See also: Buy Gold For $50 Per Ounce!
Added: 24. Januar 2010
Month: January 2010
Verizon to Cut 13,000 Jobs
See also:
– Sam’s Club cuts 11,200 jobs, 10 percent of workforce
(AP)
Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) — Verizon Communications Inc., coping with subscriber losses at its fixed-line phone business, plans to cut about 13,000 jobs at the division this year after posting fourth-quarter revenue that missed analysts’ estimates.
The cuts will follow reductions of a similar size last year, Chief Financial Officer John Killian said on a conference call today. This year’s eliminations equal to 11 percent of the staff at the unit, which had about 117,000 workers at year-end.
Sales rose 9.9 percent to $27.1 billion, missing the $27.3 billion average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Fixed-line revenue fell 3.9 percent, muting mobile-customer gains that beat some analysts’ projections. High unemployment hurt sales to companies and damped growth at Verizon’s FiOS Internet and TV service, said Stifel Nicolaus & Co. analyst Christopher King.
“The economy, first and foremost, we really see no signs of improvement there,” said Baltimore-based King, who advises investors to buy the shares and doesn’t own any. “I would have expected to see a little bit more signs of stabilization in the fourth quarter.”
Florida: Manatees die in record numbers from cold
See also:
– Florida Freeze Destroys Estimated 70% of Southwest Vegetable Crop
– Deep freeze kills millions of fish in Florida
TALLAHASSEE, FL — More than 100 manatees have been found dead in Florida waters since the beginning of the year, mostly victims of a nearly two-week cold snap.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says the preliminary cause of death for 77 of the endangered animals is cold stress. They were found from Jan. 1 through Jan. 23.
The Sunshine State saw unseasonably cold weather starting around the first of the year that killed fish and stunned thousands of sea turtles.
Officials say the numbers of dead manatees from the cold is a record for a single year. The previous record, set last year, was 56 deaths from cold stress.
Jan 26, 2010
Source: AP
UK Jewish MP: Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza
– Former Israeli Minister: ‘It’s a Trick, We Always Use It.’ (calling people ‘anti-Semitic’)
Added: 16. Januar 2009
Israel calls this self-defense:
(Click on image to enlarge.)
More:
– Palestinian children are stoned while walking to school (Christian Peacemaker Teams)
– Israel admits organ harvesting from Palestinians, and others, without consent (Guardian)
– UN assembly votes for probes of Gaza war crimes charges (Reuters)
– U.N. rights envoy: Israeli war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law in Gaza (Reuters)
– U.S. shipped 989 munitions containers to Israel week before Gaza invasion (Australien Herald)
– Paul Craig Roberts: Israel and the Goldstone Report – War Criminals Are Becoming Arbiters of the Law (CounterPunch)
– Israel’s war crimes in Gaza (Independent)
– Amnesty International: Gaza white phosphorus shells were US made (Times)
– Did Israeli soldiers kill unarmed civilians? (Toronto Star):
‘The most moral army in the world’ killed civilians without cause
– Israeli soldiers report abuses in Gaza (Los Angeles Times)
– Tony Benn to BBC: If you won’t broadcast the Gaza appeal then I will myself (BBC)
– Israel admits troops may have used phosphorus shells in Gaza (Guardian)
– Outcry over Israel’s reported use of phosphorus in Gaza (IHT)
– Israel accused of executing parents in front of children in Gaza (Telegraph)
– Gaza: ‘I watched an Israeli soldier shoot dead my two little girls’ (Independent)
– Israel ‘admits’ using white phosphorus munitions (Times)
– Gaza building apparently hit by phosphorus: UN (Vancouver Sun)
– Israeli use of white phosphorus ‘undeniable’: Amnesty International (The Age)
– Israel used phosphorus in heavily populated areas, doctors charge (Kansas City Star)
– Israeli army investigates use of white phosphorous in Gaza (Guardian)
– Israel shelled UK war graves in Gaza (Telegraph)
– Israel ‘will resume bombing’ of Gaza if Hamas reopens tunnels (Telegraph)
– Gideon Levy / Gaza war ended in utter failure for Israel (Ha’aretz)
High Frequency Trading Raises Meltdown Fears
Meltdown? Fear?
“We are doing God’s work!”
(Click on image to enlarge.)
(Financial Times) — An explosion in trading propelled by computers is raising fears that trading platforms could be knocked out by rogue trades triggered by systems running out of control.
Trading in equities and derivatives is being driven increasingly by mathematical algorithms used in computer programs. They allow trading to take place automatically in response to market data and news, deciding when and how much to trade similar to the autopilot function in aircraft.
Analysts estimate that up to 60 per cent of trading in equity markets is driven in this way.
Concerns have been highlighted by news that NYSE Euronext, the transatlantic exchange operator, has fined Credit Suisse proprietary trading arm for the first time for failing to control its trading algorithms. In the Credit Suisse case, its system bombarded the NYSE’s systems with hundreds of thousands of “erroneous messages” in 2007, slowing down trading in 975 shares.
The case was far from isolated, say traders. CME Group, the Chicago-based futures exchange, is investigating a case this month where a trader in “mini” S&P Index futures contracts “inadvertently traded approximately 200,000 contracts as both buyer and seller”.
Last year, the London Stock Exchange suffered a three-hour outage after its trading system collapsed under the strain of a huge volume of orders. Some traders blamed the spike in volumes from algorithmic trading.
Frederic Ponzo, managing partner at GreySpark Partners, a consultancy, said: “It is absolutely possible to bring an exchange to breaking point by having an ‘algo’ entering into a loop so that by sending them at such a rate the exchange can’t cope.”
Sam’s Club cuts 11,200 jobs, 10 percent of workforce
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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Sam’s Club, the warehouse club division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc is cutting roughly 11,200 jobs, or about 10 percent of its workforce, as it outsources in-store product demonstrations and eliminates positions used to recruit new business members.
Sam’s Club Chief Executive Officer Brian Cornell said on Sunday that the retailer would outline charges associated with the job cuts in February, when it releases fourth-quarter results. He said he did not expect any “material impact” on its financial results.
“We look at this as an investment in the in-club experience,” Cornell said in an interview. “This is not a cost-cutting move for us in the short term. We really hope it will be cost neutral for our operation. It’s an investment in building loyalty, enhancing the member experience and driving future growth.”
Read moreSam’s Club cuts 11,200 jobs, 10 percent of workforce
Obamanomics: Why Did the ‘Stimulus’ Fail to Help the US Economy?
The stimulus has not staved off a major depression; instead, it has ensured the greater likelihood of a major economic collapse.
William L. Anderson, Ph.D., teaches economics at Frostburg State University in Maryland, and is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He also is a consultant with American Economic Services.
When Congress was debating President Obama’s proposed “stimulus” last year, two of the watchwords for the near-trillion-dollar boondoggle were “jobs” and “shovel-ready.” Now, given what comes out of Washington, one needs a shovel to clean up the muck, and I appreciate the politicians and the media telling us we needed to have our shovels ready.
Now that the numbers are in, however, it seems that money spent had no appreciable effect on lowering unemployment:
A federal spending surge of more than $20 billion for roads and bridges in President Barack Obama’s first stimulus has had no effect on local unemployment rates, raising questions about his argument for billions more to address an “urgent need to accelerate job growth.”
An Associated Press analysis of stimulus spending found that it didn’t matter if a lot of money was spent on highways or none at all: Local unemployment rates rose and fell regardless. And the stimulus spending only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, the analysis showed.
Keynesians, not surprisingly, have an answer: The government did not spend enough. They reason that economic growth can occur only if “aggregate demand” is great enough to prevent an overall “glut” of unsold goods. (Like the mercantilists before them, Keynesians believe that recessions occur because businesses cannot sell all the goods they produce. Socialists similarly claim that workers are “unable to buy back the products” they make.)
Therefore if government is to prevent the recession-causing “glut,” it must spend whatever is necessary to cover any “shortfall” in private consumption and investment spending. Out of this “theory” we get the present “stimulus,” complete with the blessing of Ivy League economists (who seem to perform the role of the High Priests in today’s political economy).
Such a “theory,” however, is doomed to fail every time, and I wish to give some reasons why.
Read moreObamanomics: Why Did the ‘Stimulus’ Fail to Help the US Economy?
The Stuyvesant Town Collapses Under $4.4 Billion Mountain of Debt
Recommended: More Ponzi Failure: Stuyvesant (By Karl Denninger)
Tishman Venture Gives Up Stuyvesant Project
A First Avenue view in New York of Peter Cooper Village, foreground, and Stuyvesant Town apartment complexes in October.
A group led by Tishman Speyer Properties has decided to give up the sprawling Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town apartment complex in Manhattan to its creditors in the collapse of one of the most high-profile deals of the real-estate boom.
The decision comes after the venture between Tishman and BlackRock Inc. defaulted on the $4.4 billion debt used to help finance the deal. The venture acquired the 56-building, 11,000-unit property for $5.4 billion in 2006—the most ever paid for a single residential property in the U.S. The venture had been struggling for months to restructure the debt but capitulated facing a massive debt load and a weak New York City economy that has undercut rents and demand for high-priced apartments.
Tishman Speyer’s deal for Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, which was the biggest real estate deal at the time, may end up in bankruptcy, the News Hub panel reports.
The property’s owners signaled they would be unable to reach a deal with lenders and instead decided to allow creditors to proceed with what amounts to an orderly deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, which means a borrower voluntarily gives the property back to lenders to avoid a foreclosure proceeding.
Read moreThe Stuyvesant Town Collapses Under $4.4 Billion Mountain of Debt
SEC Mulled National Security Status For AIG Bailout Details
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. securities regulators originally treated the New York Federal Reserve’s bid to keep secret many of the details of the American International Group bailout like a request to protect matters of national security, according to emails obtained by Reuters.
Crisis in Credit
The request to keep the details secret were made by the New York Federal Reserve — a regulator that helped orchestrate the bailout — and by the giant insurer itself, according to the emails.
The emails from early last year reveal that officials at the New York Fed were only comfortable with AIG submitting a critical bailout-related document to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after getting assurances from the regulatory agency that “special security procedures” would be used to handle the document.
The SEC, according to an email sent by a New York Fed lawyer on January 13, 2009, agreed to limit the number of SEC employees who would review the document to just two and keep the document locked in a safe while the SEC considered AIG’s confidentiality request.
The SEC had also agreed that if it determined the document should not be made public, it would be stored “in a special area where national security related files are kept,” the lawyer wrote.
In another email, a New York Fed official said the SEC suggested in late December 2008, that AIG file the document under seal and then apply to the regulatory agency for so-called confidential treatment, if central bankers wanted to stop the information from becoming public.
The emails were included in the mountain of documents the New York Fed turned over last week to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which will hold a hearing Wednesday into the AIG bailout and the New York Fed’s role in trying keep the specific terms of that Fed-engineered rescue in November 2008, from being made public.
More than a year later, the Fed’s bailout of AIG remains controversial because it funneled nearly $70 billion to 16 big U.S. and European banks that had bought credit default swaps from AIG. Banks like Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Societe Generale and Deutsche Bank had bought those insurance-like derivatives to guard against defaults on hundreds of securities backed by subprime mortgages.
‘BACKDOOR BAILOUT’
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have labeled the AIG bailout, in which the New York Fed created a special entity to purchase those securities from the banks at essentially their face value, a “backdoor bailout” for the 16 financial institutions.
Read moreSEC Mulled National Security Status For AIG Bailout Details
Paul Craig Roberts: How Wall Street Destroyed Health Care – Greed, Be Thou My God
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
Paul Craig Roberts
At my annual check-up, my doctor handed me a sheet explaining the reasons for office fee increases for Medicare Patients. It is worth reporting at length.
Medicare fixes the prices for Medicare patients’ health care. All office charges for Medicare, including office visit charges, have been set by the Federal government since 1984. In real terms (adjusted for inflation), these fixed prices are less today than they were three decades ago.
During the last four years, there have been large decreases in Medicare reimbursements for laboratory services provided in-house by private physicians. Payments for in-office blood work, for example, have been cut 35 to 47 per cent. Yet, a physician’s overhead continues to increase as a result of uncontrollable costs, such as property taxes, building insurance, electricity, maintenance, malpractice and workers compensation insurance.
As one result, my doctor had to close both the x-ray unit and the state and federally licensed medical laboratory on his premises. Now patients are inconvenienced by having to go to other locations for services that formerly were provided by the doctor at lower cost. A one day medical check-up is now a multiple day event and more expensive.
While Medicare payments to doctors have been cut, regulations have been increasing: “Almost every outside diagnostic procedure (CT, MRI scan, sonogram) ordered by this office now has to be pre-approved by some outside agency. Many medications are now requiring pre-approval or step therapy. Each requires filling out 1-2 pages of forms and/or two or more phone calls. This requires personnel time and therefore more cost. Consultant referrals are requiring more paperwork and time to schedule.”
My doctor has more people employed doing paperwork than he does delivering health care.
While Medicare payments for in-office services to private doctors, including those for blood work and x-ray units, were drastically cut, payments to outside corporate facilities for the same services were increased. It is obvious what is afoot. Corporate lobbies are using their whores in Congress to shift income from physician offices to corporate labs, corporate medical service providers, and hospitals that are owned by national corporations.
Legislation that cuts payments to private physicians and increases the payments to large corporate entities is intended to destroy private practice and to create in its place corporate bureaucracies in which doctors are wage slaves. The physician’s income is diverted to shareholders, CEO bonuses, and Wall Street. Health care is being replaced with health business.
As a result of the way American medicine is being reconstructed, patients will cease to have a doctor whom they know and who knows them. Important information is lost in a system of bureaucratized “health care” in which a patient sees whatever face happens to be on duty at the corporate provider. Impersonal health care thus brings a cost of its own, and its quality can be low compared to private practice. Indeed, the U.S. is creating a “health care” system that is more costly and less efficient than single-payer national health systems. But it will enrich corporations and provide play for Wall Street.
It turns one’s stomach to watch libertarians and “free market economists” defend bureaucratized impersonal health care as “free market medicine.” There is no free market present. Corporate lobbies and campaign contributions use government power to create bureaucratized monopolies that destroy medicine for the practitioner and the patient. Wall Street pushes for greater shareholder earnings, which are achieved by denying care.
Just as independent businesses have been destroyed by corporate chains from Wal-Mart to auto parts to fast food, medicine is being destroyed by monopoly capital. The risks of starting a private business today are many times higher than they were a half century ago. Chains have turned Americans who once were independent business men and women into employees.
The fate of the health care bill demonstrates the power of private lobbies. What was to be health care for Americans was instantly transformed into 30 million new patients for the private health insurance industry. The “solution” to tens of millions of Americans being unable to afford health care is a law that requires them to purchase a private health care policy or be annually fined. As most of these uninsured Americans cannot afford to purchase a private policy, the plan is for the federal government to use taxpayers’ money to subsidize their purchase of a policy from private companies.
In other words, tax money is being diverted to the pockets of private businesses. This is par for the course in “capitalist” America.
Read morePaul Craig Roberts: How Wall Street Destroyed Health Care – Greed, Be Thou My God
US: December home sales down nearly 17 percent, the largest monthly drop in more than 40 years
In this Jan. 5, 2010 photo, a home is seen advertised for sale in Alameda, Calif. Sales of previously occupied homes took the largest monthly drop in more than 40 years last month, plunging far more than expected after lawmakers gave buyers more time to use a tax credit.(AP Photo/Ben Margot) (Ben Margot – AP)
WASHINGTON — Sales of previously occupied homes took the largest monthly drop in more than 40 years last month, sinking more dramatically than expected after lawmakers gave buyers additional time to use a tax credit.
The report reflects a sharp drop in demand after buyers stopped scrambling to qualify for a tax credit of up to $8,000 for first-time homeowners. It had been due to expire on Nov. 30. But Congress extended the deadline until April 30 and expanded it with a new $6,500 credit for existing homeowners who move.
“It’s ‘exit stage left’ for first-time homebuyers,” wrote Guy LeBas, an analyst with Janney Montgomery Scott.
December’s sales fell 16.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.45 million, from an unchanged pace of 6.54 million in November, the National Association of Realtors said Monday. Sales had been expected to fall by about 10 percent, according to economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters.
The report “places a large question mark over whether the recovery can be sustained when the extended tax credit expires,” wrote Paul Dales, U.S. economist with Capital Economics.
Big Brother: UK Police Plan to Use Military-Style Spy Drones
Not just in the UK: Police State: DRONES used to spy on AMERICANS!
Arms manufacturer BAE Systems developing national strategy with consortium of government agencies
Drones could be used for civilian surveillance in the UK as early as 2012. Source: BAE
Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the ”routine” monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.
The arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is adapting the military-style planes for a consortium of government agencies led by Kent police.
Documents from the South Coast Partnership, a Home Office-backed project in which Kent police and others are developing a national drone plan with BAE, have been obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.
Read moreBig Brother: UK Police Plan to Use Military-Style Spy Drones
President Obama to indefinitely imprison detainees without charges
(updated below)
Change we can believe in!
One of the most intense controversies of the Bush years was the administration’s indefinite imprisoning of “War on Terror” detainees without charges of any kind. So absolute was the consensus among progressives and Democrats against this policy that a well-worn slogan was invented to object: a “legal black hole.” Liberal editorial pages routinely cited the refusal to charge the detainees — not the interrogation practices there — in order to brand the camp a “dungeon,” a “gulag,” a “tropical purgatory,” and a “black-hole embarrassment.” As late as 2007, Democratic Senators like Pat Leahy, on the floor of the Senate, cited the due-process-free imprisonments to rail against Guantanamo as “a national disgrace, an international embarrassment to us and to our ideals, and a festering threat to our security,” as well as “a legal black hole that dishonors our principles.” Leahy echoed the Democratic consensus when he said:
The Administration consistently insists that these detainees pose a threat to the safety of Americans. Vice President Cheney said that the other day. If that is true, there must be credible evidence to support it. If there is such evidence, then they should prosecute these people.
Leahy also insisted that the Constitution assigns the power to regulate detentions to Congress, not the President, and thus cited Bush’s refusal to seek Congressional authorization for these detentions as a prime example of Bush’s abuse of executive power and shredding of the Constitution.
But all year along, Barack Obama — even as he called for the closing of Guantanamo — has been strongly implying that he will retain George Bush’s due-process-free system by continuing to imprison detainees without charges of any kind. In his May “civil liberties” speech cynically delivered at the National Archives in front of the U.S. Constitution, Obama announced that he would seek from Congress a law authorizing and governing the President’s power to imprison detainees indefinitely and without charges. But in September, the administration announced he changed his mind: rather than seek a law authorizing these detentions, he would instead simply claim that Congress already “implicitly” authorized these powers when it enacted the 2001 AUMF against Al Qaeda — thereby, as The New York Times put it, “adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies.”
Today, The New York Times’ Charlie Savage reports:
The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday.
Read morePresident Obama to indefinitely imprison detainees without charges
UNICEF: Children disappearing from Haiti hospitals
Adopted orphans arrive in France as UNICEF raises trafficking fears
Haitian children line up to receive food at a food distribution site run by the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division a week after the massive earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 21 Jan 2010
UNICEF warned of children disappearing from hospitals and raised fears of child trafficking in the wake of Haiti’s devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. Thirty-three Haitian orphans arrived in Paris on Friday after France fast-tracked adoption procedures.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced Friday that several children have gone missing from hospitals in Haiti in the aftermath of the killer earthquake, raising fears of trafficking for adoption abroad.
“We have documented let’s say around 15 cases of children disappearing from hospitals, and not with their own family at the time,” UNICEF adviser Jean Luc Legrand said.
The UN agency said it expected trafficking networks to spring into action, taking advantage of weakened local authorities to kidnap children and eventually getting them out of the country.
FDIC Seizes Five Banks; US bank failure tally hits 9 for 2010
And the FDIC is broke.
Regulators seized five banks in Florida, Missouri, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington, lifting the total number of failures this year to nine as financial institutions struggle with loan defaults and a weak economy.
Two of the five institutions had assets of more than $1 billion. The Florida bank, in Miami, was sold to an investment group that includes former North Fork Bancorp Chief Financial Officer Dan Healy. The deposits and assets of the New Mexico bank went to Texas billionaire Andrew Beal.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. estimated the Friday closings will cost the agency’s cash-strapped deposit-insurance fund a total of $531.7 million.
Since 2008, regulators have shut down 174 banks, and the expectation is that failures will continue to accelerate in 2010 amid heightened regulatory scrutiny. FDIC Chair Sheila Bair has predicted that failures will “peak” this year and then “subside.”
Read moreFDIC Seizes Five Banks; US bank failure tally hits 9 for 2010
Pentagon backtracks after Defense Secretary Robert Gates ‘admits’ Blackwater operating in Pakistan
Defense Secretary Robert Gates
The Pentagon has gone into damage control mode after Defense Secretary Robert Gates appeared to confirm that security contractor Blackwater is operating in Pakistan.
The admission, quickly denied by Defense Department officials, has set fire to long-simmering rumors inside Pakistan about the involvement of for-profit contractors in the war against the Taliban.
Defense Department officials say Gates did not mean to suggest that Blackwater is now operating on Pakistani soil when a journalist from Pakistan’s Express TV asked him about military contractors’ activities.
In the interview, which took place Thursday, Gates was asked “about another issue that has come up and again … about the phone security companies [sic] that have been operating in Iraq, in Afghanistan and now in Pakistan. Xe International, formerly known as Blackwater or Data Corp. Under what rules are they operating here in Pakistan?”
“Well, they’re operating as individual companies here in Pakistan, in Afghanistan and in Iraq,” Gates replied. “If they’re contracting with us or with the State Department here in Pakistan, then there are very clear rules set forth by the State Department and by ourselves.”
“This appears to be a contradiction of previous statements made by the Defense Department, by Blackwater, by the Pakistani government and by the US embassy in Islamabad, all of whom claimed Blackwater was not in the country,” investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill wrote.
In November, Scahill reported that Blackwater is operating out of a covert US operating base in Karachi, where it “plan[s] targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, ‘snatch and grabs’ of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan.”
In December, the UK’s Guardian reported that Blackwater guards are patrolling a CIA airbase in Baluchistan province.
Gates’ comments have sent Pakistan’s legislature into an uproar, with at least one government official denying knowledge of Gates’ remarks.
Pakistan has been rife with rumors in recent years about private security contractors operating on the country’s soil, and “about purported US plots to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and build permanent American military bases,” as the Wall Street Journal puts it.
Rep. Ron Paul: State of the Republic Address – ‘Dangerous Times Indeed.’
“The collapse of the financial system is still in its early stage.”
“The social unrest will illicit cries for the government to exert unusual force to head off a complete breakdown of law and order. The ultimate trap will be set for a system of government claiming to protect a free society.”
“If more power and police authority are not given to the Federal government, it will be argued that only anarchy will result. If more government policing power is given, it will mean a lethal threat to civil liberties.”
“We are rapidly moving toward a dangerous time in our history. Society as we know it is vulnerable to political and social unrest. This impending crisis comes as a consequence of our flawed foreign and domestic economic policies, a silly notion about money, ignorance about central banking, ignoring the onerous power and mischief of out of control intelligence agencies, our unsustainable welfare state and a willingness to sacrifice privacy and civil liberties in an attempt to achieve safety and security from an inept government.”
“Dangerous times indeed.”
“The only way that we can prevent blood from running in the streets is to offer a better idea of the proper role of government in a society that desires, first and foremost, liberty.”
1 of 3:
Added: 21. Januar 2010
2 of 3:
Added: 21. Januar 2010
3 of 3:
Added: 21. Januar 2010
The Fed and the US government are destroying America:
– America’s Impending Master Class Dictatorship! (MUST-READ!)
– The CFR Controls American News/Media
– US: Unfunded Benefits Dig States’ $3 Trillion Hole
– The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: Financial Mafia Controlling US and Wall Street
– Peter Schiff: The Lunacy of US Government Programs
– Former Dean of Harvard College Harry R. Lewis: Larry Summers, Robert Rubin: Will The Harvard Shadow Elite Bankrupt The University And The Country?
Read moreRep. Ron Paul: State of the Republic Address – ‘Dangerous Times Indeed.’
America’s Impending Master Class Dictatorship!
This article is a MUST-READ!
This is not a conspiracy. This is politics and economics.
Wake up America! You will lose everything, if you do not act NOW.
Prepare yourself for a complete controlled meltdown. The greatest financial collapse in world history.
A hyperinflationary depression. THE Greatest Depression.
The Fed and the US government are destroying America!
(More information at the end of the following article.)
“The people no longer have elected representatives; they have elected traitors.”
By Stewart Dougherty
Stewart Dougherty is a specialist in inferential analysis, the practice of identifying historic and contemporary patterns and then extrapolating their likely effects upon the future. Dougherty was educated at Tufts University (B.A., magna cum laude), and Harvard Business School (M.B.A. and an academic Fellow).
FOREWORD: At certain times, focusing on the big picture is important not just for investment success, but for personal welfare, and even survival. We believe such times are here. It is estimated that 98% of Americans have never held a gold coin in their hands. Yet 100% of Americans regularly handle Federal Reserve Notes. From a contrarian standpoint, the financial message from those two statistics is clear. Even so, gold is much more than money or an investment medium; it stands for liberty and throughout history has facilitated escape and ensured freedom. Never having touched a gold coin is the monetary equivalent to never having breathed fresh air, felt the warmth of sunshine, looked up at the stars or risen from the gutter. Fiat Federal Reserve Notes are becoming nothing more than sewage decomposing in the vast, toxic septic tank of predatory Washington politics, epic Federal Reserve arrogance and error, blatant Wall Street fraud and outright Master Class plunder. Below, we outline America’s troubling and compounding predicament, and urge you to think about how to protect yourself from its consequences, both financially and personally.
Thanks to the endless barrage of feel-good propaganda that daily assaults the American mind, best epitomized a few months ago by the “green shoots,” everything’s-coming-up-roses propaganda touted by Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, the citizens have no idea how disastrous the country’s fiscal, monetary and economic problems truly are. Nor do they perceive the rapidly increasing risk of a totalitarian nightmare descending upon the American Republic.
One stark and sobering way to frame the crisis is this: if the United States government were to nationalize (in other words, steal) every penny of private wealth accumulated by America’s citizens since the nation’s founding 235 years ago, the government would remain totally bankrupt.
According to the Federal Reserve’s most recent report on wealth, America’s private net worth was $53.4 trillion as of September, 2009. But at the same time, America’s debt and unfunded liabilities totaled at least $120,000,000,000,000.00 ($120 trillion), or 225% of the citizens’ net worth. Even if the government expropriated every dollar of private wealth in the nation, it would still have a deficit of $66,600,000,000,000.00 ($66.6 trillion), equal to $214,286.00 for every man, woman and child in America and roughly 500% of GDP. If the government does not directly seize the nation’s private wealth, then it will require $389,610 from each and every citizen to balance the country’s books. State, county and municipal debts and deficits are additional, already elephantine in many states (e.g., California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York) and growing at an alarming rate nationwide. In addition to the federal government, dozens of states are already bankrupt and sinking deeper into the morass every day.
The government continues to dig a deeper and deeper fiscal grave in which to bury its citizens. This year, the federal deficit will total at least $1,600,000,000,000.00 ($1.6 trillion), which represents overspending of $4,383,561,600.00 ($4.38 billion) per day. (The deficit during October and November, 2009, the first two months of Fiscal Year 2010, totaled $296,700,000,000.00 ($297 billion), or $4,863,934,000.00 ($4.9 billion) per day, a record.) Using the GAAP accounting method (which is what corporations are required to use because it presents a far more accurate and honest picture of a company’s finances than the cash accounting method primarily and misleadingly used by the U.S. government), the nation’s fiscal year 2009 deficit was roughly $9,000,000,000,000.00 ($9 trillion), or $24,700,000,000.00 ($24.7 billion) per day, as calculated by brilliant and well-respected economist John Williams. (www.shadowstats.com) Fiscal Year 2010’s cash- and GAAP-accounting deficits will likely be worse than 2009’s, given government bailout and new program spending that is on steroids and psychotic.
Putting Fiscal Year 2009’s $9,000,000,000,000.00 ($9 trillion) deficit another way, 17% of America’s private wealth, accumulated over a period of 235 years, was wiped out by just one year’s worth of government deficit spending insanity.
Given this, is it any surprise that Treasury Secretary Geithner has announced that the release of the nation’s FY 2009 supplemental GAAP financial statements has been delayed? Remember, this is the same Secretary Geithner who bullied people to cover up the sordid details of the AIG, or more accurately, the taxpayer-funded, multi-billion dollar, Santa Claus bailout and bonus bonanza for Goldman Sachs. Do you really think this government, characterized as it is by fiscal and monetary secrecy, lies, chicanery, cronyism and stonewalling, wants the people to know what is actually happening? Obviously, it does not, so it hides from the public the inexcusable facts.
The CFR Controls American News/Media
Related information:
– Foreign Policy Address at the Council on Foreign Relations:
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
July 15, 2009“Thank you very much, Richard, and I am delighted to be here in these new headquarters. I have been often to, I guess, the mother ship in New York City, but it’s good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.”
Source: U.S. Department of State
Barack Obama, Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice among others at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
– Ron Paul on Glenn Beck: Destruction of the dollar:
“Foreign policy is dictated by individuals who control both the Republican and the Democrat party”
– Ron Paul
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.
The CFR Controls American News/Media
The Sovereign Military Order of Malta created the CFR which includes SMOM Papal Knights such as Rupert Murdoch, David Rockefeller. The CFR is controlled by Archbishop of NY, Cardinal Edward Michael Egan.
He’s the Military Vicar and commander of the SMOM Americas based at St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. He and Grandmaster Andrew Bertie control the SMOM.
Note that the CFR was created in 1921 just one year after the SMOM created the Royal Institute of International Affairs. In reality these are one and the same. You should take note of how the RIIA uses Wall Street and Aspen Institute a lot.
Senator-elect Scott Brown: ‘We are past campaign mode.’
Now Sen-Elect Scott Brown is for a health care reform! That was fast!
“We are past campaign mode.” That sounds familiar!
– Senator-Elect Scott Brown Promises to Fight Health Care:
“When there’s trouble in Massachusetts, rest assured , there’s trouble everywhere, and they know it,” he said. “One thing is very, very clear as I traveled across this state. People do not want the trillion dollar health care plan that is being forced on the American people, and this bill is not being debated openly and fairly. It will raise taxes, it will hurt Medicare, it will destroy jobs and run our nation deeper in to debt.”
“The independent majority has delivered a great victory,” he said.
Just elected another elite puppet America! (You actually never really had a choice.)
“There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican Parties.”
– George Wallace (Governor of Alabama and 1968 Republican Presidential candidate.)
Added: 20. Januar 2010
Pentagon: US forces in Haiti to number 33,000; Hugo Chavez: US weapon test caused Haiti earthquake
33,000 US troops! Can we call it a invasion now?
– Haitians Receive Little Help Despite Promises From World Leaders; US Doctors Are Desperate
– Ex-minister warns of US ‘takeover’ of Haiti
I am not saying that Hugo Chavez is right, but I know that the US and the Russians have weapons that could easily cause such an earthquake.
Chavez: US weapon test caused Haiti earthquake
Added: 20. Januar 2010
Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has once again accused the United States of playing God. But this time it’s Haiti’s disastrous earthquake that he thinks the U.S. was behind. Spanish newspaper ABC quotes Chavez as saying that the U.S. navy launched a weapon capable of inducing a powerful earthquake off the shore of Haiti. He adds that this time it was only a drill and the final target is … destroying and taking over Iran.
I also know that the elite plans to invade Iran within the next 3 years to cause WW III. The elite constantly changes their plans and adapts them to the ‘environment’ very quickly. Call me a conspiracy nutcase, I don’t care. I know it. So maybe Chavez is right.
A major part of the Haitian disaster operation is providing security for victims and rescuers.
About 20,000 U.S. troops are expected to support relief efforts in Haiti by next week in addition to the 13,000 American military personnel already there, according to Pentagon spokesman John Kruzel.
Those men and women to be deployed are members of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, the 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade and other units. Thousands of other troops are operating afloat off the Haitian coast and on shore, distributing provisions, assisting in medical operations and helping to maintain security. Some 2,200 Marines of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit are slated to arrive within 48 hours, Kruzel reports.
“The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit is a huge part of enabling us to extend our reach to places around the country that may need our assistance but we just haven’t been there yet,” Army Lieutenant General P.K. Keen, the top U.S. commander in Haiti, said on Thursday during a segment aired on The Pentagon Channel.
The additional forces come as international aid continues pouring into Haiti following a magnitude 7 earthquake that struck Jan. 12, creating what an official called one of the greatest humanitarian emergencies in the history of the Americas, reports Kruzel, in a statement obtained by the National Association of Chiefs of Police.
US: Supreme Court overturns long-standing limits on corporate political campaign spending
See also: Roberts Delivers ‘Jolt’ in Overturning Campaign-Finance Rulings (Bloomberg):
“The 5-4 ruling freed corporations, labor unions and advocacy groups to use general treasury funds to buy advertisements that explicitly try to sway voters. The majority said restrictions on corporate spending violated the Constitution’s free-speech guarantee.”
This has nothing to do with constitutional rights, because the ruling that a corporation is legally a ‘person’ was undermining the constitution earlier and was dead wrong.
No political campaign should be funded by corporations, because of manipulation of public opinion.
(In another case (1980 Diamond v. Chakrabarty) those idiot judges ruled that it is OK to patent life forms, were before life forms were considered a part of nature and were not patentable. This ruling lead to corporations patenting the genes of everything they can think of that could later on bring them profit.)
And look who is shouting the loudest:
Obama slams ‘green light to a new stampede of special interest money’ (?)
“Washington lobbyists haven’t funded my campaign, they won’t run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of working Americans when I am president.”
– Barack Obama
Really?:
– Health Care Statements In Congress Were Ghostwritten By Lobbyists Working For Genentech
– The US Government: Bought and Paid For
– Monsanto lobbyists to be placed in charge of food safety by Obama
Liar in Chief:
– Barack Obama Lies 7 Times In Under 2 Minutes!!!!!
– Barack Obama’s Health Care Lies And Reversals
The truth is:
– The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: Financial Mafia Controlling US and Wall Street
– George Carlin: The American Dream
Obama slams ‘green light to a new stampede of special interest money’
WASHINGTON – In a landmark ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down laws that banned corporations from using their own money to support or oppose candidates for public office.
By 5-4 vote, the court overturned federal laws, in effect for decades, that prevented corporations from using their profits to buy political campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.
It leaves in place a ban prohibiting corporations and unions from directly contributing funds to candidates for any use.
In a statement, President Barack Obama said that the decision gives ‘a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics.’ The president pledged to work with Congress to ‘develop a forceful response’ to the court’s ruling.
Read moreUS: Supreme Court overturns long-standing limits on corporate political campaign spending
‘Just Kidding’: TSA Worker Places Bag of Fine White Powder Into Passengers Bag
Related article: – TSA Agent Arrested at LA (NBC LA):
A TSA agent was arrested on January 3rd in Terminal One at LAX, a source told NBCLA. He had just gotten off duty and was behaving erratically, saying, “I am god, I’m in charge.”
Update: Ann Davis, the TSA spokeswoman, said this afternoon that the worker is no longer employed by the agency as of today. She said privacy laws prevented her from saying if he was fired or left on his own.
Rebecca Solomon said the security worker’s action “was such a violation.”
In the tense new world of air travel, we’re stripped of shoes, told not to take too much shampoo on board, frowned on if we crack a smile.
The last thing we expect is a joke from a Transportation Security Administration screener – particularly one this stupid.
Rebecca Solomon is 22 and a student at the University of Michigan, and on Jan. 5 she was flying back to school after holiday break. She made sure she arrived at Philadelphia International Airport 90 minutes before takeoff, given the new regulations.
She would be flying into Detroit on Northwest Airlines, the same city and carrier involved in the attempted bombing on Christmas, just 10 days before. She was tense.
What happened to her lasted only 20 seconds, but she says they were the longest 20 seconds of her life.
After pulling her laptop out of her carry-on bag, sliding the items through the scanning machines, and walking through a detector, she went to collect her things.
A TSA worker was staring at her. He motioned her toward him.
Then he pulled a small, clear plastic bag from her carry-on – the sort of baggie that a pair of earrings might come in. Inside the bag was fine, white powder.
She remembers his words: “Where did you get it?”
Two thoughts came to her in a jumble: A terrorist was using her to sneak bomb-detonating materials on the plane. Or a drug dealer had made her an unwitting mule, planting coke or some other trouble in her bag while she wasn’t looking.
She’d left her carry-on by her feet as she handed her license and boarding pass to a security agent at the beginning of the line.
Answer truthfully, the TSA worker informed her, and everything will be OK.
Solomon, 5-foot-3 and traveling alone, looked up at the man in the black shirt and fought back tears.
Put yourself in her place and count out 20 seconds. Her heart pounded. She started to sweat. She panicked at having to explain something she couldn’t.
Now picture her expression as the TSA employee started to smile.
Just kidding, he said. He waved the baggie. It was his.
Read more‘Just Kidding’: TSA Worker Places Bag of Fine White Powder Into Passengers Bag