Weekday NEWS to Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.
Tues 03.09.2010
Ron Paul on the Census 2010
Washington Must Ban U.S. Credit Derivatives as Traders Demand Gold By: Janet Tavakoli - MarketOracle.co.uk -- Congress should act immediately to abolish credit default swaps on the United States, because these derivatives will foment distortions in global currencies and gold. Failure to act now will only mean the U.S. will be forced to act after these "financial weapons of mass destruction" levy heavy casualties. These obligations now settle in euros, but the end game is to settle them in gold. This is so ripe for speculative manipulation that you might as well cover the U.S. map with a bull's-eye.
Are Traders Demanding US Credit Default Swaps Payable in Gold? JESSE'S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN If another author had said this I might not pay it so much attention. Lately some have been given over to a tabloid approach to overstatement and sensational headlines to attract attention. This is a strong temptation as the blogosphere expands, similar to the development and evolution of newspapers as a popular medium in Victorian London for example. But as you know, I have a great deal of respect and admiration for Janet Tavakoli and her knowledge in this area. If she is seeing a new demand for Credit Default Swaps on the US payable in gold I would credit it since this is her area of expertise and industry connections, but would ask for some particulars, which I have done. This would match up with some things I have heard from other sources, and desire to continue to put the puzzle pieces together without traveling false trails. For now it remains all opaque, speculation, and rumor.
Can the Fed policy help boost gold price? By Dan Norcini The big mover in gold today was news that the Fed will increase the number of counterparties that they can do these so-called, “reverse repos” with. That was interpreted by some traders as a hint that tightening is on its way. That led to chatter that some would opt towards holding Treasuries and other interest rate products. Maybe that explains why bonds moved higher today with all those folks rushing in to buy them and sell gold. Whoops, bonds fell today. So much for plan A.
Unemployment By: Howard Katz - MarketOracle.co.uk Well, the train is pulling out of the station. Gold has said goodbye to the $1,000 level and is off for northern climes. It is not your last chance to get on board, but it is your last chance to get on board at these low, low prices. The hard analysis of the past few months has been identifying the intermediate bottom, but now that that is in it is time to step back and once again focus on the big picture. Friday’s Wall Street Journal has an excellent article on unemployment and the “minimum wage” law, and this is a very good time to discuss this most important subject.
‘Gold likely to rise at least by 30% this year’ The Gold Report caught up with John Embry, Chief Investment Strategist, Sprott Asset Management, to get his thoughts on gold and some mining stocks he favors. Embry, an industry expert in precious metals, has researched the gold sector for over 30 years. Read about why he thinks gold could gain another 30% this year as a greater proportion of the public realizes the degree of difficulty that sovereign debt is in. He believes as confidence in gold returns people will seek an outlet in gold stocks, especially small-cap gold producers and junior explorers with solid projects.
Gold may cross $1,200 in March NEW YORK (Commodity Online): Will gold prices hit $1,200 per ounce this month? If you go by the opinion of bullion market analysts, the yellow metal may cross $1,200 mark this month as the bull run in bullion has already started. In January, the yellow metal had crossed $1,160 per ounce. And analysts now say that this will go beyond $1,200 this month. Reason for this is the fluctuation in gold prices. Dollar fluctuated between gains and losses against a six-currency index last week. Gold gained 1.5 per cent last week in New York market. Gold has entered a rally, as its price has steadily risen from $1,043.75 on February 5.
Gold ticks higher on euro; palladium near 2-year high By Lewa Pardomuan SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Gold ticked higher on Monday after a firmer euro spurred bargain hunting from investors seeking a safe haven from volatile currencies, while palladium held near its strongest level in nearly two years. A steady increase in ETF holdings showed a growing interest in bullion but the physical market was muted in Asia, with dealers reporting persistent sales of scrap from Indonesia. Gold priced in euro was within sight of Friday's record.
China holds 1054 tons of gold reserves BEIJING (Commodity Online) : World’s largest gold producer, China’s gold reserve amounts to 1,054 tons, ranking fifth in the world, according to China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE). However SAFE chief Yi Gang said the country would face serious constraints if it wanted to increase its gold holdings because the acquisitions would push up the price of the precious metal.
XGD Confirms New Gold Rally By: Neil Charnock - MarketOracle.co.uk I have fantastic news to report this week. The XGD has formed a powerful buy signal indicating that the way forward is up again for the Australian gold sector. I have shown this signal in the daily XGD chart below with some resistance levels overhead which we are currently cutting through with apparent ease. Chances are that this will continue and that the awaited second leg of the gold rally that began in September 2009 at around US$954 is now back on track. Firstly let us take a look at gold.
Gold remains volatile as dollar eases SINGAPORE (Commodity Online) : Gold prices remained volatile in Asian trade Monday as the dollar eased while improvement in the global economy reduces demand for haven investments. Spot gold was seen trading at $1134.14 an ounce at 12.00 noon Singapore time while Gold for April delivery rose $2.10 to settle at $1,135.20 an ounce at the same time. Analysts said the precious yellow metal ticked higher Monday on a firmer euro after ending about $20 higher last week as a sovereign debt crisis in Greece ignited safe haven buying, which also sent euro-priced bullion to record.
John Embry Says Gold Will Rise As Confidence Returns MarketOracle.co.uk The Gold Report caught up with John Embry, Chief Investment Strategist, Sprott Asset Management, to get his thoughts on gold and some mining stocks he favors. Embry, an industry expert in precious metals, has researched the gold sector for over 30 years. Read about why he thinks gold could gain another 30% this year as a greater proportion of the public realizes the degree of difficulty that sovereign debt is in. He believes as confidence in gold returns people will seek an outlet in gold stocks, especially small-cap gold producers and junior explorers with solid projects.
China, India drive platinum group metals boom By Jon Nadler Gold prices started Monday’s trading session on a relatively steady note, with gold making a small, $1.30 advance on the tickers, and opening at $1135.70 per troy ounce. The weekend was rather bereft of major Greek-related news, save for the absence of any overt German or EU commitments to Prime Minister Papandreou. French President Sarkozy, on the other hand, pledged that the euro region stands ready to rescue Greece if the need arises. What he knows that his official friends in Berlin, Frankfurt, or Brussels, are reluctant to make public, remains an open question at this time.
Time for Silver to Shine? The Sovereign Society - SilverBearCafe.com Universally regarded as a "poor man’s gold," silver is at the cusp of a major secular rally that will outpace gold prices as the next leg of the bull market takes hold in 2010-2011. Adjusted for inflation since 1980, silver prices should be trading at roughly $128 an ounce. But massive manipulation from four major short-sellers, including J.P. Morgan (JPM), has placed enormous pressure on silver over the last several months even as investment demand soars - mainly from booming coin sales and ETFs, or exchange-traded funds.
Beijing studies severing peg to US dollar By Geoff Dyer in Beijing - FT China’s central bank chief laid the groundwork for an appreciation of the renminbi at the weekend when he described the current dollar peg as temporary, striking a more emollient tone after months of tough opposition in Beijing to a shift in exchange rate policy. Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, gave the strongest hint yet from a senior official that China would abandon the unofficial dollar peg, in place since mid-2008. He said it was a “special” policy to weather the financial crisis.
Yuan Faces Appreciation Pressure on Rates, SAFE Says By Bloomberg News March 9 (Bloomberg) -- China’s yuan is facing increasing pressure to appreciate because of a widening interest-rate differential, the country’s top currency regulator said in a statement. Speculative capital is flowing into China disguised as foreign direct investment and trade accounts through “underground money shops,” Yi Gang, head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said at a briefing in Beijing today.
Goldman Sucks
The Global Debt Crisis By: Marius Gustavson - Mises Daily With all the attention being focused on whether or not there will be a sustainable recovery in 2010, the potential for a wave of sovereign-debt crises following the wake of the global recession has just recently started to appear on people's radar screens. Yet, such a wave should not be surprising. As historical research conducted by University of Maryland economist Carmen Reinhart and Harvard University economist Kenneth Rogoff shows, financial crises are usually followed by government-debt crises. This starts as private debt is shifted onto the balance sheet of the government, through bailouts and purchases of toxic debt. The government-debt problem is then made worse as the economic downturn leads to an increase in expenditures in the form of unemployment benefits and stimulus spending, coupled with a decrease in tax revenues.
The Cross of Debt Vox Day - SilverBearCafe.com Ordinary people, farmers and fishermen, taxpayers, doctors, nurses, teachers are being asked to shoulder through their taxes a burden that was created by irresponsible greedy bankers. – Iceland President Olafur Grimsson In October 2008, polls showed that the majority of the American people, 56 percent, were opposed to the $700 billion TARP bill that funded the bank bailouts at the cost of $2,334 to each and every 300 million of them. Despite some initial resistance shown by the Republicans in the House of Representatives, the bankers succeeded in overriding the will of the American people, thanks to their elected officials who purport to represent them. So much for democracy in America.
Marc Faber: Buy Some Gold Every Month 'Forever' LewRockwell.com According to Marc Faber, the editor and publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, everybody should buy some gold every month “forever” or look to EMs stocks rather than U.S. share. “Gold is not the liability of someone else…its quantity cannot increase at the same rate as you can print money, which will eventually…weaken the US dollar,” Faber told CNBC on Thursday in a live interview.
Trade Deficits and Fiat Currencies By: Robert Murphy - Mises Daily There is a connection between fiat currencies and trade deficits, and many cynics have argued that the US dollar's status as global reserve currency allowed Americans to consume more than they produced for decades. However, this "deficit without tears" argument is sometimes overstated. To gain a deeper understanding of both monetary theory and international trade, it's useful to probe the issue more carefully.
CBO Debt Projections: Make Room for “Crowding Out” By Addison Wiggin - The DailyReckoining.com 03/08/10 Baltimore, Maryland – The latest deficit projection from the Congressional Budget Office was conveniently revealed just prior to the close of business on Friday. “Why so?” You ask suspiciously. “Because,” we respond in a hushed tone. The CBO’s latest numbers reveal that President Obama’s proposed fiscal 2011 budget would add $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years. The White House projection is only slightly less staggering – $8.5 trillion. Further, the CBO projects the national debt will be 90% of GDP by the end of this decade – higher than the 83.4% recorded at the end of fiscal 2009 last fall. We’re 100% certain this comment will elicit the customary response: “Look at Japan, its debt is 170% of GDP…and it’s been running massive deficits for years!”
Big bank oversight to stay with Fed By Tom Braithwaite in Washington - FT Banks with more than $100bn of assets will be overseen by the US Federal Reserve under a regulatory reform plan that represents a partial victory for the central bank after months of attacks in Congress. Chris Dodd, the Senate banking committee chairman, had proposed hiving off all bank supervision to a single regulator but is set to propose this week that the 23 largest institutions stay under the Fed’s oversight, according to people familiar with the plans.
Why Banks Can't Lend: U.S. Financial System "Not as Good as Wall Street Says" by Heesun Wee - TechTicker.com -- Forget the unemployment rate, durable goods orders or the Baltic Freight Index. Veteran market watcher Richard Suttmeier says the FDIC quarterly banking profile is "the single most important leading indicator for the U.S. economy." Released about 55 days after the end of each quarter, the FDIC report offers a bird's eye view of lending activity in America, especially among smaller Main Street lenders and small businesses. "It's a balance sheet of our economy," says Suttmeier, chief market strategist at Niagara International Capital and ValueEngine.com.
Can Treasury Nudge Lenders Into More Short Sales? Don't Bank On It By PETER COHAN - DailyFinance.com The U.S. Treasury is trying to break up the logjam that's holding back the housing market. The problem is that many homes are worth less than the principal balance on their mortgages. The government hopes to encourage all parties involved to accept short sales in some of these cases, allowing homeowners to get out from under the debt without declaring bankruptcy, and banks to get some percentage of their investments back without going through costly and cumbersome foreclosures.
Program Will Pay Homeowners to Sell at a Loss By DAVID STREITFELD - NYTimes.com In an effort to end the foreclosure crisis, the Obama administration has been trying to keep defaulting owners in their homes. Now it will take a new approach: paying some of them to leave. This latest program, which will allow owners to sell for less than they owe and will give them a little cash to speed them on their way, is one of the administration’s most aggressive attempts to grapple with a problem that has defied solutions.
U.S. Taxpayers on the Hook for $5T of Fannie, Freddie Debt … No Matter What Barney Frank Says by Aaron Task - TechTicker.com House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank caused a bit of an uproar Friday when he suggested the U.S. government does not guarantee the debts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Rep. Frank later recanted and backed a Treasury Department statement reassuring investors that, yes, Fannie and Freddie Mae debt is guaranteed by the U.S. government. "Going forward," he said in a statement, we "will make sure that there are no implicit guarantees, hints, suggestions, or winks and nods...we will be explicit about what is and is not an obligation of the federal government."
Merkel warns of hurdles in EMF plan By Quentin Peel in Berlin, Ben Hall in Paris and Tony Barber in Brussels - FT -- Radical plans for a European version of the International Monetary Fund to bail out crisis-hit countries would need a new treaty and the agreement of all European Union member states, Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, has warned. Throwing her weight behind the proposals from Wolfgang Schäuble, her finance minister, Ms Merkel admitted the European Union had lacked the tools to deal with the Greek debt crisis: “The sanctions we have were not good enough.”
Why Europe needs its own IMF By Giancarlo Corsetti and Harold James - FT Like every good tragedy, the current Greek crisis has its origins in events and decisions long past. In particular, two historical flaws in the European approach to monetary and fiscal management have emerged as threats to European stability. They are not fatal; but they need to be fixed. The first is the absence of a mechanism to address financial crises that could threaten, via contagion, the whole European market. It is worth recalling that this problem was well understood by the founding fathers of the common currency. The agreements of 1978 that produced the European Monetary System as a comprehensive fixed exchange rate regime also provided for the establishment of a European Monetary Fund within two years. An EMF would play an analogous role to that of the International Monetary Fund in the defunct international fixed exchange rate regime that had been created at Bretton Woods. In particular, it would allow countries that were hit by a sudden or unanticipated crisis to draw on its resources, and, like the IMF, would have allowed formal policy conditions to be imposed on countries. The EMF was never realised – but is once again under discussion.
European Monetary Fund: You Heard it Here First By Chuck Butler - The DailyReckoning.com . . . . OK… Call me clairvoyant… Nah… I’m not that! I’m just a guy that sees things and thinks of ways to make them work better… In this case I’m talking about the announcement over the weekend of the European Monetary Fund… That’s right! I did talk about the Eurozone creating this European Monetary Fund, a week ago, long before anyone even whispered it! Why did I think this? Because I knew that the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Union were not going to go for any assistance to Greece by the IMF… So… I figured that it would be best for them to form their own IMF… And lo and behold, look what they announced this past weekend! “The European Monetary Fund, patterned after the International Monetary Fund, is a key part of an initiative backed by Germany and France to strengthen cooperation and surveillance of public finances across the Eurozone, government officials said. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble revealed details of the plan during the weekend.”
Tax move by Brazil risks US trade war By James Politi in Washington and Jonathan Wheatley in São Paulo - FT -- Brazil moved on Monday to raise tariffs on a wide range of American goods, potentially igniting a trade war with the US over cotton subsidies after eight years of litigation at the World Trade Organisation. The decision takes effect next month, starting a 30-day period during which US and Brazilian officials will attempt to negotiate a solution to the dispute.
States’ Payrolls Lag as U.S. Austerity Sets In By Anthony Feld and Courtney Schlisserman March 8 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. state and local governments are likely to keep cutting jobs even as the broader labor market shows signs of emerging from the worst slump since World War II, economists said. The CHART OF THE DAY shows combined employment by state and local governments fell for eight straight months through February. The streak of losses was the longest since two years of declines ending in 1983. State and local governments, which account for about 13 percent of gross domestic product, have so far cut a total of 192,000 jobs since August 2008, when employment peaked at 19.8 million.
State Tax Revenues Plummet By $87 Billion, Biggest Year Over Year Decline In History; Record State Tax Hikes In Progress by Tyler Durden - ZeroHedge.com -- The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has released a report "State Tax Changes in Response to the Recession" in which the center notes that "national recession has had such a devastating effect on state finances that states took in $87 billion less in tax revenue from October 2008 through September 2009 than they collected in the previous 12 months. This 11 percent decline, the steepest on record, resulted from the impact on tax collections of lost jobs, reduced wages, and lowered economic activity." And here we are, missing the forest for the Greek tree, and discussing evil CDS speculators' role in Greece barely able to make a €5 billion bond auction, when we should be all over the evil Municipal CDS speculators wreaking havoc in our own back yard.
Failed Banks May Get Pension-Fund Backing as FDIC Seeks Cash By Dakin Campbell -- March 8 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is trying to encourage public retirement funds that control more than $2 trillion to buy all or part of failed lenders, taking a more direct role in propping up the banking system, said people briefed on the matter. Direct investments may allow funds such as those in Oregon, New Jersey and California to cut fees for private-equity managers, and the agency to get better prices for distressed assets, the people said. They declined to be identified because talks with regulators are confidential.
Why Is Obama's Chief of Staff Already Distancing Himself From the President? by Henry Blodget - TechTicker.com -- Washington D.C. loves to talk, and one of the favorite topics last week was about how White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel had advised President Obama to put off health-care reform until the country was less obsessed about the economy...and that the President had not taken this advice. In the inner circles, the talk was not so much about whether Emmanuel had been right about health care and President Obama wrong, but who had leaked this difference of opinion to the press.
Bernanke Wrongly Calls 'Bizarre' Allegations Cited by Ron Paul by Charles Scaliger - LewRockwell.com -- On February 24, Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), at a hearing held by the House Financial Services Committee, asked Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke whether he was aware of allegations that the Federal Reserve had been complicit in the Watergate cover-up and in the illegal funneling of billions of dollars in loans to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein: "It has been reported in the past that during the 1980s that the Fed actually facilitated a $5.5-billion loan to Saddam Hussein. And he then bought weapons from our military-industrial complex. And also that is when he invested in a nuclear reactor....
Fed Audit Bitterly Opposed By Treasury Ryan Grim - HuffingtonPost.com The Treasury Department is vigorously opposed to a House-passed measure that would open the Federal Reserve to an audit by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a senior Treasury official said Monday. Instead, the official said, the Treasury prefers a substitute offered by Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.), and would like to see it enacted as part of the Senate bill. The Watt measure, however, while claiming to increase transparency, actually puts new restrictions on the GAO's ability to perform an audit.
Fed’s Reach May Be Curbed Under Plan By SEWELL CHAN - NY Times.com Several high-ranking members of the Senate Banking Committee have reached a tentative consensus on a plan that would strip the Federal Reserve of regulatory powers over all but the very largest banks, those with more than $100 billion in assets, people briefed on the negotiations said on Monday night. The plan would remove Fed oversight from all but 23 of the 4,974 bank holding companies, which have a collective $16.7 trillion in assets, and from 874 state-chartered member banks that are members of the Fed system and that have a total of $1.7 trillion in assets.
A dangerous omen looms for bonds Posted by George Mannes - CNNMoney.com One of the key questions faced by investors today, a year after the markets were at their worst, is how safe it is to go back in the water. Given that bonds have turned out to be a better bet than stocks over the past 20 years — and given the steep decline and perhaps shaky rebound in the equity markets — is it time to reassess the primacy of stocks in our portfolios? Will we be better off with the security and steadiness of bonds? A great answer to that question came last week from Charles Schwab chief investment strategist Liz Ann Sonders. Presenting her outlook on the economy and the markets to a group in New York City, Sonders spotlighted what appears to be a powerful contrarian indicator — that is, measure of how the investing herd is zigging in the market, giving a wise and brave investor a roadmap of where to zag.
The Fastest Growing Export of the Western Banking Industry is Fraud by SmartKnowledgeU - ZeroHedge.com -- Despite the fact that nearly all of the macroeconomic trends I have predicted since 2006 on my blog, the Underground Investor, have come true, the percent of people that disagree with my predictions for 2010 and 2011 still outnumber those that agree by a factor of ten to one. There is a rational explanation why the public-at-large still grants a great deal of validity to the opinions of people I like to call the “men who cry wolf” – Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geitner, Gordon Brown, Alan Greenspan, et al.
The fall of a Wall Street highflier By Patricia Sellers (Fortune Magazine) When Erin Callan talked, people listened. Such was the case at least on the March 2008 weekend after Bear Stearns collapsed. Global markets were reeling. Many feared that Lehman Brothers would be the next to fail. And Callan, a tax-lawyer-turned-investment-banker who had rocketed to CFO of Lehman at age 41, was about to be tested. Throughout the weekend and then on Monday from 5 a.m. on, Lehman's brass, including Callan, hunkered down in the firm's Manhattan headquarters, making phone calls in the hopes of calming investors and trading partners. Despite their efforts, Lehman shares tumbled 19% that day.
Consumer Debt and the Supply-Demand Dynamic By The Mogambo Guru -The DailyReckoning.com 03/08/10 Tampa, Florida – I was recently reminded of the old argument about Say’s Law, and that reminded me that it was Keynes who twisted Say’s theories around to create the ridiculous argument that supply created its own demand, which I say is a load of crap, which pretty much sums up a lot of what Keynes did, probably because he was an egotistical idiot-savant who erroneously thought that he could put economics and human behavior in terms of absolutes that you could turn into equations, a particular, arrogant stupidity that has, nonetheless, fascinated generations of economists since then, all of whom childishly delight in equations and computers, whether it means anything or not, which it doesn’t, which I can actually prove – prove! – with an entire storage area full (the “supply”) of ashtrays made out of dried dog crap, which nobody wanted to buy (the “demand”), proving that supply does NOT create its own demand.
What if We Had a Federal Database Tracking Domestic Political Activity? Matt Welch - Reason.com Now this–this is a good lede: Imagine if the George W. Bush administration, in its waning days, had introduced something called the Patriot II Act. To prevent terrorists and foreign agents from influencing American governments and political parties, the act would require political campaigns and other groups to report the names, addresses, and employers of their supporters to the federal government, which would enter the information into a database. The act would also give businesses access to this database, enabling them to make hiring decisions, credit determinations, and other choices based on political activity. Can anyone doubt that Patriot II would be widely considered a gross violation of civil liberties? Fortunately, the government never passed such a bill. Unfortunately, it didn't need to: this is already the law, and it has been for over 30 years. That's from the former chairman of the Federal Elections Commission, Bradley Smith, writing "in defense of political anonymity" over at City Journal. It's an interesting piece no matter where you stand on the issue of disclosing campaign contributions, and not just because it quotes from Senior Editor Brian Doherty's definitive history of libertarianism, Radicals for Capitalism.
AIG sells Alico unit to MetLife for $15.5 billion By IEVA M. AUGSTUMS CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) - American International Group Inc. said Monday that it will sell its American Life Insurance Co. division for $15.5 billion to MetLife Inc. The government-approved deal, AIG's second big asset sale in two weeks, will give the insurer more cash to repay the billions of bailout dollars it still owes the government. The purchase expands MetLife's presence in Japan and high-growth markets in Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. American Life Insurance, known as Alico, operates in more than 50 countries. MetLife currently offers services in 17 countries.
Detroit looks at downsizing to save city By David Runk AP via WashingtonPost.com Wants to turn vacant lots into farmland Detroit, the very symbol of American industrial might for most of the 20th century, is drawing up a radical renewal plan that calls for turning large swaths of this now-blighted, rusted-out city back into the fields and farmland that existed before the automobile. Operating on a scale never before attempted in this country, the city would demolish houses in some of the most desolate sections of Detroit and move residents into stronger neighborhoods. Roughly a quarter of the 139-square-mile city could go from urban to semi-rural.
Seniors pinched by rising costs for home care By STEPHANIE REITZ AP via MSNBC.com Many may be pushed into costly nursing homes if states slash programs WATERBURY, Conn. - Rising property taxes, failing eyesight and even a tumble that cracked her tailbone haven't forced 89-year-old Angeline DiBeneditto from the home she's had for more than six decades. Now, though, changes in a Connecticut program that helps her and others live independently could push her toward a nursing home after all if she can't scrounge at least $180 more from her monthly budget.
Vineyard Defaults Surge as Bargain Wines Hurt Napa By Dan Levy March 8 (Bloomberg) -- In California’s Napa Valley, producer of the most expensive U.S. wines, 2010 may be a vintage year for foreclosures as the industry is squeezed by falling land values and a consumer shift to cheaper brands. As many as 10 wineries and vineyards in Napa will change hands in distressed sales or foreclosures this year and next, up from none in 2008, according to Silicon Valley Bank. In a bank survey of vintners, 7 percent called their finances “very weak” or “on life support.”
Obama hits road, pitches health plan By Kara Rowland - WashingtonTimes.com Seeking to close the deal on his health care overhaul bill, President Obama is getting out of Washington, leaving the city he loves to bash to portray himself as an outsider going up against big insurance companies and their lobbyists in the capital. Just about every time Mr. Obama has faced a deadline or crunch on his top policy priority, he has exchanged a White House podium for a campaign-style event somewhere beyond the Beltway in a bid to break through the political wrangling and reconnect with voters.
Gas price headed back to $3 a gallon this spring By Julie Schmit, USA TODAY The national average price for a gallon of gasoline is up 9 cents in a month and will likely crack $3 in coming weeks, given a typical spring rally before the summer driving season, oil and gas analysts say. Motorists may not see prices go much higher — or even stay that high throughout the entire summer — given the weak economy and the ability of refiners to kick up production, analysts add. "Three dollars a gallon is probably a pretty rich price for the U.S. in 2010," says Tom Kloza, analyst for the Oil Price Information Service.
Venezuela linked to terror groups By Martin Arostegui - WashingtonTimes.com Accused by Spain of aiding Basques, Colombians Accusations by Spanish authorities that Venezuela aided an alliance between Basque and Colombian terror groups that plotted joint attacks in Colombia and Spain have revived a debate over Venezuela's possible role as a state sponsor of terrorism. A Feb. 24 indictment issued by Judge Eloy Velasco of Spain's anti-terrorism court specifically cites "Venezuelan governmental cooperation" with 12 members of the Basque separatist group ETA and guerrillas of the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
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