovery Advisory Board headed by former Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker, said he was encouraged by "signs of normalcy" in the financial markets and hints the economy was steadying -- though he remained concerned in the long run.
Are We 'Back from the Fiscal Abyss' as Dallas Fed Claims? Richard W. Fisher, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, was once one of the most expressive economist imaginable often using graphic and sensationalist words and expressions to get our attention when describing the 'nightmarish predicament' and 'monstrous challenge' that has finally engulfed us. It was only a year ago that he warned that a 'frightful storm is brewing' - 'the mother of all financial storms' - that could well plunge the U.S. government deeper into a 'fiscal abyss' causing the country to become submerged in a 'vast fiscal chasm'. Fisher has not always been so dramatic in spite of saying recently 'I am a Texan and Texans speak plainly and directly' and he is not being very direct these days either.
California dreamin' The Golden State, the vanguard of popular culture, has always captured the world's imagination. The ultimate frontier state is again leading the way - but not, this time, to a Hollywood ending. Tuesday's defeat of deficit-reducing ballot initiatives portends the difficulties awaiting countries whose finances have been ravaged by the recession. California's plight shows where governments such as the US and the UK may be heading. Deficit spending is sensible in a recession, but the state's enormous fiscal troubles force it to tighten the purse strings, lest markets no longer buy its bonds. Its debt is rated the least creditworthy among all US states.
California One Step Closer to the Brink Another night in the great direct-democracy known as California. Facing a minimum $15 billion budget shortfall, voters rejected a series of ballot items that would've closed the state's crisis-level deficit through tax hikes and spending cuts (it's the tax hikes that were the real no go). All of the measures had been expected to fail, even though Governor Schwarzenegger supported them. Prop 1A would have capped state spending, kept in place a tax hike for two years, while also establishing a so-called rainy day fund. That was the big one and it went down 65%-35%. The one measure which did pass, comfortably: A rule limiting pay hikes for state politicians.
Ballot Defeat Leaves Calif. In Deeper Budget Hole An angry electorate soundly defeated a slate of special election budget measures Tuesday, a decision that left Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers holding virtually nothing but a scalpel to deal with California's $21.3 billion shortfall. Schwarzenegger, who dropped Election Day campaigning to attend a White House announcement on new auto fuel standards, was scheduled to return Wednesday to meet with legislators and discuss options for the budget. "The longer we wait, the worse the problem becomes and the more limited our choices will be," the governor said in a statement issued after the propositions were decided. "That is why tomorrow, we will come together to begin to develop a budget solution that gets our state back on track."
Have good credit? So what . . . you'll pay for bad risks Credit Card Industry Aims to Profit From Sterling Payers Credit cards have long been a very good deal for people who pay their bills on time and in full. Even as card companies imposed punitive fees and penalties on those late with their payments, the best customers racked up cash-back rewards, frequent-flier miles and other perks in recent years. Banks are expected to look at reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups. . . . . . . . . “Those that manage their credit well will in some degree subsidize those that have credit problems.”
Consumers Are Dealt a New Hand in Credit Cards At first glance, the sweeping credit card legislation that passed the Senate on Tuesday looks like a huge victory for consumers. The bill, after all, contains relief from penalty fees and certain interest rate spikes. But for people who pay off their bills each month, and milk the card rewards programs for everything they’re worth, there is some cause for concern.
Ronald Reagan on Capitalism and Socialism
Your Papers, please! Are your documents in order for the summer holidays? he U.S. Customs and Border Protection is making a big push to make sure Americans are aware that effective June 1 new document requirements will be in effect for entering the United States by land or sea from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. The promotional material handed out to reporters to show the different acceptable forms of identification all used the name in the example of "Happy Traveler." Verbal statements of American citizenship, birth certificates, or ordinary driver's licenses will not comply with the new requirements for re-entry after camping in the wilds of Canada, sunning on the beaches of Mexico, or cruising the Caribbean.
The U.S. Government Has Become Patently Anti-Christian . . . . While claiming to be "tolerant" and "pluralistic," our federal government, in practice, shows little tolerance or pluralism regarding Christianity. Time and again, Christian practices and people are singled out for humiliation, persecution, or retribution. This situation follows an eerily similar pattern to that of the old Holy Roman Empire. The Roman Empire loved to tout its tolerance for any and all faith systems. One common adage at the time was that "there are as many gods in Rome as people." So tolerant was Rome for myriad religious beliefs that it even constructed an altar to the "UNKNOWN GOD," for fear that it may have neglected to honor someone's obscure god.
Obama Speaks Arabic
Military Personnel Ordered To Comply With Illegal Private Gun RegistrationInfantryman based at Fort Campbell leaks shocking directive ordering soldiers to submit information on registration, location of weapons as well as Concealed Carry permits, order was stopped according to base officials An alarming document sent to us by an Infantryman based out of Fort Campbell Kentucky shows that active duty military personnel are being secretly ordered to submit information to their Chain of Command on how many firearms they own privately, their location, as well of details of any Concealed Carry permits. Though the order was apparently rescinded, the fact that active duty soldiers are being asked to submit every detail of their private firearm collection is a telltale sign that the second amendment is in dire straights.
Pravda Tells Us How Marxists Dumbed Down the U.S.A. Yup, you know that things are bad when even Pravda agrees that America is now a Marxist country! This article should be printed in every Newspaper across the country!: American capitalism gone with a whimper --Pravda It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people. True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.
Obama reveals what "Change" Means
British firms shut out of lucrative US deals British firms are being shut out from lucrative contracts in the US despite assurances from Barack Obama that America would not start a trade war. Business leaders have told the Daily Telegraph their members have reported dramatic drops in US business because of the protectionist clauses in the president's $787 billion plan to boost the US economy. Others have been forced to withdraw from bidding to supply stimulus-funded projects in the US, because they cannot meet state and local government requirements that projects should use only American-made products.
Federal Judge Says U.S. Can Hold Gitmo Detainees Indefinitely A federal judge says the United States can continue to hold some prisoners at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely without any charges. U.S. District Judge John Bates' opinion issued Tuesday night limited the Obama administration's definition of who can be held. But he said Congress in the days after Sept. 11, 2001 gave the president the authority to hold anyone involved in planning, aiding or carrying out the terrorist attacks.
Ron Paul Napolitano Glenn Beck On Guantanamo Bay 5/20/09
Biden the embellisher heads to Bosnia Joe Biden is visiting the Balkans this week, but his long résumé from the region isn't as stellar as he likes to brag Whenever Dick Cheney got his passport stamped, there was always bound to be earthquakes abroad. He relished the role of bad cop to Condoleezza Rice's good cop. He coddled dictatorships (Kazakhstan, Pakistan, et al), threatened others (Russia, Iran, et al) and did his best to make sure the world both feared and hated us with equal gusto. Joe Biden is just the opposite. Rather than snarl at despots, he is dispatched abroad to flash his pearly whites and portray America's cuddlier side. Which may be why he spends much of his time abroad on smaller fry - the Georgias and Bosnias of the world.
Obama urged to confront China over yuan valuation Unions and Congress members back bill to threaten Beijing amid claims currency is keeping exports artificially cheap A wide coalition of US trade unions and members of Congress is stepping up ?pressure on President Barack Obama to confront China over alleged illegal currency manipulation that could have cost millions of American jobs. The push comes ahead of a visit by the US treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, to Beijing next month to discuss trade issues. Against a background of rising job losses in the US, union leaders and members of Congress are backing a bill that threatens Beijing with punitive duties on its goods unless it changes its currency practices.
China bolsters Brazil trade ties . . . . China overtook the US as Brazil's biggest trading partner during the first four months of this year, underlining increasingly close relations between two of the world's biggest emerging markets. Brazilian officials told the Financial Times on Monday that the governors of the two countries' central banks would meet soon to discuss replacing the US dollar with the renminbi and the real in trade transactions. The move follows recent Chinese challenges to the status of the dollar as the world's leading currency.
China Grows More Picky About Debt Leaders in both Washington and Beijing have been fretting openly about the mutual dependence - some would say co-dependence - created by China's vast holdings of United States bonds. But beyond the talk, the relationship is already changing with surprising speed. China is growing more picky about which American debt it is willing to finance, and is changing laws to make it easier for Chinese companies to invest abroad the billions of dollars they take in each year by exporting to America. For its part, the United States is becoming relatively less dependent on Chinese financing.
US to station Patriot missile unit in Poland A US Patriot missile unit supported by 100 soldiers will be deployed in Poland by the year-end under a bilateral security pact in spite of strong objections from Russia, a senior Polish defence official has told the Financial Times. Warsaw says the move will go ahead whether or not Barack Obama, US president, proceeds with plans to base elements of a proposed anti-missile shield in eastern Europe, including long-range interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic.
Tensions Over Georgia Sour Mood As U.S. and Russia Begin Nuke Talks On the eve of the first nuclear disarmament talks between the Obama administration and Moscow, renewed tensions over Georgia are souring the atmosphere and prompting warnings that Russia may be looking for a pretext for further military intervention in the strategically located south Caucasus. Two days of meetings in Moscow, starting Tuesday, aim to advance plans to replace an expiring arms reduction treaty with a new one that significantly cuts the existing supply of nuclear warheads. The proposal is in line with President Obama’s stated desire to hit the “reset button” in bilateral relations, and he wants an outline to be ready by the time he visits Russia on July 8.
Obama allows transfer of technology to make UAE first Arab nuclear state Barack Obama today gave the go-ahead for a controversial transfer of technology to the United Arab Emirates that would make it the first Arab nuclear state. The UAE is regarded by the US as a moderate Arab state and the transfer is to allow it to build a nuclear power plant to produce energy, not a bomb. But it is easier for a country with civilian nuclear power technology to make the change to military purposes. Critics of the decision argue that could lead to an arms race in the Middle East, encouraging other countries seeking nuclear technology.
Iran tests missile as election race starts President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday Iran had tested a missile that defense analysts say could hit Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf, a move likely to fuel Western concern about Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Washington voiced concern after Ahmadinejad announced the test on the same day campaigning for the Iran's June 12 presidential election officially started. U.S. President Barack Obama "has long been concerned" by any development in Iran's missile program, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. A U.S. official said the test was a "step in the wrong direction".
Iran test fires missile capable of reaching US bases or Israel Iran test-fired a solid-fuel missile capable of reaching Israel or US bases in the Middle East today, drawing rebukes from western governments and forcing the abrupt cancellation of a diplomatic mission by Italy's foreign minister. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced the launch of the Sajjil-2 surface-to-surface missile in Semnan province, in northern Iran, claiming it landed "precisely on target". The defence minister, Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, said the missile was "equipped with a new navigation system as well as precise and sophisticated sensors".
Iran's missile test is playing with fire, says Israel Iran celebrated the beginning of its official election campaign period yesterday with the launch of a missile capable of reaching Israeli and American bases in the Gulf. The launch comes two days after Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, met President Obama in Washington and urged him to help to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions. President Ahmadinejad of Iran, who is running for his second term against three challengers, announced the launch at a public rally, declaring that Iran could "send to hell" any aggressor that sought to attack it.
Clinton: Multilateral sanctions on Iran in order if talks fail U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday she was not sure about the utility of imposing more bilateral U.S. sanctions on Iran if Washington's diplomatic effort to engage Tehran to curb its nuclear ambitions fails. Speaking at a congressional hearing, Clinton said that if the U.S. diplomatic effort does not bear fruit, multilateral sanctions against Iran may be more effective. Clinton also warned on that a nuclear Iran would spark an arms race in Middle East.
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On the Cusp of a Significant Rise in Gold . . . . If gold sells down again, and I think it will, you could see a base-bottom somewhere between $850 and $885 and then a lot of chop and mild rallies. These channeled markets are difficult to trade. And, then into the fall we're looking for the next larger, extended rally. I suspect other markets will have a negative influence on several things and, as a result of that, gold should rise significantly in the fall. I know manipulators will be trying to cap it and keep the lid on, but one of the keys could be a rally price break through $1,007-the former high. Then gold could run away to $1,150 and more, easily up to $1,260. Now the other event, depending upon manipulation, is the chance gold could rise as high as $1,375 on the December futures contract. That remains to be seen. If it happens, we should see several markets' with new pivot moves depending on key events. But, technically, from where we are today and where we've been, $1,375 appears in the cards.
Why we are gold bulls . . . . To understand why we expect gold-related investments to do extremely well over the next few years it must first be understood that gold has never performed especially well (on a relative basis) during inflation-fuelled booms and has always performed very well during the busts that follow inflation-fuelled booms. Bob Hoye has done some good work on this topic covering hundreds of years, but we don't need to go back very far to see the pattern. Analysis of the past decade's market action will reveal that gold was a top performer during the mini bust of 2000-2002, generally lagged industrial commodities such as oil and copper during the major worldwide boom of 2003-2007, and then became the world's premier investment once the major boom transformed into a major bust. Looking at just the first half of this year we can see that gold started to weaken after hope of economic recovery -- the "green shoots" that everyone is talking about -- began to grow within the financial world. It is reasonable to expect, based on both history and logic, that the investment demand for gold will resume its upward march after this hope is dashed.
'Gold to touch $1650 by 2011' . . . . Gold requires a lack of confidence in other alternatives such as the US dollar. Gold can be roughly attached to Armstrong's changes in sentiment. Long term gold is attached in the inverse to Armstrong's trends, especially under today's unique and unprecedented circumstances.
New York gold bullion players have eye on dollar After having touched lows at near $918 an ounce, gold prices stabilized overnight and subsequently rose ahead of the NY open, as the US dollar slipped nearer to 82 on the index. Yesterday's stock market rallies managed to divert a fair amount of sidelined as well as committed cash, but there remain plenty of hedge funds whose bets on the commodities sector are keeping a floor under metals and energies.
Gold Prices Gain in New York as Dollar Weakens; Silver Climbs Gold prices increased in New York as the dollar fell, boosting demand for the metal as an alternative investment. Silver also advanced. The dollar weakened against the euro after Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley sought to repay $45 billion in government bailout cash, according to people familiar with the matter. The banks need approval for the payments from the Federal Reserve. Some investors buy gold as an alternative to the dollar. The greenback fell as much as 0.7 percent against the European currency.
Audit the Fed, Then End It! by Ron Paul I have been very pleased with the progress of my legislation, HR 1207, which calls for a complete audit of the Federal Reserve and removes many significant barriers towards transparency of our monetary system. This bill now has nearly 170 cosponsors, with support from both Republicans and Democrats. Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced a companion bill in the Senate S 604, which will hopefully begin to gain momentum as well. I am very encouraged to see so many of my colleagues in Congress stand with me for greater transparency in government.
Ron Paul - Audit the Fed......Then End It 5/18/2009
Who Will TARP America? Last week the nation's number one trucking company, YRC Worldwide Inc., announced that it will seek $1 billion in TARP assistance to bailout the company's pension plan. Never mind the fact that the request is light years away from the original intention and approval given by congress to purchase toxic assets from banks' balance sheets. The point is that the troubled company's request of the government to cover its pension obligations should remind us of the bigger issue; who will bailout our country's pension plan and can the USA TARP itself?
Brazil and China eye plan to axe dollar Brazil and China will work towards using their own currencies in trade transactions rather than the US dollar, according to Brazil's central bank and aides to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil's president. The move follows recent Chinese challenges to the status of the dollar as the world's leading international currency. Mr Lula da Silva, who is visiting Beijing this week, and Hu Jintao, China's president, first discussed the idea of replacing the dollar with the renminbi and the real as trade currencies when they met at the G20 summit in London last month.
Derivatives Market Declines for First Time on Record The derivatives market shrank for the first time in the second half of 2008 as the global financial crisis curbed trading, the Bank for International Settlements said in a report. The amount of outstanding contracts linked to bonds, currencies, commodities, stocks and interest rates fell 13.4 percent to $592 trillion, the Basel, Switzerland-based bank said yesterday. That's the first decline in 10 years of compiling the data. The amount of credit-default swaps protecting investors against losses on bonds and loans fell 27 percent to cover a notional $41.9 trillion of debt.
Bill Ayers is back And he's slamming The Washington Times Bill Ayers has kept a low profile since President Obama took office, so we thought he might have gone underground again. That was until we ran into him in Baltimore on Thursday and he lobbed a bomb at one of our editorial writers. When questioned by The Washington Times during a lecture on racism, Mr. Ayers went ballistic. "Did you drink the kool-aid over at The Times or are you okay?" he asked. "What I'm saying is ... do you actually have a mind of your own?" This is ironic given Mr. Ayers' past in the Weather Underground. In his 2001 autobiography "Fugitive Days," he admitted bombing government buildings to protest the Vietnam War. He remains unrepentant, telling the New York Times in a 2001 interview that, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." While he used to employ explosives to intimidate Americans who did not share his radical views, he has adapted his tactics of indoctrination in recent years. Now he is a college professor.
Fed Widens Commercial Real Estate Loan Program The Federal Reserve yesterday broadened a key lending program to support more commercial real estate loans, expanding its rescue of the financial system to deal directly with some of the assets weighing down banks. The move is the Fed's first attempt to use its unlimited lending capacity to try to support markets for "legacy securities," or those that were created months or years ago. Previously, the Fed program supported only new commercial real estate lending.
The Short-Covering Rally Is Finished, Here Comes The Leg Down Recently departed Merrill Lynch bear David Rosenberg is out with his first report from his new outfit Gluskin Sheff. Not surprisingly, he picks up where he left off from his last report out of Merrill. He explains further why he believes that this big, two-and-half month rally is a sucker's rally based on short covering in the trashiest, low-quality stocks.
Let's Try Selling TARP Warrants Without Screwing Over Taxpayers Stuff like how the various bailout schemes are silently ripping off taxpayers doesn't usually get that much play on CNBC, unless it's Santelli, though the message usually gets lost amid all his other rants. So we were pleasantly surprised to see this debate on the fairly wonky subjects of the TARP warrants, and how Treasury can sell them back to companies without penalizing companies too much, while also offering taxpayers some of that promised "upside".
Feuding at the Central Bank PARIS - The iron discipline we have come to expect from the European Central Bank has broken down, giving an unprecedented public glimpse of feuding over the direction of monetary policy in the financial crisis. As the 16-nation euro zone's central bank dangles its toes in the uncharted waters of quantitative easing - starting to buy assets in an attempt to help revive the economy - its leaders cannot agree on how far to go and when to stop.
Wary of U.S. debt, China shifts gears on investment China has engineered a subtle yet significant shift in the investment of its foreign exchange reserves, a sign of how it is willing to act on concerns about financing an explosion of U.S. debt. Beijing has been far and away the single biggest foreign buyer of Treasuries over the past year, but this apparent vote of confidence belies how it has turned its back on long-term U.S. debt in favor of shorter maturities.
U.S. Needs More Inflation to Speed Recovery, Say Mankiw, Rogoff What the U.S. economy may need is a dose of good old-fashioned inflation. So say economists including Gregory Mankiw, former White House adviser, and Kenneth Rogoff, who was chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. They argue that a looser rein on inflation would make it easier for debt-strapped consumers and governments to meet their obligations. It might also help the economy by encouraging Americans to spend now rather than later when prices go up.
At Geithner's Treasury, Key Decisions on Hold Many Advisers' Roles Are Undefined And Others Still Awaiting Confirmation Seven weeks after the Treasury Department announced that it was ousting General Motors chief G. Richard Wagoner Jr. in the federal bailout of the company, he is still technically on GM's payroll. Wagoner's removal has been held up because senior Treasury officials have yet to decide whether he should get the $20 million severance package that the company had promised him.
Home Depot chief warns on US housing Optimism in US market may be premature Growing optimism over the US housing market may be premature, a leading retailer warned on Tuesday. Frank Blake, chief executive of Home Depot, said housing market signals were still mixed. "We are concerned about the accelerating rates of foreclosures, particularly in the western part of the country," he said, noting that one out of every 54 homes in California was in foreclosure.
In U.S., Steps Toward Industrial Policy in Autos President Obama has cast himself as a reluctant interventionist in two of the nation's major industries, Wall Street and Detroit. The federal aid, he says, is a financial bridge to a postcrisis future and the hand-holding will be temporary. Even so, the scale of the government investment and control - especially by the auto task force now vetting plans at Chrysler and General Motors - points to an approach that has been shunned by the United States more than other developed nations.
U.S. Markets Spend the Day Treading Water Stocks were narrowly mixed in light trading on Tuesday as a surprise drop in construction and a cautious outlook from the retailer Home Depot led energy and utility stocks to pare gains. Wall Street has been trying to gauge the housing market for months as investors look for signs the economy is recovering. Stocks surged more than 3 percent on May 4 after unexpected increases in pending home sales and construction spending. "The housing number on the surface was horrible," said Alan Valdes, vice president at Hilliard Lyons in New York. But the whittling away of inventory will help prices eventually, Mr. Valdes said.
Senate passes credit-card reforms The Senate passed a measure on Tuesday that would limit significantly the powers of the credit-card industry, but an amendment loosening gun laws at national parks threatens to delay a compromise with the House. The measure, which passed by a 90-5 vote, curbs the ability of credit-card companies to increase interest rates and assess fees and penalties. The House easily passed a similar version earlier this spring.
Senators Push for Delay of 'Public Option' in Health-Care Plan Some senators drafting a health-care overhaul said they may support creating a new public health insurance program only if private insurers don't do enough to expand coverage and reduce costs. Senator Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican, said a bipartisan group on the Senate Finance Committee is discussing a delay for several years in creating a "public option" plan that would compete against private insurers. The lawmakers first want to see whether more uninsured Americans get coverage under other policy changes, such as new subsidies for lower-income people, Snowe said. Snowe said she views a new government health-care program as a gamble, in part because it might attract a high proportion of sicker patients who would drive up costs.
Obama proposes new vehicle-emission standards President Obama on Tuesday proposed a new policy that for the first time merges fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles with limits on tailpipe pollutants, an effort to unify regulations that will greatly influence how the country's beleaguered automakers design vehicles. "This is an historic agreement to help America break its dependency on oil," Mr. Obama said in the White House Rose Garden.
Terminated Chrylser dealerships to challenge sale Some auto dealers that Chrysler LLC plans to close are beginning a challenge to the automaker's plans to quickly sell itself in bankruptcy. The group, which calls itself the "Committee of Chrysler Affected Dealers," filed papers on Tuesday asking the bankruptcy court to delay hearings that would approve the sale and allow Chrysler to reject almost 800 of its dealership franchise agreements, or about 25 percent of its overall dealer network.
GM says still hasn't made deals with Treasury, UAW General Motors says doesn't expect to reach deals with UAW, Treasury before May 26 deadline General Motors Corp. said Tuesday it does not expect to reach agreement on concessions with the United Auto Workers union or with the Treasury Department on its debt-for-equity exchange before a May 26 deadline. Both deals are part of the restructuring effort GM must complete by June 1, or it could be sent into bankruptcy protection. GM said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that the agreements aren't expected to be reached by May 26 -- the deadline for GM's bondholders to accept an offer to take 10 percent of the company's stock in exchange for wiping out $27 billion in debt. GM had said in its original debt swap offer that it expected to disclose terms of a UAW deal to cut labor costs before that deadline.
GM bankruptcy plan eyes quick sale to government If General Motors Corp files for bankruptcy, as widely expected, its healthy assets will be quickly sold to a new company owned by the U.S. government, a source familiar with the situation said on Tuesday. The source, who was not cleared to speak with the media and would not be identified, said the U.S. government would pay for the assets by assuming the automaker's $6 billion of secured debt and forgiving the bulk of the $15.4 billion of emergency loans that the U.S. Treasury has provided to GM.
Obama Announces First Nationwide Regulation of Greenhouse Gases President Obama today proposed tough standards for tailpipe emissions from new automobiles, establishing the first nationwide regulation for greenhouse gases. New Auto Standards vs. Old U.S. Preferences Mileage Rules To Add to Price, Shrink Engines The cars of the near future will be lighter, more expensive and maybe smaller. Big engines will shrink. And more and more cars will be hybrids or diesel-powered vehicles like those common in Europe. Those aren't qualities that American consumers have rushed to embrace in the past. But the new fuel-efficiency and tailpipe-emissions standards unveiled yesterday at the White House will push automakers and motorists in a direction aimed at reducing U.S. oil dependence and the emissions of greenhouse gases, just part of the administration's program for remaking the ailing American car industry.
Max Keiser - Between the Headlines US foreign policy is involved with the financial crisis; shadow banking system and links between Washington and Wall Street
GPS system 'close to breakdown' Network of satellites could begin to fail as early as 2010 It has become one of the staples of modern, hi-tech life: using satellite navigation tools built into your car or mobile phone to find your way from A to B. But experts have warned that the system may be close to breakdown. US government officials are concerned that the quality of the Global Positioning System (GPS) could begin to deteriorate as early as next year, resulting in regular blackouts and failures - or even dishing out inaccurate directions to millions of people worldwide. The warning centres on the network of GPS satellites that constantly orbit the planet and beam signals back to the ground that help pinpoint your position on the Earth's surface. The satellites are overseen by the US Air Force, which has maintained the GPS network since the early 1990s. According to a study by the US government accountability office (GAO), mismanagement and a lack of investment means that some of the crucial GPS satellites could begin to fail as early as next year.
'US energy policy a threat to national security' America's energy posture constitutes a serious and urgent threat to national security -- militarily, diplomatically and economically, according to a blue-ribbon panel of top-ranking retired admirals and generals. In a report released on Tuesday entitled "Powering America's Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security" the military leaders warn that continuing business as usual is perilous and recommend immediate action to address the nation's long-term energy profile. By addressing its own security needs, the Department of Defense can help lead the transformation of U.S. energy use as an innovation incubator for new energy technologies.
Barack Obama snubbed as Senate withholds funds needed to close Guantanamo Bay President Barack Obama's plan to close the Guantanamo Bay prison by early 2010 ran into unexpectedly stiff opposition from his own Democratic Party yesterday when the Senate refused to provide funds he had requested. Mr Obama had asked for $80 million from Congress to pay for relocating the 240 prisoners still held on the US naval base in Cuba, but Democratic senators joined Republicans in demanding that a clear plan for the closure be presented before they approved the money. With American allies currently prepared to take more than a handful of the detainees, and others unwanted by their home countries, Republicans have successfully raised fears have that many will be freed into the US prisons or the public at large.
No 'Fairness Doctrine'? Prove it! Demands for vote to strip FCC of ability to restore broadcast policy House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid are being told to prove once and for all that the "Fairness Doctrine" will not be reinstated - by calling for a vote to strip the FCC of its authority to reinstitute the broadcast policy. FCC Chairman Michael Copps insisted Thursday that people who are concerned about a return of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" are "conspiracy theorists" and guilty of "issue mongering," but Media Research Center President Brent Bozell isn't buying it. "The Fairness Doctrine is long gone and it's not coming back," Copps said, calling the subject a "phony issue."
Republicans salute Obama's military tack Moves anger liberal Democrats Even as congressional Democrats feuded last week with the CIA in what at times seemed to be a throwback to the 1970s, President Obama was headed in the other direction in what may have been his most active week yet as commander in chief. He pushed through the House a spending bill to finance the war in Afghanistan and reversed himself, deciding to fight the release of photos purportedly showing humiliating treatment of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.
'Patriot pastors' called to crush 'hate crimes' bill Ministers ordered to fight for freedom, against criminalization of Christianity America has become a morally bankrupt society that embraces intolerance against Christians, including a new push for "hate crimes" legislation, according to one pastor who believes it's all because church leaders have failed to do their jobs. But this Memorial Day weekend he is calling ministers to fight for those freedoms - from their pulpits. "Pastors, if you wonder who is to blame for America's slide from the 'Ozzie and Harriet' morality of yesteryear to the 'Brokeback Mountain' immorality of today, look in the mirror," said Pastor Paul Blair of Fairview Baptist Church in Edmond, Okla.
Hundreds of thousands of letters given to senators Campaign in opposition to 'hate crimes' provisions growing Hundreds of thousands of letters have been dispatched to members of the U.S. Senate suggesting that the so-called "hate crimes" bill now pending before committee is the wrong way for the country to move.
THE WRENCHING TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA - part 1 . . . . I believe the American people, and their every action, are being ruled, regulated, restricted, licensed, registered, directed, checked, inspected, measured, numbered, counted, rated, stamped, censured, authorized, admonished, refused, prevented, drilled, indoctrinated, monopolized, extorted, robbed, hoaxed, fined, harassed, disarmed, dishonored, fleeced, exploited, assessed, and taxed to the point of suffocation and desperation.
THE WRENCHING TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA - part 2 Perhaps the most egregious action item offered in the Urban Environmental Accords dealt with the topic of water. Action item number 19 called for adoption and implementation of a policy to reduce individual water consumption. The UN document begins by stating: "Cities with potable water consumption greater than 100 liters per capita per day will adopt and implement policies to reduce consumption by 10% by 2015." There is no scientific basis for the 100 liter figure other than to employ a very clever use of numbers to lower the bar and control the debate over water consumption.
ARE YOU A TERRORIST? by Larry Pratt GOA http://gunowners.org/ The Obama Administration has told us who they think the real terrorists are. It's you! Although most Americans are probably still of the opinion that the main terrorist threat in our country comes from Muslim Jihadis, they are not the ones singled out in this report. They're not even mentioned, even though they were responsible for killing thousands of people on September 11, and for perpetrating other acts of violence using motor vehicles and firearms. But, what do most Americans know? Muslim Jihadi violence is not terrorism; it is simply a "man-caused disaster," according to the administration. With that handy definition in mind, the Department of Homeland Security has issued a secret report (which was eventually leaked to the media) entitled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climates Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment."
Congress Trying To Implement The Medical Records Gun Ban Congress is moving closer to a showdown over the largest expansion of government in modern U.S. history -- a bill which would require virtually every single American to buy government-approved health insurance, whether they wanted it or not. And, in the process, that bill would feed all of your most confidential medical data into an enormous database, which could be used to take away your guns. This is a bit complicated. But here's where we are: Once a year, the 1974 Budget Act allows Congress to pass a bill -- solely for the purpose of balancing the budget -- and that bill cannot be filibustered in the Senate. Hence, it can be passed with only fifty Democrat votes (plus the vice president), without any Republican support.
Gun Owners Are On The Verge Of A Huge, Legislative Victory -- The next few days could see the end of the pernicious gun ban on NPS lands Get ready to pinch yourself. After eight years of clashing with anti-gun bureaucrats and congressional leadership hostile to gun rights, we have never been closer to victory in the battle to repeal the National Park Service (NPS) gun ban. As you are by now undoubtedly aware, NPS land is subject to a blanket gun ban. A Bush administration regulation partially reversing the ban was singlehandedly negated recently by an activist judge in Washington, D.C. Gun Owners of America reported last week about an amendment to repeal the gun ban, sponsored by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), that passed by an overwhelming 67-29 vote. Senator Coburn attached his amendment to a fast-moving "must pass bill," H.R. 627, dealing with credit card industry reform.
****This article is about Ted Kennedy's Legislation PASSED in congress April 21, pressing ALL Americans into 'service' - young and old alike, and more to restrict your freedoms of choice. "SERVICE LEARNING" THROUGH SOVIET BRAINWASHING "Lenin outlined a program for an active participation by both children and adolescents in the building of socialism. ... Socially useful work should serve as a school of collectivism."[1] "...expand and strengthen service-learning programs through year-round opportunities ... in order to renew the ethic of civic responsibility and the spirit of community for children and youth throughout the United States."[2] Serve America Act (GIVE, H.R.1388), signed into law on April 21 Read the bill - you won't like it, but IT IS NOW the LAW: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.1388:
Town halls hire citizen snoopers as young as SEVEN to spy on neighbours and report wrongs Children as young as seven are being recruited by councils to act as 'citizen snoopers', the Daily Mail can reveal. The 'environment volunteers' will report on litter louts, noisy neighbours - and even families putting their rubbish out on the wrong day. There are currently almost 9,000 people signed up to the schemes. More are likely to be recruited in the coming months. Controversially, some councils are running 'junior' schemes which are recruiting children. After basic training, volunteers are expected to be the 'eyes and the ears' of the town hall.
Mexico's Peso Gains to 6-Month High on U.S. Banks' Refund Offer Mexico's peso climbed to a six-month high after U.S. banks applied to refund government bailout cash, adding to speculation the worst of the financial crisis is over. The currency rose 0.6 percent to 12.9465 per U.S. dollar at 5 p.m. New York time, from 13.0204 yesterday. Earlier it touched 12.8820, the highest since Nov. 11. The peso has risen 5.6 percent this year.
U.S.-Israel forming working group on Iran Set to assess progress of outreach, share intelligence The United States and Israel are quietly forming a high-level working group to assess the progress of President Obama's outreach to Iran and to share intelligence about the Islamic Republic's nuclear weapons program, officials familiar with the two countries' deliberations said Tuesday. The agreement, reached during Monday's meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr. Obama, gives the U.S. a clear channel for communicating with the new Israeli government and a vehicle for keeping tabs on any military contingency plans Israel might make if diplomacy fails and Iran develops nuclear weapons capability.
Obama Urges Israel to Support Palestinian Statehood President Barack Obama urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to support Palestinian statehood and said reaching a peace agreement would give the U.S. more leverage in trying to thwart Iran's nuclear program. Obama said he wants the U.S. and its allies to begin a "serious process of engagement" with Iran after elections there in June. He also plans an assessment of whether the Iranians are serious about talks by the end of the year. The U.S. president drew an explicit link between progress on the Israel-Palestinian conflict and pressuring Iran to the negotiating table.
China on the rise once more across the East If any more evidence of China's steady ascent towards Asian regional dominance was needed, the climax of Sri Lanka's war has provided the proof. An ally of Beijing has fought a bitterly controversial conflict to a final victory, while shrugging off international protests along the way. India, the other Asian giant, is only 50 miles from Sri Lanka across the waters of the Palk Straits, yet it has been shown to have far less influence on its neighbour than China. Through a combination of strategic investments in seaports and pipelines, along with direct financial and military support for friendly governments, China is building a web of influence across South Asia. Many of Beijing's immensely ambitious projects are years away from fruition, yet the repercussions of these ventures are already being felt.
Study urges U.S. to tone down Tehran conflict As President Obama on Monday promised tough action to persuade Iran not to develop nuclear weapons, a major study prepared for the U.S. Air Force recommended "de-escalating" unilateral U.S. pressure on Tehran while strengthening multilateral sanctions and engaging Iran on regional security issues. The new study by the Rand Corp., a nonprofit organization for research and analysis, dismisses hopes that bilateral U.S.-Iran talks alone will change Tehran's behavior as "unrealistic" and advocates a broad international effort that would leverage incentives and punishment, depending on Iran's response.
Venezuelan Sway on Region Fades With Oil Wealth CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chávez's push to extend his sway in Latin America is waning amid low oil prices and disorder in Venezuela's own energy industry. In recent years, Mr. Chávez has used his nation's oil wealth to drive his socialist-inspired agenda at home and draw other countries in the region into his sphere of influence, helping to consolidate a leftward political shift in parts of Latin America. But more than a dozen big projects intended to broaden his nation's reach are in limbo - including a gas pipeline across the continent and at least eight refineries, from Jamaica to Uruguay - as Venezuela grapples with falling revenues and other troubles in its national oil company.
Arms From U.S. May Be Falling Into Taliban Hands KABUL, Afghanistan - Insurgents in Afghanistan, fighting from some of the poorest and most remote regions on earth, have managed for years to maintain an intensive guerrilla war against materially superior American and Afghan forces. Arms and ordnance collected from dead insurgents hint at one possible reason: Of 30 rifle magazines recently taken from insurgents' corpses, at least 17 contained cartridges, or rounds, identical to ammunition the United States had provided to Afghan government forces, according to an examination of ammunition markings by The New York Times and interviews with American officers and arms dealers.
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Central Banks drive gold, commodities The latest rally in commodity prices was driven by Central Banks’ policies, Chinese strategic buying and short-covering activity. Gold prices rose in the past few months, mainly driven by safe-haven demand amid the global financial and economic crisis. While this demand supported prices, it also generated risks, some of which materialized – with safe-haven investors taking profits, resulting in a price decline. The softening of prices gave the physical market much needed breathing space.
America's Coming Tectonic Shift Something just seems fundamentally wrong, and it's unnerving. What may be about to happen to our Republic is a complete change in what we've always thought was permanent in America. Glenn Beck calls it "The Perfect Storm" and the term is prescient. Several domestic and worldwide events could utterly change our lives forever. The events are economic, sociological, geo-political, and military. If the outcome is to be for good or ill, is up to the American people.
America and the world are in for a difficult time We have come a long way from Dow 14,168 and we have just completed a strong bear market rally based on little but hopes, dreams and the assistance of the "Working Group on Financial Markets" under the guidance of the Treasury and the Fed. We believe the bear market has a substantial distance to fall as the debt sector is purged. A 50% retraction of debt, which is far above GDP has to be completed, excess capacity has to be rung out of markets, consumer spending, which is now 70% of GDP, has to return to the long-term average of 64.5% of GDP. Once real estate bottoms in 2011 and 2012, we will probably be half way to the overall bottom. We have 2/3's of the way to go before credit card debt is purged. We are just beginning to see failure of commercial and industrial loans and that could last another 3 to 4 years. Presently we are about 40% to the bottom. Then the question arises how long do we bump along the bottom - probably 5 years or longer - dependent on how bad the structural damage is, whether we still have a Federal Reserve; how many banks are left; whether we have WWIII or whether we have revolution. America and the world are in for a difficult time.
Global systemic crisis: June 2009 When the world steps out of a sixty-year old referential framework . . . . First, the desperate attempts to rescue the global financial system, particularly the American and British systems, have de facto "broken navigational instruments" as a result of all the manipulation exerted by financial institutions themselves and by concerned governments and central banks. Among those panic-stricken and panic-striking indicators, stock markets are a perfect case as we shall see in further detail in this issue of the GEAB. Meanwhile, the two charts below brilliantly illustrate how these desperate efforts failed to prevent the world's bank ranking from experiencing a major seism (it is mostly in 2007 that the end of the American-British domination in this ranking was triggered).
Abandoning the gold standard in 1971 has resulted in large global trade imbalances and a massive buildup of foreign currency reserves
These trade imbalances and buildup of foreign reserves have resulted in frequent booms and busts since 1971
The Japanese bust of 1989, the Asian economic crisis of 1997, and the current US credit market collapse have resulted from the post-1971 paper money monetary system
Abandoning the gold standard has gradually resulted in a very overvalued US dollar, and that the dollar is headed for disaster
“The dollar standard is inherently flawed and increasingly unstable. Its collapse will be the most important economic event of the 21st century.”
When we run out of cash What happens when we run out of cash? It's a serious question that hasn't been asked. The US government has committed something like $13.6 trillion dollars in bailout funds, securities swaps and giveaway programs. What if there isn't $13.6 million spare cash in the world to fund it? Times, they are going to get interesting.
Niall Ferguson: Diminished Returns Regulation Can't Be The Solution If financial crises were distributed along a bell curve — like traffic accidents or people’s heights — really big ones wouldn’t happen very often. When the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management lost 44 percent of its value in August 1998, its managers were flabbergasted. According to their value-at-risk models, a loss of this magnitude in a single month was so unlikely that it ought never to have happened in the entire life of the universe. Just over a decade later, many more of us now know what it’s like to lose 44 percent of our money. Even after the recent stock-market rally, that’s about how much the Standard & Poor’s 500 index is down compared with October 2007.
Niall Ferguson Financial crisis and international change: historian Niall Ferguson on past financial emergencies and whether the current crisis in American credit markets will result in power flowing from West to East. Monday September 29 2008
Geithner's Treasury Can't Get Anything Done The Treasury Department is a mess. That's the inescapable conclusion from this morning's big Washington Post feature on how things just aren't getting done at the Treasury Department these days. David Cho describes a host of delays, backtracks and fumbles that, taken together, paint an ugly picture of one of the most economically important government department during the most devastating economic crisis in generations.
Federal Reserve: Agricultural credit tightened WICHITA, Kan. - More lenders are tightening their restrictions for agricultural loans in the Midwest at the same time that repayments on loans have dropped, The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City says. The Federal Reserve reported Friday that its quarterly survey found that the percentage of lenders raising collateral requirements reached another record high in the Tenth Federal Reserve District. The rate of loan repayments also fell for the second straight quarter. Turbulent agricultural conditions contributed to the tightened farm credit, the agency said. "The thing to take away from all of this is ... farmers are positioning themselves to get through turbulent times," Federal Reserve economist Brian Briggeman said. The district includes Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Wyoming as well as parts of New Mexico and Missouri.
Battery makers vie for US aid A handful of US battery makers is scrambling for government support ahead of a deadline this week as the US struggles to win back lost ground from Asian competitors in one of the world's next important technologies. The race is also the first test of how the administration will use the near-$190bn in stimulus money earmarked this year to support "green" technologies, from alternative fuels to energy-efficient building materials. Advanced batteries are seen as a strategic technology, given their importance to electric and hybrid vehicles, and their military applications.
American Express will eliminate 4,000 jobs 6 percent of work force affected in move to trim $800 million by year’s end American Express said Monday it is eliminating about 4,000 jobs as part of a plan to slash another $800 million in costs for the remainder of the year. . . . . . . The newest plan follows $1.8 billion in cost cuts — including 7,000 layoffs — announced in October of last year. The company also suspended management-level salary increases and instituted a hiring freeze at the time.
You'll never guess which states have most jobless Labor could loom large in mid-term elections Unemployment in March was 20 percent higher in so-called "blue states" won by Democratic candidate Barack Obama in last fall's presidential election than in "red states" won by Republican candidate John McCain, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If unemployment numbers in the blue states do not begin improving soon, the Democratic Party may start expressing concerns about 2010 mid-term election losses in both governor races and in Congress, many political observers say.
New rules: Work 'til you die Social Security, Medicare facing insolvency Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced that Medicare would run out of money in 2017 and Social Security would do the same in 2037, both sooner than previously projected, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports. Both are reaching a tipping point as federal government tax revenue slows dramatically, unemployment rates increase and program benefit payouts grow.
Ex-Rocky staffers plan to launch online magazine DENVER - After splitting from financial backers of one online news venture, some former staffers of the defunct Rocky Mountain News plan to launch an online news magazine this summer. The Rocky Mountain Independent would have free original content but would be supported by advertising and members who pay for benefits like premium content and live chats, co-founder Steve Foster said. Content would come from a staff of about a dozen, plus freelancers and partner blogs that would share content and revenue.
Fast-Track Foreclosures in Texas Face Slowdown by Legislators Carlos Perez and Belinda Castillo of El Paso, Texas, were two months behind on their mortgage in January when the lender demanded that they catch up or face foreclosure. Two months later, their three-bedroom, Southwestern- style house was auctioned on the courthouse steps. Forty-one days is all it takes for some Texans to lose a home to foreclosure. That fast track from default notice to forced sale is the quickest of any U.S. state, according to a report from the Texas Housing and Community Affairs Department.
What to tax to pay for health care? Few experts think cutting costs will provide enough savings despite pledges A federal soda pop tax. Higher levies on beer, wine and hard liquor. Taxing some health insurance benefits. Those are among the options the Senate is considering to pay for revamping health care. How to pay for expanding coverage to nearly 50 million uninsured people is the toughest question in the health care debate. Cutting costs is a popular idea, but few experts think enough savings can be wrung from the system to expand coverage to so many - despite pledges from medical providers.
Testimony of illegal alien care from 1 Florida hospital
As Detroit Crumbles, China Emerges as Auto Epicenter America's auto titans are dismantling their global empires. But across the Pacific, it's as if the global economic forces that have pummeled Detroit never struck. Chinese auto sales are up, and this year China is projected to displace Japan as the world's largest car producer. Now, the auto world is buzzing that China's auto industry may try to pick up the pieces of Detroit -- at a bargain.
Obama fails to coax Netanyahu on two-state plan Barack Obama offered Benjamin Netanyahu a trademark dose of warmth and conciliation on Monday while politely distancing himself from many of the Israeli premier's hardline positions on the Arab-Israeli conflict. But Mr Obama did not succeed in persuading Mr Netanyahu to sign up to a two-state solution. After a two-hour meeting in the White House, the Israeli leader said his country was willing to resume peace talks immediately. But he stopped short of saying the Palestinians should have a fully fledged state, saying they "should govern themselves - absent a handful of powers that could endanger the state of Israel".
FBI Agent: Another 9/11 “Inevitable” The Obama administration’s policies are making another terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland “inevitable,” according to a former fbi agent. In an interview with Newsmax, John Vincent said the U.S. administration is repeating the mistakes of the past, leaving the country vulnerable. “I’m not exactly sure where the president is coming from, but all the signals he gives out is that the United States is prepared to talk peace, we’re not going to do anything to upset any of the people that are conducting all these terrorist acts, we’re going to back out of everything we’ve done before, we’re going to apologize for everything we’ve done in the past—what kind of signals does that send?” Vincent asked. “It sends a signal of weakness and: ‘We are not willing to try and stop what you have planned.’”
Pakistan Is Rapidly Adding Nuclear Arms, U.S. Says Members of Congress have been told in confidential briefings that Pakistan is rapidly adding to its nuclear arsenal even while racked by insurgency, raising questions on Capitol Hill about whether billions of dollars in proposed military aid might be diverted to Pakistan’s nuclear program.
Special section: LEARN ABOUT CAP AND TRADE
Why Congress Is Obsessed With Cap And Trade
A brief history of cap and trade legislation From a Theory to a Consensus on Emissions As Congress weighs imposing a mandatory limit on climate-altering gases — an outcome still far from certain — it is likely to turn to a system that sets a government ceiling on total emissions and allows polluting industries to buy and sell permits to meet it. That approach, known as cap and trade, has been embraced by President Obama, Democratic leaders in Congress, mainstream environmental groups and a growing number of business interests, including energy-consuming industries like autos, steel and aluminum.
Beware of Cap and Trade Climate Bills America's Climate Security Act of 2007 (S. 2191), sponsored by Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA), is the latest and fastest-moving "cap and trade" bill introduced in Congress this year. All such climate change measures warrant careful scrutiny, as they would likely increase energy costs and do considerably more economic harm than environmental good.
Cap-and-trade policy begins to take shape The White House science adviser says there's room for compromise on an emission allowance, a stance that would please business but anger environmentalists. John P. Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told The Washington Post a cadre of Cabinet-level officials is trying to develop principles to guide cap-and-trade legislation as it travels through Congress. Cap-and-trade, also called emission trading, is an administrative process that seeks to control pollution by providing economic incentives to polluting companies for achieving reductions in the emission of pollutants.
Florida Power Light's ambitious solar roll out. The last time Florida Power & Light Co. built a power plant from scratch at a brand-new site, the country was reeling from an energy crisis. It was 1980, and fed-up Americans were eyeing wind and the sun as alternatives to fossil fuels. As FPL opened the oil and gas plant in Martin County, the first solar plants were being envisioned in California. Windmills were sprouting around the country.
Battery makers scramble to get funding ahead of deadline A handful of US battery makers is scrambling for government support ahead of a deadline this week as the US struggles to win back lost ground from Asian competitors in one of the world’s next important technologies. The race is also the first test of how the administration will use the near-$190bn in stimulus money earmarked this year to support “green” technologies, from alternative fuels to energy-efficient building materials.
Toyota aims to sell 10,000 Prius' a month in Japan Toyota Sets Japan Prius Goal Double Honda’s Target Toyota Motor Corp. began Japan sales of a revamped Prius, the world’s bestselling hybrid, setting a sales target twice as high as Honda Motor Co.’s goal for the Insight. Toyota plans to sell 10,000 Prius cars a month in Japan, with prices starting at 2.05 million yen ($21,600), it said in a statement. The car, on sale from today, is the third version of the Prius, which has racked up global sales of more than 1.25 million since 1997.
Obama Ready To Unveil New Fuel Economy Standards Automakers will have to hit 35 miles per gallon by 2016. That's 42 mpg for cars and 26.2 for trucks and SUVs, according the Times. This updates a previous law that said they'd have to hit the 35 mpg benchmark by 2020. Earlier this year Obama announced a fuel economy standard of 30 mpg by 2011 for cars and 24 mpg for light trucks and SUVs.
Jordan and Shell To Proceed With Oil Shale Development Jordan and Shell are signing an agreement to further the development and potential commercialization of the country’s oil shale resources. The agreement outlines a three-stage process leading to a commercialization decision in about 10 years. “This project, if successful, is going to be a large scale one with multibillion-dollar investments in the Kingdom,” he said. “It will change the Kingdom’s face,”
Cutting funds for hydrogen fuel research is a mistake Energy Secretary's Proposal to Cut Hydrogen Fuel Cell R&D Is A Turn for the Worse One week has nearly passed since Energy Secretary Stephen Chu proposed slashing more than $100 million from Uncle Sam's hydrogen research and development program, and all of us should still be mystified and bothered by his proposal. Chu's rationale for cutting hydrogen funding by 59 percent to just $68 million: It's unlikely that the technology will become significant player during the next two decades.
Questions about the economic feasibility of oil sands, as well as the amount of greenhouse gasses they throw off Report Weighs Fallout of Canada’s Oil Sands In the tense debate between energy security and environmental sustainability, Canada’s vast oil sand reserves hold a special place. Canada has the second-largest petroleum deposits after Saudi Arabia and the biggest in the Western hemisphere. Its oil sands produce 1.3 million barrels of oil a day, up from 600,000 a day in 2000. As a result, Canada has become the biggest foreign oil supplier to the United States, accounting for 19 percent of imports in 2008.
As Alaska Glaciers Melt, It’s Land That’s Rising JUNEAU, Alaska — Global warming conjures images of rising seas that threaten coastal areas. But in Juneau, as almost nowhere else in the world, climate change is having the opposite effect: As the glaciers here melt, the land is rising, causing the sea to retreat. Morgan DeBoer, a property owner, opened a nine-hole golf course at the mouth of Glacier Bay in 1998, on land that was underwater when his family first settled here 50 years ago.
Can vegetarians save the world? A small town in Belgium has gone meat-free one day a week. A sign of things to come, says one food historian For decades, environmental arguments against eating meat have been largely the preserve of vegetarian websites and magazines. Just two years ago it seemed inconceivable that significant numbers of western Europeans would be ready to down their steak knives and graze on vegetation for the sake of the planet. The rapidity with which this situation has changed is astonishing.
"Made in Germany" not enough for solars to prosper German solar companies that have not yet set up U.S. and Chinese production plants are likely to lose out on significant subsidies and will struggle to bring down their production costs to the levels of their Asian peers. Announcements of solar subsidy programs in the two countries have supported the recent surge in solar stocks around the world, with China mulling more than 3 trillion yuan ($439.6 billion) to boost renewable energy in the country by 2020.
Indiana Says 'No Thanks' to Cap and Trade No honest person thinks this will make a dent in climate change. This week Congress is set to release the details of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, a bill that purports to combat global warming by setting strict limits on carbon emissions. I'm not a candidate for any office -- now or ever again -- and I've approached the "climate change" debate with an open-mind. But it's clear to me that the nation, and in particular Indiana, my home state, will be terribly disserved by this cap-and-trade policy on the verge of passage in the House.
Obama Administration Trying To Rename Cap And Trade The Obama administration is exploring alternative names for cap and trade legislation. People don't really know what cap and trade means, but they don't like it. So a new name is being concocted to gather support for the legislation. It doesn't look like the names "carbon tax" or "regressive tax" are in the mix, though. How does "clean energy dividend" grab you?
Oil, Gas, Coal, Spending Hundreds Of Millions To Fight Cap And Trade The oil, gas and coal industries increased their lobbying budgets by 50% in the first quarter of 2009, with $44.5 million being spent to undermine any plans to reduce CO2 emissions, the Guardian reports. The spoiler campaign runs to hundreds of millions of dollars and involves industry front groups, lobbying firms, television, print and radio advertising, and donations to pivotal members of Congress. Its intention is to water down or kill off plans by the Democratic leadership to pass "cap and trade" legislation this year, which would place limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The cap and trade legislation is currently being hammered out in the House of Representatives and hinges on the approval of 12 Democrats. Seven of those democrats received over $100,000 in campaign donations from oil, gas, and electricity producers in last year's elections. Two others received over $90,000.
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Mon 05.18.2009
Don't Count On Your 401(k) "Our nation's system of retirement security is imperiled, headed for a serious train wreck. That wreck is not merely waiting to happen; we are running on a dangerous track that is leading directly to a serious crash that will disable major parts of our retirement system." -- John Bogle, Feb. 24 If several years before the financial and credit crisis hit, someone had told you that the housing market was preposterously overvalued and derivatives were headed for cataclysm, would it have been worth paying attention to? The answer's pretty clearly yes, ain't it? Of course, some of the best minds in finance -- from Warren Buffett to Yale housing economist Robert Shiller -- did. It's just that hardly anyone listened. Now there's another crisis building. It's just as big. Again, some of the best thinkers in the financial world are warning about it. (Yes, Buffett's one of them.) And yet again, as is often the case with gathering storms, most of us are doing our best to ignore the warning signs. Americans lost almost a quarter of their retirement savings last year. Yet even if there were no market drop, we'd still be facing a disaster in the making.
Guaranty Financial on the Rocks Guaranty Financial should be included in OA’s “bank death watch.” With $15 billion in assets and $11.6 billion in deposits as of 12/31, Guaranty Bank would be the largest bank failure in 2009.* Reader Andrew tipped us off to their second “notification of late filing” regarding Q1 financials. Like BankUnited, Guaranty’s balance sheet is so messy, the company is at a loss regarding its financial condition. Also like BKUNA, the bank has orders to raise capital or face seizure.
Treasuries Advance as Stocks Fall, Fed Prepares to Buy Debt Three times this week Treasuries rose, adding to last week’s gain, as Asian stocks extended losses and the Federal Reserve prepared to buy 10-year notes today. Benchmark 10-year yields will fall about 40 basis points by mid-year and the U.S. economic recovery may stall, according to a report from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., one of the 16 primary dealers that trade directly with the Fed. The central bank also plans to buy Treasuries on May 20 and May 21 as part of its plan to cap borrowing costs and combat the steepest U.S. recession in 50 years. “The economy is still in trouble,” said Takashi Yamamoto, chief trader in Singapore at Mitsubishi UFJ Trust & Banking Corp., part of Japan’s biggest bank. “Yields will go down.”
DOLLAR CRISIS IN THE MAKING, Part 1 Before the stampede Increasingly ominous clouds are gathering in what could soon be the perfect storm against the United States dollar and against the present dollar-centric global financial order. This is not shaping up to be a storm that anyone is trying to initiate, not even those who are actively driving for a new global financial order that is no longer centered on the dollar. Instead, it will result from a correlation of forces arising out of the deepening global financial and economic crises, coupled with recurring and conspicuous miscalculation on the part of some of the world's political, financial and economic leaders. The storm has the potential to cause upheaval on a grand scale, opening the door to swift, and largely uncontrolled, fundamental transformation.
DOLLAR CRISIS IN THE MAKING, Part 2 The not-so-safe haven Official and popular analysis of the predicament facing the US dollar has for the most part been distinctly unwilling to come fully to grips with the stark truth about the real nature of this deepening crisis and the escalating risks that are surfacing. Far too much optimism and wishful thinking, and scarce courageous realism, is a recipe for an even worse disaster than the one we're suffering at present. We have seen in Part 1 the profound risks of a dollar crisis being triggered if global demand for US Treasuries remains high and that the debt bubble persistently and destructively sucks all the air out of the global credit markets. However, if global demand for Treasuries is not sustained at a very high level, there exists an entirely different, yet equally destructive set of impending and mounting risks that a dollar crisis might be triggered.
DOLLAR CRISIS IN THE MAKING, Part 3 China inoculates itself against dollar collapse There is mounting evidence that China's central bank is undertaking the process of divesting itself of longer-dated US Treasuries in favor of shorter-dated ones. There is also mounting evidence that China's increasingly energetic new campaign of capitalizing on the global crisis by making resource buys across the globe may be
helping its central bank to decrease exposure to the dollar, while
simultaneously positioning China to make much greater profit on its investment of its reserves into hard assets whose prices are now greatly beaten down, while
also affording it greatly increased control of strategic resources and the geopolitical clout that goes with it. This is turning out to be a win-win-win situation for China as it capitalizes upon the important opportunities afforded it by the present global crisis.
Elizabeth Warren Introduces COP's May Report
China is right to fear US dollar debauchery The US dollar has weakened sharply against the euro over the last week. Optimism is one reason: investors feel cheerful enough to leave the supposedly safe haven of the greenback. But fear is another reason. In the middle of the week, China's central bank warned of a "policy mistake" by some of its western peers. The Chinese are worried that the decisions by the US and the UK to try to print their way out of economic trouble will end badly. The money creation could end up debauching the dollar and pound and inviting a global inflationary crisis.
The Almighty Renminbi? Chinese Yuan will eventually take over from the dollar as reserve currency THE 19th century was dominated by the British Empire, the 20th century by the United States. We may now be entering the Asian century, dominated by a rising China and its currency. While the dollar’s status as the major reserve currency will not vanish overnight, we can no longer take it for granted. Sooner than we think, the dollar may be challenged by other currencies, most likely the Chinese renminbi. This would have serious costs for America, as our ability to finance our budget and trade deficits cheaply would disappear.
Fed plays proxy for China Both the US Federal Reserve and the bond markets have a vested interest in seeing yields on Treasuries of all stripes remain very low, and this is especially so when it comes to the longer-dated assets. Low yields tend to keep the costs for financing government spending low. Since quite a number of loan rates, such as home mortgages, are tied to the yield on certain Treasuries, low yields tend to bring down interest rates on key consumer and business borrowing, which then tends to liven-up seized credit. Holders of Treasuries, especially the longer-dated assets, don't want to see yields rise because that eats away at the value of their holdings. So, if the interests of the Fed and those of the bond markets coincide on low yields, where's the clash of wills between the two parties?
China keeps buying U.S. bonds despite concerns China is pumping more money into US Treasury bonds, recent data show, despite concerns expressed in Beijing in recent months over the safety of dollar-linked assets. Mainland China's holding of Treasury securities jumped to 767.9 billion US dollars in March from 744.2 billion US dollars the previous month, according to US Treasury data. The figure does not include those of Hong Kong, China's special administration region, which climbed to 78.9 billion US dollars from 76.3 billion US dollars. The statistics showed China sitting comfortably as the top purchaser of Treasury bonds despite years trying to diversify its reserves from the US dollar.
Have China watchers never heard of a decoy? I would bet that the Chinese have been busy using their Treasury debt as collateral against FIXED-interest-rate loans. They will have used this money to buy real assets. We know they have bought at least 454 tonnes of gold. They are importing 70 percent more copper than they consume. They are filling up a strategic petroleum reserve. They have been going around the world making deals for raw materials and acquisitions of small-enough companies that they fly under the radar. (The Chinese learned their lesson from trying to buy Unocal.) . . . . . . . . The Chinese have a $300 billion sovereign wealth fund. If that is properly positioned in commodities, it alone will hedge China's entire bond portfolio. The notion that the Chinese have accumulated this massive U.S. debt portfolio and only now are wondering what to do about it is so naive it doesn't warrant serious consideration. I have dealt with Chinese in business and they are the sharpest knives in the drawer. My guess is that China has already diversified most of its dollar holdings.
The China Puzzle . . . . Over the past decade, China and the United States have developed a deeply symbiotic, and dangerous, relationship. China discovered that an economy built on cheap exports would allow it to grow faster than it ever had and to create enough jobs to mollify its impoverished population. American consumers snapped up these cheap exports — shoes, toys, electronics and the like — and China soon found itself owning a huge pile of American dollars. Governments don’t like to hold too much cash, because it pays no return, so the Chinese bought many, many Treasury bonds with their dollars. This additional demand for Treasuries was one big reason (though not the only reason) that interest rates fell so low in recent years. Thanks to those low interest rates, Americans were able to go on a shopping spree and buy some things, like houses, they couldn’t really afford. China kept lending and exporting, and we kept borrowing and consuming. It all worked very nicely, until it didn’t.
Asia will author its own destruction if it triggers a crisis over US bonds Japan beware, crashes have a habit of bringing regime change ET TU TOKYO? If Washington is counting on Japan to act as last-resort buyer of US dollar bonds, it may have to think again. Masaharu Nakagawa, finance chief of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), told the BBC that his country should not purchase any more US debt unless issued in yen as "Samurai" bonds, akin to "Carter bonds" in 1978. This is the sort of petulance that tends to emerge in the late phase of slumps (1840s, early 1930s) when mass lay-offs provoke a populist backlash and hotheads run away with the agenda. Mr Nakagawa later played down the comments, calling them private thoughts, but the genie is out of the bottle.
The Problem With Debt 5.4 million homeowners now owe more on their houses than their houses are worth, up from 13.6 million four months ago. The number will probably top 20 million when all is said and done. To mark this sad stat, we've updated our post from last fall on the power of leverage. As Warren Buffett succinctly observed, anything multiplied by zero is zero. Put differently, when the value of the asset drops below the value of the debt used to buy it, poof. Nowhere is this concept more important than in the housing market.
Peter Schiff Vlog Report 15 May 2009 Americans have to figure out how to convert shopping malls back into factories to produce for ourselves and rebuild our savings - process is harder because of what the government is doing. Our recession will get worse and worse.
Central Banks May Need More Oversight Authority, BIS Says Central banks may need more supervisory authority over financial companies that pose a danger to the financial system, the Bank for International Settlements said. “If central banks are to play a key role in dealing with systemic risk when applying a more macro-prudential approach, they may also need to have closer oversight of systemically significant institutions,” the Basel-based BIS said in a report to be published tomorrow [Monday, May 18th].
There Will Be No Recovery All the glad-handing, back-slapping self-congratulatory accolades the Obama administration and Wall Street are heaping upon themselves in the press is scant comfort for the vast majority of citizens now unemployed and of no fixed address. For them, this economic crisis isn’t so much a temporary crisis as a permanent redistribution of wealth and living standards representative of a downgrade in the quality of life. A dispassionate eye, equitably minded, would regard the current gross imbalance among haves and have nots as a simple case of injustice, easily rectified. Those travelling daily in jets and Escalades leveraged the savings and credit ratings of the common people to agglomerate assets onto their own balance sheets to satisfy a sense of entitlement derived from an overpriced education.
U. S. Banks Are Already Bunkrupt? - Bloomberg
*** professor make some excellent points, thinks Fed is making mistakes; doing what congress should be deciding. Inside Look - Inflation Threat Looming? - Bloomberg Interview with Carnegie Mellon Professor, Dr. Alan Meltzer
As Smash-and-Grab Capitalism Collapses, the French Economy Shines Many in Britain and the United States are in mourning for what’s taken as the suicide of the American (or Thatcherite, or Chicago-school) model of capitalism, accompanied by the non-interventionist state that hands the national economy over to business and financial leaders to run. Not least among the mourners ought to be The Economist magazine in London, a major part of whose charm has always been the insolent certitude with which it expresses its views. It is not a publication used to lunching on its own words. But The Economist too has become a victim of the world crisis, and its current issue’s cover story pays a handsome tribute to the success of the formerly scorned, centralized, interventionist, Colbertist French economic model, and the state practices and values that support it.
Fed Up by Ron PAUL Audit the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve's recent and unprecedented actions in the realm of monetary policy have provoked a backlash among the American people. Trillions of dollars worth of loans and guarantees have been provided to Wall Street firms, while Main Street Americans suffocate under harsh taxation, the prospect of higher debt levels and increasing inflation. These events have awakened many Americans to problems with the Fed's loose monetary policy, the bubbles it has created in the past and the potential hyperinflation it might cause in the future.
Ron Paul Discusses Austrian vs Keynesian Economics 5/15/2009
Lady's got ants in her pants Nobody's having more fun watching Nancy Pelosi squirm than the ants in her pants. The dowager queen of Capitol Hill was shocked - shocked! - by what's been going on at Guantanamo, and reveled in telling everyone so. Now it turns out that maybe she wasn't so shocked after all. When she was told soon after 9/11 that some of the prisoners there had been deprived of sleep and "waterboarded" she did not object. Like everyone else back in the day, she was terrified that 9/11 was merely a prelude to something really, really bad.
Marc Faber: Capitalism Will Fall Like Communism Thailand resident Marc Faber says it's highly possible that capitalism will fail just like communism did, and he guarantees that the US government will go bust (that's going to suck!). CNBC.com: The years 2006 and 2007 were "the peak of prosperity" and the world economy is not likely to return soon to that level, he added. "I think the final low in markets will occur when the system is cleaned out," Faber said. The Federal Reserve's policy of printing money is destabilizing the markets and creating "enormous volatility" said Faber, who in his latest "Gloom, Boom & Doom Report" wrote that it was money printing that had pushed stock prices up. "The US government for sure will go bust. That I guarantee you. Not tomorrow, but it will go bust," he added.
No Global Recovery Anytime Soon Dr. Doom
Portugese Authorities Investigating $50 Billion Scam On JP Morgan Chase A Portuguese website reports that authorities are investigating an attempted transfer of 50 billion dollars (36.6 billion euros) from JP Morgan Chase in what might where result would be the biggest fraud ever, rivaling the Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff. According to the website, Publico, the scam transfer was attempted by an unidentified woman, who presented a bank in Lisbon with an interbank contract for the transfer of 36.4 million euros.
Obama Adminstration Wants to Slash Defense Contractors by Hiring More Than 30,000 New Federal Employees Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he wants to reduce the role support-service contractor employees by a third and replace them with more than 30,000 new government employees. . . . . . . The Pentagon, he said, plans to reduce “the number of support service contractors from our current 39 percent of the workforce to the pre-2001 level of 26 percent and replacing them with full-time government employees. “Our goal is to hire as many as 13,800 new civil servants in FY10 (fiscal year 2010) to replace contractors and up to 33,600 new civil servants in place of contractors over the next five years,” Gates told the committee.
Marc Faber on the US stock market pt 1/3 May 13 2009 future inflation in US will be higher than assumed
Marc Faber pt 2/3 May 13 2009 cash & bonds vs equities and commodities - demand for oil will go up in Asia
Marc Faber pt 3/3 May 13 2009 Western world is NOT growing anymore - US is contracting which could lead to war with emerging nations; printing of money and fiscal deficits are a disaster - one way to distract from fiscal irresponsibility is to engage in war
Toxic Plastic Relief Too Late for Many as Rates Rise, Credit Limits Fall Congress is on the verge of passing legislation that would transform the way credit card companies and consumers interact. t's been a long time coming, consumer advocates say. But relief won't come anytime soon, even if the legislation makes it to President Obama's desk by Memorial Day, as he has requested. As proposed, the earliest that either the House or Senate version would go into effect is nine months after being signed into law. The Federal Reserve, meanwhile, has approved new regulations that do not go into effect until July 2010.
Health Care’s Enigma in Chief The most stunning and least reported news about President Obama’s press conference with health industry executives this week wasn’t those executives’ willingness to negotiate with a Democrat. It was that Democrat’s eagerness to involve those executives in a discussion about health care reform even as they revealed their previous plans to pilfer $2 trillion from Americans.
The Machinery Behind Health-Care Reform How an Industry Lobby Scored a Swift, Unexpected Victory by Channeling Billions to Electronic Records When President Obama won approval for his $787 billion stimulus package in February, large sections of the 407-page bill focused on a push for new technology that would not stimulate the economy for years. The inclusion of as much as $36.5 billion in spending to create a nationwide network of electronic health records fulfilled one of Obama's key campaign promises -- to launch the reform of America's costly health-care system. But it was more than a political victory for the new administration. It also represented a triumph for an influential trade group whose members now stand to gain billions in taxpayer dollars. A Washington Post review found that the trade group, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, had worked closely with technology vendors, researchers and other allies in a sophisticated, decade-long campaign to shape public opinion and win over Washington's political machinery.
GM looks to China to bolster U.S. sales Increased production there would lead to cars being exported to America SHANGHAI - China's auto industry has come a long way since General Motors Corp. set up its first factory here in a brand new industrial zone in Shanghai just over a decade ago. With monthly vehicle sales topping those in the U.S. so far this year, China is now an auto power in its own right — though foreign joint ventures still dominate. A reported move by GM to export cars built here to its home market in the U.S. could be just as important to the local industry's own global ambitions as it is for General Motors's survival, industry experts say.
The 81% Tax Increase To pay for government's promises on Social Security and Medicare. This week, the federal government published two important reports on long-term budgetary trends. They both show that we are on an unsustainable path that will almost certainly result in massively higher taxes. The first report is from the trustees of the Social Security system. News reports emphasized that the date when its trust fund will be exhausted is now four years earlier than estimated last year. But in truth, this is an utterly meaningless fact because the trust fund itself is economically meaningless.
Glenn Beck Tom Woods Meltdown Fed caused the problem
Commercial Real Estate Defaults Headed To 6% As you try to sort whether commercial real estate is indeed the next "shoe to drop" (as everyone's saying) here's a little more chartology, prepared by Pasquale Cardone at Realpoint, showing just how fast CRE loans are going sour.You can see it's basically quadrupled since the crisis started last autumn, and at this rate, it's easy to imagine it hitting 6% by the end of the year, which would be unheard of.
New York City Real Estate Prices To Fall At Least Another 35% Deutsche Bank runs the real-estate numbers and concludes that nationwide prices will fall another 17%, for a total peak-to-trough collapse of 40%. In New York City, meanwhile, where prices started falling later than the rest of the country (and from a higher peak) prices have another 35% to fall. And that's just to get back to fair value. If prices stop at fair value after a bubble this big, it will be the first time in history in which this happened.
Our Vanishing Home Equity Everyone knows that U.S. house prices have fallen almost 30% from the peak. What is less well known is that Americans' equity in those houses--the part that American homeowners actually own--has fallen much further. Why? Because, despite all the foreclosures and write-offs, our total mortgage debt has only dropped slightly from its peak. When value falls and debt stays the same, equity gets crushed. If house prices end up falling more than 40% peak to trough, which seems likely, U.S. homeowner equity will drop more than 70% and as many as half of American mortgage holders will be underwater.
Census GPS-tagging your home's front door Coordinates being taken for every residence in nation According to an online Yahoo program, the Global Position System coordinates for the White House, probably one of the best-known publicly owned buildings in the world, are 38.898590 Latitude and -77.035971 Longitude. And since you know that, it's no big deal for the White House to know the coordinates for your front door, is it? Some people think it is, and are upset over an army of some 140,000 workers hired in part with a $700 million taxpayer-funded contract to collect GPS readings for every front door in the nation. The data collection, presented as preparation for the 2010 Census, is pinpointing with computer accuracy the locations and has raised considerable concern from privacy advocates who have questioned why the information is needed. The privacy advocates also are more than a little worried over what could be done with that information.
Another 1,225,980+ Guns Bought by Law-abiding Americans in April 2009 Americans Are Clinging To Their Guns At A Record Pace. NEWTOWN, Conn. – The upward trend in firearms sales continued in April, marking the sixth consecutive month of significant increases. Data released by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) reported 1,225,980 checks in April 2009. This figure is a 30.3 percent increase from the 940,961 reported in April 2008. FBI background checks are required under federal law for all individuals purchasing either new or used firearms from federally licensed retailers. The checks serve as a gauge of actual sales but do not reflect the actual number of firearms sold, since, following a background check, a customer may decide not to purchase a firearm or may purchase more than one firearm.
PBS Weighs Separation Of Church & Stations PBS stations are debating the limits of one of public television's basic commandments: Thou shalt not broadcast religious programming. The discussion, some station managers fear, could lead to a ban on broadcasts of local church services and other faith-oriented programs that have appeared on public stations for decades despite the prohibition. The Public Broadcasting Service's board is to vote next month on a committee's recommendation to strip the affiliation of any station that carries "sectarian" content. Losing its PBS relationship would mean that a station could no longer broadcast programs that the service distributes, from "Sesame Street" to "Frontline."
Pro-Obama Group Demands Socialist Media A socialist-oriented “media reform” group with ties to the Obama Administration is calling for new federal programs and the spending of tens of billions of dollars to keep journalists employed at liberal media outlets and to put them to work in new “public media.” The group, which calls itself Free Press, is urging “an alternative media infrastructure, one that is insulated from the commercial pressures that brought us to our current crisis.” However, Free Press didn’t say one word about the well-documented liberal bias that has contributed to the decline in readers and viewers for traditional media outlets and has enabled the rise of the Fox News Channel, conservative talk radio, and the Internet. Instead, Josh Silver of the Free Press attacked the “bellowing ideologues” on the air and declared that “The entire dial is empty of local news in many communities.” This was a tip-off that, in order to take conservative radio hosts off the air, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will be flooded with complaints that “local news” has been shortchanged by stations airing conservative personalities with national programs such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and Michael Savage.
'Killer Chip' tracks humans, releases poison Saudi inventor applies for rights to GPS-linked lethal security device You can run, but you cannot hide ... and if you try, one push of a button will cause a lethal poison to immediately begin flowing through your body. That's the Orwellian future a Saudi inventor was seeking to bring to Germany until that nation's patent office announced last week it was rejecting his request to patent what has been dubbed the "Killer Chip." The tiny semiconductor device is intended to be surgically implanted or injected into the body, according to the patent application, for the purpose of tracking visitors from other nations by global-positioning satellites and preventing them from overstaying their visas.
Obama’s Climate Plans Spark Lobbying Boom by Shell, Boeing, 3M President Barack Obama’s push for a climate-change law this year has set off a lobbying boom on Capitol Hill, where companies are registering to weigh in at a rate of about one every business day. Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat crafting legislation in the House, and other lawmakers said they haven’t seen this much intensity since 1993, when the pharmaceutical companies and insurers lined up to combat President Bill Clinton’s proposal, championed by his wife, Hillary, to provide Americans with universal health care. “We’ve certainly had a steady stream of people in to talk to our staff,” said Waxman, 69, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. So far this year, 82 firms, trade groups and companies such as Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Boeing Co. and 3M Corp. have signed up to lobby on climate change, Senate filings show. That’s more than four times as many as are registered to lobby on another issue that is mobilizing business, a law that would make it easier for workers to join unions.
How America Lost its Freedom What Americans MUST Do to Get it Back It’s now clear to most Americans that their country is not only headed in the wrong direction, but on the brink of complete extinction. In just the last six months, every major economic sector is speeding towards bankruptcy and the Fed has spent trillions in printed funny money, in an unbridled and ill-fated effort to buy up (not bail out) America’s free-market economic system, leaving the nation, its currency, its people - and yes - FREEDOM, headed towards imminent total collapse.
Obama's Militaristic Youth Corp Commercial
Tucker Confirms Geithner Presence at Bilderberg Meeting Intrepid Bilderberg investigator and reporter Jim Tucker of the American Free Press confirms that U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will attend this year’s Bilderberg meeting in Athens, Greece. Geithner’s presence will be in violation of the Logan Act, intended to prohibit American citizens without authority from interfering in relations between the United States and foreign governments. Congress established the Logan Act in 1799. The only Logan Act indictment occurred in 1803. It involved a Kentucky newspaper article that argued for the formation in the western United States of a separate nation allied to France. No prosecution followed. Tucker told Alex Jones today that Geithner will attend the secretive meeting to talk about global government. Geithner recently announced while addressing the Council on Foreign Relations that he supported a proposal to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency with a composite of currencies that would be managed by the International Monetary Fund.
Are the people who 'really run the world' meeting this weekend? The Bilderberg group, the topic of many conspiracy theories, is now meeting behind closed doors in Greece. . . . . The individuals at the meeting come from such power houses as Google and the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Senate and European royalty. Governments, the banking industry, big oil, media and even the world of academia are amongst the Bilderberg ranks. Those reportedly in attendance at last year's conference in Virginia include former U.S. senator Tom Daschle; Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner and his predecessor Henry M. Paulson; former U.S. secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice; Microsoft executive Craig Mundie; senior Wall Street Journal editor Paul Gigot; World Bank President Robert Zoellick and Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
A Leader of Veterans Is Exposed as a Fraud DENVER — When Rick Duncan spoke at veterans’ events in Colorado, recounting how he was badly wounded when his Humvee was blown apart by a roadside bomb in Iraq, it was not unusual for those in the audience to weep. After all, Mr. Duncan was a leading voice for veterans here, a charismatic former Marine captain who told of having been at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, who spoke movingly of his war wounds and whose advocacy group led a drive to help homeless veterans in Colorado Springs. But on Thursday the Colorado Veterans Alliance, the organization he founded, announced that it was disbanding, having discovered that his entire story was a sham. As it turns out, the group said, Rick Duncan is not even Rick Duncan but instead a man named Richard Glen Strandlof.
Glenn Beck - The Problems With the Montana Gun Law - May 11, 2009 Glenn Beck interviews Randy Barnett, professor at Georgetown law and author of "Restoring the Lost Constitution". Barnett argues that it's not likely that Montana and the other states involved in the intrastate gun legislation are going to have a winning argument if/when it goes to the Supreme Court.
Is China really going green? Camels still plod the arid plains outside the ancient Silk Road city of Urumqi, their heads bowed into the gritty winds that funnel down the through the valleys of China's Tian Shan, or 'celestial' mountains. But today the same winds that struck fear into the traders of the Silk Road, swallowing whole caravans in blinding storms of dust, are being used to power plans for a new, green revolution for China's energy-hungry economy. At Dabancheng, a few miles outside the city, great forests of windmills stretch to the horizon, their blades beating out a lazy rhythm that belies the sudden urgency with which China's rulers are now investing in renewable energy.
Say No To A Palestinian State Obama's ''solutions'' will endanger Israel. Irving Kristol said that whomever the Gods want to teach humility they first tempt to resolve the Middle East conflict. Solving this conflict has been so difficult because it has always been misconstrued. As a result of confusion about the conflict's nature, the solutions that were nevertheless tried, such as the Oslo agreement establishing the Palestinian Authority, or Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, resulted in costly failures. The suffering of Israelis and Palestinian Arabs increased.
Agendas clash as Netanyahu, Obama meet U.S. links peace, Iran TEL AVIV | On the eve of the first summit between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel is worried about clashing with its top ally over strategy toward Arab-Israeli peace and preventing Iran from building a nuclear bomb. The first meeting between the two recently elected heads of state may be a defining moment for the Obama administration's effort to reshape policy in the region. The new administration has indicated that it wants progress on both Iran and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, suggesting that the issues are linked.
Obama makes his bid for Middle East peace Tomorrow [Monday, May 18th] the Israeli prime minister meets the US president at the White House. The following week Obama will also meet the Egyptian and Palestinian leaders. America has signalled it wants solutions in the Middle East, but are the president's guests ready to make concessions? Late tomorrow morning President Barack Obama will welcome Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, into the Oval Office at the White House. Leave five minutes for the pleasantries, 30 seconds for the coffee to be poured, and 84 and a half minutes will remain to kick-start what is perhaps the most ambitious bid to bring peace to the Middle East for nearly a decade. Once again, true to his campaign motto of "Yes we can", Obama is boldly plunging in where others fear to tread. May will see an extraordinary series of meetings for the new president: Netanyahu will be followed to the White House by President Mubarak of Egypt and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian National Authority. Other regional allies will be consulted, envoys dispatched, world leaders called and cajoled. And then, in the first week of June, Obama will fly to Egypt, where he will deliver a historic speech aimed not just at outlining his own strategy for bringing peace to the Middle East, but also at reframing America's entire relationship with the Muslim world, so damaged during recent years.
Obama to warn Israel's PM, Benjamin Netanyahu: 'No more blank cheques' Barack Obama is to deliver a blunt warning to Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that the era of the blank US cheque is over. The President will use a meeting with Mr Netanyahu in Washington on Monday to tell him that from now on Israel must earn its privileged relationship with America. Mr Obama will make clear that he will not allow his foreign policy objectives to be dictated by the Jewish state's interests, and that its leaders must resume working for peace with the Palestinians.
Ron Paul Thought Obama WOULD BE FIGHTING LESS WARS! (5/14/08)
Afghanistan stalled on its land bridge President Hamid Karzai has been keen, since becoming head of Afghanistan's interim administration in late 2001, to tout his landlocked country's potential as a "land bridge" for regional trade. The idea entails transforming the mountains of Hindu Kush from a conflict zone into a trade hub between China, the Middle East, South Asia and Central Asia - home to one-third of the world's population. The realization of such a vision, many Afghans believe, would do more to help restore peace and bring development to their impoverished country than any amount of foreign aid.
Gold versus Discretion 1983 Ron Paul 1 Speech on the Gold Standard by Congressman Ron Paul 1983. The Gold Standard, An Austrian Perspective.
With the unemployment rate rising into double digits - and that's not counting the millions of "underemployed" Americans - consumers are hitting the breaks, which is having a huge impact, given consumer spending accounts for about 70% of economic activity.
Rising unemployment and the $8 trillion negative wealth effect of housing mean more Americans will default on not just mortgages but student loans and auto loans and credit card debt.
More consumer loan defaults will hit banks, which are also threatened by what Davidowitz calls a "depression" in commercial real estate, noting the recent bankruptcy of General Growth Properties and distressed sales by Developers Diversified and other REITs.
‘Like gold in 1924, dollar is today a barbarous relic’ Once upon a time, Byron King shunned writing letters to the editor. He was afraid that one might actually appear in print. That sounds like the stuff of fairy tales when you’re talking about someone with as prolific a pen (or keyboard) as Byron. A one-time field historian on the staff of the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, he has a gift for putting current events into an historical context. Byron King’s credits include writing for Agora Financial’s Daily Reckoning and its Energy and Scarcity Investor newsletter (editor) as well as Whiskey and Gunpowder (contributing editor for this “independent investor’s daily guide to gold, commodities, profits and freedom”).
Gold sees next demand boom from Central Banks By now, the whole world knows that China is buying gold like never before and the country has become one of the top holders of the yellow metal. Even though it was obvious that China has been buying gold for the past few years, a clear picture was not available till last month when China came out with a statement on its gold holdings. At a time when China is stocking gold and other metals like copper, other countries also may be harbouring the same idea and may be doing the same.
Gold Climbs to Seven-Week High on Jobless Rise; Silver Advances Gold rose to the highest closing price in seven weeks as investment demand for the metal increased after reports showed a gain in U.S. producer prices and a rise in initial claims for jobless benefits. Silver also advanced. The number of first-time applicants seeking unemployment insurance jumped to 637,000 last week, threatening to restrain consumer spending and prolong the recession. A separate report showed prices paid to U.S. producers climbed in April, paced by a 1.5 percent increase in consumer foods, pushing back the risk of deflation taking root in the economy.
US 'sham' bank bail-outs enrich speculators, says buy-out chief Mark Patterson The US Treasury's effort to stabilise the banking system through the TARP programme is a hopelessly ill-conceived policy that enriches speculators at public expense, according to the buy-out firm supposed to be pioneering the joint public-private bank rescues. "The taxpayers ought to know that we are in effect receiving a subsidy. They put in 40pc of the money but get little of the equity upside," said Mark Patterson, chairman of MatlinPatterson Advisers. The comments are likely to infuriate Tim Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary, because MatlinPatterson took advantage of the TARP's matching funds to buy Flagstar Bancorp in Michigan. His confession appears to validate concerns that the bail-out strategy is geared towards Wall Street.
Obama Says U.S. Long-Term Debt Load 'Unsustainable' President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending "unsustainable," warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries. "We can't keep on just borrowing from China," Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. "We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children's future with more and more debt." Holders of U.S. debt will eventually "get tired" of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, Obama said. "It will have a dampening effect on our economy."
World Government: Accept or Resist? Part 1 World Government is coming.... and it's coming fast!!! Whether it succeeds or not, depends on us... And not on a MAJORITY of us (at least not at first), but rather, it depends on whether a much smaller group of FREEDOM FIGHTERS will rally the Peoples of the world against the New World Order Masters... So, what will it be with you? Do you accept or resist the coming World Government?
World Government; Accept or Resist? Part 2 If you don't plan on passively accepting the coming World Government, here's some tips on common first steps that are possible the world over. The initial Objective is to generate a CRITICAL MASS of active, clear-minded people...
Prudential, Allstate Said to Be Among Insurers Cleared for TARP Prudential Financial Inc., Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. and Allstate Corp. are among six insurers approved by the U.S. government for bailout funds after investment declines eroded capital across the industry. Hartford won preliminary approval for $3.4 billion from the Treasury Department's capital purchase program, the Connecticut- based insurer said today in a statement. A person familiar with the matter said five other carriers won preliminary approval, including Lincoln National Corp., Principal Financial Group Inc. and Ameriprise Financial Inc.
Bernanke May Revise Fed Rules Favoring Moody's, S&P The U.S. Federal Reserve may revise rules that currently favor Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said in a letter released today by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. The Fed is "conducting a broad review of our approach to using rating agencies," Bernanke said in an April 13 letter written in response to a complaint from Blumenthal that the central bank's rules unfairly favor the companies that helped cause the financial crisis.
Treasuries Rise as Fed Purchases Debt, Treasury Auctions Pause Treasuries rose for a second day after the Federal Reserve bought U.S. debt maturing between one and two years amid a two-week hiatus in the Treasury's auction schedule as the government borrows record amounts to revive economic growth. Ten-year note yields touched the lowest level since April 29 as more Americans than forecast filed for unemployment benefits last week. The central bank bought $2.975 billion of Treasuries maturing from October 2010 to February 2011 as part of an effort to lower consumer borrowing costs.
"The Yield from Money Held" Reconsidered Franz Cuhel occupies an honorary place in the history of economic thought and of the "Viennese" or "Austrian" school of economics in particular. In his book Zur Lehre von den Bedürfnissen (1907), Cuhel presented for the first time a strictly ordinal interpretation of marginal utility and thus contributed to a systematic advance of pure economic theory. Since this lecture is named in Cuhel's honor, I felt it appropriate that I, too, should discuss here a purely theoretical problem of economics. My subject is not the general theory of value, however, but, more specifically, the theory of money.
Strong appetite for silver boosts coin production Mints around the world almost doubled their silver coin production in the first quarter in response to a surge of investor interest in the metal. It follows an extraordinary buying spree for coins and bars by investors last year that was accompanied by a record surge of inflows into silver exchange-traded funds. It suggests that silver has benefited as much as gold from the trend by risk-averse investors to seek out havens following the September collapse of Lehman Brothers, according to GFMS, the consultancy, which on Wednesday released its Silver Survey 2009 in conjunction with the Silver Institute, the industry association.
Former official slams Fed for inflation risk A sharp critic of the Federal Reserve and prominent authority on monetary policy on Tuesday slammed the U.S. central bank for risking inflation and warned that government action had "caused, prolonged and worsened" the country's financial crisis. John Taylor, a former undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs and author of the widely cited Taylor Rule of central banking, ran his own numbers for the U.S. economy and said the Fed's monetary stance was way too loose. "My calculation implies that we may not have as much time before the Fed has to remove excess reserves and raise the rate," he said in remarks prepared for a financial markets conference hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. "We don't know what will happen in the future, but there is a risk here and it is a systemic risk," he said.
Tincture of Lawlessness Obama's Overreaching Economic Policies Anyone, said T.S. Eliot, could carve a goose, were it not for the bones. And anyone could govern as boldly as his whims decreed, were it not for the skeletal structure that keeps civil society civil -- the rule of law. The Obama administration is bold. It also is careless regarding constitutional values and is acquiring a tincture of lawlessness. In February, California's Democratic-controlled Legislature, faced with a $42 billion budget deficit, trimmed $74 million (1.4 percent) from one of the state's fastest-growing programs, which provides care for low-income and incapacitated elderly people and which cost the state $5.42 billion last year. The Los Angeles Times reports that "loose oversight and bureaucratic inertia have allowed fraud to fester."
Clueless Economists Say Recession Will End By Autumn The Wall Street Journal released it's latest survey of economists today, revealing the good news that they see the recession ending by autumn. The bad news is that they say it will take years for the economy to fully recover." The worse news: economists are just as crappy as everyone else at predicting the future. Gordon Smith at the Conglomerate searched the WSJ economist survey for the last few years. What he found was that sometime the economists are right but sometimes they were wrong. In short, they're "fairly clueless" about the future. That's hardly surprising--the future is hard predict--but it makes us wonder why the Journal even bothers with these things.
Real Estate Expert: Stay Away from Malls Real estate expert Howard Davidowitz expects the real estate collapse will spread to the malls, and is looking for a large number of them to close.
55,000 helped by Obama mortgage rescue Servicers are adjusting loans under Obama's foreclosure prevention program. The administration is expanding the program to help those that don't qualify for a modification. More than 55,000 troubled homeowners have received loan modification offers under President Obama's foreclosure prevention program, officials said Thursday. The administration also announced it was expanding the $75 billion program to assist more troubled borrowers. The government will provide incentives for servicers and borrowers to avoid foreclosure using methods such as short sales.
Commercial Real Estate Is The Next Shoe To Drop, According To The Internet With the market having reached a kind of uneasy stasis, everyone's been asking the same thing: "What's the next shoe to drop?" At least the folks who aren't smoking the green shoots and mustard seeds are asking this. Over and over again we've heard the same thing loud and clear: commercial real estate. One problem with this is that if everyone is saying that it's the next shoe to drop, is it really?
Decoupling From America Back in the golden age of American Fly fishing -- say around 1913 -- when technical innovation in a prissy and recondite sport was joined by a new leisure class emanating from the white glove canyons of Wall Street, some new-minted guru of angling came up with method for whipping up action on a trout stream when no fish would rise to the fly. It was really lame. The idea was to artificially create the illusion of a mayfly hatch -- that moment when the larva of, for instance, Ephemerella subvaria, the Hendrickson mayfly, swims to the surface, molts, and dries its newly unfurled adult wings in the brisk spring air. This is famously the moment that drives trout crazy, and when it occurs en masse, with zillions of mayflies "hatching" off the water, a trout feeding-frenzy can ensue. The idea with the artificial hatch was to pitch a fake Hendrickson fly made of feathers and fur in so many furious, rapid casts that the dumb trout lurking below would get suckered into a feeding frenzy -- and, shortly, into the buttered frying pan, with a nice "tuxedo" of cornmeal and bacon.
The End of American Exceptionalism Andrew Bacevich has written a powerful but flawed criticism of American foreign policy. Both an academic historian and a professional soldier, he is exceptionally qualified to undertake such a critique. He begins his indictment from an indisputable fact. America has commitments all over the world, but we proved unable to defend ourselves against the assault of 9/11. By allowing empire to trump defense, what Bacevich calls the "national security state" failed miserably. . . . "A political elite preoccupied with the governance of empire paid little attention to protecting the United States itself. In practical terms, prior to 9/11 the mission of homeland defense was unassigned. The institution nominally referred to as the Department of Defense didn't actually do defense; it specialized in power projection." (p. 5)
Who Runs America? What do you suppose it is like to be elected president of the United States only to find that your power is restricted to the service of powerful interest groups? A president who does a good job for the ruling interest groups is paid off with remunerative corporate directorships, outrageous speaking fees, and a lucrative book contract. If he is young when he assumes office, like Bill Clinton and Obama, it means a long life of luxurious leisure. Fighting the special interests doesn’t pay and doesn’t succeed. On April 30 the primacy of special over public interests was demonstrated yet again. The Democrats’ bill to prevent 1.7 million mortgage foreclosures and, thus, preserve $300 billion in home equity by permitting homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages, was defeated in the Senate, despite the 60-vote majority of the Democrats. The banksters were able to defeat the bill 51 to 45.
‘AUDIT THE FED’ BILL GATHERS STEAM TWO MONTHS AFTER REP. RON PAUL (R-Texas) introduced the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009 (H.R. 1207), the bill, which mandates an official audit of the privately owned and controlled Federal Reserve System has already garnered 112 cosponsors. It is currently making the rounds in the House Committee on Financial Services. Advocates are optimistic that the landmark measure will see the light of day in this Congress and could even come to the floor for a House vote soon. “This piece of legislation is perhaps the most important of my career,” said Paul upon introducing the measure. “Americans from all over the political spectrum are demanding an audit of the Federal Reserve. And with good reason.”
Senate Will Move on Hate Crimes Bill Critics Claim Bill Simply Unnecessary ON APRIL 29, THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES passed the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 (H.R. 1913) by a vote of 249 to 175. It is expected to be taken up in the Senate any day now. Critics of the measure contend that, if the bill becomes law, it will force local and state law enforcement to prosecute and sentence individuals not only for the crimes they commit, but also for their beliefs—a slippery slope which will take the country down the road toward eventually criminalizing the thoughts of the American people. Conservatives were quick to blast the bill for elevating a few in the eyes of the law. “In addition to posing a litany of constitutional problems, today’s legislation alarmingly overturns the cornerstone of equality in our justice system by placing a higher value on one life over another,” said Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) on the House floor. “In no way could I support a bill that more harshly punishes criminals who kill a homosexual, transvestite or transsexual than criminals who kill a police officer, a member of the military, a child, or a senior citizen.”
New World Order - Our Leaders Are Ready. Are You? Spread the message of freedom and individual liberty by rating and commenting on this video, as well as reposting it. Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty. -Thomas Jefferson
Is U.S. government-data being “massaged”? "Many market-watchers claim that U.S. economic statistics are increasingly being revised downward in subsequent periods, suggesting that the figures initially being reported by Washington are “puffed up,” so to speak, most likely for political purposes."
The public pension bomb For years, states all across the country have been starving their retirement plans. Here's a look at how the crisis is playing out in New Jersey, where the bill is coming due, and the state doesn't have the money to pay it. Even as the nation's economy is showing some tentative signs of bottoming out, another calamity looms: the public pension bomb. For years, states nationwide have shortchanged the retirement programs that cover teachers, police, and other public employees; now the stock market plunge has wiped out billions of dollars from already underfunded plans. California, New York and Illinois are among the states scrambling to plug multibillion-dollar holes in their pension systems. The growing obligations raise the specter of higher taxes, diminished services, or even another round of costly federal bailouts.
Boiling Frogs The Boiling Frog Syndrome goes something like this: "If you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, he will jump out. But if you place a frog into a pot of cold water and and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot tub, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death. Now I'm not sure this really works with frogs, (I couldn't bring my self to find out), but I am certain that it works with people. I believe that we are all sitting in a big pot and the water is beginning to boil.
Never-Ending Government Lies About Markets The purpose of government is for those who run it to plunder those who do not. Throughout history, governments have used violence, intimidation, coercion, and mass murder to enforce this system. But governments' first line of "defense" is always a blizzard of lies — about its own alleged benevolence, altruism, heroism, and greatness, along with equally big lies about the "evils" of the civil society, especially the free market. The current economic crisis, which was instigated by the government's central bank and its boom-and-bust monetary policies, among other interventions, has once again been blamed on "too little regulation" and too much freedom. Will Americans ever catch on to this biggest of all of government's Big Lies?
Trading Down to Survive Economy
Pipeline-Istan: Everything You Need to Know About Oil, Gas, Russia, China, Iran, Afghanistan and Obama Nothing of significance takes place in Eurasia without an energy angle. As Barack Obama heads into his second hundred days in office, let's head for the big picture ourselves, the ultimate global plot line, the tumultuous rush towards a new, polycentric world order. In its first hundred days, the Obama presidency introduced us to a brand new acronym, OCO for Overseas Contingency Operations, formerly known as GWOT (as in Global War on Terror). Use either name, or anything else you want, and what you're really talking about is what's happening on the immense energy battlefield that extends from Iran to the Pacific Ocean. It's there that the Liquid War for the control of Eurasia takes place.
Schwarzenegger Seeks $6 Billion Loan, Orders Cuts California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed the state seek a $6 billion loan from Wall Street and called for deep cuts in education and welfare programs to help erase a resurgent $15 billion deficit. Schwarzenegger, a 61-year-old Republican, said the state should sell $6 billion of revenue anticipation warrants, a type of cash-flow loan that can be repaid over two years. More borrowing likely will be needed as the fiscal year progresses, he said. He also proposed cutting $6 billion in spending, mostly from schools and colleges. The proposals are part of his annual May revision to the state's budget plan.
Chrysler Dealers Hunt for Answers After Shutdown News A half-century of Chrysler car sales ended when Eldon Howe received a delivery from United Parcel Service Inc. That's how Howe learned that his Beacon Sales Inc. in Charlotte, Michigan, was among the dealers targeted to be shuttered as bankrupt Chrysler LLC prunes its retail outlets in a restructuring led by Italy's Fiat SpA. "We got the letter today from UPS," said Howe, 78, who founded Beacon 55 years ago in the central Michigan city about 110 miles (177 kilometers) west of Detroit. "I've done this all my life," he added. "I haven't done anything else." From Virginia to California, Chrysler's decision to cancel 789 dealership agreements forced franchisees to assess what they'll do next, prepare to dismiss employees and ponder how to wind down decades-long relationships with their customers.
Chrysler Seeks to Reject 789 Dealership Agreements Chrysler LLC is seeking to reject 789 automotive dealership agreements, including seven contracts with AutoNation Inc., according to court papers filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. The bankrupt company wants to reject its contracts with less than a quarter of its approximate 3,188 retail outlets, according to today’s filing with U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Arthur Gonzalez seeking approval of the move. Fiat SpA, not Chrysler, decided which dealers will be brought along to the new company to be formed under the U.S. automaker’s bankruptcy process, according to people familiar with the situation. Trimming the bulk of dealers from urban areas will increase profitability at the remaining dealers, lawyers for Chrysler said.
Auto layoffs lift U.S. jobless claims, PPI up The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits rose more than expected last week, government data showed on Thursday, pushed up by auto plant shutdowns related to Chrysler's bankruptcy. Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits increased 32,000 to a seasonally adjusted 637,000 in the week ended May 9, the Labor Department said, reversing an easing trend of the previous two weeks. A Labor Department official said "a good part of the increase is due to automotive states and claims."
Mich. jobless rate may rise to 20 percent David Littmann, senior economist with the Midland-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy, predicts unemployment in the state could hit "somewhere between 17 (percent) and 20 percent" by year's end. The current figure for unemployment statewide is 12.6 percent. According to an interview posted on the think tank's Web site Tuesday, Littmann cited the impact of the auto crisis on the state's economy, including contributing to a steep decline in the state's tax base.
Obama Tells Arizona Graduates to Become Leaders With ‘Purpose’ President Barack Obama challenged Arizona State University graduates to help bring an end to a culture that for too long has emphasized “celebrity over character” and “short-term gain over lasting achievement.” The president, speaking to almost 9,000 graduates of the university in Tempe last night, said that with their energy and enthusiasm they can revive the spirit that built the nation. “The leaders we revere, the businesses that last -- they are not the result of narrow pursuit of popularity or personal advancement, but of devotion to some bigger purpose,” Obama said in his address, the first of three college commencement speeches he is scheduled to give this month.
U.S. Producer Prices Rose in April, Led by Food Prices paid to U.S. producers rose in April as food costs surged, pushing back risks that extended price declines may take root in the economy. The 0.3 percent increase was more than forecast and followed a drop of 1.2 percent in March, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Excluding fuel and food, so-called core prices climbed 0.1 percent, as anticipated. Signs that the worst of the recession is over may boost commodity costs further, alleviating concern over deflation, or an extended drop in prices that hurts the economy. Along with the trillions of dollars pumped into the banking system by the Federal Reserve, increases in raw materials may stoke inflation once an economic recovery takes hold.
Jobless Claims in U.S. Increase More Than Forecast More Americans than forecast filed first-time claims for unemployment insurance last week, mainly reflecting a jump in applications related to the Chrysler LLC bankruptcy. Initial jobless claims rose by 32,000 to 637,000 in the week ended May 9, from a revised 605,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said today in Washington. A “good part” of the jump was from states reporting an increase in auto-related claims, a Labor spokesman said without providing a more precise estimate.
Sunny skies forecast for House climate bill But Democrats still face GOP House Democratic leaders claimed an early victory on a revised climate bill Thursday even as they had sizable work ahead to draft the legislation and gain the support of moderate party members to pass one of President Obama's top priorities. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers hoping to peel away Democratic support for the measure introduced an alternative climate bill and said they planned to offer amendments to the Democratic draft next week in an effort to dilute the final bill.
Senate Nears Completing Credit Card Bill, Blocks 15% Rate Cap The U.S. Senate, working to complete legislation to curb credit-card fees and limit contract changes, refused to cap interest rates on balances at 15 percent. The Senate may pass the so-called credit-card bill of rights measure as early as today, said Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd. Approval would send the measure to a committee to resolve differences with a House version. “We’ve spent a lot of time over the last number of months trying to help stabilize the financial system,” said Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat. “A lot of attention has been paid to banks. We haven’t spent enough time trying to help consumers.”
Dictionary: 'Narrow-minded' means 'conservative' Reference book equates terms without comment When you hear the word "narrow-minded," does "extremely conservative" pop into your head? It might if you use Dictionary.com as a reference tool. The online source to learn the meanings of words equates the two, based on information in the Random House Dictionary. The listing provides three definitions for "narrow-minded":
having or showing a prejudiced mind, as persons or opinions; biased.
not receptive to new ideas; having a closed mind.
extremely conservative and morally self-righteous.
It also features a list of synonyms, specifically "bigoted, partial, intolerant, illiberal."
Gun-Control Advocate: Napolitano Report on ‘Rightwing Extremists’ Makes Case for Gun Ban An April 7 report from the Department of Homeland Security branding some conservative groups as “rightwing extremists” is enough reason to revive former President Bill Clinton’s idea of an assault-weapons ban, according to an executive of a gun-control group--the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. "I think it certainly helps to make that case because what that report suggests is that there is a rise in the kind of paramilitary activity that we saw actually in years before the Oklahoma City bombing,” Dennis Henigan, the vice president for law and policy at the Brady Center, told CNSNews.com Wednesday. Henigan talked about the years before the 1995 Oklahoma City tragedy--when “rightwing extremist militia groups (were) out training with assault weapons, training for war against the United States government, training to shoot federal law enforcement,” he said.
British Want Their Guns Back
Napolitano on Supreme Court short list Former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is among those being considered by President Barack Obama to replace retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, according to the Associated Press. The AP reports that California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and some other federal judges also are on the short list to replace Souter.
Scouts Train to Fight Terrorists, and More Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor. The responding officers - eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 - face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots - BAM! BAM! - fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed. "United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!" screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued. It is all quite a step up from the square knot.
What Do Guns and Credit Cards Have in Common? . . . . On Tuesday, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) introduced an amendment to a credit card reform bill -- a credit card reform bill! -- that not only reinstates the Bush-era rule but actually broadens it to give gun owners even more leeway in carrying guns on public lands. The amendment was approved by a 67-29 vote. A House version of the credit card bill -- did I mention Coburn slapped the gun amendment on a credit card bill? -- does not carry the gun provision. This discrepancy now forces House and Senate negotiators to come to some sort of compromise. Here's a suggested resolution: Drop the gun amendment completely from the -- wait for it -- credit card bill.
Republicans Adopt Emanuel’s Tactics to Deliver 2010 ‘Thumpin” Republicans are getting inspiration on how to rebuild their party in the U.S. Congress from an unlikely source: White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. California Representative Kevin McCarthy, the chief recruiter for House Republicans, said he wants his party to select candidates based less on ideology and more on their chances of winning. The goal, he said, is to seek out prospects who are ethnically diverse, female, less partisan and even supportive of abortion rights. So far, these efforts are more concept than reality.
Swine Flu is a HOAX! It is a U.S. Government Psychological Operation (Psy/Op) to TERRIFY the Public! This is not the first time the U.S. Government has used the LIE of “Swine Flu” to try to accomplish its evil goals. In 1976, they wreaked havoc on the American people with their disastrous “Swine Flu” vaccine that caused numerous horrendous injuries and deaths. WHAT are the U.S. Government and the New World Order/Illuminati doing?
Media Censoring Lethal Side Effects Of Flu Remedies Donald Rumsfeld’s Tamiflu pushers (just as they were in 2006) are set to be the big winners in the GSFS (great swine flu scare of 2009) lottery. Shares of Swiss drug-maker Roche Holding had fallen sharply after their latest cancer drug failure—but the GSFS came just in time to give their falling stocks a boost—just as the great bird flu scare of 2006 did. In November 2005, George W. Bush goaded Congress to pass $7.1 billion in “emergency funding” to prepare for the possible bird flu pandemic, of which $1 billion was solely dedicated to the purchase and distribution of Tamiflu.
New World Order Mind Altering Drug Corporations Makes People Suicidal and Psychopathic Part 1
New World Order Mind Altering Drug Corporations Makes People Suicidal and Psychopathic Part 2
Scientist arrested for smuggling vials used in Ebola research into US A Canadian scientist has been arrested for smuggling 22 vials stolen from Canada's National Microbiology Lab, used in Ebola and HIV research, into the United States, Canadian and US officials said Wednesday. Konan Michel Yao, 42, "was taken into custody" while crossing the border from Manitoba province into the western US state of North Dakota on May 5, said a spokeswoman for the Public Health Agency of Canada, which operates the lab. According to US prosecutor Lynn Jordheim, Yao was detained for carrying unidentified biological materials in vials wrapped in aluminium foil inside a glove and packaged in a plastic bag, along with electrical wires, in the trunk of his car. Yao said in an affidavit he stole the vials, described as research vectors, from the Winnipeg lab on his last day of work there on January 21.
Constitution ‘Suspended’ on Mexican Border Returning to his home in Tempe, Ariz., Pastor Steve Anderson refused to allow a search of his automobile by Border Patrol guards when he was stopped on April 14 at a routine check point on Interstate-8. Not willing to submit to the increased harassment of law-abiding Americans by so-called law enforcement, Anderson says he was merely standing up for his right to be protected against unreasonable search without a warrant. After being held at the scene for an hour while awaiting the arrival of state police, Anderson saw his car windows cracked opened by officers who proceeded to smash his face into the broken glass before dragging him from the car. He was then tasered multiple times. According to Anderson, the cops ground his face into the asphalt with their boots. He was taken to jail for the night.
HARD TIMES AHEAD It’s time to prepare for hard times, my friends. And, if you’re a bible believing, Christ-following Christian, I believe the coming years will be particularly troublesome. I say “bible-believing, Christ-following Christian” because our degenerating culture has all but stripped the biblical definition of the word “Christian” from today’s collective conscience so that it has lost much of it’s scriptural meaning, even among many of today’s attending church members.
2nd congressman: Prove eligibility Virginia representative signs onto plan to demand evidence Now there are two. A Virginia congressman, very quietly, has signed onto a measure in Congress that would require presidential candidates to verify their eligibility to hold the highest elected office in the United States. WND earlier reported when freshman Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., filed H.R. 1503, an amendment to the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971. According to the Library of Congress' bill-tracking website, H.R. 1503 would "require the principal campaign committee of a candidate for election to the office of president to include with the committee's statement of organization a copy of the candidate's birth certificate, together with such other documentation as may be necessary to establish that the candidate meets the qualifications for eligibility to the Office of President under the Constitution."
Why are there still questions about qualifications? Arguments of president's defenders never actually addressed eligibility In the last few months, dozens of U.S. courts have dismissed legal challenges to Barack Obama's constitutional eligibility to occupy the Oval Office, and even the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hold a hearing on the evidence – but what have the courts actually cited as reasons for dismissing the concerns of millions of Americans? Mootness, lack of jurisdiction, lack of responsibility, lack of standing, a series of "no comments" and even the fact the issue has been "twittered." The one subject that has been avoided to date has been whether or not the president is, in fact, eligible.
249-175 House Vote Gives Child Molesters Hate Crime Shield THE HOUSE APPROVED federal hate crimes legislation (H.R. 1913), by a decisive 249- 175 margin. But in a shocking move, Democrats killed language that would have excluded pedophiles from receiving protections afforded in the measure. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) added the amendment during Judiciary Committee hearings, which stated that sexual orientation in the bill specifically be defined as not including pedophiles. According to Ted Pike, director of the National Prayer Network, Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) objected, saying that King’s amendment was “unnecessary and inflammatory.” Ms. Baldwin claimed that sexual orientation, as defined by the Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1990, means consensual heterosexual or homosexual sex. That definition, she claimed, is sufficient to exclude pedophiles, Pike added. Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (Ill.) then quickly cut off debate—before any conservatives on the committee could respond—and called for a vote.
Bill Clinton Urges Action on Repayments to TARP, Climate Bill Former President Bill Clinton called on the Obama administration to make a “genuine effort” to prod healthy banks to repay the Troubled Asset Relief Program and urged Congress to act on legislation to cut U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions before the global warming summit in Copenhagen this December. Referring to banks that were pressed late last year to take TARP funding, Clinton said yesterday: “Give them a chance to pay it back and maybe just give it back without the interest or anything else.” Unencumbered by TARP loans, financial institutions could set executive compensation without fearing a public backlash, he said in an interview with Bloomberg News.
Obama to Confront Israeli Settlement Surge in Netanyahu Meeting On a West Bank plateau overlooking the desert road to Jericho, crews are building cottages and paving streets for a new neighborhood in Maale Adumim, Israel’s biggest settlement. A town of 35,000 with a suburban-style shopping mall, Maale Adumim is one of about two dozen settlements Israel is expanding in the face of demands from U.S. and European leaders to halt construction. The push has helped increase the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank, where Palestinians hope to create a state, by 40 percent in the last seven years to almost 300,000.
Netanyahu Asks Pope to Condemn Iran Pope Benedict XVI became further entangled in Middle East politics on Thursday when the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, urged him to denounce Iran. A day after visiting a Palestinian refugee camp and calling for the creation of a Palestinian state as a solution to the conflict with Israel, Benedict met with Mr. Netanyahu, whose hawkish Likud government has not endorsed that policy.
Jordan Tells Israel to Accept Two-State Solution The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, met on Thursday with King Abdullah II of Jordan, who urged the Israeli leader to commit to a two-state solution with the Palestinians, according to news reports. Mr. Netanyahu made the unannounced trip to Jordan hours before he was to meet in Nazareth with Pope Benedict XVI, and days ahead of a pivotal meeting with President Obama, scheduled to take place in Washington on Monday. It will be the first meeting between the Israeli and American leaders since the conservative-leaning Mr. Netanyahu took office six weeks ago.
Israeli Leader to Meet Obama as U.S. Priorities Shift The last time Benjamin Netanyahu met an American president as Israel's new leader, in 1996, it did not go well. Mr. Netanyahu lectured President Bill Clinton about Arab-Israeli relations, aides recalled, driving Mr. Clinton into a profane outburst after his guest left. Mr. Netanyahu is likely to avoid a repeat of that when he meets President Obama at the White House on Monday. But the underlying relationship between Israel and the United States has become more unsettled since Mr. Obama took office. Israel has been rattled by signs that the Obama administration has sworn off the unstinting support of Israel that was a hallmark of the Bush years, as well as by the softer approach that Mr. Obama has taken to dealing with Iran.
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Thurs 05.14.2009
Paulson forced 9 bank CEOs to take TARP Paulson told 9 bank CEOs they were required to take TARP money, gov't documents confirm The chief executives of the nine largest U.S. banks had no choice but to accept capital infusions from the Treasury Department in October, government documents have confirmed. Obtained and released by Judicial Watch, a nonpartisan educational foundation, the documents revealed "talking points" used by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson during the Oct. 13 meeting between federal officials and the executives that stressed the investments would be required "in any circumstance," whether the banks found them appealing or not.
US 'sham' bank bail-outs enrich speculators, says buy-out chief Mark Patterson The US Treasury’s effort to stabilise the banking system through the TARP programme is a hopelessly ill-conceived policy that enriches speculators at public expense, according to the buy-out firm supposed to be pioneering the joint public-private bank rescues. “The taxpayers ought to know that we are in effect receiving a subsidy. They put in 40pc of the money but get little of the equity upside,” said Mark Patterson, chairman of MatlinPatterson Advisers. The comments are likely to infuriate Tim Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary, because MatlinPatterson took advantage of the TARP’s matching funds to buy Flagstar Bancorp in Michigan. His confession appears to validate concerns that the bail-out strategy is geared towards Wall Street.
Asian markets tumble amid fears about US consumer Asian markets tumble as worries about US consumers halt rally; Tokyo, HK off about 3 pct Asian stock markets tumbled Thursday as signs of distress among U.S. consumers dashed hopes for a faster end to the worst global economic slump in generations. Every major market was hit by sharp losses, with Japan and Hong Kong indexes down around 3 percent, as an aggressive nine-week rally that's lifted shares from Asia to the U.S. 30 percent or more started to reverse course.
Chinese imports could bring GM political troubles Chinese import plans could bring political troubles in US for General Motors As thousands of General Motors workers await word on more U.S. plant closures, reports that the company plans to import Chinese-made vehicles to the U.S. have created a political problem for the automaker and the White House. The reports, which GM will neither confirm nor deny, could mean trouble because GM is supported by $15.4 billion in U.S. government loans, largely due to the Obama administration's desire to preserve the company's 90,000 U.S. jobs. The United Auto Workers charged last week that the Detroit automaker intends to almost double over the next five years the number of vehicles it imports to the U.S. from Mexico, South Korea, China and Japan.
Rising gold price a "virtual certainty" In separate talks to the New York Hard Assets meeting analysts Adrian Day and Martin Murenbeeld concurred in many aspects on their view of where the gold price was likely to go in the short to medium term and both were positive, but not inordinately so. Day chose to compare the current global financial recession with the Great Depression and with Japan's more recent problems, pointing out that recovery in each case took many years not months. He felt that monetary authorities have little idea of what they are doing and that measures to bring the world out of recession are experimental at best. At least the Europeans have a plan, he said, but they don't know where to find it!
Why a Commodities Super-Boom is Inevitable As we watch the roller-coaster ride that the markets are on, we consider the next moves. Where do you put your money? In these unsettling and uncertain markets, where are the "bubbles" waiting to pop and…where are the markets waiting for a true bullish run? First, in what investing venues should you be wary? What markets look bearish or (at the very least) don't look bullish? In short…what should you consider avoiding today?
Gold & the Euro: Metal vs. Money Gold has now doubled since the Euro first got where it stands against the Dollar today... SINCE THIS decade's Dollar Decline first pushed the Euro above $1.35 in late 2004 - a level it reclaimed this week - the price of gold has gone on to double for both US and Eurozone citizens. American investors and savers would have been much better off Buying Gold instead of Euros, in other words, as would everyone else. And looking ahead, "These days, currency weakness, relative to other currencies, matters less for gold," reckons Standard Bank's Walter de Wet.
Excellent! It takes 41,000 years to count a Trillion Dollars We're headed for hyper-stagflation; gov spending 40 billion/day
Gold, Silver, Economy + More The Secrets of the Federal Reserve: The Federal Reserve Act was legislated in 1913 to end recessions, panics and depression. Over that almost 100-year period they have been eminently no more successful then their predecessors. The Fed is a private corporation, which guides US monetary policy. Its staff is from Wall Street, banking, and transnational conglomerates and occasionally from academia. Of the 12 Federal Reserve banks the New York bank is the most powerful. The staffing of the Fed at the least is incestuous, because the member banks take part in the staffing, as they filter to the Fed what actions they should take. That is done by the FOMC, The Federal Open Market Committee.
Not Good as Gold The case against global currency schemes, whether Chinese or American Late last March, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner stunned world financial markets by stating that the U.S. is "quite open" to Chinese proposals to replace the dollar as the primary world reserve currency. In the Chinese proposal, a "super-sovereign reserve currency" would be run by the International Monetary Fund. Geithner's remarks instantly caused the dollar to plunge against the Chinese RMB. The Treasury secretary had to retreat. He stated that he expected the dollar to remain the world's dominant reserve currency for "a long period of time," and even the Chinese officials claimed that their proposal was only intended for some indefinite future.
All Eyes Are On Huey! The HUI index is poised to break out above 350. The importance of this breakout is evident in the following chart. . . . . . . . . On the fundamental side, we have a US government deficit that is clearly out of control. In the words of William Black, associate professor of Economics at the University of Missouri: "We have 'failed bankers' giving advice to 'failed regulators' on how to deal with 'failed assets'". The US Budget Office estimates the 2009 budget deficit at 1.8 trillion dollars or four times the 2008 record deficit. We're talking 'monetary inflation in spades'! While it can be said that it takes time for monetary inflation to turn into price inflation, you can be sure that more and more investors are going to anticipate whopping price inflation. Such price inflation will result in increased demand for gold and silver, and the stock of companies that produce gold and silver.
Gold Pattern Finally Revels Itself As some one who has been bullish on gold since 2003 and documented it's rise from the ashes of the $300 lows and has followed the work of other like mined gold bulls such as Jim dines, Doug Casey, Adam Hamilton, Jim Puplava, Bob McHugh, Jim Sinclair, Jim Willie, Matthew Frailey and many others it is very exciting to see how the current pattern in gold is unfolding, and here is the exciting part! It looks like the pattern has fully reveled its self and it is breathtaking!
Gold May Extend Gain as Resistance Breached Gold may extend its two-week advance after breaching the so-called resistance level that defined the precious metal's bear trend since this year's peak in February, Standard Bank Group Ltd. said, citing trading patterns. This indicates the "corrective phase has ended," Darran Grabham, the bank's technical analyst, wrote in a note yesterday. "This is a positive development, but we are not currently forecasting a move to a new high." A resistance level is where sell orders may be clustered.
Gold's Haven Status Eclipsed by Precious Rivals: Chart of Day Gold, traditionally a haven in times of economic turmoil, is trailing silver, platinum and palladium this year on a jump in bullion recycling and expectations the worst of the recession may be over. The CHART OF THE DAY shows the price of gold, in orange, has risen 4 percent this year, compared with gains of at least 21 percent for the other precious metals. Bullion added 5.8 percent last year as investors sought a store of wealth.
Ron Paul's rEVOLution Versus the "One Ring" of the Federal Reserve "One Ring to Rule them All... and in the Darkness Bind Them." - from J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Lord of the Rings' When I talk to people who have never even heard of the Federal Reserve, I often use an analogy based on the above quote from The Lord of the Rings trilogy. (That is after I first disavow them of the notion that the dollar is loosely backed by gold, which even I will admit believing was true just two years ago.) (Photo courtesy Playadura license) Today's FED is a group of bankers who have the "Money Power" over all other banks and the money supply. This awesome power is like that of Tolkien's One Ring, which controlled all of the other Rings of Power worn by men, elves, and dwarves.
Forensic Examination of the Gold Carry Trade Is There A Supply Deficit? If you ask the World Gold Council or their "official numbers keeper" - GFMS - they'll say there is no persistent gold supply deficit. If you ask the folks at GATA - they'll claim there is an annual 1,000 - 1,500 tonne gold supply deficit. So who's telling the truth?
Peter Schiff Vlog Report 12 May 2009
Wells Fargo Is Broke Poor Forecasting Slays Another Giant The Financial Times is reporting that Wells Fargo expects [it's] earnings to fill [its stress test] deficit. "Wells Fargo, deemed to need $13.7bn of capital by the US government's stress test last week, claims to have the earning power to fill its capital deficit by November and apply to repay "as soon as practical" $25bn of government funds. "We think we already have a lot of capital and, with our earnings, we are accumulating regulatory capital at a very high rate," said Howard Atkins, chief financial officer." …after a good first quarter most banks thought they could earn their way out of the crisis by using rising profits to reduce the need for fresh capital."
Wells Fargo May Need $50 Billion in Capital Wells Fargo & Co., the second- biggest U.S. home lender, may need $50 billion to pay back the federal government and cover loan losses as the economic slump deepens, according to KBW Inc.’s Frederick Cannon. KBW expects $120 billion of “stress” losses at Wells Fargo, assuming the recession continues through the first quarter of 2010 and unemployment reaches 12 percent, Cannon wrote today in a report. The San Francisco-based bank may need to raise $25 billion on top of the $25 billion it owes the U.S. Treasury for the industry bailout plan, he wrote.
U.S. banking crisis may last until 2013 A day after saying big U.S. banks probably needed to raise only one-fourth the capital demanded by the government, Standard & Poor's said the nation's banking crisis has "merely entered a new phase" and might not end before 2013. The credit rating agency said the industry is being propped up by hundreds of billions of dollars of government support, especially for lenders considered too important to the financial system to fail.
The Bad Old days are Here Again Commodities are rising, the dollar is falling and the trade deficit is growing. Everything bad is good again, thanks to the Feds. All of the pernicious factors that brought us to the brink of financial Armageddon are now once again returning and are still-amazingly enough--being embraced as both normal and healthy for the long term viability of the U.S. economy. Factors such as a strengthening U.S. dollar, shrinking trade deficit, a surging savings rate and falling commodity prices were all being viewed as the bane of the U.S. economy. And now, unfortunately, what had been the budding re-emergence of economic sanity is being obliterated by a killing frost thanks to the Fed and the Administration.
Global banks sue MBIA over split Claim bond insurer hurt policyholders Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan and 15 other large financial institutions filed suit on Wednesday against MBIA, claiming the bond insurer reduced its ability to pay policyholders by splitting its business in two. The suit, which includes Barclays and HSBC of the UK as well as European banks, is the second legal challenge to MBIA's restructuring since the bond insurer in February received regulatory approval to split into two: a "good bank" business responsible for guarantees of municipal bonds and a "bad bank" that had insured structured bonds backed by mortgages and other assets.
Fiscal Meltdown Will Test the Bond and the Dollar to the Breaking Point Don't blame the Democrats alone for this. Instead blame a political system that is corrupted by Wall Street and lobbyist money, and a mainstream media dominated by four corporations feeding a stream of managed news and perception spin to gullible US households. The day of reckoning is nearly at hand, in which the currency crisis in the US will shake the financial foundations of the global economy.
Geithner: Bailout money to go to small banks The Obama administration will use bailout money repaid by large U.S. banks to provide additional capital infusions to smaller banks, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Wednesday. Banks with less than $500 million in assets will have six months to apply for the funds, Geithner said in remarks to the annual meeting of the Independent Community Bankers of America. They also will be able to apply for larger amounts than banks were allowed to request during the current round of investments.
Breathing easier after bank stress tests? You shouldn't Largely unnoticed in last week's government report on the condition of the nation's biggest banks was the disclosure that five of them, topped by Bank of America, could lose $99 billion from the kinds of exotic bets that sank the global economy. Even that figure, however, could prove to be exuberantly optimistic if the economy hits new depths, a McClatchy analysis has found. Moreover, the regulators' recent "stress tests" on bank holding companies didn't fully measure the cash squeeze those institutions could face if souring conditions forced them to post tens of billions of dollars in additional collateral on some of their insurance-like bets, known as derivatives.
* Important - (see Freedom Watch Part 2 below) Obama wants to make America more like Europe Barack Obama is unhappy with much that preceded his occupation of the White House, and not only his predecessor's foreign policy, for which he is a serial apologiser. Pre-Obama domestic policy also displeases him: any prosperity the nation enjoyed, he says, was built on a foundation of sand. That, won't happen again: the trillions of debt he is loading on the nation's books will enable us to erect our post-recession house on solid rock. Our world will never be the same again.
Of course, it never has been: the march of technology has enabled us to travel faster, age more slowly, entertain ourselves differently, and build air-conditioned homes in the miserably hot south and southwest, and in our nation's steamy capital. But the president has something more in mind and, with control of both houses of Congress, the power to change the way we live now. Let's make a few guesses as to where those changes will take us.
Top of the president's change list is the way we consume energy. He believes our use of carbon-based fuels is causing the globe to heat up, with all the dire consequences conjured up by Al Gore as he sits in the library of his home, probably the largest single consumer of energy of any private residence in America. By one means or another, the president will make the use of oil, natural gas and especially coal so expensive that consumers will be forced to use less energy, and rely more for the energy we do use on costly wind and solar power, paid for with tax-funded subsidies or higher utility bills.
Also, the day of spacious, safe cars is to end, with the exception of the limousines favoured by congressional leaders and White House appointees. . . .
Nouriel Roubini Stress Tests not stressful enough
Bankers Told by Paulson to Accept U.S. Aid or Be 'Vulnerable' Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said nine U.S. banks would have to accept $125 billion in government investments or be forced to by regulators, according to a memo prepared for a meeting with the lenders' chief executive officers in October. "If a capital infusion is not appealing, you should be aware that your regulator will require it in any circumstance," the one-page list of talking points said. "We don't believe it is tenable to opt out because doing so would leave you vulnerable and exposed."
Documents on Paulson, bankers' meeting released Documents made public on Wednesday confirm former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson gave nine major banks no choice but to allow the government to take equity stakes in them as the Bush administration moved to address turmoil in the financial industry. The documents, obtained by the public interest group Judicial Watch under a Freedom of Information Act request, include "talking points" used by Paulson at the October 13, 2008, meeting with the banks' CEOs in Washington.
SEC may charge Angelo Mozilo with fraud The staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission has decided to recommend that the agency bring civil fraud charges against Angelo Mozilo, the former chief executive of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp., according to a published report Wednesday. The SEC staff sent a Wells notice to Mozilo a few weeks ago informing him of possible charges, The Wall Street Journal reported online, citing unnamed people familiar with the investigation. The report said the charges include illegal insider trading and failing to disclose significant information to Countrywide shareholders.
Treasury seeks oversight of derivatives market The Obama administration moved Wednesday to shed more light on the over-the-counter derivatives market, a once-booming shadow banking system that is now closely linked to the global credit crisis. Authorities proposed subjecting all over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives dealers to "a robust regime of prudential supervision and regulation," including conservative requirements for capital, reporting and margins. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro and Mike Dunn, acting chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, announced the proposal at a news conference.
US calls for OTC derivatives regulation Plan would require contract clearinghouse The Obama administration on Wednesday unveiled a sweeping plan to regulate over-the-counter derivatives in an attempt to seize greater control over an opaque market that has been blamed for exacerbating the financial crisis. The move is intended to increase transparency and reduce risk in a market that is worth more than $680,000bn but has so far been largely unregulated because of the laisser-faire regime sanctioned by US authorities at the start of the decade.
Recovery ? What Recovery Nouriel Roubini
Obama Urges Rules on Investments Tied to Crisis In its first detailed effort to overhaul financial regulations, the Obama administration on Wednesday sought new authority over the complex financial instruments, known as derivatives, that were a major cause of the financial crisis and have gone largely unregulated for decades. The administration asked Congress to move quickly on legislation that would allow federal oversight of many kinds of exotic instruments, including credit-default swaps, the insurance contracts that caused the near-collapse of the American International Group.
Alarm Sounded On Social Security Report Also Warns Of Medicare Collapse The financial health of the Social Security system has eroded more sharply in the past year than at any time since the mid-1990s, according to a government forecast that ratchets up pressure on the Obama administration and Congress to stabilize the retirement system that keeps many older Americans out of poverty. The report, issued yesterday by the trustees who monitor the government's two main forms of help for the elderly, shows that Medicare has become more fragile as well and is at greater risk than Social Security of imminent fiscal collapse. Starting eight years from now, the report says, the health insurance program will be unable to pay all its hospital bills.
Obama says House eyes July healthcare bill President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that the US House of Representatives is working to approve a comprehensive overhaul of the US healthcare system by the end of July. Obama spoke after a White House meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other influential Democrats who will take the lead on shaping the healthcare legislation. "We don't have any excuses. The stars are aligned," said Obama, who has devoted much of this week to his drive to spur momentum behind the healthcare legislation. The legislation is expected to generate a partisan battle in Washington. Republicans say Obama's proposal to create a new public health plan to cover millions of uninsured Americans would undermine the private health care market and exacerbate already huge budget deficits.
What health care legislation could mean for everyone President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that they expect to have a health care package before Congress by the end of July. Their aim is to make medical coverage cheaper and more widely available, while reining in costs throughout the $2.5 trillion health care system. The Senate could act even sooner. The insurance and pharmaceutical industries, which helped kill a similar effort championed by the Clinton administration 15 years ago, appear to be on board.
General Aviation Sounds Mayday as Fat Cats Ditch Their Jets Nothing symbolizes corporate excess in this economy like a private jet, and scores of companies are ditching them to bolster their images and hold the bottom line. It's a trend that could hurt the aviation industry, undermining one of the last manufacturing sectors the U.S. still dominates. Corporate giants ranging from Bank of America to Time Warner are grounding planes amid a faltering economy and pressure from critics who say jets are a luxury they cannot afford and taxpayers should not subsidize. Shareholders and pundits aren't the only ones telling CEOs to fly commercial with the rest of us. A judge recently told Ritz Camera, which is closing more than 400 stores, to get rid of the jet it started leasing a few months before filing for Chapter 11.
Retail Sales Unexpectedly Fell in April Retail sales in the U.S. unexpectedly dropped in April for a second month, indicating that rising unemployment is prompting consumers to conserve cash. The 0.4 percent decrease followed a revised 1.3 percent drop in March that was larger than previously estimated, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Other reports showed companies continued to cut stockpiles as demand slowed, and climbing oil costs pushed up prices for imported goods.
Congress aims to jump-start cash for clunkers program Consumers could get up to $4,500 each to help replace old gas-guzzling cars - as long as they turn in their old ones - under a plan that's gained strong support from the White House and leaders of Congress. The "cash for clunkers" movement has proved so strong that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is seriously considering making it part of the emergency Iraq and Afghanistan war-spending bill. The House of Representatives is expected to vote on the war-funding measure by Friday, probably without the "cash for clunkers" language, which the Senate is expected to add next week when it debates the legislation. " 'Cash for clunkers' is really important," Reid said.
If You Disagree With Obama, Are You Anti-American? If you attack President Barack Obama’s policies, are you attacking America? According to today’s left, the answer is yes: Barack Obama is America. And opposition to Barack Obama or any of his policies is therefore, by definition, anti-American. Just listen to alleged comedienne Wanda Sykes at the White House Correspondents Dinner this past week: "Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails … He just wants the country to fail. To me, that’s treason. He’s not saying anything differently than what Osama bin Laden is saying."
Napolitano: A Nation Of Sheep Illegality of the Patriot Act - part 1
April foreclosures rise 32 percent The number of U.S. households faced with losing their homes to foreclosure jumped 32 percent in April compared with the same month last year, with Nevada, Florida and California showing the highest rates, according to data released Wednesday. More than 342,000 households received at least one foreclosure-related notice in April, RealtyTrac Inc. said. That means one in every 374 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing last month, the highest monthly rate since the Irvine, Calif.-based foreclosure listing firm began its report in January 2005.
Freddie Mac Loses $10 Billion for Quarter Mortgage Giant's Bailout Tops $50 Billion Freddie Mac yesterday reported that it lost $10 billion in the first three months of the year, as investments in mortgages continued to fall in value at the federally run housing finance giant. The disclosure automatically prompts a $6 billion investment from the Treasury Department to keep the company solvent, bringing Freddie Mac's bailout total to $51 billion in the first nine months of its government rescue.
GM, Chrysler to cut up to 3,000 dealers General Motors Corp and Chrysler aim to drop as many as 3,000 U.S. dealers and are expected to begin sending notifications as early as Thursday, three people briefed on the still developing plans said. GM, facing a U.S. government-imposed deadline of June 1 to restructure or file for bankruptcy, is expected to send termination notices to up to 2,000 dealers -- a third of its roughly 6,000 U.S. dealers, the sources told Reuters.
Car dealers fight rapid closures; 180,000 workers could lose jobs Car dealers from around the nation will be in Washington Wednesday to urge President Obama's automotive task force to let the economics, not the government, decide which car dealers should shut down, and when. The task force has been pushing General Motors(gm) to trim its dealer ranks faster than the several years originally planned as part of its overall restructuring. Speeding up that process will only dump 180,000 more workers onto unemployment rolls in a recession, the dealer group argues.
Chrysler Seeks to Reject 789 Dealership Agreements Chrysler LLC is seeking to reject 789 automotive dealership agreements, including seven contracts with AutoNation Inc., according to court papers filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. The bankrupt company wants to reject its contracts with less than a quarter of its approximate 3,188 retail outlets, according to today’s filing with U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Arthur Gonzalez seeking approval of the move. Fiat SpA, not Chrysler, decided which dealers will be brought along to the new company to be formed under the U.S. automaker’s bankruptcy process, according to people familiar with the situation. Trimming the bulk of dealers from urban areas will increase profitability at the remaining dealers, lawyers for Chrysler said.
Panasonic seen posting $1.1 billion loss in 2009/10 Japan's Panasonic Corp (6752.T) is likely to post a net loss of more than 100 billion yen ($1.1 billion) for the year ending in March 2010, the Yomiuri newspaper reported, as the consumer electronics maker grapples with a stronger yen and slowing demand. That is in line with an average estimate of a 105.4 billion yen net loss in a poll of 17 analysts by Thomson Reuters. Analysts expect the company to suffer a second straight year of losses this financial year, as the industry is mired in a global slump that is shaping up to be nastier than the last major downturn in 2001 after the IT bubble.
Retail sales dip raises worries about recovery Retail sales fell in April for a second straight month, dashing hopes that consumer spending was starting to revive and would help end the recession. Economists said families who are worried about layoffs and unpaid job furloughs are saving more and spending less, delaying the start of a sustained recovery. The disappointing report helped send stocks down on Wall Street, where the Dow Jones industrial average slid 184 points - more than 2 percent. Other major indexes fell even more sharply.
U.S. shoppers reticent, stall global recovery hopes U.S. consumers took the wind from the sails of optimists looking for a swift end to the recession on Wednesday as April retail sales fell, signaling they are not yet ready to lead the world back to growth. Following a report of diving European industrial output and a Bank of England forecast saying Britain needed a long period of healing, hopes slipped for a quick rebound for the global economy.
Republican lawmakers back carbon tax (yes, that's right) Reps. Bob Inglis of South Carolina and Jeff Flake of Arizona on Wednesday became the first Republican lawmakers to introduce legislation imposing a carbon tax on producers and distributors of fossil fuels. The bill, co-sponsored by Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski of Illinois , would set a tax of $15 a ton of carbon dioxide produced in its first year in effect, with the tax rising to $100 a ton over three decades. "The first axiom of economics is if you want less of something, you tax it," said Flake, a leading fiscal conservative, in an interview. "Obviously, we want less carbon, so we tax it."
[it ALWAYS starts out with a worthwhile purpose, but where will it stop?] States to Microchip Criminals to track them.
Tsunami 'could annihilate data cables' AUSTRALIAN tsunami scientists will meet officials from the federal Attorney-General's office next month to discuss research vital for understanding risks to the nation's undersea data links. The scientists, from the nation's leading tsunami authority, believe that 70 per cent of Australia's undersea cable capacity would be destroyed in a single stroke if a tsunami similar to the one that devastated coastal Thailand and Sri Lanka in 2004 were to strike Hawaii. Hawaii is the main thoroughfare for cables linking Australia to the rest of the world. . . . . . . . . A major cable breakage in Hawaii would have a catastrophic effect on the Australian economy, he said.
In the UK. . .coming to a hospital or nursing home near you, your parents, or grandparents RCN to give nurses guidance on discussing assisted dying with patients Nurses are to receive detailed guidance for the first time on how to help terminally ill patients end their own lives. Assisted suicide remains illegal in Britain but the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) says that many nurses are being asked by desperate patients about travelling abroad, such as to the Swiss clinic Dignitas, to end their lives. The RCN has been opposed since 2004 to assisted suicide - actively helping people to die - but is consulting its 400,000 members about whether to reconsider this stance in the light of calls to change the law.
Israel: Why the Two-State Solution Will Not Work The international community wants Israel to commit suicide. The State of Israel was born 61 years ago today. Israel’s delivery was not without complication and drama. For months, the life of the newborn state hung in the balance, under constant threat from and at a significant strategic disadvantage to the Arab armies that surrounded it on three sides. Miraculously, Israel survived. Victorious and worn out, yet still independent, Israel remained imperiled and strategically disadvantaged for the next 19 years.
Obama's green light to attack Iran Arctic winds are blowing into Jerusalem from Washington these days. As Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's May 18 visit to Washington fast approaches, the Obama administration is ratcheting up its anti-Israel rhetoric and working feverishly to force Israel into a corner. Using the annual AIPAC conference as a backdrop, this week the Obama administration launched its harshest onslaught against Israel to date. It began with media reports that National Security Adviser James Jones told a European foreign minister that the US is planning to build an anti-Israel coalition with the Arabs and Europe to compel Israel to surrender Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to the Palestinians. According to Haaretz, Jones was quoted in a classified foreign ministry cable as having told his European interlocutor, "The new administration will convince Israel to compromise on the Palestinian question. We will not push Israel under the wheels of a bus, but we will be more forceful toward Israel than we have been under Bush." He then explained that the US, the EU and the moderate Arab states must determine together what "a satisfactory endgame solution," will be.
Vladimir Putin signals return as president with court reform The Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, has been accused of plotting his return as president after the Kremlin announced plans to strip judges of the right to elect the head of the country's powerful constitutional court. The loss of the judiciary's last quasi-independent position would remove any lingering potential for a legal challenge should Mr Putin make an early presidential comeback. After serving consecutive four-year terms, Mr Putin was obliged to step down as president last year. He became prime minister instead and shoehorned his long-term protege, Dmitry Medvedev, into his old job.
Freedom Watch Part 1 05/13/2009
Freedom Watch Part 2 05/13/2009 [IMPORTANT lessons and advice from across the pond about socialism leading to world government] (see article above about *Obama wanting to make US more like Europe)
Freedom Watch Part3 05/13/2009 government wants to control and take over private sector - egalitarianism [i.e. heading to communism]
Freedom Watch Part 4 05/13/2009
Freedom Watch Part 5 05/13/2009 on protectionism; but not much industry left to protect
12.8 TRILLION! On and off balance sheet transactions conducted by Federal Reserve add up to 12.8 trillion, according to numerous articles reported by Bloomberg News.
YouTube Clip of Lawmaker, Fed Official Draws 166,000 [210,593 views & growing] A clip on Google Inc.’s YouTube of a congressman scolding the Federal Reserve’s inspector general on her oversight of taxpayer funds has garnered more than 166,000 viewings in six days since a hearing on Capitol Hill. Representative Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, chastised Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman for what he deemed a lack of oversight of the central bank’s off-balance-sheet transactions. The video titled “Is Anyone Minding the Store at the Federal Reserve?” was posted a day after Coleman’s May 5 testimony to a House Financial Services subcommittee. “Do you know who received that $1 trillion-plus that the Fed extended and put on its balance sheet since last September?” Grayson asked. Coleman responded by saying she didn’t know. “We have not looked at that specific area,” she said in the nearly five-and- a-half minute clip.
High Quality Version: Is Anyone Minding the Store at the Federal Reserve? This is a high quality version of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing of May 5, 2009. Rep. Alan Grayson asks the Federal Reserve Inspector General about the trillions of dollars lent or spent by the Federal Reserve and where it went, and the trillions of off balance sheet obligations. Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman responds that the IG does not know and is not tracking where this money is.
Bloomberg April 15th - Dollar Optimism Drops to One-Year Low as Fed Dilutes Currency Economic sentiment improved after global governments and central banks beefed up efforts to combat the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The U.S. government and the Fed have spent, lent or committed as much as $12.8 trillion to shore up the nation’s banking system and economy. In Japan, the government announced a record 15.4 trillion yen ($153 billion) stimulus package on April 10, bringing total spending to 25 trillion yen.
Bloomberg May 2nd - Berkshire’s Munger Says ‘Venal’ Banks May Evade Needed Reform . . . . Munger said policy makers should seek to impose limits on banks that are deemed “too big to fail” after financial institutions worldwide suffered more than $1 trillion in losses. The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the recession.
Bloomberg May 4th - U.S. Markets Wrap: S&P 500 Erases 2009 Loss as Copper, Oil Gain . . . . David Kostin, a Goldman Sachs strategist, upgraded his rating on financial stocks to “neutral” from “underweight” today, citing the economic stimulus package and better-than- estimated results from banks during the first quarter. The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed at least $12.8 trillion to help end the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, according to Bloomberg data.
(Congressman who raised the question of the 9 trillion in off balance sheet transactions) Alan Grayson on Large Financial Institutions: Who will say 'enough is enough'? Rep. Alan Grayson asks a group of witnesses representing parts of the hedge fund industry what the rules should be to prevent large financial institutions from threatening the financial system.
Socialism Coming Back To Haunt U.S. America is more than a country; it is the ideal of liberty. In economic terms, liberty translates into the entrepreneurial spirit of hard work, risk taking and self-reliance. And this spirit has made America rich beyond compare. Unfortunately, over the past four decades, much has been undone. Under the guise of a new, "social" justice, political leaders have turned our native ethics upside down. Profit-taking is now seen as gouging; success is greed; businessmen are predators. This creeping socialist transformation of our culture has finally broken the back of the American economy.
The Very Large Bubble of Government Debt . . . . You do not wipe out twenty five years of credit and leverage excess in a mere eighteen months. We are barely halfway through the liquidation/loss realisation phase. The essential question is which assets are going to perform the best as governments inflate and create a new bubble in government debt? And by the way, it's going to be very large bubble.
Forget the $1.8 trillion deficit the Obama White House admitted to today. Forget the A$60-$70 billion deficit Wayne Swan is going to shove down your face tonight. The true scope of government borrowing is breathtaking, and rather sickening. More importantly, you have to wonder where the money is going to come from, and what will happen when it's not forthcoming from private investors.
Consider the chart below, courtesy of Niels Jensen, writing in John Mauldin's "Outside the Box" e-letter. Niels shows that according to IMF estimates, twelve governments around the world (the 'Dirty Dozen') will have to issue $10.2 trillion in bonds to cover future banking losses and funding requirements in the credit markets as a result of the ongoing financial crisis.
[official version for public consumption] U.S. Budget Gap Is Revised to Surpass $1.8 Trillion President Obama has lately begun pointing to optimistic signs for the economy, but the continuing crisis still bedevils his budget projections and his domestic agenda. The administration, in final budget and tax details released Monday, disclosed a double wallop of bad news from government number-crunchers. First, its Office of Management and Budget reported that the economy had added - both for this year and next - $90 billion to the historically high deficit estimates the administration issued just two months ago.
The Ken Rogoff Study That Tim Geithner Refuses To Read Niels C. Jensen of Absolute Return Partners isn't buying the green shoots thing. He's also thinks the huge market move is just a suckers' rally. In ARP's May letter, he notes that 1929-1932 saw four massive rallies of 20%+ and that such rallies are the hallmark of bear markets. But Niels' real problem is with debt. Specifically, the amount of debt the world is going to have to take on during the recovery from this crisis. This mountain of debt, Niels says, is likely to be vastly larger than the IMF, the US government, or anyone else is expecting. . . . . . . . . total private wealth across the world today is about $37 trillion less the losses incurred in 2007-09, so the real number is probably closer to $30 trillion now. Total global savings (loosely adjusted for the big losses in 2008) are probably somewhere in the region of $100 trillion. In other words, financing this crisis could absorb one-third of total global savings.
Ron Paul On Fox Business "...runaway Inflation is horrendous"
Rumsfeld 2.3 Trillion Dollars missing Pentagon 1 DAY before 4/9-11
Gold Remains Undervalued vs. the Dollar Gold and silver prices rose last week (gold was up 3.1% and silver rose sharply by 11.6%) as the US dollar fell sharply and broke down technically and US bonds continue to sell off aggressively. Stock markets remained sanguine as ever and continued on their merry way despite valuations looking very ripe and the recent bear market rally looking long in the tooth.
How Will Gold Perform in the Coming Equity Crash? The multi-billion dollar question for precious metal investors today has to be how gold will perform as this sucker's rally in stocks goes spectacularly bust. Retail equity investors will surely wake up last, having not noticed that insiders and professional traders have been putting their shorts on or selling in the past week or so. In the equity rout we saw last autumn gold and silver stocks plunged with the rest, and even the precious metals themselves were sold off as funds scrambled to raise cash to meet margin calls. Will it be the same story this time?
Gold Gains, Dollar Sinks as Bernanke Declares US Currency "Strong", Prices "Stable" THE GOLD PRICE rose sharply for US investors in London on Tuesday morning, touching $922.50 an ounce as world stock markets held flat and the Dollar fell hard on the currency markets. The Euro hit its best level in 8 weeks near $1.37, while US crude oil broke fresh 6-month highs above $59 per barrel. Government bond prices retreated from Monday's bounce, pushing 10-year US Treasury yields back up to 3.20%. "It is too early to expect an economic recovery and we see [the 40% gain in world equities since March] as a bear market rally only," says the May edition of Metal Matters from London market-makers Scotia Mocatta.
Billions for Bankers - Debts for the People Editor's Note: This compilation provides a overview of central banking, the Federal Reserve and the specific steps that the Globalists have used to thawart the United States Constitution for the purpose of redistributing the wealth of our country. Knowledge is empowering. The concepts you are about to entertain may upset you. As a responsible patriot, you must grasp the reality of the globalist's motives and share this information with others..... Johnny Silver Bear "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." - Thomas Jefferson
[multi-part series - well done] Prologue: Three Types of Conquest History reveals nations can be conquered by the use of one or more of three methods.
The most common is conquest by war.
A second method is by religion
The third method can be called economic conquest
1 .The Real Story of Money Control in America Americans, living in what is called the richest nation on earth, seem always to be short of money. It's impossible for many families to make ends meet unless both parents are in the work force.
2. Money is "Created", Not Grown or Built. Economists use the term "create" when speaking of the process by which money comes into existence. "Creation" means making something which did not exist before
3. Bankers' Depression of the 1930's. In 1930 America did not lack industrial capacity, fertile farmlands, skilled and willing workers or industrious families.
5. Power to Coin and Regulate Money When we can see the disastrous results of an artificially created shortage of money, we can better understand why our Founding Fathers, who understood both money and God's Laws, insisted on placing the power to "create" money and the power to control it ONLY in the hands of the Federal Congress.
6. How We Lost Control of the Federal Reserve Instead of the Constitutional method of creating our money and putting it into circulation, we now have and entirely unconstitutional system.
9. The interest amount is never created The only way new money (which is not true money, but rather credit representing a debt), goes into circulation in America is when it is borrowed from the bankers.
11. Gambling Away the American Dream To grasp the truth that periodic withdrawal of money through interest payments will inexorably transfer all wealth in the nation to the receiver of interest, imagine yourself in a poker or dice game where everyone must buy the chips (the medium of exchange) from a "banker" who does not risk chips in the game.
12. Continuing Cycles of Debt and War But instead of peace and debt-free prosperity, we have ever-mounting debt and cyclical periods of war.
14. Citizen Control of U.S. Currency Money, issued in such a way, would derive its value in exchange from the fact that it had come from the highest legal source in the nation and would be declared legal to pay all public and private debts.
15. Creating a Debt-Free America With debt-free and interest-free money, there would be no direct confiscatory taxation and our homes would be mortgage-free without approximately $10,000-per-year payments to the bankers.
16. Controlling Public Debate and Opinion We realize that this small, and necessarily incomplete, article on money may be charged with oversimplification.
17. Spread the Word and Do Something to Fix Things The "almost hidden" conspirators in politics, religion, education, entertainment, and the news media are working for the banker-owned United States, in a banker-owned World under a banker-owned World Government! (This is what all the talk of a New World Order promoted by Presidents Bush and Clinton is all about.)
18. Quotes From Prominent People "Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value ---- zero." --VOLTAIRE (1694-1778) (huge list of great quotes. . . )
19. What You Can Do Pray for America's release from this wicked money control, which is at the root of our debts and wars.
The Root of Your Economic Problems Rising debts and increasing bankruptcies are the result of Congress suspending the free coinage of metals - into money - and switching us to bank credits as our medium of exchange.
The Critical Mathematical Flaw Economists and bankers choose not to discuss a very significant flaw in the present banking system.
"The refusal of King George to operate an HONEST colonial MONEY SYSTEM which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the manipulators was probably the prime cause of the Revolution." Benjamin Franklin
Is America Overstretched? O! Bama! Whither takest thou us? There are two broad theories concerning the great men of history. One says that history is made by great men. The other says great men are made by history. But here at The Daily Reckoning we think they're both wrong. In our book, great men don't really exist. They are merely invented by the historians. History needs heroes. Sometimes tragic heroes… sometimes comic… the historians take what they've got to work with and set them spinning. But if you look at their leading characters closely, they look little different from the rest of us… just fellow passengers on the big bus. . . . . . . . . The bear market in property has put one out of every four homeowners underwater. And now the recession/depression threatens to knock the stuffing out of the rest of the economy.
Follow the Money… out of the U.S. dollar? Recently, stock markets appear to have experienced an almost euphoric phase, seemingly shrugging off most negative news flow day after day. Whether or not you believe in the so-called "green shoots" of economic recovery, a significant economic rebound, or a continued decline in economic activity, one thing seems abundantly clear: investors have been becoming less risk averse. The most commonly followed "fear indicator", the VIX index, has retracted (likewise, other commonly followed indicators such as the TED spread has tightened and OIS spreads have reverted to levels not seen since the Lehman Brothers collapse), three month T-bill yields have recently risen and equity markets around the world have rebounded from March lows.
Dollar Fails Crucial Test "This move has really lit a fire under the dollar bears," says Chuck Butler. "Many institutional investors use the dollar index as their means of trading the dollar. And to see it fall through its 200-day moving average was enough proof for them that the dollar is heading south. "The 200-day moving average, for those of you unfamiliar with this term, is a long-term moving average that helps determine the overall health of the asset, which, in this case, we're talking about the dollar. It is, for all practical purposes, a dividing line, if you will, between as asset being healthy and one that is not."
Tax Revenues Collapse! Medicare And Social Security Going BUSTRuh-oh. The Treasury has just come out with a big warning on Federal tax revenues. It boils down to this: Receipts are vanishing at a faster rate than expected (surprise!) and the entitlement programs are careening towards insolvency. According to the latest estimates, Social Security will take in less in revenue than it pays out each year by 2016. That's just a few years. And the program will go completely insolvent by 2037 if no serious changes are made. Medicare will be insolvent by 2017.
Social Security and Medicare Will Cost More Than The Value Of Everything In The United StatesHere's the good news: future costs of Social Security and Medicare won't require higher taxes. Now here's the bad news: the reason these programs won't require higher taxes is that they'll be so expensive that there's no possible way to pay for them through taxes. Everything in the US (not counting people) is worth about $50 trillion and those two programs will cost $80 trillion, unless they are reformed.
Social Security, Medicare bleeding faster The deep economic recession has brought the days of reckoning for Social Security and Medicare much closer, with Medicare's program for hospital stays already running in the red and Social Security expected to start taking in less cash than it pays out beginning in 2016. A new report detailing the programs' deteriorating finances makes it clear that Congress will have to decide sooner than it had expected to either curtail the programs or find new sources of revenue to bolster them. Taxpayers and recipients probably will have to pay more as a result, analysts said.
Medicare, Social Security Funds Worsen in Recession The financial health of Social Security and Medicare, the two main safety nets for American retirees and the elderly, is declining as the recession cuts payroll-tax contributions just as the baby-boom generation begins to retire. The Social Security trust fund will run out of assets in 2037, four years sooner than previously forecast, the trustees said today. Spending on Medicare, the health insurance plan for the elderly, will reach a legal limit by 2014, the same year predicted in 2008, the trustees' report said.
No, Citigroup Is Not Using "Most" Of Its TARP Money For Lending Sorry, but Citi's new spin campaign really warrants some counterspin. As we noted this morning, Citigroup is gin up some buzz from the fact that it's taken $45 billion from TARP, and that this past month it's lent out an incremental $45 billion (some of it even to cash-strapped cities, how patriotic!)
Citigroup: $45 billion TARP money goes toward loans Citigroup Inc said on Tuesday that the committee overseeing its use of $45 billion of taxpayer money had approved the use of nearly all of that sum to make loans. The New York-based bank said the committee had approved $44.75 billion of lending initiatives as of March 31, including $8.25 billion for new programs in the first quarter. Citigroup said the new loans included $5 billion to municipalities, universities and nonprofit hospitals; $2 billion to help fund small and midsized businesses; $1 billion for residential mortgages; and $250 million for auto loans.
Bill Coming This Week To Guarantee Entire Muni Market One of the most insane ideas we've heard of may soon become reality. Fox Biz is reporting that the House Financial Services Committee is set to take up legislation this week that would establish a federal backstop for all Municipal bonds and muni insurance. This would, of course, represent another massive expansion of the government's guarantees and turn all states into Fannie and Freddy.
Dollar Falls to 7-Week Low on Speculation Global Slump Easing The dollar fell to a seven-week low against the euro after Chinese government reports today added to signs the worst of the global economic slump is over, sapping demand for the greenback as a refuge. Demand for the dollar also waned after David Walker, former U.S. comptroller general, wrote in an opinion piece in the Financial Times that the nation's AAA credit rating may be cut. Australia's dollar rose against the U.S. currency after better- than-expected retail sales data from China provided more evidence of a rebound in the world's third-largest economy.
Dollar Falls as China May Rebound; U.S. Debt Ratings Threatened The dollar fell to the weakest level versus the euro since March, on speculation Chinese government reports today will add to signs the worst of the global economic slump is over, sapping demand for greenback as a refuge. Demand for the U.S. currency also waned after David Walker, former U.S. comptroller general, wrote in an opinion piece published by the Financial Times that the nation's AAA credit rating may be cut. Australia's dollar rose against the greenback before retail and industrial production data from China that may add to evidence of a rebound for the South Pacific nation's biggest trading partner.
Dollar Falls to Two-Week Low Against Yen on U.S. Rating Concern The dollar fell to a two-week low against the yen and declined versus the euro after a Financial Times article said the U.S. AAA credit rating may be at risk. The dollar dropped for a fourth day versus the yen after the former U.S. comptroller general David Walker wrote in the FT that the U.S. government should create a "fiscal future commission" to rein in the country's finances because its credit rating may be cut.
Bernanke Says U.S. Banks Must Test More to Identify Other Risks Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said efforts by U.S. banks to raise capital are "encouraging" and called on firms to identify other risks through internal stress tests. The banks, especially those with "trading and investment banking businesses," should keep monitoring "operational, liquidity and reputational risks," which weren't addressed by the exam concluded last week, Bernanke said in a speech yesterday at a Fed conference in Jekyll Island, Georgia.
Taylor Says Fed May Not Have Much Time Before Rate Rise Needed The Federal Reserve may soon need to raise interest rates, said a former Treasury official who devised a formula for rate-setting based on the outlook for inflation and growth. "My calculation implies we may not have as much time before the Fed has to remove excess reserves and raise the rate," John Taylor, a Treasury undersecretary under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, said today at an Atlanta Fed conference in Jekyll Island, Georgia.
Paul Krugman Says Rapid Recovery 'Extremely Unlikely' Paul Krugman, Princeton University's Nobel Prize-winning economist, said global economic prospects don't justify the two-month rally that has restored $8.9 trillion to stock markets around the world. Speculation government spending packages and interest-rate cuts worldwide will reinvigorate the global economy has helped the MSCI World Index rally 37 percent since falling to its lowest since 1995 on March 9. The U.S. Standard & Poor's 500 Index surged 34 percent in that time.
Uh Oh, Look Who's Bullish Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said that the decline in the U.S. housing market may be bottoming and it's "very easy to see" financial markets continuing to improve. "We are finally beginning to see the seeds of a bottoming" in the housing industry, Greenspan said today during a conference of the National Association of Realtors in Washington. The U.S. is "at the edge of a major liquidation" in the stock of unsold properties, which may help to stabilize prices, Greenspan said.
Greenspan Sees 'Seeds of a Bottoming' in U.S. Housing Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said that the decline in the U.S. housing market may be bottoming and it's "very easy to see" financial markets continuing to improve. "We are finally beginning to see the seeds of a bottoming" in the housing industry, Greenspan said today during a conference of the National Association of Realtors in Washington. The U.S. is "at the edge of a major liquidation" in the stock of unsold properties, which may help to stabilize prices, Greenspan said.
Records Show Billions Withdrawn Before Madoff Arrest About $12 billion was pulled out of accounts at Bernard L. Madoff's firm in 2008, according to several people briefed on an analysis of Mr. Madoff's business records. About $6 billion, or half, was taken out in just the three months before the financier was arrested in December and charged with operating an extensive Ponzi scheme, these people said.
U.S. Aid to IMF to Be Recalculated - $$ Congressional leaders agreed Tuesday to calculate the cost of a new U.S. contribution to the International Monetary Fund in a relatively inexpensive way, paving the way for possible Congressional approval within weeks. The Obama administration has pledged a $108 billion contribution to the IMF, as part of a $500 billion global boost to IMF resources. The White House has argued that this is a necessary contribution to global financial stability and would send a signal that there is enough money to help prevent struggling countries from becoming further enmeshed in economic crises. Congressional approval would put pressure on European nations, China, Brazil and others to increase their lending to the IMF.
Treasury Expected to Notify Asset Managers Chosen in PPIP Review The Treasury Department is expected to notify a group of asset managers Wednesday that they've been culled from the 104 that applied to oversee the first wave of Public-Private Investment Program funds. The selected firms, widely expected to include mega-managers BlackRock Inc. and the Pacific Investment Management Co., will then negotiate with Treasury over the structure of their proposed funds before they're formally identified as qualified under PPIP, expected in early June, according to a Treasury official.
Freddie Mac to Tap $6.1 Billion in Aid After Loss Freddie Mac is seeking a $6.1 billion investment from the U.S. Treasury, a fifth of the aid tapped in March, as the mortgage-finance company used an accounting rule and gains on derivatives to help curtail losses. A $9.9 billion first-quarter net loss, which pushed Freddie Mac's net worth below zero for the third straight time, was less than half of the losses posted in each of the previous two quarters. Freddie Mac said it will still need more financial help from the government and may have trouble coming up with the cash to pay dividends owed on Treasury funds already borrowed.
Home Prices in U.S. Drop Most on Record in Quarter Home prices in the U.S. dropped the most on record in the first quarter from a year earlier, led by California and Florida, as banks sold foreclosed properties. The median price fell 14 percent to $169,000, the National Association of Realtors said today. Prices dropped in 134 of 152 metropolitan areas, with the deepest declines in Cape Coral and Ft. Myers, Florida, followed by San Francisco and San Jose.
Judge approves GMAC-Chrysler deal A bankruptcy judge on Tuesday ruled that GMAC Financial Services can become Chrysler LLC's preferred lender, potentially sending a slew of new business to the financing company and ensuring that Chrysler's dealers will have access to the loans they need to stay in business. U.S. Judge Arthur Gonzales approved the four-year deal between the Auburn Hills, Mich.-based automaker and GMAC, pending the completion of certain documentation. He also gave pending approval of a risk-sharing agreement between Chrysler and Chrysler Financial, which allows the deal between Chrysler and GMAC to go forward.
GM Tanks As Insiders Run For The Hills Sometimes insiders actually have a pretty good idea of what's going on. And the message, loud and clear, from GM insiders is that barring a miracle -- and we don't mean something unlikely, but an actual, literal miracle -- shares of GM are going to $0. Several execs said last night that they were dumping their entire holdings at their current, undignified levels and today the stock is tanking, down over 20% to about $1.10. It's the lowest the stock's been in over 70 years.
Rethinking the Rust Belt One of the least useful habits of thought fostered by the modern mythology of progress, it seems to me, is the notion that historical change can only move in one direction - the direction in which it seems to be going at the present. Those of us who suggest that today's industrial societies are headed for a process of decline and fall, not that different from the ones that ended civilizations of the past, run up against this insistence constantly. The truism that time only goes one way gets distorted into the claim that since the last three hundred years have seen a great deal of expansion and technical development, the future must follow the same trajectory.
Oil Advances for Second Day on China's Imports, Weaker Dollar Oil rose for a second day after China, the world's second-biggest energy-consuming country, said yesterday crude imports increased by 14 percent in April. Deliveries reached 16.17 million metric tons last month, or 3.9 million barrels a day, the Chinese customs department reported. Oil also climbed as the dollar fell to the lowest level against the euro since March, bolstering demand for commodities as an alternative investment. "It was fairly encouraging data out of China," said Toby Hassall, research analyst at Commodity Warrants Australia Pty in Sydney. "China and some of the other developing countries have really underpinned demand as a lot of the OECD countries have slipped into recession."
Credit Card Receivables: Even Moody's Thinks the Fed's 'Adverse Case' Is a Joke When even Moody's chimes in and notes that the Fed's "Adverse Case" assumptions are in line with their "Base Case" assumptions, one can't help but wonder in what parallel universe the Federal Reserve is expecting to see its optimistic outcome realized, especially since many of its macro worst case parameters have already been trampled by real economic data.
Schwarzenegger Tells Lawmakers Deficit May Swell to $21 Billion California's budget deficit has grown so severe that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said he may be forced to release 40,000 prisoners or lay off 51,000 teachers if voters next week reject three budget balancing measures. The state's projected deficit will swell to $15 billion between now and June 2010, Schwarzenegger told lawmakers late yesterday. Half the gap falls in the current fiscal year that ends in seven weeks. If voters reject plans to sell bonds backed by lottery profits and siphon tax receipts from tobacco and high earners already dedicated to special programs then the deficit would expand by another $6 billion.
Trade Gap Widens as Exports Decrease The U.S. trade deficit widened for the first time in eight months as exports slumped to a two-year low, overwhelming a reduction in American demand for goods made abroad. Analysts detected signs in the report that a record contraction in global trade flows may be easing, highlighting the slowest pace of decline in U.S. imports since they started dropping in August. The figures also showed that American shipments to China in the last two months of the first quarter climbed the most since 2006.
Christians in Mideast Losing Numbers and Influence Christians used to be a vital force in the Middle East. They dominated Lebanon and filled top jobs in the Palestinian movement. In Egypt, they were wealthy beyond their number. In Iraq, they packed the universities and professions. Across the region, their orientation was a vital link to the West, a counterpoint to prevailing trends. But as Pope Benedict XVI wends his way across the Holy Land this week, he is addressing a dwindling and threatened Christian population driven to emigration by political violence, lack of economic opportunity and the rise of radical Islam. A region that a century ago was 20 percent Christian is about 5 percent today and dropping.
Pope's Hitler Youth past revived Following visit to Holocaust memorial JERUSALEM | Pope Benedict XVI celebrated a Mass at the garden of Gethsemane for thousands of pilgrims Tuesday and received a tumultuous welcome that raised the tone of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but repeated criticism in Israel forced Vatican officials to defend the pontiff's past. The pontiff was greeted by a throng of cheering pilgrims as his white popemobile rolled through the olive groves in the Valley of Kidron between the Mount of Olives and the 400-year-old walls of Jerusalem's Old City. The Mass was the first the German pope has celebrated since arriving in Israel on Monday for the start of a five-day visit that has taken him to sites sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians.
Earth Warming? The earth is warming! About 1/2 a degree over the last century, I think. Some say the Antarctic is re-freezing, and the Arctic is melting. Who knows? All I do know, is that humans have absolutely NOTHING to do with it. It's all a first rate bunch of horse puckey. This guilt trip, that us humans are the cause, is pure and unadulterated nonsense. I'm sick of it. The greenies now are even blaming the cows! Rather than going vegetarian, let's eat the greenies. Now remember a bit of history, say about 15 years ago. Remember? We were all going to freeze to death, and the ice age was coming back! Amazing how things change, isn't it? Today, the media and greenies are having a blast with 'carbon footprints,' and other assorted bits of garbage, trying to make everyone feel guilty about turning on the hot water faucet, or starting a car's engine. Yuk.
Middle East World Economic Forum 2009 - Samir Brikho Samir Brikho, Chief Executive, AMEC, United Kingdom and Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East 2009, taking place at the Dead Sea in Jordan, 15-17, May, 2009
Middle East World Economic Forum 2009 - John P. Drzik John P. Drzik, President and Chief Executive Officer, Oliver Wyman Group (MMC), USA for the World Economic Forum on the Middle East 2009
Middle East World Economic Forum 2009 - Chey Jae-Won Chey Jae-Won, Vice-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, SK Holdings, Republic of Korea and Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East 2009, taking place at the Dead Sea in Jordan, 15-17, May, 2009
Seen on a t-shirt: "Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. Recovery is when Obama loses his."
Everyone Is Wrong, Again (Except The Gold Bulls) One of our readers sent us a very interesting article from itulip.com entitled "Everyone is wrong, again -- 1981 in Reverse Part II: Nine Signs of Inflation". The article is an explanation by Peter Warburton (the author of the book "Debt and Delusion") of why generalised 'price inflation' is likely to become an issue by early next year, with comments by itulip's editor (Eric Janszen) interspersed. We don't agree with every aspect of this article, but we do concur with its gist and conclusions. Unfortunately, we can't provide a link because it is in the subscriber area of the itulip web site, but what we can (and will) do is discuss some of the article's main points and tie them in with our own views.
Be wary of the markets - gold still offers the best insurance In a week that has seen global stock markets continuing to perform positively, gold has done remarkably well given that many experts are predicting the start of a new bull market. There has been little, if any, disinvestment from gold over the period, which suggests there are many out there continuing to hedge their bets. And indeed they may well be wise to do so. Major bear markets of the past have seen big upswings during their progress, sucking investors back in, only for the upturns to end dramatically as some further major financial collapse spooks the markets again and prices tumble.
Gold coin production up at Royal Mint LONDON: Gold has emerged as the biggest winner during the recession and this has resulted in demand for gold coins soaring to unimaginable levels. Following the never-ending rise in gold coin demand, UK’s Royal Mint has stepped up production of coins. The UK mint, which is based in Wales, used 75 per cent more gold in the opening three months of 2009 than it did a year previously. It produced 28,496 ounces of gold coins in the first quarter, compared to 16,317 ounces in the same period in 2008, while production last year also increased 30 per cent.
The gold monetization scheme is ending The G8 appears finished but their policymakers continue to try to bend the G20, and the world, to their will. The establishment, the Fed, the Bank of England, the Bank for International Settlements, the same gang that has been setting policy for decades, is still at it. They appear to remain in charge (with nary a whimper of criticism about the trillions of dollars' worth of damage their policies have caused) but, when it comes to gold, they are slowly losing their grip.
Sterling silver turns a hot commodity Even as the world is fighting recession and jewellery shops across the globe are facing a crisis to dispose of their collections, Philippines’ leading silver jewellery brand Michelis is going gung-ho over its future plans. According to a press note, the company will concentrate on creating new collections and mapping out new measures to boost consumer interest.
Boosting The Dying Dollar With A False Rally On Friday the dollar completely broke down, with the USDX collapsing to about 82.5, as monetizations by the Fed became a stark reality. A world stock market collapse could be imminent as a source of dollar support. We wonder how low they will let the dollar go before they collapse the stock markets to chase people back into US treasuries, which have also broken down, with treasury interest rates on the rise despite various Fed purchases of treasuries in the hundreds of billions. So much for the bogus stress tests as things turn much uglier than anticipated by the boneheads in Goldman Sachs South who are attempting to resurrect the Goldilocks Matrix. The suckers rally is simply the loading and winding of a catapult meant to throw the dollar upward as the stock market spring unwinds at the moment chosen by the PPT, which moment has already been telegraphed to Illuminist insiders for their continued looting of the sheople and for the filthy aggrandizement of their growing mountain of ill-gotten gains. The stock market shorts are being set up in the dark pools of liquidity beyond the purview of regulators as this article is being written, so if you plug yourself back into the pod electrodes of the Goldilocks Matrix again, you are in for a major shock.
Dollar Fails Crucial Test The U.S. dollar failed an important technical test recently. "This move has really lit a fire under the dollar bears," says Chuck Butler. "Many institutional investors use the dollar index as their means of trading the dollar. And to see it fall through its 200-day moving average was enough proof for them that the dollar is heading south.
Dollar Rally Will End, Rogers Says; May Short Stocks The dollar’s rally is set to end in a “currency crisis,” investor Jim Rogers said, adding that he may bet on a slide in equities after they jumped 34 percent in the U.S. in nine weeks. The rally in the dollar has been driven by investors covering their short sales, Rogers, 66, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Singapore. He may consider adding to his holdings of the yen and prefers the euro to the dollar or the pound, the investor added.
Rick Santelli Says: Watch This Video Of A Clueless Fed Inspector General! No fan of the Federal Reserve, CNBC's Rick Santelli is eager to highlight anything that shows just how corrupt and counter-productive the organization is. In one of his classic rants, the Chicago bond guy said to search YouTube for "Elizabeth Coleman Inspector General" to see just how clueless the person tasked with monitoring the Fed actually is. Here you go. It is pretty much a trainwreck
Is Anyone Minding the Store at the Federal Reserve?
Big spending to revive U.S. economy is still planned With banks needing less, the Treasury Department could prop up municipal bonds and aid life insurers such as Hartford or Lincoln Financial. The Obama administration still plans to spend tens of billions of dollars reviving the nation's financial system, even after the government's unexpected finding that major banks need only a little bit more direct government aid. Despite signs that the worst of the recession may be over, senior officials say they think big actions are necessary to spark an economic revival.
Estimate of Budget Deficit Now Tops $1.84 Trillion The economic crisis is already taking a toll on the Obama administration's new budget projections, adding $90 billion to its already historically high estimates of deficits for both this fiscal year and next. The changes, reported on Monday by the Office of Management and Budget, brings the deficit for this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, to $1.84 trillion from a February projection of $1.75 trillion. For fiscal 2010, the new estimate is $1.26 trillion, up from $1.17 trillion.
Goldman Pays to End State Inquiry Into Loans In the first major settlement involving Wall Street's role in the subprime mortgage business, the Goldman Sachs Group agreed on Monday to pay up to $60 million to end an investigation by the Massachusetts attorney general's office into whether the firm helped promote unfair home loans in the state. The money will be used for a loan modification program that would allow Massachusetts homeowners with mortgages from Goldman entities to write down their principal balances by as much as 50 percent.
Three Banks to Sell Stock to Repay TARP Funds Three United States banks, apparently emboldened by the clean bills of health they received under the federal stress tests, announced plans Monday to pay down the government's investments under the TARP program by selling billions of dollars in new stock. The announcements came from Capital One Financial, US Bancorp and BB&T Corporation, each of which were found not to need additional capital under the examinations of 19 large financial institutions, whose results were made public last week. The decision to sell new stock to help buy back government's preferred shares and warrants shows that just a few months after last fall's credit-market meltdown, some banks are feeling increasingly confident of their ability to stand on their own.
Bank Stock Sales Add Billions in New Capital The nation's largest banks are taking advantage of the recent stock market rally to raise billions of dollars in new capital, allowing the firms to improve their financial health much more quickly and cheaply than government officials had expected. Capital One of McLean joined three other large banks yesterday in announcing new sales of common stock that together total more than $6 billion. Large banks have announced more than $18 billion in share sales since the government's release of stress test results last week.
Wall Street's rally hits a wall Stocks fall as investors take a step back from the two-month rally. Dow posts its biggest selloff in 3 weeks. Stocks stumbled Monday as investors took a step back after propelling the major stock gauges by more than 30% each in just two months. Treasury prices rallied, lowering the corresponding yields, as investors pulled money out of stocks and put it into the safer-haven bonds. The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) lost 156 points, or 1.8%. It was the Dow's biggest one-day selloff in three weeks.
The day the commodity world changed Energy bears are stunned. They say it is impossible and there is no reason for it. Energy seems to be defying gravity. The bears and the rest of the world are waking up to the fact that something has changed in the energy complex. Petroleum and now natural gas are soaring despite the fact that the supplies are overwhelming. There's shock and disbelief that oil and gas can defy the normal historical reactions to supply and demand. Traders are calling me and are stunned with no idea of what is happening.
Oil Falls a Second Day on U.S. Equity Markets, Higher Supplies Oil fell for a second day as the drop in equities signaled the global economy and fuel consumption may not recover anytime soon, pushing crude stockpiles higher. Crude followed equity markets lower, reversing gains made last week after the U.S. economy lost fewer jobs than expected. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index declined 2.2 percent while the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.8 percent. U.S. oil inventories probably gained for a 10th week, according to a Bloomberg News survey.
Peter Schiff, End The Fed!
We're Dull, Small Banks Say, and Have Profit to Show for It It's unlikely that any group of professionals is happier to highlight the dullness of their work than small-town bankers. At a recent conference held here by the Indiana Bankers Association, attendees said it over and over: our business is plodding and boring and we would not have it any other way. "Banking should not be exciting," said Clay W. Ewing, president of retail financial services at German American Bancorp, a community bank in Jasper. "If banking gets exciting, there is something wrong with it." It is an ethos squarely at odds with the risk-addicted style of megabanks, like Citigroup and Bank of America, that trafficked in the subprime mortgages and complex financial products that helped drive the country into the grimmest recession in decades.
Recession robberies of banks on the rise Financial pressure pushes some people over the edge Bruce Windsor lived the life of a respectable family man - father of four, deacon in his South Carolina church, youth soccer coach, a volunteer who helped build orphanages in Brazil. Then four days after his 43rd birthday, authorities say, he donned a mask, wig and sunglasses and tried to rob a bank at gunpoint. Windsor, it turns out, was falling down a financial hole. A real estate investor who ran several property business, his troubles predated the recession but continued as the housing bubble burst and easy credit for businesses and consumers dried up. Clad in an orange jumpsuit, his hands cuffed at his waist, Windsor calmly told the judge at his bond hearing, "I've never stolen anything in my life."
High-End Homes Won't Evade Crash Will homes maintain their value best in expensive neighborhoods, where homeowners presumably are not under the gun to sell or even to make mortgage payments? I've argued the opposite - that in percentage terms, high-end homes are likely to fall the hardest as the nation's real estate crash runs its course over the next 4-5 years. While it is true that the wealthy, most of whom own their homes outright, do not face jeopardy from mortgage lenders, they could find themselves on the ropes for other reasons, including the failure of a business, or devastating investment losses. That could easily force the sale -- for starters -- of a vacation home, which would put price pressure on all of the other homes in the neighborhood. Keep in mind that prices are set at the margin and that $2 million homes in a high-end development all become $1.4 million homes overnight if just one of the homeowners is forced to sell in a hurry.
Ron Paul to Bernanke: Continue Down Path of Socializing Our Entire Economy + Transparency
Recession changes the rules of retail As consumers buy only the clothes they need today, stores try to keep fashions in sync with the seasons. When times were good, retailers sold sundresses in February and heavy wool sweaters in August. Now, Americans worried about the recession are buying only what they need today. This new frugality has merchants and suppliers overhauling every aspect of their businesses, from window displays to the fabrics they choose. It's changing some of the rules of retail. Joan Danehy, a 63-year-old retired teacher from Cazenovia, N.Y., would always get a head start on spring, buying summer clothes for her grandchildren when it was still chilly in March. She would put her purchases aside and give out the items a few months later when the weather turned warm. This year, she passed by the colorful assortment at Lord & Taylor without buying.
Boeing Targets $10 Billion Market for Leased Drones Boeing Co., the second-largest U.S. defense contractor, is leasing drones to government agencies and militaries seeking to bypass years-long purchasing processes, a market the company says may grow to $10 billion in a decade. Boeing won contracts in 2007 and 2008 for a total of $312.7 million to supply the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps with ScanEagle spy drones on a fee-for-service basis and got a $250 million contract from the U.S. Special Operations Command on similar terms last month. Under the deals, Boeing owns the equipment and sends the operators where the military wants them.
Change in Estate Tax Suggested to Pay for Health Care Struggling to find ways to pay for the president's signature health care overhaul, the administration on Monday proposed to raise nearly $60 billion more over 10 years mostly from tightening rules for inheritance taxes affecting the wealthiest estates. The Treasury Department's proposals, and several others affecting taxation of life insurance and some other financial products, are intended to fill a gap that has opened up in President Obama's health care plans. Revised estimates show that his main idea for financing the initiative - a 28 percent limit on deductions for Americans in the top two tax brackets - would raise $266.7 billion over a decade, not $318 billion as he had projected in his overall budget blueprint last February.
Obama's Push for Health Care Cuts Faces Daunting Odds President Obama engineered a political coup on Monday by bringing leaders of the health care industry to the White House to build momentum for his ambitious health care agenda. Mr. Obama pronounced it "a historic day, a watershed event," because doctors, hospitals, drug makers and insurance companies voluntarily offered $2 trillion in cost reductions over 10 years. The savings, he said, "will help us take the next and most important step - comprehensive health care reform."
Health industry pledges to spend $2 trillion less Foes of '93 reform plan now seek edge The health care industry's pledge to the White House on Monday to reduce spending increases by $2 trillion was the first step as both sides began to jockey for the upper hand in the congressional battle over expanding health care coverage. President Obama noted that some of the players who fought the last proposed health care overhaul in 1993 were at the White House on Monday, but the groups say they have not signed on to his health care agenda and are hoping voluntary cuts now will stave off onerous government mandates.
Chances Bright for Legislation Seeking FDA Regulation of Tobacco After 15 years of debate, tens of millions spent on lobbying and a roller-coaster legislative history, public health advocates say they believe Congress is finally ready to regulate tobacco -- and their opponents privately agree. This week, a Senate committee will take up its version of a bill that passed the House by a comfortable margin last month. Supporters say they have more than the 60 votes needed to make the legislation filibuster-proof when it reaches the Senate floor sometime after Memorial Day.
Bill would allow return to lower credit-card rates Consumers who are paying more in interest because they have fallen behind on their credit-card bills could regain their older, lower rates if they pay their bills on time for six months, under a compromise proposal reached by senators seeking changes in laws governing the credit card industry. The Senate proposal was brokered between Republicans, who say lenders should be able to take into account a person's behavior, and Democrats, who contend that the practice of hiking rates on past balances prevents consumers from climbing out of debt.
Rich Folks Buy Art To Beat Hyperinflation Your currency could be worthless soon, what do you do? You could buy gold, but that's a pain. You can buy a farm and water and firearms, but that's kind of depressing. If you're in Europe you can buy dollars, but those could be toilet paper, too. How about art? Despite the horrifying environment for the once super-wealthy, recent art auctions haven't been getting killed like you might expect. Sure it's down, but not horrendously so. People will still plunk down millions for oil paint on canvas.
Empty big-box stores drag down their neighbors Large vacant stores cast their shadows on empty parking lots. Several shopping carts lie on their sides. The retail area in Dublin near the 580 and 680 freeways looks like it's halfway to becoming a ghost town. A slumping economy has transformed part of this city, where Mervyns, Circuit City and Expo Design Center have all closed recently, into an extreme example of the malaise affecting shopping centers across the Bay Area.
Ford to raise up to $2bn with new share issue Ford Motor, the only one of the three Detroit carmakers surviving without a government bail-out, has further distanced itself from its troubled rivals with plans for an equity issue that could raise close to $2bn. The proceeds could enable Ford to pay cash for a sizeable chunk of its contributions to a union-managed healthcare trust that would otherwise have been made in shares. Alan Mulally, Ford's chief executive, described the share issue as "another example of the fast, decisive action we are taking as we build momentum on our plan, including further progress on improving our balance sheet".
Credit insurance hampers GM restructuring Hedge funds and other investors stand to make billions of dollars on credit insurance contracts if GM declares bankruptcy, a prospect that is complicating efforts to persuade creditors to agree to a restructuring plan for the automaker, analysts say. Holders of $27bn in GM bonds have until June 1 to decide whether to swap their debt for a 10 per cent equity stake in the company as part of an offer that would give the US government 50 per cent of the shares, a United Auto Workers union healthcare fund 39 per cent and existing shareholders 1 per cent.
Your Auto Bailout Tab: $83 Billion And Counting Now that you've finished filing your taxes, here's another task sure to clog your calculator-tallying the cost of the auto bailout. With General Motors Corp. running through $10 billion in cash from the federal treasury during the first three months of 2009 and Congress poised to offer consumers substantial tax credits for new, more fuel efficient vehicles, the costs of helping the struggling automobile industry are mounting fast. Throw in special financing for auto loans supported by the Federal Reserve Board, and the aid for automakers now totals $83 billion-and it keeps growing.
Experts say GM bankruptcy almost inevitable With a June 1 deadline looming, automaker is running out of viable options For General Motors Corp., the task at hand is so difficult that experts say a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing is all but inevitable. To remake itself outside of court, GM must persuade bondholders to swap $27 billion in debt for 10 percent of its risky stock. On top of that, the automaker must work out deals with its union, announce factory closures, cut or sell brands and force hundreds of dealers out of business - all in three weeks. "I just don't see how it's possible, given all of the pieces," said Stephen J. Lubben, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law who specializes in bankruptcy.
G.M. Says Offer to Bondholders Won't Change General Motors does not plan to sweeten its debt exchange offer to bondholders, even though its failure would probably push the company into bankruptcy, G.M.'s chief executive said Monday. Bondholders, who hold more than $27 billion in G.M. debt, have until May 27 to decide whether they will swap their bonds for shares of a reorganized G.M. The company has said it needs 90 percent of the bonds to be exchanged to meet Treasury Department guidelines to receive additional loans. Analysts say that is unlikely to happen.
Egypt Prepares for Center Stage When Obama Addresses Arabs CAIRO - President Obama's decision to deliver a speech here next month has given significant encouragement to a once powerful ally that has grown increasingly frustrated over its waning regional influence and its inability to explain to its citizens why it remains committed to a Middle East peace process that has failed to produce a better life for Palestinians. After eight years in which Egypt felt unappreciated and bullied by the Bush administration, Egyptian officials were gleeful about Cairo's selection last week for the president's address to the Muslim world. They said that it proved Egypt remained the capital of the Arab world and that it eased concerns that Washington might undermine its Arab allies in exchange for a grand deal with their rivals in Iran.
Pope Backs a Palestinian Homeland JERUSALEM - On the fourth day of his first trip to the Middle East as pope, Benedict XVI arrived Monday in Israel and immediately called for a solution to the conflict that would yield a "homeland of their own" for both Palestinians and Israelis. While he did not use the word "state," he made clear in a brief speech that he was underscoring the Vatican's previous support for the creation of a Palestinian state, albeit with a stronger resonance imparted by the setting and timing of his remarks within minutes of arriving in Israel.
U.S. Replaces Commander in Afghanistan in War Overhaul The Pentagon is replacing the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, less than a year after he took over, marking a major overhaul in military leadership of a war that has presented President Obama with a worsening national security challenge.
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Cheney: Obama endangers the nation Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday continued his verbal attack against President Obama, saying that the country is more vulnerable to a potential terrorist attack since the Obama administration took power. Mr. Cheney said that administration's dismantling of many of the policies and protections instituted by President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks - including the planned closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba and halting controversial prisoner interrogation techniques - have made the country more vulnerable to future attacks.
Liddy's urgent message on Middle East 'Read Aaron Klein's 'Late Great State of Israel' immediately' Everyone seeking to understand the urgent dangers facing Israel must immediately read the blockbuster new book "The Late Great State of Israel." So says radio host G. Gordon Liddy in an interview with the crucial book's author, WND Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein. The subtitle of Klein's book - released this past week as Israel celebrated its independence - reads, "How enemies within and without threaten the Jewish nation's survival." "The greatest threat, the one that magnifies all others exponentially, is that only a few in Israel or abroad are aware of the real extent of the dangers facing the Jewish country - both from within and without," writes Klein.
Westsound Bank of Bremerton, Wash., seized, sold Government regulators have seized Bremerton-based Westsound Bank and sold it to Kitsap Bank of Port Orchard, Wash. OLYMPIA, Wash. - Government regulators have seized Bremerton-based Westsound Bank and sold it to Kitsap Bank of Port Orchard, Wash. The state Department of Financial Institutions says Westsound Bank's main office and eight branches will open again on Monday, but some online banking services may not be available over the weekend. Officials point out that most bank deposits are insured by the federal government up to $250,000. State officials say they do not anticipate losses by Westsound Bank depositors. The state announced its seizure of Westsound Bank on Friday evening, citing "severe asset problems, significant losses and inadequate capital."
Don't Be Fooled by Inflation Strike up the band, boys, happy days are here again! Recently released short-term economic data, including unemployment claims, non-farm payrolls, home sales, and business spending, which had been so unambiguously horrific in February and March, are now just garden-variety awful. With the Wicked Witch of Depression now apparently crushed under the house of Obamanomics, the Munchkins of Wall Street have sounded the all clear, pushing the Dow Jones up 25% from its lows. But the premature conclusion of their Lollipop Guild economists, that the crash of 2008/2009 is now a fading memory, is just as delusional as their failure to see it coming in the first place.
Peter Schiff The Collapse Barely Begun 08 May 2009
Gold in the Face of Government Stupidity “Gold Isn’t Going To $2,000 An Ounce” is both the headline and the announcement of Jeff Clark at CaseyResearch.com, a conclusion he apparently reached after he “decided to take a fresh look at calculations that could be used to appraise gold’s upside potential.” Confirming rumors that I am “always disagreeable,” I am absolutely sure that gold will soar in price, as in To The Freaking Moon (TTFM), as a result of the fiscal and monetary malfeasance as we see today, as that is what has ALWAYS happened in the last 4,500 years of governments acting like grubby, corrupt morons, particularly when using a fiat currency, which always expands too, too much and for too, too long.
Gold $915, Silver $14, Dollar Index Falls, What Next? The euphoria of Wall Street over the bank stress tests and the mere $75 billion in new money required to shore up balance sheets failed to stop precious metals advancing again last week. Gold closed at $915 and silver above $14 an ounce, while the US dollar index fell to 82.4 below the level that some technical analysts held as being an important support. There is some logic in the contention that dollar weakness is due to stock market strength, with money coming out of bonds and cash and into equities. Last autumn the dollar rally and market crash showed that the reverse also seems to apply.
Upside Down Gold "The U.S. and world economies are on the threshold of a deflationary crash that will make the 1930s look like a boom. Gold will be the single best investment to own. Buy it now while it's still cheap."- John Exter . . . . At the bottom of the debt pyramid sits gold, the asset that needs no bank, Fed, or human "blessing" of any kind to be valued by both the individual and the banking system (although they hate to admit it) alike. Has the rush to gold started? Yes, but barely, because only recently have we seen a nation admit they are moving into gold. China and of course the gold bugs have been buying since the recent bottom in 2000, but this pales in comparison to what this writer sees ahead; now that the structure is failing, more and more nations, institutions, and individuals will be heading to the bottom for safety and liquidity (gold).
Gold and Economic Freedom: Reinterpreted for the 21st Century I do not profess that the main structural arguments of the following essay are mine. Rather they belong to a rather famous former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve named Alan Greenspan as noted in his rather seminal 1966 essay titled “Gold and Economic Freedom”. However, I have taken the specific arguments of that very prescient essay and modified and reinterpreted them to fit into the contemporary situation of our current global and financial crisis.
All That Glitters is NOT Gold: the truth about counterfeit gold You probably remember movies about the Old West, wherein a shady-looking character would offer to exchange a gold coin for a horse, and the seller would bite down on the coin to verify its authenticity. That was about all you could do if you lacked proper assaying equipment and had to make a snap judgment: depend on your teeth to tell you whether the metal in your hand was sufficiently soft to be genuine gold. The bite test is actually a pretty good one since gold, despite being among the heaviest metals, is also very soft. If you chomp down and shatter a tooth, it ain't gold. But before you go munching on your coin collection, you might want to ask yourself, why bother? Well, because of the Internet.
Dollar Index May Extend Loss, Drop 5.7% The Dollar Index, which tracks the currency against those of six major trading partners, may slump a further 5.7 percent based on technical analysis, according to Forecast Pte in Singapore. The Index traded on ICE Futures in New York broke the 200- day moving average on May 8 and closed below it. The index also dropped through a major trend-line that ran from July 15 to Dec. 18 on the same day. "This is a very strong bearish signal," said Pak Lai Ng, a technical analyst at Forecast. "It is a corrective move from the major uptrend that began since March 2008."
What Recovery? . . . . A drop-headline put it in better perspective: “13.7 Million Americans Are Still Unemployed.” Elsewhere on the page, in the News Briefs section, a slightly more skeptical tone obtained: “As far as Wall Street is concerned there is no bad news anymore. At least for now, traders are seeing news about longtime trouble spots like banking and unemployment in a strictly positive light.” Not to impugn the sage judgment of traders or cast doubt on their prescience, but there must be at least twenty-five million homeowners who see things differently. Very differently. After all, how optimistic about the economy can one be if one owes $50,000 to $300,000 more on one’s home than it’s worth? A conservatively estimated third of U.S. homeowners are in this boat, and we doubt any of them are quite so confident as “Wall Street traders” that a recovery is at hand. To the contrary, Main Street remains deeply troubled by something that bullish traders are straining to ignore -- i.e., that a reported $12.8 trillion worth of fiscal and monetary stimulus has failed to lift the prices of homes by even a dime. Even worse, prices are continuing to fall.
Ron Paul:Stress Test is Propaganda 5/7/09
Geithner Plan Is An "Unconscionably Large" Rip-Off Jeffrey Sachs, one of the early critics of Tim Geithner's Public-Private Investment Partnership scheme, is admitting he was wrong about the program--it's far worse than he thought. The worst problem is that it is completely open to being scammed by banks because it allows the banks selling the toxic assets to be buyers as well. This creates the potential for a daisy-chain scam: a bank creates an off-balance-sheet entity that buys bad assets for far more than they're worth, using money borrowed from taxpayers. When the assets turn out to be worthless, the bank-created entity then defaults on the loan. Because the loan is non-recourse, the government is left holding the worthless assets and is out the entire amount of the loan. In effect, the plans lets banks write themselves checks straight from the US taxpayers.
Why The US Shouldn't Be An Active Bank Investor Matthew Yglesias is one of a number of pundits who think that if the US is going to own a big chunk of bank common stock -- and in the case of Citigroup they certainly will, perhaps not Bank of America though -- then it should act like any other big fund. Yglesias wants the US to be active, with board representation and a say in how the company is run. There's certainly something to be said for this idea from a fairness point of view. At least it seems fair. And he thinks that if the government were to remain a passive shareholder, it would be a strange institution where the largest shareholder remained passive.
Geithner's warning on speed of economic recovery US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said that there is a risk that US economic recovery could take a long time, but vowed to take all necessary steps to speed it up. "Well, that's the risk," Geithner said in a PBS television interview on Friday when asked if the recovery could take several years. "I mean, people -- economists generally worry that a recession that comes after a long period where people borrowed too much, banks took on too much risk -- requires a slower, longer recovery, because people have to reduce debt, they're going to have to save more," the treasury secretary pointed out.
Recovery Still Depends On Bold Actions, Officials Say With Banks Needing Less, Treasury Can Fund Other Fronts The Obama administration still plans to spend tens of billions of dollars reviving the nation's financial system, even after the government's unexpected finding that major banks need only a little bit more direct government aid. The initiatives being crafted include helping municipalities borrow money, providing insurers with new capital and after a long delay buying troubled assets from financial firms. Senior officials see signs that the recession may be bottoming out, but they say they continue to think big actions are necessary to spark an economic revival.
US banks claim line softened on $74bn US banks have been given government assurances they will be allowed to raise less than the $74.6bn in equity mandated by stress tests if earnings over the next six months outstrip regulators' forecasts, bankers said. The agreement, which was not mentioned when the government revealed the results on Thursday, means some banks may not have to raise as much equity through share issues and asset sales as the market is expecting. It could also increase the incentive for banks to book profits in the next two quarters.
The Big Lie: Stress Test Optimism Just Wall St. Propaganda, Former Bank Regulator Says Results of the stress test brought a collective sigh of relief from Washington D.C. to Wall Street Friday, and stocks were rallying again on a growing sense the financial crisis has past. Don't you believe it, says William Black, an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri - Kansas City. "It's in the interest of the financial community to send this propaganda out," Black says. "It's remarkable not that they do it but that it still works." In other words, this isn't the first time we've been told "the crisis is over" and that "banks are well capitalized" - and probably won't be the last.
Banks Bludgeoned Fed Into $50+ Billion Of Stress-Test Concessions One reason the final stress test tab for the banks was lower than expected was that the banks persuaded the Fed to drastically reduce its estimate of capital shortfalls. Bank of America saved $20 billion this way. Citigroup saved $30 billion. The other reason was that the regulators ended up using "Tier 1" capital as the solvency metric instead of Tangible Common Equity. According to some estimates, this saved the banks $70 billion.
Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole? [note: homeschoolers - this is a satire, minor foul language]
Ailing Banks Need $75 Billion, U.S. Says After subjecting the nation's biggest banks to the most public scrutiny in decades, federal regulators ordered 10 of them on Thursday to raise a total of $75 billion in extra capital and gave the rest a clean bill of health. The long-awaited results of the "stress tests" set off an immediate scramble by major institutions for more capital. By June 8, they must give regulators their plans for raising the money, and raise it by November.
Enjoy the rally while it lasts - but expect to take a sucker punch Our delicious spring rally is nearing the limits. The 40pc rise on global bourses since March assumes that central banks have conjured away the debt overhang by slashing rates to zero and printing money. Nothing of the sort has occurred. Two thirds of the world economy will be in deflation by July. Bear market rallies can be explosive. Japan had four violent spikes during its Lost Decade (33pc, 55pc, 44pc, and 79pc). Wall Street had seven during the Great Depression, lasting 40 days on average. The spring of 1931 was a corker. James Montier at Société Générale said that even hard-bitten bears are starting to throw in the towel, suspecting that we really are on the cusp of new boom. That is a tell-tale sign.
Stress tests signal more intervention The stress tests on the 19 biggest US banks pave the way for an ongoing interventionist approach to regulation, Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, signalled on Thursday. Hours before the publication of the results of the tests, which are expected to show that banks including Citigroup and Bank of America will need to raise equity, Mr Bernanke told the Chicago Fed that the "exercise has been comprehensive, rigorous, forward-looking, and highly collaborative… Undoubtedly, we can use many aspects of the exercise to improve our supervisory processes in the future."
In Battle With Fed, Banks Won Details surrounding the bank stress tests continues to make headlines, with the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times leading with how the U.S. government has, and will continue, to make concessions to the banks. According to the WSJ, the Federal Reserve's initial estimate of capital deficits was much larger than the $75 billion or so reported Thursday. But the agency, toeing a fine line between trying to restore confidence with the tests while also maintaining its credibility, finally agreed to scale back some of the findings "following two weeks of intense negotiations." A senior executive at one of the banks actually described the early numbers as "mind-numbing," while another detailed Bank of America's (BAC) reaction to a more than $50 billion capital hole as "shocked." Eventually, BofA's capital deficit was pegged at $33.9 billion, which, according to a bank spokesperson, was reached through an "adjustment for first-quarter results and errors made by regulators in their analysis" and not as a result of lobbying.
Capitalism Goes Out Of Tune From Oct. 18 to Dec. 3, 1961, 116,000 people visited New York's Museum of Modern Art before anyone noticed that Henri Matisse's painting "Le Bateau" had been hung upside down. Modernity is supposed to "transgress" standards of the traditional, which is why Paul Hindemith, while rehearsing one of his dissonant orchestral compositions, said to the musicians, "No, no, gentlemen -- even though it sounds wrong, it's still not right." Proponents of today's world-turned-upside-down economic policies say the policies might seem wrong but really are boldly modern in their rejection of markets in favor of pervasive government intervention in economic life. Hence New York, which until eight months ago was the financial capital of the world, is no longer even the financial capital of the United States. Washington is.
Global Crisis 'Vastly Worse' Than 1930s, Taleb Says The current global crisis is "vastly worse" than the 1930s because financial systems and economies worldwide have become more interdependent, "Black Swan" author Nassim Nicholas Taleb said. "This is the most difficult period of humanity that we're going through today because governments have no control," Taleb, 49, told a conference in Singapore today. "Navigating the world is much harder than in the 1930s."
very revealing panel discussion . . . Davos Annual Meeting 2009 - Update 2009: The New Economic Era In the opinion of many pundits, the global economic collapse that began in 2008 rivals the Great Depression of the 1930s. In partnership with Time Magazine, members of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Councils and Time magazine's Board of Economists examine the new fundamentals of the global economy that will emerge in 2009.
The American Dream Is Dying Shocker: Most people are just a couple of paychecks away from financial ruin. The American dream is fading. For many Americans, the idea is this: Simply survive. The borrow-and-spend-your-way-to-happiness model has evaporated. Now the harsh light of economic reality is pouring through the windows. In its latest “Study of the American Dream” survey, MetLife reports that the country has “experienced major changes” that will likely leave “a lasting impact on how Americans achieve and sustain the dream.” The American dream has “once again been revised—possibly to a greater extent than could have been imagined just one year ago.”
Bank of England braced for third wave of financial crisis Surprise £50bn cash injection is attempt to avert new phase of credit crunch The Bank of England is concerned that the UK's banking system is heading for a third wave of crisis that could snuff out fragile signs of recovery in the economy. On Thursday the Bank surprised the City by announcing that it would pump an extra £50bn of new money into the economy despite recent stockmarket rallies. Now the Guardian has learned that this increase in quantitative easing was driven by fears in Threadneedle Street that the credit crunch is still sucking the life out of the British economy and the banking sector remains in deep trouble.
U.S. Orders GMAC to Raise $9.1 Billion in Capital The federal government reported yesterday that the financing arm of General Motors will need to raise $9.1 billion in new capital to ensure the firm's stability in the face of heavy losses in mortgage and auto lending and, sources said, possibly as much as $4 billion more to cover costs related to loans for Chrysler. The sum is among the biggest required for any U.S. financial institution subjected to the government stress test, and could prove difficult for GMAC Financial Services to raise because of the limited nature of its business and the poor quality of its loans. The firm has struggled to raise money from private investors in the past and has already received $5 billion in federal assistance.
Experts say GM bankruptcy almost inevitable Experts say GM bankruptcy almost inevitable; too much work left with too little time For General Motors Corp., the task at hand is so difficult that experts say a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing is all but inevitable. To remake itself outside of court, GM must persuade bondholders to swap $27 billion in debt for 10 percent of its risky stock. On top of that, the automaker must work out deals with its union, announce factory closures, cut or sell brands and force hundreds of dealers out of business -- all in three weeks. "I just don't see how it's possible, given all of the pieces," said Stephen J. Lubben, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law who specializes in bankruptcy.
U.S. may face years of sluggish economic growth At an Aug. 7, 2007, meeting of the Federal Reserve's policymaking committee, staff economists identified disturbing signs that the economy's growth potential was downshifting to a lower gear. American workers and factories hadn't been as productive in recent years as initially believed, a realization that caused the Fed's green eyeshade corps to lower fractionally its estimate of the economy's future trajectory.
Federal benefits now face Senate A record number of pro-federal worker, pro-retiree proposals are in play on Capitol Hill. Most are embedded in the so-called tobacco bill, which easily passed the House. Many of the new civil service benefits were assumed to be favored by the Obama administration. Or not. … In the first place, the tobacco bill faces a much tougher time in the Senate than it did in the House. That's because the legislation would give the Food and Drug Administration regulatory control over tobacco and tobacco products. Tobacco is the biggest money-maker (and tax revenue generator) in at least a dozen states.
The Disturbing Gap Between The Rich And The Super-Rich Since it's a slow Friday afternoon, we thought we'd put up another one of The Onion's hilarious "In The Know" segments. This one, about the growing gap between America's rich and super-rich is awesome, in part because you could almost see this discussion happening circa 2007. Of course now, with the wealthiest elites seeing their wealth vanish violently, the problem seems to have taken care of itself.
Congress Plans Incentives for Healthy Habits In its effort to overhaul health care, Congress is planning to give employers sweeping new authority to reward employees for healthy behavior, including better diet, more exercise, weight loss and smoking cessation. A web of federal rules limits what employers and insurers can do now. Congress is seriously considering proposals to provide tax credits or other subsidies to employers who offer wellness programs that meet federal criteria. In addition, lawmakers said they would make it easier for employers to use financial rewards or penalties to promote healthy behavior among employees.
Ex-Hospital CEO Battles Reform Effort Ads Cite Long Waits In Canada and Britain The television ads that began airing last week feature horror stories from Canada and the United Kingdom: Patients who allegedly suffered long waits for surgeries, couldn't get the drugs they needed, or had to come to the United States for treatment. "Before government rushes to overhaul health care, listen to those who already have government-run health care," intones Rick Scott, founder of a group called Conservatives for Patients' Rights. "Tell Congress to listen, too."
Upfront costs complicate Obama's health care plan Senate ponders how to pay for expanded health coverage; cost could go as high as $1.5 trillion Costs are emerging as the biggest obstacle to President Barack Obama's ambitious plan to provide health insurance for everybody. The upfront tab could reach $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion over 10 years, while expected savings from wringing waste and inefficiency from the health care system may take longer to show. Details of the health legislation have not been written, but the broad outlines of the overhaul are known. Economists and other experts say the $634 billion that Obama's budget sets aside for health care will pay perhaps half the cost.
Shortages stir coffee and sugar prices Caffeine addicts face higher prices for their daily fix as the wholesale cost of both coffee and sugar rise sharply because of poor crops and robust demand. We are in a dangerous situation," Andrea Illy, chief executive of Italy's leading coffee ?company, told the Financial Times, warning that prices could "explode" due to supply shortages. His comments echo those of other industry players - and point to a sharp shift in sentiment among analysts. Until recently, it was widely assumed that the global economic crisis would damp consumption and prices for coffee. However, that forecast proved wrong, since demand for coffee has remained high, even while consumers have moved from cafés to home drinking.
Anger about credit cards Maximums cut, fees rise as bad debts hit banking Prabhudev Konana traveled to Paris in December and used his Citigroup Inc. credit card to pay for hotel and restaurant bills. When he got home to Austin, Texas, he was upset to see two currency exchange rates for charges made the same day, and one was 3.6 percent higher than the other. He e-mailed Citigroup to complain. "The response was, 'Go read your contract,'" says Mr. Konana, 47, a professor at the University of Texas' McCombs School of Business. "The arrogance was just unbelievable."
Rising Credit Card Losses Are Next Challenge for Banks It used to be easy to guess how many Americans would have problems paying their credit card bills. Banks just looked at unemployment: Fewer jobs meant more trouble ahead. The unemployment rate has long mirrored banks' loss rates on card balances. But Eddie Ward, 32 and jobless, may be one reason that rule of thumb no longer holds. For many lenders, losses are now starting to outpace layoffs. Mr. Ward, of Arkansas, lost his job at a retail warehouse in April and so far has managed to make minimum payments on his credit card debt, which he estimates at $15,000 to $20,000. Asked whether he thinks he will be able to pay off his balance, he said, "Not unless I win the lottery."
Boomers Going Bust People have accused the baby boomers of being whiners almost since we were born. But just wait until we get to retirement age and discover that we don't have nearly enough money to take care of our "golden years." That's going to be the ultimate generational bummer. I've been gathering some data about what I'll call, with the usual boomer understatement, the "retirement crisis." My mentors have been Eugene Ludwig, the head of the consulting firm Promontory Financial Group, and his colleague Michael Foot. The numbers show a genuinely frightening gap between what people have saved for retirement and what they will need. And many of these studies don't take into account last year's stock market crash, which will make the problem worse.
The Problem with Bankruptcy Laws When faced with a collapsing housing market and mounting real burden of debt, it's entirely rational for households suffering negative equity to simply walk away. This is a major problem in the United States, and has exacerbated the banking crisis caused by defaulting borrowers. Many of these consumers might suffer a terrible credit rating as a result, but it still makes sense for them. It seems odd that the market would allow such an insidious example of moral hazard to wreak havoc with the banking system. The guilt of the real culprit is less surprising. In the United States, defaulting homeowners can walk away from their problem after declaring bankruptcy under Chapter 7. There are significant advantages to this option. It allows these people to make a new start, and return to the labor market free from debt. The risk of such defaults is built into banking models, and the costs are distributed among other borrowers. However, this system has never been tested under the extremely stressful conditions of a bursting asset-price bubble.
In Toledo, Downturn Empties Offices White-Collar Workers Reeling as Layoffs Force Them to Remake Their Lives Rob Noonan's friends think he's a sucker. Laid off from his $140,000-a-year construction management job when the credit markets froze, he still shows up at work, one man working without pay in a cluster of vacant cubicles, trying to make something out of nothing. While friends are mystified that he would toil for the developer who fired him after 16 years, Noonan figures voluntary work is his best path to a real job at real pay. And in an employment market this awful, he adds, "I really don't have anything better to do."
U.S. Jobless Rate Hits 8.9%, but Pace Eases The American job market remains dreadful and is still worsening, but at a slower pace than before - good news given the stomach-churning events of recent months. The government's monthly employment report buoyed hopes that the longest, most punishing recession since the Great Depression may be relenting. Another 539,000 jobs disappeared from the economy in April, and the unemployment rate jumped to 8.9 percent, its highest level in a quarter century, the Labor Department reported Friday. Yet the deterioration was milder than expected, prompting encouraging talk.
Meltdown 101: Unemployment report, by the numbers 13.7 million: People unemployed in April 2009, the most ever in records dating to 1948 13.2 million: People unemployed in March 2009 12.1 million: People unemployed in December 1982, record before the current recession, although labor force was smaller back then
Layoffs might ease, but firms in no mood to hire Employers are letting up a bit on the mass layoffs they resorted to earlier this year to cope with the recession, but the unemployment rate is climbing because many businesses remain wary of hiring given all the economic and financial uncertainties. The Labor Department on Friday is slated to release a report expected to show that a net total of 620,000 jobs were lost in April. If analysts are correct, the figure - while still big - would be an improvement from March's 663,000 job losses and mark the fewest reductions since November. The deepest job cuts of the recession, which started in December 2007 and is now the longest since World War II, came in January: 741,000 jobs vanished then, the most since the fall of 1949.
'Electronic Police State' report cites U.S. Ultimate Big Brother 'basics are in place' In what may be the first assessment of its kind, a private company that offers a range of privacy products for computers and other technology is ranking the United States No. 6 in the world for having the most aggressive procedures for monitoring residents electronically. The report, called The Electronic Police State, assesses the status of governmental surveillance in 52 nations around the globe for 2008. The document was released Cryptohippie, Inc., which was set up in 2007 through the acquisition of several little-known but highly regarded providers of privacy technologies.
Anti-tax crusade to storm Capitol Grassroots 'tea parties' build strength The grass-roots "tea party" movement that swept across the country April 15 to protest federal tax and spending hikes will hold demonstrations in Washington and elsewhere this summer and fall when Congress will be battling over President Obama's biggest budget proposals. Leaders of the Tax Day rallies that drew an estimated 600,000 people in nearly 600 cities and towns say the seemingly spontaneous local protests have grown into a more muscular movement concerned that the escalating growth and cost of government threatens to undermine economic freedom.
Pakistan won't tell US where the Nukes are Zardari Says Pakistan Isn’t Adding Nuclear Weapons Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said his country isn’t adding to its nuclear arsenal and doesn’t have to disclose the location of its weapons to the U.S. Pakistan is “not adding to our stockpile as such,” Zardari said today on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “Why do we need more?” Asked whether Pakistan would tell U.S. intelligence officials where all its nuclear weapons are located, to allow for a joint strategy to keep them secure, Zardari said Pakistan is a sovereign country. “Why don’t you do the same with other countries yourself?” Zardari said in the interview taped May 7. “I think this is a sovereignty issue, and we have a right to our own sovereignty.”
Middle East World Economic Forum 2009 - John P. Drzik John P. Drzik, President and Chief Executive Officer, Oliver Wyman Group (MMC), USA for the World Economic Forum on the Middle East 2009
Secret U.S.-Israel nuclear accord in jeopardy President Obama's efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons threaten to expose and derail a 40-year-old secret U.S. agreement to shield Israel's nuclear weapons from international scrutiny, former and current U.S. and Israeli officials and nuclear specialists say. The issue will likely come to a head when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Mr. Obama on May 18 in Washington. Mr. Netanyahu is expected to seek assurances from Mr. Obama that he will uphold the U.S. commitment and will not trade Israeli nuclear concessions for Iranian ones.
Obama Picks Egypt as Speech Venue Addressing World's Muslims From Nation of an Autocratic Ally Could Bring Criticism President Obama will travel to Egypt next month to deliver his promised address to the Muslim world, culminating a long and politically sensitive selection process by choosing as his venue an Arab nation governed by an autocratic U.S. ally who faces strong internal Islamist opposition. Those elements will present challenges to Obama as he delivers a speech his advisers described yesterday as the next step in his effort to dispel perceptions in the Muslim world that the United States is in conflict with Islam. It will be the first stop in a trip that will also take him to Buchenwald, the former Nazi concentration camp in Germany, and then to Normandy, in France, to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landing.
Has Obama cut off information to Israel? Lack of communication 'not normal practice' Unlike the Bush administration, the staff of President Obama is not coordinating its policy on Iran or the greater Middle East with Israel and has not been informing the Jewish state of its plans or recent diplomatic developments in area, according to sources in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office. The silence extends to U.S. talks with the Palestinians, the sources said. "Our intention and our hope as we go to Washington is to establish close intimate cooperative relationships on these sensitive matters," a top Netanyahu official told WND yesterday.
Netanyahu meeting with Obama decides Mid-East's future, says Abdullah President Obama's critical meeting with Binyamin Netanyahu next week has become the acid test for the Administration's commitment to peace in the Middle East, King Abdullah of Jordan said yesterday. The monarch does not conceal his feelings about the Israeli leader. He described their last encounter - 10 years ago when he had just come to the throne - as the "least pleasant" of his reign. But he, and President Mubarak of Egypt, are expected to meet the Israeli leader before his trip to Washington, where the future course of the region could be decided.
King Abdullah of Jordan's ultimatum: peace now or it's war next year America is putting the final touches to a hugely ambitious peace plan for the Middle East, aimed at ending more than 60 years of conflict between Israel and the Arabs, according to Jordan's King Abdullah, who is helping to bring the parties together. The Obama Administration is pushing for a comprehensive peace agreement that would include settling Israel's conflict with the Palestinians and its territorial disputes with Syria and Lebanon, King Abdullah II told The Times. Failure to reach agreement at this critical juncture would draw the world into a new Middle East war next year. "If we delay our peace negotiations, then there is going to be another conflict between Arabs or Muslims and Israel in the next 12-18 months," the King said.
Obama puts his global popularity towards Middle East peace process When he was running for the White House, Barack Obama warned that a swift resolution to the Israel-Arab conflict might be beyond even his powers. "It's unrealistic to expect that a US President alone can suddenly snap his fingers and bring about peace in this region," he said. Such truths have not prevented President Obama throwing himself with characteristic urgency into an effort to succeed where many of his predecessors have failed. He regards his early peak of global popularity as a time of maximum opportunity. Yesterday General James Jones, his National Security Adviser, told ABC News that there was an "expectation around the world that we are in a moment when we can make progress" in the Middle East, providing America offered "leadership".
Chávez Seizes Assets of Oil Contractors CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chávez asserted greater control over the country's energy industry on Friday by seizing the assets of some foreign and domestic oil contractors while his government grapples with a sharp decline in oil revenue and mounting debts. The move points to a greater concentration of power by Mr. Chávez, who is busily exerting sway over important industries and political institutions during the economic crisis. In recent weeks, his government has also hounded top rivals, stripping the mayor of Caracas of financing for the city budget while forcing the mayor of Maracaibo to seek asylum in Peru after he was confronted with corruption charges.
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Fri 05.08.2009
Why gold will continue to shine he Fed and the government - first the Bush administration and now Obama's - are pulling all available levers hoping to heal what went wrong by doing exactly the same thing that was done in 2001. As in 2001, the pumping of dollars into the system is a major signal for a gold bull market. So with today no different - but actually worse - I'm sticking to my belief that gold will continue to shine. And I'd like to note that there are at least two more reasons to believe that gold will push higher …
China says it's a gold buyer!
Gold's Charts Look Bullish
Is COMEX Running Out of Gold? The "blogosphere" has been all atwitter with stories of the COMEX [Commodity Exchange] warehouses running out of gold. There was interesting speculation about the motives behind the ECB's recent sale of gold. The ECB happened to sell gold on the exact same day that Credit Suisse (CS) had to make a large delivery of gold (for more check out this link). Despite the ECB's recent brush with openness it is highly unlikely that we will ever find out if this was pure coincidence or a calculated bailout.
Gold at 925, What's The Gold Plan, Stan? Gold is the world's smallest major market. As such, the gold charts are the most easily "painted". The COMEX is not about to blow up because JP Morgan has a hundred thousand gold shorts going. In their world, that's like you blowing up because you have 10 shares short on Barrick gold stock. The bankers, with the world's largest physical position in gold, are not about to lose all their trillions on an upwards move in gold. Especially since the taxpayers just handed them 10 trillion dollars. That's a fantasy of failed gold speculators. Each dollar higher in the price of gold makes the bankers richer. Not poorer. The good news for you, is the bankers want gold higher in price. Vastly higher. If you had to rely on the overleveraged hedge funds to take it higher, well, let's just review what kind of job the funds did for you. In May 2006, they bought gold for you. What happened? It melted. In the spring of 2008, they bought gold for you. What happened? It melted.
Gold Today and Nasdaq 1995 There are technical and fundamental similarities in all bull markets. In the case of Gold today and the Nasdaq in the mid 1990s, there are several key technical similarities. I will show these in two charts. In this case there are three important similarities. There is a running correction for a few years, the squeezing in of several bollinger bands and finally, a breakout from the price channel. Below is a chart of the Nasdaq. The running correction occurred from 1992 to 1995. As the market began its parabolic ascent (in 1995), all the bollinger bands (20, 40 and 80 week) were squeezed in which suggests a strong move in all time frames. Each time the market touched the lower 80-week band (1984, 1987, 1990, 1994, 1998) proved to be a very important low.
Silver Leads Gold as Dollar Teeters In a bizarre exercise intended to defend legitimacy, the bankers are engaged in a complex game of propaganda. They pressured the USCongress to relieve Wall Street from the chains of FASB Rule #157, and the senators & representatives obeyed their paying masters. The result has been a baseless stock rally led by insolvent banks that have lied desperately about their capital and earnings. The announced audited Citigroup profit of $1.6 billion in the first quarter was actually a deep $2.5 billion loss, provided the $4.1 billion in gimmickry was removed. The gimmicks pertained to toxic assets valued at fictitious model, shell games on loss reserves management, and illicit debt markdowns on the balance sheet. Thanks to Martin Weiss for the autopsy of Citigroup, the biggest zombie strutting in the global financial sector. Actually, that ignominy is a close race with Bank of America. The end result is the global financial markets are losing faith in the US$-based system, since the US is regressing in backward steps rather than working toward remedy.
The Silver Phoenix is Rising Again Is Silver Really Money? Does It Matter? I wish I had a troy ounce of silver for every time I have encountered those questions on the net! Newsflash, the prestigious ISO (International Organization for Standardization) has set the standards for international currencies. Silver and gold are listed by the ISO as currencies. A fascinating quick resource for information regarding currency ISO 4217 is Wikipedia of course. Silver's currency code is a combination of X and its chemical symbol AG; hence its currency code is XAG. Following the same logic, gold's currency code is XAU. Each currency is assigned a 3 digit numeric code. Silver is currency number 961. Its standard is set at one ounce of silver. Therefore, Silver is an internationally recognized currency and not just a figment in the fervid imaginations of suburban gold bugs. In fact, I have even traded the XAG/USD currency pair at European brokerage houses and the XAU/USD at Forex.com. Go to Forex.com and check it out. They are the only U.S. firm offering this incredible investment vehicle. It requires only about $200 per contract! But is silver money? Answer, NO. Rule of thumb, if you can't buy a candy bar with it, it is not money.
China Stirs a Pot of Gold This week, based on indicators of improving Chinese manufacturing activity, commodity and stock markets surged in the Pacific Rim. It appears that China's recession-fighting policies are being judged successful. The 41 percent rally in Chinese stocks in 2009 from the 2008 lows dwarfs the single digit rallies in the U.S. and Europe. With Western economies still sluggish, eyes are turning eastward for solutions to the global economic riddle. As such, recent hints at the direction of Chinese monetary policy should be closely regarded. At the recent G-20 London meetings, China called for a new international monetary order with a gold link. This was followed by the sudden disclosure that China had used part of its huge gold output to boost its own reserves by some 600 metric tons, a 75% increase in total holdings since 2003. In his first hundred days in office, President Obama's administration has injected nearly $40 billion each day into U.S. economy. Given the inflationary impact that such a torrent of new cash will spark, it is logical that the Chinese hedge their $1 trillion dollar position with a more reliable store of value.
How will Chinese Central Bank Gold Buying affect the Gold Price short & Long-Term? Hu Xiaolian, head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) informed us last week that the country's gold reserves had risen by 454 tonnes from 600 tonnes since 2003, when China last adjusted its state gold reserves figure. Since the days last century when Peter Fava, then head of HSBC's U.S. gold department, visited the Bank of China to persuade them to buy gold bullion [they thought it was a simple sales pitch initially and did not buy visibly] China has been a buyer of local gold production. This includes the period before 2003.
China's buying binge focused on Mae, Mac Holds $1.1 trillion in U.S. debt China, which recently became the American government's biggest creditor, was bulking up on risky Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt and U.S. equities from mid-2007 to mid-2008 as the U.S. stock market reached record highs, a recent Treasury Department report confirms. Then the financial crisis reached a fever pitch, sending equities plunging and forcing a government takeover of Fannie and Freddie. After being burned on Wall Street and nearly scorched by Fannie and Freddie, China has significantly increased its appetite for low-risk Treasuries - just as the federal budget deficit approaches a record $1.8 trillion this year.
Lets all party like its 1999 The top of this recent euphoric relief rally in a Bear Market is close at hand And lets make sure our iPods are playing a loop of "Don't worry be happy" as happy days are here again, and I'm looking for Fonzie to give me the thumbs up! We better enjoy them while they last…as "Optimism builds" was a recent headline in the Financial Times. As I had predicted, the markets are enjoying a very nice bounce {and I must admit its rocketed upward much further than I thought it would}. Now so called experts who had no idea there was anything wrong with the world financial system two years ago, now say the problem is fixed and we are off to the races in a new bull market. And we should bow to and acknowledge that the very people who saw no contagions and had no idea what was wrong with it, are the architects of the greatest financial recover ever-seen.
Money As Debt 1: what money is & why we are bankers' slaves
This is Not the 1930's... and that Means a Whole Lot of Inflation to Come Many comparisons have been made between today's financial and economic crisis and the Great Depression, none more than the specter of deflation. Well, contrary to what happened during the Great Depression and contrary to the deflationary forecasts of government leaders, central bankers and economists, deflation, while always possible, is, in this man's opinion, highly unlikely. Why's that? Because the monetary and political framework of today is nothing like that of the early 1930's. In fact, it's nothing like anything seen, ever. Quite simply, today's monetary and political framework is built for inflation, as much inflation as the government, the Federal Reserve and their banking partners want. And inflation, and a whole lot of it, is exactly what we are about to get.
On the Subject of Bottoms Bond prices were hit hard, extending their recent slide to multi-month lows as investors demanded higher-than-expected yields at today's auction of $14 billion of 30-year Treasurys. Not that anyone should be too surprised. According to Bloomberg, increased government spending will likely require Washington to raise a record $3.25 trillion in the current fiscal year -- a tsunami of supply that suggests yields have lots more room on the upside. Also worth noting is the fact that the yield curve is steepening in the U.S. and in other countries where governments are cranking up the printing presses, signaling that investors are losing faith in those who control the public purse strings.
124 congressman demand audit of Federal Reserve Support multiplying for scrutiny of nation's money controllers A bill calling for the comptroller general of the United States to audit the private Federal Reserve is gaining widespread support in Congress, as 124 representatives have added their names to its growing list of co-sponsors. As WND reported, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, introduced in February H.R. 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009, a bill requiring that an audit of both the Fed's Board of Governors and the Federal Reserve Banks be completed and reported to Congress before the end of 2010.
Biggest banks rush to shrink Sell assets to avoid bailouts Citigroup and Bank of America, the nation's biggest troubled banks, are furiously trying to sell off assets to build a cushion against losses in a downsizing strategy encouraged by the federal government that may save taxpayers from having to bail them out again. The two mega-banks, which already have received more than $45 billion each in taxpayer funds, are expected to have to raise more in coming weeks because of burgeoning losses detected in government "stress tests," whose results are due out Thursday. But the $34 billion needed by Bank of America, the more than $5 billion needed by Citigroup and $15 billion needed by Wells Fargo are not expected to come mostly from taxpayers this time. The Federal Reserve and Treasury are encouraging the banks to sell stock or assets to raise the cash.
The big banks: How much each needs The government announced its plan in late February to look under the hoods of the nation's largest financial institutions to gauge their ability to withstand losses. The results are now in: Ten of the nation's 19 largest banks will need to raise a total of $74.6 billion in capital. In the table below, see which banks stand to lose the most if the economy weakens further -- and how much capital each is required to raise during the next six months.
U.S. seen involved with Wells for some time Back in March, Wells Fargo & Co Chairman Dick Kovacevich scoffed at being pressured into taking $25 billion of taxpayer money from the government, saying his bank was healthy and didn't need it. Now, the fourth-largest U.S. bank may find itself unable to get free of the government's clutches for some time.
Money As Debt 2: what money is & why we are bankers' slaves
NY Fed chair quits over Goldman role Friedman steps down after report that he remains on board and holds shares of Goldman, a regulated bank. The chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York resigned Thursday, days after coming under attack for his continuing involvement in a company regulated by the institution. Stephen Friedman received a waiver to remain on the board of Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500), the Wall Street firm that became a bank holding company amid September's financial frenzy, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal on Monday. He also holds a substantial amount of shares in the company and continued to buy more even after Goldman came under the Fed's supervision.
U.S. Says Ailing Banks Need $75 Billion Federal regulators told the country's 19 largest banks that they must raise $75 billion in extra capital by November, a more upbeat verdict on the health of the financial system than the industry had feared just two months ago. Ten of the 19 bank holding companies deemed "too big to fail" by the Obama administration will be required to raise additional capital, according to the results of the government's stress tests, released late Thursday afternoon. But the 10 banks will have to raise much less capital than some analysts had expected as recently as a few days ago.
Bernanke Favored Rate Cuts Tied to Bubble Comments Made as Fed Governor in 2003 Foreshadowed Moves as Chairman Ben S. Bernanke was a strong internal advocate of the Federal Reserve's decision to cut interest rates to very low levels in 2003, steps that some analysts argue stoked the housing and credit bubbles that are now unfurling with disastrous consequences. Bernanke was a Fed governor then, and his comments during key meetings -- transcripts of which were released yesterday -- foreshadow the decisions he would eventually make as Fed chairman. He consistently pushed for the central bank to disclose more about its goals for inflation and to communicate more clearly to the public, hallmarks of his three years as chairman.
Money as Debt (3 of 5) Money IS Debt $700 billion bailout
ECB Cuts Key Rate to Record Low, May Lengthen Loans The European Central Bank cut its key interest rate to a new record low of 1 percent today, and may offer banks longer-term loans to stem the region's worst recession since World War II. ECB officials meeting in Frankfurt lowered the benchmark rate by a quarter point, as predicted by all 53 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. Separately, the Bank of England left its key rate at 0.5 percent and increased its asset-purchase program. ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet, who has promised to unveil new policy measures to tackle the crisis, holds a press conference at 2:30 p.m.
Trichet Drags ECB Into New Era Over Weber's Bond Objections Jean-Claude Trichet has dragged the European Central Bank into a new era by pursuing direct asset purchases over the objections of Germany's Bundesbank. President Trichet yesterday announced the ECB will buy 60 billion euros ($80 billion) of covered bonds, taking markets by surprise after Bundesbank chief Axel Weber had campaigned against such a policy. For a central bank that's been slow to follow counterparts around the world, the move marks a change in mentality toward battling the financial crisis.
Obama Releases Details of $3.4 Trillion Budget Plan The Obama administration today unveiled program details of a $3.4 trillion federal budget for the fiscal year beginning in October, a proposal that includes substantial increases for a number of domestic priorities as well as a plan to trim or eliminate 121 programs for a savings of $17 billion. In a statement delivered at the White House after the budget details were released, President Obama defended the cuts from critics on both sides -- those he said would fight to preserve the targeted programs and others who consider the reductions insignificant.
Money as Debt (4 of 5) Monetary Reform $700 billion bailout
Consumer Credit Drops by Record Amid Job, Bank Losses Consumer credit in the U.S. contracted by a record in March after the jobless rate reached its highest level in a quarter century and banks made it harder to get loans in an effort to buttress their balance sheets. Consumer credit fell by $11.1 billion, almost three times more than forecast and the most since records began in 1943, to $2.55 trillion, according to a Federal Reserve report released today in Washington. The 5.2 percent drop at an annual rate was the biggest since 1990, the Fed said. Credit also decreased by $8.1 billion in February, more than previously estimated.
Rescue by Fiat The Chrysler deal confirms President Obama's disregard for the law. The last time the federal government bailed out Chrysler, the Carter administration reached a deal with the carmaker in August 1979, but Congress did not approve the legislation implementing it until December. This time around, the Bush administration dispensed with the legal niceties, loaning billions of taxpayer dollars to Chrysler (and General Motors) without statutory authority. Although he ran on a promise to respect the legislative branch's constitutional role, Barack Obama applauded the Bush administration's illegal loans, and since taking office he has not sought congressional approval for a bailout that is still operating outside the law. President Obama's high-handed engineering of the pending merger between Chrysler and Fiat, a deal that flouts well-established bankruptcy principles, confirms he is no more committed to the rule of law in this area than his predecessor.
Money as Debt (5 of 5) Warning About the NWO $700 billion bailout
BEYOND HERE THERE BE DRAGONS When the world was still flat contemporary maps of the great ocean to the west of Europe showed a distant point offshore and noted "Beyond here there be dragons." That warning well applies to a voyage Congress is about to launch - the infamous Cap & Trade bill - a peril-laden excursion into a fiscal and regulatory nightmare rife with the fearsome dragons of excess government control and crushing financial burdens on America's families. Ballyhooed as a measure designed to somehow "sequester" CO2 - they haven't quite yet figured out how - in order to prevent this life-giving gas, upon which the health of plant life depends, from allegedly contributing to an imaginary warming of a planet that is actually cooling, it would in fact impose economy destroying costs and tyrannical regulatory restrictions on the backs of the American people. It would take us back to the horse and buggy days and have us shivering in the dark. Essentially, cap & trade legislation would set a limit, or cap, on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use, effectively imposing rationing of coal, oil, and natural gas on the American economy.
What Happens to the American Dream in a Recession? Given the battered economy, increasing joblessness and collapse of the housing market, what is the state of the American dream? ollsters for The New York Times and CBS News set out last month to try to answer that question. And the results seemed somewhat contradictory. Although the nation has plunged into its deepest recession since the Great Depression, 72 percent of Americans in this nationwide survey said they believed it is possible to start out poor in the United States, work hard and become rich - a classic definition of the American dream.
Road to Nationalization
What's on Obama's chopping block From health care in Alaska to payments to farmers to store cotton, president identifies federal spending he says the country can live without. Even on the campaign trail last year, President Obama pledged to cull waste from the budget. On Thursday, he pulled back the curtain on his plans. All told, Obama put 121 government initiatives in the cross hairs for reductions. Dozens of them face outright elimination. "Some programs may have made sense in the past -- but are no longer needed in the present," President Obama said. "Other programs never made any sense; the end result of a special interest's successful lobbying campaign."
Democrats Assail Obama's Hit List Lawmakers Vow to Protect Pet Programs resident Obama's modest proposal to slice $17 billion from 121 government programs quickly ran into a buzz saw of opposition on Capitol Hill yesterday, as an array of Democratic lawmakers vowed to fight White House efforts to deprive their favorite initiatives of federal funds. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she is "committed" to keeping a $400 million program that reimburses states for jailing illegal immigrants, a task she called "a total federal responsibility." Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.) said he would oppose "any cuts" in agriculture subsidies because "farmers and farm families depend on this federal assistance." And Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey (D-N.Y.) vowed to force the White House to accept delivery of a new presidential helicopter Obama says he doesn't need and doesn't want. The helicopter program, which cost $835 million this year, supports 800 jobs in Hinchey's district. "I do think there's a good chance we can save it," he said.
Sallie Mae Plans Life Without Loans Obama Wants Gone Sallie Mae, the biggest U.S. provider of college loans, says it doesn't oppose President Barack Obama's plan to wipe out much of that business. The company just has a few suggestions. "What we've thought about here is how to make the president's proposal better," Jack Remondi, chief financial officer of the company, known formally as SLM Corp., said in an interview.
Bank of America seeks new board members Bank of America quietly seeking help to find new directors after shareholder revolt Bank of America Corp. is looking for new directors following a shareholder revolt that stripped Chief Executive Ken Lewis of his chairman's title, the bank said during a conference call Thursday discussing the government's stress tests results. The Charlotte N.C.-based bank has approached executive search firms about finding new directors. It's unclear how many directors could be affected or who might step down, Walter Massey, the bank's new chairman, said during the call.
California had most subprime loans, study says California was the center of the mortgage meltdown that led to the nation's current economic crisis, as lenders in the state issued a majority of all recent subprime loans, says a nonprofit journalism group based in Washington. The study published Wednesday on the Center for Public Integrity's Web site analyzed government data on $1.38 trillion worth of subprime mortgages made from 2005 to 2007. The analysis found that about 56 percent of those loans were originated by 15 lenders from California.
'Gay' day coming to California public schools? Lawmakers vote to make children honor Harvey Milk - without parent consent SACRAMENTO - A California committee passed a bill proclaiming that the state's public school children will take a break from learning every year to celebrate Harvey Milk - a homosexual icon considered by some to be "a martyr for gay rights." The California State Senate Education Committee passed SB 572 today on a 7-2 vote. The bill encourages all California public schools to "conduct suitable commemorative exercises … remembering the life of Harvey Milk and recognizing his accomplishments as well as the contributions he made to this state." It requires no parental consent for student participation.
How Much Was That Globe Lifetime Job Guarantee Worth After All? $33K (NYT) In the game of chicken the Newspaper Guild was playing against the management of the Boston Globe, the lifetime employment guarantee that almost got the paper shut down turned out to be worth $33,000 a person. According to the Wall Street Journal, the deal reached between the Globe-owned by the similarly battered New York Times-and the union included an 8.4% pay cut and the "elimination of lifetime job guarantees held by 190 members in exchange for a $33,000 payment plus severance for each of those guaranteed employees who gets laid off."
Get a Building Permit, Get Disenfranchised: Business as Usual in California Via Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy, this bit of officious ridiculousness from California being challenged in court this week before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals by the Pacific Legal Foundation. From an account by Timothy Sandefur, who will be arguing the case for PLF, at the PLF blog: riswold v. City of Carlsbad....is an astonishing case in which city officials forced the Griswold family to give up their constitutionally protected right to vote in exchange for a building permit. Hard as that might be to believe, it is actually not unique: it's actually quite common for local governments to abuse permits by forcing property owners to give up money or land or other rights.
Want A Building Permit? Then Give Up Your Right to Vote! [Unconstitutional Exactions] [T]he government has transformed the police power into an efficient way to raise money by regulating political minorities and then selling exemptions from the regulatory scheme.... The government, in effect, says: We have the power; therefore, pay us to leave you alone. By any measure, that is extortion. Moreover, it turns the takings clause on its head. Instead of the government having to pay compensation to property owners, the government now wants property owners to compensate it to get back the fair value of property the government took away.... -Justice Janice Rogers Brown1
Obama's Health Care Quackery Countries with universal health coverage are economically worse off than the U.S. True to the advice of his chief of staff to never let a good crisis go waste, President Barack Obama is using the current economic crisis to sell a top item on the liberal wish-list: universal health care. "You can't fix the economy," he has repeatedly said, "without fixing health care." But the president needs to take a big chill pill before committing America to a huge new entitlement: One is hard pressed to find any evidence from abroad showing that universal coverage has grown the major industrialized economies more than ours in the past-or shielded them more than us from the global slump now.
How Obama Will Ruin Health Care
Marchionne Picks Over U.S. Wreckage to Build European Car Group Fiat SpA Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne is setting out to build a pan-European car company from the rubble of the U.S. auto industry. The car industry is in turmoil, and Marchionne, the 56-year-old deputy chairman of UBS AG, says he sees opportunity. He's taking over Chrysler LLC after a U.S.-arranged bankruptcy and seeking to incorporate units owned by General Motors Corp., including three European brands, Opel, Vauxhall and Saab, and some Latin American operations.
The White House Is Now Refusing To Respond To Chrysler Threat Stories Earlier this week, we ran a number of stories about how Steve Rattner allegedly threatened hedge funds that refused to drop their opposition to the Obama administration's Chrysler plan. We asked the White House to comment, and after three days it has become apparent that they have no plans to respond. The White House has denied earlier charges that it threatened to use the White House press corps to ruin the reputation of a firm that was opposing its Chrysler plans.
G.M.'s Cash Reserves Are Dwindling Even after receiving $15.4 billion in federal loans, General Motors is once again on the brink of financial collapse. The automaker's first-quarter earnings released Thursday showed that G.M. was losing more money and sales than it was in late December, when the government began its bailout. With its cash reserves down to the bare minimum and its revenue plunging, G.M. seems more certain each day to be heading toward a bankruptcy filing.
General Motors Burning $113 Million A Day General Motors (GM)'s well has finally run dry: NYT: G.M. said it lost $6 billion in the first quarter as its sales around the world fell 40 percent and revenue was cut nearly in half. But the most concerning number is the $10.2 billion in cash that G.M. depleted in three months, the equivalent of $113 million a day. That is nearly twice the company's rate of spending in the fourth quarter.
GM Posts $5.9 Billion Loss Amid Steep Drop in Revenue General Motors, facing the prospect of bankruptcy, posted a loss of $5.98 billion for the first three months of this year as revenue continued to slide because of the economic crisis and slumping auto sales. GM's losses were offset somewhat by the company's restructuring efforts and by an infusion of loans from the federal government, the automaker said yesterday. GM has until the end of the month to cut costs further and win stakeholder concessions. If it fails, the government will likely force it into bankruptcy. GM lost $9.78 per share, compared with a loss of $5.80 per share, or $3.28 billion, a year earlier. Cash on hand totaled $11.6 billion -- approaching the minimum reserves needed to continue operations.
GM burns $10 billion in first quarter as deadline looms General Motors Corp said it burned through $10.2 billion in the first quarter as it relied on a federal bailout to ride out a sharp decline in global sales that overwhelmed its cost-cutting efforts. Revenue dropped by almost half to $22.4 billion as the company cut production by about 900,000 vehicles and worked to run down costly inventories in the United States and Europe. The results showed the extreme pressure on GM with just four weeks remaining for the embattled automaker to win deals to slash debt and operating costs with its major union and bondholders to avoid bankruptcy.
U.S. Orders GMAC to Raise $9.1 Billion in Capital The federal government reported yesterday that the financing arm of General Motors will need to raise $9.1 billion in new capital to ensure the firm's stability in the face of heavy losses in mortgage and auto lending and, sources said, possibly as much as $4 billion more to cover costs related to loans for Chrysler. The sum is among the biggest required for any U.S. financial institution subjected to the government stress test, and could prove difficult for GMAC Financial Services to raise because of the limited nature of its business and the poor quality of its loans. The firm has struggled to raise money from private investors in the past and has already received $5 billion in federal assistance.
Venezuela soldiers seize oil service companies MARACAIBO, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan soldiers on Thursday took control of boatyards and other assets belonging to oil service companies in the latest step by socialist President Hugo Chavez to tighten his grip on the industry. Earlier in the day, Venezuela's legislature approved a law allowing the nationalization of a group of oil service companies. Chavez said the takeovers would quickly start in the Lake Maracaibo oil heartland in the western state of Zulia.
Goodbye to shop 'til you drop Even when the economy recovers, retail experts don't expect consumers to go on a spree. Frivolous spending, one of the hallmarks of America's consumer-driven economy, is on its way out, with budget shopping becoming the mantra for households. April store sales results Thursday showed clearly how the recession is training consumers to embrace value at all levels - whether it is shopping for food at Wal-Mart, or buying clothes for your kids at a discount department store such as Ross Stores instead of at Macy's.
Obama seeks to double tax law enforcement budget President Barack Obama proposed on Thursday nearly doubling funds to enforce U.S. tax laws next year, with an aim of more than quadrupling funding for tax compliance to $2.1 billion within five years. The budget plan seeks $12.1 billion for the Internal Revenue Service, responsible for collecting and enforcing individual and corporate tax laws, for fiscal 2010, which begins October 1. That amounts to a roughly 5.2 percent increase over the IRS budget for 2009, which was $11.5 billion.
Climate plans could cost families $1,600 Federal proposals to curb carbon emissions will cost American households $1,600 a year, the chief budget analyst for Congress said Thursday. Any measure that curbs greenhouse gasses by capping emissions and issuing permits for allowable carbon dioxide - called a cap and trade system - would invariably be passed on to consumers in higher costs, said Douglas W. Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO analysis released Thursday updates research of previous cap and trade proposals and estimates that a 15 percent reduction in greenhouse gasses would cost American families between $700 and $2,200 a year in increased energy and consumer goods prices. The average cost to families would be $1,600, according to the analysis.
The War On Capitalism Continues . . . . The current War on Capitalism didn't begin a year ago, by the way. The feds have been conducting a dirty, undercover campaign against the free market for many years. Instead of permitting willing lenders and borrowers to set the price of credit, for example, the Federal Reserve imposed its own short-term rates many times over the last 50 years. Eleven times during that period, capitalism tried to correct the "borrow and spend" economy. Each time, the feds rushed in with more credit on even easier terms. By the recession of 2001-2002, the feds were intervening with such heavy hands that it set off the bubble in housing prices in the 2002-2007 period. And when the bubble exploded, the fed's dirty campaign turned into a major war with huge pitched battles…and millions of casualties. Bloomberg reported yesterday, "nearly a quarter of US homeowners are underwater." When the Fed flooded the market with so much easy credit, it pushed up housing prices way beyond what people could afford. Capitalism struck back - blowing up the dikes that held all that liquidity in place. But the explosion blew out the cushion of equity that kept homeowners afloat. House prices are still falling at a 14% annual rate. "Less than before," say the bulls. But still going down.
G-20 Ends US Economic Sovereignty
Close 'Gun Show Loophole,' Dems Say Democratic lawmakers and one Republican told CNSNews.com on Wednesday that the so-called "gun show loophole" -- sales between private individuals, which never require a background check -- ought to be closed. Republicans, meanwhile, told CNSNews.com that creating more rules on how a gun can be legally purchased will not prevent criminals -- who do not follow the rules anyway -- from obtaining weapons in illegal ways.
What to Do When Panic Buying Begins . . . . Jerry sells guns and ammo. And right now Jerry's business is booming. A surge in demand has caused gun prices across the country to nearly double. When it comes to ammo, Jerry has run out - just like thousands of others. The guns and ammo boom is alive and well. And if we pay close attention, it's easy to see where the real opportunity is. As usual, it's not where most folks are looking.
OBAMA WANTS MILITARY PLEDGE TO HIMSELF NOT THE CONSTITUTION! Here's the latest attempt by Barack Hussein Obama to destroy PATRIOTISM in our nation. From The National Law Journal: Military to Pledge Oath to Obama -- Not Constitution. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is extremely frustrated with orders that the White House is contemplating a historic change in the way our government is run. According to sources at The Pentagon, including all branches of the armed forces, the Obama Administration may break with a centuries-old tradition. Heck-- why not? Obama already declared that he and his crooked and terrorist pals will be "remaking America" into a Marxist-Communist Society, like it or not!
Congressman: 'Hate crimes' would 'break' Constitution Criminalizing thought called 'unprecedented in federal law' The "hate crimes" plan pending in the Senate that has been dubbed the "Pedophile Protection Act" would "break" the U.S. Constitution if adopted and enforced, according to an Arizona congressman. U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., was interviewed today on WND columnist Janet Porter's radio program for the Faith2Action Christian ministry. "They have to necessarily break the Constitution for this bill to have any effect," Franks said.
'Conscience' shield vital, many caregivers say Kim McAllister, a Bay Area nurse for 31 years, knows she can recuse herself from a medical procedure with which she has a moral conflict. f a patient wants an abortion or if McAllister sees an end-of-life decision she might question, she can discreetly find another nurse who would help the patient in the way the patient seeks. But, like many Catholics, evangelicals and others, McAllister now worries that an Obama administration proposal to repeal "conscience" protections for health care workers will imperil her rights. "I took it for granted that my beliefs were protected," said McAllister, 51, of Hayward. "I'm concerned."
Suspect detained over 'extremist' bumper sticker 'Don't Tread on Me' puts driver in 'watch' category in DHS report A Louisiana driver has been stopped and detained for having a "Don't Tread on Me" bumper sticker on his vehicle and warned by a police officer about the "subversive" message it sent, according to the driver's relative. The situation developed in the small town of Ball, La., where a receptionist at the police department told WND she knew nothing about the traffic stop, during which the "suspect" was investigated for "extremist" activities, the relative said.
Tancredo: Obama 'truly a cult leader' Former GOP congressman takes on swine flu response, amnesty, free speech Swine flu has been confirmed by laboratory tests in 1,516 patients in 22 countries, according to the WHO. Mexico has reported 942 cases, including 29 deaths, while the U.S. has 403 cases and two deaths. Despite the increasing number of U.S. cases, President Obama is solidly against closing the U.S.-Mexico border to contain the outbreak, likening such a move to "closing the barn door after the horses are out." Former Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado disagrees: "The problem is you cannot necessarily contain it, but what you're trying to do is minimize the impact, of course, and reduce the number of people coming into the country with it." Tancredo believes the administration's refusal to act is also indicative of a "desire on the part of many people to eliminate borders."
Brazil, Argentina Confirm Swine Flu Cases as Outbreak Spreads Brazil and Argentina, South America's largest economies, confirmed their first cases of swine flu as five people contracted the virus that's spreading across the globe. Four people are infected in Brazil, Health Minister Jose Gomes Temporao said yesterday in Brasilia. Argentina's Health Minister Graciela Ocana said one person in that country has swine flu. Brazil and Argentina are the second and third countries in South America after Colombia to report confirmed cases.
SWINE FLU EXCUSE FOR CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION An official policy of the Obama administration is to keep happy our pigs and those who raise them by avoiding the term "swine flu" when describing the influenza virus that jumped from pigs to people. It is not the swine flu, but rather the H1N1 virus, they tell us. The Egyptian government, however, uses swine flu as an excuse to launch another round of persecution against its minority Christian population. Even though the World Health Organization reports no swine flu in any African nation as of this writing, the Egyptian government ordered the destruction of the entire pig population in a nation where only Christians raise pigs because Muslims consider pork unclean. Earlier this week, according to various news organizations, about 1,000 Christian pig farmers armed with stones and bottles faced off against about 200 police officers armed with tear gas and accompanied by armored vehicles. The Christians lost.
Flu Is Injecting Itself Into Mexican Politics MEXICO CITY - The slumping economy and the bloody drug war had been Mexican voters' top worries ahead of midterm elections in July. Then the mysterious A(H1N1) virus gave Mexicans the scare of their lives and made those who did not end up in a hospital bed - or a grave - feel fortunate. Pollsters, who had found President Felipe Calderón's governing National Action Party lagging before the flu bug hit, are scrambling back into the field to see how the influenza outbreak may have changed the dynamics of the election season. Did Mr. Calderón's government overreact? Or did it skillfully manage the crisis and keep deaths down?
Central Banks in Europe Ease Credit Policies Again FRANKFURT - The European Central Bank lowered its benchmark lending rate by a quarter of a percentage point on Thursday, to a new low of 1 percent, and announced plans to spend about 60 billion euros, or $80.5 billion, in an effort to ease credit flows. At the same time, the Bank of England held its key interest rate steady at 0.5 percent and said it would expand its program of buying corporate debt and British government bonds to pump more cash into the economy.
How Ahmadinejad Is Playing Obama
Premier Vows to Eliminate the Taliban in Pakistan ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani vowed Thursday to "eliminate" the Taliban militants who have taken over large parts of the country, publicly declaring a get-tough strategy that American officials have been urging on him since he took office last year. "To restore the honor and dignity of our homeland and to protect our people, the armed forces have been called in to eliminate the militants and terrorists," Mr. Gilani said in a nationally televised address. "We will not bow before extremists and terrorists."
The Other Dangers in Pakistan Is the Taliban a threat to Pakistan? If you want Americans to pay attention to Pakistan-not an easy thing to do-your best bet is to conjure up images of Armageddon. The Obama administration, being put out with the Islamabad government, has decided understatement is no virtue. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently pronounced Pakistan nothing less than "a mortal threat" because it is "abdicating to the Taliban."
Tiananmen haunts China Freed prisoners unable to get work, scrape by as 'history's sacrificial lambs For some imprisoned in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, getting out of jail has not meant freedom. Imprisoned at 21 for destroying a videotape of clashes between soldiers and Beijing residents, Zhang Yansheng spent nearly 14 years in prison before his life sentence was commuted in 2003. He served another five years of parole, barred from media interviews, publishing, free speech or travel. Now he's out of prison, but he cannot find steady work and shares his elderly mother's apartment and meager pension. Finally able to tell his story at 41, Mr. Zhang says: "Most of us were in our 20s, just starting out, and then our lives were ruined, just like that. ... Now, after so many years, we get out and no one cares. There is no one to look after us."
Bigger Than Watergate? Whether the story is bigger than Watergate or not, it is definitely a scandal of huge proportions. To sum it up, on April 23, 2009, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo sent a letter to Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Chris Dodd; Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Barney Frank; SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro; and Chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel Elizabeth Warren. The letter outlined how former Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke forced Bank of America’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch – even though Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis and the board of directors tried to pull the plug on the deal after it turned out that Merrill Lynch was far deeper in debt than it had admitted.
Lewis, Bernanke, And Paulson To Be Probed By Congress Over Merrill Deal Ken Lewis apparently isn't finished testifying about his decision not to tell Bank of America (BAC) shareholders about Merrill Lynch's "devastating" losses. Congress is getting ready to drag him into televised hearings, along with--from the sound of it--Bernanke, Paulson, and the whole Fed and Treasury crew. . . . . . . . . The decision to hold a hearing before members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform comes after investigators spent the last week reviewing documents at the Federal Reserve. The person familiar with the investigation said the review of documents, notes from phone conversations involving Federal Reserve officials, and other information suggest "there's fire there."
House Panel to Probe BofA's Merrill Deal - $$ CEO Lewis and Federal Officials Will Be Asked to Testify Next Month Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis and top federal officials will be asked to testify under oath by a U.S. House panel next month, as congressional investigators probe claims the bank was pressured by the government into completing its deal with Merrill Lynch & Co., a person familiar with the investigation said Wednesday. The decision to hold a hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform comes after investigators spent the last week reviewing documents at the Federal Reserve. The person familiar with the investigation said the review of documents, notes from phone conversations involving Federal Reserve officials and other information suggest "there's fire there."
Gold retakes $900 level on US dollar retreat Overnight trading saw gold retake the $900 level following a retreat in the US dollar to near the 84 level on the index. Participants were mainly still out for 'Golden Week' in Japan and conditions continued thinner than normal, but a few more spec fund nods in gold were detected as equations of economic recovery giving rise to higher inflation were manifest.
China fears bond crisis as it slams quantitative easing China has given its clearest warning to date that emergency monetary stimulus by Western governments risks setting off worldwide inflation and undermining global bond markets. "A policy mistake made by some major central bank may bring inflation risks to the whole world," said the People's Central Bank in its quarterly report. "As more and more economies are adopting unconventional monetary policies, such as quantitative easing (QE), major currencies' devaluation risks may rise," it said. The bank fears a "big consolidation" in the bond markets, clearly anxious that interest yields will surge as western states try to exit their QE experiment.
US debt on default path Big government rescues on Wall Street and elsewhere, domestic stimulus plans, toxic asset replacement plans, and new government programs to address a wide range of other longstanding problems are causing the United States budget deficit to skyrocket. More than US$12 trillion has already been committed and/or spent in this crisis, with the current year's budget deficit projected to reach, or exceed, nearly $2 trillion. The US Treasury is flooding the market with new issuance of debt, while the chances appear increasingly slim that the huge and ballooning deficit will be brought under control anytime soon. With all this spending, we're guaranteeing that huge and persistent tax increases will be enacted down the line to pay for it all. That will trounce economic growth and is an enormously ugly prospect.
Risk is Rising I always enjoy following the market’s twists, turns, ups and downs. But this is serious business as well, because it is our livelihood, our money and our financial survival that is at stake. For perspective, let’s look at the striking view provided by the yield curve measuring long term treasuries vs. t-bills. The story of this chart is one of increasing moral hazard, of a game with ever higher stakes for winners and losers and it is a story in which the sustainability of the current system is called into question.
A Tale of Two Depressions Comparing the Great Depression to now for the world, not just the US This and most other commentary contrasting the two episodes compares America then and now. This, however, is a misleading picture. The Great Depression was a global phenomenon. Even if it originated, in some sense, in the US, it was transmitted internationally by trade flows, capital flows and commodity prices. That said, different countries were affected differently. The US is not representative of their experiences.
Obama Will Propose $17 Billion in Budget Cuts President Obama on Thursday will unveil nearly $17 billion in additional budget cuts for the coming fiscal year to showcase what a top adviser called a “constant” effort to find savings at a time when the government’s costs for bailouts, health care and wars are mounting far faster. The savings for the budget year starting Oct. 1 represent the sum of Mr. Obama’s promised “line by line” scrubbing of the federal budget. But, underscoring the nation’s fiscal plight, the proposed cuts represent about 1.4 percent of the $1.2 trillion deficit that is projected for the fiscal year 2010.
Budget Proposes Cuts in 121 Programs - $$ President Barack Obama's detailed 2010 budget plan, due out Thursday, will propose to eliminate or consolidate 121 domestic and defense programs to save $17 billion, administration officials said Wednesday. The trims, though modest, are likely to spark opposition from lawmakers and interest groups seeking to shift to someone else cuts aimed at narrowing next year's projected $1.2 trillion deficit. "There are very few programs that don't have a constituency and someone who is willing to stand up for them in Congress. We understand that," a senior administration official said. But he added, "A lot of programs are implemented with the best of intentions. Not all of them are effective."
Surge in Underwater Mortgages Forces Obama Administration to Review Loan Limits Almost a quarter of U.S. homeowners now owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth, according to one new study, signaling additional challenges to the Obama administration’s efforts to stabilize the housing market. About 21.8% of all owners were underwater as of March 31, according to a report today (Wednesday) by Zillow.com, a Seattle-based real estate data service. That figure is up from 17.6% at the end of the fourth quarter of 2008, as prices of homes continued a downward slide from their 2006 peak.
Elizabeth Warren: Americans Aren't Here to Serve the Banks, They're Here to Serve Us Bailout monitor Elizabeth Warren says the U.S. government "shows strong improvement" from the early days of TARP, when $350 billion was "shoveled into financial institutions" with a "no strings attached" and an attitude of "take my money, please." The chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel was fairly complimentary of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, certainly in comparison to his predecessor in three key areas: transparency, accountability and clarity of purpose for various programs.
Red Pill or Blue Pill? You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." -- Morpheus in The Matrix The elite and their acolytes seem to believe that by sustaining the illusion of the Financial Matrix that we create a confidence that will support a national economic system that is based on a credit bubble and a mass illusion of wealth based on paper. The money center banks are the instruments of national policy, and the power to control not only the domestic economy but the nations of the world. All we have to do is believe, and act as though it were true. After all, its so confusing, who can understand it? Better to just believe. Can we delude ourselves to prosperity? Can a powerful nation and otherwise intelligent people be that venal, faithless and craven? Yes we can. We have been doing it for years. And it can only continue if we gain more control over the real world and the people in it, and bend them to our increasingly irrational will.
Economy on the Ropes The economy continued to shrink in the first quarter of 2009 at an annual pace of 6.1 percent, making it the worst recession in more than 50 years. Gross Domestic Product slipped into negative territory from January to March for back-to-back quarters of negative 6 per cent growth. The news of falling GDP was preceded on Tuesday by a dismal housing report which showed that housing prices have continued their historic downward plunge with only modest slowing in the tempo of doom. Since their peak in July 2006, housing prices have dropped 31 per cent, falling 18.6 per cent in the last year alone. The rate of decline has decelerated slightly but -- on their present trajectory -- prices are on target to tumble 45 to 50 per cent from their 2006 highs. Another 20 per cent loss in home equity means another $4 trillion loss for US homeowners.
FDIC Chief Wants Broader Federal Powers - $$ Policy makers should consider moving quickly to allow the government to place large financial companies into receivership, a top banking regulator said Wednesday. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair, in an appearance on Capitol Hill, told Senate lawmakers that putting the authority in place quickly could make large financial firms more willing to deal with troubled assets, as well as have other benefits. "It could serve as a catalyst, more of a wake-up call," Ms. Bair said. The FDIC is allowed to place banks into receivership, but similar authority doesn't exist among federal regulators for insurance companies, bank-holding companies, broker dealers and other financial firms.
Regulators put bank CEOs on notice Banks that need capital after stress tests will have a month to give regulators a plan and to review management to make sure they have "sufficient expertise." Banks that need more capital under the stress tests will have a month to present regulators with a fundraising plan, federal officials said Wednesday. The banks will have six months to raise the funds, according to a statement from the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Some Big Banks Are Seen in Need of More Capital The results of the bank stress tests have been trickling out for days, in drips from Washington and drops from Wall Street, and the leaks seem to confirm what many bankers feel in their bones: despite all those bailouts, some of the nation's largest banks still need more money. But that does not necessarily mean the banks will get that money from the government. The findings, to released Thursday by the Obama administration, suggest that the rescue money that Congress has already approved will be enough to fill the gaps. If so, the big bailouts for the banks may be over.
Stress Test Results Show Capital Needs at Wells Fargo, GMAC Regulators' stress tests on the 19 largest U.S. banks showed Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and GMAC LLC are among the firms needing to strengthen their buffers against potential losses over the next two years. Bank of America has the biggest shortfall, at $34 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Citigroup's requirement for deeper reserves to offset potential losses over the coming two years is about $5 billion, people with knowledge of that bank's results said. Wells Fargo requires about $15 billion, while GMAC's need is $11.5 billion, one person said.
We Can't Subsidize the Banks Forever Government has to show it can handle major insolvencies. The results of the government's stress tests on banks, to be released in a few days, will not mark the beginning of the end of the financial crisis. If we are to believe the leaks, the results will show that there might be a few problems at some of the regional banks and Citigroup and Bank of America may need some more capital if things get worse. But the overall message is that the sector is in pretty good shape.
666: Goldman's latest bonus bears the mark of the beast Something strange is afoot when Popbitch – provider of a weekly email beloved of students, stuffed full of celebrity tittle-tattle and links to the silliest miscellany of the web – breaks off from such glorious trivia to encourage readers to support GoldmanSachs666.com, a deadly serious website measuring the political tentacles of the mighty investment bank. Something strange, too, when Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, becomes a hero of the internet and the satirical comedy-show circuit on cable TV, promoting his theory that the US is in the grip of a financial oligarchy. The credit-market catastrophe that has plunged the world into recession is everywhere stirring new ways of thinking about how banking relates to the wider world, but nowhere more so than among a generation coming into political consciousness in these searing times. Something is brewing, some argue, that could make the "regulatory-financial complex" something to rail against in the same way that the military-industrial complex was in the Cold War.
GoldmanSachs666.com This website has NOT been approved by Goldman Sachs. This website was designed to provide information about Goldman Sachs to demonstrate how destructive this company is to our lives.
"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." - Thomas Jefferson
"When the people and the government fear Goldman Sachs, there is economic dictatorship that will destroy the very fabric of our existence as a civilized society." - Mike Morgan
What are the Credit Markets Telling Us? Over the course of the past two months we have witnessed some stabilization in the financial markets as stocks have staged a strong rally and credit spreads have come down. While we have seen stabilization in the financial markets since the March lows the stabilization process actually began after the October 2008 panic lows. After the collapse of Lehman the markets came unglued and the Federal Reserve and Treasury worked over time creating lending facility after lending facility to ease the various sectors of the financial markets, and looking back, one would have to conclude they have largely been successful. But the question that lies ahead of us is whether or not their financial efforts will gain economic traction. Basically, do the recent green shoots have roots?
The greatest cost An astute analyst posed the following question last week: "The current debate is centered on whether the [US Federal Reserve] can take back the liquidity in time in order to prevent inflation. Suppose it can. Suppose they execute this perfectly. But if the Fed is able to flood the system with the liquidity (thus reducing the severity of the downturn) and take it back before it causes inflation, it seems there is a free lunch. We get something for nothing. So, assuming a perfectly executed game plan by the Fed, is there a cost? Do they keep rates low for a time, only to raise them a lot a year down the road - is that the cost? Or is there another cost?"
From Shortage to Glut, and Boom to Bust In recent decades, technological advances have unlocked huge reserves of unconventional natural gas. Directional drilling and advanced seismic have been important, but many of the most critical advances have occurred in the realm of completion technologies, including hydraulic fracturing. Fracing was used half a century ago, but recent improvements have been stunning, unlocking new tight gas in Colorado and Wyoming, then shale gas in Texas' prolific Barnett play. Shales are the most widespread source rocks on the planet–but historically they have been of little interest since they tend to be very impermeable. Chesapeake's Aubrey McClendon believes that the Marcellus Shale alone, under Pennsylvania and New York, may hold as much gas-in-place as the U.S. has used in its entire history. Hype? Or hope? Time will tell. Certainly, with U.S. drilling down by half since last summer, shale gas may not come to market as quickly as its boosters were touting a few months ago. Nonetheless, the shale gas story is a tribute to human ingenuity, as Randy Udall explains below.
The Worst Case Scenario (Someone Has to Say It) Since the economy began sliding downhill in late 2007, mainstream economic and market experts have consistently erred on the sunny side. As late as June 2008, mainstream consensus held that the U.S. was heading for a “soft landing” and would avoid recession. Several months later, the slump was acknowledged to have started in January 2008, but we were supposed to see renewed growth by mid-2009, with unemployment peaking in the eight-to-nine percent range. A quick “shovel-ready” stimulus bag was supposed to set us back on the road to prosperity.
Atlanta bank failure to have big impact The collapse of 'bankers' bank' Silverton could lead to pain for 1,400 community banks that were its customers, but experts downplay fears of similar failures. When regulators announced last Friday they had seized control of the relatively unknown Silverton Bank, its collapse struck many as just another minor casualty in the ongoing economic crisis. But the demise of the Atlanta-based bank could have broad implications for the entire industry, given Silverton's unique role as a so-called "bankers' bank".
Nominee ensnared in records violations Office handed largest fine in U.S. history President Obama's choice for the government's No. 2 housing job is embroiled in the largest fine in U.S. history for "blatant violations" of open records laws after the Washington State Supreme Court chastised his office for withholding documents detailing taxpayer costs for a new professional football stadium in Seattle. The documents that Ronald Sims' office was found to have kept from the public when he served as King County executive included information about cheaper alternatives to the $430 million Seattle Seahawks stadium, which was built in 2002, according to a Washington Times review of the court records.
Freddie Pressured Over Accounting Disclosure Regulator Worried Information Could Raise Bailout's Cost When Freddie Mac privately suggested to regulators last month how it planned to account for its mounting losses, the mortgage giant set off a firestorm. Freddie Mac's regulator pressed the company to withhold information related to the proposal from a federal filing, concerned that this seemingly arcane discussion of accounting practices could add billions of dollars to the government's cost of bailing out financial firms, two people familiar with the matter said. But the company's executives refused, the sources said. They worried that removing the information from the report to the Securities and Exchange Commission could expose them to accusations they'd hid required details from regulators.
CREDIT CARD LOSSES TO SOAR IN Q2 Fitch is out with a new report stating that credit card losses are set to soar in Q2. Fitch reports: Recent revisions to unemployment expectations, following the unexpected pace of deterioration in the first quarter, indicate that significant pressure on card credit metrics will remain over the balance of 2009 and into 2010. Furthermore, net charge-off levels will be hurt by industry portfolio contraction, which will make trends in absolute dollar losses more useful in coming quarters.
Why the national eco-tax is in trouble Yesterday, I noted Henry Waxman’s debate-evading maneuvers to try and facilitate passage of the massive eco-tax/”climate change” bill. The NRCC sent out a helpful fact sheet outlining why the radical green plan is really in trouble. You can thank opposition from Democrats in manufacturing and energy-producing states. Tea Party activists, here’s your opportunity to reach across the aisle:
Rich Default on Luxury Homes Like Subprime Victims Chuck Dayton put down a quarter of the $950,000 purchase price when he bought his house in Newport Beach, California, in 2004. He was making $500,000 a year with his drywall company and he expected home values to keep rising. Then the mortgage market collapsed, new construction stopped and builders no longer needed his services. Dayton, 43, went into default four months ago because he couldn't afford payments on the three-bedroom home, located within a block of the Pacific Ocean. He hopes his lender will agree to sell the seven-year-old house for less than he owes to avoid a foreclosure.
Few escape blame over subprime explosion Chronicling the explosion of subprime mortgages is a bit like reading Murder on the Orient Express. As in the novel, in which everyone is revealed to have had a hand in the murder, America’s subprime story implicates almost every power centre – including the Bush administration, the Federal Reserve and the Democratic party. Take Roland Arnall, founder and chief executive of Ameriquest Mortgage Co, the California-based company that made more than $80bn in subprime mortgages between 2005 and 2007.
Muscled cars: Government in power grab The proposed end games for General Motors and particularly Chrysler illustrate why government shouldn't have gotten involved in the first place. It's worthwhile to begin with the broader picture. Americans used to buy about 17 million new cars and trucks a year. Now, we're buying fewer than 10 million. That, of course, puts considerable stress on manufacturers with weaker products or financial structures. How many new cars Americans will want to purchase in the future is unknown. But there can be a high degree of confidence in this: However many it is, someone will sell them to us.
The Socialist-Syndicalist Plan for GM It has often been said that government expands during a crisis. As White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel noted, "Never allow a crisis to go to waste, they are opportunities to do big things." The tendency for governmental growth during crises is more than just conjecture. Robert Higgs has explained how the hidden costs of government intervention during crises cause people to overestimate the value of intervention.[1] Thus, people tend to adopt more favorable views of government during crises.
Chrysler won't repay bailout money An administration official confirms that a $4 billion bridge loan and $3.2 billion in bankruptcy financing won't be paid back by Chrysler following bankruptcy. Chrysler LLC will not repay U.S. taxpayers more than $7 billion in bailout money it received earlier this year and as part of its bankruptcy filing. This revelation was buried within Chrysler's bankruptcy filings last week and confirmed by the Obama administration Tuesday. The filings included a list of business assumptions from one of the company's key financial advisors in the bankruptcy case.
Chrysler bankruptcy: Test drive for GM GM could gain leverage in negotiations with creditors and dealers if Chrysler's reorganization is a success. But it still may wind up filing for bankruptcy. Will General Motors succeed in its efforts to restructure itself and turn the embattled automaker around? That could depend on how well the bankruptcy process plays out over the next month at rival Chrysler LLC. Chrysler hopes to quickly reorganize through bankruptcy. It filed for bankruptcy Thursday as part of a deal with the federal government, unions, some lenders and Italian automaker Fiat to keep the company from being shut down.
With Gay Issues in View, Obama Is Pressed to Engage President Obama was noticeably silent last month when the Iowa Supreme Court overturned the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. But now Mr. Obama — who has said he opposes same-sex marriage as a Christian but describes himself as a “fierce advocate of equality” for gay men and lesbians — is under pressure to engage on a variety of gay issues that are coming to the fore amid a dizzying pace of social, political, legal and legislative change.
White House Is Firm on Shaking Up Military Spending When the Obama administration outlined its plans to cut big weapons programs, some of the military industry’s allies in Congress assumed, as they have in the past, that they would have the final say. But over the last week, the White House has prodded Congressional leaders to strip several billion dollars’ worth of extra equipment out of a wartime spending bill. Experts say that effort suggests that President Obama should be able to reshape the Pentagon’s spending practices.
Justice Dept. Finds Flaws in F.B.I. Terror List The Federal Bureau of Investigation has incorrectly kept nearly 24,000 people on a terrorist watch list on the basis of outdated or sometimes irrelevant information, while missing people with genuine ties to terrorism who should have been on the list, according to a Justice Department report released Wednesday. The report said the mistakes posed a risk to national security, because of the failure to flag actual terrorism suspects, and an unnecessary nuisance for nonsuspects who may be questioned at traffic stops or kept from boarding airplanes. By the beginning of 2009, the report said, this consolidated government watch list comprised about 400,000 people, recorded as 1.1 million names and aliases, an exponential growth from the days before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Obama's Gitmo Mess - $$ So where is the Pentagon going to send the Yeminis? On his second day in office, President Obama ordered the Pentagon to mothball Guantanamo within one year, purportedly to reclaim the "moral high ground." That earned applause from the anti-antiterror squadrons, yet it is now causing all kinds of practical and political problems in what used to be known as the war on terror. This mess grew even more chaotic this week, when Democrats refused the Administration's $50 million budget request to transfer some of the remaining 241 Gitmo detainees to a prison likely to be somewhere in the U.S. and perhaps to a new one built with taxpayer dollars. "What do we do with the 50 to 100 -- probably in that ballpark -- who we cannot release and cannot try?" Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently asked Congress.
Americans do not have the intellectual capacity to revolt
Sebelius calls for more insurance oversight Public plan eyes curbs on private sector Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a House panel Wednesday that a government-run health care plan is needed to keep in check the private insurance industry, which she says wields too much power and often fails to best serve the public. "The president is committed to - and I'm committed to - a design that needs to level the playing field, and it's on two fronts," Mrs. Sebelius said while testifying during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on health care reform.
New Effort Reopens a Medical Minefield A back-pain researcher, Dr. Richard Deyo recalls the uproar the last time federal officials tried to suggest how doctors should practice their profession. It was in the mid-1990s, when Dr. Deyo helped develop federal guidelines urging surgeons not to perform spinal fusions to treat acute pain. The reason was simple: There was little evidence that the fusions worked in many patients. Spine specialists quickly attacked the report, calling it flawed. One medical device maker, Medtronic, sued unsuccessfully to block its release. Republican lawmakers tried to kill the agency that issued the report. It survived, but its funding was drastically cut, and it decided to stop issuing guidelines.
More than one in five homeowners underwater: Zillow Home values in the United States extended their fall in the first quarter, with more than one in five homeowners now owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, real estate website Zillow.com said on Wednesday. U.S. home values posted a year-over-year decline of 14.2 percent to a Zillow Home Value Index of $182,378, resulting in a total 21.8 percent drop since the market peaked in 2006, according to Zillow's first-quarter Real Estate Market Reports, which encompass 161 metropolitan areas and cover the value changes in all homes, not just homes that have recently sold.
The Rust Belt: A forgotten housing crisis The emptiest neighborhoods are in places hit hard by the 198 CINCINNATI - Meet the forgotten housing crisis. While most attention has focused on the wave of foreclosures sweeping mostly middle-class, suburban Sunbelt neighborhoods from California to Florida, the nation's emptiest neighborhoods have remained concentrated in the same place for nearly a generation: the mostly minority, poor, urban neighborhoods of the American Rust Belt. An analysis by The Associated Press, based on data collected by the U.S. Postal Service and the Housing and Urban Development Department, shows the emptiest neighborhoods are clustered in places hit hard during the recession of the 1980s — cities such as Flint, Mich.; Columbus, Ohio; Buffalo, N.Y.; and Indianapolis.
US private sector sheds 491,000 jobs The US private sector shed 491,000 jobs in April, according to a survey of business employment, a sign that while job losses remain high, the freefall may be slowing. Results from the monthly ADP Employer Services survey, which tracks private non-farm payroll employment, were better than expected and its lowest estimate of monthly job losses since October. The revised figure for March showed 708,000 jobs lost. Some better-than-expected economic data in the past two months have prompted cautious optimism among some US politicians, including President Barack Obama, who said last month there were “glimmers of stabilisation” in the economy. On Tuesday Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, said demand in the US “may be stabilising”.
For Small Employers, Shedding Workers and Tears GRAFTON, Wis. — In a small, windowless conference room, the nine members of the management team at Ram Tool gathered to consider which employees should be laid off in the company’s latest round of cutbacks. They debated each name and weighed issues like seniority and skills. Could they do multiple jobs? What was their attendance record? Finally, after three days of discussions, they arrived at a list, and it fell to Shelly Polum, the vice president for administration at this small, family-owned tool-and-die manufacturing company here, to inform four workers they were being let go. She put on what her husband called her “stone-cold face” and walked out onto the shop floor.
Commuters No More Luray Area Struggles As Far-Flung Jobs, And Hopes, Wane LURAY, Va. Steve Morgan fired up the weed whacker and flicked away a morning cigarette. "I should be in the middle of a workday right now," he said, starting in on a patch of weeds at the base of his acre property. Later, he would mow the lawn and muse about the Chinese garden he'd like to put out back one day. "I figure I'll put up a stone wall on the back there when I can afford it, maybe make a little stone path leading to the creek, there." Morgan is not used to this kind of morning routine. For about five years, he started his day at 2:30 a.m. preparing to drive to his warehouse job in Manassas. He traveled 60 miles each way, every day, for the job that paid $17 an hour. The job helped him buy this plot of land, his first, so he never complained about the pre-dawn drive there or the bumper-to-bumper drive back home.
More employers seek out seniors Growing list of companies see benefits of hiring people 50 and up AARP is adding three federal government agencies and six private companies to its list of employers looking to hire people 50 and older for a variety of full-time, part-time and seasonal jobs, the group announced Thursday. The Internal Revenue Service, the Peace Corps and the U.S. Small Business Administration's Office of Disaster Relief are the newest members and the first federal employers on AARP's National Employer Team, bringing the total number of employers in the three-year-old partnership to 38, said Deborah Russell, director of work force issues for AARP in Washington.
Shaved Heads Keep Barbers Idle as Drought Sears California The drought in California's Central Valley is so severe that it's drying up money for haircuts. One customer waited six months to get a $10 haircut, then asked to have his head shaved so he could wait another six months, said Armando Ramirez, a barber in Firebaugh. "People come in and say, 'Hey Armando, how about I give you a dollar for a cut, it's all I have,'" said Ramirez, 63, who has owned his shop for four decades. "Saturday is supposed to be my busiest day, but I'm lucky if I get one customer before I go to lunch."
Privacy issues across the Pond in the UK Americans need to pay attention to global gestapo trends "Specific criminal conduct need not be proved" Your business IS the business of world government Police seize 'unexplained' £67k Large quantities of cash were found in the man's house A man has been ordered to forfeit more than £67,000 because he could not prove where the money came from. Police found the cash at his house in Sandfields, Port Talbot, after reports of an attempted burglary there. He was arrested on suspicion of money laundering and although never charged police have successfully applied to the courts for a confiscation order. See comments on this U.K. forum: http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t113526-100.html
Barack Obama Proves His Anti-Semitism One hundred days into Barack Obama's presidency, he demonstrated cowardice abroad and demagogic tyranny at home. On the 105th day of his presidency, he demonstrated his clear-cut anti-Semitism. On Monday, Rahm Emanuel, the president's hatchet man, delivered a message to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. According to the Jerusalem Post, Emanuel stated, "Thwarting Iran's nuclear program is conditional on progress in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians." The message is clear: America will bar any action against Iran unless Israel makes concessions to the Palestinian Arab thugs who seek to eviscerate all Jewish presence east of the Mediterranean.
Embassy Row THREATS TO ISRAEL The man expected to be Israel's next ambassador to the United States warned Israel to resist pressure to abandon any plans for a "military operation" to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Michael Oren, now a professor at Georgetown University in Washington, also urged the government in Jerusalem to support President Obama's diplomatic efforts with Iran but make sure the White House is aware of Iranian duplicity. "Israel cannot allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons," he wrote in this month's edition of Commentary Magazine. "Israel should work in tandem with the United States, supporting the current administration's diplomatic efforts to dissuade the Iranians from going nuclear but warning American policymakers of the dangers of Iranian prevarication.
Peres to Obama: No choice but to compare Iran to Nazis The world has no choice but to compare the threat posed by Iran now to that of Nazi Germany before the Second World War, President Shimon Peres told U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington on Tuesday. "Iran is a threat not just to Israel, but to the whole world. As Jews, after being subjected to the Holocaust, we cannot close our eyes in light of the grave danger emerging from Iran," Peres said. "If Europe had dealt seriously with Hitler at that time, the terrible Holocaust and the loss of millions of people could have been avoided. We can't help but make the comparison."
A Nuclear Power Is About to Fall to Islamists Radical Muslims are closer to the nuclear bomb than we’d like: only 60 miles. Pakistan is turning into the Iranian Revolution—plus nuclear weapons. Like Iran in 1979, Islamist radicals are taking a weakly governed country by the throat and preparing to shape it according to their twisted spiritual vision. The immediate danger is heightened exponentially by Pakistan being one of the world’s eight nuclear powers, possessing between 60 and 100 nukes, scattered throughout the country. Amid escalating chaos, some of those bombs are sure to slip into extremist Muslim hands. Though the United States and others talk about preventing this scenario, they simply aren’t willing to take measures forceful enough. Signs are, in fact, that the Obama administration is beginning to realize this is a losing cause. Brace yourself for the consequences. This situation threatens to change the world.
Afghans to Obama: Get Out, Take Karzai With You When President Hamid Karzai drove to Kabul airport to fly to America earlier this week, the centre of the Afghan capital was closed down by well-armed security men, soldiers and policemen. On his arrival in Washington he will begin two days of meetings, starting today, with President Barack Obama and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari about their joint efforts to combat the Taliban. Karzai is also to deliver a speech at the Brookings Institution think tank on “effective ways of fighting terrorism.”
Vatican Presses for Possession of Jerusalem Sites And Israel’s president is helping. Tension is building between Israel and the Vatican over contested parts of Jerusalem ahead of Pope Benedict xvi’s visit to the Jewish nation next week. Negotiations between Israel and the Vatican have been ongoing for the past 10 years concerning the handover of sites in Jerusalem, including parts of Mount Zion, and elsewhere in the country claimed by the Roman Catholic Church. Reports in the Catholic media imply that these negotiations are nearing their conclusion. While Israel’s Foreign Ministry denies the reports, idf Army Radio says that President Shimon Peres is pressuring Interior Minister Eli Yishai to surrender six properties demanded by the Vatican. If the interior minister does not cave, staffers in the president’s office say, they will find some legal way to sign away the sites without Yishai’s approval. [According to author Dave Hunt, Shimon Peres cut a deal with the Vatican in 1994, to divide the city of Jerusalem into three parts (Jewish, Islam, Christian) and turning it into an 'international' city.]
Peres backs Arab League peace initiative In a message intended for US President Barack Obama, President Shimon Peres on Monday indicated that the Arab League peace plan could serve as a basis for moving the peace process forward. In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual conference, Peres stressed that Israel's leaders trusted the US president as he works toward peace, something Israel would pursue as it respected its previous commitments to the Palestinians.
Obama, Peres Discuss Israeli-Palestinian Peace President Obama's meeting with Shimon Peres this afternoon marked a first step in the new administration's relationship with Israel. But it comes at a time when the two governments disagree sharply over what constitutes the biggest long-term threat to the Jewish state and how best to achieve peace in the region. Peres, Israel's president, is serving mostly as a scout on this trip to Washington on behalf of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who took office at the end of March and will meet with Obama for the first time on May 18. Israel's presidency is a largely ceremonial post, and Peres, as a former prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is his country's most recognizable ambassador.
BILDERBERG: The systemic conspiracy: Estulin
BILDERBERG: BIG, BAD & UGLY: Daniel Estulin (#2
BILDERBERG: DEMAND DESTRUCTION - Daniel Estulin
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124 congressman demand audit of Federal Reserve Support multiplying for scrutiny of nation's money controllers A bill calling for the comptroller general of the United States to audit the private Federal Reserve is gaining widespread support in Congress, as 124 representatives have added their names to its growing list of co-sponsors. As WND reported, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, introduced in February H.R. 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009, a bill requiring that an audit of both the Fed's Board of Governors and the Federal Reserve Banks be completed and reported to Congress before the end of 2010. Paul was joined at the time of introduction by 11 other Republican and Democratic co-sponsors - but now that number has multiplied. Since its introduction, 113 additional U.S. representatives have added their names.
Exposing the Federal Reserve by G. Edward Griffin We'll start way back in history to give some kind of historical perspective to this; we'll go back to the first century BC and the tiny kingdom of Phrygia. There was a philosopher by the name of Epictetus and it was Epictetus who said: "Appearances are of four kinds: things either are as they appear to be; or they neither are nor appear to be; or they are but do not appear to be; or they are not and yet appear to be." The Federal Reserve is incapable of accomplishing its stated objectives.
It is a cartel operating against the public interest.
It's the supreme instrument of usury.
It generates our most unfair tax.
It encourages war.
It destabilizes the economy.
Ron Paul Asks Ben Bernanke 5/5/2009 "Would You Repeal Some Of The Transparency Provisions?"
Bernanke Warns of Danger of Credit Market 'Relapse' Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned that another shock to the financial system would undercut the central bank's forecast that the U.S. recession will give way this year to a slow recovery. "A relapse in financial conditions would be a significant drag on economic activity and could cause the incipient recovery to stall," Bernanke said today in testimony to the congressional Joint Economic Committee. He highlighted that the economic contraction may be slowing and that the housing market has "shown some signs of bottoming" after a three-year slump.
Bernanke cautions about swift recovery Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday cautioned against expecting a sharp improvement in the U.S. economy later this year, saying the recovery is likely to be gradual and that unemployment will continue to remain high. "We expect economic activity to bottom out, then to turn up later this year," he said before Congress' Joint Economic Committee. "Businesses are likely to be cautious about hiring, implying that the unemployment rate could remain high for a time, even after economic growth resumes."
As Investors Circle Ailing Banks, Fed Sets Limits CAINSVILLE, Mo. — No one seems to want to own a business in this dusty, windswept corner of rural America, population 370, with its crumbling sidewalks and boarded-up storefronts. Except, that is, for J. Christopher Flowers, a media-shy New York billionaire who last year bought the First National Bank of Cainesville, one of the United States’ smallest national banks. Mr. Flowers, a private equity manager, has no particular love for rural Missouri; in fact, he has never set foot in Cainsville. Rather, he wants to use the national bank charter he picked up in this farm town to go on a nationwide buying spree.
Government Foisting Illegal Requirements On TARP Repayment The government is planning to detail a complete set of guidelines dictating how banks can repay the TARP, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. The requirements, which may be revealed as early as tomorrow, will likely include a requirement that they demonstrate their ability to borrow without taking advantage of a government debt guarantee program.
Washington sets out Tarp payback rules US regulators are moving to impose tough conditions on banks that want to repay federal bail-out funds, requiring them to prove that they can issue debt without government insurance. This new requirement, which was confirmed by a senior US official, could deter some banks from trying to repay funds early. Banks have issued more than $300bn of debt insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Earlier, a second senior US official told the Financial Times that banks wishing to repay government funds may also be required to demonstrate that they can raise equity capital from private investors.
U.S. Banks Must Raise Debt Without FDIC to Repay TARP Banks that want to exit from the U.S. government's capital injections must demonstrate they can issue debt to private investors without a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. guarantee, according to people familiar with the matter. The Treasury will unveil conditions for repaying the Troubled Asset Relief Program money as soon as tomorrow, the people said on condition of anonymity. Banks generally must apply to the Treasury and secure permission from their bank supervisor in order to pay back the government; so far only a handful of small banks have done so.
Fed Stress Tests to Show About 10 Banks Need Capital The Federal Reserve plans to deliver results of stress tests on U.S. banks to executives today that may show about 10 companies need additional capital to weather a deeper recession, people familiar with the matter said. Banks are formulating plans for filling their capital requirements, much of which would likely come from conversions of preferred shares, the people said. Many of the 19 lenders under review and the government are set to discuss publicly the examinations after markets close May 7, the people said.
Gold may plunge on US banks’ stress-test results Risk appetite is on the rise. Equities have rebounded sharply, many emerging market currencies have strengthened, and the US dollar is depreciating. Despite gold’s jump above $900 yesterday, the metal lacks momentum. We have seen good physical selling with gold above $900 — and this seems to be the current trend.Equity markets have almost wiped out YTD losses.
Banks Given ONE MONTH To Raise Capital After the results of the stress test are released this Thursday, those banks that have to raise capital will be given one month to do so. Unofficial Fed spokesperson Steve Liesmen of CNBC broke the news, while Chairman Bernanke sat in front of Congress. We're not sure what the "or what" is. As in, what happens if they don't or can't come up with the cash.
Bank Of America Needs A Whopping $34 Billion When the FT reported that Bank of America (BAC) would need to raise "well in excess" of $10 billion in order to please regulators, they weren't kidding. Reuters is now reporting that the stress test verdict is that BofA will need $34 billion. The official results are due out in two days, so with any luck we'll have an end to this ongoing leak-fest.
States Getting More Money From The Feds Than They Are From Taxes While most of the yappers talk about the Federal Government's unprecedented control of corporations, the long arms of Washington are also extending deeply into state governments. As you know, state revenues have collapsed (we're looking at you California), and unlike the federal government, lenders aren't just willing to throw cash at them (again, California).
Monetary Inflation the Old-fashioned Way! All of our economic problems are caused by the Federal Reserve creating the excess of money and credit that produced the bubbles in stocks, bonds, houses and size of government, but doesn't have to be electronic money made from electronic credit. No, sirree! You can expand the money supply the old-fashioned way, as it can be money made from plain, old, paper-and-ink! Fire up the presses! Monetary inflation the old-fashioned way!
Gerald Celente The Greatest Depression of all times Part 1 /2
Did FDR Make the Depression Great? Robert Murphy demonstrates in this excellent book a penetrating ability to explain the essence of fallacious economic doctrines. As he notes, three theories offer competing explanations of the Great Depression: the Keynesian account, which stresses a lack of aggregate demand; Milton Friedman's monetarism, which ascribes the severity of the early years of the Depression to a drastic cut in the money supply by the Fed; and, of course, the Austrian theory that Murphy himself favors. Herbert Hoover, though not under Keynes's influence, defended a version of the first theory. If wages were not kept high, purchasing power would be insufficient to restore prosperity. Accordingly, Hoover encouraged businesses to refrain from wage cuts.
Bernanke says U.S. recovery ahead, housing near bottom Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Tuesday the three-year U.S. housing bust may be near a bottom and the recession should end this year, as long as there is no relapse of the credit squeeze that has strangled the economy. In March, Bernanke had pointed to "green shoots" of economic recovery, but in testimony to Congress on Tuesday he was more explicit in saying the pieces were in place for a rebound. Still, he acknowledged that growth would remain subdued and unemployment high even after the recession ends.
Fed lines up exit strategy to damp inflation The Federal Reserve is focused "like a laser beam" on an exit strategy to ensure its extraordinary efforts to stimulate the economy do not end up fuelling inflation, Ben Bernanke said on Tuesday. "We have a plan in place," the Fed chairman said. "We are trying to strengthen and improve it." He said Fed policymakers spent much of their last two-day policy meeting "thinking very heavily and extensively about exit strategy". His comments come amid concern among some economists and politicians that the US central bank could be caught on the hop if tentative signs of economic stabilisation morph into recovery.
Bankrupting For Profit At a Cambridge House Investment Conference I received a question about Bear Stearns. In my answer I alluded to the possible financial benefit of some from its implosion. When pressed I had to explain how credit default swaps worked and then we were out of time. Because the owners of the majority of the financial press have too much money to make from bankruptcies this topic is sparingly covered. But the Financial Times editor let an article wiggle through.
Treasuries Little Changed as Supply, Bank Fears Limit Trading Treasuries Fall as $35 Billion Three-Year Note Auction Draws 1.473% Yield Treasuries were little changed as traders focused on the 10- and 30-year auctions later this week and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned that a relapse in the banking system could stall economic recovery. U.S. debt recouped earlier losses after the Treasury's sale of $35 billion of three-year notes drew a higher yield than traders anticipated. The sale was the first of three this week that will auction $71 billion of notes and bonds. Bernanke said "a relapse in financial conditions would be a significant drag on economic activity" as investors await the results of the government's stress tests on U.S. banks.
Obama's tax reforms anger "haven" countries The proposed US crackdown on corporate tax avoidance has provoked an angry response from low-tax countries used heavily by the multinationals that are the target of the Obama administration's reforms. The US administration, in publishing the plan on Monday, highlighted the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the Netherlands and Ireland. The US proposals are also likely to be felt in Luxembourg, Switzerland and Singapore where profits reported by US subsidiaries often appear disproportionately high, given the size of those countries.
Hedge Fund Registration Is Still A Pointless Exercise The chief of investment management at the Securities and Exchange Commission told a Mutual Fund trade group yesterday that that he believes hedge fund advisers should be required to register with the SEC, Sarah Lynch of Dow Jones Newswires reported this morning. So now that this terrible idea is once again rearing its nonsensical head, we'll have to return to thwacking it back down.
Hedge Funds Outraged At Obama Bullying But Also Cowering In Fear The President has just harshly castigated hedge fund managers for being unwilling to take his administration's bid for their Chrysler bonds. He called them "speculators" who were "refusing to sacrifice like everyone else" and who wanted "to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout." The responses of hedge fund managers have been, appropriately, outrage, but generally have been anonymous for fear of going on the record against a powerful President (an exception, though still in the form of a "group letter", was the superb note from "The Committee of Chrysler Non-TARP Lenders" some of the points of which I echo here, and a relatively few firms, like Oppenheimer, that have publicly defended themselves). Furthermore, one by one the managers and banks are said to be caving to the President's wishes out of justifiable fear.
401(k)s Hit by Withdrawal Freezes Investors Cry Foul as Some Funds Close Exits; Perils of Distressed Markets Some investors in 401(k) retirement funds who are moving to grab their money are finding they can't. Even with recent gains in stocks such as Monday's, the months of market turmoil have delivered a blow to some 401(k) participants: freezing their investments in certain plans. In some cases, individual investors can't withdraw money from certain retirement-plan options. In other cases, employers are having trouble getting rid of risky investments in 401(k) plans. When Ed Dursky was laid off from his job at a manufacturing company in March, he couldn't withdraw $40,000 from his 401(k) retirement account invested in the Principal U.S. Property Separate Account.
Will Obama Seize Americans' 401k and IRA Funds? There is a rumor floating around that Obama will seize Americans' retirement funds, like Argentina and some other countries have done. Two investment newsletters - Green Chip Review and The Mining Speculator - have recently claimed that the 401k seizure is a sure thing. Is this just crazy talk, or is there something to it? And in October of 2008, the idea of confiscating private 401k and IRA accounts and replacing them with government accounts gained wide traction. But are those plans still in the works, or has the idea been abandoned?
Dems Target Private Retirement Accounts Democratic leaders in the U.S. House discuss confiscating 401(k)s, IRAs Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers’ personal retirement accounts — including 401(k)s and IRAs — and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration. Triggered by the financial crisis the past two months, the hearings reportedly were meant to stem losses incurred by many workers and retirees whose 401(k) and IRA balances have been shrinking rapidly.
Obama, Dems Seek to End 401(k) Plans Sen. Barack Obama's Democratic allies in Congress are looking into a radical new plan that would fundamentally change the way Americans save for retirement. House Democrats recently heard testimony on the idea and, under a potential Obama administration, would likely move to put it in place. Democrats want to seize the money that workers currently invest in their 401(k) plans and replace the popular retirement savings accounts with a one-size-fits-all government sponsored retirement account. Under the scheme, Americans would be forced to transfer all of their hard earned retirement savings from their 401(k) to the government.
Obama & His Socialist Economists Should Listen to Ron Paul & Peter Schiff
A Cap And Trade Program Would Eliminate .38% Of Disposable Income The battle over cap and trade will be raging for a long time to come, according to Democrats that emerged from a meeting with Barack Obama earlier today. The big problem holding them back from reaching consensus: different parts of the country will be hit harder by a cap and trade than others. To this end, Kevin Book at ClearView Energy Partners tried to quantified what the costs will be across different states. Overall, he finds that a greenhouse gas surcharge of $10 per metric ton would erode about .38% of personal disposable income. Not too shabby, in our opinion. On a state by state basis the cost varies. Residents of Mississippi would lose .53% of their personal income, while people in Colorado for instance would only lose .262%. We've pasted the full chart below.
World could be moving to crude at 70$ barrel If the fundamentals on oil are so bearish then why did oil close at a new high for the year? Oil bears be on guard as the fundamentals in the oil market are transcending traditional measures of supply and demand. Oil is making a statement and that statement could be punctuated with a new worry on the geo-political front. Reports of a military coup in Georgia could pop the top on this simmering caldron. If we take out the highs for the year, stops could be hit sending oil in a higher trading range and possibly signaling a move towards $70 a barrel.
Should People Just Ignore Economists? What Good Are Economists Anyway? Why they failed to predict the global economic crisis—and why their help is still crucial to a recovery Economists mostly failed to predict the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. Now they can't agree how to solve it. People are starting to wonder: What good are economists anyway? A commenter on a housing blog wrote recently that economists did a worse job of forecasting the housing market than either his father, who has no formal education, or his mother, who got up to second grade. "If you are an economist and did not see this coming, you should seriously reconsider the value of your education and maybe do something with a tangible value to society, like picking vegetables," he wrote on patrick.net. Take that, you pointy-headed failures! Go jump off a supply curve!
House Dems Agree On Cash For Clunkers, Not Cap And Trade House Democrats wrapped up their meeting with President Obama, saying they've reached an agreement on the cash for clunkers program, but cap and trade is still a long ways away. Cash for clunkers provides rebates for drivers unloading their old gas guzzling cars for new, better for the environment types. In April, a FBR Capital analysis said the program would be ineffective, as "less than 5% of U.S. vehicles will be able to participate."
Taxpayers Won't Get Chrysler "Loan" Back As we noted this morning, lawyers representing Chrysler said in court yesterday that the government would not be getting its $8 billion of loans back, including about $4 billion in debtor-in-possession financing. Well that news was so stunning -- so obviously an admission that the bankruptcy itself is a bailout to the union -- that we had a hard time believing it. But it's totally true.
US Government Will Lose All $8 Billion It's Given To Chrysler The fact that Chrysler is going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy is in itself a form of bailout, since the government is providing the financing for the bankrupt company. Without Uncle Sam, no private investor would throw fresh cash into it, and it'd be a liquidation case. Game over. But don't think that you, as the taxpayer, are getting any kind of senior position here.
Chrysler Bankruptcy May Not Dent Economy as Cutbacks Were Set Treasuries were little changed as traders focused on the 10- and 30-year auctions later this week and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned that a relapse in the banking system could stall economic recovery. U.S. debt recouped earlier losses after the Treasury's sale of $35 billion of three-year notes drew a higher yield than traders anticipated. The sale was the first of three this week that will auction $71 billion of notes and bonds. Bernanke said "a relapse in financial conditions would be a significant drag on economic activity" as investors await the results of the government's stress tests on U.S. banks.
Chrysler Hedge Funds Getting Death Threats Barack Obama's decision to paint the hedge funds in the Chrysler case as anti-American obstructionists is prompting death threats against them. That's at least what their lead lawyer Thomas Lauria is saying, reports The Detroit News. He said in court that the threats have been turned over to the FBI. We assume Lauria is being honest -- you don't say this stuff in court and turn it over to the FBI if it's rubbish -- though we'll note that Lauria is being pretty provocative in his attempt to win the war of public opinion in the Chrysler case. He's of course been airing the complain that one redoubt, Parella Weinberg, only decided to go along with the Rattner plan upon receiving thuggish threats of intimidation.
White House "Directly Threatened" Perella Weinberg Over Chrysler The Obama administration threatened to use the White House press corps to besmirch the reputation of one of the financial firms that holds Chrysler debt, according to a prominent New York bankruptcy lawyer. If true, the explosive charge shows that the White House was willing to go much further than is widely known to have its way in the attempt to restructure the Detriot automaker.
Democrats maneuver to advance U.S. climate change bill Democrats in the House of Representatives said on Tuesday they were still working to pass a climate change bill by year's end as they scrambled to get enough of their fellow lawmakers to support the initiative. But in an important procedural move, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman said he would leapfrog a subcommittee and have the controversial legislation voted on by the full committee before his end-of-May deadline for the panel to act.
Fed rejects request to help credit card holders The U.S. Federal Reserve rejected a request to force credit card companies to immediately halt retroactive interest-rate increases on existing balances, Democratic Senator Charles Schumer said on Tuesday. Schumer and Christopher Dodd, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, asked the Fed last month to use its emergency powers for rescuing banks to also help credit card consumers being slapped with unexpected rate increases.
Gerald Celente The Greatest Depression of all times Part 2 /2
Wall Street Firms Will Revert to Pre-Crisis Model Wall Street Is Seen Emerging From Collapse Much Like Pre-Crisis Industry Wall Street, after getting billions of taxpayer dollars, will emerge from the financial crisis looking much the same as before markets collapsed, said H. Rodgin Cohen, chairman of law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. "The system will look more like what preceded the current environment than many people seem to believe," Cohen said yesterday at a panel discussion on the future of Wall Street sponsored by Bloomberg News in New York. "I am far from convinced there was something inherently wrong with the system."
Coca-Cola, Oracle, Intel Use Caymans to Avoid Taxes Seagate Technology, the world's largest maker of hard disk drives, is headquartered in Scotts Valley, California. Yet the documents it files with the Securities and Exchange Commission list its address on South Church Street in George Town, the capital of the Cayman Islands. Seagate is just one of the companies that may be affected by President Barack Obama's proposal yesterday to raise about $190 billion over the next decade by outlawing techniques used by U.S. companies in offshore locations to avoid paying taxes. While the U.S. corporate tax rate is 35 percent, Seagate paid an effective tax rate of 5 percent in the year ended June 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
AIG reveals $454 million in 2008 performance bonuses Embattled insurer American International Group paid some $454 million in previously undisclosed performance bonuses to employees for 2008, the company said in answers to questions from a U.S. lawmaker that were released on Tuesday. AIG was widely criticized for paying out some $165 million in retention bonuses after it received some $180 billion in government bailout aid. Some of the retention bonuses were returned by employees after the firestorm of criticism.
Swine flu kills second person in U.S. A Texas woman with the new H1N1 swine flu died earlier this week, state health officials said on Tuesday, the second death outside of Mexico, where the epidemic appeared to be waning. The death of the woman, who was in her 30s and had health problems, followed that of a Mexican toddler visiting Texas. U.S. health officials have predicted that the virus would spread and inevitably kill some people, just as seasonal flu does.
Healthcare reform is top U.S. priority: Sebelius Healthcare reform is the top priority for the U.S. government this year, and the momentum is there to achieve it, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on Tuesday. Sebelius said there was "unprecedented" bipartisan cooperation to speed through reforms this year. "In the Senate, Democrats have been working closely together and with their Republican counterparts. Key chairmen have committed to passing reform legislation out of their respective committees in June," Sebelius said.
GMAC has $675 mln loss, can weather GM bankruptcy GMAC LLC, which provides loans to buyers of General Motors Corp (GM.N) vehicles, posted its sixth loss in seven quarters as the weak economy caused a surge in soured auto and mortgage loans, but said it will not be forced into bankruptcy if the automaker takes that route. The lender has struggled because the deteriorating auto and housing markets caused financing volume to decline and credit losses to increase. GMAC's owners include GM and the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP CBS.UL.
GM plans 1-for-100 reverse stock split General Motors plans reverse stock split General Motors Corp. notified shareholders Tuesday it is planning a reverse stock split that would give them one share of new stock for every 100 shares they currently own. The automaker said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the deal would be part of an agreement with the Treasury Department in which the government would assume at least half of GM's debt in exchange for company shares. GM will send the information to shareholders currently holding a total of 610.5 million outstanding shares.
Opel labor leader says Fiat deal risks everything The senior labor leader of German car maker Opel warned that Fiat's ambitious growth strategy was an all-or-nothing bet, rejecting the Italian rival's takeover concept for the GM Europe brand. After a meeting on Monday with Fiat Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne, Opel works council chairman and supervisory board member Klaus Franz said his plans foresee the loss of some 9,000 to 10,000 jobs at their combined European operations.
Next on Senate agenda? 'Pedophile Protection Act' 'Hate crimes' law definitions would protect 547 sex 'philias' The leader of a pro-family organization says families across the nation need to contact their U.S. senators now to try to derail a legislative plan that already has passed the U.S. House and is being awaited by President Obama - after a Democrat confirmed it would protect "all 547 forms of sexual deviancy or 'paraphilias' listed by the American Psychiatric Association." WND columnist Janet Porter, who also heads the Faith2Action Christian ministry, today cited S. 909, dubbed the "Pedophile Protection Act," as an extreme danger to America. As H.R. 1913, the House version of the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act bill, the plan was adopted on a 249-175 vote, but not before several amendments were proposed by Republicans trying to mitigate the impact of the law.
Census GPS-tagging your home's front door Coordinates being taken for every residence in nation According to an online Yahoo program, the Global Position System coordinates for the White House, probably one of the best-known publicly-owned buildings in the world, are 38.898590 Latitude and -77.035971 Longitude. And since you know that, it's no big deal for the White House to know the coordinates for your front door, is it? Some people think it is, and are upset over an army of some 140,000 workers hired in part with a $700 million taxpayer-funded contract to collect those GPS readings for every front door in the nation.
There will be a Violent Revolution in America Max Keiser
Sixty million armed Patriots ... and counting "No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." --Thomas Jefferson Currently, large sectors of the U.S. economy have collapsed, consumer confidence is at a historic low, Democrats control the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, and they're poised to print "bailout and infrastructure" money on the theory of "trickle up poverty" -- risking a prolonged recession followed by hyperinflation and/or a protracted depression. Or does the latter "risk" constitute their real plan? If there is an economic recovery any time soon, it will be the result of private sector initiatives and a consumer confidence recovery, not the redistribution of a few trillion dollars among friends as directed by the "community organizer" in the White House.
City in danger of falling victim to EU wiles and becoming another Antwerp The City of London is on borrowed time. Great banking centres can prosper for 40 years or so after the host country has lost industrial leadership but then some shock or political upset exposes the fragility of it all. "There is an extreme stickiness in financial centres," writes Peter Spufford, a Cambridge historian, reviewing the rise and fall of Genoa, Florence, Venice, Bruges, Antwerp, Amsterdam and London over eight centuries.
Britons face working until 70 to help bring public debt under control Britons will have to work until the age of 70, at least five years beyond the current retirement age, if the Government is to stand any hope of bringing public debt under control over the next decade, a report claims. The scale of the debt that Gordon Brown takes on to fight the economic crisis means that future governments will have to consider drastic measures to ease it, according to the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR). The think tank said it would be all but impossible for the Government to return Britain's total public debt to 40 per cent of gross domestic product, currently equivalent to £600billion, until 2023.
Bilderbergers plan secret meeting in Greece Source says top agenda item is reconstructing world economy The 57th meeting of representatives from Western European and North American countries known as Bilderberg Group will be held next week at a five-star hotel in Greece, reports Daniel Estulin, an investigative author who has written a defining book on the secretive annual gathering. Estulin says his sources in Greece have confirmed the meeting will be held at the Nafsika Astir Palace Hotel in Vouliagmeni from May 14-17.
Israel must accept Palestinian state, Joe Biden says Vice-President Joe Biden placed America on a collision course with Israel on Tuesday, urging the new government to accept the goal of a Palestinian state and stop expanding Jewish settlements on occupied land. Mr Biden used an address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee - the leading pro-Israeli lobby group in the United States - to deliver a tough message to Benjamin Netanyahu, the country's new prime minister. "Israel has to work for a two-state solution," said Mr Biden. "You're not going to like my saying this, but not build more settlements, dismantle existing outposts and allow Palestinians freedom of movement."
Karzai : War on Terror Political Not Military Now & Higher Moral Platform in War
Obama to meet Afghan, Pakistani leaders on strategy President Barack Obama presents his strategy for defeating al Qaeda to the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan on Wednesday amid growing U.S. concern that it is losing the war and neither is a reliable ally. The White House meetings with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai are likely to be cagey affairs -- both visitors have been heavily criticized by Obama's administration and are also wary of each other.
Secret U.S.-Israel nuclear accord in jeopardy President Obama's efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons threaten to expose and derail a 40-year-old secret U.S. agreement to shield Israel's nuclear weapons from international scrutiny, former and current U.S. and Israeli officials and nuclear specialists say. The issue will likely come to a head when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Mr. Obama on May 18 in Washington. Mr. Netanyahu is expected to seek assurances from Mr. Obama that he will uphold the U.S. commitment and will not trade Israeli nuclear concessions for Iranian ones.
Muslim Demographics
[Wonder what China's future will ultimately bring, with its longstanding one-child policy; from world superpower to a vanishing population, virtually overnight.]
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Tues 05.05.2009
America: 'Sold Out' for $5.2 Billion! The 'Money Industry' Bought Control of America for $5.2 Billion Harvey Rosenfield, President of the Consumer Education Foundation, contends that "Over the last decade, Wall Street (i.e. the entire financial sector consisting of commercial banks, accounting firms, insurance companies, securities firms including hedge funds and private equity firms) showered Washington with over $1.738 billion in supposed 'campaign contributions' and another $3.441 billion on 2,996 officially registered lobbyists (more than five for each Member of Congress) whose job it was to press for deregulation. In return for the investment of this $5.179 billion, the Money Industry was able to get rid of many of the reforms enacted after the Great Depression and to operate, for most of the last ten years, without any effective rules or restraints whatsoever."
The Killing of a Worthless Currency All of our economic problems are caused by the Federal Reserve creating the excess of money and credit that produced the bubbles in stocks, bonds, houses and size of government, but doesn't have to be electronic money made from electronic credit. No, sirree! You can expand the money supply the old-fashioned way, as it can be money made from plain, old, paper-and-ink! Fire up the presses! Monetary inflation the old-fashioned way! Perhaps that is why Mark J. Lundeen, market analyst, writes that Currency in Circulation (CinC) can also be an inflationary problem, as "The historical period where the US saw double digit CPI inflation occurred from the mid 1970s to about 1982" which was a time when, "CinC's annual increase was pegged at 10% during this period. The CPI Index soon followed." Yikes! Double-digit inflation!
If China loses faith the dollar will collapse Emerging economies such as China and Russia are calling for alternatives to the dollar as a reserve currency. The trigger is the Federal Reserve's liberal policy of expanding the money supply to prop up America's banking system and its over-indebted households. Because the magnitude of the bad assets within the banking system and the excess leverage of its households are potentially huge, the Fed may be forced into printing dollars massively, which would eventually trigger high inflation or even hyper-inflation and cause great damage to countries that hold dollar assets in their foreign exchange reserves.
Brace For Hyper-Inflation, 2 Economist Allan Meltzer explains how hyper-inflation developed in the 1970s. It wasn't because people were stupid then. It wasn't because they didn't care about inflation. It wasn't because they didn't think inflation was a problem. It was because they thought pumping money into the economy would strengthen the recovery, add jobs, etc. and because the Fed wasn't independent enough to stand up to political pressure. Sound familiar?
Inflation Nation IN the 1970s, with inflation rising, I often described the Federal Reserve as knowing only two speeds: too fast and too slow. At the time, the Fed's idea was to combat recession by promoting expansion, printing money and making it easier for businesses and households to borrow - and worry only later about the inflation that resulted. That strategy produced a sorry decade of slow productivity growth, rising unemployment and, yes, rising inflation. If President Obama and the Fed continue down their current path, we could see a repeat of those dreadful inflationary years.
Gold-Exchange Standard, Gold, and Monetary Freedom Two major government economists, Christina D. Romer and Ben Bernanke, have done influential research on the Great Depression. Both implicate the State-run gold standard of that era, which differed from the pre-1914 gold standard, as a major culprit in the Great Depression. (See here and here.) Their work parallels that of other economists such as Barry Eichengreen and Peter Temin on the negative role of the interwar gold exchange standard. There is an emerging or existing consensus among economists about the negative effects of the gold-exchange standard.
Gold Review for 5/04/09 Gold traded up about $15 per ounce today. With the H1N1 Influenza A (aka swine flu) panic subsiding, pending home sales up 3.2%, the US dollar slightly lower, and commodity prices higher, gold bulls appear to have all their ducks lined up in a row and are pushing prices back up towards the trend-line. It did not hurt things either when Warren Buffet, over the weekend, mentioned that high inflation is in the making. June futures prices for gold are back to the trend-line and buyers should be waiting nervously to see whether today's strength holds and carries into tomorrow. The correction in gold could be over if prices can get back over the last high, made on April 27, with resistance found between $915-$920.
Gold, Silver Gain as Dollar Falls, Pending Bank Stress Results Gold climbed for the first time in three sessions on surging demand for the metal as a store of value while the dollar fell and investors prepared for the release later this week of U.S. bank stress tests. Silver rose. The tests may signal whether 19 top financial firms need more capital to withstand economic disruptions. The Federal Reserve plans to make the data public on May 7, the same day as a possible interest-rate move by the European Central Bank. Some investors buy precious metals as a haven from economic turmoil. The dollar slid as much as 1.2 percent against the euro.
Does Mises' Equation Give a Basis for Gold Price? But the real impact of Mises' work is not in what the price of gold should or could be but rather the conclusion that no matter what the government does (e.g. quantitative easing, free running printing presses, artificially low interest rates, stimulus packages, bank bailouts, TARP, TALF, etc, etc) we still get a serious erosion if not all out loss of the exchange value of fiat money. Deflation (mark to market) results in bank failures wiping out bond holders or savers or both but monetizing any substantial portion of the bubble debt means hyperinflation. No escape. This is why Geithner looks like such an idiot. Not because he's not smart.
Dollar Trades Near One-Month Low on Reduced Demand for Safety The dollar traded near a one-month low against the euro before a U.S. report that may show demand for services is improving in the world's largest economy, reducing demand for the relative safety of the greenback. The yen was near a three-week low versus the euro and a six-month low against Australia's dollar as speculation the global slump is easing spurred investors to buy higher-yielding assets. Losses in the dollar were tempered after the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. regulators administering stress tests to 19 banks will tell 10 of the lenders to raise more capital.
Ron Paul gives a lesson on Money
Are commercial mortgages the next crisis? The renewal date is fast approaching for thousands of commercial mortgages valued at hundreds of billions of dollars. Two years after fissures in the residential housing market gave way to a national collapse of home prices and sales, experts warn the next shoe to drop is the commercial real estate market, bringing more woes to the battered economy. Thousands of commercial mortgages valued at hundreds of billions of dollars are approaching a renewal date. By some estimates, two out of every three will no longer meet the original loan conditions and won't be able to refinance. And with prices for commercial properties expected to plunge, a vicious cycle may unfold much as it has in the nation's housing market.
Small Banks Face Hits on Commercial Real Estate $$ Thursday's "stress-test" results will bring fresh scrutiny to the nation's biggest banks. They also are likely to highlight the woes from commercial real-estate loans that are piling up at large and small banks alike. In the worst-case scenario, federal regulators examining the 19 largest U.S. banks are projecting losses of up to 12% on commercial real-estate loans over two years, according to a document viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The regulators are likely to cite commercial-property debt problems as a major reason why at least some of the large banks need additional capital.
Fed Says More Banks Tighten Home Loan Standards A larger share of banks has made it more difficult for people to obtain home mortgages over the last three months even as demand has grown, the Federal Reserve reported Monday. The Fed's new quarterly survey found that about 50 percent of U.S. banks tightened their lending standards on prime mortgages, up from about 45 percent in the survey issued in early February. Meanwhile, 65 percent of banks said they tightened standards on nontraditional mortgages, such as adjustable-rate loans with multiple payment options. That was up from 50 percent in the last survey.
Georgia Has Highest Number of Bank Failures in Country The banner above FirstCity Bank still reads "Celebrating 100 Years of Service," but the 690 residents of this rural community aren't in the mood - not since government regulators locked the door, emptied the vault and closed the only bank within nearly 20 miles. Georgia leads the nation in bank failures, with nine banks shut down in the past year. Still, few in tiny Glascock County suspected the financial meltdown driven by toxic real-estate loans would scuttle the place they deposited paychecks earned from sawmills and row-crop farming, their local lender for buying tractors and pickup trucks.
How Much of Banks' Earnings Are Real? Last month, many banks reported strong earnings. Market sentiment has changed substantially. Only a few months ago, the collapse of the whole US banking industry threatened to bring the whole global economy down. Now, suddenly, the picture looks rosier than ever and this financial crisis seems to be over. Or is it? With very limited transparency of bank earnings, there are several so-called earnings areas investors should question whether they are sustainable, and a few other areas investors should ask whether they are even real. They are as follows:
Bankrupt Banks Fractional reserve banking is embezzlement and the accounting rules have changed to protect those engaged in fraud. The intrinsic value of the financial companies mentioned is almost impossible to accurately determine, may be nothing and therefore should be avoided. Asset values are rapidly evaporating and the credit quality of borrowers is quickly deteriorating which will lead to more banks failing. On 20 March 2009 FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair said some very scary words, "Without additional revenue beyond the regular assessments, current projections indicate that the fund balance will approach zero."
Tense talks as U.S. bank stress tests near completion The largest U.S. banks made the case to regulators on Monday that they have the financial firepower to withstand a deeper recession, as Bank of America denied a report it was trying to raise capital of $10 billion. Banks and regulators were in tense discussions over the findings of so-called "stress tests" aimed at assessing whether the 19 largest firms have a sufficient capital cushion. Final results are expected to be disclosed on Thursday. "Today is going to be a very key day in negotiations," a financial industry source said, speaking anonymously because the banks' discussions with regulators are not public. "Things are particularly tense."
Wells Fargo asked to raise money after stress test Regulators have told Wells Fargo & Co. to shore up its finances after government "stress tests" showed the bank would have trouble surviving a deeper recession. Wells Fargo is one of several banks that regulators will force to hold larger buffers to protect them against possible future losses, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the process. Representatives from San Francisco-based Wells Fargo did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday morning.
IF YOU BELIEVE - BANKS ARE RECOVERING The government has something up its sleeve this time. They are perpetrating the greatest fraud in the history of the world. The conspirators are Barack Obama, Timothy Geithner and the Treasury Department, Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve, Sheila Baer and the FDIC, and Barney Frank and the Democratic Congress. They have colluded to commit taxpayer funds to enrich bankers that brought down the financial system, without getting Congressional approval. They have delayed foreclosures and have tried to artificially prop up the housing market. They have poured billions of stimulus pork into the states praying for some of it not to be wasted. They have confiscated billions in taxpayer funds, bestowed them on reckless banks and forced them to lend it to anyone with a pulse, again. The outrage from the public during the TARP confiscation, made it crystal clear to courageous Congressmen they didn't want to vote on something requiring fortitude and bravery again. They have outsourced their obligation to safeguard their citizen's tax dollars to unelected bureaucrats at Treasury and the Federal Reserve. They have already sacrificed their obligation to declare war to the Presidential branch. What is the point of having a Congress?
Peter Schiff on CNBC Is it a Recovery ? Pt 1/2
Treasuries Little Changed as Fed Buyback Tempers Supply Concern Treasuries were little changed as the Federal Reserve bought $8.5 billion in debt, the largest amount since the central bank began purchasing government securities in March to drive borrowing rates lower. The acquisition helped to temper concern that the $71 billion in notes and bonds set to be sold later this week would push yields higher. Ten-year notes have declined for six straight weeks, the longest losing streak in almost two years, as the Treasury sells record amounts to finance bank bailouts, fiscal stimulus programs and a record budget deficit.
The Deadly Derivitives The Real Big Danger Is Derivitives, Not Sub-Prime Mortgages The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has issued a report stating that Derivatives are now $1.14 quadrillion dollars. That is a one with 15 zeros after it. AIG has now been given $180 billion dollars, with a good portion of that money going to Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank and a list of others covering one whole page. These are the counter parties to insurance contracts (DERIVITIVES) written by AIG which, like the money given to the banks, is supposed to keep the world's financial system afloat. But as large as these monies are, it is just like spitting in the ocean. As these Derivatives implode, there will be no end to the monies given to AIG, which has on its books $400 billion of OTC Derivatives and $200 billion of sub-prime mortgages (in a large measure directly due to government involvement).
New York Fed Chairman's Ties to Goldman Raise Questions $$ The Federal Reserve Bank of New York shaped Washington's response to the financial crisis late last year, which buoyed Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and other Wall Street firms. Goldman received speedy approval to become a bank holding company in September and a $10 billion capital injection soon after. During that time, the New York Fed's chairman, Stephen Friedman, sat on Goldman's board and had a large holding in Goldman stock, which because of Goldman's new status as a bank holding company was a violation of Federal Reserve policy.
Obama Seeks End of Corporate Tax Break to Raise $190 Billion President Barack Obama proposed raising about $190 billion over the next decade by outlawing three offshore tax-avoidance techniques used by U.S. companies such as Caterpillar Inc. and Procter & Gamble Co. Obama's plan also would make it riskier for Americans to stash money in tax-havens. The tax code is "full of corporate loopholes that makes it perfectly legal for companies to avoid paying their fair share," Obama said at the White House today, as he outlined the plan along with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
Obama takes aim at US multinationals Barack Obama on Monday unveiled a sweeping crackdown on offshore tax avoidance by US companies, in a move likely to affect the way Britain taxes profits earned by UK companies operating abroad. Mr Obama, who campaigned relentlessly on the issue of closing offshore loopholes, said the steps he announced would raise $210bn (£140bn) over 10 years and "make it easier" for companies to create jobs in Buffalo, New York, rather than in Bangalore, India. But corporate America reacted with dismay, saying the rules - which would affect multinationals such as General Electric and Procter & Gamble - would put US companies at a disadvantage to foreign rivals.
Central Planning Is Back In Vogue At the root of central planning ideology is the belief that a group of well-meaning government officials and/or experts is more capable than the unrestrained free market of allocating resources for the betterment of society. However, whenever and wherever central planning of the economy has been attempted it has always been a failure, with the magnitude of the failure generally being proportional to the breadth of the central planning experiment (small-scale attempts to centrally plan have tended to create relatively minor problems whereas efforts to centrally plan the majority of economic activity have led to total disaster). It always fails because the market process is so complex, and yet so smooth, that any attempt by the government to control it will 'throw a spanner into the works'. But unfortunately, each new generation seems to operate under the assumption that the only reason central planning has never worked in the past is because the right people haven't been in charge.
Fed Says U.S. Banks Expect Deepening of Loan Losses Most U.S. banks expect loan delinquencies and losses to increase this year, a Federal Reserve report showed today before this week's release of stress tests of the nation's 19 largest lenders. More than 70 percent of respondents on net said bad loans will rise should the economy progress "in line with consensus forecasts," the Fed said in a quarterly survey of banks' senior loan officers. More firms made it tougher for consumers to get home and credit-card loans in the past three months than in the previous survey, while fewer tightened terms for businesses.
Bernanke To Face Tension On the Hill The last time Ben S. Bernanke testified on Capitol Hill, it was immediately after the furor that erupted over bonuses paid to American International Group executives. When the Federal Reserve chairman goes before the Joint Economic Committee tomorrow [Tuesday], the atmosphere could be just as testy.
Congress leery about Obama's plan on tax loopholes President Barack Obama promised sternly on Monday to crack down on companies "that ship jobs overseas" and duck U.S. taxes with offshore havens. It won't be easy. Democrats have been fighting - and losing - this battle since John F. Kennedy made a similar proposal in 1961. Obama's proposal to close tax loopholes was a reliable applause line during the presidential campaign, but it got a lukewarm response Monday from Capitol Hill. Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said the plan needed further study, even though similar ideas have been around for years.
Growth Will Slow as Regulation Increases, Gross Says A demarcation for U.S. economic policy was reached in 2009 as the administration of President Barack Obama sought to curb the excesses of free-market capitalism, according to William Gross, co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co. This year "represents the beginning of government policy counterpunching," Gross wrote in his May investment outlook posted today on the Newport Beach, California-based firm's Web site. "Asset values should be negatively affected."
Peter Schiff on CNBC Is it a Recovery ? Pt 2/2
Falling Wage Syndrome Some of the wage cuts, like the givebacks by Chrysler workers, are the price of federal aid. Others, like the tentative agreement on a salary cut here at The Times, are the result of discussions between employers and their union employees. Still others reflect the brute fact of a weak labor market: workers don't dare protest when their wages are cut, because they don't think they can find other jobs. Whatever the specifics, however, falling wages are a symptom of a sick economy. And they're a symptom that can make the economy even sicker.
'Great Recession' Will Redefine Full Employment as Jobs Vanish Post-recession America may be saddled with high unemployment even after good times finally return. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have vanished forever in industries such as auto manufacturing and financial services. Millions of people who were fired or laid off will find it harder to get hired again and for years may have to accept lower earnings than they enjoyed before the slump. This restructuring -- in what former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker calls "the Great Recession" -- is causing some economists to reconsider what might be the "natural" rate of unemployment: a level that neither accelerates nor decelerates inflation. This state of equilibrium is often described as "full" employment.
No bailout for newspapers Asked in his Monday briefing if the White House would consider bailing out the newspaper business, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters the government may not have the power to reverse the industry’s decline. “I don’t know what, in all honesty, government can do about it,” Gibbs said in response to a question about the Boston Globe’s financial struggles. Noting that it's a "bit of a tricky area to get into," given the relationship between the White House and the media, Gibbs said President Barack Obama “believes there has to be a strong free press" and expressed "concern and sadness" over the state of the industry.
Harley's Skid Spills Uneasy Riders The recession is creating winners and losers in the Harley-Davidson club. The seizing up of credit markets last fall has wreaked havoc on Harley-Davidson Inc.'s finance unit. The company has announced plans to lay off 1,400 to 1,500 workers as demand tumbles. And growing numbers of cash-strapped riders have been forced to give up their pride and joy when they couldn't keep up with loan payments. But the crisis is a stroke of luck for some Harley shoppers like the ones who visited a former car dealership here last week. They came to look over dozens of repossessed Harleys at discounts of thousands of dollars below the normally rock-solid resale market.
U.S. airlines running a little low on cash U.S. airlines, struggling to spur demand amid economic recession, face a potential liquidity crisis if revenues keep falling while credit markets remain tight. Despite their best efforts, several of the top U.S. airlines currently have less cash on hand than some experts think is comfortable. If revenue does not increase this year, carriers may breach the minimum liquidity covenants enforced by their creditors, who then may accelerate the loan and force a default.
But would you buy a car from Obama? The real test of Barack Obama's sex appeal is coming soon to an automobile showroom near you - Would you buy a new car from this man? The president has given his personal warranty on cars from Detroit - if a fuel pump on your new Pontiac falls apart and the dealer won't make it good, just call the White House and ask for the president. Happy days are here again. The transformation of the American automobile industry into a government operation, managed from Europe, may be the preview of how Mr. Obama intends to remake America in the image of the Old Country. London's Financial Times reported Monday that Sergio Marchionne, the chief executive of Fiat, has big plans for consolidating Fiat, Chrysler and General Motors Europe into an enormous new publicly traded European car company.
Funds Hoodwinked THE Obama administration singled out hedge funds as the bad guys this week in its attempt to reorganize Chrysler. The accusation falls comfortably into the administration's view that unfettered capitalists on Wall Street and poor planning by short-sighted CEO's are responsible for our financial problems. Reacting to the setback, President Obama took dead aim at the few capitalists left: the owners of some of Chrysler's securitized bank debt -- hedge funds and private investors -- who scuttled the plan.
Fiat setback in plans for European group Fiat's plan to build a European car group with Chrysler and GM's German unit, Opel, began to hit obstacles on Monday as Berlin issued a string of conditions for any Opel buyer, and dissident Chrysler creditors said a sale to Fiat would be "patently illegal". The moves came as Sergio Marchionne, Fiat's chief executive, met government and union officials in Berlin in the first round of his campaign to secure political backing by the end of this month for a car group with up to 7m in annual sales and combined revenues of €80bn ($107bn).
GOP Rep. Ron Paul: "Stop The Swine Flu Hysteria!"
Judge OKs Chrysler financing over lenders' protest A bankruptcy judge on Monday gave Chrysler access to a crucial $4.5 billion to fund the carmaker's operations through the end of June, creating a "bridge" to the sale of the company's most valuable assets to Italy's Fiat Group SpA. Chrysler LLC won the interim approval for the government loan and immediate use of $1.8 billion, staving off the immediate threat of liquidation for now. Access to the full $4.5 billion requires final approval in a later hearing. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Arthur Gonzalez overruled objections from a dissident group of Chrysler LLC lenders, who argued that the loan was too closely tied to the sale, setting Chrysler on an irreversible path to complete the deal at the lenders' expense.
U.A.W. Chief Sees 'Lot of Risk' in Chrysler Deal The president of the United Automobile Workers union, Ron Gettelfinger, said Monday evening that concessions granted to Chrysler would leave the U.A.W.'s new retiree health care fund "on life support initially." Mr. Gettelfinger, in his first public comments since Chrysler filed for bankruptcy protection last week, said the equity that Chrysler was substituting for more than $5 billion in cash was worth "zero today." The union plans to sell its stock as soon as doing so would be financially feasible, he said.
Is the recession suffocating American innovation? Got a bright business idea? Take a number. Americans haven't stopped dreaming up newfangled gizmos or sketching engineering marvels on the back of cocktail napkins. But tight credit and business cutbacks have slowed the pace of getting the latest U.S. innovations to market. Venture capital investments have plummeted. Lenders aren't lining up to fund business startups. New patent applications are down at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, creating a budget crisis at the agency, which depends on money from fees to keep operating.
Oath Keeper Chauncey Normandin
Guess how DHS defines who is a terrorist now 2nd 'domestic extremism' report includes 'alternative media,' 'tax resisters' in lexicon Two weeks before the U.S. Department of Homeland Security penned its controversial report warning against "right-wing extremists" in the United States, it generated a memo defining dozens of additional groups – animal rights activists, black separatists, tax protesters, even worshippers of the Norse god Odin – as potential "threats." Though the "Domestic Extremism Lexicon" was reportedly rescinded almost immediately, Benjamin Sarlin of The Daily Beast recently obtained and published online a copy of the unclassified memo, dated March 26, 2009. While many of the groups listed in the lexicon – such as Aryan prison gangs and neo-Nazis – may indeed be widely considered extremists, others will likely take offense at being described as a potential "threat."
The 2nd Amendment / 1 Of 3
The 2nd Amendment / 2 Of 3
The 2nd Amendment / 3 Of 3
Iraq insists on US leaving cities by June 30 Iraq's government Monday ruled out allowing U.S. combat troops to remain in Iraqi cities after the June 30 deadline for their withdrawal, despite concern that Iraqi forces cannot cope with the security challenge following a resurgence of bombings in recent weeks. Asking U.S. forces to stay in the cities, including volatile Mosul in the north, would be embarrassing for Iraq's prime minister, who has staked his political future on claims that the country has turned the corner in the war against Sunni and Shiite extremists.
China has 'canceled US credit card' China, wary of the troubled US economy, has already "canceled America's credit card" by cutting down purchases of debt, a US congressman said Thursday. China has the world's largest foreign reserves, believed to be mostly in dollars, along with around 800 billion dollars in US Treasury bonds, more than any other country. But Treasury Department data shows that investors in China have sharply curtailed their purchases of bonds in January and February.
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Feds Seize The Silverton, The Nation's Largest Bank of Banks This afternoon Federal banking authorities seized Silverton Bank, the Atlanta-based bank for banks. The troubled bank had already been subject to government censure, prohibited from paying dividends, paying interest on its debt or issuing new debt without prior consent from the Federal Reserve. The seizure is bad news for Silverton's shareholder base, comprised entirely of its customer banks. More than 1,500 banks across the country are Silverton customers, and 400 hundred of those are shareholders. The bank provides banks, especially community banks, with credit lines and other back-office services. It is the largest bankers' bank in the country.
Financial Fail Friday: Two More Mortgage Lenders Go Belly Up The long awaited bankruptcy filing of Thornburg Mortgage has finally occurred, according to FT Alphaville's Stacy-Marie Ishmael. The company filed for Chapter 11 banktupcy, reveal that it had just $500 million of assets and more than $1 billion of debts. Meanwhile, Accredited Home Lenders, which was acquired for $296 million in 2007 by the private equity group Lone Star, is filing for bankruptcy today. Reuters reports that Accredited was one of the largest players in the subprime mortgage mortgage market during the housing boom.
Gold Gains for First Day in Three as Dollar Drop Drives Demand Gold gained for the first day in three, as a weaker dollar fueled demand for a store of value and alternative investment. The dollar traded near a three-week low against the euro before a German report today that may show retail sales in Europe’s largest economy rebounded in March. Bullion, denominated in dollars, tends to rise when the dollar falls as it becomes cheaper for holders of other currencies. “Gold is being influenced interchangeably by the dollar and equities,” Yide Futures Brokerage Co. analyst Yang Zhenqiang said from Tianjin today. “It’s still trading within a tight, narrow range and may take both dollar and equity weakness to drive it over $900.”
Gold prices may go to a bottom: Jim Rogers Will the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) decision to sell 403 metric tons of gold drive down gold prices? Yes, gold prices will plunge to $700 or below that if and when IMF really sells its gold reserves, says legendary global commodities investor Jim Rogers. Rogers, who left the United States to settle down in Singapore last year, and who is regarded as a commodities guru globally said he will hold on to his gold and is waiting to buy more gold because he expects gold prices to considerably come down when IMF sells its gold holdings. ”The fact is that IMF is trying to get permission from everybody to sell gold. I don’t know it will succeed or not. But if and when IMF sells its gold, gold prices may go to a bottom. Who knows? It may go down to US$700. IMF has got a lot of gold to sell. If it does, I hope I’m brave enough and smart enough to buy more,” Rogers told Bloomberg Radio in an interview.
Gold and Swine Flu Economics The irony of the emergence of a Swine Flu pandemic amidst an economic contraction brought on by glutinous gorging on credit and real estate in the United Casinos of America is surely not lost on barbed minds. The insistence by the World Health Organization that it be termed the far less ominous sounding "H1N1" is evidence of our collective predisposition to avoid calling a spade a spade if it has negative implications. That predisposition will be viewed by posterity, should there be any, as a terminal flaw in the human character of our era.
Stress Test May Push 14 Banks to Raise Money, FBR’s Miller Says U.S. Regulators may compel as many as 14 of the nation’s 19 largest banks to raise common equity based on financial stress tests due to be completed next week, said Paul Miller, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets Corp. Miller, a former bank examiner, said his estimate assumes regulators will require banks to maintain tangible common equity, one of the most conservative measures of capital, equal to 4 percent of their risk-weighted assets over the next two years, to withstand losses in case the recession worsens. The tests, originally scheduled for release on May 4, are set to be disclosed after U.S. markets close on May 7, according to a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
World Bank Bonds Show What Happens in State Rescues Federal guarantees by 13 countries on more than $400 billion of financial company bonds are punishing the AAA-rated World Bank Group with record borrowing costs -- an indication of what can go wrong when government gets in the way. The Washington-based World Bank, founded in 1944 to rebuild economies after World War II, sold $6 billion of three-year notes March 26 priced to yield 30 basis points more than the benchmark for such borrowings. The so-called spread was the widest for a dollar-denominated bond offering by the supranational lender, said George Richardson, the institution’s head of capital markets, in an interview.
Geithner's New Bank Fix Is Bogus, Too Tim Geithner has a clever new way to "recapitalize" banks that fail the stress test: Convert the taxpayer's preferred stock to common stock. From Geithner's perspective, this technique has several advantages:
The banks will suddenly seem healthy, because their assets-to-common equity ratios will rise.
Geithner doesn't have to ask Congress for more baillout money yet.
Taxpayers won't understand that they're giving up a nice dividend and a safer security just to make the banks look better.
If Geithner is right that what's wrong with the banks is just a temporary liquidity problem, the taxpayer should do well when the stocks rise. (We don't think he's right.)
Unfortunately, the plan also has two major flaws: First, it's smoke and mirrors. Second, the taxpayers will be even more exposed to losses than they are now.
The Deliberate Global Economic Crisis The top tiers of the United States government, along with numerous national and international organizations, are in complete cooperation and collusion with the entities controlling the money supply. In unity, the combined alliances of this money controlling entity have waged a global economic ambush against the governments and citizens of the world. Giving a name to this "entity" such as, Illuminati, Banking Cartel, Bilderberg Group etcetera, matters not. The organizations controlling the money supply exist and have coordinated together for decades to create, control, manage and manipulate all aspects of the faulty economic debt model being utilized around the globe. As a result, they have created a conglomerate of organizations which is without question the most influential power on the earth superseding all governments including the government of the United States. Let's label this group the PCMS -"People Controlling the Money Supply."
Worries Rise on the Size of U.S. Debt The nation's debt clock is ticking faster than ever - and Wall Street is getting worried. As the Obama administration racks up an unprecedented spending bill for bank bailouts, Detroit rescues, health care overhauls and stimulus plans, the bond market is starting to push up the cost of trillions of dollars in borrowing for the government. Last week, the yield on 10-year Treasury notes rose to its highest level since November, briefly touching 3.17 percent, a sign that investors are demanding larger returns on the masses of United States debt being issued to finance an economic recovery.
Silver - Too Little or Too Much? What strikes me as odd is that quite a number of the people who buy and sell silver and gold on a daily basis are really not very favorable to the product that provides their livelihood. The first time I ran across such an owner of a precious metals shop, it surprised me that the proprietor was pretty negative on silver, or gold investing for that matter. He made the usual mainstream arguments about not paying interest, static investment, and so on. But then he stated the clincher, the one phrase I have heard more from the precious metals dealer community than probably anywhere else; he said, "I think everyone should own a little silver and gold."
Gold isn't going to $2,000 an ounce Gold isn't going to $2,000 an ounce. Before you gag on your coffee or suffer chest pains, allow me to explain. We're about eight years into the bull market, and gold has breached the $1,000 level twice and has spent weeks trading above the old high of $850. Some observers are now saying that gold's pretty much had its day and that once the recession is over, it will retreat for good. . . . . . . . . No, we don't think gold will hit $192,000 or even $32,000. And there really isn't any surefire way to forecast the eventual high. But it's clear that every weathervane is pointing in the same direction. So, yes, gold isn't going to $2,000; it's going higher.
Paul Krugman's Answer To Everything Break it! Because then you have to fix it. So Paul Krugman revealed yesterday that he's a fan of cap & trade on carbon emissions because not only will it help the environment, it will actually boost the economy. That's right. Forget all the fear-mongering about cap & trade slowing the economy, says the Nobel Laureate, just the incentive to invest and innovate will be a boon to growth.
Aristotle's Choice Of Money Revisited how money and currency will evolve in the future Definition of Money Money is anything that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts. The main uses of money are as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. Aristotle on good money Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. Aristotle discovered, formulated, and analyzed the problem of commensurability. He wondered how ratios for a fair exchange of heterogeneous things could be set. He searched for a principle that makes it possible to equate what is apparently unequal and non-comparable.
The Great Asset Bubble Where are we going, and what lies next? To address these questions, we need to know how we got here in the first place. I want to share with you an interesting observation that I think will provide great clarity and insight into our current predicament, as well as indicate that our recovery, such as it is, will be protracted and incomplete. It begins with our old friend, the Debt-to-GDP chart (below), with our long-term average circled in green and our recent debt experiment in red. Today we're going to focus on what happened there in the 1980s, when we began our long climb to our current levels of over-indebtedness.
Wall St faces bank stress tests, Bernanke speech U.S. stocks keep proving the naysayers wrong, as major averages continue to gain despite expectations for the recent rally's demise. And this week may be no different. But after a frenzied two-month run, the roadblocks may be too much to overcome. Fears that bank stress tests will cast an even bigger shadow over the addled financial sector coupled with uncertainty about the April employment figures might just bring the rally to an end.
Barack's in the basement Obama is less popular than Nixon and Carter President Obama's media cheerleaders are hailing how loved he is. But at the 100-day mark of his presidency, Mr. Obama is the second-least-popular president in 40 years. According to Gallup's April survey, Americans have a lower approval of Mr. Obama at this point than all but one president since Gallup began tracking this in 1969. The only new president less popular was Bill Clinton, who got off to a notoriously bad start after trying to force homosexuals on the military and a federal raid in Waco, Texas, that killed 86. Mr. Obama's current approval rating of 56 percent is only one tick higher than the 55-percent approval Mr. Clinton had during those crises.
Banks Are Prevailing in a Tug of War Informed debate is a crucial part of public policy development. But the behind-the-scenes tug of war between banks and the government over the results of their recent stress tests strains the already tenuous credibility of the exercise. It also shows that banks have become too powerful. How so? First, banks and their regulators run stress tests all the time, on individual products, divisions and the institutions as a whole. Without them, it would be very difficult to manage risk or allocate capital among business lines. The current crisis proved these tests were inadequate - or in some cases, ignored by bank managers. But that's largely because of management incentives to take excessive risks, and the failure of the tests to use sufficiently grim projections.
What A Deal! Treasury Offers 0 Pct. Interest On Bonds! The Treasury Department is now selling savings bonds that pay an interest rate of 0 percent, The Post's Binyamin Appelbaum reports. That's nothing. Nada. Give the government $5,000, and six months from now, you'll get exactly $5,000.
Peter Schiff The Schiff Report Video Blog May 01, 2009
Buffett attacks bank tests, eyes flu pandemic Warren Buffett attacked the government's stress tests of 19 large U.S. banks, saying they failed to properly assess the industry's health, and that he would buy more shares in three big banks Berkshire Hathaway Inc already owns. The world's second-richest man also said Berkshire, which generates about half its business from insurance, would consider writing policies to insure against a potential swine flu pandemic if it got paid enough.
Political correctness is torture Here we go again. The latest poster conservative for political-correctness-run-amok in a country careening downhill on left-wing, Democratic cruise control is Republican congresswoman Virginia Foxx. Mrs. Foxx's impropriety: The thought crime of arguing against "hate crime" laws by pointing out that Matthew Shepard - the tragic icon attached to the legislation - represents a salient argument against enacting them.
Hyperinflation is Not Coming Soon ...Here's Why Over the past several months the idea that hyperinflation will hit the United States in the near future has become increasingly commonplace. From mainstream economists and money men to Joe barbeque's cook out, everyone around the world it seems is on board with idea that the US Dollar is headed towards hyperinflation; everyone that is except for me and a handful of others.
Why You're Being Told Hyperinflation Is Coming Soon Generally speaking, (this certainly is not an exhaustive explanation) the arguments for hyperinflation point almost exclusively to the idea that the US Treasury is currently running its printing presses non stop to keep up with Federal deficit spending. Through this printing activity, hyperinflationists contend that there is an ever increasing money supply which will create a glut of US Dollars at some point in the future (they do not generally agree to a specific date though most are suggesting late 2009 to mid 2010).
China vs Global Financial Crisis Today, the world economy and the marketplace are deeply stuck in the mud of a far-reaching recession. What is China's real exposure to the global financial crisis? Can this emerging nation sustain the crisis? The answer: on one hand, China is experiencing vast pains; on the other, China can still manage the problems arising from the crisis. In short, this increasingly globalized China must take the same boat along with the rest of the world community.
U.S. jobs data a stress test of its own The U.S. government will release the findings on bank stress tests this week, and data expected to show another month of crushing job losses will also test emerging optimism on global economic prospects. World stock markets have been surging for two months, a rally predicated on the notion that the pace of U.S. economic contraction may be easing, presaging a possible recovery from the first synchronous global recession since World War Two.
RON PAUL STILL WINNING http://revolutionmarch.com Ron Paul's March on Washington is set for July 12th Sign up and PLEDGE July 12 March to abolish the IRS and Fed. Reserve Support Ron Paul and lead your fellow ... Ron Paul's March on Washington is set for July 12th
Obama to roll out international tax proposals President Barack Obama plans to roll out a set of proposals on international tax policies on Monday, in an announcement with potential implications for U.S. multinational firms. The White House said Obama will be joined by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for the 11:05 EDT event. Obama's budget outline released in February made reference to proposals to change the tax treatment of U.S. firms with overseas operations and measures to crack down on international tax evasion.
Obama tax breaks may trip up seniors Social Security beneficiaries received notices last month that they soon will be getting a $250 check courtesy of President Obama's economic recovery package, but the administration did not say that some recipients may have to give part of it back. The problem: Seniors who also work and qualify for Mr. Obama's $400 Making Work Pay middle-class tax cuts may find themselves forced to give back some or all of the Social Security bonus come tax-filing time in 2010. The result, some economists say, could be serious confusion for tax filers. "This is a compliance headache that borders on being a nightmare. It's going to be complicated to reconcile these payments," said American Enterprise Institute economist Kevin Hassett.
Obama says financial sector to shrink The financial sector will make up a smaller part of the U.S. economy in the future as new regulations clamp down on "massive risk-taking," President Barack Obama said in an interview published on Saturday. Obama, whose young administration has spearheaded a raft of reforms in the banking sector as part of efforts to tackle the financial crisis, said the industry's role in the United States would look different at the end of the current recession.
Obama to offer more budget details on Thursday President Barack Obama will offer more specifics on Thursday about his proposed $3.55 trillion budget. In an outline of the spending proposals released in February, Obama laid out broad goals such as overhauling the health care system, fighting climate change and changing the tax code to shift more taxes toward the wealthy.
Buffett offers bleak outlook for U.S. newspapers Warren Buffett is fond of newspapers -- he reads five a day -- but the billionaire investor warned shareholders of his Berkshire Hathaway Inc that the reeling industry may never recover because it lacks a sustainable business model. At Saturday's annual meeting of Berkshire, which owns the Buffalo News and has a big stake in Washington Post Co, Buffett said that as readership falls, so does the attraction of newspapers for advertisers, and for investors in the companies that publish them.
Boston Globe's management threatens shutdown Boston Globe management threatens shutdown; deadline passes The management of The Boston Globe has threatened to begin the process of shutting down the newspaper in a dispute with its unions over $20 million in cuts. The Globe's management says it has given its biggest union a copy of a notice it was prepared to file Monday if it was unable to agree on the concessions by midnight Sunday. The 60-day shutdown notice is required under federal law.
U.S. economic panel led by Volcker to meet May 20 The White House will convene later this month the first meeting of a high-profile economic advisory panel led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. A U.S. official said on Sunday that President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board would meet on May 20 at a forum that will include members of the public.
U.S. senators weigh in on Supreme Court selection President Barack Obama's choice to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter should be pragmatic, follow the law and not be an ideologue, Democratic and Republican senators said on Sunday. Obama has said he wants someone with a sharp, independent mind for his first appointment to the nation's highest court. He also said last week he would look for someone who had empathy for ordinary Americans, remarks that raised concerns among conservatives that he would appoint an "activist judge," who would make decisions based on politics and not law.
OATH KEEPERS; http://www.oath-keepers.blogspot.com Military, veterans, and peace officers who will honor their oaths to defend the Constitution, will NOT "just follow orders", will stand for Liberty, and will save the Republic, so help us God.
Motto:NOT ON OUR WATCH Oath Keepers: 10 Orders We Will NOT Obey
We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people.
We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people
We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to military tribunal.
We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state.
We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.
We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.
We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.
We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control.”
We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies.
We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.
Oath Keepers Muster on Lexington Green [click on video; go directly to YouTube to see other 9 videos]
Obama May Seek Out Centrist to Replace Souter on Supreme Court President Barack Obama, weighing advice from both the left and right on his first Supreme Court choice, is likely to seek a judicial version of himself: a moderate coalition-builder. In making his first imprint on the court, Obama will choose from a list of candidates who would add ethnic or gender diversity. The most discussed possibilities -- federal appeals court judges Diane Wood and Sonia Sotomayor and U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan -- are well-credentialed lawyers whose records suggest they would become moderate-to-liberal justices.
Obama wants court pick to have 'empathy' Conservatives gear up to block a liberal nominee President Obama said Friday he will look beyond traditional legal experience to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter - to someone who can relate to average Americans. Putting another challenge on his already crowded desk, Mr. Obama said he wants to have a replacement sworn in by October. But his goal of a nominee with "empathy" has already sparked a battle with Republicans and others who say the Supreme Court should concern itself with judicial philosophy, not social outcomes.
U.S. Trade Bubble Continues to Collapse Goods imports are down 33% over the past year, but the U.S. trade deficit, a key part of the global financial crisis, needs to narrow further The trade report released Apr. 9 shows that the trade bubble continues to collapse-and that's good news. The trade deficit shrunk to $26 billion in February, or an annual rate of $313 billion, down from $743 billion a year ago. Goods imports alone are down 33% over the past year. Leaving out oil, the imports of nonpetroleum goods are down by 26% over the past year. This shouldn't be a surprise to readers of my BusinessWeek blog, Economics Unbound. Global trade is following the same steep downward path as home prices and borrowing, after having followed the same upward path.
U.S. Workers' Wages Stagnate As Firms Rush to Slash Costs In December, Timothy Owner, a trombone player with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, called his landlord to tell her he might have trouble paying rent around May. He and the orchestra's 53 other full-time members, many of whom are paid less than $30,000 a year, had agreed to a month-long furlough. The furlough, which ended yesterday, was rough, Owner said. But he and other musicians acknowledged that the alternative could have been worse. "We're less unhappy if this means the orchestra will survive," he said.
Oil falls below $53 after 4 pct jump, eyes housing data Oil fell below $53 a barrel on Monday, paring some of the 4 percent gains chalked up in the previous session, as traders booked profits ahead of U.S. housing data expected to show the health of the world's largest economy. U.S. crude futures for June delivery fell 24 cents to $53.08 a barrel by 0048 GMT. London Brent crude fell 12 cents to $52.73.
Chrysler's Fall May Help Obama to Reshape G.M. WASHINGTON - Fresh from pushing Chrysler into bankruptcy, President Obama and his economic team are hoping that the hard line they took last week gives them leverage to force huge changes in General Motors, a far larger and more complex company. Officials say that, difficult as Mr. Obama's decision was on Wednesday to take all the risks of a Chrysler bankruptcy, the politics of reshaping G.M. will be far harder. Already a shadow of the company that once dominated the American landscape, G.M. will be forced to eliminate tens of thousands of additional jobs and close factories and dealerships nationwide.
Max Keiser - France 24 - Chrysler Bankruptcy
White House "Directly Threatened" Perella Weinberg Over Chrysler The Obama administration threatened to use the White House press corps to besmirch the reputation of one of the financial firms that holds Chrysler debt, according to a prominent New York bankruptcy lawyer. If true, the explosive charge shows that the White House was willing to go much further than is widely known to have its way in the attempt to restructure the Detriot automaker.
Obama Really Is Trying To Intimidate The Chrysler Hedge Fund Holdouts Barack Obama's fierce attack yesterday on the hedge funds and investment firms that refused to go along with the administration's plan to rescue Chrysler was intended to intimidate those funds from resisting the plan in the bankruptcy proceedings. "While many stakeholders made sacrifices and worked constructively, I have to tell you some did not. In particular, a group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout," Obama said. "I don't stand with those who held out when everybody else is making sacrifices."
GM: The Government Is in Charge The White House task force in charge of salvaging the carmaker is using a heavy hand. Is it hurting or helping? The Obama Administration has "no desire to run an auto company on a day-to-day basis," says White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. If so, somebody forgot to tell the team of Treasury Dept. staffers and management consultants now camped out at the Detroit Renaissance Center, a hotel and office complex anchored by General Motors' (GM) headquarters. There, GM executives are mapping out a survival strategy ahead of a government-imposed June 1 deadline to squeeze concessions from bondholders and the United Auto Workers union or face bankruptcy.
GM eyes growth in Mideast General Motors Corp's Middle East sales fell 19 percent in the first quarter as customers struggled to secure car loans due to tighter lending restrictions at banks, GM's regional president said on Sunday, Yet, while General Motors could face bankruptcy in the United States, its regional operation plans to introduce new car brands this year to help boost market share from about 13 percent now, said Mike Devereux, president of GM Middle East Operations.
Fiat could seek merger, listing with GM Europe Italy's Fiat SpA could seek a merger of its auto group with General Motors Corp's Europe unit, then spin off the combined company and list it, Fiat said on Sunday. Fiat Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne, fresh from a partnership with ailing U.S. automaker Chrysler, will meet German government ministers on Monday to discuss a bid for German car maker Opel, part of GM Europe.
Help Wanted: Why That Sign's Bad The nation has 3 million jobs going begging. And without retraining, U.S. workers may not be able to fill them Surprising statistic: In the midst of the worst recession in a generation or more, with 13 million people unemployed, there are approximately 3 million jobs that employers are actively recruiting for but so far have been unable to fill. That's more job openings than the entire population of Mississippi. Sound like good news? It's not. Instead, it's evidence of an emerging structural shift in the U.S. economy that has created serious mismatches between workers and employers. People thrown out of shrinking sectors such as construction, finance, and retail lack the skills and training for openings in growing fields including education, accounting, health care, and government. At the same time, the worst housing bust in decades has left the unemployed frozen in place. They can't move to get work because they can't sell their homes.
Joblessness Probably Rose to 25-Year High Unemployment in the U.S. probably climbed in April to a 25-year high, showing the labor market will be one of the last areas to emerge from the worst recession in at least 50 years, economists said before reports this week. The jobless rate jumped to 8.9 percent last month from 8.5 percent in March and employers cut at least 600,000 workers from payrolls for a fifth straight time, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey ahead of a May 8 Labor Department report. Other figures may show service industries shrank at a slower pace.
Buffett Says Insurers Took ‘Ungodly Amount of Risk’ Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman Warren Buffett said that life insurers, a group led by MetLife Inc. and Prudential Financial Inc. in the U.S., “took on an ungodly amount of risk.” The industry’s retirement products guaranteeing minimum returns on equity-based investments were “crazy,” Buffett said today at a press conference in Omaha, Nebraska. Berkshire gets about half its profit from insurance, mostly from property and casualty coverage.
Swine Flu Attacks 30 U.S. States as Global Cases Grow Swine flu has spread to 30 U.S. states and the number of countries with confirmed cases jumped to 19 from two in little more than a week. The expansion comes amid signs of a waning epidemic in Mexico. Officially called H1N1, the virus is probably circulating in “virtually all” U.S. states, said Anne Schuchat of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. First reported in the U.S. and Mexico, H1N1 also has been confirmed in Central America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and New Zealand.
No Swine Flu Vaccine For Six Months The first doses of a vaccine for swine flu won't be available for four to six months, an official from the World Health Organization said on conference call this morning. "It's a long journey, even if you know by heart all the steps," the official said. Why so long?
JACK KEMP, 73 Ex-Official Championed Housing, Tax Reforms Jack Kemp, 73, a star quarterback with the Buffalo Bills who became a spokesman for supply-side economics, a secretary of Housing and Urban Development and a candidate for high national office, died yesterday at his home in Bethesda. A former aide said he died of cancer. He had announced in January that he had been diagnosed with the illness.
Israel Will Accept Palestinian State, Rejects Syria Peace Talks The new Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu gave the strongest signal yet that it would accept a Palestinian state, while rejecting peace negotiations with Syria. “We do want to see peace and do understand that long-term peace and stability will entail a two-state solution,” Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon said in an interview. Israel will honor the previous government’s commitments and accept the internationally backed 2002 peace plan, or road map, which calls for the creation of a Palestinian state, Ayalon said, in the most explicit acceptance of Palestinian statehood since Netanyahu formed a government in March.
Clinton sees "intense" Afghanistan-Pakistan talks Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday she expected "intense sessions" when the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan come to Washington for three-nation talks next week. President Barack Obama is due to meet Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday and Thursday, following through on a pledge for regular high-level, three-way meetings aimed at improving coordination and strategy to stabilize the Asian countries.
Pakistan's Nuclear Arms Feared at Risk From Fighting WASHINGTON - As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan, senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities. The officials emphasized that there was no reason to believe that the arsenal, most of which is south of the capital, Islamabad, faced an imminent threat. President Obama said last week that he remained confident that keeping the country's nuclear infrastructure secure was the top priority of Pakistan's armed forces.
RPT-China hopes draw billions in foreign funds back to Asia After a six-month drought, foreign investors have been sending billions of dollars back to Asia, a trend some expect to continue on hopes China will lead the region out of the global economic recession. Foreigners have poured a net $6 billion into six major Asian markets since early March, according to BNP Paribas, helping to boost China, Taiwan and South Korean stocks by up to 35 percent this year and making them the world's best performers.
Arron Russo talking about socialism and world government already in the works:
Alex Jones & Aaron Russo
How to survive the economic crisis by one who knows firsthand Economic Crisis: My Two Rubles
America: Freedom to Fascism Aaron Russo by Peter Boyles-1 of 5 Sept 27, 2006 - WE MUST SHUT DOWN THE FEDERAL RESERVE to prevent global dictatorship! Director Aaron Russo discusses his documentary America: Freedom to Fascism 9/27/06 in Denver. Federal Reserve was never ratified; income tax is constitutionally illegal. Jekyll Island, IRS, New World Order, secret government, FEMA camps, RFID spy chips, communist manifesto. Russo's previous films: Trading Places, The Rose.
[Esteemed filmmaker, ardent activist and loyal patriot Aaron Russo lost his battle to cancer on August 24, 2007 at the age of 64.]
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