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Weekday NEWS to Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.

Wednesday 06.30.2010

Hotbutton issue! Contact your elected congressmen for clarification on the 1099 tax reporting provision. We'll be adding more information today and beyond, as we try to sort out the facts.

Small Business owners will bear the brunt of legislation.

Health-Care Bill Surprise: 1099 Nightmare
By John Tozzi - BusinessWeek.com
A clause buried in the bill requires more tax forms—and small business will bear the brunt
Anyone who makes it to page 737 of the massive health-care bill approved by Congress in March will find a three-paragraph section that has nothing to do with hospitals, doctors, or drugs. The provision, inserted by Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee to help offset the cost of the bill, requires companies to report to the IRS payments of more than $600 a year to any vendor. The intent is noble: to capture $2 billion or more a year in taxes on income that currently goes unreported by contractors and small businesses.

$600 Sale? Get Ready for Tax Form
By David L. Ganz, Numismatic News
A blizzard of paperwork could be about to hit numismatics.
Passage by Congress of the national health care legislation has had an unintended consequence to the nation's coin collectors, vest-pocket dealers who buy and sell coins, and larger dealers who are frequent buyers of coins that collectors periodically liquidate as they trade up their collections for better coins, or simply sell to take a small profit or loss.
What has happened is that effective Jan. 1, 2012, the whole system of giving and receiving Internal Revenue Service 1099 forms will be turned on its head and all persons (including corporations) who are in business will now have to give 1099 tax reporting forms for coins and other goods that they sell as well as buy.

The 2010 Health Care Reform Bill and what it Means for Small Businesses by SEAN - StartUpLoans.com
Tucked away in the health-care overhaul bill that became law this year was a provision that will require small-business owners to keep better records of what they buy. They'll also have to report some purchases to the government. This will apply to any trade or business.
What does it mean for a small business?
This new law requires small businesses to issue 1099 forms to people or companies that sell them more than $600 worth of goods or services. It takes the 1099 beyond its most common business use, which is to report money paid to independent contractors or freelancers.
The law doesn't take effect until Jan. 1, 2012, which means owners won't have to worry about the paperwork until early 2013, when they're compiling their 2012 returns. But owners whose books and finances are chaotic might want to get themselves organized in the meantime so keeping track of such payments and reporting them become routine.

Location in Internal Revenue Code
TITLE 26 - INTERNAL REVENUE CODE
Subtitle F - Procedure and Administration
CHAPTER 61 - INFORMATION AND RETURNS
Subchapter A - Returns and Records
PART III - INFORMATION RETURNS
Subpart B - Information Concerning Transactions With Other Persons

Statute
Sec. 6041. Information at source

(a) Payments of $600 or more
All persons engaged in a trade or business and making payment in
the course of such trade or business to another person, of rent,
salaries, wages, premiums, annuities, compensations, remunerations,
emoluments, or other fixed or determinable gains, profits, and
income (other than payments to which section 6042(a)(1),
6044(a)(1), 6047(e), 6049(a), or 6050N(a) applies, and other than
payments with respect to which a statement is required under the
authority of section 6042(a)(2), 6044(a)(2), or 6045), or $600 or
more in any taxable year, or, in the case of such payments made by
the United States, the officers or employees of the United States
having information as to such payments and required to make returns
in regard thereto by the regulations hereinafter provided for,
shall render a true and accurate return to the Secretary, under
such regulations and in such form and manner and to such extent as
may be prescribed by the Secretary, setting forth the amount of
such gains, profits, and income, and the name and address of the
recipient of such payment. . . . [read the rest of this section online]

Small businesses threatened with 1099 tax form tyranny provision in health care bill by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger - Editor
(NaturalNews) According to a recent report from CNNMoney.com, the massive U.S. health care system overhaul includes more than just a transition to government-run medicine. A small section hidden away in the 2,409-page bill requires all businesses to send 1099 tax forms to every company or individual from which they purchased more than $600 in services and goods throughout the tax year, beginning on January 1, 2012.
As you'll see below, this new law threatens to cause a wave of paperwork chaos across the entire U.S. economy, stifling the operations of small businesses and driving more jobs overseas.
Here's why...

Health care law's massive, hidden tax change
By Neil deMause, May 5, 2010 - CNNMoney.com
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- An all-but-overlooked provision of the health reform law is threatening to swamp U.S. businesses with a flood of new tax paperwork.
Section 9006 of the health care bill -- just a few lines buried in the 2,409-page document -- mandates that beginning in 2012 all companies will have to issue 1099 tax forms not just to contract workers but to any individual or corporation from which they buy more than $600 in goods or services in a tax year.
The stealth change radically alters the nature of 1099s and means businesses will have to issue millions of new tax documents each year.

Costly IRS Mandate Slipped into Health Bill
Posted by Chris Edwards - CATO INstitute
Most people know about the individual mandate in the new health care bill, but the bill contained another mandate that could be far more costly.
A few wording changes to the tax code's section 6041 regarding 1099 reporting were slipped into the 2000-page health legislation. The changes will force millions of businesses to issue hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of additional IRS Form 1099s every year. It appears to be a costly, anti-business nightmare. . . .

Basically, businesses will have to issue 1099s whenever they do more than $600 of business with another entity in a year. For the $14 trillion U.S. economy, that's a hell of a lot of 1099s. When a business buys a $1,000 used car, it will have to gather information on the seller and mail 1099s to the seller and the IRS. When a small shop owner pays her rent, she will have to send a 1099 to the landlord and IRS. Recipients of the vast flood of these forms will have to match them with existing accounting records. There will be huge numbers of errors and mismatches, which will probably generate many costly battles with the IRS.

Gary Shilling: A Rough Ride Ahead for the Economy
By NIKHIL HUTHEESING - DailyFinance.com
The U.S. economy has been though the wringer over the past couple of years, and Gary Shilling, president of A. Gary Shilling & Co., says things aren't going to improve any time soon.
In a video interview here at DailyFinance, Shilling warns that we should brace for more punches from the commercial real estate market and a slowdown in the Chinese economy as well as Japan, which he calls a "slow-motion train wreck." He sees bad news ahead for unemployment, the housing market and GDP growth and says investors should be very cautious.

Recession Warning
John P. Hussman, Ph.D.
Based on evidence that has always and only been observed during or immediately prior to U.S. recessions, the U.S. economy appears headed into a second leg of an unusually challenging downturn.

Warning signals of a double-dip recession flash brightly across the world
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
Global bond markets are flashing warning signals of a sharp slowdown in growth across the world and a possible slide toward a double-dip recession and outright deflation.
The yield on two-year US Treasuries has fallen to a record low of 0.61pc in a flight to safety, a level not seen during the depths of the Great Depression. Ten-year yields dropped below the ?psychologically sensitive level of 2.96pc.
Such levels are clearly incompatible with assumptions on Wall Street for 3pc growth in the second half of this year. "If the bond market is correct then this recovery could be dead in the water," said Jim Reid, credit strategist at Deutsche Bank. The credit markets tend to sniff out trouble first and have acted as an early warning alert at every stage of the financial crisis over the past three years.

U.S. Can't Continue As Engine That Drives the Global Economy, Obama and Geithner Say
By Fred Lucas, Staff Writer
Washington (CNSNews.com) - Citing the country's trade deficit, President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner each asserted last week that the United States cannot continue to lead the world economy.
"We said in Pittsburgh [at] the G20 that it was important for us to rebalance, in part because the U.S. economy for a long period of time was the engine of world economic growth; we were sucking in imports from all across the world financed by huge amounts of consumer debt," Obama said Thursday during a joint press conference with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

The Coming Hard Rain
BY ROBERT MORLEY - theTrumpet.com
A word to the wise: Great Depression survivors warn to batten down the hatches.
Most of your typical economic analysts have never lived through a really tough period of time. For the most part, excluding a couple of short recessions, they have only experienced the good times.
To them, a depression is outside their frame of reference. It has never happened in their lives, so it isn't imaginable. It is the same for most people.
Yet there are a few voices from the Depression era still alive, and they are shouting a warning at the top of their lungs, hoping that someone, anyone, will listen.
In short: The recession is just starting, the stock market is set up for the biggest bear market crash ever, the government is going to be shocked when foreign lenders abandon it, and the dollar could devalue suddenly and catastrophically.

U.S. double-dip recession is officially coming, analyst warns
By Jameson Berkow - FinancialPost.com
The ink is barely dry on the G20 Toronto communiqué, drafted with the specific goal of lowering deficits in hopes of staving off another worldwide recession.
It was widely heralded as a success for Canadian fiscal leadership. Though at least one market watcher believes the recovery efforts will not thwart a new recession from descending upon the United States.

Desperate and Blatant Manipulation
Dan Norcini - SilverBearCafe.com
Monday must now be the new "Friday" when it comes to gold. Those of you who have been watching the gold price action over the last decade know what I am referring to. For those of you who are a bit newer to the gold game, Fridays, particularly after a payrolls report, have typically been the day on which gold was taken down by the bullion bank crowd to mess with the weekly chart and the technical picture.
Last Monday saw gold put in a horrendous bearish downside reversal day which the bulls managed to negate the rest of the week by a sheer gritty determination not to run. Today (another Monday) we have an exact repeat of the same bullion bank tactic that they employed 7 days ago; to wit, a takedown after price took out last Friday's session high while gold mining stocks were also moving sharply higher. The result - an exact repeat of last Monday technically - another bearish outside reversal day on the daily chart. This coming on the heels of a brand new record high in Dollar terms at the London PM Fix ($1,261).

U.S. Economy: Consumer Confidence Sinks on Concern Over Jobs
By Timothy R. Homan
June 29 (Bloomberg) -- Confidence among U.S. consumers sank in June more than forecast as Americans became distressed over the outlook for jobs and incomes.
The Conference Board's confidence index slumped to 52.9 this month, below the lowest forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, from a revised 62.7 in May, figures from the New York-based private research group showed today. Another report showed home prices climbed, propelled by a homebuyer credit.

Jim Rogers: Buy Silver - CNN Money

The Bad-Policy Spiral
BY STEVE SAVILLE - GreenFaucet.com
According to a recent article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, "Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is waging an epochal battle behind the scenes for control of US monetary policy, struggling to overcome resistance from regional Fed hawks for further possible stimulus to prevent a deflationary spiral." The article goes on to explain that with the economy rolling over the Fed should be prepared to quickly inject a massive amount of new money, and that pig-headed resistance to more monetary inflation by a few Fed governors poses a serious threat. However, nowhere in the article is there a logical explanation of how counterfeiting more money would benefit the economy. This could be because such an explanation doesn't exist.

G20 Meddlers At It Again
By Bill Bonner - The DailyReckoning.com
Waterford, Ireland - Dow went nowhere yesterday. Gold fell $17.
"The doctrine of regulation and legislation by'master minds,' in whose judgment and will all the people may gladly and quietly acquiesce, has been too glaringly apparent at Washington during these last ten years. Were it possible to find 'master minds' so unselfish, so willing to decide unhesitatingly against their own personal interests or private prejudices, men almost godlike in their ability to hold the scales of justice with an even hand, such a government might be to the interests of the country; but there are none such on our political horizon, and we cannot expect a complete reversal of all the teachings of history."

Greeks Strike to Protest Pensions, Labor Law Overhaul
By Maria Petrakis and Natalie Weeks
June 29 (Bloomberg) -- More than 9,000 protesters marched through Athens today as Greek unions staged their fifth general strike of the year to challenge government plans to cut pension benefits and loosen labor laws.
The walkout halted state services including public transport and tax offices and disrupted some hospitals. The 24 - hour stoppage hit ferry lines at Piraeus, Greece's largest port, as the Panhellenic Union of Merchant Marine Engineers demanded changes to "anti-social measures."

Keiser Report 55:

Obama Says Economy Hitting 'Headwinds' From Europe
by Julianna Goldman
June 29 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said after meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke that the U.S. economy is strengthening even as it faces "headwinds" because of concerns about the European debt crisis.
"We have seen some very positive trends in a number of sectors, unfortunately because of the troubles we've seen in Europe we're now seeing some headwinds and skittishness and nervousness on the part of the markets," Obama said at the White House after a meeting with his economic advisers.

Europe's Fiscal Dystopia: the "New Austerity" Road
By MICHAEL HUDSON
Europe is committing fiscal suicide - and will have little trouble finding allies at this weekend's G-20 meetings in Toronto. Despite the deepening Great Recession threatening to bring on outright depression, European Central Bank (ECB) president Jean-Claude Trichet and prime ministers from Britain's David Cameron to Greece's George Papandreou (president of the Socialist International) and Canada's host, Conservative Premier Stephen Harper, are calling for cutbacks in public spending.
The United States is playing an ambiguous role. The Obama Administration is all for slashing Social Security and pensions, euphemized as "balancing the budget." Wall Street is demanding "realistic" write-downs of state and local pensions in keeping with the "ability to pay" (that is, to pay without taxing real estate, finance or the upper income brackets).

Global markets fall sharply on economic woes
By Nathaniel Popper, Walter Hamilton and Tom Petruno, LA Times
The Dow drops 268 points to close below the 10,000 mark as downbeat news from China, the U.S. and Europe intensifies worries about the global recovery
Reporting from New York and Los Angeles - Stocks tumbled around the world Tuesday, sending the Dow Jones industrials below the 10,000 mark, as downbeat economic news intensified fears that a stumbling global economy could send the U.S. back into recession.
The Dow closed down 268.22 points, or 2.6%, to 9,870.30 - its first close below 10,000 since June 9. The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 3.1% and the Nasdaq composite index plunged 3.8%.

Time to shut down the US Federal Reserve?
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - SilverBearCafe.com
Like a mad aunt, the Fed is slowly losing its marbles.
Kartik Athreya, senior economist for the Richmond Fed, has written a paper condemning economic bloggers as chronically stupid and a threat to public order.
Matters of economic policy should be reserved to a priesthood with the correct post-doctoral credentials, which would of course have excluded David Hume, Adam Smith, and arguably John Maynard Keynes (a mathematics graduate, with a tripos foray in moral sciences).
"Writers who have not taken a year of PhD coursework in a decent economics department (and passed their PhD qualifying exams), cannot meaningfully advance the discussion on economic policy."

U.S. Banks Laundered Mexican Drug Money
By DAILYFINANCE STAFF - DailyFinance.com
In a meeting in Mexico last March, Obama administration officials acknowledged that Americans' insatiable appetite for illegal narcotics is at the core of Mexico's drug war. But it isn't only the habits of some U.S. consumers that are keeping Mexican drug cartels in business.
In April, Mexican soldiers searched a DC-9 jet that had landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. On the plane they found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million.

The Social Function of Credit-Default Swaps
Mises Daily: by Philipp Bagus
Whenever the government causes a mess, chances are high that it will accuse speculators of being responsible.[1] In the recent financial crisis, speculators and their financial instruments have been under attack again. Some famous investors have even supported governments' attacks on speculators. Warren Buffet has called derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction."
George Soros has argued in favor of a ban on naked credit-default swaps.

The Secrets of Liquidity
Bob Chapman - TheInternationalForecaster.com
Many investors wonder how are markets able to propel themselves back and forth as they do. How do corrections turn into rallies? The secret is liquidity and the question is where does it come from?
As you know the Fed up until 14 months ago increased what once was called M3 by 15% annually. Foreign major central banks did the same cutting back a couple of months sooner than the Fed. The Fed increased M3 for 5-1/2 years and the other central banks for about four years. Starting four years ago all currencies started falling versus gold. The US dollar started about ten years ago.

Santelli:
Go Read Some Austrian Economists Instead of the Funny Pages
By Rocky Vega - The DailyReckoning.com
Rick Santelli, who has already gained plenty of notoriety for rants on CNBC, takes it to a new level in the video below. In this instance, with a message worth repeating, he screams at least five other hosts "I want the government to stop spending, stop spending, stop spending, stop spending STOP spending! That's what we want, stop spending!"

'Stop Spending!': CNBC's Rick Santelli Warns Steve Liesman 'November 2nd Is The Day'

Radical Money Printing Just Like the Continental Congress
By Bill Baker - The DailyReckoning.com
06/29/10 Baltimore, Maryland - From within the Fed in the days that the policy of quantitative easing became official, Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Plosser alerted us that "(recent economic statistics) prompted some commentators to suggest that the United States is facing a threat of sustained deflation, as we did in the Great Depression or as Japan faced for a decade.
"I do not believe this is a serious threat (but) the Fed must credibly commit to preventing sustained deflation from becoming widely anticipated, just as it must prevent sustained inflation from becoming widely anticipated."

Banks May Have 12 Years to Implement Volcker Rule
By HUGH COLLINS - DailyFinance.com
Banks such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc. may have as long as 12 years to cut their stakes in private-equity units and hedge funds under the new financial reform bill, Bloomberg News reported.
The time-frame in the bill, combined with provisions that would allow banks to apply for extensions, make it unclear exactly how quickly banks would have to reduce their investments. Estimates cited by Bloomberg News range from seven years to 12 years.

State and Local Spending Transparency Efforts
Center for Fiscal Accoountability
Find out what is happening in the area of transparency in government spending in your state by clicking on the map below.

Fannie-Freddie Bailout Could Cost Taxpayers $1 Trillion
By: Reported by Steve Liesman, written by Michelle Lodge - CNBC.com
For American taxpayers, now on the hook for some $145 billion in housing losses connected to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans, that amount could be just the tip of the iceberg.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the losses could balloon to $400 billion. And if housing prices fall further, some experts caution, the cost to the taxpayer could hit as much as $1 trillion.
Two things are clear: Taxpayers don't want to foot the bill, and Fannie and Freddie, taken over by the government in 2008 to stanch the financial bloodletting, need a major overhaul.

Whitney: Reform will hurt banks

Home Prices Could Drop 50% As The Great Recession Resumes
Richard Henry Suttmeier - Forbes
In my opinion the Recession that was time-stamped by the Economic Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) to have begun in December 2007 has not ended and continues today. How can the NBER declare an end to this Recession with unemployment at 9.7% when the Recession began with unemployment at 4.6%?
The basic causes of the Great Recession began in the Housing Market and the community banks on Main Street. Those problems have been masked by numerous failed attempts at mortgage mitigations as house prices stabilized during the period when the government was offering tax credits for first time homebuyers as well as existing homebuyers who wanted to move. Those programs ended on April 30th for contracts and for closings effective this week by the end of June 30th.

Is Home Ownership an American Right?
By: Diana Olick - CNBC Real Estate Reporter
Today we begin a series on CNBC called The Housing Fix. To be honest, it grew out of our need to look at the biggest elephant in the home today: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Maybe the government doesn't want to deal with them just yet, but that doesn't mean we should all just ignore the fact that these two ticking time bombs continue to support more than half of the mortgages in this country and the bulk of new originations.

Fannie Mae: Walk Away and You Will Pay
By: Diana Olick - CNBC Real Estate Reporter
Dare I say it? "What took you so long??"
An announcement from government-owned mortgage giant Fannie Mae warns: "Defaulting borrowers who walk-away and had the capacity to pay or did not complete a workout alternative in good faith will be ineligible for a new Fannie Mae-backed mortgage loan for a period of seven years from the date of foreclosure."
I have to ask: Why only seven years? Up the ante!

Virtual pay for real work
By Joseph Galante, Bloomberg Businessweek
Amanda Dorsey has spent dozens of hours categorizing search results on eBay, verifying search-engine links and doing other online jobs for CrowdFlower Inc., a San Francisco employment agency.
Dorsey doesn't get paid in legal tender. She takes her wages in the form of virtual money, which she's used to buy a gray winter coat and a sexy yellow doctor's uniform for her avatar, or virtual self, on TinierMe.com, a chat and game site.
There's nothing odd about it, says Dorsey, a 28-year-old unemployed writer and editor in Florida. "Doing work for virtual currency is pretty much like any other form of putting forth an effort for a reward," she said.

How Far Underwater Do Borrowers Sink Before Walking Away?
By Nick Timiraos - WSJ.com
At what point do borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth decide to stop paying the mortgage?
A new study from economists at the Federal Reserve Board aims to answer that question. The research found that the median borrower who "strategically" defaults doesn't walk away from the mortgage until the amount owed exceeds the value of the home by 62%.
The study is bad news for the mortgage industry in that it backs up the idea that a growing share of borrowers are walking away from loans. Concerns are mounting among lenders and investors that some borrowers who owe far more than their homes are worth are now choosing not to pay mortgages that they can afford.
But the silver lining here is that it suggests a rather high threshold for borrowers to walk away.

Delinquent mortgage borrowers now get free cell phones
The Truth About Mortgage.com
Imagine receiving a cell phone in your mailbox, that once powered on, dialed your mortgage lender - and once connected, offered lower mortgage payments. Sounds like a dream right?
Well, First Guaranty Mortgage customers have reportedly received cell phones in the mail, programmed to dial the company's loss mitigation department.
The move was employed to offer at-risk customers, those it was unable to contact through traditional means, money-saving loan modifications.
A similar tactic, utilized by SunTrust Bank, cut their non-response rate in half - it had been as high as 50 percent two years ago.

How Goldman Trashed a Town
By Stephen Gandel - Time.com
Starting in July, Liza Kuzela of Cedar Rapids will pay $0.44 more a month to have her trash collected. The amount is trivial, but the reason is not. Two years ago, Cedar Rapids lost $2.6 million on an investment tied to a Goldman Sachs bond deal Abacus that the Securities and Exchange Commission claims was rigged to fail. When the bond went bust, hedge-fund manager and Goldman client John Paulson pocketed a billion dollars. Kuzela, her neighbors and others around the country with no ties to Wall Street are picking up the tab. The case of Cedar Rapids and Goldman illustrates how everyday Americans end up paying for Wall Street's big paydays.

Ron Paul on Freedom Watch

524 Guard Soldiers Headed to Arizona-Mexico Border
By Paul Davenport, Associated Press
Phoenix (AP) - Federal officials told Arizona's attorney general and a congresswoman on Monday that 524 of the 1,200 National Guard troops headed to the U.S. Mexican border will be deployed in the state by August or September.
U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and Attorney General Terry Goddard, both Democrats, met with Obama administration officials in Tucson along with dozens of law enforcement officials and community leaders. The federal officials included John Brennan, deputy national security adviser for homeland security.

Agencies confirm mass evacuation plans
Gulf state emergency preparedness agencies confirm mass evacuation plans
Wayne Madsen Report - Urban Prepper
A well-placed source in California told WMR that the California Emergency Management Agency (CEMA) has been briefed by its counterpart agencies in the Gulf coast states that there are plans to conduct a mass evacuation of millions of Gulf coast residents due to the catastrophic environmental and public health effects of the BP oil disaster.
CEMA officials have been briefed on the planned evacuations by counterparts in the Louisiana Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, the Alabama Emergency Management Agency, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, and the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

Oil Industry Reputation Hit by Gulf Oil Spill, Survey Shows
Written by Darrell Delamaide - OilPrice.com
The Gulf oil spill has hit the reputation not only of BP but of the entire oil industry, including among those who favor increased use of fossil fuels as the main source of energy.
Research firm Market Strategies International said its E2 Index, which measures consumer perceptions of the energy industry's economic contribution and environmental performance and credibility, showed the image of the industry has declined 25% in the past six months, from 40 in December to 30 in June.

CLEAR Water Tests Positive for Oil, Officials "Only Doing Visual Assessments", "What You Can't See May Be More Dangerous"
Washington's Blog
The Pensacola News Journal notes:
Dick Snyder, director of the Center for Environmental Diagnostics and Bioremediation at the University of West Florida, began conducting water samples May 3 on Pensacola Beach every Tuesday and Thursday because beach and health officials were only doing visual assessments.
What you can't see in the water may be more dangerous than what you can see, he said.
"That's why we thought we had to start looking for dissolved oil," he said.

Cap the Spill, Don't 'Cap and Trade'

BP now a takeover target?
HOUSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL - BY Mary Ann Azevedo
BP Plc is now getting hit with takeover talk.
JP Morgan Cazenove analysts issued a research note Tuesday, noting that the London oil giant's steep decline in share price makes it a prime candidate for a buyout.
"The market has lost sight of the intrinsic value that is resident in an asset-rich company like BP. We very much doubt that keen-eyed industry players have lost sight of BP's value," JP Morgan Cazenove's Fred Lucas wrote in the report, according to Reuters.

Bob Chapman: Obama's Asset Holder 'Vanguard' Sold BP Stock Weeks before Gulf Oil Disaster! 1/4

Bob Chapman: Obama's Asset Holder 'Vanguard' Sold BP Stock Weeks before Gulf Oil Disaster! 2/4

Bob Chapman: Obama's Asset Holder 'Vanguard' Sold BP Stock Weeks before Gulf Oil Disaster! 3/4

Bob Chapman: Obama's Asset Holder 'Vanguard' Sold BP Stock Weeks before Gulf Oil Disaster! 4/4

Verizon Wireless Said to Get Apple iPhone in January
By Amy Thomson
June 29 (Bloomberg) -- Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. mobile-phone company, will start selling Apple Inc.'s iPhone next year, ending AT&T Inc.'s exclusive hold on the smartphone in the U.S., two people familiar with the plans said.
The device will be available to customers in January, according to the people, who declined to be named because the information isn't public. Natalie Kerris, an Apple spokeswoman, and Jeffrey Nelson, a Verizon Wireless spokesman, declined to comment.

More Russia sleepers walk U.S. streets
10 held part of a network
By Jerry Seper - WashingtonTimes.com
They posed as ordinary citizens, living daily, nondescript lives in communities from Arlington, Va., to Yonkers, N.Y. They were married couples with car payments, monthly rents, and telephone and medical bills. They bought computers, gave gifts and ate occasionally in restaurants.
But there was more.
The FBI says 10 people arrested up and down the East Coast on Sunday were part of a deep-cover, or sleeper network, of Russian intelligence agents operating inside the United States, where they sought to infiltrate "policy-making circles" in Washington, recruit government and business sources, and "search and develop" intelligence ties in the United States.
Worst of all, they may not be alone.

Russian intelligence found gold market info 'very valuable,' FBI says
By: Chris Powell, GATA
Russian spies in the United States whose arrest was announced Monday last year conveyed information about the gold market that the Russian security service considered "very valuable" and forwarded to the Russian finance ministry and ministry of economic development, according to the criminal complaint filed by the FBI with U.S. District Court in New York.
The gold angle in the story was highlighted in reporting Monday night by the Economic Policy Journal, based in Washington, D.C.
Perhaps most interesting for GATA's purposes, the FBI's criminal complaint suggests that the spies obtained the gold market information through "a prominent New York-based financier" who is a political fund raiser and a friend of a U.S. Cabinet member. Would a New York-based financier have valuable information about the gold market if the U.S. government wasn't using New York financial houses for gold market intervention purposes?

Petraeus Says Military May Ease Rules of Engagement
By Tony Capaccio
June 29 (Bloomberg) -- General David Petraeus today said he's concerned the U.S. military's rules of engagement in Afghanistan are too restrictive and putting American forces at risk.
General Stanley McChrystal, in an effort to curb civilian casualties, issued directives that sharply curtailed the use of lethal force. Civilian casualties are down, yet some troops have charged that the restrictions make them more vulnerable.
U.S. and allied soldiers in Afghanistan are dying at the fastest pace in the war, now nine years old and the longest in U.S. history.

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Tuesday 06.29.2010

The Banks Keep Stealing - Why Should You Keep Paying?
Dylan Ratigan - SilverBearCafe.com
The dire straits of the middle class of America has made it near impossible for our politicians to keep up the pretense that our current government truly works for the "people." Between the multiple overt and secretive bailouts, the massive bonuses and the circular use of our tax money to lobby for these continued handouts, you can no longer hide from the evidence.
When Senator Durbin said "The banks... frankly own this place," you realize it was not in jest.
Couple this with recent protections handed by the Supreme Court to corporations to directly influence elections and it can make things seem hopeless for those not on Wall Street or their chosen politicians. Favored CEOs and now even foreign countries get all the printed money they need, leaving us paying both our bills and theirs.

Dylan Ratigan On TYT: How Banks Rob Us

President Obama urges G-20 nations to spend;
they pledge to halve deficits
By Howard Schneider and Scott Wilson - Washington Post
TORONTO -- President Obama warned Sunday that the world economic recovery remains "fragile" and urged continued spending to support growth, an expansionist call at the end of a summit marked by an agreement among developed nations to halve their annual deficits within three years.
The president's remarks tempered the Group of 20's headline achievement at the summit, a deficit-reduction target that had been pushed by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the host of the meeting and a fiscal conservative. Although there is broad agreement that government debt in the developed world needs to be reduced, there is concern that cutting too fast and too deeply will slow growth and possibly spark a new recession.

U.S. Treasury chief Geithner urges G-20 leaders to continue government spending
By Christi Parsons, Los Angeles Times
The Treasury secretary, speaking at the summit in Toronto, says the global recovery remains fragile and that ill-timed austerity measures could derail gains. Obama meets privately with other leaders.
Reporting from Toronto - They smiled for photos and announced agreement on everything from nuclear containment to development efforts in Africa on Saturday, but world leaders gathered in Toronto have a tougher challenge as they get down to brass tacks on the best way to keep the global economic recovery from stalling.
Going into Sunday's meetings with the Group of 20 industrialized and emerging nations, the Obama administration was pressing leaders to stay the course they set more than a year ago to promote growth through government investment in the economy.

Did the G-8 Push Us Closer to Gold Confiscation?
By: Julian DW Phillips - MarketOracle.co.uk
The global economic recovery is not looking good. The G-8 meeting this weekend saw divisions that could lead [as the I.M.F. put it] to losses of trillions of dollars and millions of jobs. Now it is reported that Mr. Bernanke and his close allies at the board in Washington are worried by signs that the U.S. recovery is running out of steam. The E.C.R.I. leading indicator published by the Economic Cycle Research Institute has collapsed to a 45-week low of -5.7 in the most precipitous slide for half a century. Such a reading typically portends contraction within three months or so.

Markets seek new direction after G20
ByJamie Chisholm - FT.com
Like an England centre-half pairing, markets were unsure which direction to take, with investors relieved by a benign G20 meeting but still harbouring lingering concerns about the strength of the US and European economic recoveries.
The FTSE All-World index was up 0.2 per cent, commodities are mixed, and though the dollar is higher, the currency complex is struggling to establish its previously clearly-defined risk-on or risk-off trend.
In addition, the S&P 500 on Wall Street has endured a volatile session and finished 0.2 per cent lower as traders warily eyed the falling US 10-year bond yield, whose 14-month low suggests many remain worried about economic prospects, and the tumbling euro, which has fallen below the $1.23 level.

Fed Looks to Hyperinflate
The Daily Bell - SilverBearCafe.com
Dominant Social Theme:
We'll dump as much money into the market as necessary - until it surrenders and does our bidding.
Free-Market Analysis:
This potential move gives the deflation versus inflation debate a new perspective. We have written in the past that we had questions about the Great Depression based on conflicting opinions of Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman et. al. Living through the "Great Recession" has begun to clear them up. It is a little like being a lab rat; it is painful, but the experience gives you an insider's look at the scientific method. Or in this case a fiat-money economy.

Why the recent gold price surge is definitely not a bubble
In another excerpt from the Erste Bank Special report on Gold, Ronald Stoeferle explains why gold is not another example of a price bubble ready to burst.
Author: Ronald Stoeferle - Mineweb.com
Many market participants and commentators are obviously having a hard time distinguishing between a bull market and a bubble. More and more articles are referring to the imminent burst of the "gold bubble" and to an alleged "crowded trade". But are the authors of these articles crying wolf?

Recession worries may drive gold price to $5,000
By Jon Nadler - CommodityOnline.com
World leaders took the "oath of the deficits" over the weekend and gave every indication that they intend to cut difficult to sustain budget imbalances in their home countries. Although the Toronto G-20 communiquŽ faces the scrutiny of the markets this morning and appears to have been met with less than a convinced attitude, its substance points to significant changes on the horizon for the nations that have signed on its dotted lines.

Gold, Silver, How High? When?
DeepCaster LLC - SilverBearCafe.com
Investors and Traders charged with deploying Assets to acquire Precious Monetary Metals are impelled to first Forecast the likely Future Course and Timing of the Price Moves of the Precious Metals, as they do with other prospective acquisitions. Then, they must actually Deploy Assets based on those Forecasts.
Therefore, it is important to make Educated Forecasts about Gold and Silver Prices. Specifically, one must forecast "How High?" (or "How low?") and "When?"

Silver Posting Best Streak Since Hunt Brothers
Nicholas Larkin and Pham-Duy Nguyen - SilverBearCafe.com
Silver, the precious metal most used in industry, is attracting investors betting on both faster and slower economic growth as prices extend the longest run of quarterly gains in three decades.
Doubling as a store of value for buyers concerned about the economy and as an industrial material for those bullish on growth, silver is outperforming metals from copper to zinc this year and keeping pace with gold. It will rise as much as 15 percent to $22 an ounce before December, from $19.145 today, according to Daniel Brebner, an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG whose fourth-quarter outlook was accurate to within 0.7 percent.

Peter Schiff - GDP, Markets, Dollar, FinReg - June 25, 2010

Double Dip Economic Recession
This Chart Say's Its Guaranteed!
By: JD Rosendahl - MarketOracle.co.uk
With all the incessant analysis from economists, politicians, and bureaucrats of this nascent recovery sprouting wings, there is one great and simple chart that's screaming a "Double Dip" is guaranteed: See the weekly chart of the $BDI below.
The index had made classic bearish divergences on both the RSI and MACD. It has also made a bearish head and shoulders topping pattern. The technical analysis of the index is screaming economic collapse on the way.

US Double Dip Depression
Daily Bell - SilverBearCafe.com
. . . . What happens in a very bad recession - this one being called the Great Recession - is that many of the tools that mercantilist central banks use to manipulate the economy cease to work. This comes about because the central banks in question have printed too much money (electronically and otherwise) and flooded the economy with currency that has caused first a boom and then a bust.

US money supply plunges at 1930's pace
By Sol Palha
The M3 money supply in the United States is contracting at an accelerating rate that now matches the average decline seen from 1929 to 1933, despite near zero interest rates and the biggest fiscal blitz in history. The M3 figures - which include broad range of bank accounts and are tracked by British and European monetarists for warning signals about the direction of the US economy a year or so in advance - began shrinking last summer. The pace has since quickened.

Dollar Faces Perfect Storm
By: Rick Ackerman - GoldSeek.com
For spin-free analysis of the global economy, the Australia-based The Privateer is one of our favorite reads. Amidst a cacophony of hubris and unwarranted optimism, its editor, William Buckler, provides a fact-filled perspective that reduces the mainstream media's reports of "recovery" to drivel. Buckler notes drily that "the signs that the party is indeed almost over are all around us and becoming very difficult to ignore." The same goes for the U.S. dollar. When Nixon cut off foreign holders from redeeming dollars for gold in 1971, says Buckler, the U.S. initiated a reckless global experiment with fiat paper. "Forty years later, the bill for this adventure has come due," he warns, "and there is nobody to pay for it."

Inside the United States How Bad is it?
William (Bill) Buckler - SilverBearCafe.com
It's pretty bad. All of a sudden, the recovery has almost officially become "fragile" in the US. The official version was stated in the Fed's press release following the FOMC meeting on June 22-23. "Financial conditions have become less supportive of economic growth on balance", they said. Indeed they have. A recent report from a department of the US Treasury shows just how bad they have become.

Deflation, Inflation and Why Paul Krugman Fears Austerity
By Addison Wiggin - DailyReckoning.com
06/28/10 Baltimore, Maryland - This is very disconcerting, fellow forecaster. Paul Krugman is making sense up to a point.
"We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression," the Nobel laureate wrote in a NY Times Op-Ed yesterday, dipping his toes into a pool we've been sloshing around in for some time.
"It will probably look more like the Long Depression [of the late 1800s]," the Krug continues, "than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost - to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs - will nonetheless be immense."
We choke on our morning brew admitting it but Krugman is onto something.

Europe's banks are still on 'life support', BIS warns
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
Europe's banks have yet to come clean over bad loans and may struggle to refinance short-term debt unless the region's bond crisis subsides soon, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has warned.
The BIS said in its annual report that banks on both sides of the Atlantic remain "highly leveraged and still appear to be on life support. The essential task of reducing leverage and repairing balance sheets is simply not finished. The Greek sovereign debt crisis shows just how fragile the financial system still is.

New general strike planned in Greece Tuesday
ATHENS (AP) - Greek public services will close down Tuesday and most transportation will be disrupted by a new general strike against proposed pension and labor reforms.
The debt-ridden country's two major private and public sector unions bitterly oppose draft legislation that will increase retirement ages and make it cheaper for companies to fire workers.

US expects yuan to keep rising
President Barack Obama said the US expects China's currency to appreciate as the Chinese government allows more flexibility and market forces take a bigger role in setting the value.
China's decision to lift a two-year-old policy of pegging the yuan to the US dollar and allow its currency to trade more freely was a first step and the US will monitor progress over the next ''several months,'' he said.

Welcoming the Failure of the Economic Recovery Team
By Bill Bonner - DailyReckoning.com
06/28/10 Waterford, Ireland - The latest from the G20 meeting in Toronto. As you recall, the meeting was billed as a showdown between the Germans and the Americans that is, between the deficit cutters and the big spenders
That is, between the people without a hope and the people without a clue.
TORONTO (AP) - World leaders must work together to make sure the global recovery stays on track, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Saturday.

Gerald Celente: Wall Street Bill a Joke

States of Crisis for 46 Governments Facing Greek-Style Deficits
By Edward Robinson
June 25 (Bloomberg) -- Californians don't see much evidence that the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression is coming to an end.
Unemployment was 12.4 percent in May, 2.7 percentage points higher than the national rate. Lawmakers gridlocked over how to close a $19 billion budget gap are weighing the termination of the main welfare program for 1.3 million poor families or borrowing more than $9 billion in the bond market. California, tied with Illinois for the lowest credit rating of any state, is diverting a rising portion of tax revenue to service debt, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August issue.

Congress blasts Medicaid hole in states' budgets
By Tami Luhby,
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Young children in Massachusetts will lose state-funded mental health services. Welfare recipients will see their employment and training programs slashed. And homeless families will lose nearly all their state assistance to move into more permanent housing.
Massachusetts lawmakers had to make these and other difficult cuts last week after discovering they had to slash another nearly $700 million out of the state budget. The Bay State had assumed Congress would pass $24 billion in additional Medicaid funding for states before their fiscal years start on July 1.

U.S. Credit Metrics Will Continue To Weaken
GoldSeek.com
The fiscal situation in Greece has brought new attention to the fiscal situations of countries around the world, including the United States. We have written several times that the U.S. budget deficit and overall debt load have passed the point of no return, whereby further borrowing to stimulate growth or cutting the budget deficit through austerity measures could threaten the U.S. credit standing in global markets. Recently, two noteworthy events have transpired which support our thesis. First, Alan Greenspan's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, titled "U.S. Debt and the Greece Analogy," reflects a growing concern that the United States' borrowing needs will lead to a dramatic rise in long-term interest rates. Second, the Senate voted against extended unemployment benefits, once considered a rubber-stamp process, which exemplifies voters' increasingly negative sentiment towards Government deficit spending.

Report Warns That Many Banks Still Vulnerable to Crises
By JACK EWING - NYTimes.com
BASEL, SWITZERLAND - An organization that brings together most of the world's major central banks said Monday that the easy money that has propped up the banking system during the financial crisis must soon be withdrawn - even as it warned that many banks are still in fragile health.
"Exceptional government and central bank support was needed to quell the enormous uncertainty and market disruption during the crisis," said Jaime Caruana, general manager of the Bank for International Settlements, whose board includes the U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, and the European Central Bank president, Jean-Claude Trichet.

Treasury Yield Near 14-Month Low as Consumer Confidence May Ebb
By Wes Goodman
June 29 (Bloomberg) -- Treasury yields were near a 14-month low before a private report that economists said will show consumer confidence fell in June.
U.S. government securities returned 4.4 percent this quarter, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch indexes, as investors sought the relative safety of debt on speculation global economic growth will slow. The MSCI World Index of shares declined almost 10 percent in the period as a debt crisis in Europe led investors to shun higher-yielding securities.

Corporate Anarchy: Wall Street and BP Criminals At Large
Danny Schechter - SilverBearCafe.com
In this era of corporate anarchy, legal, ethical and financial rules have all been rescinded in the pursuit of profit.
It seems clear that BP can't seem to fix the catastrophic gusher the press calls a "leak," and that President Obama can't fix the economy because its problems are structural and won't respond to soaring rhetoric emanating from his bully pulpit.
Meanwhile, most of the world's people really don't get the fix we are all in. I take that back; the million Americans who have just lost their benefits probably do. The deficit hawks voted that down without doing anything about the growing deficit of jobs.

Deepwater Horizon and Pandora's Box
by Cris Sheridan - FinancialSense.com
Today we are able to sustain billions of people due to genetically modified food products, fight wars without having to use actual soldiers, build twirling skyscrapers thousands of feet into the air, and drill miles down into the ocean floor while floating precariously above its surface. Every day technology takes us further and further into uncharted depths, pushing the boundaries of what's possible. Little, it seems, is beyond our reach. With all that we've accomplished, however, there's a feeling we've built a civilization - a way of life - that is unsustainable. That we've reached a point where we are no longer able to fully understand or control the consequences of our technology; and for each day the oil spews relentlessly in the deep, the effects of this reality become more profound, more troubling.

Oil spill: Is Gulf safe for swimming?
KIMBERLY BLAIR - Pensacola News Journal
EPA opening public "Decontamination Stations"; 400 people seek medical care after visiting Florida beach
The Escambia County Health Department lifted a health advisory on Pensacola Beach on Friday on the advice of a beach official and against the advice of a federal environmental official.
But the advisory was not lifted for Gulf Islands National Seashore's Fort Pickens beach, immediately west of Pensacola Beach or Johnson Beach on Perdido Key.
And hours after the Pensacola Beach advisory was lifted, the health department asked for state approval to issue an oil-impact advisory that leaves the decision to swim in the Gulf of Mexico up to the discretion of individual beachgoers.

The Coming Gulf Coast Firestorm: How the BP oil catastrophe could destroy a major U.S. city
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger - NaturalNews.com
(NaturalNews) It's hurricane season in the Atlantic, and that means Mother Nature could be whipping up fierce storms and sending them charging into the Gulf Coast any day now. In a normal hurricane season, that's bad enough all by itself... remember Katrina? But now there's something even more worrisome in the recipe: There's oil in the water.
So what happens when a Katrina-class hurricane comes along and picks up a few million gallons of oil, then drops that volatile liquid on a major U.S. city like Galveston or New Orleans?

162 cases of illness linked to oil spill reported in Louisiana
By the CNN Wire Staff
(CNN) -- Exposure to the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has resulted in 162 cases of illnesses reported to the Louisiana state health department, according to a report released Monday. Of those cases, 128 involved workers on oil rigs or individuals involved in the oil spill cleanup efforts, the report said.
Among the most common reported symptoms were throat irritation, shortness of breath, cough, eye irritation, nausea and headaches, according to the department's oil spill surveillance report.

When wind, water and oil mix
TRAVIS GRIGGS- Pensacola News Journal
In 1993, as a powerful Atlantic storm approached, the tanker MV Braer ran aground on a Scottish island, spilling directly onto the rocky coastline twice as much oil as the Exxon Valdez..
Hurricane-force winds pounded the coast the following week, driving the spill ashore, whipping oily spray miles inland, contaminating crops, coating houses and smearing cars with crude oil.
With estimates between 69 million and 132 million gallons of oil currently in Gulf waters as a result of the Deepwater Horizon blowout on April 20, and with a good portion of that off the coast of Pensacola Beach and Perdido Key, chilling questions emerge:

BP Slick Covers Dolphins and Whales

Gulf Oil Spill - The Greatest Disaster Since The Flood?
MarketOracle.co.uk
Joshua S. Burnett writes: Most articles begin with a purpose statement revealing what the author desires to convince the reader of. This article is different. These few paragraphs begin with a plea for someone to tell me that I've got the evidence all wrong and that what I see and know is a smoke filled illusion void of reality. I want someone who knows differently to tell me. So as you read this article please understand that I'm not attempting to be a fear-mongerer. Please know I'm no prophet or guru, just a guy who looks at all the evidence he has and draws conclusions. And if you know I'm wrong and why, please write and tell me. First, let's review the facts:

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Should 'Unwind' Portfolios, Pimco Says
By Jody Shenn - BusinessWeek.com
June 28 (Bloomberg) -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the housing-finance companies supported by U.S. taxpayers, should take advantage of demand for government-backed mortgage debt and sell their holdings, according to Pacific Investment Management Co.
"Since the government's going to want to unwind them at some point anyway, why not do it at the best levels ever?" Scott Simon, the mortgage-bond head at Newport Beach, California-based Pimco, manager of the world's biggest fixed- income fund, said in a telephone interview. "It's good for taxpayers, good for stakeholders, good for everybody."

Nearly One in Five Mortgage Defaults Are 'Strategic'
By Nick Timiraos
A new report estimates that nearly one in five mortgage defaults through the first half of 2009 were "strategic," where borrowers who appeared to have the capacity to pay their mortgages stopped doing so.
The research follows on an earlier report by Experian and Oliver Wyman that first aimed to quantify the share of mortgage defaults that are "strategic." Strategic defaulters are defined as those who miss six straight mortgage payments without missing multiple payments on auto loans and other consumer debts for the six months after they first fell behind on mortgage payments.

Gary Shilling: Expect Housing Prices to Continue to Fall
By NIKHIL HUTHEESING - DailyFinance.com
DailyFinance recently met with Gary Shilling, president of A. Gary Shilling & Co. to discuss China, the economy, housing prices, and to learn a little about Gary Shilling himself. In this video segment, Shilling focuses on the housing market.
Shilling explains that when an economy starts to recover, there are four cylinders that need to get fired up but so far, the economy is running on one: It's unwinding the inventory cycle so that production actually fulfills final sales instead of old inventory. But the other three cylinders -- employment growth, consumer spending, and housing -- are not yet working. Worse, there is no sign that any of these will improve.

The Next Crisis: Public Pension Funds
By ROGER LOWENSTEIN - NYTimes.com
Ever since the Wall Street crash, there has been a bull market in Google hits for "public pensions" and "crisis." Horror stories abound, like the one in Yonkers, where policemen in their 40s are retiring on $100,000 pensions (more than their top salaries), or in California, where payments to Calpers, the biggest state pension fund, have soared while financing for higher education has been cut. Then there is New York City, where annual pension contributions (up sixfold in a decade) would be enough to finance entire new police and fire departments.

Job blues for gray-haired workers
By Chris Isidore,
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Companies are starting to hire again, but many are turning their backs on older job seekers.
Statistics from the Labor Department show the employment outlook is improving for most workers. The unemployment rate for those in the 25 to 54-year-old age group has fallen from a record high of 9.2% in October to 8.7% in May.
But the nationwide unemployment rate for older workers -- while lower than that of younger workers -- has barely moved since hitting a record high of 7.2% in December. It's currently 7.1%.
"All the gains we've seen from the peak last fall to now, they've gone to people less than 55 years old," said Heidi Shierholz, labor economist with the Economic Policy Institute.

Oil Swings May Widen as Spare Capacity Shrinks
By Alexander Kwiatkowski
June 28 (Bloomberg) -- Swings in oil prices may widen over the next five years as OPEC's shrinking spare production capacity increases traders' concern about supply shortages.
Oil's 50-day historical volatility, a measure of how much crude fluctuates around its average price, was at 34 percent on June 25. The measure rose to a record 108 percent in January 2009 after OPEC's spare production capacity fell to its lowest in almost four years. The group's idled capacity may drop to 3.9 percent of world demand by 2015 from 6.8 percent this year, according to International Energy Agency estimates.

Illinois Borrowing $900 Million as Credit-Default Cost Doubles
By Allison Bennett and Brendan A. McGrail
June 28 (Bloomberg) -- Illinois plans to add $900 million in Build America Bonds to the $755 million in securities it sold in June as the cost of insuring the state's debt against default reached a record high.
The cost of an Illinois credit-default swap has more than doubled since April 5 to a record of 370 basis points, or $370,000 to protect $10 million of debt, according to CMA DataVision. The state rescheduled the Build America sale for mid-July, after originally planning it for as early as this week, Dow Jones reported, citing John Sinsheimer, Illinois's capital markets director.

White House Preparing National Online ID Plan
By Mathew J. Schwartz - InformationWeek
The proposed system for authenticating people, organizations and infrastructure on the web at the transactional level will require an identity ecosystem.
The Obama administration is set to propose a new system for authenticating people, organizations and infrastructure on the Web. The online authentication and identity management system would be targeted at the transactional level -- for example, when someone logs into their banking website or completes an online e-commerce purchase.

Authority overstepping bounds? . . . or all about CONTROL
EU to ban selling eggs by dozen
By Alastair Jamieson - Telegraph.co.uk
Shoppers will be banned from buying bread rolls or eggs priced by the dozen under new food labelling regulations proposed by the European parliament.
Under the draft legislation, to come into force as early as next year, the sale of groceries using the simple measurement of numbers will be replaced by an EU-wide system based on weight.
It would mean an end to packaging descriptions such as eggs by the dozen, four-packs of apples, six bread rolls or boxes of 12 fish fingers.

Supreme Court sides with gun advocates, extends gun rights nationwide
By: MARK SHERMAN, AP - WashingtonExaminer.com
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court held Monday that Americans have the right to own a gun for self-defense anywhere they live, expanding the conservative court's embrace of gun rights since John Roberts became Chief Justice.
By a 5-4 vote, the justices cast doubt on handgun bans in the Chicago area, but signaled that some limitations on the Constitution's "right to keep and bear arms" could survive legal challenges.

Joe Biden, the vice-president who keeps putting his foot in it
By Ed Pilkington - The Guardian
Joe Biden has done it again: made a gaffe in full view of the cable TV news cameras. But it's nothing new for the vice-president
You would have thought Joe Biden would have learned by now. When in a public space surrounded by cameras, thou shalt speak nothing but inanities.
The US vice-president probably wishes he had followed that script on Saturday while glad-handing in Milwaukee. Things took a turn for the worse when he walked into a shop and asked, "Where's the ice-cream?", only to be told it traded in frozen custard.
Then it got really bad. Biden engaged the owner in conversation. "What do we owe you?" he asked, licking a cone. "Lower our taxes and we'll call it even," the owner replied.
Leave it there, Joe! Don't do it!
But no, Biden just had to answer back, for the benefit of the cable news channels. "Why don't you say something nice instead of being a smartass all the time? Say something nice," he snorted.

EGYPT: Radar finds an ancient city in Nile Delta
LATimes.com
Beneath the flag-like fields of the Nile Delta, an ancient city lingers.
A team of Austrian archeologists using radar and satellite imaging has discovered what is believed to be an ancient city once controlled by the Hyksos, invaders from Asia who ruled Egypt from about 1664-1569 BC.

Turkey Closes Airspace to Some Israeli Flights
NYTimes.com
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Turkey has closed its airspace to some Israeli military flights following a deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship, the Turkish prime minister and officials said Monday. An official said civilian commercial flights were not affected.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters in Toronto that Turkey imposed a ban on Israeli flights after the May 31 raid on a Turkish ship that was part of a six-vessel international aid flotilla, according to the state-run Anatolia news agency. The prime minister, who is in Canada to attend a summit of the Group of 20 major industrial and developing nations, did not elaborate.

Kissinger warns on Afghan exit strategy
By Daniel Dombey in Washington - FT.com
Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, has warned that Washington's plan to begin handing over responsibility to national forces in Afghanistan in July next year "provides a mechanism for failure".
The people "must be prepared for a long struggle" in what is already the US's longest war, Mr Kissinger said in the wake of Barack Obama's decision to remove General Stanley McChrystal as commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan.

Meet The KGB 2.0: Cold War Espionage Is Back, As Spies In The US Serve To Determine Russian Gold Policy, And Much More
by Tyler Durden - ZeroHedge.com
The KGB is back, and it's leaner and meaner than ever. In a dramatic bust, the FBI has arrested 10 Russian individuals for allegedly carrying out long-term, deep cover assignments in the United States on behalf of Russia. The 37 page indictment from the Southern District of New York reads like a John LeCarre-cum-Ian Flemming espionage thriller and has everything including conspiracies, brush passes, handlers, money exchanges, code words, flash memory cards, covert meetings in Central Park, cracked secret codes, infiltration of strategic US organizations, and last but not least, Russia's apparent interest "about prospects for the global gold market", whereby espionage conducted by one of the group of rounded-up spies served to at least partially determine Russian policy vis-a-vis gold.

'Gasland' documentary fuels debate over natural gas extraction
ANDREW MAYKUTH The Philadelphia Inquirer
John Hanger might think twice the next time a documentary filmmaker knocks on his door in the state capital.
In a documentary about natural gas development that premiered this week on HBO, Pennsylvania's secretary of the environment receives a decidedly unflattering portrayal at the hands of Josh Fox, who made the movie, "Gasland."
Fox portrays Hanger -- a liberal who spent years in the mainstream environmental movement -- as an equivocating tool of the natural gas industry. In one of the film's signature moments, Fox pulls out a bottle of water he says was polluted by a Marcellus Shale gas well and challenges the state's top environmental regulator to drink it.

This documentary really hits home. Americans need to pay attention to the message (watch on HBO; DVD out in Dec):

GASLAND Trailer 2010

GASLAND Q & A (part 1) @ 2010 Sundance Film Festival

GASLAND Q & A (part 2) @ 2010 Sundance Film Festival

GASLAND Q & A (part 3) @ 2010 Sundance Film Festival

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Monday 06.28.2010

RBS tells clients to prepare for "monster" money printing by the Federal Reserve
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
As recovery starts to stall in the US and Europe with echoes of mid-1931, bond experts are once again dusting off a speech by Ben Bernanke given eight years ago as a freshman governor at the Federal Reserve.
Entitled "Deflation: Making Sure It Doesn't Happen Here", it is a warfare manual for defeating economic slumps by use of extreme monetary stimulus once interest rates have dropped to zero, and implicitly once governments have spent themselves to near bankruptcy.
The speech is best known for its irreverent one-liner: "The US government has a technology, called a printing press, that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost."

Regulators close banks in Fla., Ga., N.M.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Regulators on Friday shut down banks in Florida, Georgia and New Mexico, lifting to 86 the number of U.S. bank failures this year.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over Peninsula Bank, based in Englewood, Fla., with $644.3 million in assets and $580.1 million in deposits. The agency also seized First National Bank in Savannah, Ga., with $252.5 million in assets and $231.9 million in deposits, and High Desert State Bank, based in Albuquerque, N.M., with $80.3 million in assets and $81 million in deposits.
Miami-based Premier American Bank agreed to assume the assets and deposits of Peninsula Bank. In addition, the FDIC and Premier American Bank agreed to share losses on $437.6 million of Peninsula Bank's assets.

Eagle Community Bank under increased oversight
BY Chris Newmarker - MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL BUSINESS JOURNAL
Eagle Community Bank is facing increased scrutiny from regulators, who announced Friday that they've placed the bank under a consent order.
The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Minnesota Department of Commerce are requiring Maple Grove-based Eagle Community to hire an outside consultant to analyze and assess the performance of the bank's six-member management and staff.
The consent, dated May 27, also requires Eagle Community to reduce troubled assets and concentrations of commercial real estate loans, and to establish policies for setting aside cash for troubled loans. It restricts additional loans to problem borrowers, the taking on of brokered deposits, and payment of dividends and management fees.

SW Colorado bank agrees with FDIC to address capital levels
DENVER BUSINESS JOURNAL
A southwest Colorado bank has signed an agreement with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to address its capital levels and other issues.
The agreement was disclosed in the FDIC's monthly report of enforcement actions.
Pine River Valley Bank of Bayfield, which is in La Plata County near the Four Corners, signed the consent order on May 26. In it, the bank agrees to submit a written plan to achieve and maintain acceptable capital levels.

FDIC: Shoreline Bank 'significantly undercapitalized'
PUGET SOUND BUSINESS JOURNAL (SEATTLE)
Shoreline Bank is considered "significantly undercapitalized" by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and needs to immediately sell shares of stock or sell itself to another bank.
The FDIC warning said the Shoreline bank's management "has not demonstrated the ability to return the bank to a safe and sound condition." The agency is demanding that "prompt corrective action be taken immediately" because of the bank's "deteriorating condition and management's inability to return the bank to a safe and sound condition."

FDIC hands out C&D orders, fines in Ga.
ATLANTA BUSINESS CHRONICLE
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. put three Georgia banks under cease-and-desist orders and fined two banks for violating the Flood Disaster Protection Act.
The banks receiving "consent orders" are:

• Pineland State Bank in Metter
• Bank of Monticello
• Citizens Bank of Effingham in Springfield

By signing the consent order, banks neither admit nor deny the citations of unsafe and unsound banking practices listed.

FDIC issues order for Superior Bank
ST. LOUIS BUSINESS JOURNAL - BY Kelsey Volkmann
Superior Bank in Hazelwood, Mo., must evaluate management, reduce bad loans and cut risk exposure, under an order with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
The north St. Louis County bank must also maintain certain capital ratios, review liquidity, develop a business and succession plan, suspend cash dividends, hire a consultant to analyze its performance and act on the consultant’s recommendations, according to a FDIC order dated May 26 but made public Friday.

Arrowhead is latest credit union seized as regulators step up reviews
Officials cite the 'declining financial condition' not-for-profit financial institution, one of the largest in the Inland Empire.
By W.J. Hennigan and E. Scott Reckard, Los Angeles Times
The federal seizure of one of the Inland Empire's largest credit unions over the weekend was part of a stepped-up effort by regulators to shore up the financial institutions, which were battered along with banks by the mortgage meltdown and the real estate bust.
Regulators took over Arrowhead Credit Union on Saturday, citing its "declining financial condition." The action was part of a nationwide move to increase vigilance that has included the hiring of 107 new examiners and more frequent reviews of credit unions' financial health.

On Fannie's Escalating Threats Against "Strategic Defaulters"
This blog warned a few weeks ago of a coming campaign by the officialdom against so-called "strategic defaulters". It has arrived even sooner than we expected.
We warned that this development was the inevitable result of financial firms, taking an increasingly predatory posture toward their customers. Borrowers are responding in kind, by taking a cold-blooded and legalistic look at their agreements with lenders.
Now having said that, it is well nigh impossible to determine how frequently "strategic" or "ruthless" defaults are taking place. Even though it is in theory an appealing option for borrowers with severely underwater mortgages, it nevertheless comes with a lot of costs: moving and a trashed credit rating. And note that a bad credit report does not merely mean restricted access to borrowing, but it it is a big negative in the job market, now that many employers routinely pull credit reports. So I suspect the talk of strategic defaults greatly exceeds the reality.

Moral bankruptcy?
By Mary Ellen Podmolik, Chicago Tribune reporter
Financially struggling homeowners say they're just being shrewd when they file for Chapter 7 to escape a mortgage
Cash-strapped, jobless and denied a loan modification, Del Phillips faced the same straits as millions of homeowners who risk losing their homes to mortgage lenders.
Some have struggled unsuccessfully to keep their homes, and others have just walked away. Phillips decided he wanted revenge and was willing to ruin his credit record for it.
When a short sale didn't work out as planned, the 32-year-old Chicagoan opted for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation, a move that will leave Phillips with little except for the scant possessions in his one-bedroom condo. It also will leave his lender, Chase, with little except for, eventually, a condo that has lost value. Meanwhile, Phillips continues to live there, mortgage-free.

GOP Takes Hardline on Federal Deficit By Killing Unemployment Benefits Extension
BY DON MILLER, Associate Editor, Money Morning
Drawing a line in the sand over the federal deficit, Senate Republicans on Thursday killed a spending bill that included an extension of unemployment benefits and increased taxes on bonuses paid to executives at private equity firms.
The collapse of the comprehensive legislation spells the end of assistance for a total of 1.3 million unemployed Americans who were scheduled to lose their benefits at the end of last week. It also will leave a number of states with large budget holes they had expected to fill with federal cash to help with Medicaid.

Biden: "No possibility" of restoring lost jobs
by Mike Memoli - Chicago Tribune
The pool reporter covering Vice President Biden's remarks at a fundraiser in Wisconsin today noted near the beginning of his dispatch that the veep joked "he didn't rely much on a speech that was prepared for him." That's always good news for those looking for fodder from the loquacious former senator, in Milwaukee today to boost Sen. Russ Feingold's campaign warchest.
During 47 minutes of remarks, Biden defended the Obama administration's record on working to turn around the nation's economy, something that has become boilerplate for him at these party functions. The pool reporter -- Dan Walker of the Journal Sentinel -- did flag this particularly blunt assessment, though.
"There's no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession," he told about 150 people at a $500-per-plate luncheon.

Unemployment benefits extension nixed for nearly 1 million
By Tami Luhby, senior writer
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Nearly a million people have lost their unemployment benefits because the Senate failed for the third time Thursday to extend the deadline to file for this safety net.
Hoping to overcome deficit concerns, the Senate trimmed down the bill yet again on Wednesday night so that it would only increase the deficit by $33.3 billion over 10 years, instead of $55.1 billion. The main changes were to scale back additional Medicaid funding for the states and to reallocate some stimulus and Defense Department spending.

Obama's agenda: Overwhelm the system
Wayne Allyn Root - Las Vegas Review-Journal
Rahm Emanuel cynically said, "You never want a crisis to go to waste." It is now becoming clear that the crisis he was referring to is Barack Obama's presidency.
Obama is no fool. He is not incompetent. To the contrary, he is brilliant. He knows exactly what he's doing. He is purposely overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure, economic crisis and social chaos -- thereby destroying capitalism and our country from within.
[see John Coleman's interview confirming this, below - video 2]

Bank reform passes - bank stocks soar
Kurt Brouwer - MarketWatch.com
I have to confess that the latest 'reform' legislation has aroused a bit of skepticism in me. The Senate just passed a 2,000 page bank reform bill that was positioned as a tough measure to reform big banks and Wall Street. The goal is to make sure events like the financial panic of 2008 never happen again. Who could argue with that? However, this statement from the chief architect of the legislation, Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT), aroused my concerns.

Will new financial regulations prevent future meltdowns?
By Paul Davidson, Paul Wiseman and John Waggoner, USA TODAY
Congress, in a pointed response to a historic economic downturn, is expected to pass a massive overhaul of financial regulations that would touch nearly every layer of the nation's economy - from home buyers and merchants to giant investment banks.
Now for the $700 billion question: Will it prevent the next meltdown?
No one doubts its ambitions. The nearly 2,000-page measure, finalized late last week by a House-Senate committee, is a legislative Veg-o-matic. Among other things, it aims to better protect consumers, tighten the reins on financial institutions and stop rewarding executives for taking reckless risks to fatten their quarterly earnings and bonuses.

Lawmakers guide Dodd-Frank bill for Wall Street reform into homestretch
By David Cho, Jia Lynn Yang and Brady Dennis - WashingtonPost.com
Nearly two years after tremors on Wall Street set off a historic economic downturn, congressional leaders greenlighted a bill early Friday that would leave the financial industry largely intact but facing a more powerful network of regulators who could impose limits on risky activities.
The final bill took shape after a 20-hour marathon negotiation between House and Senate leaders seeking to reconcile their separate versions. The legislation puts a lot of faith in the watchful eye of regulators to prevent another financial crisis. New agencies would police consumer lending, the invention of financial products and the trading of exotic securities known as derivatives. Bank supervisors would have the power to seize large, troubled financial firms whose collapse could threaten the entire system. The bill calls for banks to hold more money in reserve to weather economic storms but leaves the details to regulators.

Celente: The US is run by Wall Street

Some See a Tough Law, Others Little Change
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Financial companies, analysts and politicians began sorting through the repercussions of the agreement that lawmakers reached early Friday to overhaul financial regulations.
"Much of this new law should help to restore and maintain confidence in U.S. financial markets, including several important provisions such as the establishment of a systemic risk regulator, resolution authority and a new federal fiduciary standard for retail investors,"the chief executive of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, Tim Ryan, said in a statement. "But this is a tough law that will also have profound effects on the operations and cost structure of most financial services companies and financial markets."

Gold - the optimal investment in deflation and inflation
History shows that gold is an excellent performer in both inflationary and deflationary economic scenarios.
Author: Ronald Stoeferle - - MineWeb.co.za
VIENNA (ERSTE BANK) - The central question of whether the next few years will be dominated by inflation or deflation still remains unanswered. In periods of inflation, tangible assets are the preferred asset class, whereas in times of deflation, cash is king. Gold is liquid, divisible, indestructible, and can be easily transported. It has a worldwide market and there is no default risk associated with it, which means it is cash of the highest quality. Therefore gold is the optimal investment both in deflation and inflation.

Gold in the context of the financial crisis
In another article from the Erste Bank 2010 report on gold, Ronald Stoeferle looks at the metal in respect to the current financial crisis and draws parallels from history
Author: Ronald Stoeferle - MineWeb.co.za
VIENNA (ERSTE BANK) - The paradox is the trigger of the crisis, i.e. too cheap money, is now being treated as its medicine. This could be regarded as an absurdity of historical proportions. Three years ago probably nobody would have expected the Federal Reserve to take USD 1,250 worth of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) onto its balance sheet. This is certainly not a step that would be beneficial to building confidence in paper money- and neither are the countless desperate stimulus and bailout packages of the past few years. On the other hand this represents a clear argument in favour of gold and should thus ensure a positive environment for gold investment.

Judge Andrew Napolitano: Obama's Impeachable Offenses Mount
Alex Jones Tv 1/3

Judge Andrew Napolitano: Obama's Impeachable Offenses Mount
Alex Jones Tv 2/3

Judge Andrew Napolitano: Obama's Impeachable Offenses Mount
Alex Jones Tv 3/3

From Card Fees to Mortgages, a New Day for Consumers
By RON LIEBER and TARA SIEGEL BERNARD
At last, it's settled.
After months of haggling, the terms of financial reform are set, so long as both houses of Congress vote to accept them in the coming days.
While elected officials spent much of their time working out the details of regulating complex derivatives and grappling with whether banks ought to make big bets with their own money, they also set a number of new rules that will directly affect consumers.

Arizona Gov: Most Illegal Immigrants Smuggling Drugs
By Paul Davenport, Associated Press - CNSNews.com
Phoenix (AP) - Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said Friday most illegal immigrants entering Arizona are being used to transport drugs across the border. Brewer said the motivation of "a lot" of the illegal immigrants is to enter the United States to look for work, but that drug rings press them into duty as drug "mules."
"I believe today, under the circumstances that we're facing, that the majority of the illegal trespassers that are coming into the state of Arizona are under the direction and control of organized drug cartels and they are bringing drugs in," Brewer said.

Group meets for SOS to Congress
PHOENIX BUSINESS JOURNAL
A group of 700 people from the Valley's business and political community sent a message to Congress Sunday morning, asking them for comprehensive immigration reform.
The group, meeting in response to the ongoing backlash from the state's newly passed immigration law, met in the Heard Museum parking lot in Phoenix and spelled out "SOS Congress."

Many Legislators Aim to Copy Arizona Immigration Law
By John Miller, Associated Press - CNSNews.com
Boise, Idaho (AP) - Arizona's sweeping new immigration law doesn't even take effect until next month, but lawmakers in nearly 20 other states are already clamoring to follow in its footsteps.
Gubernatorial candidates in Florida and Minnesota are singing the law's praises, as are some lawmakers in other states far from the Mexico border such as Idaho and Nebraska. But states also are watching legal challenges to the new law, and whether boycotts over it will harm Arizona's economy.

Obama Internet kill switch plan approved by US Senate
By Grant Gross - TechWorld.com
President could get power to turn off Internet
A US Senate committee has approved a wide-ranging cybersecurity bill that some critics have suggested would give the US president the authority to shut down parts of the Internet during a cyberattack.
Senator Joe Lieberman and other bill sponsors have refuted the charges that the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act gives the president an Internet "kill switch." Instead, the bill puts limits on the powers the president already has to cause "the closing of any facility or stations for wire communication" in a time of war, as described in the Communications Act of 1934, they said in a breakdown of the bill published on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee website.

--------- Privatization of municipal assets -----------

What Do Greece, California, Portugal and Illinois Have in Common?
Leonard Gilroy - Governing.com
Answer: They all made CMA's top-10 list of governments with the highest sovereign debt default risk. In order, the loser list (along with today's probability of default) is:

• #1 Greece (68.67%)
• #2 Venezuela (58.35%)
• #3 Argentina (48.39%)
• #4 Pakistan (38.85%)
• #5 Ukraine (35.54%)
• #6 Dubai/Emirate of (29.07%)
• #7 Iraq (28.91%)
• #8 California/State of (25.13%)
• #9 Portugal (25.03%)
• #10 Illinois/State of (24.63%)

US state budget crises threaten social fabric
By Matthew Garrahan in Los Angeles - FT.com
The small southern California city of Maywood has hit on a unique solution to its budget crisis. Crushed by the recession and falling tax revenues, the city is disbanding its police force and firing all public sector employees.
Maywood has opted for an extreme solution, by contracting out all public services, including the most basic, to save cash. But it is not alone.
States around the US are cutting costs wherever possible as they prepare budgets for the fiscal year that starts this week for most of them. Their combined deficit is projected to reach $112bn by June 2011.

Amid Fiscal Pressures, States Move to Privatize Workers Compensation Programs
POSTED BY LEONARD GILROY - Governing.com
Ongoing fiscal pressures are prompting policymakers to pursue a wide variety of government streamlining strategies to cut costs. One of the less visible -- but nonetheless intriguing -- subcurrents of this streamlining trend involves moves in several states to get government out of the workers compensation insurance business.
For example, last month, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law Senate Bill 1045, which sets in motion the privatization of SCF Arizona, the state's workers compensation fund. The bill requires SCF Arizona to become a mutual insurance company, regulated by state insurance officials, by January 2013. SCF Arizona is the largest workers' compensation insurance carrier in the state, covering 40,000 state businesses and receiving $191.8 million in direct premiums written last year. SB 1045 passed with strong, bipartisan votes in each chamber (House 37-19, Senate 26-1).

The great sell-off: Chicago auctions city assets
By Mark Guarino - CSMonitor.com
The city is auctioning private assets to the highest bidder. But private ownership of parking meters stirs a backlash.
No city in America beats Chicago when it comes to selling public assets - garages, bridges, even parking meters - and contracting with private companies to supply traditional public services.Over the past five years, the Windy City under Mayor Richard M. Daley has sold or leased out public institutions such as the Chicago Skyway ($1.83 billion), underground garages beneath Grant and Millennium Parks ($563 million), and, more recently, city parking meters ($1.15 billion).
That's not exactly chump change, especially for a city still grappling with a $469 million budget shortfall from last year, not to mention an estimated $300 million deficit this year.

Will city sell or shelve closed library materials, real estate?
Books just the beginning of Aurora's decisions on idle assets
By BRANDON JOHANSSON - The Aurora Sentinel
AURORA | The closure of four Aurora libraries - shuttered early this year amid shrinking budgets and after voters rejected a tax hike to keep them open - has left the city's library officials with a daunting task.
What should come of the slew of books, movies, CDs and computers that once stocked the shelves at Iliff Square, Chambers Plaza, Mission Viejo and Hoffman Heights libraries?
"It's been just an immense project, it's taken more time than I thought," said Patti Bateman, the city's director of library and cultural services.
And the work won't end when the books are gone.

Senators Collins, Snowe Found the Money to Bail Out Wall Street
But They Can't Spare a Dime to Keep Cops, Teachers and Nurses Working in Maine? - AFSCME.org
$100,000 Effort from AFSCME, Americans United for Change Urges Maine's Senators to Get Their Priorities Straight and Pass the Jobs Bill
Washington D.C. - AFSCME and Americans United for Change unveiled a joint $100,000 TV ad campaign today calling on Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to get their priorities straight after voting to cut off struggling out-of-work Mainers from unemployment benefits and threatening the jobs of cops, firefighters, nurses and teachers across the state. See script below for "Priorities," which will begin airing on broadcast television Monday in Portland and Bangor.

San Diego Must End Delays and Implement Managed Competition Now
Adam Summers - Governing.com
The following are remarks delivered on June 14, 2010, at a press conference organized by San Diego Councilmember Carl DeMaio to promote a ballot initiative, The Competition and Transparency in City Contracting Initiative, that would force the City of San Diego to implement managed competition reforms to encourage the city to allow private-sector companies to compete for contracts to provide various city services more cheaply and efficiently. Voters overwhelmingly approved a managed competition measure in November 2006 but the city employees' labor unions, fearful of competition and losing contracts to more efficient service providers in the private sector, have effectively stonewalled the implementation of the program for over three and a half years. The press conference took place at the Rancho Bernardo Library, which has seen its hours slashed as the city has been unable to implement the managed competition program, and has resorted to service cuts to balance the budget.

Harrisburg finances: Selling assets is only viable option
Patriot-News Editorial Board - PennLive.com
We agree with Mayor Linda Thompson.
The best plan on the table to get Harrisburg out of its debt crisis is to re-negotiate the payment schedule with creditors and to sell assets.
It's the plan she spelled out at her State of the City address this month in front of several hundred business and community leaders to much applause.
As much as everyone likes to talk about considering 'all the options on the table,' the truth is Harrisburg does not have many options. The ones it has have been apparent for months, if not years.
It boils down to this: Declare bankruptcy and hope for the best in an uncertain legal terrain or sell enough assets to cover the debt.

Chief prepares to sell DWP assets
General Manager Austin Beutner hopes to sell L.A.'s share of a coal-fired generating station in Arizona and is weighing a sale and lease-back deal on the utility's landmark downtown building.
By David Zahniser, Los Angeles Times
The top executive at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is laying the groundwork for a sale of some of the agency's biggest assets - including the utility's iconic downtown Los Angeles headquarters - as it seeks to cover rising costs without raising electricity rates.
DWP Interim General Manager Austin Beutner said Monday that he would not pursue any additional power rate increases for the remainder of the calendar year. But that decision would come with a series of tradeoffs, he said.

Taking State Parks off the State's Books
By Leonard Gilroy - BaconsRebellion.com
The Commission on Government Reform and Restructuring - established under executive order by Gov. Bob McDonnell - will soon begin the important work of identifying opportunities to streamline, consolidate, privatize or eliminate inefficient or unnecessary services, programs and authorities in Virginia state government. Virginia State Parks should be among the many state services and agencies the Commission ultimately puts under the microscope.

Taking State Parks off the State's Books, Part 2
Leonard Gilroy - Reason.org
Do we need a public sector monopoly on the operation of public lands?
My last column (see "Taking State Parks off the State's Books," 4/14) explored the concept of long-term concessions with private recreation management firms for the operation and maintenance of state parks, generating reader feedback ranging from supportive to skeptical. Such polarization is understandable given that the proposal represents a novel and emerging paradigm in public land management that's altogether different than the norm today, characterized by a public sector monopoly on the operation of public lands.

------- G8 - G20 Summit & global news -------

Obama, world leaders walk fiscal 'tightrope' in Toronto
USAToday.com
Last year in London, world leaders were perched on a dangerous precipice as they faced down a global recession of historic proportions.
Nearly 15 months later in Toronto, they're off the precipice -- and on a "tightrope."
That was the prognosis this morning from Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper as he gaveled leaders of the G-20 major and developing nations into session for a day full of talks focused largely on economics and financial regulation.

G20 summit:
Rifts in Toronto as US warns EU of double-dip recession risk
Patrick Wintour and Larry Elliott in Toronto - guardian.co.uk
Divisions add to financial market jitters, with David Cameron praised by Canadian counterpart for budget to slash deficit
Signs of deep rifts at the G8 and G20 summits in Toronto over how quickly governments should cut deficits added to financial market jitters today, with the Americans warning of the dangers of a double dip recession if all countries started to rein back spending at once.
The leading European economies, especially Germany, are putting a new emphasis on cutting back government spending, and there is a possibility that a G20 communique, due to be released on Sunday , will set out an indicative timetable of how far and fast countries should retrench spending.

Leaders at Summit Turn Attention to Deficit Cuts
By JACKIE CALMES and SEWELL CHAN - NYTimes.com
TORONTO - Despite President Obama's pitch at the summit meeting for developed nations here for continued stimulus measures to prevent another global economic downturn, the United States will go along with other leaders who are more concerned about rising debt and join in a commitment to cut their governments' deficits in half by 2013, administration officials said on Saturday.

Hundreds arrested after G20 protesters riot in Toronto
Mark Tran and agencies - guardian.co.uk
Police detain almost 500 people as masked anarchists break away from peaceful rally to smash storefronts and torch cars
Almost 500 people have been arrested after a group of anarchists torched police cars and smashed storefronts close to the G20 summit in Toronto.
The Toronto Star, citing security officials, reported that 480 people were detained after violence broke out when several hundred masked protesters broke away from a larger, peaceful demonstration yesterday.

George Butler:
Big Money Spent for G8-G20 Summit Security in Toronto

US-Israeli relations suffer 'tectonic rift'
By Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem - Telegraph.co.uk
A senior Israeli diplomat has warned that the Jewish state's relationship with the United States has suffered a "tectonic rift".
The sobering assessment comes a week before Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, meets President Barack Obama at the White House.
There had been hope the two could lay to rest a row that erupted between the two allies in March but the new comments have raised fears of long-term damage.
Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to Washington, told foreign ministry colleagues at a private briefing in Jerusalem that they were facing a long and potentially irrevocable estrangement.
Sources said Mr Oren told the meeting: "There is no crisis in Israel-US relations because in a crisis there are ups and downs. [Instead] relations are in a state of tectonic rift in which continents are drifting apart."

US, Russia fail to grip Kyrgyz helm
By M K Bhadrakumar - AsiaTimes
If the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan were to be the litmus test, the United States' "reset" of ties with Russia appears only selectively genuine. Kyrgyzstan is a perfect case for the two powers to agree to tactical cooperation, as there are significant common interests - and yet that is not happening.
The Kyrgyz statehood is dissolving and Sunday's referendum on constitutional reform may only aggravate the crisis and further splinter the ruling class. The Kyrgyz implosion impacts on regional stability, given the drug mafia and the militant Islamists waiting in the wings. Ethnic strife is opening the floodgates.

Dr. John Coleman:
Committee of 300 Staged Atrocities for World Government
Alex Jones Tv 1/4

Dr. John Coleman:
Committee of 300 Staged Atrocities for World Government
a GOAL of NWO - make people dependent upon government
Alex Jones Tv2/4

Dr. John Coleman:
Committee of 300 Staged Atrocities for World Government
Alex Jones Tv 3/4

Dr. John Coleman:
Committee of 300 Staged Atrocities for World Government
Alex Jones Tv 4/4

-------- Gulf Oil News -----------

Alex, first named Atlantic storm, heads for Gulf
PATRICK E. JONES - AP foreign - Guardian.co.uk
BELIZE CITY (AP) - Tropical Storm Alex weakened to a depression Sunday hours after making landfall in this popular tourist destination, but is expected to regain strength in the coming days as it moves out over warmer waters in the Gulf of Mexico.
Although Alex could eventually become a hurricane, it is projected to touch down on the Mexican coastline later this week well away from the area where BP PLC is trying to stop a massive oil leak, the U.S. Hurricane Center in Miami said.

Don't ignore low-income spill victims, advocates urge BP
By Deborah Barfield Berry, Gannett Washington Bureau - USAToday.com
WASHINGTON - Vicky Townley is waiting to hear whether BP will compensate her for tip income she says she's lost because of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
"Things are so slow we're basically living from paycheck to paycheck, which is not very much," said Townley, a bartender in Gulf Shores, Ala., who filed her lost-wages claim three weeks ago.
Before the spill, she said, she earned $60 a day in tips during the summer months, which helped in the long slog to rebound from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

How BP wants to start over in bid to contain Gulf oil spill
By Mark Sappenfield, CSMonitor.com
Even before tropical storm Alex came on the scene, BP wanted to revamp how it collects oil from the leaking well at the center of the Gulf oil spill. Those plans could take shape this week.
Tropical storm Alex comes just as the Coast Guard and BP are preparing to make the oil-collection system at the leaking well on the sea floor more hurricane-ready.
For now, it appears as if Alex will pass far west of the Gulf oil spill. But even before Alex developed, the end of June and the beginning of July was shaping up to be a crucial moment in BP's bid to collect all the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.
During the next two to three weeks, BP will make major changes at and above the well. It will bring in a host of new ships to replace those currently on site and radically change the underwater architecture that has captured 15,000 to 25,000 barrels of oil (630,000 to 1 million gallons) daily during much of the past month.

Stuart Varney (on Neil Cavuto) with Ron Paul
setup of President's BP Commission by EO instead of by Congress

Alabama State Troopers Moonlighting as BP Security Guards
Written by Wayne Madsen - OilPrice.com
WMR's sources on the Gulf coast report that BP Security personnel are being augmented by off-duty Alabama state troopers and G4S Wackenhut private security guards. The BP Security personnel ensure that no observers are present on Gulf coast beaches during night time hours when BP contractors scour the beaches and pick up and covertly dispose of dead dolphins, turtles, birds, and other sea animals that wash ashore covered with oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.

Panorama - BP - In Deep Water .2010

Cleanup Hiring Feeds Frustration in Fishing Town
By JOHN LELAND - NYTimes.com
BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. - Nine weeks into the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, there is more money in this small, hardscrabble fishing town than there has been in decades, residents say. There are more high-paying workdays, more traffic accidents, more reports of domestic violence, more drug and alcohol use, more resentment, more rumors, more hunger, more worry.

Criminal Investigation of BP Staged Oil Spill Vital

Gulf oil spill: Could 'toxic storm' make beach towns uninhabitable?
By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer - CSMonitor.com
Residents fear mass relocations should a hurricane kick the Gulf oil spill onto resort towns. 'Hazmat cards' are a hot commodity among residents, since they could be the key to return.
Orange Beach, Ala.
Ron Greve expects the worst is yet to come in the oil spill drama that is haranguing beach towns all along the US Gulf Coast. So, like a growing number of residents, the Pensacola Beach solar-cell salesman took a hazardous materials class and received a 'hazmat card' upon graduation.
Those cards, says Mr. Greve, could become critical in coming weeks and months. In the case of a hurricane hitting the 250-mile wide slick and pushing it over sand dunes and into beach towns, residents fear they'll face not only mass evacuations, but potential permanent relocation.

Lindsey Williams on The Oil Spill catastrophe
Jeffe Rense 23/06/2010

Coming Soon to a Food Supply Near You
By Nancy Matthis - AmericanDaughter
The toxic chemical dispersant Corexit 9500 was pumped into the Gulf to counter the oil spill. Now it appears to have gassified, entered the atmosphere, and rained down on inland farmers, damaging crops and killing songbirds:
One month ago, on May 24, The European Union Times wrote about a report prepared by Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources for President Medvedev - Toxic Oil Spill Rains Warned Could Destroy North America:
A dire report prepared for President Medvedev by Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources is warning that the British Petroleum (BP) oil and gas leak in the Gulf of Mexico is about to become the worst environmental catastrophe in all of human history threatening the entire eastern half of the North American continent with "total destruction".

Russian Scientists Warn Toxic Rain Could Destroy North America
Due to BP Chemical

Alex Gives His Full Report of The BP Gulf Oil Spill "False Flag" Event
Alex Jones Tv 5/5

----- On a lighter note! -----

Great Spoof on November Elections!
Clint Webb for Senate

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Archived Page Link
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Friday 06.25.2010

Ben Bernanke needs fresh monetary blitz as US recovery falters
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is waging an epochal battle behind the scenes for control of US monetary policy, struggling to overcome resistance from regional Fed hawks for further possible stimulus to prevent a deflationary spiral.
Fed watchers say Mr Bernanke and his close allies at the Board in Washington are worried by signs that the US recovery is running out of steam. The ECRI leading indicator published by the Economic Cycle Research Institute has collapsed to a 45-week low of -5.7 in the most precipitous slide for half a century. Such a reading typically portends contraction within three months or so.
Key members of the five-man Board are quietly mulling a fresh burst of asset purchases, if necessary by pushing the Fed's balance sheet from $2.4 trillion (£1.6 trillion) to uncharted levels of $5 trillion. But they are certain to face intense scepticism from regional hardliners. The dispute has echoes of the early 1930s when the Chicago Fed stymied rescue efforts.

Democrats blink on sanctity of stimulus
By Stephen Dinan - WashingtonTimes.com
Failed bill aimed to redirect some funding
After repeatedly turning back the GOP's efforts to redirect stimulus money to other purposes, Senate Democrats did an about-face this week as they dipped into the Recovery Act funds to try to pay for their own tax breaks and job-spending priorities.
It's the first time Senate Democratic leaders have embraced undoing parts of last year's $862 billion stimulus - though Democrats insisted it wasn't a strategy change, but rather a last-ditch desperation move to try to entice Republicans to support another round of spending.

Big Banks May Have to Pay if Fannie and Freddie Go Bust
By CHARLES WALLACE - DailyFinance.com
Financial stocks took a beating at the opening of trading Thursday after a Republican congressman added language to the proposed financial regulation overhaul that would make big banks pay up if government-backed mortgage lenders Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) go bust.
"It would be unconscionable if we would not be dealing with the government enterprises now," Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, told a conference committee hearing Thursday, referring to Fannie and Freddie, which were seized by the government in September 2008 when they were on the verge if insolvency.

Rise Of The New Gold Rush
Giordano Bruno - SilverBearCafe.com
They called us "kooks" and "crackpots". They said our ideas were outdated and incompatible with modern finance. They said it wouldn't last. Oh yes, Gold, they said, was a silly investment with no inherent value, and soon, precious metals investors would be "wiped out" by the "inevitable implosion of the gold bubble" (gold bubble....?). Mainstream establishment economists and Keynesians have been yipping and snarling like overanxious Chihuahuas for the past two years against gold and silver, most specifically their use as a hedge against collapse in stocks and currencies.

Golden Times
The Aden Sisters - Kitco.com
Gold is amazing. It's been very strong, hitting record highs last week. Its bullish price action means investors and governments know it's time to be in safe assets. The result is, gold continues to benefit as the world's #1 safe haven.
GOLD IS MONEY
We're also seeing first hand gold's role in the monetary system. Few people understand gold's importance over other forms of wealth but if there was ever a doubt, it's been erased by gold's reaction to ongoing financial developments.
Gold is money. Most governments regard gold as a monetary instrument, and it has been the international currency for thousands of years.

While the Economy Fizzles - Gold Sizzles!
By Chris Blasi - Kitco.com
Those that could not see the disaster coming, and grossly underestimated its magnitude once underway, have been loudly proclaiming an economic rebound is underway. Such proclamations, spewing from establishment channels, are so blatantly short on truth that it reveals a disturbing level of desperation to raise confidence. Furthermore, the straight-faced dissemination of such transparently amateurish "official analysis" being served as a substitute for tangible economic growth clearly shows that the damage to the national economic infrastructure is so great that past practices employed by the Fed and Government to goose the economy to revival are now futile at best and most likely counterproductive.

If They Don't Own Gold, Don't Trust Their Opinion on Gold
Justice Litle, Editorial Director, Taipan Publishing Group
As an asset class, gold stirs the passions. Some folks love it, and others despise it. Be wary of those who will never own gold.
As I write this note to you on Friday, fingers flying over keys like the flickering quotes on my screens, Pink Floyd's "Learning to Fly" is playing on my speakers.
It's an appropriate tune, because gold is once again "learning to fly" now. After one or two scrapped take-off attempts, the yellow precious metal has broken out to fresh all-time highs. (Well... nominal highs at least. To break inflation-adjusted highs - which will happen sooner or later - gold will have to trade above $2,000 per ounce.)

SDR Strawman & Gold-Backed Euro
by Jim Willie, FinancialSense.com
The world faces challenges and uncertainty these days like perhaps never before in modern history. Broken insolvent banking systems match the insolvent homeowners living in despair but with newfound hope from simply not paying home mortgages in large numbers. Henry David Thoreau could actually run for the US Senate, as his platform of civil disobedience is more widely embraced with each passing month. Over a quarter million Bank of America home mortgage holders have not made a loan payment in a year, yet still occupy rent-free dwellings. The European sovereign debt has shaken the entire government financial structures, offering a preview of what comes to the sacrosanct Untied States and United Kingdom. In its wake, a fire is lit under gold as a recognized safe haven asset that has no debt attachment or counter-party risk. Government budgets read like Banana Republics throughout the Western world. The norm has become crime syndicates to control most Western Govts, matching the trend for local warlord criminal groups to control most Third World Govts. Mexico is now a failed state. Think evolution in reverse. Indeed, crisis has become the new norm.

The U.S. Dollar Falls by Fall
Greg Hunter - SilverBearCafe.com
Last week, three stories acted as signposts for the direction of the U.S. Dollar. The first is about a letter President Obama sent to members of the G20 (Group of 20 major industrial countries) in advance of next weekends meeting in Canada. The Presidents letter asked members to "reaffirm our unity of purpose to provide the policy support necessary to keep economic growth strong." The policy he is talking about is to print money and run monstrous deficits to keep the world economy afloat. The talk in Europe is just the opposite. The EU these days is all about austerity and budget cuts which are hardly pro-growth. The Associated Press reported the story this way: In the letter, Obama said that the June 25-27 summit should also focus on efforts to stabilize public deficits in the "medium term," a reference to the administrations position that governments need to run huge deficits currently to provide the stimulus needed to ensure a sustained recovery but then move in future years to deficit reduction efforts.

CFR Meeting: Zbigniew Brzezinski Fears The Global Awakening

Greece puts its islands up for sale to save economy
by Elena Moya - guardian.co.uk
Desperate attempt to repay debts also driven by inability to find funds to develop infrastructure on islands
There's little that shouts "seriously rich" as much as a little island in the sun to call your own. For Sir Richard Branson it is Neckar in the Caribbean, the billionaire Barclay brothers prefer Brecqhou in the Channel Islands, while Aristotle Onassis married Jackie Kennedy on Skorpios, his Greek hideway.
Now Greece is making it easier for the rich and famous to fulfill their dreams by preparing to sell, or offering long-term leases on, some of its 6,000 sunkissed islands in a desperate attempt to repay its mountainous debts.

Gary Shilling: China's Currency Move Means Tough Decisions Ahead
By NIKHIL HUTHEESING - DailyFinance.com
When the Chinese government recently said it was going to let its currency, the yuan, float, the knee-jerk reaction among U.S. investors was enthusiastic. A stronger yuan, they reasoned, meant that there would be fewer trade problems between China and the West, that it would be easier to tame inflation, and that it would help to rebalance that country's economy.
But Gary Shilling, the economist credited with predicting the subprime mortgage crisis and the subsequent slowdown of the U.S. economy, says not to believe the headlines. Shilling says that there is no way China's government will give the yuan complete free rein to trade against the dollar.

Wall Street reform hits Main Street
By THOMAS J. DONOHUE - Politico.com
The law of unintended consequences dictates that massive, complicated and sweeping bills passed by Congress can lead to unanticipated, often undesirable, outcomes.
As Congress prepares to pass a historic financial reform bill, what can be done to ensure that negative unintended consequences are kept to a minimum?
The Senate bill provision dealing with the derivatives market seems rife for unintended consequences. If left unchanged, it could restrict capital, undermine economic growth and job creation and increase the level of uncertainty for businesses and consumers.

Fed to reduce size, scope of Nashville branch
NASHVILLE BUSINESS JOURNAL - BY Dan Hieb STAFF WRITER
The Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta will downsize its presence in Nashville by mid-2011, eliminating more than two-thirds of its local work force as it moves some of its processes from the Nashville branch to its office in Atlanta.
The Fed announced the changes today, which will reduce its local work force from 54 to about 15.
Among the changes: The Fed plans to turn the Nashville branch at 301 Rosa L. Parks Ave. into a "cash depot," eliminating the cash processing that currently takes place at the branch. Instead, armored carriers will transport the cash for processing in Atlanta.

The End of The Great Bailouts is Approaching
Bob Chapman - TheInternationalForecaster.com
Broke central banks, UK must monetize or collapse, 20 major countries on the edge of insolvency, No way but down for the Stock markets, defaulting on bailout payments, Fed audit going through Senate, shrinkage of high-end properties, VAT coming.
The devastating results of Keynesianism didn't take hold of the western world until after WWII. Cycles were created for the accumulation of wealth. A boom occurs and you get wealthy from investments on the way up and even wealthier on the way down, because the elitists are controlling the supply of money and credit and interest rates. That is the real underlying mission of the Fed, which is owned by banking and Wall Street. All the power to control markets and create inflation and deflation lies with the Federal Reserve. Politicians do not create monetary policy, the Fed does. The politicians do as they are told. They know from time to time there will be economic pain, but the payoffs are so good they learn to live with it.

Keiser Report 54

Why Municipal Bonds Aren't the Answer
By Dave Gonigam - DailyReckoning.com
06/24/10 Baltimore, Maryland - US households are piling into municipal bonds. The household sector accounts for 80% of all flows into munis over the last three quarters, according to the Federal Reserve's flow of funds report.
Of the $2.8 trillion in municipal debt currently outstanding, households hold $1 trillion. And that doesn't count what they hold indirectly through banks, insurance companies, mutual funds and so on.

Bank execs panic over proposed change to orderly liquidation authority -- Dodd unhappy with Brown -- Zero hour arrives as derivatives, 'Volcker rule' remain unresolved
By: BEN WHITE - Politico.com
DOUBLE SIREN EXCLUSIVE - Bank executives were panicking last night over a proposed fix to Title II of financial reform literally penciled in at the last minute. The fear is that that the proposed change to the orderly liquidation authority could leave banks on the hook for a possible wind-down of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that could cost as much as $400 billion. In the House counter-offer below, Fannie and Freddie are penciled in as falling under the definition of 'financial company,' meaning they could be resolved by the orderly liquidation process. This process is paid for by the sale of the failing company's assets and/or through assessments on other financial companies, possibly putting the Street in line to pay for the liquidation of the troubled housing giants.

We Cannot Afford to Double Dip
By Alex Daley - Kitco.com
Talk of a double-dip recession is seemingly increasing these days. Home sales have dropped like a brick since the end of the special tax breaks for buyers. Weekly job reports are showing much larger rises in unemployment claims than previously expected by whoever it is that decides what exactly is expected - 427,000 new filings in just the last weekly report.

Government 'too big to fail' and too big to succeed
By Jason Clemens and Julie Kaszton - WashingtonTimes.com
Washington has become a 'systemic risk'
These days, one is hard-pressed to read a newspaper or watch the news without encountering the phrase "too big to fail." The debate over TBTF, as it also is known, completely ignores the one institution that deserves attention when assessing the real risks of TBTF: government.
To get a sense of its size, consider government as a corporation. Sam Corp., as we will call it, will have revenues of $2.2 trillion this year against expenses of $3.6 trillion. As of the end of 2008, Sam Corp. employed more than 2.76 million people. The monthly payroll costs for Sam Corp. exceed $17 billion. Sam Corp. has affiliates in all 50 states, and each of these affiliates has subaffiliates at the county and city level.

Caveat Lector - The views and opinions represented in the articles and videos on this page do not necessarily reflect the opinions of PTG, but are included for your perusal. We attempt to bring timely information to the table for your consideration.

Webster Tarpley : US and the geopolitical situation in the World

A Plague Upon The World: The USA is a "Failed State"
by Paul Craig Roberts - ForeignPolicyJournal.com
Question: Dr. Roberts, the United States is regarded as the most successful state in the world today. What is responsible for American success?
Dr. Roberts: Propaganda. If truth be known, the U.S. is a failed state. More about that later. The U.S. owes its image of success to: (1) the vast lands and mineral resources that the U.S. "liberated" with violence from the native inhabitants, (2) Europe's, especially Great Britain's, self-destruction in World War I and World War II, and (3) the economic destruction of Russia and most of Asia by communism or socialism.
After World War II, the U.S. took the reserve currency role from Great Britain. This made the U.S. dollar the world money and permitted the U.S. to pay its import bills in its own currency. World War II's destruction of the other industrialized countries left the U.S. as the only country capable of supplying products to world markets. This historical happenstance created among Americans the impression that they were a favored people. Today the militarist neoconservatives speak of the United States as "the indispensable nation." In other words, Americans are above all others, except, of course, Israelis.

Central Banking in Crisis:
Some Twenty Countries on the Verge of Insolvency
Bob Chapman - SilverBearCafe.com
Market Volatility as the Debt Implosion Continues
Cycles were created for the accumulation of wealth. A boom occurs and you get wealthy from investments on the way up and even wealthier on the way down, because the elitists are controlling the supply of money and credit and interest rates. That is the real underlying mission of the Fed, which is owned by banking and Wall Street. All the power to control markets and create inflation and deflation lies with the Federal Reserve. Politicians do not create monetary policy, the Fed does. The politicians do as they are told. They know from time to time there will be economic pain, but the payoffs are so good they learn to live with it.

Making It McChrystal Clear
by Butler Shaffer - LewRockwell.com
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. ~ H.L. Mencken
The war system's response to Gen. McChrystal's Rolling Stone interview is instructive. It is a reminder that every Memorial Day should begin by honoring the first victim of every war: truth. But as all wars are grounded in lies - the bloodier the war the more enormous the falsity of its foundation - truth becomes not only a casualty, but the enemy itself.

Barack Obama's sacking of General McChrystal put his vanity above the national interest
By Gerald Warner - Telegraph.co.uk
Barack Obama has handled the issue of General Stanley McChrystal as cack-handedly as his mismanagement of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. While it is true that generals owe a duty of respect to their commander-in-chief, the consensus among those who have read the offending interview in Rolling Stone magazine is that McChrystal did not overstep the mark as badly as had been rumoured, though his aides were certainly at fault. The President was within his rights to call in McChrystal for an explanation; but there were very special circumstances obtaining in this case.

Dozens from U.S. on list of targets as terrorists
By Eli Lake - WashingtonTimes.com
Threat called 'worrisome'
Dozens of Americans who have joined terrorist groups are targets of President Obama's war on al Qaeda, the president's most senior adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security said Thursday.
"There are, in my mind, dozens of U.S. persons who are in different parts of the world, and they are very concerning to us," said John O. Brennan, deputy White House national security adviser for homeland security and counterterrorism.

Stimulus, Austerity, and the Spiral of Decline
By Nathan Lewis - DailyReckoning.com
06/24/10 Binghamton, New York - In an economic decline, mediocre governments typically bounce back and forth between "stimulus" and "austerity." They are the ketchup and mustard of bad recession policy.
"Stimulus" - favored by the left-leaning politicians - rarely amounts to more than a form of welfare spending. This is appreciated in hard times, but it tends to be extremely expensive and does little for the economy as a whole. Deficit worries increase. Then comes the "austerity," often favored by conservative politicians.

Morgan Stanley to Pay $102m in Subprime Settlement with Massachusetts AG
by AUSTIN KILGORE - HousingWire.com
Morgan Stanley will pay $102m to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and more than 1,000 homeowners in a settlement that brings to a close an investigation into the investment firm's subprime mortgage securitization and financing practices, Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley's office announced Thursday.
According to the announcement, Morgan Stanley will pay $58m to more than 1,000 homeowners, $23m to the Massachusetts Pension Fund for investment losses and $19.5m to the commonwealth's general fund and $2m to Massachusetts non-profit groups to help distressed subprime borrowers avoid foreclosure.

A Closer Look at the Second Leg Down in Housing
By Barry Ritholtz - Ritholtz.com
. . . . Today, residential real estate confronts numerous headwinds: Credit, once given to anyone who could fog a mirror, is now tight. Hence, demand is far below what it was during the past decade. Home prices are still unwinding from artificially high levels, and remained over-priced. Inventory is elevated. Unemployment remains high. A huge supply of shadow inventory is out there: Speculators and flippers who overpaid but have held onto their properties await modestly higher prices to sell. Bank owned real estate (REOs) continues to increase. We are barely halfway through a decade long foreclosure surge.
This is known, or at least should be by those who have looked at the data. I cannot explain why some economists still have not figured this out.

Is America Destined to Starve?
by Phillip Parham - LewRockwell.com
Americans are no longer prepared to take care of their basic needs without the involvement of the federal government. The majority of Americans have relinquished the responsibility of their future survival to bureaucrats. How and when did we, as an intelligent and formerly self-reliant populace, decide to become wards of the state?

Mortgage rates fall to record lows
By Patrice Hill - WashingtonTimes.com
But buyers still hesitant
The rates on 30-year mortgages last week fell to 4.69 percent, the lowest level on record, mortgage company Freddie Mac reported Thursday. The previous record of 4.71 percent was set in December.
Mortgage rates closely track the rates on 10-year Treasury bonds, which have fallen steeply in recent weeks as the European debt crisis has driven investors into the safe haven of U.S. Treasury securities.

The Wrong Bankruptcy
Adam Lass, Senior Editor, WaveStrength Options Weekly - TaipanDaily
FedEX is NOT headed for bankruptcy - but you might be, if Wall Street gets its way.
In Middle English, a "bellwether" is a castrated ram with a bell placed around its neck so that it might lead the flock home in the evening. In the investing biz, bellwether can refer to most any leading indicator, really, but is most commonly applied to stocks that tend to predict their sectors' next move.
I have several such indicative stocks that I keep a steady an eye on, as their actions are always illuminating. For example, the chart for Monster Worldwide offers a window on hiring practices that updates every 10 seconds. Sure beats waiting for some weekly (and probably cooked) figures out Washington.

Calif. lawmakers begin push to boycott Arizona
By Michal Elseth - WashingtonTimes.com
Forty-five California legislators, headed by state Sen. Gil Cedillo, Los Angeles Democrat, have introduced a nonbinding resolution to boycott Arizona until that state's new immigration law is repealed.
Cities across the country, including Seattle, Boston and Los Angeles, have already begun boycotting Arizona, but California would be the first state to do so.
Senate Concurrent Resolution 113, which was introduced Wednesday evening, would urge the state's retirement systems to stop new investments in Arizona until that state's new law on illegal immigrants, SB1070, which goes into effect July 29, is repealed.

Treasury Watchdog Says 1,295 Prisoners Claimed Homebuyer Tax Credit
by AUSTIN KILGORE - HousingWire.com
First it was minors and resident aliens. Now the Treasury Department's independent watchdog is alleging that $9.1m in homebuyer tax credits went to 1,295 prisoners who were incarcerated at the time they allegedly purchased homes.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) released its latest interim audit (download here) on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) efforts to identify and prevent fraudulent homebuyer tax credits.

US, Mexico Agree To Act on Illegal Immigration -- By Suing Arizona
Larry Elder - Townhall.com
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder questioned the constitutionality of Arizona's new immigration law -- before admitting he hadn't read it. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just confirmed that the feds plan to sue to stop the law. And Mexico, whose president said Arizona's law "opens a Pandora's box of the worst abuses in the history of humanity," recently filed a brief in U.S. federal court to side with the law's opponents.
Is Arizona's law, scheduled to go into effect next month, an unconstitutional assault on all things moral and decent? How else to describe the over-the-top reaction to -- and the often completely false description of -- the law by people who apparently neither read nor understood it?

G-20 leaders arrive in Toronto riven by national interests
By Howard Schneider and Scott Wilson Washington Post Staff Writer
TORONTO -- Leaders of the world's major economies began gathering here Thursday amid warnings that their failure to cooperate on core financial and economic issues could cost the world tens of millions of jobs.
After crafting a common response to the financial crisis in the fall of 2008 -- one that saw countries from communist-governed China to conservative Canada pull in the same direction -- members of the Group of 20 arrive this time rived by newly asserted national interests. Many are at odds over details such as how fast and far some countries should cut public spending, and how strict new capital requirements should be for the world's major banks.

Medvedev-Obama Q&A: WTO, G20 and Afghan war

A New Strategic Partnership Emerges
Brad MacDonald - TheTrumpet.com
The European Union, under German direction, is forging a new strategic relationship with Russia.
Before war there is often a fateful moment when conflict becomes inevitable. When this point is breached, no amount of negotiation or compromise can prevent the impending violence.
In the case of World War ii, that point occurred close to midnight on Aug. 21, 1939, when the music stopped playing on Berlin radio and the Reich government announced that it had "conclude[d] a pact of nonaggression" with the Soviet Union. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed two days later, officially making Russia a friend of Germany, and allaying Hitler's last remaining fear.
Eight days later, he began his slaughter.

The despised state of Israel cannot survive for long: Christopher Bollyn
by Kourosh Ziabari - ForeighPolicyJournal.com
Christopher Bollyn is an American journalist and researcher. He is widely known for his extensive research on the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that cost the lives of 2,976 victims and left more than 6,000 injured. The U.S. government under former President George W. Bush blamed the terrorist group Al-Qaida as the main culprit of the attacks and adopted an aggressive policy towards Muslim nations. It also enacted the USA PATRIOT Act and issued an illegal order to search and investigate the telephone and email communications of the U.S. citizens under the pretext of discovering and mapping out possible threats to U.S. national security. Bollyn has written on U.S.-Israel relations comprehensively and believes that a powerful corporate cartel of Zionists control and mastermind large-scale U.S. foreign policy.

Germany - Coming Military Dictatorship
By Ron Fraser - TheTrumpet.com
Twin trends in Germany spell danger ahead.
To view Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg at work in parliament, on the hustings, being interviewed by the press, or just enjoying himself socializing is to see a consummate politician in action.
Bright, articulate in both his native German and in English, witty and sharp, Guttenberg is a politician for the moment given Germany's present political turmoil. Even as politicians around him see their careers in tatters, or, in other instances, their popularity on the wane, Guttenberg seems to thrive on the controversy swirling in the current melee of German politics and to come up shining through crisis upon crisis.

Senate passes Iran sanctions
By LAURA ROZEN - Politico.com
The Senate on Thursday passed Iran sanctions legislation that gives President Barack Obama only part of the flexibility he had sought to exempt some U.S. allies from its provisions.
The legislation, which passed 99-0, came in the form of a conference report reconciling different versions passed earlier by both the House and Senate. It now goes to the House, where it is expected to clear quickly for Obama's signature.

----------- Gulf Oil News ------------

Is BP burning sea turtles alive?
MyFoxTampaBay.com staff report
VENICE, La. - A boat captain working to rescue sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico says he has seen BP ships burning sea turtles and other wildlife alive.
Captain Mike Ellis said in an interview posted on You Tube that the boats are conducting controlled burns to get rid of the oil.
"They drag a boom between two shrimp boats and whatever gets caught between the two boats, they circle it up and catch it on fire. Once the turtles are in there, they can't get out," Ellis said.

The Well from Hell
Christian A. DeHaemer - SilverBearCafe.com
The Dwarves dug too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dum... shadow and flame. - Saruman, The Lord of the Rings
There is something primordial about BP's quest for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. It's an Icarus-like story of super-ambition; of reaching too far, delving too deep. I don't know if you've stopped to contemplate what BP was trying to do... The well itself started 5,000 feet below the surface. That's the depth of the Grand Canyon from the rim. And then the company attempted to drill more than 30,000 feet below that - Mt. Everest would give 972 feet to spare.Furthermore, the company sought oil in a dangerous area of the seabed. It was unstable and many think BP sought it out because seismic data showed huge pools of methane gas - the very gas that blew the top off Deepwater Horizon and killed 11 people.

Florida closes down oil-stained Pensacola beaches
Breitbart.com
Oil from the massive Gulf of Mexico spill reached the white sands of Pensacola in north-eastern Florida, forcing local authorities Thursday to close down area beaches to swimming at the height of summer.
"There's oil both in the water and in the sand," said Warren Bielenberg, an official with the Gulf Islands National Seashore, one of the areas affected by the spill.
"There's a double red flag, so it's not permitted to swim," he said.
A health advisory was issued for Escambia County and runs from Perdido Key to Santa Rosa Island and the east side of Pensacola Beach, Bielenberg said.
Santa Rosa Island is one of the biggest tourist attractions of the region.

Max Keiser Reveals "Put Options" Ties to BP's False Flag Oil Spill Event on Alex Jones Tv 4/5

Gulf Oil Spill Spells Disaster For President Obama
Todd M. Schoenberger, Managing Editor, Taipan's Tipping Point Alert
The news about the forced resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal pushed a likely headline story to the back pages yesterday as the Gulf oil spill disaster reached another level of anxiety for the country.
For most of Wednesday, the broken well pushed up to 104,000 gallons of crude oil per hour into the Gulf of Mexico with nothing in its way. The cap that had been collecting roughly 25% of the flowing crude oil was bumped and knocked off by a robotic submarine in a way an annoying person would tip the hat off your head.
Adding to this news was the fact that we're running out of the booms needed to help collect and prevent the oil from flowing to the marsh and beaches of the Gulf region. Evidently, there are only 3,000 feet remaining and nobody has come up with a solution to find more.

BP Is Pursuing Alaska Drilling Some Call Risky
By IAN URBINA - NYTimes.com
The future of BP's offshore oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico has been thrown into doubt by the recent drilling disaster and court wrangling over a moratorium.
But about three miles off the coast of Alaska, BP is moving ahead with a controversial and potentially record-setting project to drill two miles under the sea and then six to eight miles horizontally to reach what is believed to be a 100-million-barrel reservoir of oil under federal waters.
All other new projects in the Arctic have been halted by the Obama administration's moratorium on offshore drilling, including more traditional projects like Shell Oil's plans to drill three wells in the Chukchi Sea and two in the Beaufort.

Health Risks from Oil Spill:
"Some of the Most Toxic Chemicals that We Know"
Washington's Blog
"Every Place Can be Ground Zero", CDC Advises "Everyone" to Avoid Oil
An "epidemiologist" is a scientist who studies diseases among groups of people.
So the following quote from Bloomberg caught my eye:
Shira Kramer, an epidemiologist who has conducted research for the petroleum industry on the health consequences of exposure to petroleum, said she is concerned that the risks are being downplayed.
"It's completely scientifically dishonest to pooh-pooh the potential here when you are talking about some of the most toxic chemicals that we know," said Kramer....
"When you talk about community exposure, you are talking about exposures in unpredictable ways and to subpopulations that may be more highly susceptible than others, such as those of reproductive age, people who are immuno-compromised, children or fetuses.

Lord Christopher Monckton: The Global Warming Take Over Grid
- Alex Jones Tv 1/6

Lord Christopher Monckton: The Global Warming Take Over Grid
- Alex Jones Tv 2/6

Lord Christopher Monckton: The Global Warming Take Over Grid
- Alex Jones Tv 3/6

Lord Christopher Monckton: The Global Warming Take Over Grid
- Alex Jones Tv 4/6

Lord Christopher Monckton: The Global Warming Take Over Grid
- Alex Jones Tv 5/6

Lord Christopher Monckton: The Global Warming Take Over Grid
- Alex Jones Tv 6/6

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Thursday 06.24.2010

California welfare cards can be used in many casino ATMs
By Jack Dolan, Los Angeles Times
Times review finds that in more than half of the state's casinos and gaming rooms, welfare recipients can get cash from state-issued EBT cards. Officials say they're moving to block such transactions.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who learned of the issue when asked to comment for this story, promised to take immediate action.
"We have instructed our vendors to prohibit these cards from being accepted at ATMs located in casinos and card rooms," Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said Wednesday. "It is reprehensible that anyone would use taxpayer money for anything other than its intended purpose."

Fannie Mae Will Deny New Loans to Homeowners Who Walk Away
By Lorraine Woellert
June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Fannie Mae, the mortgage guarantor 80 percent owned by the U.S. government, will temporarily deny new loans to borrowers who deliberately default and walk away from their homes.
Borrowers who have the means to make mortgage payments and don't work with lenders to restructure loans will be banned from obtaining new mortgages backed by Fannie Mae for seven years from the date of foreclosure, the company said today in a statement. Washington-based Fannie Mae, along with McLean, Virginia-based rival Freddie Mac, own or guarantee more than half of the $10.7 trillion U.S. mortgage market.

Business leaders say Obama's economic policies stifle growth
By Lori Montgomery - Washington Post
The chairman of the Business Roundtable, an association of top corporate executives that has been President Obama's closest ally in the business community, accused the president and Democratic lawmakers Tuesday of creating an "increasingly hostile environment for investment and job creation."
Ivan G. Seidenberg, chief executive of Verizon Communications, said that Democrats in Washington are pursuing tax increases, policy changes and regulatory actions that together threaten to dampen economic growth and "harm our ability . . . to grow private-sector jobs in the U.S."

Mortgage crisis could damp consumer consumption for years to come
By Gail MarksJarvis - LATimes.coom
Borrowers who defaulted could have low credit scores for years, crimping their spending. And changes in scoring and how it's applied could dramatically affect all Americans' ability to borrow.
For countless Americans struggling to make their mortgage payments, the problems have just begun.
Although a loan modification or foreclosure might allow them to put their housing problems behind them, millions will be dogged for years by the aftermath - a credit score so tarnished by the housing debacle that lenders will avoid them. And if they are able to obtain loans, high interest rates are likely to strain their budgets.

Why analysts see Gold at $10,000
By Lorimer Wilson - CommodityOnline.com
My first reaction when I read an article on this site by Arnold Bock - articulating why gold would go to $10,000 - by 2012 no less - was amazement. Who in their right mind would suggest that gold would eventually reach $2,500, let alone $5,000 or even $10,000? Well, I did some investigation and, believe it or not, Bock is in lofty company. Many respected individuals, such as David Rosenberg, Peter Schiff, Harry Schultz, Rob McEwen and many others, have come to the same conclusion. Below is a partial list of such individuals with sound reasons to substantiate their views.

What The Economist Doesn't Know About Gold
By: Adrian Ash, - GoldSeek.com
Two things happen to cash savers (meaning pretty much everyone) when real interest rates get stuck below zero... HOW HAS GOLD reached and breached new all-time highs in the absence of strong 1970s-style inflation?
The Buttonwood column in last weekend's Economist is only the latest analysis to miss the point, and despite tripping right over it, too.
"Owning gold is traditionally seen as offering protection against inflation. And inflation is very bad news for owners of government bonds.

Fed Sees Recovery Weakening but Uses No New Economic Tools
By CHARLES WALLACE - DailyFinance.com
The Federal Reserve issued a somewhat downbeat assessment of the state of the economy Wednesday but didn't outline any new tools to help the country get back to work.
The Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement that it is leaving interest rates unchanged at between 0% and 0.25%. The FOMC, which is headed by Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, said information gathered since the last meeting in April suggests that "the economic recovery is proceeding and that the labor market is improving gradually."
It said household spending is increasing but "remains constrained by high unemployment, modest income growth, lower housing wealth and tight credit."

Government Insiders: Get Ready for the Gulf "Dead Zone"
Written by Wayne Madsen - OilPrice.com
Bad news concerning the Gulf oil disaster continues to come from WMR's federal government sources in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers. Emergency planners are dealing with a prospective "dead zone" within a 200 mile radius from the Deepwater Horizon disaster datum in the Gulf.

BP: Now less popular than Goldman Sachs
BY ALEX PAREENE - Salon.com
Felix Salmon has been monitoring the BrandIndex scores of Toyota, BP and Goldman Sachs. BrandIndex polls people daily on whether what they've heard about a particular brand is negative or positive.
Exciting news: Goldman Sachs, which has been in the toilet, brand-wise, for a year, is finally more popular than another corporation. With a score of -47.6 in the latest BrandIndex poll, BP is now semi-scientifically the most reviled company in the United States.

General McChrystal and the militarization of US politics
by Simon Tisdall - guardian.co.uk
America has settled into being a nation perpetually at war. In this climate it's no surprise generals sometimes get out of control
Barack Obama has a problem with America's generals that is unlikely to be solved quickly or easily, whatever the outcome of the Stanley McChrystal affair. The disrespectful behaviour of the US commander in Afghanistan and his aides was symptomatic of a more deeply rooted, potentially dangerous malaise, analysts suggest. This week's events might thus be termed a very American coup.
One reason for Obama's difficulty lies in his own inexperience. As a greenhorn commander-in-chief and a Democrat to boot, Washington watchers say Obama has had scant opportunity to win the military's respect, let alone its affection. His unease with his violent inheritance in Afghanistan and Iraq is evident.

How McChrystal sabotaged counterinsurgency
BY MARK BENJAMIN - Salon.com
The man who co-wrote the bible on fighting insurgents says the general and "nincompoop" aides flouted its tenets
Throughout the Rolling Stone article that brought him down, Gen. Stanley McChrystal is described as "America's leading evangelist for counterinsurgency" -- a leader who surrounded himself with a crack team of "counterinsurgency experts" devoted to using that strategy to win the war in Afghanistan. But the man who co-wrote the military's 2006 counterinsurgency manual with Gen. David Petraeus says McChrystal didn't appear to understand or embrace that strategy's cornerstone: full military partnership with civilian government allies.
"If you look at Iraq, Petraeus and [former Iraq Ambassador Ryan] Crocker were joined at the hip and closely coordinated State Department and military activities," said Conrad Crane, the leading author of what has become the counterinsurgency bible. "From the reports, it appears that the close cooperation in Afghanistan was not there."

BP removes oil cap after submarine crash
PhysOrg.com
The containment system capturing oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill had to be removed Wednesday, leaving crude gushing unchecked, after a collision involving a robotic submarine, US officials said. "We had an incident earlier today, they noticed that there was some kind of a gas rising," said Admiral Thad Allen, pictured on June 17, the US official coordinating the response to the disaster.
Oil gushed unchecked Wednesday from the leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico after BP's containment system was removed for repairs following a submarine crash, US officials said.

G-20 unity fades along with global crisis
Leaders will spar over deficits, bank rules and global rebalancing
By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Leaders of the biggest economies managed to put their differences aside at the height of the global financial panic, but the unity of 2008 and 2009 will be replaced by strong differences of opinion when the Group of 8 and the Group of 20 leaders meet this weekend in Canada.
The problems of the global economy haven't gone away, but the sense of urgency to act as one has faded.

Soros tells Germany to step up to its responsibilities, or leave EMU
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor - Telegraph.co.uk
Legendary investor George Soros has called on Germany to leave the euro unless it willing to embrace a growth strategy, describing Berlin's austerity doctrine as a threat to democracy and political stability in Europe.
"German policy is becoming a danger that could destroy the European Project. A collapse of the euro cannot be excluded," he told the German weekly Die Zeit.
"Unless Germany changes policy, its withdrawal from the currency union would be helpful for the rest of Europe. At the moment Germany is pushing its neighbours into deflation: this threatens a long phase of stagnation, leading to nationalism, social unrest, and zenophobia. It endangers democracy," he said.

Soros Warns That Germany's Austerity Policy Endangers Europe
By MELLY ALAZRAKI - DailyFinance.com
The business community has no shortage of people who love to cause a stir with their comments. From Alan Greenspan to Nouriel Roubini to Paul Krugman, these gurus say what's on their minds, often engendering no small amount of controversy. George Soros is one such prominent commenter, and his latest remarks that Germany's fiscal policy could cause the euro to fail and undermine the European Union have more than struck a nerve.
The billionaire investor made his fortune speculating on currencies, most famously betting against the British pound in 1992, a gamble that made him $1 billion and forced the Bank of England to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Over the past couple of years, as the world has undergone a financial crisis and economic recession, Soros has often been quoted in the media.

Shilling Says Yuan Policy Shift Timing May Be 'Terrible'

Beijing Keeps a Tight Rein on Currency's Rise
By BETTINA WASSENER - NYTimes.com
HONG KONG - The Chinese central bank set a reference rate for the renminbi on Wednesday at a level that signaled Beijing was engineering only a very gradual appreciation of the Chinese currency.
The daily reference rate for the renminbi has become a focus of attention in the financial markets since Beijing announced on Saturday that it would allow more currency flexibility. Analysts are trying to gauge how rapidly, and when, the government will allow the currency to gain in value against the dollar - a critical issue in relations between the United States and China.

DEFICIT TERRORISTS STRIKE IN THE UK - USA NEXT?
Ellen Brown - WebOfDebt.com
....Banks advance the principal but not the interest necessary to pay off their loans; and since bank loans are now virtually the only source of new money in the economy, the interest can only come from additional debt. For the banks, that means business continues to boom; while for the rest of the economy, it means cutbacks, belt-tightening and austerity. Since more must always be paid back than was advanced as credit, however, the system is inherently unstable. When the debt bubble becomes too large to be sustained, a recession or depression is precipitated, wiping out a major portion of the debt and allowing the whole process to begin again. This is called the Òbusiness cycle,Ó and it causes markets to vacillate wildly, allowing the monied interests that triggered the cycle to pick up real estate and other assets very cheaply on the down-swing.

Volcker Rule Attacked as Lawmakers Seek Fund Loophole
By Yalman Onaran
June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Senate negotiators will probably offer changes today to the financial overhaul bill to soften the Volcker rule by allowing banks to sponsor hedge funds and invest their own money, within limits, alongside that of clients.
The compromise, designed to win the support of at least three Republican senators, comes as lawmakers struggle to reach agreement on financial reform this week. To appease Democrats in favor of stronger regulation, negotiators also plan to make it harder for regulators to undermine the rule, according to lobbyists and congressional aides involved in the discussions.

Lincoln Intervenes for Arkansas Bank
By DAMIAN PALETTA - WSJ.com
Sen. Blanche Lincoln, one of the chief architects of the financial-regulation overhaul nearing completion in Congress, is pushing for a change that would benefit a bank in her home state of Arkansas.
The bank, Arvest Bank Group Inc., of Bentonville, Ark., is predominantly owned by the Walton family, of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. fame, perhaps the most influential family in the state and one of the richest in the U.S.

On Wall Street, So Much Cash, So Little Time
By JULIE CRESWELL - NYTimes.com
Only on Wall Street, in the rarefied realm of buyout moguls, could you actually have too much money.
Private equity firms, where corporate takeovers are planned and plotted, today sit atop an estimated $500 billion. But the deal makers are desperate to find deals worth doing, and the clock is ticking.

Dollar Falls to 6-Week Low Against Pound as Fed to Hold Rates
By Ron Harui
June 24 (Bloomberg) -- The dollar fell to a six-week low against the pound as traders increased bets the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates near zero for longer in order to support a recovery in the world's largest economy.
The U.S. currency weakened versus 13 of its 16 most-active counterparts after Fed officials said in their statement that falling prices for energy and other commodities were undercutting inflation. The pound traded near a 19-month high against the euro after a report showed U.K. policy makers were split on whether to raise interest rates this month.

Pimco's Loss Is a Win for Wall Street Crooks
Commentary by Jonathan Weil
June 24 (Bloomberg) -- Crime didn't pay for Joseph Collins, a former corporate lawyer who received a seven-year prison sentence in January for securities fraud. It just has cost him a lot less money than it should have.
Collins, a former partner at the law firm Mayer Brown LLP, was the chief outside counsel for Refco Inc. when the futures- trading firm collapsed in October 2005, two months after its initial public offering. He was convicted last July on five felony counts for helping Refco executives fleece the company's investors and lenders of $2.4 billion. Yet Collins, 60, hasn't been forced to pay compensation to anyone who lost money when Refco went bust.

Gundlach Sees 10-Year Treasury Yield at 2.5% as Economy Slows
By Charles Stein
June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Jeffrey Gundlach, the top-ranked bond manager and founder of DoubleLine Capital LLC, said the yield on the 10-year Treasury note may fall to 2.5 percent as the U.S. economy slows over the next year.
Growth will weaken as the impact of government stimulus programs wears off, Gundlach said in an interview posted on the website of Morningstar Inc., a Chicago-based firm that tracks the mutual-fund industry. He didn't give a forecast for U.S. gross domestic product.

Treasuries Gain on Fed's Statement, Plunge in New Home Sales
By Cordell Eddings and Susanne Walker
June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Treasuries rose, pushing the two- year note's yield to the lowest level this year, as the Federal Reserve signaled that European indebtedness may harm America's growth and a report showed new home sales plunged.
U.S. debt advanced for a second straight day as the central bank reiterated its commitment to an "extended period" of low interest rates. Treasuries earlier pared gains as the government's $38 billion auction of five-year notes drew a higher yield than forecast.

Toshiba to build motors for Ford in Houston
HOUSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL
Toshiba Corp. announced on Tuesday plans to manufacture drive electrified motors for hybrid vehicles for Ford Motor Co. in Houston, marking the first time Toshiba has made such units outside of Japan.
Toshiba said it would produce the automotive propulsion units at an existing facility in the Bayou City. The production will be Toshiba's first overseas manufacturing base for automotive propulsion motors that are currently produced in Mie Prefecture, Japan.

5 states get mortgage help
By Tami Luhby, senior writer
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Five states hit hard by the mortgage crisis will soon share $1.5 billion in federal funds to help the unemployed and the underwater who owe more than their homes are worth.
The Treasury Department on Wednesday approved proposals by Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan and Nevada. The states will use the money primarily to subsidize homeowners' monthly mortgage payments and to reduce their principal. Some of the funds will also go to paying off second liens or facilitating short sales.

New home sales plunged 33 percent in May
By Alan Zibel AP - WashingtonTimes.com
WASHINGTON (AP) - Sales of new homes collapsed in May, sinking 33 percent to the lowest level on record as potential buyers stopped shopping for homes once they could no longer receive government tax credits.
The bleak report from the Commerce Department is the first sign of how the expiration of federal tax credits could affect the nation's housing market.

Meredith Whitney

Obama accepts McChrystal's resignation
By Shaun Waterman - WashingtonTimes.com
President Obama said Wednesday he had accepted the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal as commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, bringing to an ignominious end the storied but sometimes controversial career of one of the country's top soldiers.
Mr. Obama, who angrily summoned Gen. McChrystal to Washington after the general and several aides disparaged senior members of the administration in a series of interviews with Rolling Stone magazine, said he had accepted the resignation "with considerable regret, but also with certainty that it is the right thing for our mission in Afghanistan, for our military and for our country.

Barack Obama to replace Gen McChrystal with Gen Petraeus over Rolling Stone comments
By Toby Harnden in Washington - Telegraph.co.uk
President Barack Obama has sacked Gen Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, over comments made in a magazine interview.
In what could become a defining moment for his presidency, Mr Obama said he had accepted Gen McChrystal's resignation "with considerable regret but also with certainty that it is the right thing for our mission in Afghanistan, for our military and for the country".
Gen McChrystal was immediately replaced as commander by Gen David Petraeus, the architect of the successful Iraq surge in 2007.

Napolitano: State and local police may deploy to border
By Stephen Dinan - WashingtonTimes.com
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday the federal government will move to let state and local police in non-border states rotate down to the border to help local authorities go after smugglers along the U.S.-Mexico line.
In a major policy speech in which she took aim at what she called "bumper sticker" slogans and said the Obama administration has made huge strides on security, Miss Napolitano said the border can be made still more secure and said administration officials are in the middle of "surging" more boots on the ground.

Bond Defaults Stalk Michigan's Wealthiest as Home Prices Crash
By Darrell Preston and Jeff Green
June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Michigan's auto-industry collapse, which led to the worst home-price drop among U.S. states, has forced some of its wealthiest and fastest-growing communities to seek state aid to prevent municipal bond defaults.
Detroit, slammed by the state's 74 percent housing-price decline, warned of bankruptcy when it borrowed in March to cover part of a $280 million deficit. Now, nearby communities in Livingston County such as Hartland Township and Howell Township may need legislation to help make bond payments.

Sales of U.S. New Homes Plunged in May to Record Low
By Shobhana Chandra and Timothy R. Homan
June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Purchases of U.S. new homes fell in May to the lowest level on record after a tax credit expired, showing the market remains dependent on government support.
Sales collapsed an unprecedented 33 percent from April to an annual pace of 300,000, less than the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and the fewest in data going back to 1963, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. Demand in prior months was revised down.

Notorious Private Military Company Blackwater up for Sale
Written by Editorial Dept - OilPrice.com
Earlier this month, Xe Services, LLC, the latest re-branded name of the company that was once known as Blackwater Worldwide, announced that the company was up for sale. The announcement that Xe was seeking new ownership came somewhat as a surprise to industry insiders both in favor of and critical of the company, especially considering Blackwater's seemingly amazing ability to withstand the yearly toll of accidents, mishaps and misconduct that has since earned it a highly negative reputation throughout the world.

Magnitude-5.0 earthquake strikes Canada
AP - WashingtonTimes.com
TORONTO (AP) -- A magnitude-5.0 earthquake struck on the Ontario-Quebec border in Canada on Wednesday, shaking houses and businesses from Ottawa into the United States, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The midday quake was felt in Canada and in a number of U.S. states, including Michigan, Vermont, Ohio and parts of upstate New York.
The USGS said the quake occurred at a depth of about 12 miles. The agency initially said the quake had a 5.5 magnitude but later reduced it to a magnitude-5.0. The quake occurred at 1:41 p.m. EDT, the USGS said.

--------- Gulf Oil news ----------

Judges' hands tied by oil industry interests
By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times
Many presiding in gulf states are heavily invested in the oil and gas industries, creating the possibility of mass recusals in lawsuits and legal challenges stemming from the BP spill.
Federal judges in gulf states have been extensively invested in the oil and gas industries for decades, and those interests threaten to create a logjam for the 150-plus lawsuits and legal challenges prompted by the BP spill.
Seven of the 12 federal judges of the Eastern District of Louisiana already have cited potential conflicts of interest in bowing out of cases brought by fishermen, charter operators, tourist services and families of those killed in the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

Reeves Sees 'Extremely Active' Atlantic Hurricane Season
Ken Reeves, director of forecasting operations at AccuWeather Inc., talks about the outlook for the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season.

Feinberg to Step Down as Pay Supervisor to Focus on BP Claims
By Ian Katz
June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration's special master on executive compensation, will step down from the post by the end of August, a Treasury Department spokesman said.
Feinberg will leave to focus on his job as government- appointed administrator of BP Plc's $20 billion fund to pay claims stemming from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams said today.

BP Removed Cap on Leaking Gulf Well, Allen Says
By Jim Polson
June 23 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc removed a cap that's been sending oil from its leaking Gulf of Mexico well to one of two ships on the surface for inspection after an underwater remote- operated vehicle collided with it, U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said.
The ROV accidentally closed a vent on the cap, disrupting the system that funnels oil to the drillship Discoverer Enterprise, Allen, the government's national incident commander, said at a press conference today in Washington. Crude isn't spilling "unconstrained" because it continues to flow to a drilling rig that is burning it, he said.

More oil gushing into Gulf after cap problem
By Michael Kunzelman AP - WashingtonTimes.com
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Tens of thousands of gallons more oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday after an undersea robot bumped a venting system, forcing BP to remove the cap that had been containing some of the crude.
It was yet another setback in the nine-week effort to stop the gusher, and it came as thick pools of oil washed up on Pensacola Beach in Florida and the Obama administration tried to figure out how to resurrect a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.

More Oil Spewing Into Gulf After Accident at Well
Hugh Collins - AOLNews.com
(June 23) -- An underwater robot bumped into a venting system on the containment dome on the broken oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, forcing the removal of the cap, the Coast Guard said today.
Adm. Thad Allen also announced the deaths of two people involved in the cleanup operation.
The accident came on the day BP's Bob Dudley took over from CEO Tony Hayward as the company's point man for the spill.

BP Puts Gulf Well Manager on Leave Pending Disaster Probes
By Joe Carroll
June 23 (Bloomberg) -- The BP Plc manager who oversaw the well that erupted in April has been placed on leave while at least four federal agencies probe the disaster that killed 11 workers and triggered the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
Donald Vidrine, the well site leader aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that exploded and sank nine weeks ago off the Louisiana coast, said in an interview today that he has been on administrative leave since the incident.

BP Executive Prepares to Take Over Spill Response
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and ANDREW E. KRAMER
HOUSTON - Faced with the continuing American furor over its gaffe-prone British chief executive, Tony Hayward, BP is putting a former Mississippi resident in charge of handling the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and its aftermath.
Robert Dudley, who takes charge of BP's spill response on Wednesday, has plenty of experience dealing with a hostile government, unhappy partners and angry citizens.
The former head of BP's joint venture in Russia, TNK-BP, he was expelled from that country in 2008 after a nasty feud with the authorities and BP's business partners. In the end, BP was forced to turn over management control of the venture to the Russians, though it remains highly profitable for both sides.

Gulf oil spill flow increases after accident forces BP to remove cap
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent - guardian.co.uk,
'Top hat' damaged by robot vehicle shortly after US interior secretary had praised device
The gusher in the Gulf of Mexico returned to full force today after BP was forced to remove a cap that had been containing some of the oil spewing out of its ruptured wellhead.
Initial reports suggested a robot vehicle had accidently bumped into the "top hat" device and damaged one of the vents. Its failure represented a major setback to efforts to contain the spill, with underwater video showing crude and gas billowing from the ocean floor unchecked for the first time in three weeks.

BP Oil-Containment Effort Threatened
By SUSAN DAKER - WSJ.com
A key component of BP PLC's efforts to control the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill shut down Wednesday, threatening to derail the company's ambitious plan to nearly double the amount of oil it captures by next week.
An underwater robot collided with a cap placed atop the leaking deepwater well on Wednesday morning, forcing the company to halt the operation of the Discoverer Enterprise, the larger of two vessels currently capturing oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP oil flow increases after accident
By Rowena Mason, Telegraph.co.uk
Oil was gushing largely unchecked from BP's stricken Gulf of Mexico well on Wednesday night - after an accident dramatically increased the flow.
The oil giant had to remove a cap that was channelling 16,000 barrels per day to the surface, after a robot crashed into the capturing equipment. The collision raised fears that ice-crystals could have formed on the device.
BP is still piping some oil to the surface and burning it, but it could not confirm when it expects to replace the cap - its largest and most successful containment device to date. The latest blow to BP came as Ken Salazar, the US Interior Secretary, said all preliminary evidence pointed to "reckless conduct" in the run-up to the accident on April 20 that killed 11 men.

BP confirms Bob Dudley in key Gulf cleanup role
LONDON (AP) - BP PLC on Wednesday confirmed that Bob Dudley is now in charge of efforts to clean up the damage caused by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, replacing Chief Executive Tony Hayward, who has been heavily criticized for his handling of the incident.
Mr. Dudley, who had led BP's operations in the Americas and Asia, will head the Gulf Coast Restoration Organization, effective immediately, and report to Mr. Hayward.
Mr. Hayward had been overseeing the response to the spill but had been accused of an inept response in his public pronouncements.

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Wednesday 06.23.2010

Gassed in the Gulf (Parts I & ll): New Gulf War Syndrome
Deborah Dupré - SilverBearCafe.com
The petro-chemical-military-industrial complex is gassing Gulf Coast residents with poisonous Benzene and Corexit dispersant at dangerously high levels in the largest U.S. domestic military operation to date. The military and FEMA are engaged in Emergency Plans for 36 urban areas from Texas to Florida due to the unstoppable Gulf oil volcano the size of Mt. Everest, as WMR reports, indicating evacuations. Some people are advised to relocate now.
Satellite imagery that Obama's administration withheld shows "under the gaping chasm spewing oil at an ever-alarming rate is a cavern estimated to be around the size of Mount Everest. This information has been given an almost national security-level classification to keep it from the public," writes Wayne Madsen.

50 Statistics About the U.S. Economy That Are Almost Too Crazy to Believe
Most Americans know that the U.S. economy is in bad shape, but what most Americans don't know is how truly desperate the financial situation of the United States really is. The truth is that what we are experiencing is not simply a "downturn" or a "recession". What we are witnessing is the beginning of the end for the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen. Our greed and our debt are literally eating our economy alive. Total government, corporate and personal debt has now reached 360 percent of GDP, which is far higher than it ever reached during the Great Depression era. We have nearly totally dismantled our once colossal manufacturing base, we have shipped millions upon millions of middle class jobs overseas, we have lived far beyond our means for decades and we have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world. A great day of financial reckoning is fast approaching, and the vast majority of Americans are totally oblivious.

Maywood to lay off all city employees, dismantle Police Department
LATimes.com
The city of Maywood will lay off all city employees and begin contracting police services with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department effective July 1, officials said.
In addition to contracting with the Sheriff's Department, the Maywood City Council voted unanimously Monday night to lay off an estimated 100 employees and contract with neighboring Bell, which will handle other city services such as finance, records management, parks and recreation, street maintenance and others. Maywood will be billed about $50,833 monthly, which officials said will save $164,375 annually.
"We will become 100% a contracted city," said Angela Spaccia, Maywood's interim city manager.

Why China's Yuan Announcement Is Completely Meaningless
Robert Reich - BusinessInsider.com
The stock market is euphoric over China's apparent decision to allow its currency to rise against the dollar.
Watch your wallets.
China isn't really changing anything. It's only doing the minimum to prevent Congress from listing China as a currency manipulator, leading to a squeeze on Chinese imports.
Over time - and I'm talking about months if not years - China will raise its currency to where it was before the global meltdown in 2008. Big deal.

A Bankrupt BP - Worse For The Financial World Than Lehman Brothers?
Written by JSMineset - OilPrice.com
The BP crisis in the Gulf of Mexico has rightfully been analysed (mostly) from the ecological perspective. People’s lives and livelihoods are in grave danger. But that focus has equally masked something very serious from a financial perspective, in my opinion, that could lead to an acceleration of the crisis brought about by the Lehman implosion.

BP Spills Coffee

'Gold bull run to continue, target $1300-1500'
Gold prices have once again climbed to record levels of $1264 last week before correcting on profit taking thereby cementing the appeal of the yellow metal as a safe haven for investors. China announced its move toward a more flexible currency exchange rate mechanism which has improved the investor sentiments in general but the softening of the dollar has helped the recent surge in gold prices to record levels.

Gold futures rise as recovery doubts prevail
By Claudia Assis and Laura Mandaro , MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Gold futures found firmer footing Tuesday, turning positive with less than an hour from the end of floor trading and after swerving in and out of negative territory.
A declining dollar stoked some gold buying amid low volumes. Gold prices had made attempts to turn positive earlier Tuesday, but any substantial advances were swiftly clipped by investors cashing out after the recent record run.
Markets were also absorbing Monday's gyrations, when gold pushed close to $1,260 an ounce but ended up posting a 1.4% loss on the day.

Silver has better commodity value than gold
By Sam Mathid
Most watchers of the ratio of gold to silver have done so in the expectation that it will return to its historical average of around 15 to 16.
It is an interesting aside that this ratio is similar to the reserves in the ground. Gold at 0.004 parts per million of the Earth's crust, and silver at 0.07 parts per million, gives a ratio of 17.5.
In ancient times the ratio of gold to silver was about 10. In other words, gold was usually perceived to be around 10 times more valuable than silver.
By the middle ages this ratio had increased to around 15. In the 20th century the ratio was in the area of about 50.

Is Saudi Arabia Also Stocking Up On Silver As Well As Gold?
By: Peter J. Cooper
News that Saudi Arabia has secretly doubled its official gold reserves over the past few years should come as no surprise to readers of ArabianMoney. But then it was just speculation. Now this is fact. Will it be the same story for silver?
We can only draw on the evidence and gossip that comes to our attention in Dubai. There has certainly been a big jump in interest in silver on the arabianmoney.net website over the past six months.

Silver Leaving the Comex As Investors Want to Get Physical
JESSE'S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
Dave from Denver reports that: "On Friday 516,522 ounces of silver were withdrawn from the Comex from Brinks.
Yesterday another 1.6 million ounces were withdrawn from Brink's and HSBC. It all came from the "eligible" category, which is the investor silver being kept at the Comex. This means it wasn't the banks and SLW playing a "shell game" with their "fractional" silver holdings. This was real stuff leaving and going into real hands off-Comex.
This is a lot of silver leaving the Comex and at least the silver leaving HSBC is motivated investors taking physical delivery.

Gartman: Euro is Completely Doomed Currency
Gold is a 'reserve' driven factor

Rally Over China's Yuan Move Fades as Quickly as It Began
By: CNBC.com With Reuters
The rally in global markets over China's decision to let its currency rise gradually appears to have faded after just one day.
Investors reassessed the impact of China's plan for more currency flexibility and grew skeptical about how much Beijing would allow the yuan to rise.
"People gave much more weight to the currency move than it deserved," said Koen De Leus, economist at KBC Securities.

How a Rising Chinese Yuan Complicates Life for U.S. Companies
By PETER COHAN - DailyFinance.com
Days before a key meeting of the world's 20 largest economies -- the G-20 Summit on June 26-27 in Toronto -- China has signaled a shift in currency policy. It will allow its currency, the yuan or renminbi, to float instead of pegging it to the U.S. dollar.
For the time being, China's move is meant to show good faith toward the G-20. But if it goes beyond a political gesture to a lasting economic policy shift, it will represent a huge change that will affect America in big ways.

Why China's Unpegging of Yuan Is a Sham
David White - SeekingAlpha.com
China has announced very vaguely so far that it will let the yuan float "somewhat" against a market basket of currencies. This likely means a market basket of the currencies of its biggest trading partners. Six that are virtually certain to be included are the USD, the euro, the yen, the won, the real, and the AUD. I'm sure there will be many more.
Is China going to one-off appreciate the yuan? They say no. Is China going to allow the yuan to free-float against this market basket of currencies (like a USD Index)? Again, they say no. This will be a controlled pegging of the yuan to a basket of currencies instead of just one. China says it will allow some floating of the yuan against this basket of currencies. In the next breath it says it will control such a float very carefully.

Asian millionaires overtake Europeans in rich list
By Ellen Kelleher in London - FT.com
The net wealth of Asian millionaires has eclipsed that of rich Europeans for the first time, largely because of the relative health of stock markets in Hong Kong, India and China last year, according to a new survey.
The annual Merrill Lynch Wealth Management /Capgemini analysis of investors with $1m or more in assets found that as of late last year, there were 3m millionaires in both the Asia-Pacific and Europe. The survey quantified the wealth held in Asia at $9,700bn, compared with $9,500bn in Europe.

FDIC to Delay Planned Bank-Premium Increase
By JESSICA HOLZER - WSJ.com
WASHINGTON - The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said it would put off additional planned premium increases on banks as it held steady its projected losses for the government fund that covers bank deposits.
The FDIC staff on Tuesday advised the agency's five-member board to delay any changes in premiums beyond the increase of three one-hundredths of a percentage point scheduled for Jan. 1 because it expects bank failures to begin trailing off next year. The higher assessments will be put off until some unspecified date.

As Some Consumer Banking Fees Fall, Expect Others to Rise
By CHARLES WALLACE - DailyFinance.com
Thanks to a series of laws passed by Congress and rules imposed by the Federal Reserve, fees for using credit cards and bank accounts have begun to decline appreciably, which is a real boon to consumers. The key question is: Will banks find other ways to hit customers with new charges to make up for lost profits? Among the possibilities: Hefty increases in annual credit card fees or an end to free checking.

Subprime Lending Fueled by Campaign Cash
Make sure you're sitting down for this one: A new study finds that the mortgage industry boosted its campaign contributions to congressional districts that had a large share of subprime borrowers during the housing boom in order to influence government housing policy. (Hat tip to Felix Salmon).
The report, from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, concludes that campaign cash from the mortgage industry outpaced contributions from the rest of the financial industry from 2002 to 2006, and that donors targeted members from both parties that had more subprime borrowers in their districts.

Is U.S. Now On Slippery Slope To Tyranny?
By THOMAS SOWELL - Investors.com
When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics.
Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler's rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions.
"Useful idiots" was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.
Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive.

Architecture for a New World Financial System
Antal E. Fekete - GoldSeek.com
The Symposium was held at the historic town of Hall in Tirol, Austria, for a good reason. Hall in Tirol (just east of Innsbruck) had been the "monetary capital" of Europe for centuries.
It all started in 1477 with the moving of the Mint from Meran in South Tirol (now part of Italy) where it had been operating since 1271, to Burg Hasegg in Hall, by Archduke Sigismund of Austria (1427-1496). At the same time the Archduke instituted important monetary reforms. He opened the Mint to silver. As a result, silver mining was revived in the valleys of Tirol, and new mining methods and technology were developed. Ultimately, the much-debased coinage of Medieval Europe was replaced by sound currency that brought heretofore unprecedented prosperity to the people of Renaissance Europe. The currency reform of Archduke Sigismund has laid the foundations for the architecture of a new world financial system.

Public Employee Unions on the Defensive
by Peter Scheer - LewRockwell.com
For public employee unions - those representing police, firefighters, teachers, prison guards and agency workers of all kinds at the state and local levels - these are the worst of times.
Despite record high membership and dues, and years of unparalleled clout in state capitols, public-sector unions find themselves on the defensive, desperately trying to hold onto past gains in the face of a skeptical press and angry voters. So far has the zeitgeist shifted against them that on one recent weekend, government employees were the butt of a "Saturday Night Live" skit, and the next day, a New York Times Magazine cover article proclaimed "The Teachers' Unions' Last Stand."

The Slumming of America
Alan Keyes - SilverBearCafe.com
Alan Keyes asks if 'inescapable subjection' will be unalterable future of U.S.
Slums are not born, they are made. When I was a child, my father (a career Army NCO) would use most of his annual leave during the summer. On several occasions, my parents, my next older brother and I bundled into the car and spent the time making the rounds of family who lived mainly in North Carolina (my mother's birthplace), Maryland (my father's) and New York (where both my parents were partly raised, living with near relations).

Obama's Home Affordable "HAMP" Program A Failure; Another Huge Wave Of Foreclosures Coming Mike "Mish" Shedlock - BusinessInsider.com
Over a third of HAMP participants have exited the program and another batch is coming up. Those leaving the program will likely end up in foreclosure. Moreover, 4 million delinquent borrowers are not even eligible for the program.
Please consider Borrowers exit troubled Obama mortgage program.
The Obama administration's flagship effort to help people in danger of losing their homes is falling flat.
More than a third of the 1.24 million borrowers who have enrolled in the $75 billion mortgage modification program have dropped out. That's more than the 27 percent who have managed to have their loan payments reduced to help them keep their homes.

Mortgage Delays Blamed in Home Sales Decline
By CHRISTINE HAUSER - NYTimes.com
Sales of existing homes fell in May, hurt by delays in mortgage applications and uncertainty over a federal flood insurance program, the National Association of Realtors said on Tuesday.
There were 5.66 million sales of existing homes last month, down from a revised 5.79 million in April, the association said. While the seasonally adjusted figure for May was weaker than the 6.12 million analysts had expected, it represented a 19 percent increase from the same month last year.

Homebuilder Levinson gets 4 years in prison
ST. LOUIS BUSINESS JOURNAL
Edward Levinson, president of Levinson Homes, was sentenced to 51 months in prison Tuesday after pleading guilty last year to a bank fraud charge in connection with his construction business that prosecutors said resulted in more than $14 million in losses to banks, prospective homeowners and subcontractors.
Levinson, 51, of Chesterfield, was indicted last year on 10 felony counts of bank fraud and pleaded guilty to one felony count of bank fraud.

Housing Double-Dip to Slow Economic Recovery: Whitney
By: Jeff Cox - CNBC.com Staff Writer
The US economy faces a perilous second half as a new set of problems hits real estate and thwarts any chance for a strong recovery, banking analyst Meredith Whitney told CNBC.
While stopping short of predicting a full-blown double dip in the broad economy, Whitney said one is certainly in store for the housing market.
"People doubt there's a double-dip in housing," she said. "It's amazing."

Gear up for another lost decade in real estate. Housing will remain stagnate from 2010 to 2020. Demographic shifts, higher mortgage rates, and shifting consumer taste in real estate.
The dynamics for housing moving forward point to a very bleak future and a potential lost decade yet again from 2010 to 2020. Housing has a treacherous path moving forward and deep down demographic shifts will keep a lid on any significant housing appreciation moving forward. The economy is in the process of deleveraging from a market highly dependent on real estate. Wall Street and the government are doing everything they can to bring back the economy of yesterday but have had little success. This recession has shrunk the middle class so those looking to buy homes have declined simply because many can no longer afford to purchase a home even at today's lower prices.

Social Security: Will Obama panel cripple it with "minor" tweaks?
By Michael Hiltzik - LATimes.com
Social Security's curse is that its amazing simplicity from the standpoint of its beneficiaries - those checks keep coming regardless of the state of the economy or the federal budget - masks the complexity of its inner workings.
This is what allows the program's antagonists to disguise their efforts to destroy it as merely minor tweaks - requiring from the rest of us never-ending vigilance. That's because some seemingly "minor" fixes can have consequences great enough to wreck the entire edifice, the way a tiny water leak can eat away a foundation and bring down a house.

5 Places to Retire On Social Security Alone
Kathleen Peddicord
One of the most compelling reasons to consider retiring to another country is the opportunity to reduce your cost of living, maybe dramatically.
As one American I know who retired to Boquete, Panama put it recently, "Back in Tucson, Arizona, where I'm from, my monthly Social Security check might cover the cost of my utilities. Here in Boquete, my income from Social Security is enough to buy me a very comfortable new life."
The average Social Security check is about $1,200. You can receive that payment while living anywhere in the world. In some countries, you can even have your Social Security check direct-deposited into your local bank account. Here are five places where you could retire on your Social Security income alone.

Fact Sheet: The Affordable Care Act's New Patient's Bill of Rights
HealthReform.gov
A major goal of the Affordable Care Act - the health insurance reform legislation President Obama signed into law on March 23 - is to put American consumers back in charge of their health coverage and care. Insurance companies often leave patients without coverage when they need it the most, causing them to put off needed care, compromising their health and driving up the cost of care when they get it. Too often, insurance companies put insurance company bureaucrats between you and your doctor. The Affordable Care Act cracks down on the some of the most egregious practices of the insurance industry while providing the stability and the flexibility that families and businesses need to make the choices that work best for them.

Is Gen. Stanley McChrystal someone the president can afford to fire?
By Greg Jaffe and Ernesto Londoño - Washington Post
Is Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal someone the president can afford to fire?
Even some of McChrystal's staunchest backers in Afghanistan said the derisive comments the general and his staff made about the Obama administration to a Rolling Stone reporter leave him open to dismissal.
"I say this as someone who admired and respects Stan McChrystal enormously. The country doesn't know how much good he's done. But this is a firing offense," said Eliot A. Cohen, who served as a counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the latter days of the Bush administration.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal ordered back to DC; White House on possible firing: 'all options on table'
BY RICHARD SISK - DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU - NYDailyNews.com
WASHINGTON -- Gen. Stanley McChrystal tripped over his own ego and risked turning his superstar career into toast with an eye-popping interview trashing President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and others in the administration.
McChrystal immediately was ordered back to Washington by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to face an angry Obama at a White House meeting Wednesday on Afghanistan to explain his remarks.

Fire Gen. Stanley McChrystal? Not yet: Obama should wait -- then assess the Afghanistan surge
BY ANDREW J. BACEVICH - NYDailyNews.com
Has Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the American four-star commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, committed a firing offense? A forthcoming article in Rolling Stone - its accuracy to this point unchallenged - quotes McChrystal and members of his staff expressing disdain, if not utter contempt, for civilian officials ranging from the U.S. ambassador in Kabul, the President's special envoy to the region, the White House national security adviser (a retired Marine general) and Vice President Biden to President Obama himself.
So should McChrystal be handed his walking papers?
No. At least, not yet.

Obama to meet with McChrystal before making 'any final decisions' on dismissal
By Michael D. Shear, Ernesto Londoño and Debbi Wilgoren - WashingtonPost.com
President Obama said he wants to meet directly with the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan before making "any final decisions" about whether to fire him over inflammatory comments that have enraged the White House and threatened to undermine the administration's Afghan war effort.
In his first public remarks about a Rolling Stone article published Tuesday, Obama said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's comments showed "poor judgment." Obama quickly added that his "central focus" remains the fight against al-Qaeda and terrorists who would attack the U.S. and its allies.

McChrystal - writer Michael Hastings comments on Rolling Stones article
Christine Nyholm - Examiner.com
The story about comments made by the staff of General Stanley McChrystal, has caused controversy and have made President Barack Obama angry. Writer Michael Hastings talked to CNN reported Rick Sanchez in an exclusive interview. The video interview is attached to this article.
In his first interview about his in-depth article on Gen. Stanley McChrystal, writer Michael Hastings calls into Rick's List from Kandahar today to talk about the controversy his article generated as Gen. McChrystal is called back to Washington, DC.

Iranian Leaders Clampdown on Social Media
Written by Golnaz Esfandiari - OILPRICE.COM
One year ago, Iran's 'Twitter revolution' made headlines in the western media. Yet in Iran itself, no Twitter revolution was taking place at all.As several opposition members and bloggers tell RFE/RL, if any social networking innovations are to receive credit, they should be Facebook and YouTube.

Belarus to stop flow of gas to Europe in dispute with Russian gas company
By Courtney Weaver and Roman Olearchyk - WashingtonPost.com
MOSCOW -- Belarus announced Tuesday that it will cut off the flow of all gas through its territory to Europe as President Alexander Lukashenko warned that the dispute between his country and Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, has escalated into a full-scale "gas war."
Lukashenko's comments came hours after Russia increased the level of its gas cuts to Belarus from 15 to 30 percent. Gazprom has said it will cut up to 85 percent of supplies if Belarus does not pay the $192 million the state-controlled Russian company says it owes for gas deliveries.

An open letter to President Obama from Jon Voight

------- Gulf Oil situation --------

Judge Blocks Deep-Water Drilling Moratorium
By CHARLIE SAVAGE - NYTimes.com
WASHINGTON - A federal judge in New Orleans on Tuesday blocked a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling projects that the Obama administration had imposed in response to the vast oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The White House swiftly said the administration would appeal the decision.
In a 22-page ruling, Judge Martin L. C. Feldman of Federal District Court issued a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of a May 28 order halting all floating offshore drilling projects in more than 500 feet of water and preventing the government from issuing new permits for such projects.

Oil Companies in Limbo as Judge Halts Deep-Water Drilling Ban
By Edward Klump and David Wethe
June 22 (Bloomberg) -- Oil companies and contractors that work in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico are likely to wait to restart drilling operations until there's more clarity on how a federal judge's decision to lift a U.S. ban will play out.
U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman today granted a preliminary injunction, halting a six-month moratorium that President Barack Obama put in place May 27 to cease issuing new deep-water drilling permits. The president also called for work to be stopped on 33 exploration wells.

Obama Administration Knew About Deepwater Horizon 35,000 Feet Well Bore Written by Wayne Madsen - OilPrice.com
President Obama and Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates were informed that BP would drill an unprecedented 35,000 feet well bore at the Macondo site off the coast of Louisiana. In September 2009, the Deepwater Horizon successfully sunk a well bore at a depth of 35,055 below sea level at the Tiber Prospect in the Keathley Canyon block 102 in the Gulf of Mexico, southeast of Houston.

Oil Spill on Track to Reach Atlantic No Later Than October
Alexandra Witze - SilverBearCafe.com
BOULDER, Colorado - Oil gushing from the Deepwater Horizon site in the Gulf of Mexico will reach the Atlantic Ocean within six months, says oceanographer Synte Peacock. Exactly when is all down to an eddy that broke off of the infamous Loop Current southwest of Florida on June 12.
Peacock, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, usually studies how the oceanâ's water absorbs atmospheric gases. But after the Deepwater Horizon platform exploded April 20, she realized her computer models could be used to follow where the oil gushing from the seafloor might end up.

BP CEO may be trying to get fired, really
Hayward's compensation pales against those of American oil execs
By Brett Arends , WSJ.com and MarketWatch
You might think so after his latest stunt. The hapless honcho, already slammed as "the most hated man in America," skipped out on the Gulf gusher over the weekend to participate a yacht race in England.
A yacht race? Are you kidding? Paging Thurston Howell III!
OK, maybe Hayward's critics are being hypocritical. After all, if his hour-by-hour presence in the Gulf of Mexico is absolutely essential, why was it appropriate to drag him away for that ridiculous circus up on Capitol Hill last week?

Barry Soetoro, Imposter in Chief, Implements CODEX ALIMENTARIUS by Executive Order in the U.S.!
by Barbara Peterson - SurvivingTheMiddleClassCrash
We knew that CODEX was right around the corner, and here it is, live and in color. Barry Soetoro, AKA Barack Hussein Obama, Imposter in Chief, on June 10, 2010, issued an Executive Order - Establishing the National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council. In short, the CODEX council. The entire Executive Order is attached, but please read this part and understand just what it is saying:
"Section 6 (g) contains specific plans to ensure that all prevention programs outside the Department of Health and Human Services are based on the science-based guidelines developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under subsection (d) of this section."

Former Shell exec predicts blackouts, gas lines
Elizabeth Souder/Reporter - Texas Energy and Environment blog
Americans are on the path toward blackouts and gas lines, and the federal government's tools to prevent it are broken.
And John Hofmeister, the former Shell executive who made this prediction at a World Affairs Council breakfast on Friday, said he's an optimist. Some of his energy industry friends expect worse, he said.
"Within a decade I predict the energy abyss looks like brownouts, blackouts and gas lines," said Hofmeister. "Our federal government, when it comes to energy and the environment, is dysfunctional, it's broken, and it's unfixable in its current form."

Cracks Show BP Battled Well Two Months Before Blast
Congressional investigators. Cracks in the surrounding rock continued to complicate the drilling operation during the ensuing weeks. Left unsealed, they can allow explosive natural gas to rush up the shaft.
"Once they realized they had oil down there, all the decisions they made were designed to get that oil at the lowest cost," said Peter Galvin of the Center for Biological Diversity, which has been working with congressional investigators probing the disaster. "It's been a doomed voyage from the beginning."

Is Obama's BP Shakedown an Impeachable Offense?
By Raymond Richman - AmericanThinker.com
As former counsel and trainer in political tactics for ACORN, President Obama used a well-known ACORN tactic, the shakedown, in getting BP to create the $20-billion escrow (slush!) fund without any law, legal controls, or binding rules to guide it on how and how much those injured materially by the oil spill (and whom among them) will be paid. Attorney Kenneth Feinberg, well-respected and well-known for heading the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, was appointed by the president to administer the escrow fund. BP will pay $5 billion into the fund for four years, starting in 2010.

BP Oil Disaster Costs U.S. State Pensions $1.4 Billion in Value
By Dunstan McNichol
June 22 (Bloomberg) -- The California Public Employees' Retirement System lost $284.6 million in value as the largest oil spill in U.S. history erased more than $1.4 billion from BP Plc shares held by 42 state retirement accounts, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
BP, the biggest producer of oil and gas in the U.S., has lost 47 percent of its value since a Gulf of Mexico well blew out April 20, destroying the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, killing 11 of its crew and polluting beaches from Louisiana to Florida.

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Tuesday 06.22.2010

'Risks in fiat currencies pushes gold higher'
FLORIDA, USA (Commodity Online): The price of gold Thursday topped $1,252 before settling at a close of $1,245 on a combination of unpleasant economic news and a drop in the US dollar against every major currency save the Canadian dollar. Liberty International Financial Services director of research, J.M. Schuler, anticipates that the price of gold will continue to climb in the weeks ahead.

Gold at new record high after Saudi reserves double
By Javier Blas in London
Published: June 20 2010 21:06 | Last updated: June 21 2010 10:39
Gold prices hit on Monday a fresh record high of almost $1,265 a troy ounce following the revelation that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, is sitting on more than twice as much gold as previously thought, according to new estimates.
The disclosure points to the revival of bullion as part of emerging economies' official reserves and comes as investors pour money into the yellow metal.

Rahm Emanuel expected to quit White House
By Alex Spillius in Washington - Telegraph.co.uk
Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, is expected to leave his job later this year after growing tired of the "idealism" of Barack Obama's inner circle.
Washington insiders say he will quit within six to eight months in frustration at their unwillingness to "bang heads together" to get policy pushed through.
Mr Emanuel, 50, enjoys a good working relationship with Mr Obama but they are understood to have reached an understanding that differences over style mean he will serve only half the full four-year term.

China 'steals U.S. thunder' ahead of G20
By Geoff Dyer, FT.com
(FT) -- China's announcement that it will introduce more flexibility into its exchange rate is a deft political move amid rising international criticism of Beijing, but the economic implications are much less certain.
Although Chinese officials insisted on Sunday that the decision was taken for domestic reasons, the announcement comes a week ahead of a G20 summit in Canada that was shaping up to be something of a showdown over the level of the Chinese currency.

Peter Schiff on the Yuan:
CNBC Fast Money Spotlight 21 june 2010

Yuan Strengthens Most Since 2005 After China Signals End to Peg
By Bloomberg News
June 21 (Bloomberg) -- The yuan rose the most since a July 2005 revaluation and forwards jumped after China's central bank ended a two-year peg before a Group of 20 summit this week.
The currency advanced 0.42 percent to 6.7976 per dollar as of 5:30 p.m. in Hong Kong, the biggest gain since July 2005, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The 12-month non- deliverable yuan forward rose 1.1 percent to 6.6425, implying traders are betting on a 2.3 percent appreciation.

China retreats on revaluation of the yuan
by Katie Allen - guardian.co.uk,
Doubt cast over moves to strengthen currency
US critics say policy has hit exports and cost jobs
China faces a potential backlash from critics, led by the US, to its exchange rate policy after it appeared to retreat today on promises to allow its currency to revalue.
Beijing's hints on Saturday that it would end a two-year peg to the dollar were initially welcomed as a positive step to redress unfair trading terms and end an approach attacked by many as currency manipulation. Analysts said that the move might also head off a potentially damaging trade row between China and the US at a G20 summit this week.

Meredith Whitney on FinReg, China & the Markets

Chinese Yuan Bent But Not Bowed, Trade War Still On
By: Dian L Chu - MarketOracle.co.uk
The currency issue has been a constant tension in relations between the United States and China. Many analysts had expected the Chinese central bank to announce a one-off revaluation in the yuan to appease critics of the exchange rate policy.
However, on Sunday, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) has ruled out the one-off revaluation that US politicians had sought. This was seen as a largely political move to deflect criticism of its fixed exchange rate ahead of the G20 meeting next week.

Niall Ferguson's Take on Yuan

Yuan Move Has U.S. Spenders, German Savers Tilting World GDP
By Simon Kennedy and Timothy R. Homan
June 21 (Bloomberg) -- China's biggest shift in currency policy in almost two years is just one step on the path toward recalibrating the forces needed to drive the world economy into a sustainable expansion.
"Even if China allows a significant appreciation in the exchange rate, this still isn't a panacea for imbalances," said Kenneth Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. The move is "far from completely solving the problem," he said in a phone interview yesterday.

Treasury trouble starts at home
Fortune.CNN.com
We have met the enemy of the U.S. Treasury market, and he is us.
China is letting its currency, the yuan, off the leash a bit. The move has reawakened fears that the voracious Chinese will eventually back away from U.S. government bonds, boosting interest rates for Americans already in hock up to their eyeballs.
But by now, what our top overseas creditors might do in a couple years is almost beside the point. If the United States can't bring itself to shore up its tattered balance sheet -- particularly by imposing a politically unpopular squeeze on costly entitlement programs -- a dollar crisis is inevitable, whatever the trigger.

Treasuries Drop Most in Week as Stocks Gain on End of Yuan Peg
By Susanne Walker and Matthew Brown
June 21 (Bloomberg) -- Treasuries fell the most in a week as China said it will allow a more flexible yuan, encouraging confidence in the global economic recovery and triggering gains in stock markets.
Longer-maturity bonds led declines after the People's Bank of China indicated two days ago it's abandoning the 6.83 yuan peg to the dollar adopted during the global financial crisis to protect exporters. The U.S. will sell $108 billion in two-, five- and seven-year notes this week.

Global markets fear US Treasuries sell-off as China ends currency freeze
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
Global markets are braced for a possible sell-off in US Treasury bonds after China said over the weekend that it will allow the yuan exchange rate to adjust against the dollar, ending a two-year currency freeze that has led to trade clashes with Washington and Brussels
China's Central Bank said the economic recovery had opened the way for a return to "flexibility" but ruled out an immediate one-off rise in the yuan. The currency will be allowed to fluctuate within a widened band of 0.5pc each day against a basket of currencies.
The yuan is now expected to rise slowly against the dollar, although it may fall if the euro weakens further. "There is at present no basis for major fluctuation or change in the exchange rate," said the bank.

Mideast funds line up behind Agricultural Bank of China
By Robert Cookson in Hong Kong and Simeon Kerr in Dubai - FT.com
Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds have emerged as the most prominent international backers of Agricultural Bank of China's planned $23bn-plus initial public offering.
The sovereign wealth funds of Qatar and Kuwait have agreed to invest $2.8bn and $800m, respectively, as cornerstone investors in what is expected to be the world's biggest IPO.

Ron Paul on the Lew Rockwell Show - June 18, 2010

Middle Class--Not the Rich or the Poor--Pay Majority of Federal Taxes, Says CBO Data
By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief
(CNSNews.com) - Middle-class Americans--not the rich or the poor--pay the majority of annual tax revenues taken in by the federal government, according to data released in a new Congressional Budget Office study. Households earning less than $34,300 per year, meanwhile, actually pay a negative average federal income tax rate.
Middle-class households that earned between $34,300 and $141,900 paid 50.5 percent of all federal tax revenues in 2007 (the most recent year analyzed), according to the CBO study released Thursday, and households that earned between $34,300 and $352,900 paid 66.7 percent of all federal taxes.

Price hikes hammer individual health coverage
By Julianne Pepitone, CNNMoney.com
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- When health insurance costs rise for individual buyers, they soar: The average premium rose 20% in its most recent increase, according to a report released Monday.
About 14 million Americans younger than 65 buy their own individual health plans, rather than purchasing coverage through their employers, said the report from the nonprofit group Kaiser Family Foundation. More than three-quarters of that contingent said they were recently hit with a price hike.

Housing Is On Shaky Ground
By ALAN R. ELLIOTT, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY The U.S. government launched its Home Affordable Modification Program early last year to slow the cascade of home foreclosures. While the program has fallen short of some hopes, it's had a surprising side effect: a way to compare how bank-owned loan servicing operations fare against independent rivals.
The federal program, which targets borrowers with mortgages more than 60 days delinquent, has about 1.2 million trial participants. As of April, about 25% of those mortgages had been converted - that is, permanently renegotiated - with a median cut in payments of 36%, or more than $500 per month.

Minorities hit hard by foreclosure crisis
By Renae Merle - Washington Post
Minority homeowners have been disproportionately affected by the foreclosure crisis and stand to lose homes at a faster pace than white borrowers in the future, according to a report released Friday by a nonprofit research group.
The study by the Center for Responsible Lending found that whites made up the majority of the 2.5 million foreclosures completed between 2007 and 2009 -- about 56 percent -- but that minority communities had significantly higher foreclosure rates.

Harrisburg, Pa., other cities overwhelmed by economic downturn and debt
By Michael A. Fletcher - Washington Post
HARRISBURG, PA. -- This city has a $68 million bill coming due before year's end, an impossible sum that is larger than its annual budget. It's a predicament caused by extravagant borrowing and spending, and now there are only unpleasant fixes: steep tax increases, severe layoffs and crippling service cuts, even bankruptcy.
It's a story that could be repeated across the country as cities and towns deal with the lingering consequences of the economic downturn and mounting debt.
The obligations of state and local governments have doubled in the past decade, to $2.4 trillion, according to a recent Federal Reserve report, a figure that excludes more than $1 trillion in unfunded pension and retiree health-care liabilities.

Gulf paymaster: People are in 'desperate' shape
By ASSOCIATED PRESS - WashingtonTimes.com
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The man President Obama picked to run the $20 billion Gulf oil spill damage fund said Monday that many people are in "desperate financial straits" and need immediate relief.
"Do not underestimate the emotionalism and the frustration and the anger of people in the Gulf uncertain of their financial future," Kenneth Feinberg told interviewers. "It's very pronounced. I witnessed it firsthand last week."

The high price of homelessness
Sadhbh Walshe - guardian.co.uk
In New York and across the US, services for the homeless are being cut. But in the long term this makes no financial sense
I ran into a woman recently called Carmen Velez outside the Office for Prevention Assistance and Temporary Housing (Path) in the Bronx. She was dragging a shopping cart stuffed with pillows and other bedding and a wheely suitcase filled with personal effects.
Carmen, 60, who is disabled, had been evicted from her apartment the day before after losing her section eight subsidised housing voucher. She had checked into a homeless shelter the previous night but had to wait until 3am before she was awarded a bed. As she walked into the Path office, she asked me to pray that they would give her a bed for that night.

Gerald Celente on the Lew Rockwell show 06 14 10 pt 1
(GET READY FOR WW3 WITH IRAN SOON!)

Gerald Celente on the Lew Rockwell show 06 14 10 pt 2
(GET READY FOR WW3 WITH IRAN SOON!)

Troops 'weary' of Afghanistan fighting
By Rowan Scarborough
Doubts, frustration said rising in ranks
Within the U.S. military's rank and file, there are growing doubts about winning in Afghanistan, a mood that contradicts upbeat war reports delivered to Congress last week by the top commander and officials.
A senior military intelligence official who has served in Afghanistan and participates in daily briefings on the war told The Washington Times there is a "weariness" among officers as the war nears the nine-year mark in October.

Now Hiring: Fake Executives in China. No Experience Required.
By: Cindy Perman - CNBC.com
If you're a white guy in China and you own a suit - Congratulations! You're hired.
There's an odd trend brewing there, where companies hire fake executives from the U.S. and other Western nations to attend events, give speeches and generally just to give that appearance in the community and in the business world of that connection with the western world.
"I think it says a lot about the business culture here," said Mitch Moxley, a freelance writer living in Beijing who was hired to be a fake businessman for a high-tech company building a factory in Dongying, five hours south of Beijing. "Face is hugely important in China, and having foreigners in suits I guess gives some credibility to the companies. You'd be amazed how often this happens."

AZ Sen. Kyl at townhall meet
Obama not securing border on purpose

Iran to ban two nuclear inspectors
By the CNN Wire Staff
(CNN) -- The head of Iran's atomic energy agency said Monday that the nation will ban two U.N. atomic watchdog inspectors from visiting nuclear facilities, the semi-official Iranian Student News Agency reported.
Ali Akbar Salehi, the chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said Tehran barred the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors "due to their presentation of false information and early disclosure of official data," according to the news agency.
The IAEA confirmed that Iran objected to two of its inspectors.
"The IAEA has full confidence in the professionalism and impartiality of the inspectors concerned," Greg Webb, an agency press officer, said in a statement.

Former Israeli top spy calls for strike on Iran
AFP - Breitbart.com
Israel should launch a pre-emptive strike to prevent arch-foe Iran from going nuclear, a former head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency said on Monday.
"I am of the opinion that, since there is an ongoing war, since the threat is permanent, since the intention of the enemy in this case is to annihilate you, the right doctrine is one of pre-emption and not of retaliation," Shabtai Shavit told a conference.
Shavit, who served as chief of Israel's foreign spy agency from 1989 to 1996, was speaking at a conference held at the hawkish Bar Ilan University outside Tel Aviv.

***** Gulf Oil disaster *****

Obama, EPA to push for restoration of Superfund tax on oil, chemical companies
By Juliet Eilperin - Washington Post
There is no question that the Superfund program, first established 30 years ago to clean up sites around the country contaminated with hazardous waste, is facing a budget crunch.
For 15 years, the government imposed taxes on oil and chemical companies and certain other corporations. The money went into a cleanup trust fund, which reached its peak of $3.8 billion in 1996. But the taxes expired in 1995, and because Congress refused to renew them, the fund ran out of money.

Gulf oil spill puts mental health at risk, too
By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
For humans, the psychological effects of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could be as devastating as the physical, say experts who will speak at an Institute of Medicine workshop today in New Orleans.
"There's a lot of social disruption. That's what technological disasters tend to do," says Lawrence Palinkas, a professor of social work at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He will be speaking on the spill's potential long-term effects.

Government sends BP third bill, for $51 million
By Julianne Pepitone,
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- BP received a third bill from the government on Monday, to the tune of $51.4 million, for cleanup costs related to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
The Obama administration said BP "and other responsible parties" have paid the first two bills in full, for a total of $70.89 million. Monday's bill makes a total of $122.29 million billed to date.
But on Day 63 of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, where an an explosion occurred aboard the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, thousands of gallons of oil are still gushing from BP's (BP) well each day.

BP oil spill: A hurricane in the Gulf could be good for BP
By Garry White - Telegraph.co.uk
Oil industry executives always keep an eye on the weather forecast during the hurricane season. This year, those at BP's top table will be on the edge of their seats.
As oil keeps pumping into the Gulf, the future of BP itself has been called into question. BP has to stop the oil from flowing from the Deepwater Horizon well soon Ð or the financial costs could spiral into unknown territory.
A large hurricane in the area will certainly stop BP drilling its relief well Ð allowing more oil to spew into the environmentally sensitive Gulf. But there is a chance that it could help the situation Ð depending on which way the wind blows.

Hayward acts to stem BP identity crisis
By Carola Hoyos in London - FT.com
At BP's sprawling campus in suburban Sunbury-on-Thames and in the elegant halls of its headquarters in St James's Square, Mayfair, the realisation that the company was in deep trouble set in about a week ago, two months after the deadly explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
In spite of a barrage of news stories and internal e-mails from Tony Hayward, chief executive, who had decamped to Houston almost immediately, and town hall meetings led by the long-time chief financial officer, Byron Grote, employees from information technology to mergers and acquisitions felt relatively unaffected, 'like ostriches with their heads in the sand', as one person who works at BP described it.

BP oil spill: leak found in rig weeks before blast
Telegraph.co.uk
The Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded causing the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, had suffered a leak in the weeks leading up to the blast, an employee has claimed.
Tyrone Benton told the BBC that he identified a leak in the rig's safety equipment weeks before the explosion.
He claimed that the leak was not fixed at the time. Instead, the faulty device was shut down, forcing the rig to rely on a second one.
"We saw a leak on the pod, so by seeing the leak we informed the company men," Mr Benton said. "They have a control room where they could turn off that pod and turn on the other one, so that they don't have to stop production."
The pods control the blowout preventer, the most important piece of safety equipment on the rig, and contain both electronics and hydraulics. This is where Mr Benton said the problem was found.

BP oil spill: leak found in rig weeks before blast
Telegraph.co.uk
The Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded causing the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, had suffered a leak in the weeks leading up to the blast, an employee has claimed.
Tyrone Benton told the BBC that he identified a leak in the rig's safety equipment weeks before the explosion.
He claimed that the leak was not fixed at the time. Instead, the faulty device was shut down, forcing the rig to rely on a second one.
"We saw a leak on the pod, so by seeing the leak we informed the company men," Mr Benton said. "They have a control room where they could turn off that pod and turn on the other one, so that they don't have to stop production."
The pods control the blowout preventer, the most important piece of safety equipment on the rig, and contain both electronics and hydraulics. This is where Mr Benton said the problem was found.

Max Keiser on Oil Spill: Rewarding Eco-Terror

Gulf oil spill: BP accused of lying to Congress
Tim Webb in New Orleans and Ed Pilkington New York - guardian.co.uk
US congressman says company's worst-case assessment of leak was 20 times higher than public estimate
BP has been accused by a senior US politician of lying to Congress to reduce its liabilities, after an internal company document showed that the oil giant's own worst-case assessment of the size of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico was 20 times its public estimate.
In the document, BP attempts to put a figure on the rate of oil spewing into the ocean. It notes that if the condition of the well bore deteriorates to the extent that crucial parts fall off, the rate could reach 100,000 barrels a day.

Gulf of Mexico oil spill threatens oyster culture 'It's going to be gone forever' CLAIRE TAYLOR - The Advertiser.com
ABBEVILLE - The Pearl Reef Oyster Co. processing plant south of Abbeville should be abuzz with activity this time of year. Shuckers should be hammering on gnarled oyster shells to free the juicy meat inside. Packers should be filling jars and boxes. Truckers should be carrying the product to market.
But the plant was eerily silent Tuesday, so quiet you could hear birds squawking outside. No trucks were coming and going. No shuckers hammered noisily on shells. Oyster sacks and boxes sat in stacks, unused.

Vast amounts of methane in Gulf spill pose threat
By MATTHEW BROWN and RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI (AP) - 3 days ago
NEW ORLEANS - Vast amounts of natural gas contained in crude escaping from the blown Gulf of Mexico oil well could pose a serious threat to marine life by creating "dead zones" where oxygen is so depleted that nothing lives.
The danger presented by the methane has been largely overlooked, with early efforts to monitor the oil spill focusing on the more toxic components of oil. But scientists are increasingly worried about the gas that can suffocate sea creatures in high concentrations.

BP oil spill 2010: The politics behind the global disaster
Maryann Tobin - Examiner.com
Amid the comprehensive chaos that has blanketed the news cycle since the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, 2010, there seems to be a scenario that makes sense, but has not been widely suggested.
What if BP and the US government know exactly whatÕs going on, but have too much to lose by disclosing it?
The scenario
It is possible that the Deepwater Horizon explosion was not as much of a surprise as BP would have the public think.
The 5,000 foot deep well was a rouge from the beginning, but the benefits of tapping the second largest oil and natural gas deposit in the world was well worth the gamble. The less it cost to get at the virtually bottomless pit of oil, the higher the profit margin. For many businesses, cutting corners with the hope that it will never be noticed is common practice.

BP Refuses E.P.A. Order to Use Less-Toxic Dispersan

Russian scientists predict toxic rain from BP Oil Dispersants
Edited by David Jones
A dire report prepared for President Medvedev by Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources is warning today that the British Petroleum (BP) oil and gas leak in the Gulf of Mexico is about to become the worst environmental catastrophe in all of human history threatening the entire eastern half of the North American continent with "total destruction".
Russian scientists are basing their apocalyptic destruction assessment due to BP's use of millions of gallons of the chemical dispersal agent known as Corexit 9500 which is being pumped directly into the leak of this wellhead over a mile under the Gulf of Mexico waters and designed, this report says, to keep hidden from the American public the full, and tragic, extent of this leak that is now estimated to be over 2.9 million gallons a day.

Will North America be destroyed by Toxic Rain from Dispersal Chemicals?

North America faces years of toxic oil rain from BP oil spill chemical dispersants
Maryann Tobin - Examiner.com
When you pour more than a million gallons of toxic chemical dispersants on top of an oil spill, it doesnÕt just disappear. In this case, it moves to the atmosphere, where it will travel hundreds, if not thousands of miles from the site of the BP oil spill, in the form of toxic rain.
BPÕs oil spill-fighting dispersant of choice is Corexit 9500. It has been banned in Europe for good reason. Corexit 9500 is one of the most environmentally enduring, toxic chemical dispersants ever created to battle an oil spill. Add to that the millions of gallons of oil that have been burned, releasing even more toxins into the atmosphere, and you have a recipe for something much worse than acid rain.

Mystery Crop Damage Threatens Hundreds Of Acres and ORGANIC FARMERS

Toxic Oil Spill Rains Warned Could Destroy North America
Posted by Europe - EUTimes.net
A dire report prepared for President Medvedev by Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources is warning today that the British Petroleum (BP) oil and gas leak in the Gulf of Mexico is about to become the worst environmental catastrophe in all of human history threatening the entire eastern half of the North American continent with "total destruction".
Russian scientists are basing their apocalyptic destruction assessment due to BP's use of millions of gallons of the chemical dispersal agent known as Corexit 9500 which is being pumped directly into the leak of this wellhead over a mile under the Gulf of Mexico waters and designed, this report says, to keep hidden from the American public the full, and tragic, extent of this leak that is now estimated to be over 2.9 million gallons a day.

Corexit Is Killing The Gulf (Part I)

Corexit Is Killing The Gulf (Part II)

BP's Dispersant Could Cause Toxic Rain All Over East Coast
....Many have focused their concerns about Corexit (the dispersant BP continues to use despite an EPA order to stop) on what it's doing under the water. But as we know, the oceans are part of a larger precipitation cycle, and scientists are worried that soon the consequences of using dispersants could be falling from the sky.
A report prepared for prepared for President Medvedev by Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources warns that "a greater danger involving Corexit 9500...is that with its 2.61ppm toxicity level, and when combined with the heating Gulf of Mexico waters, its molecules will be able to "phase transition" from their present liquid to a gaseous state allowing them to be absorbed into clouds and allowing their release as "toxic rain" upon all of Eastern North America (European Union Times).

NASA: Solar storm to hit earth in 2013
NASA scientists predict a solar storm will hit the earth in 2013 mostly affecting electronic devices leading to a major catastrophe.
The once-in-a-generation storm, caused by extremely high levels magnetic energy released by solar flares, "will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigations, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic," says Richard Fisher, head of NASA's Heliophysics Division, quoted in a June 14 Daily Telegraph article.
"Large areas will be without electricity power," says Fisher who emphasizes that the emergence of the storm is certain, though its degree of severity cannot be accurately foretold.

VIETNAM WALL
A virtual wall of all those lost during the Vietnam war with the names, bio's and other information on our lost heroes.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Archived Page Link
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Monday 06.21.2010

Bank failure is 83rd in '10; pace more than double last year's
WASHINGTON (AP) - Regulators on Friday shut down a Nevada bank, raising to 83 the number of U.S. bank failures this year.
The 83 closures so far this year is more than double the pace set in all of 2009, which was itself a brisk year for shutdowns. By this time last year, regulators had closed 40 banks. The pace has accelerated as banks' losses mount on loans made for commercial property and development.

Feds close Nevada Security Bank, Silverado Bank
Sacramento Business Journal - by Mark Anderson Staff writer
Federal banking regulators closed Nevada Security Bank of Reno late Friday, the second bank in the region to fail. Umpqua Bank of Roseburg, Ore., acquired Nevada Security's accounts and deposits, including at the failed bank's Silverado Bank in Roseville.

Egypt turns down Israel's request to ban Gaza-bound Iranian ships from sailing through Suez Canal
RUVR.ru - June 19th
Egypt has turned down Israel's request to ban the passage of Gaza-bound Iranian ships with humanitarian aid by the Suez Canal.
This came in a report by the Al-Jazeera TV channel with reference to an unidentified source in the Egyptian security forces.
Cairo described the demand as unacceptable and took it as interference in Egypt's internal political affairs. Iran said earlier that it would send three ships with humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip population.

Armada of U.S. and Israeli Warships Head for Iran
Kurt Nimmo - Infowars.com
More than twelve U.S. and Israeli warships, including an aircraft carrier, passed through the Suez Canal on Friday and are headed for the Red Sea. "According to eyewitnesses, the U.S. battleships were the largest to have crossed the Canal in many years," reported the London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi on Saturday.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported Egyptian opposition members criticized the government for cooperating with the U.S. and Israeli forces and allowing the passage of the ships through Egyptian territorial waters. The Red Sea is the most direct route to the Persian Gulf from the Mediterranean.

Gold reclaims its currency status as the global system unravels
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
We already know that the eurozone money markets seized up violently in early May as incipient bank runs spread from Greece to Portugal and Spain, threatening the first big sovereign default of our era. Jean-ClaudeTrichet, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), talked days later of "the most difficult situation since the Second World War, and perhaps the First".
The ECB's latest monthly bulletin gives us some startling details. It reveals that the bank's "systemic risk indicator" surged suddenly to an all-time high on May 7 as measured by EURIBOR derivatives and stress in the EONIA swaps market, exceeding the strains at the height of the Lehman Brothers crisis in September 2008. "The probability of a simultaneous default of two or more euro-area large and complex banking groups rose sharply," it said.

A Golden Response to Economic Declines
Bob Chapman - The InternationalForcaster.com
A plan for the euro, a response to declines is made with gold, pension benefits exposed, BP will default, Baltic Dry Index gets drier, oil deluge to flow for years, Fannie and Freddie to delist from exchanges, banks missing TARP payments.
Note how gold explodes whenever the euro takes a dive. Those of you who think that the euro is going much lower in the near future had better think again. The explosion of gold whenever the euro goes down will alone give the Illuminati powerful reasons to support the euro, as will the potential for a devastating trade imbalance that will aggravate the US debt problem from a balance of payments perspective.

Gold set to make new records
LONDON (Commodity Online): It was a week of rise and rise for gold as the precious metal scaled new heights by gaining strength from the safe haven buying.
And, it seems there is no end to the gold rally as the metal is expected to cross new barriers in the coming week.
According to data, gold set a new record of $1,260 an ounce on Friday as momentum triggered by buying of the metal as a haven from sovereign and financial risk pushed prices.

Official Gold Reserves As of June 10, 2010, and Truths Yet to be Told
It is important to remember that these are the 'official' numbers. And it does not show how the reserves are 'encumbered' by leases and loans.
For example, there is circumstantial evidence that the Reserve Bank of Australia loans up to 100% of its gold reserves to the bullion banks who subsequently sell it, and then 'owe' it to the Bank and the people of Australia. The trick of course is the significant counterparty risk in the event of a serious short squeeze.

'Gold is a classic hedge against inflation'
Commodity Online: In the current global economic crisis, which is primarily driven by European Union; what do you consider as the investment instrument for investors?
Ashok Mittal: Current European debt crisis is an off-shoot of the Economic Recession in 2008, which resulted in a broad market fall. Gold emerged out to be the king of such turbulent times and has risen over 12%, so far in this year. Equities failed to match up with the performance of gold, as investors stayed away from equities and higher riskier assets. The benchmark MSCI world index for stock dropped more than 5%, year-till-date. Markets saw a debasement in fiat currency in the recent past which induced gold's alternative investment demand with getting further support from safe haven buying amidst on-going debt crisis. Therefore, gold's value reached all-time high in many currencies such as; Euro, Pound, Indian rupee, Swiss Franc etc. Considering this I think Gold is the only investment instrument for investors for long term.

'It's time to focus on Silver'
By Jordan Roy-Byrne CMT
It is not exactly ground breaking analysis to say that what's good for Gold is generally good for Silver. As observers of the precious metals know, Silver tends to lag Gold but eventually catch up quickly.
In the long-term sense, Silver is still a year or two behind Gold as Gold has broken above all resistance levels. Technically speaking, we do favor Gold over the next few months, but ultimately, Silver is poised to catch up with vengeance.
Silver rebounded strongly from $15 earlier this year and is soon to attempt to break $20. A clean breakout and Silver should reach $25, which is its final long-term resistance.

Cost of Seizing Fannie and Freddie Surges for Taxpayers
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM - NYTimes.com
CASA GRANDE, Ariz. - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac took over a foreclosed home roughly every 90 seconds during the first three months of the year. They owned 163,828 houses at the end of March, a virtual city with more houses than Seattle. The mortgage finance companies, created by Congress to help Americans buy homes, have become two of the nation's largest landlords.

A Stronger Yuan Is Good for China, Little Help for U.S. Job Creation
By VISHESH KUMAR - DailyFinance.com
China finally caved in and relented to, well, serving China's best interests.
American politicians have been browbeating Beijing to let the value of its yuan currency appreciate for months. And on Saturday, Chinese authorities announced their intentions to move to a more flexible exchange rate in a tacit signal that the economic expansion there is robust.
Details remain sketchy, but China is likely to let the yuan appreciate gradually against the U.S. dollar. That's a good move for a rapidly growing Chinese economy facing inflation and pockets of labor unrest. A stronger currency will ease inflationary pressures and boost much-needed consumption by raising the purchasing power of Chinese consumers.

China Signals a Gradual Rise in Value of Its Currency
By KEITH BRADSHER - NYTImes.com
HONG KONG - China announced on Saturday evening that it would allow greater flexibility in the value of its currency, a move that could deflect growing international criticism of its economic policies and defuse one of the greatest sources of tension between Beijing and Washington.
The statement, by China's central bank, was the clearest sign yet that the country would allow its currency to appreciate gradually against the dollar. World leaders are due to meet next week in Canada for economic talks, and China's currency policies had appeared a certain source of conflict.

China Signals End to Yuan's Peg to Dollar Before G-20 Summit
By Bloomberg News
June 20 (Bloomberg) -- China said it will allow a more flexible yuan, signaling an end to the currency's two-year-old peg to the dollar a week before a Group of 20 summit.
The decision was made after the world's third-largest economy improved, the central bank said in a statement on its website yesterday, without indicating a timeframe for the change. It ruled out a one-time revaluation, saying there is no basis for "large-scale appreciation," and kept the yuan's 0.5 percent daily trading band unchanged.

Markets to scrutinize China exchange rate
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN (AP)
BEIJING - Currency markets will closely watch Chinese exchange rates Monday to see how far Beijing will allow the yuan to rise after announcing the end of its two-year-old peg to the dollar.
A stronger yuan would make Chinese exports more expensive and bring relief to foreign manufacturers that have been struggling to compete. But Beijing plans to disappoint them, saying Sunday there will be no dramatic rise.
Beijing has long refused to allow the yuan to float and denied accusations that it is unfairly undervalued.

Marc Faber on CNBC 17 June 2010

Marc Faber on CNBC 6/17/10 part 2 final

Elliott Wave Prediction: Is the Dow Heading for Another Plunge?
By NIKOLAY TSINTSADZE - DailyFinance.com
Think the market's bad enough now? If you believe the Elliott Wave Principle, a market-analysis theory that predicted the 2008 fall, you can expect it to get much worse.
Stock analyst Robert Prechter, who uses the principle in his financial forecasts at Elliott Wave International, predicts the market will suffer a cataclysmic collapse in the next six years. The firm's monthly Elliott Wave Theorist newsletter forecasts that the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($DJI) will lose more than 90% of its value in that time, MarketWatch reported last week.

Goldman said to ask more time for lawsuit reply
The investment bank asks for an extension until July 19 to respond to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit accusing the firm of defrauding investors while selling mortgage-linked securities, sources say.
(Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. asked for more time to respond to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's April 16 lawsuit accusing the firm of defrauding investors while selling mortgage-linked securities, said two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
The company submitted the request today to the judge overseeing the case, asking for an extension until July 19, the people said. The original deadline was June 21, court documents show. The SEC consented to the New York-based firm's proposed extension, according to one of the people.

Wall Street reform comes down to the wire
By Jennifer Liberto
WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) -- With one week down and one week to go on negotiations melding the two Wall Street reform bills, lawmakers have a lot of tough decisions ahead.
House and Senate negotiators had set a goal to finish work on reconciling the bills - aimed at preventing the next financial crisis - before President Obama heads to Canada on Friday for two major summits of world leaders.

Congress Defends the Big Guys
NYTimes.com Editorial
In the first week of talks over a financial regulatory reform bill, Democratic lawmakers - in some cases with apparent White House backing - have been defeating or delaying reforms to protect individual investors. Instead, they are catering to corporate interests that prefer the status quo - and write big campaign checks.
At its most basic, this bill is supposed to restore stability and fairness to the markets and give Americans some confidence that their efforts to save and invest will not be undone - over and over again - by the destructive excesses of banks and corporations.
Those goals are being undermined by cynical maneuvers. Here is the damage assessment:

• COOKING THE BOOKS
• KEEPING CORPORATE BOARDS SAFE FOR CRONIES
• SHORTCHANGING THE S.E.C.

Money, Faith, Austerity, and a Failed System
Tim Iacono - SeekingAlpha.com
If the price of gold were not soaring, baffling the likes of Fed Chief Ben Bernanke who seems to think it is just an ordinary commodity and a monetary relic, it might be a little more difficult to explain to economists like Paul Krugman why there is a big move toward austerity now sweeping the globe. But, it is, so it's not.

Gerald Celente: The entire system is collapsing

Greenspan Says U.S. May Soon Reach Borrowing Limit
By Jacob Greber
June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the U.S. may soon face higher borrowing costs on its swelling debt and called for a "tectonic shift" in fiscal policy to contain borrowing.
"Perceptions of a large U.S. borrowing capacity are misleading," and current long-term bond yields are masking America's debt challenge, Greenspan wrote in an opinion piece posted on the Wall Street Journal's website. "Long-term rate increases can emerge with unexpected suddenness," such as the 4 percentage point surge over four months in 1979-80, he said.

The Town That Loved Its Bank
By ANDREW MARTIN - NYTimes.com
LIKE many working-class towns in the Midwest, this Chicago suburb has been on the cusp of better times for decades.
Separated by a river and woods from its wealthier neighbors, Oak Park and River Forest, it shares some of their charms: imposing, century-old homes and stately elms and maples draping the streets. But Maywood is decidedly more blue-collar than its neighbors, and its residents are predominantly African-American. Most of its homes are modest bungalows and frame houses that were built for factory workers whose jobs disappeared long ago. Many storefronts are vacant, and there appear to be more churches than viable businesses.

New Jersey: Ding the Poor or Tax the Rich?
Cut services for poorer senior citizens and the disabled or tax the rich? That's the question that will be debated in the New Jersey legislature Monday as the state maneuvers to balance a budget deficit of close to $11 billion.
The tax, which was overwhelmingly opposed by Republicans last year, would re-impose a 10.75 percent levy on income over $1 million and affect a grand total of 16,000 people-many of whom are financial professionals working on Wall Street.

Peddling Relief, Firms Put Debtors in Deeper Hole
By PETER S. GOODMAN - NYTimes.com
PALM BEACH, Fla. - For the companies that promise relief to Americans confronting swelling credit card balances, these are days of lucrative opportunity.
So lucrative, that an industry trade association, the United States Organizations for Bankruptcy Alternatives, recently convened here, in the oceanfront confines of the Four Seasons Resort, to forge deals and plot strategy.
At a well-lubricated evening reception, a steel drum band played Bob Marley songs as hostesses in skimpy dresses draped leis around the necks of arriving entrepreneurs, some with deep tans.

Jim Rogers on The Gulf Oil Spill Crisis and The future of the Euro
CNBC 16 June 2010

ECB must buy 'hundred of billions' of bonds to tame Europe's debt crisis
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
Fitch Ratings has warned that it may take massive asset purchases by the European Central Bank to prevent Europe's sovereign debt crisis escalating out of control.
Brian Coulton, the agency's head of sovereign ratings, said German members of the ECB appeared to be blocking the sort of muscular intervention in southern European bond markets needed to restore the shattered confidence of investors.
"There has been an unwillingness to follow through, and markets are going to want to see the ECB's money. It will require hundreds of billions in my opinion," he told a global banking conference.

As Oil Spills, BP Chief Attends Yacht Race

Oil spill: BP to sue partner in Gulf oil well
By Rowena Mason and Damian Reece - Telegraph.co.uk
Legal action aims to share clean-up costs as Anadarko is accused of 'shirking' responsibilities over spill
BP is preparing to sue its main partner in the leaking Gulf of Mexico oil field for its share of clean-up costs after the company, Anadarko, said BP's behaviour revealed "gross negligence" and that the accident was preventable.
In a fundamental split between the two companies with lead responsibility for the well, a senor BP source told The Sunday Telegraph that Anadarko was "shirking its responsibilities", not accepting its liabilities and that legal action in the US was now likely to follow.
Anadarko, which has a 25pc stake in the well, signalled this weekend that it will refuse to pay up.

Anadarko slams BP for 'reckless decisions and actions'
HOUSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL
Anadarko Petroleum Corp.'s top executive Jim Hackett didn't mince words Friday in a statement blaming the Gulf of Mexico oil spill squarely on BP Plc.
In a prepared statement issued late Friday after a week of hearings on the disaster, Anadarko Chairman and Chief Executive Jim Hackett declared that the tragedy was a preventable one and "the direct result of BP's reckless decisions and actions."

BP Tells Cleanup Workers They'll Be Fired If They Wear Respirators
Washington's Blog
As I noted on May 19th, BP has been telling cleanup workers that they don't need to wear respirators or other protective gear.
As Jerrold Nadler, the New York congressman whose district includes the World Trade Center, said today:
We're repeating the same catastrophe in the Gulf. You see pictures of people wearing regular clothes who are wading in and scooping oil off the water. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people, are going to get sick unnecessarily.
More egregious still, sources on the ground say that BP is telling cleanup workers that they will be fired if they wear respirators:

Growing Health Crisis In Gulf Of Mexico
T.I.L.T. 'Toxicant Induced Loss of Tolerance'

Gulf oil spill worsens -- but what about the safety of gas fracking?
Imagine a siege of hydrocarbons spewing from deep below ground, polluting water and air, sickening animals and threatening the health of unsuspecting Americans. And no one knows how long it will last.
No, we're not talking about BP's gulf oil spill. We're talking about hydraulic fracturing of natural gas deposits. And if that phrase makes your eyes glaze over, start blinking them open. Fracking, as the practice is also known, may be coming to a drinking well or a water system near you. It involves blasting water, sand and chemicals, many of them toxic, into underground rock to extract oil or gas.

Sen. Nelson: 'I Don't Know That' Obama Had the Constitutional Authority
to Tell BP It Had to Surrender Stockholders' Money for Oil Spill Fund
By Nicholas Ballasy, Video Reporter
(CNSNews.com) - Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) told CNSNews.com he does "not know that" President Barack Obama had the constitutional authority to tell BP to surrender its stockholders' money into an escrow account outside the company's control that would be used to pay damages to victims of the Gulf oil spill. Moreover, Nelson said the constitutional question was "not going to get answered" because BP agreed to Obama's demand.

BP Chief Draws Outrage for Attending Yacht Race
By LIZ ROBBINS - NYTimes.com
BP officials on Saturday scrambled yet again to respond to another public relations challenge when their embattled chief executive, Tony Hayward, spent the day off the coast of England watching his yacht compete in one of the world's largest races.
Two days after Mr. Hayward angered lawmakers on Capitol Hill with his refusal to provide details during testimony about the worst offshore oil spill in United States history, and one day after BP's chairman said the chief executive would not be as involved in daily operations in the Gulf of Mexico, Mr. Hayward sparked new controversy from afar.

BP: Hayward to Be Relieved of Day-to-Day Duties
By Staff, Associated Press via CNSNews.com
London (AP) - The chairman of BP says embattled chief executive Tony Hayward is being relieved of day-to-day responsibility for managing the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a day after he angered U.S. lawmakers with his refusal to answer many of their questions.

BP Blocking Media Access? New Orleans interview

Oil Prices: Two Ways to Profit From 'Peak Oil'
BY PETER KRAUTH, Contributing Editor, Money Morning
If there's one thing U.S. investors need to know about the future, it's this: Oil prices are headed higher - much higher, in fact, and could well double to reach $150 a barrel.
U.S. oil prices fell for the first time in four days yesterday (Thursday) - ending a rally that had taken crude prices to a six-week high. Crude oil for July delivery now stands at roughly $77 a barrel, meaning oil prices would need to nearly double to hit my target of $150 a barrel. But I think that can happen - and here's why.

BP's U.S. Future Teeters as CEO, Lawmakers Clash
By Joe Carroll and Jessica Resnick-Ault
June 18 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward's failure to set safety standards to prevent the Gulf of Mexico oil spill may cost the company control over U.S. oil fields, refineries and pipelines that account for more than one- third of its sales, lawmakers and analysts said.
Less than 24 hours after Hayward met President Barack Obama's demand to set aside $20 billion to clean up and compensate victims of the worst oil spill in U.S. history, lawmakers yesterday accused the BP CEO of "stonewalling." Hayward appeared before a House committee probing the cause of the April 20 offshore rig explosion that killed 11 workers.

URGENT!! BP SPILL - VOLCANIC TSUNAMI AND POISON GAS ALERT!!

Richard C. Hoagland reports on BP oil spill gas bubble - Part 1 of 2

Richard C. Hoagland reports on BP oil spill gas bubble - Part 2 of 2

BP Ignored the Omens of Disaster
By JOE NOCERA - NYTimes.com
"We have to get the priorities right," the chief executive of BP said. "And Job 1 is to get to these things that have happened, get them fixed and get them sorted out. We don't just sort them out on the surface, we get them fixed deeply."
The executive was speaking to Matthew L. Wald of The New York Times, vowing to recommit his company to a culture of safety. The oil giant was adding $1 billion to the $6 billion it had already set aside to improve safety, the executive told Mr. Wald. It was setting up a safety advisory panel to make recommendations on how the company could improve. It was bringing in a new man to head its American operations - the source of most of the company's problems - who would make safety his top priority. And on, and on.

Crews drill deep into Gulf of Mexico to halt leak
ON THE GULF OF MEXICO (AP) - Drilling crews are grinding ever deeper to build the relief wells that are the best hope of stopping the massive oil leak at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
The crew of Transocean Ltd.'s Development Driller II was on track to pour cement starting early Sunday to firm up a section of metal casing lining one of two relief wells.

Hazlitt's Battle with Bretton Woods
Mises Daily: by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.
"The Austrians were right" is a phrase we hear often now, and for good reason. The housing bubble and bust were called by the Austrians and, essentially, no one else. The Austrians were right about the dot com bubble and bust. The Austrians were right about the 1970s stagflation and the explosion in the price of gold after the gold window was closed.
You can tick through the issues and see that the Austrians have been right again and again throughout history: on price controls, on protectionism, on bailouts, on wars, on regulation, on prohibitions and civil liberties, and so on.

Dr. Coburn on Dylan Ratigan
discussing his amendment to the extenders bill & the oil spill

Senators Propose Granting President Emergency Internet Power
by Declan McCullagh - LewRockwell.com
A new U.S. Senate bill would grant the president far-reaching emergency powers to seize control of or even shut down portions of the Internet.
The legislation announced Thursday says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines, or software firms that the government selects "shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed" by the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone failing to comply would be fined.

Justice Dept. Confirms Lawsuit Against Arizona
Ecuador Just Nods and Says 'We Know'
By Doug Powers - MichelleMalkin.com
By way of Right Scoop, now that Hillary Clinton got the diplomatic formality of notifying Ecuador out of the way, Arizona and the rest of America can be told that the Obama Justice Department will file suit against Arizona's immigration law:
Now a senior administration official tells CBS News that the federal government will indeed formally challenge the law when Justice Department lawyers are finished building the case. The official said Justice is still working on building the case.

Brewer 'outraged' over potential immigration suit
PHOENIX BUSINESS JOURNAL - BY Mike Sunnucks
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said Friday she was outraged by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telling a South American TV network the Obama administration would sue to stop Arizona's new immigration law. The law allows police greater authority to question those they suspect are illegal immigrants.
The Obama administration has been mulling a federal lawsuit against the state law arguing its a federal matter.
Here's Brewer statement on the Clinton declaration.
"Because Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced on Ecuadorean television on June 8th that the Obama Administration had decided to sue Arizona over its recently passed anti-illegal immigration law, SB1070, it will come as no surprise if recent media reports are accurate and if the president's policies now, in fact, include filing a lawsuit against the State of Arizona.
"Though not surprising, that decision is, nevertheless, outrageous.

In Budget Crisis, States Take Aim at Pension Costs
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH - NYTimes.com
Many states are acknowledging this year that they have promised pensions they cannot afford and are cutting once-sacrosanct benefits, to appease taxpayers and attack budget deficits.
Illinois raised its retirement age to 67, the highest of any state, and capped public pensions at $106,800 a year. Arizona, New York, Missouri and Mississippi will make people work more years to earn pensions. Virginia is requiring employees to pay into the state pension fund for the first time. New Jersey will not give anyone pension credit unless they work at least 32 hours a week.

Illinois Sells Build Americas as Premium to Treasuries Climbs
By Brendan A. McGrail and Allison Bennett
June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Illinois sold $300 million of Build America Bonds at a yield premium over Treasuries about 40 percent higher than two months ago after lawmakers failed to close a $13 billion budget deficit for the year starting July 1.
The fifth most-populous U.S. state sold the taxable debt maturing in 2035 priced to yield 7.1 percent yesterday, or 297 basis points over the 2040 Treasury to which it was benchmarked, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Illinois offered Build Americas of similar maturity at spreads of 205 basis points and 210 basis points in two April issues, Bloomberg data show. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point.

'ACORN Youth Union' Chapters Were Funded by Justice Department, Says GAO By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief
(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Justice Department gave a group called the New York Agency for Community Affairs a grant of $135,130 in fiscal year 2005 to "provide youth leadership training to students at select New York City schools, form 'ACORN Youth Union' chapters, and coordinate student campaigns to address issues such as school funding, neighborhood safety, and school governance," according to a Government Accountability Office report released this week.

Israel could lose a major Muslim ally in Turkey
By Ashish Kumar Sen - WashingtonTimes.com
Relations tense after flotilla raid
Israel stands to lose its main Muslim ally in the Middle East - Turkey - over a recent raid on a flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip in which nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed by Israeli forces, according to two senior Turkish officials.
Ibrahim Kalin, chief adviser to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Omer Celik, vice chairman of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), were in Washington last week to demand an independent, U.N.-backed inquiry into the flotilla incident and explain Turkey's June 9 vote at the U.N. Security Council against U.S.-backed sanctions on Iran.

Letter From Istanbul
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN - NYTimes.com
Turkey is a country that had me at hello. I like the people, the culture, the food and, most of all, the idea of modern Turkey - the idea of a country at the hinge of Europe and the Middle East that manages to be at once modern, secular, Muslim, democratic, and has good relations with the Arabs, Israel and the West. After 9/11, I was among those hailing the Turkish model as the antidote to "Bin Ladenism." Indeed, the last time I visited Turkey in 2005, my discussions with officials were all about Turkey's efforts to join the European Union. That is why it is quite shocking to come back today and find Turkey's Islamist government seemingly focused not on joining the European Union but the Arab League - no, scratch that, on joining the Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran resistance front against Israel.

Letter From Istanbul, Part 2
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN - NYTimes.com
I leave Istanbul with four questions that Turks asked me echoing in my head. Forget the answers, just these questions will tell you all you need to understand the situation here. The four questions, which were asked of me by different Turkish journalists, academics or businessmen, can be summarized as follows:
One: Do you think we are seeing the death of the West and the rise of new world powers in the East?

Military in Iran seen as taking control
Curb on nukes could result
By Bill Gertz - WashingtonTimes.com
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Sunday that Iran's government is becoming a military dictatorship, with religious leaders being sidelined and, as a result, new sanctions could pressure Tehran into curbing its illegal nuclear program.
"What we've seen is a change in the nature of the regime in Tehran over the past 18 months or so," Mr. Gates said on "Fox News Sunday."
"You have a much narrower-based government in Tehran now," he said. "Many of the religious figures are being set aside."

R.C. Hoagland - Oil spill Disaster & Hayabusa's Return part 1/3

R.C. Hoagland - Oil spill Disaster part 2/3

R.C. Hoagland - Oil spill Disaster part 3/3

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Archived Page Link
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Friday 06.18.2010

Clinton says Ariz. to be sued over immigration law, but Justice Dept. won't confirm plan By Jerry Markon - Washington Post
The Obama administration has decided to sue Arizona over the state's controversial immigration law, according to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Justice Department declined Thursday to confirm such a plan.
In a June 8 interview with an Ecuadorean television station, Clinton said the department, under President Obama's direction, "will be bringing a lawsuit" over the measure. A video of the interview was distributed Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union, which urged the administration to go to court.

Federal regulator orders Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac to delist shares from NYSE By David Cho - Washington Post
The federal regulator overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ordered the mortgage finance giants on Wednesday to delist their shares from the New York Stock Exchange, dealing another blow to the battered companies.
Both firms' stock prices plunged by nearly 40 percent after the announcement. But several housing analysts said the deslisting was not shocking, given the companies' substantial troubles and uncertain future.

Delisted but Not Gone: What to Do About Fannie and Freddie?
By CHARLES WALLACE - DailyFinance.com
Even though U.S. taxpayers now own most of Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE), the fact that shares of the mortgage giants still traded on the New York Stock Exchange always provided a faint hope that one day they would pay back the billions of dollars they lost making bad bets on home loans.
But shares of Fannie Mae, which hit $89 less than a decade ago, fell below the required minimum of $1 a share this week, so both firms ended their listings on the exchange Wednesday. What's not ending is the huge mountain of unpaid bills that could saddle taxpayers with up to $1 trillion in bad debt.

More Than 90 Banks Miss TARP Payments
By: Reuters - CNBC.com
More than 90 U.S. banks and thrifts missed making a May 17 payment to the U.S. government under its main bank bailout program, signaling a rising number of lenders are struggling to meet their obligations.
The statistics, compiled by SNL Financial from U.S. Treasury data, showed 91 banks and thrifts skipped the May dividend payment under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. It was the first missed payment for 23 of the banks; for the others, it was at least their second miss.

Italian economists slam austerity measures
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
A group of 100 Italian economists has written an open letter warning that the EU austerity policies being imposed on Southern Europe may tip the region into a downward spiral, risking the disintegration of the monetary union.
"The `politics of sacrifice' in Italy and in Europe run the risk of accentuating the crisis in the end, causing a faster rise in unemployment and company failures, and could at a certain point compel some countries to leave monetary union. We must have an immediate debate on the extremely grave errors in economic policies now being committed," the economists said.

Spain is About to Make Trouble for German and French Banks
NakedCapitalism.com
Ooh, this might get ugly.
The ECB rather firmly resisted the idea of releasing its recent stress test results on individual European banks. And with good reason: many observers suspect that some of the big German and French banks look less than robust. (And this is before we get to the obvious elephant in the room: since they were modeled on the too-bank-friendly US stress tests, even this measure is likely to be too permissive).
Desperate times are now producing desperate measures. Spanish firms are locked out of international credit markets. Its banks are getting funding from the ECB.
The Spanish authorities think this is all misguided prejudice (which is not entirely accurate, its savings bank, the cajas, which were not subject to the ECB stress tests, are a bit of a mess, to put it politely. The last few weeks has witnessed rescues and forced marriages among the cajas). So it has decided to defy the ECB and publish the results of the tests on specific Spanish banks.

'Serious Market Problems' in the Fall - Gold to Hit $2500
By: JeeYeon Park - CNBC.com
Stocks fell on Tuesday after reports that jobless claims jumped last week and the Philly Fed gauge of manufacturing activity tumbled. Christian Thwaites, president and chief executive of Sentinel Asset Management, and Paul Schatz, president of Heritage Capital, shared their views.
"Since we had the big May correction, the market has been dominated entirely by macro economic and political events," Thwaites told CNBC.
"When that happens, the market fundamentals tend to get pushed down."

Why Silver is a sizzling investment
By Jeff Clark - CommodityOnline.com
Silver has been sizzling and causing lots of buzz in the industry. Investors are excited.
Part of the hubbub is due to its current run. Since its February 8 low, silver has roared ahead 22.4% (through June 21) and has doubled from its November 2008 low.
This excitement has spilled over into greater investment demand - especially so for coins. The U.S. Mint sold more Silver Eagles in the first quarter of this year - just over nine million - than any prior quarter in its history. The Royal Canadian Mint produced 9.7 million silver maple leafs in 2009, also a record.
Take a look at the jump in U.S. Mint coin sales since 2007.

Gold consolidates on market uncertainty
SINGAPORE (Commodity online) : Gold prices consolidated positions in Asian trade Thursday on market uncertainty as equity markets and euro movements failed to give any directions for investors.
Analysts said the situation prompted safe haven buying and benefited the precious yellow metal.
Gold for immediate delivery was seen trading at $ 1231.84 an ounce at 11.30 a.m Singapore time while U.S. gold futures for August delivery was at $ 1235.06 an ounce.

Elliot Wave Predicts Triple-Digit Dow in 2016
by Peter Brimelow -
If you think things are bad now...
An investment letter that called the Crash of 2008 said that this would be a bad year - and it now says it will get worse.
A whole generation of investors think that Robert Prechter and his Elliott Wave Theory letters, Elliott Wave Financial Forecasts and Elliott Wave Theorist, are permabears. And they've certainly seemed that way for the last decade -- although it should be noted that the stock market is now roughly back where it started.

Stocks Party Like It's 2009, but Soros Sees Ghosts of the '30s
by Aaron Task - TechTicker
From April 26 through June 7, the Dow fell 12.4%
and the S&P dropped 13.7%, The Wall Street Journal reports, in a rapid-fire decline that scared many investors out of the market.
So, of course, stocks rallied at the end of last week and are starting Monday off with gains as the euro is rallying after France announced an austerity package and a report showed eurozone industrial output surged in April.
The "risk on" trade appears to be back in vogue for the moment -- commodities are also rallying early Monday, while "safe havens" such as the dollar, Treasuries and Japanese yen are in retreat. There's no telling how long this latest rally effort will last or how far it will take the major averages. But if the past 18 months are any indication, the move will probably go further and farther than most of us expect.

Gold tops closing record on shakier stocks, slow growth
By Claudia Assis , MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Gold futures traded above the past week's record, rising more than 1% on Thursday as investors grew more concerned about the U.S. economy and its proxy, the stock market.
Gold for August delivery, the most active contract, added $17.60 to $1,248 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gold closed at a record $1,245.60 an ounce on June 8.

Central banks join gold rush
By Annalyn Censky
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Foreign governments have been getting in on the recent gold rush, driven by continued fears about Europe's debt crisis and the pace of the global economic recovery. Those concerns have been propelling the precious metal to record highs over the past 18 months. In fact, gold closed at a fresh record high of $1,248.70 an ounce Thursday.

Oil and Real Estate: Fannie Mae to the Rescue
By: Diana Olick - CNBC.com
As I continue my week here on the Gulf Coast of Florida, I hear more and more real and anecdotal stories of contract cancellations for new home purchases and second homeowners walking away. There is no question that while oil has barely brushed the beaches here in Pensacola, the place is awash in fear. Fear and real estate are like, well, oil and water; they don't mix well.

Phoenix lags other big cities in economic recovery
by Austen Sherman - The Arizona Republic
After a recession, the nation's Mountain West usually makes employment gains faster than the rest of the nation, analysts say. That's not the case this time. According to a new report, the region's slow economic recovery actually has weakened in some ways in the early months of 2010. Metro Phoenix, along with Las Vegas and Boise, Idaho, remain behind the nation in the economic recovery, according to a June study produced by Brookings Mountain West.

The FedEx Situation: What Happens When Peter Wants His Money Back?
Adam Lass - TaipanDaily
FedEx's unfunded pension problem gives us a clear look at the troubles lurking just around the corner for those who borrowed their way through the recession.
Is the recession truly over?
It may seem somewhat late to be asking that question. After all, haven't Washington and Wall Street already bragged as to how we have had an adequate number of consecutive months of GDP growth to sound the death knell for "The Great Recession of 2007-2010"? Heck, we've even been regaled by the Federal Reserve itself as to how American's "wealth" has increased for four straight quarters now.
As usual, the actual answer to that question is somewhat more complex - and substantially more disturbing - than our little propaganda makers would have you think.

Mortgage Fraud Probe Results in Almost 500 Arrests
By: AP with CNBC.com
The Justice Department says it has made nearly 500 arrests since March in a probe of mortgage fraud called Operation Stolen Dreams.
In prepared remarks Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder says the government will use every law enforcement tool available to prosecute those who prey on vulnerable homeowners.
The investigation involves 1,250 criminal defendants who are allegedly connected to losses amounting to $2.3 billion.

More families are homeless and on the streets
By Tami Luhby - CNNMoney.com
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Great Recession drove more families into homeless shelters in 2009, a new federal report has found.
Some 170,000 families needed shelter last year, up from 159,000 in 2008, according to an annual survey from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. There were 535,000 people in those families.

Housing Market Slows as Buyers Get Picky
By DAVID STREITFELD - NYTimes.com
Before the recession, people simply looked for a house to buy. Later they got squeamish just thinking about buying. Now they are on a quest for perfection at the perfect price.
Exacting buyers are upending the battered real estate market, agents and other experts say, leading to last-minute demands for multiple concessions, bruised feelings on all sides and many more collapsed deals than usual.

Gary Shilling: House Prices Will Fall Another 10%-20% And Won't Bottom Until 2013
A year ago, house prices finally stopped collapsing after two years of brutal declines. Over the following few quarters, moreover, they actually rose. This led many observers to conclude that the housing bottom had been reached and that we were headed for a v-shaped bounce.
Not Gary Shilling.

Former home of Mitt Romney torn down
AP - LATimes
A demolition crew in Detroit has torn down a 5,500-square-foot house that was lived in by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney when he was a child.
The dilapidated two-story home torn down Tuesday in the Palmer Woods area is one of 3,000 set for demolition this year under Mayor Dave Bing's plans to improve neighborhoods by getting rid of dangerous structures and eyesores.

Internet 'kill switch' proposed for US
By Declan McCullagh, CNET.com
A new US Senate Bill would grant the President far-reaching emergency powers to seize control of, or even shut down, portions of the internet.
The legislation says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines or software firms that the US Government selects "shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed" by the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone failing to comply would be fined.
That emergency authority would allow the Federal Government to "preserve those networks and assets and our country and protect our people," Joe Lieberman, the primary sponsor of the measure and the chairman of the Homeland Security committee, told reporters on Thursday. Lieberman is an independent senator from Connecticut who meets with the Democrats.

Afghanistan's $1 trillion mineral wealth is a problem for Britain and US, poised to withdraw
Gerald Warner - Telegraph.co.uk
With British fatalities in Afghanistan creeping remorselessly towards the 300 mark and Barack Obama making noises about beginning American troop withdrawals after the current offensive, the Nato powers have just been presented with a new dilemma. A report produced by the American military and the United States Geological Survey has revealed that Afghanistan is sitting on at least $1 trillion in mineral wealth. That staggering figure does not even present the full potential, since less than 70 per cent of the country was surveyed.

More on the Gulf disaster

Gulf oil full of methane, adding new concerns
By MATTHEW BROWN and RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI - WashingtonPost.com
NEW ORLEANS -- It is an overlooked danger in the oil spill crisis: The crude gushing from the well contains vast amounts of natural gas that could pose a serious threat to the Gulf of Mexico's fragile ecosystem.
The oil emanating from the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits, said John Kessler, a Texas A&M University oceanographer who is studying the impact of methane from the spill.

Agency That Was Supposed To Be Regulating BP Admits Cracks Appeared In Well Last February
Gus Lubin - BusinessInsider.com
The pathetic Mining and Mineral Services agency has released documents to Bloomberg that show BP was dealing with major cracks in the Maconda well as early as February.
On Feb. 13, BP told the minerals service it was trying to seal cracks in the well about 40 miles (64 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast, drilling documents obtained by Bloomberg show. Investigators are still trying to determine whether the fissures played a role in the disaster.

Kinetics of convective crystal dissolution and melting, with applications to methane hydrate dissolution and dissociation in seawater
Youxue Zhang, Zhengjiu Xu - U of Mich - Dept of Geological Science
Is there a vast undersurface bubble of Methane?
". . . . Upon reaching inherent instability depth, hydrate would dissociate rapidly into methane gas and water in shallow water, producing a bubble plume, which might power a methane-driven oceanic eruption.
This would be an efficient way to transport a large amount of CH4 gas rapidly to the atmosphere."

Scientist Warns Impact of Methane Gas as Result of Oil Spill
Xinhua, Web Editor: Xu Leiying
A U.S. scientist has warned the impact of methane gas, erupted from undersea of the Gulf of Mexico, on the seawater and the earth's atmosphere.
"There are huge quantities of methane gas that are mixed in with oil spewing up from the seafloor," said John Kessler, assistant professor in the Department of Oceanography of Texas A&M University who specializes in ocean chemistry.
"The mixture coming up is now about 40 percent methane and 60 percent oil from undersea of the Gulf of Mexico," Kessler explained in an exclusive interview with Xinhua. "This means there are immense amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, being input into the Gulf."

Tony Hayward: "There Are Many Wells In The Gulf Of Mexico That Have The Same Casing Design" Gus Lubin - BusinessInsider.com
Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) just asked Hayward if there are any other BP wells that were drilled with various controversial procedures. Turns out most BP wells are drilled like this: "There are many wells that have the same casing design. Many have been drilled with the same cement procedure," Hayward says.

BP oil spill: Tony Blair is the right man to be BP chairman
By Neil Collins, Reuters - Telegraph.co.uk
It's not a sinecure after all, being chairman of an international oil company. Nobody blames Carl-Henric Svanberg for taking the job at BP - it was an honour to be asked, and lack of experience in the oil business did not prevent his predecessor, Peter Sutherland, coping with his own crisis well enough.
Unfortunately, Svanberg's crisis is of a different order. The fall of chief executive John Browne when Sutherland was chairman was awkward for BP; the gusher in the gulf is potentially life-threatening.
Svanberg has failed to provide leadership and public support for his CEO, Tony Hayward. He will have to go. There seems little prospect of Hayward keeping his job, either.

Is BP the Next Lehman Brothers?
by Peter Gorenstein - TechTicker
Not only has the BP oil leak created the worst the environmental disaster in U.S. history, it also has the potential to trigger another financial crisis.
"In a finance-based, derivative-laced global economy, a pelican flapping his oil-soaked wings in the Gulf could have profound implications on the other side of our interconnected world," writes Minyanville CEO and founder Todd Harrison in a recent column.

The BP Blowout - Part 2
Written by Allen Gilmer - OilPrice.com
Below is the TransOcean rig data on the wellbore from two hours out until blowout.
This from what was filed with the US government investigators. So what does it say?
It says that the well wasn't drilling (no ROP (or Rate of Penetration), no Torque or RPM data which measures how smoothly and quickly the drill string turns).

OSHA Limits Don't Protect Gulf Coast Workers
Gina Solomon, Senior Scientist, NRDC - HuffingtonPost.com
BP is claiming that because the air concentrations of carcinogens such as benzene are below OSHA limits, the workers involved in cleaning up the Gulf oil spill are not at risk of health effects. BP is dismissing the fact that its own data have shown levels of hydrocarbons above BP's 'action level', and have shown levels of benzene and 2-butoxyethanol (the dispersant chemical) above the Recommended Exposure Limit set by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). See my prior blog for more details on this. The OSHA standards are the fig leaf that they are using to pretend that workers are safe.

Oil Spill Forces Animals To Flee To Shallow Water Off Coast, Scientists Warn Of 'Mass Die-Off'
JAY REEVES, JOHN FLESHER AND TAMARA LUSH - HuffingtonPost.com
GULF SHORES, Ala. - Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water just off the Florida coast. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again.
Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange phenomena.
Fish and other wildlife seem to be fleeing the oil out in the Gulf and clustering in cleaner waters along the coast in a trend that some researchers see as a potentially troubling sign.

Simmons Says Nuclear Device Only Option to Stop Oil Flow

The Nuclear Option: It may happen now.
By Gary Vey
It's so surreal... like a sci-fi movie. The earth is threatened by a huge hole in its crust, leaking crude oil like a highly pressurized volcano and threatening to kill all life in the oceans. The solution? The military detonate a nuclear bomb in an attempt to melt the cap rock and seal the leak.
But this is no science fiction. As reported back on May 14th, Barack Obama sends nuclear experts to tackle BP's Gulf of Mexico oil leak:
The US has sent a team of nuclear physicists to help BP plug the "catastrophic" flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico from its leaking Deepwater Horizon well, as the Obama administration becomes frustrated with the oil giant's inability to control the situation.

Oil And Gas Leaks From Cracks In Seabed Confirmed
Videos Show Gulf Oil Spill Leaking From Seafloor
by Alexander Higgins
There have been several reports of oil and gas leaking on the cracks in the Gulf of Mexico seafloor which may cause problems with BP capping the gushing oil well.
Although BP denies that there is oil or gas leaking from the cracks in the sea floor many people watching the BP Oil leak cam have witnessed explosions and leaks from the seafloor.

ROV films oil leak coming from rock cracks on seafloor - June 13th
This video was recorded from the Viking Poseidon -- ROV 1 on June 13th, 2010 at 2:58 AM EST.

Location of the sea floor crack leaking:
N:10431633.05
E: 1202852.27

Senator confirms reports that wellbore is pierced; oil seeping from seabed in multiple places BY OILFLORIDA
Senator Bill Nelson was interviewed by Andrea Mitchell this morning on MSNBC and confirmed reports of oil seeping up from additional leak points on the seafloor.
Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL): Andrea we're looking into something new right now, that there's reports of oil that's seeping up from the seabed which would indicate, if that's true, that the well casing itself is actually pierced underneath the seabed. So, you know, the problems could be just enormous with what we're facing.

Sen. Bill Nelson: Reports of oil seeping up from seabed, well casing may be pierced. June 7, 2010

Oil Spill Animations - Multimedia Gallery
UCAR (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research)

Ocean currents likely to carry oil to Atlantic

Gulf Gusher and the Price of Oil and Gasoline
by Jan Lundberg, oil industry analyst
Culture Change was asked about the impact from the Gulf oil gusher on the price of gasoline in 6 months, 12 months and 18 months from now:
It might be an interesting question for debate, with many possible opinions. There are too many variables to make forecasts with any certainty, so prognosticators would have to exclude all but one or two factors. There are these non-textbook questions: Will hurricanes wreak havoc? Will there be migration and refugees from the Gulf? Could a BP bankruptcy result, triggering broader corporate failures? The dismantling of BP or the massive downsizing and selling off of its assets are possible if criminal penalties plus anticipated fines prove as devastating for the corporation as its behavior has been for the Gulf of Mexico.

What the Spill Will Kill
by Sharon Begley - Newsweek
Giant plumes of crude oil mixed with methane are sweeping the ocean depths with devastating consequences. 'I'm not too worried about oil on the surface,' says one scientist. 'It's the things we don't see that worry me the most.'
It was in mid-May that independent scientists-not any of the officials or researchers working for any of the government agencies on scene at the Deepwater Horizon disaster, let alone BP-first detected the vast underwater plumes of crude oil spreading like Medusa's locks from the out-of-control gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. BP immediately dismissed the reports, and in late May CEO Tony Hayward flatly declared "there aren't any plumes," stopping just short of accusing the scientists of misconduct. Federal officials called the scientists' claim "misleading, premature and, in some cases, inaccurate." Moreover, continued a statement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, any oxygen depletion in the surrounding waters due to plumes is not "a source of concern at this time,"and critics blaming dispersants for the plumes had "no information" to stand on. NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco, a respected oceanographer when President Obama tapped her to lead the agency, insists there are no plumes, only "anomalies" - though last week she acknowledged the possibility of oil beneath the surface.

BP Death Clouds Already Onshore!
Benzene-3400ppb & Hyrdrogen Sulfide-1200ppb
TOXIC AIR ALERT

BP Coughs Up Another Drop of Air Quality Data: Not Reassuring
Gina Solomon, Senior Scientist, NRDC - HuffingtonPost.com
New BP air testing results were posted yesterday from April 27 - May 26 for benzene, total hydrocarbons, and 2-Butoxyethanol. There's still no information about other oil-related air toxic chemicals such as naphthalene or hydrogen sulfide, offshore.
The BP sampling plan focuses only on workers on the large ships, and appears to not include monitoring for the people on the approximately 1,500 small fishing boats helping to clean up the spill. These people are dismissed as of "Reduced Priority" on page 4 of the BP sampling plan.

New oil plume evidence uncovered
By John Couwels, CNN
St. Petersburg, Florida (CNN) -- As if the pictures of birds, fish and animals killed by floating oil in the Gulf of Mexico are not disturbing enough, scientists now say they have found evidence of another danger lurking underwater.
The University of South Florida recently discovered a second oil plume in the northeastern Gulf. The first plume was found by Mississippi universities in early May.
USF has concluded microscopic oil droplets are forming deep water oil plumes. After a weeklong analysis of water samples, USF scientists found more oil in deeper water.

Matt Simmons:
"Theres another leak, much bigger, 5 to 6 miles away"

Socialists Claim Gulf Oil Disaster:
A Trillion-Dollar Corporate Crime
beforeitsnews.com
The oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is a corporate crime whose magnitude almost defies comprehension. The eventual cost - combining damage to complex Gulf and coastal ecosystems, wiping out of the fishing and tourism industries, and long-term health consequences for the population of the region - is likely to total over $1 trillion.
The explosion that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, killed 11 workers and began the massive and continuing flow of oil was not an "accident," but the product of willful corporate cost-cutting and negligence. Further evidence of this fact was provided Monday in documents released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. One document was an email from a BP engineer, Brian Morel, on April 14, six days before the explosion, in which he described the rig as a "nightmare well which has everyone all over the place."

Peak Oil Stress Map
The map above is a first rough cut at where the stress of peak oil (or any oil shock) is likely to be greatest. It comes from taking county level data from the Census Quick Facts and extracting two variables: the average travel time to work (from the 2000 census), and the median household income (from 2008 data). The idea is that if average travel time is long, that probably indicates that people in that county need a lot of oil to run their cars. On the other hand, if income is low, they are probably going to have more trouble paying for that oil. So I divided the travel time by median income, and then rescaled that index by its own average and standard deviation to produce a map of where the problems are likely to be greatest.

THE SHORT FILM BP DOESN'T WANT YOU TO SEE.

The Nuclear Option: It may happen now.
By Gary Vey
It's so surreal... like a sci-fi movie. The earth is threatened by a huge hole in its crust, leaking crude oil like a highly pressurized volcano and threatening to kill all life in the oceans. The solution? The military detonate a nuclear bomb in an attempt to melt the cap rock and seal the leak.
But this is no science fiction. As reported back on May 14th, Barack Obama sends nuclear experts to tackle BP's Gulf of Mexico oil leak:
The US has sent a team of nuclear physicists to help BP plug the "catastrophic" flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico from its leaking Deepwater Horizon well, as the Obama administration becomes frustrated with the oil giant's inability to control the situation.

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
BP Death Clouds Already on Shore & Giant Wave 1/4
Lindsey Williams reports the latest developments concerning the situation in Gulf of Mexico. It seems BP Death Clouds are already on shore. They bring a poisonous and noxious mix of Benzine and God knows what more. Also the Mechanics of the Giant Wave (or Tsunami) this Oil Spill crisis may generate are explained.

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
BP Death Clouds Already on Shore & Giant Wave 2/4

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
BP Death Clouds Already on Shore & Giant Wave 3/4

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
BP Death Clouds Already on Shore & Giant Wave 4/4

Kyrgyzstan killings are attempted genocide, say ethnic Uzbeks
Luke Harding in Osh - guardian.co.uk
Fractured demographics and economic success of minority underpinned volatile country, say those targeted by mobs
It was early afternoon when the mob surged down an alley of neat rose bushes and halted outside Zarifa's house. The Kyrgyz men broke into her courtyard and sat Zarifa down next to a cherry tree. They asked her a couple of questions. After confirming she was an ethnic Uzbek, they stripped her, raped her and cut off her fingers. After that they killed her and her small son, throwing their bodies into the street. They then moved on to the next house.

Saudi Arabia: We will not give Israel air corridor for Iran strike
By Haaretz Service
Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf refutes Times of London report saying Saudi Arabia practiced standing down its anti-aircraft systems to allow an Israeli bomb run.
Saudi Arabia would not allow Israeli bombers to pass through its airspace en route to a possible strike of Iran's nuclear facilities, a member of the Saudi royal family said Saturday, denying an earlier Times of London report.

U.S. announces new sanctions to curb Iran nuclear program
By News Agencies - Haaretz.com
U.S. Treasury imposes sanctions on a state-controlled bank, companies that are fronts for the state shipping line and the air force and missile commands of Iran's Revolutionary Guard.
The U.S. Treasury on Wednesday announced new sanctions on Iran to curb its nuclear program, including blacklisting a state-controlled bank, companies that are fronts for the state shipping line, and the air force and missile commands of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps

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Thursday 06.17.2010

Obama Gives Part of Arizona to Mexicans

Pinal County Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu says That Mexican Drug Cartels Are Gaining Control in Parts of Arizona and He Can't Stop Them Without Federal Help
People want to know how bad things really are in Arizona and what's the big deal with a few illegals sneaking in now and then, Ok, watch this news clip. Pinal County Sheriff, Paul Babeu comes out and says that there is a good sized chunk of Arizona that they are loosing control of to the Mexican drug cartels. Sheriff Babeu notes that the drug smugglers are better armed than his officers and won't hesitate to shoot them. One of his deputies was shot about five or six weeks ago while pursuing Mexican illegals smuggling drugs. Sheriff Babeu is saying that the Mexican drug cartels are gaining control in parts of Arizona and he can't stop them without federal help.

Sheriff: Mexican Drug Cartels Now Control Parts of Arizona

BP Admits That - If It Tries to Cap the Leak - the Whole Well May Blow
Washington's Blog
As I previously noted, oil industry expert Rob Cavner said that BP must "keep the well flowing to minimize oil and gas going out into the formation on the side": (see video)
This has just been confirmed by BP.
Specifically, BP's Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles told CNN last Thursday that BP's data indicates that BP can't cap the leaking oil, or it might cause the well casing to blow out: (see video)
Suttles denies that there is evidence that the well casing has already blown out beneath the sea floor.
But many experts - including experts working for BP - say that there is damage beneath the sea floor. Indeed, Matt Simmons told Bloomberg today that America's top research vessel - the Thomas Jefferson - found that the well casing is gone, and can no longer even be seen on the sea floor, having been destroyed: (see video)

The Dangers and Difficulties of 'Bottom Kill'
By Philip Bethge - Spiegel.de
BP has only one arrow left in its quiver, a method known as 'bottom kill.' The idea is for relief wells to stop the gushing oil from below, but the technical challenges are formidable. Past experiences show that the oil may continue flowing into late autumn.
For the engineers, it was a blessing in disguise. They had drilled to a depth of up to 3,500 meters (11,500 feet) below the sea floor when gas and oil suddenly began shooting upward. But there was no explosion. The 69 workers at the site were evacuated and no one was killed.

Nightmare vision for Europe as EU chief warns 'democracy could disappear' in Greece, Spain and Portugal
By JASON GROVES - The DailyMail.co.uk
Democracy could 'collapse' in Greece, Spain and Portugal unless urgent action is taken to tackle the debt crisis, the head of the European Commission has warned.
In an extraordinary briefing to trade union chiefs last week, Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso set out an 'apocalyptic' vision in which crisis-hit countries in southern Europe could fall victim to military coups or popular uprisings as interest rates soar and public services collapse because their governments run out of money.
The stark warning came as it emerged that EU chiefs have begun work on an emergency bailout package for Spain which is likely to run into hundreds of billions of pounds.

EU Flags The Risk Of Debt Snowballs In Southern Europe - Irony Or Tragedy?
By: Claus Vistesen - iStockAnalyst
As it seems that we are finally about to get something which resembles a stable summer here in Denmark it may seem strange to suddenly start talking about snowballs. Yet, the idea of debt snowball is very relevant in the current environment as it relates to the potentially unstoppable development in public/domestic debt levels despite a country's best efforts in the form of austerity measures. Specifically, the combination of a year long loss of competitiveness, excessive domestic debt levels (private as well as public) and being caught up in a fixed currency union means that as austerity measures enforced to rein in debt levels also push the economy into deflation and growth, by virtue of the loss of competitiveness, remains absent the debt problems essentially worsens despite efforts to the contrary. Recently, I penned a paper on, in part, this very subject and the following passage sums up the main learning point;

GERALD CELENTE:
Greece, World Wide Revolt & the Great War Part 1

GERALD CELENTE:
Greece, World Wide Revolt & the Great War Part 2

Spanish debt wilts amid €250bn rescue plan confusion
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
European debt markets remain under high stress on persistent reports that Spain is in secret talks with EU officials and the International Monetary Fund for a support package of up to €250bn (£208bn), the largest rescue in history.
The spreads on 10-year Spanish bonds jumped to a post-EMU high of 224 basis points above German Bunds as traders brace for a crucial auction by Madrid on Thursday. The relentless rise in bond yields replicates the pattern seen in Greece at the onset of crisis. Spain must raise €25bn of debt in a cluster of auctions in July.
"We're in a dangerous and stressful situation," said Gary Jenkins, a credit expert at Evolution Securities. "Spain is a big enough borrower to wipe out the EU's rescue fund."

Bank Run in Spain and Its Destabilizing Ramifications for the Entire EU
by Robert Wenzel - EconomicPolicyJournal.com
Spanish banks are borrowing record amounts from the European Central Bank.
According to FT, Spanish banks borrowed €85.6bn ($105.7bn) from the ECB last month. This was double the amount lent to them before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and 16.5 per cent of net eurozone loans offered by the central bank.
"If the suspicion that funding markets are being closed down to Spanish banks and corporations is correct, then you can reasonably expect the share of ECB liquidity accounted for by the country to have risen further this month," said Nick Matthews, European economist at RBS.

'Circuit breakers' tripped for the first time
By Michael Mackenzie in New York - FT.com
The S&P 500 circuit breakers, which began operating this week, were triggered for the first time on Wednesday afternoon when shares in the Washington Post Company doubled in price inside the space of one second.
Shares in the publisher were trading at about $460 at 3.07pm yesterday when an order for 400 shares and 200 shares were both executed at $919.18, followed by 166 shares at $929.18.

Bernanke Says Fed Is Beefing up Bank Oversight
By JEANNINE AVERSA AP Economics Writer - ABCNews.com
Bernanke: Fed taking steps to beef up oversight to prevent replay of recent financial crisis
The Federal Reserve is working to beef up oversight of financial companies to better protect the nation from another financial crisis in the future, Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday.
The Fed chairman's comments come as Congress moves closer to sending President Barack Obama a final legislative package that revamps the nation's financial structure to prevent a replay of the recent financial crisis.
Bernanke welcomed key parts of that package in remarks prepared for delivery to a conference in New York. At the same time, though, Bernanke emphasized that the Fed is moving ahead on its own reforms.

Retail data put double-dip recession back on table
by Irwin Kellner - MarketWatch.com
PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y. (MarketWatch) -- Where are the big spenders, now that we really need them?
The unexpected decline in May's retail sales has many economists questioning the strength and durability of the nascent recovery. This was the first month-to-month retreat for retail sales since last autumn. What is more, it was pretty much across the board - even if you exclude autos.

Lee Farkas, Ex-CEO of Bankrupt Mortgage Lender TBW, Indicted on TARP Fraud By MELLY ALAZRAKI - DailyFinance.com
Lee Farkas, the former CEO of the now bankrupt mortgage lending company Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, has been indicted for allegedly engaging in a fraud scheme to misappropriate $1 billion from the government's Troubled Assets Relief Program and other targets. He has been charged with 16 counts of conspiracy, bank fraud, wire fraud and securities fraud. The indictment loudly echoes public concerns that bailout money would be mishandled at best, and fraudulently obtained at worst.

US Dollar: The Mother of All Bubbles
JESSE'S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
A bubble is a significant increase in valuation supported by a set of artificial, inexplicable, and otherwise unsustainable conditions. True bubbles almost always involve some element of secrecy, some dispensation from received or common knowledge.
When the artificial conditions are removed the valuation of the bubble 'reverts to the mean, ' a more normal valuation based on the fundamentals, unadjusted and undistorted supply and demand. An asset bubble often involves a fraudulent design taking advantage of and even perpetuating a corresponding foolishness. In other words, the fraud is father to the folly.

US Mint Sells 310,000 Fractional 2010 Gold Eagle Bullion Coins in Five Days By Darrin Lee Unser - CoinNews.net
Debuting last Thursday, the 22-karat 2010 American Eagle Gold Bullion Fractional Coins are off to a brisk pace according to the most recent coin sales figures released by the United States Mint. An impressive 310,000 were sold during the first five days amounting to 48,500 ounces of gold. A look at the individual coins sales are shown below:
2010 Fractional Bullion Eagle Debuting Sales
2010 1/2 oz Gold Eagle - 28,000 coins for 14,000 ounces
2010 1/4 oz Gold Eagle - 42,000 coins for 10,500 ounces
2010 1/10 oz Gold Eagle - 240,000 coins or 24,000 ounces

Gold Futures Fluctuate Amid Speculation Euro Will Resume Slump
By Pham-Duy Nguyen
June 16 (Bloomberg) -- Gold prices fluctuated on speculation that the euro will resume a slump, boosting the appeal of the precious metal as an alternative asset.
The euro may drop to the lowest level since 2003 on Europe's debt crisis, Sophia Drossos, the co-head of global currency strategy at Morgan Stanley, said today in an interview with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Radio. Before today, gold rose 13 percent this year, reaching a record $1,254.50 an ounce on June 8, as the euro tumbled 14 percent.

Pay czar and 9/11 arbiter takes on oil spill money
By KAREN MATTHEWS (AP)
NEW YORK - He was given the delicate task of putting a dollar figure on the life of each Sept. 11 victim and trimming paychecks at companies that got taxpayer bailouts.
Now the federal government has given Kenneth Feinberg a new job overseeing a fund to pay the victims of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
President Barack Obama announced Wednesday that BP would set aside an initial $20 billion and that Feinberg would administer the fund to oil spill victims.

BP 'small people' comment causes anger along Gulf
By HOLBROOK MOHR, AP
VENICE, La. -The "small people" of the Gulf Coast have a humongous message for oil giant BP: They're tired of the company's big-time executives making insensitive comments.
On Wednesday, BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg told reporters in Washington: "I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don't care, but that is not the case with BP. We care about the small people." He later apologized and said he spoke "clumsily."

Will Obama Force BP into Bankruptcy?
Written by Editorial Dept - OilPrice.com
BP is already down and out, but President Obama has the power to force the petroleum company into bankruptcy once and for all.
An article published in the New York Post this morning details the 'nuclear option' in which Obama could yank BP's oil rig leases which generate more than $55 billion in revenue for the company.

BP Agrees to Set Aside About $20 Billion for Spill Claims
By HELENE COOPER and JACKIE CALMES - NYTimes.com
WASHINGTON - The White House and BP tentatively agreed that the oil giant will create a $20 billion fund to pay claims for the worst oil spill in American history, to be independently run by the mediator who oversaw the 9/11 victims compensation fund, Kenneth Feinberg, according to two people familiar with the deliberations.
The agreement was not final and was still being negotiated when President Obama and his top advisers met this morning with BP's top executives and lawyers. Its preliminary terms would give BP several years to deposit the full amount into the fund so it could better manage cash flow, maintain its financial viability and not scare off investors.

BP Cancels Dividend to Finance Obama's Spill Fund
By Brian Swint
June 16 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc, seen as a rising default risk by credit investors, scrapped dividends and pledged asset sales to meet President Barack Obama's demand for a $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the U.S.'s worst oil spill.
BP's Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg visited the White House today and agreed on payments over four years to finance an independent body that will settle claims resulting from a damaged oil well that's spewing as much as 60,000 barrels of crude a day into the Gulf of Mexico.

"We Brought In Dead Porpoises Today!"
(Is MSM Hiding Video Of Animals Killed By Oil Spill?)
May 23, 2010 CNN

Oil and Snake Oil
by Thomas Sowell - Townhall.com
The big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is bad enough in itself. But politics can make anything worse.
Let's stop and think. Either the government knows how to stop the oil spill or they don't. If they know how to stop it, then why have they let thousands of barrels of oil per day keep gushing out, for weeks on end? All they have to do is tell BP to step aside, while the government comes in to do it right.
If they don't know, then what is all this political grandstanding about keeping their boot on the neck of BP, the Attorney General of the United States going down to the Gulf to threaten lawsuits-- on what charges was unspecified-- and President Obama showing up in his shirt sleeves?

Matt Simmons Revises Leak Estimate To 120,000 Barrels Per Day, Believes Oil Covers 40% Of Gulf Beneath The Surface
by Tyler Durden - ZeroHedge.com
Matt Simmons was on Bloomberg earlier, adding some additional perspective to his original appearance on the station, in which he initially endorsed the nuclear option as the only viable way to resolve the oil spill. Simmons refutes even the latest oil spill estimate of 45,000-60,000 barrels per day, and in quoting research by the Thomas Jefferson research vessel which was compiled late on Sunday, quantifies the leak at 120,000 bpd. What is scarier is that according to the Jefferson the oil lake underneath the surface of the water could be covering up to 40% of the entire Gulf of Mexico.

With Criminal Charges for Oil Spill, Costs to BP Could Soar
By JOHN SCHWARTZ - NYTimes.com
As BP watches its bill rise quickly for the oil spill, including $20 billion it is setting aside for claims, it could find the tally growing much faster in coming months if the United States Department of Justice files criminal charges against the company.
Based on the latest estimates, for example, the daily civil fine for the escaping oil alone could be $280 million. But criminal penalties, if imposed, could cause the costs to balloon still further, said David M. Uhlmann, a law professor at the University of Michigan, who headed the environmental crimes section of the Justice Department from 2000 to 2007.

Underwater Oil Plumes In Gulf EXPOSED By ABC News
June 2, 2010

BP Hires Mercs to Block Oily Beaches (Updated)
By Adam Rawnsley - Wired.com
Last week, we all voted here on who should buy Blackwater now that it's up for sale. In addition to Steve Jobs and the Salvation Army, one of the top finalists was British Petroleum. "Somebody is gonna have to keep all those sunbathers away from the beach," one commenter noted.
Well, today we can tell you: Danger Room gets results. Kinda.
BP, in a move destined to go down as one of the bestest public relations moves ever, has apparently hired a private security company to help to keep pesky reporters from covering the unfolding catastrophe on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. The report comes via New Orleans' 6WDSU reporter Scott Walker, who last week ran into representatives of a "Talon Security" trying to block him from interviewing cleanup workers on a local beach. Just which of the various companies named "Talon Security" is storming the (public) beaches for BP, however, remains unclear.

9 Important Points about the BP Blowout - Part 1
Written by Allen Gilmer - OilPrice.com
Here is what a couple of offshore drilling engineers told me about the BP Blowout
However, everything is consistent with a well way over budget, company men taking heat from the home office to finish the job, and a series of decisions, none catastrophic by themselves, that eventually accumulated to cause this disaster.
I have worked with several majors in my career, and the BP/Amoco E&P guys were as good as they come. I can't comment first hand on their drilling engineering practices in general, because I don't know. Here are a few items on THIS well that are notable.

NOAA Chief: Oil Crisis Is a 'Serious Tragedy'
June 2, 2010

BP's Contracts In 'Deep' Trouble
By: Zacks Investment Research - iStockAnalyst.com
BP plc (BP) is running the risk of losing control on its U.S. oil and natural gas wells following the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) oil spill, according to a report by Bloomberg. Industry and regulatory analysts are of the opinion that the U.S. government should ban BP from operating in the GoM and other fragile regions since the company failed to take prerequisite actions to check the spill.

Grandson of Jacques Cousteau After Diving into BP Oil Spill
May 29, 2010

Florida Bankers: oil spill threatens industry
TAMPA BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL
The Florida Bankers Association is asking federal regulators to give banks in the state leeway on loans and investment efforts because of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The spill, just miles from Florida's coastline, is the equivalent of a long lasting economic disaster that's impacting tourism and real estate, said Alex Sanchez, president and chief executive officer of the state banking trade group, in a letter to top regulators.
The loss of jobs and business will affect the banking industry when otherwise good customers stop paying their loans, Sanchez said.

BofA to limit duration of trades with BP
(Reuters) - Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAC.N) has ordered its traders not to enter into oil trades with BP Plc (BP.L) that extend beyond June 2011, a market source familiar with the directive told Reuters.
The order to the bank's traders came from a high-level executive and was made on Monday, according to a source familiar with it. It told traders not to engage in trade with BP for contracts beyond one year from this month.

Accelerating Jumbo Mortgage Delinquencies Will Bash High-End Property Values: Part 1 of 6 - Anecdotes on Inventory
Michael White - Implode-O-Meter blog
(Chicago) Look at unit sales over $1 million in Sarasota County Florida and all appears well. Twelve-month sales equaled 128 units at March 1 versus 151 units the previous year. The 15 percent fall in sales is real, but it isn't scary. If you want to sell your home there, you may not like the rest of the math as much.
Talk to Hannerle Moore, an agent at Michael Saunders & Co. She suggests a sobering strategy. Reduce prices at least 40 percent from 2005 highs.
"I tell them,'You could be the lady who has had her home on the market for 936 days, or you could sell,'" Moore told the Sarasota Herald Tribune.

Citi Halts Some Foreclosures Near Gulf Spill
By MATTHIAS RIEKER - WSJ.com
NEW YORK - Citigroup Inc. is halting certain foreclosures in the areas affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The bank announced a three-month suspension of foreclosure sales and notifications, as well as evictions on possessed properties for qualifying borrowers in the Gulf region with first mortgages held by CitiMortgage. The suspension is effective from Thursday through Sept. 17. Citi expects about 1,000 borrowers to participate initially, but that number might climb.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac to delist from NYSE
By Chris Isidore, senior writer
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were ordered by their federal regulator to no longer trade their shares on the New York Stock Exchange, the agency announced Wednesday. Both stocks plummeted on the news.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and its predecessor agency have overseen the operation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac since September 2008, when they were both placed under conservatorship, a form of control similar to what is found in a bankruptcy process.

Home construction sinks, building permits down
By ALAN ZIBEL - AP via MSNBC.com
WASHINGTON - Home construction plunged last month and building permits also fell, the latest signs that the construction industry won't fuel the economic recovery.
Builders are scaling back now that government incentives have expired. The biggest evidence of that trend: single-family homes tumbled 17 percent, the largest monthly drop since January 1991. The struggle in the housing industry is a concern for the broader economy because fewer homes mean fewer jobs across various sectors.

What happens if your state government shuts down?
By Tami Luhby
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- State budgets are so squeezed that some governors are threatening to shut down state operations if lawmakers can't address massive spending shortfalls.
States are facing the threat of shutdowns because of the dismal condition of their finances. Governors and lawmakers have been reluctant to make deep and unappealing cuts, particularly to education, health and social services, but have also been loath to raise taxes.

In jail for being in debt
By CHRIS SERRES and GLENN HOWATT , StarTribune.com
As a sheriff's deputy dumped the contents of Joy Uhlmeyer's purse into a sealed bag, she begged to know why she had just been arrested while driving home to Richfield after an Easter visit with her elderly mother.
No one had an answer. Uhlmeyer spent a sleepless night in a frigid Anoka County holding cell, her hands tucked under her armpits for warmth. Then, handcuffed in a squad car, she was taken to downtown Minneapolis for booking. Finally, after 16 hours in limbo, jail officials fingerprinted Uhlmeyer and explained her offense -- missing a court hearing over an unpaid debt. "They have no right to do this to me," said the 57-year-old patient care advocate, her voice as soft as a whisper. "Not for a stupid credit card."
It's not a crime to owe money, and debtors' prisons were abolished in the United States in the 19th century. But people are routinely being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts.

Families in homeless shelters increased 7% in '09
By Marisol Bello, USA TODAY
The recession continued to take its toll as more families with children became homeless for the second straight year, a U.S. government report shows.
The number of families in homeless shelters increased 7% to 170,129 from fiscal year 2008 through fiscal year 2009, a report released today by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found. At the same time, the overall number of homeless people in shelters fell 2% to 1.56 million.

U.S. prices could rise with Chinese workers' salaries
By Kathy Chu, USA TODAY
Rising wages in China are stoking concerns that U.S. consumers will ultimately pay more for Chinese-made products from iPads to Levi's.
For years, foreign companies have contracted with Chinese suppliers to make products, drawn by the low-cost labor. But as local Chinese governments raise minimum-wage requirements - and workers clamor for higher salaries - it's becoming more expensive to do business in the country.

Price increases fuel fears of food 'crises'
By Javier Blas in London - FT.com
Food commodity prices will increase more than previously expected in the next decade because of rising energy prices and developing countries' rapid growth, two leading organisations said on Tuesday, worsening the outlook for global food security.
"A return to higher global economic growth. . . together with continuing population gains, are expected to increase demand and trade and underpin prices," the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said in their annual agricultural outlook.

Google Wi-Fi Data Collection Discussed by 30 Attorneys General
By Karen Freifeld and Joel Rosenblatt
June 16 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc.'s collection of data via Wi-Fi networks was the subject of a conference call among law enforcement officials from 30 U.S. states, according to Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.
"We're looking to establish where, when, why, for how long and for what purpose there was this collection of information on wireless networks," Blumenthal said yesterday in an interview. The call included representatives of the states' attorneys general.

Radio Journalist Slain in Philippines
By CARLOS H. CONDE - NYTimes.com
MANILA - A commentator known for scathing on-air attacks on corruption has been killed in the second fatal attack in 24 hours on a radio broadcaster in the Philippines, one of the world's most dangerous countriesfor journalists.
Joselito Agustin, 37, a broadcaster with DZJC Aksyon Radyo in Laoag City in the northern Philippines, died of gunshot wounds early Wednesday after two men on motorcycles ambushed him Tuesday night as he was riding a motorcycle home, according to the local police. Mr. Agustin's nephew, who was on the motorcycle with him, was shot in the leg, the police said.

The Israel-Turkey Rift: Is The Future of NATO At Risk?
Written by Claude Salhani - OilPrice.com
If anyone still harbored any doubts that there is an urgent need to resolve the Middle East crisis one needs only look at the events that unfolded two weeks ago off the coast of Gaza when Israeli commandos stormed a Turkish relief vessel heading for the besieged Palestinian territory.
The end result of that operation, one which turned out to be a monumental public relations fiasco for Israel, was that it raised the level of animosity between Israel and Turkey, a level which was already dipping well into the red zone - pushing it another notch deeper into the danger zone.

Tarpley: Geopolitical problems in Afghanistan

Iran says it will build more nuclear reactors
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI - AP via MSNBC.com
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran stepped up its nuclear defiance Wednesday by endorsing plans to boost its uranium enrichment and to build four new facilities for atomic medical research - less than a week after the latest U.N. sanctions.
The series of announcements and sharp comments by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - who said the West must come to Iran like a "polite child" in any possible nuclear talks - could encourage calls for more economic pressure against the Islamic Republic.

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Wednesday 06.16.2010

Obama's Speech Raises Question:
Where Does He Get the Authority to 'Inform' a Private Company That It Must Surrender Its Money?
By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief
(CNSNews.com) - In his first-ever address from the Oval Office on Tuesday night, President Barack Obama said he was going to "inform" the chairman of BP that he must surrender the company's money to an independent party that will distribute it to people and businesses determined to have been harmed by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The president's declaration raises a serious constitutional question about his authority: Where does the president get the lawful power to order any private-sector company - BP or any other - that it must surrender its money? Should not courts and normal legal proceedings determine who is responsible, who has been harmed, and who owes what to whom in regards to the Gulf oil spill?

The Three-Legged Stool Of The Economy Is Already Missing Two Legs
Peter Stock, Stock Investment Management Inc - BusinessInsider.com
Last year when the Euro was soaring and the dollar collapsing there was some frustration articulated by Euro zone policy makers that it was economically counterproductive for the Euro to be too strong. Well I guess, as we watch the Euro's recent slide, these Eurocrats should have been more careful of what they wished for. I doubt that any of them ever anticipated the balkanizing circumstances that would lead to a lower valuation for their once high and mighty currency. In fact the way things are working now with the abrupt change of direction for the Euro it could in fact hasten the further dissolution of the grand EU/EC/ECB experiment. How so?

EPA classifies milk as oil, forcing costly rules on farmers
Monica Scott - The Grand Rapids Press
GRAND RAPIDS -- Having watched the oil gushing in the Gulf of Mexico, dairy farmer Frank Konkel has a hard time seeing how spilled milk can be labeled the same kind of environmental hazard.
But the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is classifying milk as oil because it contains a percentage of animal fat, which is a non-petroleum oil.

US Treasury Rolls $284 Billion In Bills, $316 Billion In Total Debt In First 10 Days Of June, Cash Balance Down To $4 Billion
by Tyler Durden - ZeroHedge.com
The US Treasury is once again running on cash fumes, with total US Treasury cash down to $4.3 billion in the Treasury's Federal Reserve account. The reason: the US Treasury has now rolled $320 billion in total treasuries in the first ten days of the month, or over $11 trillion annualized. All those paying attention to interest paid on US debt are focusing on the wrong thing: the monthly scheduled amortization of principal are now by far a much greater threat to the US Treasury than a couple of percent increase in rates. The short-date sides of the curve is getting progressively larger, contrary to the UST's previously announced plan to extend the average duration of Treasury debt.

It's Official: Fed Governors Are Starting To Worry About A Double Dip
by Joe Weisenthal - BusinessInsider.com
According to WSJ, the debates have begun inside the Fed about what it should do in the event of a double dip.
With the market swooning, and Europe clearly having problems, with the potential to put a drag on the economy, not to mention nascent domestic issues, it's absurd to imagine the Fed isn't beginning to wargame the scenarios.

Barack Obama turns the oil spill into his poor man's 9/11 to revive Cap-and-Trade climate legislation
by Gerald Warner - Telegraph.co.uk
"You never let a serious crisis go to waste," Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama's chief of staff, famously remarked. "And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." The extent to which his master has absorbed this maxim is demonstrated by Obama's exploitation of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln's derivatives-spinoff plan gains support in Congress
By Brady Dennis - Washington Post
An effort to force some of the nation's biggest banks to spin off their lucrative derivatives-dealing operations appears to be gaining traction, as members of a House-Senate conference begin finalizing details of far-reaching new financial regulations.
The measure, championed by Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), was included in the financial overhaul bill recently passed by the Senate. It had been opposed by Obama administration officials, some lawmakers in both parties, multiple banking regulators and Wall Street. Lincoln is seeking to restrict federal aid to banks that operate as major derivatives dealers.

Markets, Ron Paul, Rubini, BP

US Commission subpoenas Goldman Sachs
FinancialStandard.com.au
Goldman Sachs, which is currently under SEC investigation, has been issued a subpoena by the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission this month. According to a press statement from the Commission, Goldman Sachs failed to comply with a request for documents and interviews in a timely manner. The Commission had previously warned it would use its subpoena power if there was a delay or lack of compliance during the investigation.

PIMCO Flip-Flops --
Stops Warning About Inflation And Starts Buying Treasuries
Vincent Fernando, CFA - BusinessInsider.com
Pimco has increased its holdings of U.S. treasuries to the highest level in five months according to the Wall Street Journal. Note this is something that David Rosenberg had insinuated was happening a few days ago.

Last Train for the Coast
Howard S. Katz - SilverBearCafe.com
All aboard, dear gold bugs. The train is slowly picking up speed and is leaving the station. It is your last chance to get aboard at a price reasonably close to $1,000/oz. Now you may not agree that $1,250 is reasonably close to $1,000, but when you see gold at $3,000, then you will agree. From the vantage of $3,000, then $1,000, $1,250 no big deal. The point is to be long of gold.

Gold Climbs Most in a Week on Demand for Currency Alternative
By Pham-Duy Nguyen
June 15 (Bloomberg) -- Gold prices rose the most in a week on demand for an alternative investment to currencies as the dollar slumped and concern mounted that Europe's sovereign-debt crisis will escalate.
The greenback dropped for a second straight day against a basket of six currencies. Debt levels in Spain and Portugal may "snowball" in coming years, and additional budget cuts are needed to meet deficit targets announced a month ago, according to a draft European Commission document.

Gold advances on safe haven buying
SINGAPORE (Commodity Online) : Gold showed signs of recovery in Asian trade as investors turned to safe haven buying on reports of Greek inability to repay its debts.
Gold for immediate delivery was seen trading at $1220.24 an ounce while US gold futures for August delivery was at $1222.5 an ounce on the Comex in New York.
A report by Moody's cast's doubts about Greece's ability to solve its debt problems reminded investors that the debt crisis in Europe was far from over.
The report sends Asian stocks lower Tuesday and also hit the European single currency.

AXA fears 'fatal flaw' will destroy eurozone
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
Analysts at the French financial group AXA see a serious likelihood that the eurozone will break in half or disintegrate, dismissing Europe's €750bn (£623bn) rescue package for Club Med debtors as a stop-gap measure that misdiagnoses the problem
"The markets are very nervous because they can see that there is a fatal flaw in the system and no clear way out," said Theodora Zemek, head of global fixed income at AXA Investment Managers.
"We are in a very major crisis that has even broader implications than the credit crisis two years ago. The politicians have not yet twigged to this."

Spain plays high-stakes poker game with Germany as borrowing costs surge By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
Spain has upped the ante in a high-stakes poker game with Germany, pushing for the release of EU stress test results for major banks in a move that risks precipitiating a dramatic escalation of Europe's financial crisis.
"We're not afraid of transparency," said the Spanish Banking Association (AEB), saying the full truth would put an end to rumours battering Spain's instutitions. El Pais reported that the government backs the initiative, putting it on a collision course with Germany which insists on secrecy.
Josef Ackermann, head of Deuts