Weekday NEWS to Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.
Tues 01.19.2010
Forecast: Debt to dwarf GDP Former budget office chiefs say 'something has to give' A blue-ribbon panel that includes three former heads of the Congressional Budget Office is telling President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress that the federal deficit must be cut now or the national debt within about two generations will be 600 percent of the Gross Domestic Product. "The debt level of the United States is unsustainable, something has to give," said Rudolph Penner, former head of the CBO and co-chair of a report issued last week by the National Research Council and the National Academy of Public Administration. The report concludes federal deficit spending is so out of control that unless Obama and Democrat leaders on the Hill make changes now, debt in 2080 will be six times what the nation produces.
Why you should cling to gold Even our school of economics and investors have become habituated to the social, political and financial calamity at hand. The outlaw financial leadership of the entire Western world has sold out our heritage on both sides of the pond. Governments, states, municipalities, towns and hamlets are broke. Insurance companies, banks and major investment houses are valuing their assets from worth-less to worth-full. The stampede to the bonus stock holder’s asset give away is clearly because this is the last dip at the well for a decade. All paper money in the West is the common shares of the bankrupts.
Gold prices not to fall in 2010: WGC Most of Indian households are now expecting the gold prices to come down so that they can start buying the yellow metals which they had shunned for sometime now due to the soaring prices. But, if the World Gold Council’s opinion is anything to go by, the gold prices are unlikely to come down in 2010. According to an interview given to the Economic Times by Ajay Mitra, managing director, World Gold Council (India), for investors, gold is as good as currency even in terms of returns. Also, gold has more stability. While it is also volatile, gold has never dropped in its value and you cannot substitute gold with anything else as it is finite.
Gold edges up above $1131 in Asia Gold remained highly volatile but showed signs of recovery in Asian trade Monday despite a firm dollar. Gold for immediate delivery was seen trading at $1,131.20 per ounce at 11.30 a.m Singapore time while gold futures for February delivery were at $1,131.50 per ounce, up 0.1 percent at the same time. The dollar remained firm against major currencies on Monday, with the euro being vulnerable to falls by concerns about fiscal problems buffeting Greece.
Platinum at 17-Month High on Investment, Industrial Demand Platinum climbed to a 17-month high on speculation investment and industrial demand will increase. Gold rose as the dollar weakened. Palladium advanced for a fifth day to the highest since July 2008. The metal held in ETF Securities Ltd.’s exchange- traded commodities products rose 2.6 percent to a record 679,938 ounces on Jan. 15, according to the company’s Web site. Platinum and palladium are used mainly in catalytic converters that curb pollution from automobiles. “Assets are obviously being reallocated in favor of the newly issued platinum and palladium ETFs,” Commerzbank AG analysts led by Eugen Weinberg, said in a note. “They seem to establish themselves as a large demand component alongside the jewelry and car industry demand.”
Platinum, palladium drive gold and silver prices Gold ticked higher for US and Euro investors early Monday but held inside a tight range while Asian stock markets closed the day 1% lower and European shares rose. Little economic news was due for release as US markets stayed closed for Martin Luther King Day. Government bonds were flat across the board. Commodity prices dropped 1% on average, as crude oil held below $79 per barrel and foodstuffs fell.
Keeping Precious Metals Offshore An increasing number of Americans are concerned enough about the threat of precious metals confiscation to want to store gold or silver overseas. But laws in effect in 21 states may stand in their way. I learned about these laws last year when one of my subscribers in Arizona called. He wanted to buy gold from a foreign dealer for storage offshore, but the dealer refused to sell to him. The reason: the Arizona Model Commodities Act. After some research, I learned that 21 states have enacted the MCA or some variation of it: Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.
Dollar Near Four-Week Low Against Yen on U.S. Growth Concern The dollar traded near a four-week low against the yen on speculation the U.S. economic recovery will slow, prompting the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates near zero to sustain growth. The U.S. currency declined before U.S. reports this week forecast to show building permits rose at a slower pace and manufacturing in the Philadelphia region fell. The pound surged to a six-week high against the dollar on speculation Kraft Foods Inc. of the U.S. will acquire U.K. chocolate maker Cadbury Plc.
China About To End Dollar-Peg Having received several comments and questions from readers about the future of China's monetary policy, which "pegs" the price of the renminbi to the U.S. dollar, that usually serves as a good indicator that this is a topic worthy of a more detailed discussion. The general attitude I have encountered (which is obviously fuelled by how the mainstream media chooses to report this issue) is that China's government is likely to retain the dollar-peg either because a) that has been its policy throughout the last decade; or b) that China is somehow "trapped" into maintaining the "peg". I firmly believe the exact opposite: that China's government is very close to abandoning the dollar-peg, and (in fact) has made a multitude of preparations to do so.
Ron Paul: "Prepare for Revolutionary Changes in the Not-too-distant Future.” It certainly sounds as though Representative Paul expects some significant developments. Change is in the wind.
How the big banks rigged the market When Lloyd Blankfein met politicians in London a little while ago he brushed aside warnings that investment banks faced higher taxes if they ignored the rising public outcry about multibillion-dollar bonus pools. The Goldman chief executive seemed to believe governments would not dare. That misjudgment – a measure of the breathtaking hubris that, even after all that has happened, continues to separate bankers from just about everyone else – may explain Goldman’s response to the British government’s decision to apply a 50 per cent tax to this year’s payouts.
Banks pull another $1 billion from small business lending The nation's biggest banks cut their collective small business lending balance by another $1 billion in November, according to a Treasury report released late Friday. The drop marked the seventh straight month of declines. The 22 banks that got the most help from the Treasury's bailout programs have cut their small business loan balances $12.5 billion since April, when the Treasury began requiring them to file monthly reports on the tally. The banks' total lending has fallen 4.6% in that seven-month period, to $256.8 billion.
Souring Mortgages, Weak Market Force FHA to Walk a Tightrope David Stevens bought his first home almost 25 years ago, paying just 3% down with a loan backed by the Federal Housing Administration. "I had no money in the bank," he says. "If it weren't for the FHA, I wouldn't have gotten that home." Now, as FHA commissioner, Mr. Stevens has to decide how many others to let through that door. Souring FHA-insured mortgages are threatening the agency's finances. Congress is pressuring him to tighten the easy-money standards that once helped people like him, and he is expected to announce revisions as early as this week.
Economic Breakdown on the Financial Highway The stock market fell 100 points on the Dow index on Friday. We hope Daily Reckoning readers are out of US stocks. Sooner or later this jig is going to be up. You don’t want to be heavily invested when it does. Right now, the market is dilly-dallying. Investors are enjoying a picnic. Alas, they’ve spread their picnic blanket on the side of Vesuvius. It could blow up at any time. We are in a depression. Not yet a ‘great’ depression. But it’s a pretty good depression; and we’ll take what we can get.
IMF chief: double-dip a risk if stimulus ends to early TOKYO (Reuters) - Developed countries may slip back into recession if they abandon strategies deployed to battle the global financial crisis too early, the head of the International Monetary Fund warned on Monday. Recovery in private demand and employment are necessary conditions for governments to begin unwinding policies designed to support their economies, though the right timing depends on specific conditions in each nation, Dominique Strauss-Kahn said. "Recovery in advanced economies has been sluggish," he told reporters in Tokyo. "We have to be cautious because the recovery has been fragile."
Inflation Is Tame, but Other Data Bode Ill Industrial Production Posts Increase Holiday discounting helped keep inflation at bay in December, but fresh data on the state of U.S. industry suggest price pressures could yet become an obstacle to recovery. The Labor Department reported Friday that its index of consumer prices rose a tame 0.1% in December from the previous month, held down by decelerating fuel prices and declines in the prices of items such as toys, televisions and new cars. In a reflection of the depth of the recession and a sharp drop in oil prices, the index average for all of 2009 was 0.4% lower than in 2008—the first such full-year decline since 1955.
Inflation 101 Inflation is a hidden tax, an insidious crime against the public. It is the easiest way for any government to confiscate the savings of the public and for generations, wealth has been transferred in this manner. Remember, money is supposed to be a store of value, however due to reckless central bank-sponsored inflation, it can no longer fulfill this critical role. Unfortunately, nobody questions the inexplicable loss of the purchasing power of their savings, thus, central banks get away with financial murder.
Identifying Sure Signs Of The Final Economic Plunge Many researchers, including those here at Neithercorp, have projected that the third and final stage of the economic collapse will begin sometime in 2010. Barring some kind of financial miracle, or the complete dissolution of the Federal Reserve, a snowballing implosion should become visible by the end of this year. Data indicates that the dollar and the Dow are running on nothing but false promises and fiat bailouts, and that this game is slowly winding down. The Fed cannot sustain its current rate of liquidity injections without raising the ire of foreign nations heavily invested in U.S. debt, especially when banks have refused to loosen their lending practices as promised, thereby hoarding all bailout funds made available to them and stifling any chance of a credit market recovery.
Roubini on the Massive Debts of the Wealthiest Nations Government debt continues to be one of the most written about topics of 2010… and for good reason. The most developed and wealthy economies can’t seem to refrain from spawning the extraordinary levels of debt that were historically seen only in emerging markets (which for the most part, seem to have improved their balance sheets). Today Nouriel Roubini points a finger at some of the worst offenders:
Wall St. Weighs a Challenge to a Proposed Tax Wall Street's main lobbying arm has hired a top Supreme Court litigator to study a possible legal battle against a bank tax proposed by the Obama administration, on the theory that it would be unconstitutional, according to three industry officials briefed on the matter. In an e-mail message sent last week to the heads of Wall Street legal departments, executives of the lobbying group, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, wrote that a bank tax might be unconstitutional because it would unfairly single out and penalize big banks, according to these officials, who did not want to be identified to preserve relationships with the group's members.
What's Plan B if Senate dawdles on Bernanke? The Senate faces some weighty issues when it reconvenes this week. Health care. A jobs bill. The debt ceiling. And then there's the Jan. 31 deadline to confirm Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for a second term. Nobody's really worried that Bernanke will lose his seat. But there is a chance the Senate won't vote before his term expires. The question is: What happens then? In back rooms at the Senate and the Fed, staffers and attorneys have been scratching their heads and looking at laws and historical precedents to figure out Plan B for temporary succession.
SEC Admits It’s Investigating Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Mary Schapiro, admitted today that it is investigating the sales practices of Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) of Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), Citigroup (NYSE:C), and Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS). The admission came before the Federal Crisis Inquiry Commission on Thursday and was the most direct indication to date that the regulators are investigating the sales practices of investment bankers that lead up the meltdown in the credit market and the collapse of the financial markets.
Judge Andrew Napolitano on The Alex Jones Show 1/2: Geithner's Bankergate & 3rd Party Rising
Judge Andrew Napolitano on The Alex Jones Show 2/2: Geithner's Bankergate & 3rd Party Rising
An Officer of Too Many Banks In a few foreclosure cases, judges have noticed that the same individual appears as an officer of various banks. In several of these cases, the judges have dismissed the foreclosure actions and ordered that such actions cannot be refiled unless the foreclosing party presents an Affidavit with the three-year employment history of the bank “officer.” In most of these cases, the Bank has never refiled – presumably unable to explain the issue of the same individual appearing as an officer of many banks.
Five Potential Potholes on the Road to U.S. Recovery Last week's news that business inventories and industrial production are rising suggests the recovery is improving along the well-worn lines followed by previous exits from recession. Production and inventories rise, eventually driving improvements in employment. That in turn triggers a "virtuous cycle" of renewed consumer spending that powers further production increases, and so on. But unlike the previous recessions in 2001 and 1991, there are five potentially significant "potholes" in the road ahead, any one of which could thwart the recovery.
China Pushes 1-Year Bill Yield Higher for Second Week China’s central bank guided its benchmark one-year bill yield higher for the second time this year to curb record loan growth and prevent bubbles in the nation’s property and stock markets. The People’s Bank of China sold the bills at a yield of 1.9264 percent in open-market operations, the highest in 14 months, according to traders at Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and BOC International Holdings Ltd. The yield rose eight basis points, or 0.08 percentage point, matching last week’s increase, said the traders, who asked not to be identified.
Iceland Credit Risks Rise ‘Considerably,’ S&P Says Iceland’s credit risk may rise “considerably” as the island faces the threat of a shelved emergency bailout and a government collapse, Standard & Poor’s said. “The risk is there that the program will fall apart and with that, the downside risks would increase very considerably,” Moritz Kraemer, S&P’s managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said in a Jan. 15 telephone interview. If the outlook for the bailout program doesn’t improve, “it’s quite possible” the government will collapse.
New Short Sale Fraud Allegations: Second Liens During the bubble we had banks that knew (because the FBI had warned them in 2004, there were stories in the media in 2006, and in 2007 HUD published a study) that virtually ALL stated and reduced-documentation loans were fraudulent. They wrote 'em and securitized 'em anyway and I have not been able to find ONE prospectus from that period in which the above fact was disclosed to buyers of that securitized debt. Not one.
Homes owned less than 90 days soon to be eligible for FHA financing Soon it will be easier to finance foreclosed properties with FHA loans. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan announced today that FHA financing will be permitted on homes owned by sellers for less than 90 days in a bid to stabilize home prices and accelerate the sale of vacant properties. The agency currently prohibits insuring a mortgage on a home owned by the seller for less than 90 days, making it difficult for those who acquire foreclosed properties to resell them, as FHA loans are the most widely used nowadays.
Nestle Targets Elderly Malnutrition to Fight Danone’s Gains Nestle SA will begin selling drinks to fight malnutrition among the elderly in an effort to revive its nutrition business, which has trailed sales and profit forecasts every year since they were set in 2006. Resource SeniorActiv supplements will go on sale in Switzerland this year, the company’s nutrition unit said in an e-mailed statement today. The product includes protein, calcium and vitamin D to promote muscle strength and prevent bone fractures, the world’s largest food company said.
American Samoa: The real story 60 Minutes missed
Triple Digit Oil and Economic Change Triple digit oil and the economic change that it would bring is something that intrigues, and will have a cascading impact on the real economy and globalization. It is not that we will be running out of oil. Rather, we will be running out of cheap oil, light sweet Arabian crude, to be replaced eventually by synthetic oil rendered from tar sands and shale. The implication is $200 per barrel oil and $7.00 per gallon gasoline. Demand for oil is peaking in developed nations like the US and Canada, and may never exceed the levels of the past few years. But demand growth in the developing nations is increasing, and perhaps dramatically. World gasoline production has not grown in the past four years.
As Shrinking Newsrooms Use Upstarts' Content, Vetting Questions Arise News comes from more and more outlets, about which readers know less and less. Publishers and broadcasters have always called on freelance journalists. But a generation ago, if they used material from another organization, it was usually limited to a handful of large, well-known and respected ones like The Associated Press or Reuters. With established newsrooms shrinking, a raft of smaller news outlets have cropped up in the last few years, selling or simply giving news reports to the traditional media - groups like ProPublica, Global Post, Politico and Kaiser Health News.
Massachusetts Senate vote likely to be close Democrats were bracing themselves for what could be a devastating defeat in Wednesday’s Massachusetts election for the US Senate. Some – but not all – last-minute opinion polls showed a surge in support for the little-known Republican candidate over Martha Coakley, the state’s Democratic attorney-general. The loss of a seat held for decades by Ted Kennedy to the Republican, Scott Brown, would not only be a symbolic blow to Democrats. It would bring an end to their 60-seat “super-majority” in the upper chamber and raise doubts about their ability to pass sweeping healthcare reform or any other key initiative on the agenda of Barack Obama, president.
MA Senate Race's Impact on Health-Care Reform
Illinois among leaders in 2009 foreclosures Illinois, along with California, Florida and Arizona, shared the dubious distinction last year of accounting for more than half of the nation's foreclosure activity, according to data scheduled to be released Thursday. A total of 131,132 Illinois homes, or one in every 40, received a foreclosure filing last year, an increase of almost 32 percent over 2008, according to RealtyTrac, a Web site that tracks foreclosures. During the fourth quarter alone, foreclosure activity in Illinois was up almost 29 percent from the third quarter.
Will the Feds Fund Deficits with 401(k)s? The writing is on the wall for retirement assets held in conventional ways. A report last week in Business Week shows that the U.S. Feds have 401(k) assets in their sites. “The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are spearheading the effort.
1 million Americans give up on job searches Long-term unemployment and labor-force dropouts hit record highs Nearly 1 million unemployed American workers, frustrated with a lack of available jobs, are dropping out of the labor force, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports. Likewise, the number of individuals unemployed for more than 27 weeks dramatically worsened in the first year of the Obama administration. Discouraged workers are not counted in official unemployment statistics.
Commercial Real Estate Collapse - The Next Wave
Therapists Report Increase in Green Disputes Couples arguing more over save-the-planet issues Gordon Fleming is, by his own account, an environmentally sensitive guy. He bikes 12 1/2 miles to and from his job at a software company outside Santa Barbara, Calif. He recycles as much as possible and takes reusable bags to the grocery store. Still, his girlfriend, Shelly Cobb, feels he has not gone far enough. Ms. Cobb chides him for running the water too long while he shaves or showers. And she finds it "depressing," she tells him, that he continues to buy a steady stream of items online when her aim is for them to lead a less materialistic life.
Democrats Aim to Bypass Senate Health Care Vote A panicky White House and Democratic allies are scrambling for a plan to salvage their hard-fought health care package in case a Republican wins Tuesday's Senate race in Massachusetts, which would enable the GOP to block further Senate action. The likeliest scenario would require persuading House Democrats to accept a bill the Senate passed last month, despite their objections to several parts.
Health Bill Can Pass Senate With 51 Votes, Van Hollen Says Even if Democrats lose the Jan. 19 special election to pick a new Massachusetts senator, Congress may still pass a health-care overhaul by using a process called reconciliation, a top House Democrat said. That procedure requires 51 votes rather than the 60 needed to prevent Republicans from blocking votes on President Barack Obama’s top legislative priorities. That supermajority is at risk as the Massachusetts race has tightened. “Even before Massachusetts and that race was on the radar screen, we prepared for the process of using reconciliation,” said Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Federal health care foes plot for state opt-outs Congress can pass a federal health care bill and President Obama can sign it, but that doesn't mean the states plan to abide by it. Lawmakers in 30 states are pressing for constitutional amendments to exempt individuals from the requirement to purchase health care, a pivotal piece of the legislation under debate in Congress. In Colorado, organizers of a proposed ballot measure filed language with the state elections office Friday. They would like the state legislature to place the amendment on the ballot, but given that both houses are controlled by Democrats, that's unlikely.
Brown: Senate win would send 'message' Scott Brown, the Republican Senate candidate seeking to fill the seat held for nearly 50 years by liberal icon Edward M. Kennedy, had a simple message Sunday for why Massachusetts voters should send him to Washington. "I want to be the person to go down there to send health care back to the drawing board," he shouted to cheers from several hundred supporters, standing on a bare concrete floor in the makeshift campaign headquarters on Grafton Street.
Democrats Face Loss of Senate Seat in Massachusetts Democrats risk losing their most iconic U.S. Senate seat, held for almost 47 years by the late Edward Kennedy, to a once little-known Republican in a Massachusetts election tomorrow that could cost them their 60- vote Senate supermajority needed to help pass a health-care overhaul. In just over a week, Democrat Martha Coakley, the state attorney general once considered a shoo-in for the Senate, has watched her lead evaporate. Some polls show her trailing state Senator Scott Brown, who was more than 30 points behind last November. The nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report today moved its rating of the race to likely Republican takeover.
Is Ron Paul Really An Anti-Semite or the only one with the balls to tell us the truth!?
Social Security rarely uses E-Verify Despite helping run the government's electronic database designed to weed out illegal-immigrant workers, Social Security failed to run E-Verify checks on its own employees nearly 20 percent of the time. An audit by the Social Security Administration's inspector general says the agency outright failed to check 19 percent of its hires in 2008 and 2009, and of the checks it did run, nearly half of them weren't performed in a timely manner.
Retailing hardware isn’t what business Google is in.
They don’t wanna compete against their partners.
Google’s damaging its brand name.
The Nexus One is a stupid name anyway.
The cell phone business will hurt Google’s gross margins.
Is it finally time to see Apple's tablet? Apple Inc. on Monday morning announced an invitation-only special event in San Francisco Jan. 27 at which it is widely expected the company will unveil its much-anticipated tablet device. All Things Digital reported the company's invitation reads, "come see our latest creation." The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that Apple planned to announce a multimedia tablet device later in January but did not plan on shipping the product until March, citing people briefed by the company.
Why America and China will clash Google’s clash with China is about much more than the fate of a single, powerful firm. The company’s decision to pull out of China, unless the government there changes its policies on censorship, is a harbinger of increasingly stormy relations between the US and China. The reason that the Google case is so significant is because it suggests that the assumptions on which US policy to China have been based since the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 could be plain wrong. The US has accepted – even welcomed – China’s emergence as a giant economic power because American policymakers convinced themselves that economic opening would lead to political liberalisation in China.
U.S. to repatriate most Haitian refugees Officials brace for surge as plight worsens .S. authorities are readying for an influx of Haitians seeking to escape their earthquake-racked nation, even though the policy for migrants remains the same: With few exceptions, they will go back. Fears of a mass migration have not materialized so far, but conditions in Haiti become more dire each day and U.S. officials don't want to be caught off guard.
Greece is the word Could Europe kill the chances of a global economic recovery? There are growing concerns about the health of several European nations, most particularly Greece. Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings all downgraded their credit ratings for Greece last month. And in a report last week about Europe by Moody's, analysts at that agency wrote that the economic outlooks in Greece and Portugal are so troubling that they run the risk of a "slow death."
Iran never halted nuke work in '03 Intelligence estimate contradicts '07 report By Bill Gertz U.S. intelligence agencies now suspect that Iran never halted work on its nuclear arms program in 2003, as stated in a national intelligence estimate made public three years ago, U.S. officials said. Differences among analysts now focus on whether the country's supreme leader has given or will soon give orders for full-scale production of nuclear weapons. The new consensus emerging among analysts in the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community on Iran's nuclear arms program is expected to be the highlight of a classified national intelligence estimate nearing completion that will replace the estimate issued in 2007.
Al-Qaida seeking tools for nuclear 9/11 Intel agents 'certain' terrorists will try for Pakistan's bombs LONDON – Agents for Britain's MI6 Secret Intelligence Service say they are "certain" al-Qaida is poised to try and grab some of the 80 nuclear weapons that Pakistan possesses, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin. The al-Qaida leadership – Osama bin Laden and Ayman a-Zawahri – are believed to have spent the winter months in Pakistan's Tribal Areas finalizing their plans for an attack. It will spearhead al-Qaida's global network and its capability to carry out a wide range of terrorist onslaughts.
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George Washington's Remarkable Vision NOTE: The following was originally published by Wesley Bradshaw in the National Review, Vol. 4, No. 12, December 1880 (and handed down to me by my grandmother). The last time I ever saw Anthony Sherman was on July 4, 1859, in Independence Square. He was then 99 years old, and becoming very feeble. But though so old, his dimming eyes rekindled as he gazed upon Independence Hall, which he came to visit once more. "Let us go into the hall," he said. "I want to tell you an incident of Washington's life - one which no one alive knows of except myself; and, if you live, you will before long, see it verified. "From the opening of the Revolution we experienced all phases of fortune, now good and now ill; one time victorious and another conquered. The darkest period we had, I think, was when Washington, after several reverses, retreated to Valley Forge, where he resolved to spend the winter of 1777. Ah! I have often seen our dear commander's care-worn cheeks, as he would be conversing with a confidential officer about the condition of his poor soldiers. You have doubtless heard the story of Washington's going to the thicket to pray. Well, it was not only true, but he used often to pray in secret for aid and comfort from God, the interposition of whose Divine Providence brought us safely through the darkest days of tribulation.
RETURN OF THE "THIRD WAY" By Balint Vazsonyi [First published October 30, 1998, in The Washington Times] The wolf sports a brand new suit of sheep's clothing called the "Third Way." It has been tailored by prime minister Tony Blair of Britain, and by President and Mrs. Clinton in America. The newly-elected chancellor of Germany and the prime minister of France have hastened to add their affirmative vote. Approval from Italy is a forgone conclusion. "Third Way, Better Way" writes Tony Blair (Washington Post, 9/27). Better than what? There is only confusion as he recalls a profusion of agendas from the recent past. He carefully avoids any mention of political philosophies, let alone principles. He knows why.
The Third Way's bad karma By Joyce Mucci - web posted July 26, 1999 Bill Clinton found it. Tony Blair found it. Germany's Gerhard Schroeder found it too. Lest you think these middle-aged leaders have found the Jesus of the Bible - you haven't found "It". It is the Third Way. Chiefly, supporters of the Third Way are mainly liberal Democrats of the American variety, the Labor Party of the British ilk, Social Democrats of Germany, the Communist Party of Italy and the French. The Third Way is a free-market, entrepreneurial, capitalistic approach to social and environmental programs. The Democrats in America are not unlike their counterparts in Europe in that they share the same problem - trying to advance social and environmental programs with no money. So they embrace capitalism, not because they buy into the philosophy of freedom, but they exploit the benefits of capitalism to further their agenda. This is not a new idea.
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