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| Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. |
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Citi eyes selling businesses, other options: source
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc is looking at multiple options as its share price sinks, including selling businesses, selling shares, or merging with another firm, a person familiar with...
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Fed's Bullard: U.S. spending slump to sap 2009 growth
EVANSVILLE, Indiana (Reuters) - St Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard said on Thursday that financial market turmoil has collapsed U.S. consumer confidence and this would weigh on growth well...
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Oil falls over $1 on demand worries
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.S. crude oil dropped more than $1 a barrel on Friday, falling for sixth straight sessions as more distress for the global economy threatened to eat further...
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NY City securities workforce down to Sept 2005 level
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City's securities companies shed 16,000 employees in October, measured on a year-over-year basis, pushing the total work force down to a level last seen...
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S&P dives to lowest level since 1997
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks plunged yet again on Thursday, as a frantic flight from risk prompted by investors' deepening economic fears drove the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index...
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Democrats demand U.S. Big 3 offer survival plan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic congressional leaders, seeking to salvage a bailout of the Big Three automakers, demanded executives provide a business survival plan in exchange for their support of up...
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Marsal to lead team of over 600 at Lehman
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bryan Marsal, currently chief restructuring officer of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc , will take over as chief executive of the bankrupt investment bank after the close...
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Paulson defends handling of U.S. financial crisis
SIMI VALLEY, California (Reuters) - Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Thursday defended his handling of the financial crisis but refused to say whether any further help will be offered to...
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Dell profit tops Street view, shares rise
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Dell Inc, the world's No. 2 PC maker, posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit on Thursday as cost cuts offset lower revenue, sending its shares up about...
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Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac suspend some foreclosures
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two biggest U.S. home loan finance companies, on Thursday said they would suspend foreclosures of occupied homes until early 2009,...
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The Freedom Revolution Blog
Posted by: Jordan in Government, Economy on
Nov 20, 2008
Fed to Cut Rates to Zero on Deflation Risk, JPMorgan PredictsJason Clenfield : Bloomberg Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Federal Reserve will probably cut interest rates to zero percent over the next two months to staunch deflation, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. The Fed will lower borrowing costs by 50 basis points at each of the next two policy meetings on Dec. 16 and Jan. 28, JPMorgan economist Michael Feroli wrote in a note to investors yesterday. The central bank will hold rates at zero for the rest of 2009 to prevent prices from spiraling down as companies cut jobs and banks reduce lending, stifling spending, Feroli said. Read More...
Posted by: Jordan in Health, Government on
Nov 20, 2008
Daschle: Good, Wrong, and TerribleEli Lehrer : OpenMarket.org President-elect Obama has named Tom Daschle to head the Department of Health and Human Services. By some measures the largest department in the government, Daschle is sure to take center stage in Obama’s inevitable effort to reform the U.S. Healthcare system. So what of the choice? Well, Daschle has some good ideas, one wrong idea, and one really bad one. A quick rundown: Good Ideas: Daschle believes that individuals, mostly, should have to pay for their own health care and opposes the current mixed-economy health-care system that costs a ton but doesn’t provide good care for most Americans. The current U.S. health care system–which isn’t a free market in any sense of the term or “freer” than most other developed countries’ health care systems–seems largely devoted to cost-shifting rather than actually providing health care. Every party involved–consumers, insurers, the government, hospitals, doctors–tries to get somebody else to pay its bills. The pendulum swings back and forth a bit but nothing really changes in a fundamental way. Read More...
Posted by: Jordan in Humor, Government, Economy on
Nov 20, 2008
Rewarding Failure: Why Stop With Big 3?Declan McCullagh : CBS The Honorable Henry Paulson U.S. Department of the Treasury 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20220 Dear Secretary Paulson: I understand that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are urging you to hand $25 billion or more to Detroit's nearly bankrupt automakers. While President-elect Obama indicated on 60 Minutes that he likes the idea, the Bush administration has been skeptical. That is unfortunate. Bailing out companies that lose money on every vehicle they manufacture and cannot adapt to changing market conditions is not merely necessary in today's economic climate -- it's the American way. Read More...
Posted by: Mark Cahall in Economy on
Nov 20, 2008
By John Kemp: Blogs.Reuters.com Quietly, without fanfare, the (Private Bank Cartel) Federal Reserve has turned on the printing presses. The central bank is flooding the market with enough excess liquidity to refloat the banking system -- and hopes to generate an upturn in both economic activity and inflation in the next 12-18 months to prevent the economy falling into a prolonged slump.
Since the banking crisis intensified in September, the Fed has been rapidly expanding the credit side of its balance sheet, providing an ever-increasing array of facilities to support the financial system (repos, term auction credit, primary discount credit, broker-dealer credit, commercial paper funding, money market mutual fund liquidity and term securities lending).
Total credit extended by the central bank has surged from an average of $885 billion in the week ending August 27 to $2.198 trillion in the week ending November 12. Credit extensions surged another $142 billion last week alone -- mostly in form of increased term auction credit (+$114 billion) and other miscellaneous credits the central bank does not break out (+$41 billion).
Until fairly recently, the expansion on the asset side of the Fed’s balance sheet was matched by increased non-bank liabilities, mostly in the form of higher balances deposited by the US Treasury into its regular and special supplementary financing accounts at the central bank.
Since the Treasury was borrowing this money in the open market by issuing cash management bills, the impact of the Fed’s balance sheet expansion was being fully sterilized.
The Fed was providing liquidity in the narrow sense (helping commercial banks cover short-term funding problems arising from illiquid assets on their books) but not in the broader sense of inflating the money supply (money in circulation plus vault cash plus reserve balances).
But in the last three weeks, something very significant has happened. The non-bank part of the Fed’s liabilities has stopped expanding: combined Treasury deposits with the Fed plus cash in circulation has actually fallen from $1.517 trillion in the week ending Oct 29 to $1.467 trillion in the week ending Nov 12.
Instead, the Fed’s increased lending to the financial system over the last two weeks (+$325 billion) has been matched by an increase in the volume of deposits the commercial banks are hold with the Fed (+$331 billion).
In other words, the Fed is now lending to the banks, which are now lending the funds back to the central bank. The Fed is no longer supplying just narrow liquidity needed to enable the market to function. It is now supplying excess funds (more than the banks need) which are being recycled back into the central bank.
The volume of reserve balances with the Fed, which had jumped from $8 billion at end Aug to $280 billion by mid Oct, has now surged again to a staggering $592 billion in the week ending Nov 12.
The Fed is now very deliberately supplying more liquidity than the banks need (or are willing to lend on to other banks, corporations or homeowners). By paying a low but positive interest rate on these reserve balances, it can ensure that the federal funds rate remains above zero (currently about 35 basis points) even as it floods the banking system with excess funds.
There are several startling implications: Read more...
Posted by: Mark Cahall in Economy on
Nov 20, 2008
By Jim Kingsland: FoxBusiness.com At first glance, it appears as if the gold bugs, those bullish on gold, have been stepped on this year. Spot gold is down nearly 30% from its peak of $1033 an ounce set earlier in the year. But a two tiered market has developed where speculators have been badly burned trading gold futures, while some investors holding actual physical gold have not only managed to keep their shirts, but have held on to gains for the year. Dealers and analysts are calling it an “upside down” market where physical gold, including coins and bars, are in short supply and far more expensive than the price quoted on New York Mercantile Exchange’s COMEX division. What’s sparking the demand for physical gold? You need to look no further than the financial landscape surrounding investors. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” says Scott A. Travers, author of The Coin Collector’s Survival Manual. “1979 and 1980, the go-go years of Jimmy Carter, gas lines, inflation, interest rates at extraordinary levels had people rushing to tangibles. The frenzied pace for yellow metal today has exceeded those tumultuous levels.” On top of a slowing economy, liquidation by cash hungry hedge funds has gotten much of the blame for the slide in commodities futures prices including the metals group. In recent trading, the active December contract has traded in the area of $740 per ounce, while one-ounce bars of gold have been trading at or near 20% premiums to the front-month futures contract, according to gold dealers. Usually the premium is only about 5%. The same goes for silver, where Comex paper futures are trading at just over $9 an ounce, compared to physical supplies commanding prices above $12 an ounce. There’s an even greater discrepancy involving average uncirculated one-ounce late 19th and early 20th century gold coins known as $20 Liberty and $20 St. Gaudens coins. These particular gold coins, which normally attract a price of about $70 an ounce above spot, are attracting bids of at least $1,100 a piece. Online auction sites have experienced active auctions for one-ounce gold coins. A quick check of eBay (EBAY) yields a variety of examples of gold coins trading at big premiums to the spot price. A 1908 one ounce $20 Double Gold Eagle had attracted more than two dozen bids and price of over $1200. Says Travers, “physical gold does well in times of economic distress, calamity and blood in the streets,” adding that “gold is really a quasi-currency; as people worry about a possible collapse of the banking system. With (Treasury Secretary) Paulson’s change of policy on how to use TARP funds, the collapse of the global banking system is still not off the table.” While the price of gold futures has sunk into the low $700 per ounce range, World Gold Council data show that a pricing floor may be developing, even for beaten-down Comex contracts, due to lower gold production. Through the second half of the year, the Gold Council reported a 4% drop in mining output and a decline in central bank sales.
Posted by: Mark Cahall in Economy, Crime on
Nov 20, 2008
GoldSeek.comThe following are some snippets from the most recent issue of the International Forecaster. For the full 32 page issue, please see subscription information below (at link). By Bob ChapmanUS MARKETS What you are now witnessing is the slow motion destruction of the CRIMEX, formerly known as the COMEX, a commodities futures market which is supposed to provide a means for producers to hedge their products, but which has morphed into a rigged casino where commodities that don't exist are traded as if they did for prices that exist only in the fairytales woven by the Illuminati, who control the exchange. This destruction is what happens when the credibility and integrity of the market owners and managers of the CRIMEX, together with the credibility and integrity of the market regulators, the CFTC, move from near zero to negative infinity. Not only do the owners and regulators do absolutely nothing about obvious criminal manipulations and illegal concentrations of short positions, but also we believe that they conspire with the criminal operators, which we refer to as "commercial shorts," to aid and abet their criminal mischief by divulging the precise nature of the trading positions of the "spec longs" who take the other side of the contracts, thus allowing pinpoint attacks on black-box formulations, especially where stops have been placed, thereby minimizing the cost of the manipulations by preventing the waste associated with overkill. Also, the owners and regulators change margin requirements, and whitewash investigations of obvious illegalities, whenever it serves to protect the commercial shorts, thus making a mockery out of the exchange and transforming what are supposed to be free markets into crony capitalist, corporatist fascist systems of syndicated piracy. This lack of integrity and criminal manipulation is the most pronounced in the gold and silver commodity markets, but many other types of commodities are under manipulation as well, especially oil, base metals and agricultural produce, meaning most of the rest of the exchange. The despicable, nefarious dealings of the miscreant CRIMEX owners and regulators is quickly catching up to them in the precious metals markets of the exchange, and soon every one of the spec longs is going to pick up their toys and go home, and if the specs have any brains or sense of justice, they will take as much of the CRIMEX gold and silver with them when they leave by paying cash for it and taking delivery of it. Since the end of October, when open interest for the December gold contract started a new series of decreases as the rollovers got off to any early start, the December open interest has fallen from 190,140 to this past Friday's 122,902, yet total open interest has fallen from 305,451 to 285,219 during that same period. Thus, of the 67,238 December contracts that have been terminated in the rollover thus far, total open interest has plummeted by 20,232 contracts, meaning that many of the contracts are not being rolled over, and are being cashed out instead. If this 30% ratio persists, we could see gold open interest fall to under 250,000, a multi-year low, an astonishing drop of 58% from the peak of 593,953 contracts set on January 15, 2008. This is an absolute disgrace for the CRIMEX owners and regulators, and we wish them well in the ensuing bankruptcies and criminal investigations that will occur after the exchange collapses. No one wants to play in a game where the owners and sponsors are in cahoots with certain privileged players to make sure they come out on top. In addition, we note that no commodities market can survive without speculators who provide balance to the markets by taking the other side of contracts and by keeping the pendulum of market momentum alternating between bulls and bears. Otherwise the markets lean too far to one side or the other, and then bubble and/or collapse due to the lopsided positions. Once the precious metals markets of the exchange collapse, all the other markets will soon follow, as everyone realizes that the whole system is rigged against them. The CRIMEX will soon be ostracized from participation by honest market players. The criminal manipulators will soon find themselves traipsing in and out of court in endless investigations, and they will be forced to sit in their bedrooms, lonesome, because their is no one left who wants to play with them. Read more...
Posted by: Jordan in Politics on
Nov 20, 2008
Ron Paul for Treasury?angusthermopylae : Motley Fool Ok, I'm just blue-skying here, but "what if" Prez-Elect Obama were to ask Ron Paul to act as Treasury Secretary? Some thoughts: --He's a Republican. Not only that, but he's a Republican primary candidate who the rest of the contenders basically hated, mostly for his repeated statements about where the economy was headed (which pretty much were dead on). You've got a win-win for the Obama camp: "Across the aisle" with a guy who's been beaten up by the rest of the Republican establishment. Talking about having your cake and eating it too: Obama would be able to use the terms "Uniter" without becoming a caricature while lobbing a grenade into the middle of the RNC.
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Posted by: Jordan in Government, Economy on
Nov 20, 2008
Finger-pointing begins as Senate nixes auto voteJULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS : AP WASHINGTON (AP) - A Democratic Congress, unwilling or unable to approve a $25 billion bailout for Detroit's Big Three, appears ready to punt the automakers' fate to a lame-duck Republican president. Caught in the middle of a who-blinks-first standoff are legions of manufacturing firms and auto dealers—and millions of Americans' jobs—after Senate Democrats canceled a showdown vote that had been expected Thursday. President George W. Bush has "no appetite" to act on his own. U.S. auto companies employ nearly a quarter-million workers, and more than 730,000 other people have jobs producing the materials and parts that go into cars. About 1 million on top of that work in dealerships nationwide. If just one of the auto giants were to go belly up, some estimates put U.S. job losses next year as high as 2.5 million.
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Posted by: Jordan in Civil Liberties on
Nov 20, 2008
Justice, NYPD feuding over terrorist surveillanceLARA JAKES JORDAN : AP WASHINGTON – The Justice Department and New York Police Department are feuding over surveillance of suspected terrorists — and how quickly it can be legally approved. Intelligence officials familiar with the spat say the NYPD is accusing federal lawyers of delaying approval of surveillance applications. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly is complaining that the delays have made New York less safe. Read More...
LIMA (AFP) — Top officials from across the Pacific rim were set to open talks here Wednesday on the global economic crisis and to issue a joint appeal against protectionism. Peru, where Maoist guerrillas have stepped up attacks in recent weeks, was on its highest state of alert for the summit, which is the last scheduled foreign trip for US President George W. Bush before he steps down. Ministers of trade and foreign affairs from 21 countries including China, Japan, Russia and the United States will hold two days of talks to lay the groundwork for the leaders' summit on Saturday and Sunday. An official of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum drafting the leaders' statement said they would defend free trade despite the sharp slowdown in the global economy. "Everyone has been speaking with the same voice saying we need to keep markets open," said Elizabeth Chelliah, chair of a committee drafting the statement. "We have to keep the door open to foreigners. You can't close the door," she told reporters. Peruvian President Alan Garcia said that APEC, which accounts for 60 percent of the world's gross domestic product, also had more small private businesses than other parts of the world. "It's thanks to this that the region is more active," Garcia told Asia-Pacific business leaders . "APEC is the greatest anti-crisis tool in the world." Some 39,000 police were deployed in Lima and another 60,000 officers were on full alert across the rest of the country, which is still haunted by a bloody Maoist insurrection in the 1980s and 1990s. Remnants of the Shining Path rebels on Saturday shot dead three police officers and injured another one in southeastern Peru. Read more...
Posted by: Jordan in Politics, Humor on
Nov 19, 2008
Obama's Use of Complete Sentences Stirs ControversyAndy Borowitz : Huffington Post In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say. Millions of Americans who watched Mr. Obama's appearance on CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday witnessed the president-elect's unorthodox verbal tick, which had Mr. Obama employing grammatically correct sentences virtually every time he opened his mouth.
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Posted by: Jordan in Government on
Nov 19, 2008
Horse racing's big windfall Chicago Sun-Times Roads are crumbling. Illinois is languishing at No. 49 among all states for funding education. And the state can't pay its bills -- Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes figures state government's unprecedented $4 billion debt will balloon to more than $5 billion by March. But despite all the state's money troubles, Illinois taxpayers are set to give a big boost to the horse racing industry -- as much as $70 million a year. Read More...
Posted by: Mark Cahall in Economy on
Nov 19, 2008
Public announcement GEAB N°29 (November 17, 2008)  The G20-meeting held in Washington on November 14/15, 2008, is in its essence a historical indicator that the Western - above all Anglo-Saxon - monopoly on global economic and financial governance, is coming to an end. Nevertheless, according to LEAP/E2020, this meeting also clearly demonstrated that this kind of summits is doomed to inefficiency because they concentrate on curing the symptoms (banks’ and hedge funds’ financial difficulties, derivative markets’ explosion, financial and currency markets’ dramatic volatility, ...) rather than the fundamental root of the current crisis, i.e. the collapse of the Bretton Woods system based on the US Dollar as sole pillar of the global monetary system. Without a complete overhaul of the system inherited from 1944 by summer 2009, the failing of the current system and that of the United States at the center, will lead the whole planet to an unprecedented economic, social, political and strategic instability, and more specifically to a breakdown of the global monetary system by summer 2009. In light of the technocratic jargon and calendar of the declaration released after this first G20-meeting (totally disconnected from the speed and scope of the unfolding crisis (1)), it is more than likely that the disaster will have to happen for the fundamental problems to be seriously addressed and for the beginning of a reply to be initiated.
Four key-factors are now pushing the Bretton Woods II (2) system to collapse in the course of the year 2009:
• Fast weakening of the central players: USA, UK
• Three visions of the future of global governance will be dividing world’s largest players (United-States, Eurozone, China, Japan, Russia, Brazil) by spring 2009
• Unbridled speeding-up of the last decade’s (de-)stabilizing processes
• Increasing number of more and more violent backlashes.
LEAP/E2020 already extensively described factors 1 and 4 in previous editions of the GEAB. Therefore we will concentrate on factors 2 and 3 in the present edition (GEAB N°29).
The agitation that has seized global leaders since the end of September 2008 indicates that panic has struck at the highest level. Worldwide political leaders have now understood that the house is on fire. But they have not yet perceived something obvious: that the very structure of the building is involved. Improving fire-regulations or reorganizing emergency services will not be sufficient. To use a strong symbolic image, the World Trade Center’s twin towers did not collapse because firemen were late or because water was missing in the automatic fire-system, they collapsed because their structure was not meant to support the shock of two airliners hitting them in just a few minutes.
Today’s global monetary system is in a similar situation: the twin-towers are the Bretton Woods system, and the airliners are called « subprime crisis », « banking failures », « economic recession », « Very Great US Depression », « US deficits », … a whole squadron. First year of major correction (Dow, as percentage, since 1900) - Source ChartoftheDay Today’s leaders, who all belong to the collapsing world (including Barak Obama (3)), cannot possibly imagine how to solve the problem, just like central bankers in 2006/2007 could not possibly imagine the scope the unfolding crisis could reach (4). It is their world which is disappearing under their eyes, their beliefs and their illusions (sometimes similar) (5). According to our team, a 20 percent renewal of worldwide leaders is required to begin to see sustainable solutions (6) appear. This is indeed, according to LEAP/E2020, the « critical mass » needed to permit any fundamental change of perspective in a complex not very hierarchical human group. Today we are still far from reaching this critical mass: in order to contribute to finding solutions to the crisis, those new leaders must accede power in full awareness of the crisis’ specific nature. According to LEAP/E2020, if global leaders fail to realize that in the next three months and to take actions in the next six months, as explained in GEAB N°28, the US debt will « implode » by summer 2009 under the shape of the country’s defaulting or the Dollar’s dramatic devaluation. This implosion will follow closely a number of similar episodes affecting less central countries (see GEAB N°28), including the United Kingdom whose already huge debt is ballooning at the same pace as Washington’s (7). In the same way as the US Federal Reserve saw, month after month, its « Primary Dealers » (8) being swept away by the crisis before it was itself confronted to a real problem of capitalization and therefore survival, the United States in the coming year will witness the implosion of all countries too-closely integrated to their economy and finance, and of their allies financially too-dependent on them (9).
 Monetary authorities with the largest foreign reserves in 2008 - Sources FMI/BRI/Wikipedia , 10/2008
Posted by: Jordan in Video, Government, Economy on
Nov 19, 2008
Posted by: Mark Cahall in Economy on
Nov 19, 2008
By Paul B. Farrell: MarketWatch ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. -- By 2011? No recovery? No new bull? "Hey Paul, why do you keep talking about a bigger crash coming by 2011?" Readers ask that often. So here's a sequel to my predictions of 2000 and 2004, with a look three years ahead: First. Dot-com crash We pinpointed the dot-com crash at its peak, in a March 20, 2000 column: "Next crash? Sorry, you won't see it coming." Bulls-eye: The dot-com bubble popped. The economy went into a 30-month recession. The stock market lost $8 trillion. And today, over eight years later, the market is still roughly 40% below its 2000 peak. See previous Paul B. Farrell. Factor in inflation and the average stock has lost well over 50% of its value. Stocks have proven to be a very big loser, a bad investment for Americans, thanks to Wall Street's selfish greed, plus the complicity and naiveté of politicians, press and public. Second. Subprime meltdown We reported on warnings of another crash coming as early as 2004, wrote a sequel, also titled "Next crash? Sorry, you won't see it coming." Yes, we were early, but in good company. We wrote many more warning columns. Few listened. Subsequent events, notably former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's admission of his failures in congressional testimony, prove that if he and other Reaganomic ideologues weren't so myopic and intransigent about proving their free-market deregulation theories, they could have acted earlier and prevented today's colossal mess. Instead, their ideology kept the bubble blowing, delayed the pop, making matters worse. So once again, as history proves over and over, ideology trumps common sense, reality and the facts. Greed drives ideologues to blow bubbles. They pop. Crashes happen. The public is collateral damage. Third. Megabubble cycles We also detailed the broader, accelerating macroeconomic sweep of cycles last summer in columns like "20 reasons new megabubble pops in 2011." We summarized a long list of major warnings from financial periodicals -- Forbes, Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, Economist -- and from the voices of Warren Buffett, Bill Gross, a sitting Fed governor and a former Commerce secretary. Multiple warnings "hiding in plain sight," beginning with a Fed governor warning Greenspan in 2000 about subprime risk. But the big shocker came from the new Treasury secretary two years before the meltdown: Bloomberg News reports that shortly after leaving Wall Street as Goldman Sachs' CEO, Henry Paulson was at Camp David warning the president and his staff of "over-the-counter derivatives as an example of financial innovation that could, under certain circumstances, blow up in Wall Street's face and affect the whole economy." Yes, they knew. And still both Paulson, a Wall Street insider, and Greenspan's successor, Ben Bernanke, a Princeton scholar of the Great Depression, stayed trapped in denial and kept happy-talking the public for months after the meltdown began in mid-2007. Get it? While they could have put the brakes on this meltdown years ago, our leaders were prisoners of their distorted, inflexible views of conservative Reaganomics ideology. As a result, once again the "best and the brightest" failed America and now they and their buddies in Washington and Corporate America are setting up the Crash of 2011. Now it's time for my 2008 update, a look into the future where things will get far worse during the next presidential term. And given human behavior, especially in the deep recesses of Wall Street's "greed is good" DNA, it seems inevitable that no matter how well-intentioned the new president may be Wall Street and Washington's 41,000 special-interest lobbyists will drive America into the Great Depression 2. 30 'leading edge' indicators of the coming Great Depression 2
Posted by: Jordan in Crime on
Nov 19, 2008
Cheney, Gonzales indicted in South Texas countyCHRISTOPHER SHERMAN : AP McALLEN, Texas (AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have been indicted on state charges involving federal prisons in a South Texas county that has been a source of bizarre legal and political battles under the outgoing prosecutor. The indictment returned Monday has not yet been signed by the presiding judge, and no action can be taken until that happens. The seven indictments made public in Willacy County on Tuesday included one naming state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. and some targeting public officials connected to District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra's own legal battles.
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Posted by: Jordan in Government, Civil Liberties on
Nov 19, 2008
Last-minute Bush abortion ruling causes furorRobert Pear : Herald Tribune WASHINGTON: A last-minute Bush administration plan to grant sweeping new protections to health care providers who oppose abortion and other procedures on religious or moral grounds has provoked a torrent of objections, including a strenuous protest from the government agency that enforces job-discrimination laws. The proposed rule would prohibit recipients of federal money from discriminating against doctors, nurses and other health care workers who refuse to perform or to assist in the performance of abortions or sterilization procedures because of their "religious beliefs or moral convictions."
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The medical miracleJeremy Laurance : The Independent A 30-year-old Spanish woman has made medical history by becoming the first patient to receive a whole organ transplant grown using her own cells. Experts said the development opened a new era in surgery in which the repair of worn-out body parts would be carried out with personally customised replacements. Claudia Castillo, who lives in Barcelona, underwent the operation to replace her windpipe after tuberculosis had left her with a collapsed lung and unable to breathe. Read More...
Posted by: Jordan in Politics on
Nov 18, 2008
Hagel, Unrestrained, Lashes Into Bush, Rush And The GOPSam Stein : Huffington Post Two months before he leaves office, Sen. Chuck Hagel is increasingly unrestrained by political niceties. Appearing at a forum at the Johns Hopkins School of Advances International Studies, the outgoing Nebraska Republican leveled harsh criticism at his own party, the lack of intellectual curiosity among some of his colleagues, the Bush administration's handling of nearly every aspect of governance and -- perhaps most bitingly -- the conservative radio voices that often dictate the GOP agenda. "We are educated by the great entertainers like Rush Limbaugh," said Hagel, sarcastically referencing the talk radio host who once called him "Senator Betrayus." "You know, I wish Rush Limbaugh and others like that would run for office. They have so much to contribute and so much leadership and they have an answer for everything. And they would be elected overwhelmingly," he offered. "[The truth is] they try to rip everyone down and make fools of Read More...
Posted by: Jordan in Government, Economy on
Nov 18, 2008
Nevada College Chancellor Asks U.S. for $3 Billion BailoutBanks. Insurance companies. Automakers...and colleges? It looks like the latest organization to line up in the U.S. bread line is the college system of Nevada. Jim Rogers, the Nevada College Chancellor and proponent of the bailout, had this to say: “If the federal government steps in to help Nevada,” it will be “inundated by 49 requests from every other state.” But “being fiscally prudent,” Rogers said, he thoughtfully suggests that the government consider helping only those states with “double digit drops in revenue. No other state in the union has seen or will see its revenues decline by a greater margin than Nevada.” So 'fiscal prudence' means helping you out, Jim? Or does it just mean helping those states that have spent themselves into a hole? Either way, it seems likely that some amount of money will be forthcoming, as Nevada is home to Sen. Harry Reid. Read the full story here.
Posted by: Jordan in Politics, Government on
Nov 18, 2008
Soros-Funded Democratic Idea Factory Becomes Obama Policy FontEdwin Chen : Bloomberg Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Three blocks from the White House, on the 10th floor of a sleek glass building, young workers pound at computers, with giant flat-screen TVs overhead. It has the look and feel of a high-tech startup. In many ways it is. The product is ideas. Thanks in part to funding from benefactors such as billionaire George Soros, the Center for American Progress has become in just five years an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals, including many that are shaping the agenda of the new Obama administration. Read More...
Posted by: Jordan in Economy on
Nov 18, 2008
GOVERNMENTS CAN'T HANDLE GLOBAL RUN ON GOLD COINSJohn Crudele : NY Post THERE'S a worldwide run on gold coins. Even as the price of the precious metal itself comes under pressure along with commodities like oil and copper, people around the world are demanding so many of the valuable coins that government mints are having difficulty filling orders. A spokesperson for the US Mint tells me that gold coins in this country, for the past month, "are being allocated because of an increased demand." And the price that the government charges coin dealers has recently been increased by as much as 10 percent for a 10-ounce coin. Robert Mish, a coin dealer in Menlo Park, Calif., says customers who want to purchase 200 gold coins often have to wait up to two weeks. Six months ago, he said, a purchase that size could have been filled immediately. Read More...
Posted by: Jordan in Peace and War, Government on
Nov 18, 2008
Russian spy in Nato could have passed on missile defence and cyber-war secretsRoger Boyes : Times A spy at the heart of Nato may have passed secrets on the US missile shield and cyber-defence to Russian Intelligence, it has emerged. Herman Simm, 61, an Estonian defence ministry official who was arrested in September, was responsible for handling all of his country's classified information at Nato, giving him access to every top-secret graded document from other alliance countries. He was recruited by the Russians in the late 1980s and has been charged in Estonia with supplying information to a foreign power. Read More...
Posted by: Mark Cahall in Economy on
Nov 18, 2008
By George Friedman: Stratfor.com A complex sequence of meetings addressing the international financial crisis took place this weekend. The weekend began with meetings among the finance ministers of the G-7 leading industrialized nations. It was followed by a meeting of finance ministers from the G-20, the group of industrial and emerging powers that together constitute 90 percent of the world’s economy. There were also meetings with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. The meetings concluded on Sunday with a summit of the eurozone, those European Union countries that use the euro as their currency. Along with these meetings, there were endless bilateral meetings far too numerous to catalog. The weekend was essentially about this: the global political system is seeking to utilize the assets of the global economy (by taxing or printing money) in order to take control of the global financial system. The premise is that the chaos in the financial system is such that the markets cannot correct the situation themselves, and certainly not in an acceptable period of time; and that if the situation were to go on, the net result would be not just financial chaos but potentially economic disaster. Therefore, governments decided to use the resources of the economy to solve the problem. Put somewhat more simply, the various governments of the world were going to nationalize portions of the global financial system in order to stave off disaster. The assumption was that the resources of the economy, mobilized by the state, could manage — and ultimately repair — the imbalances of the financial system. Read more...
Posted by: Mark Cahall in Economy on
Nov 18, 2008
by Michel Chossudovsky: GlobalResearch.ca The financial crisis is deepening, with the risk of seriously disrupting the system of international payments. This crisis is far more serious than the Great Depression. All major sectors of the global economy are affected. Recent reports suggest that the system of Letters of Credit as well as international shipping, which constitute the lifeline of the international trading system, are potentially in jeopardy. The proposed bank "bailout" under the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is not a "solution" to the crisis but the "cause" of further collapse. The "bailout" contributes to a further process of destabilization of the financial architecture. It transfers large amounts of public money, at taxpayers expense, into the hands of private financiers. It leads to a spiraling public debt and an unprecedented centralization of banking power. Moreover, the bailout money is used by the financial giants to secure corporate acquisitions both in the financial sector and the real economy. In turn, this unprecedented concentration of financial power spearheads entire sectors of industry and the services economy into bankruptcy, leading to the layoff of tens of thousands of workers. The upper spheres of Wall Street overshadow the real economy. The accumulation of large amounts of money wealth by a handful of Wall Street conglomerates and their associated hedge funds is reinvested in the acquisition of real assets. Paper wealth is transformed into the ownership and control of real productive assets, including industry, services, natural resources, infrastructure, etc. Collapse of Consumer Demand The real economy is in crisis. The resulting increase in unemployment is conducive to a dramatic decline in consumer spending which in turn backlashes on the levels of production of goods and services. Exacerbated by neoliberal macro-economic policy, this downward spiral is cumulative, ultimately leading to an oversupply of commodities. Business enterprises cannot sell their products, because workers have been laid off. Consumers, namely working people, have been deprived of the purchasing power required to fuel economic growth. With their meager earnings, they cannot afford to acquire the goods produced. Overproduction Triggers a String of Bankruptcies Read more...
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