michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Mar 16, 2008 8:05:37 GMT 4
READ THIS ONE CLOSELY, FOLKS, AND READ THE NEWS BEHIND THE NEWS....MichelleSpitzer's Shame Is Wall Street's Gain By Robert Scheer Truthdig Wednesday 12 March 2008 Tell me again: Why should we get all worked up over the revelation that the New York governor paid for sex? Will it bring back to life the eight U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq that same day in a war that makes no sense and has cost this nation trillions in future debt? Will it save those millions of homes that hardworking folks all over the country are losing because of financial industry shenanigans that Eliot Spitzer, as much as anyone, attempted to halt? Perhaps it provides some insight into why oil has risen to $108 a barrel, benefiting most of all the oil sheiks whom our taxpayer-supported military has kept in power? Sure, the guy, by his own admission, is quite pathetic in all those small, squirrelly ways that have messed up the lives of other grand public figures before him, but why is an all-too-human sin, amply predicted in early Scripture, getting all this incredible media play as some sort of shocking event? The answer is that, while having precious little to do with serious corruption in public life, it does have a great deal to do with stoking flagging newspaper sales and television ratings. The sad truth is that reporting on major corruption, say, the rationalizations of a president who has authorized torture, doesn't cut it as a marketing bonanza. Just days before this grand expose, the president vetoed a bill banning torture, and instead of being greeted with horrified disgust, the president's deep denigration of this nation's presumed ideals was met with a vast public yawn. Torture, unlike paid sex, doesn't have legs as a news story. Sex sells, and frankly it would seem far more exploitative for the news media to pimp this tale to the public than anything that VIP escort service did with the pitiable governor. His behavior was not really any more wretched than messing around with a young and vulnerable White House intern who didn't even get paid for her efforts, yet Bill Clinton survived that one, whereas Spitzer was presumed dead on the arrival of this "news." The New York Times, which editorially has supported the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, whose vast White House experience clearly did not include corralling her husband, now editorializes contemptuously about Spitzer's betrayal of the public trust as well as about his exploitation of his "ashen-faced" wife, who, like Hillary, stood by her man. The media consensus from the opening salvo was that Spitzer must resign and he will be thrown to the dogs, which is unfortunate because, like Clinton, he has done much valuable work in the public interest, and the outrage over this personal dereliction, tawdry in the extreme, is excessive. I certainly never wanted Clinton to resign, let alone be impeached, but why is Spitzer's paying for sex more disgraceful than ripping it off? Yes, Spitzer allegedly broke a law that shouldn't be on the books, and his resignation in disgrace is inevitable, but it bothers me that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney remain in office despite having violated enormously more serious laws. Frankly, I don't care what any of these politicians do in their personal lives as long as the practice is consensual, and the thousands of dollars that exchanged hands in this case would provide a presumption that the lady in question was indeed a willing partner in this commercial transaction. True, Spitzer is an outrageous hypocrite for having prosecuted others caught in what should not be considered criminal behavior, but since when is hypocrisy on the part of a politician, particularly as to sex, so shocking? I wouldn't have written this column had I not read The Wall Street Journal's Page 1 news story headlined "Wall Street Cheers as Its Nemesis Plunges Into Crisis." The article begins with the crowing statement "It's Schadenfreude time on Wall Street" and goes on to quote those whom Spitzer went after over what should be considered the criminal greed that has predominated on Wall Street. It was Spitzer, as much as anyone, who sounded the alarm on the subprime mortgage crisis, the obscene payouts to CEOs who defrauded their shareholders and the other financial scandals that have brought the U.S. economy to its knees. The best rule of thumb these days is that ordinary Americans should be mightily depressed over any news that Wall Street hustlers cheer, for they have been exposed as a dangerous pack of scoundrels quite willing to rob decent, hardworking people of their homes. And of course no one on Wall Street ever paid for sex. Source:www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031208D.shtml
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Mar 17, 2008 15:05:37 GMT 4
Fed acts Sunday to prevent global bank run Monday By Rex Nutting & Greg Robb, MarketWatch Last update: 10:38 p.m. EDT March 16, 2008 WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Acting quickly to prevent a run on major global financial firms, the Federal Reserve cut its discount rate by a quarter percentage point to 3.25% and offered to lend money to a longer list of firms than ever before. The extraordinary weekend moves came as J.P. Morgan Chase sealed a deal to buy Bear Stearns Cos. (BSC:The Bear Stearns Companies Inc for just $2 a share backed by up to $30 billion borrowed from the Fed. The Fed board gave its approval to that unique funding arrangement, which guarantees JP Morgan against losses from buying Bear. See full story: tinyurl.com/38nw67The Fed board also approved the creation of a special lending facility through the New York Fed that would be available to members of its primary dealers list, which includes both commercial banks and investment banks. Investment banks, such as Bear Stearns, have not been allowed to borrow directly from the Fed. JP Morgan has access to the discount window through its Chase Bank subsidiary, but Bear Stearns does not have direct access. Events have unfolded at warp speed over the past week. On Tuesday, the Fed announced a new lending program for primary dealers in the bond markets, but that program won't go into effect for two more weeks. On Friday, the Fed allowed Bear Stearns to borrow money via JP Morgan in a desperate bid to save the firm, which has been pummeled by losses on exotic securities backed by subprime mortgages. The Federal Open Market Committee meets on Tuesday. Analysts expect the FOMC to cut the target for the federal funds rate by as much as a full percentage point to 2%. Another cut in the discount rate is also likely. The new lending program would operate for at least six months, and would offer loans for as long as 90 days, rather than 30 days under the regular discount window. Loans from the new program would be backed by a "broad range of investment-grade debt securities," the Fed said. The interest rate would be the same as the discount rate. "The Federal Reserve, in close consultation with the Treasury, is working to promote liquid, well-functioning financial markets, which are essential for economic growth," said Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, in a statement. "These steps will provide financial institutions with greater assurance of access to funds." Robert Brusca, chief economist at FAO Economics, said the new lending facility created a general way to help other dealers. "The Fed has more information now that it has seen what Bear Stearns had on its books," Brusca said in an interview. President Bush will meet with Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Chris Cox on Monday at 2 p.m. Eastenr. Earlier on Sunday, Paulson went on television to project an image of confidence in the U.S. financial market. He said Washington would do what it takes to foster stability on Wall Street. See full story: tinyurl.com/244awrDean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, criticized the Fed's "real turn to secrecy" in the new auction facilities. The Fed does not reveal the names of firms that borrow funds in the auctions. The purpose was to get around the "stigma" of banks that didn't want to borrow at the discount window because of the questions it would raise about its balance sheet. But, in an interview, Baker said "now is not the time to shut the doors and keep everything in the dark." Baker said he sensed a whiff of panic at the Fed and in the Treasury Department. "The main thing is that they [Fed and Treasury] are really really scared. Telling us that everything is great is an insult to intelligence. They should own up to it and talk seriously to people," Baker said. Peter Morici, a professor of economics at University of Maryland, criticized the Fed for not imposing meaningful conditions on the financial institutions that it is providing cash. As a result, banks continue to impose onerous conditions on their innocent customers, he said. "Today's moves by the Federal Reserve are the desperate acts of failing men," he said. Below is a list of primary dealers who will be able to borrow directly from the Fed's new program announced Sunday: BNP Paribas Securities Corp. Banc of America Securities LLC Barclays Capital Inc. Bear, Stearns & Co., Inc. Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. Citigroup Global Markets Inc. Countrywide Securities Corporation Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC Daiwa Securities America Inc. Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein Securities LLC. Goldman, Sachs & Co. Greenwich Capital Markets, Inc. HSBC Securities (USA) Inc. J. P. Morgan Securities Inc. Lehman Brothers Inc. Merrill Lynch Government Securities Inc. Mizuho Securities USA Inc. Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated UBS Securities LLC. Rex Nutting is Washington bureau chief of MarketWatch. Greg Robb is a senior reporter for MarketWatch in Washington. Source: tinyurl.com/2yvfyt------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Wall Street fears for next Great DepressionBy Margareta Pagano, Business Editor Sunday, 16 March 2008 Wall Street is bracing itself for another week of roller-coaster trading after more than $300bn (£150bn) was wiped off the US equity markets on Friday following the emergency funding package put together by the Federal Reserve and JPMorgan Chase to rescue Bear Stearns. One UK economist warned that the world is now close to a 1930s-like Great Depression, while New York traders said they had never experienced such fear. The Fed's emergency funding procedure was first used in the Depression and has rarely been used since.
A Goldman Sachs trader in New York said: "Everyone is in a total state of shock, aghast at what is happening. No one wants to talk, let alone deal; we're just standing by waiting. Everyone is nervous about what is going to emerge when trading starts tomorrow."In the UK, Michael Taylor, a senior market strategist at Lombard, the economics consultancy, said on Friday night: "We have all been talking about a 1970s-style crisis but as each day goes by this looks more like the 1930s. No one has any clue as to where this is going to end; it's a self-feeding disaster." Mr Taylor, who had been relatively optimistic, has turned bearish: "It really does look as though the UK is now heading for a recession. The credit-crunch means that even if the Bank of England cuts rates again, the banks are in such a bad way they are unlikely to pass cuts on."Mr Taylor added that he expects a sharp downturn in the real UK economy as the public and companies stop borrowing. "We have never seen anything like this before. This is new territory for us. Liquidity is being pumped into the system but the banks are not taking any notice. This is all about confidence. The more the central banks do, the more the banks seem to ignore what's going on." Mr Taylor added that the problems unravelling at Bear Stearns are just the beginning: "There will be more banks and hedge funds heading for collapse." One of the problems facing the markets is that, despite the Fed's move last week to feed them another $200bn, the banks are still not lending to each other. "This crisis is one of faith. We are going to see even more problems in the hedge funds as they face margin calls," said Mark O'Sullivan, director of dealing at Currencies Direct in London. "What we are waiting for now is for the Fed to cut interest rates again this week. But that's already been discounted by the market and is unlikely to help restore confidence." Mr O'Sullivan added that the dollar's free-fall is set to continue and may need cuts in European interest rates to trim the euro's recent strength against the dollar. "But the ECB doesn't like cutting rates," he said. On Europe, Mr Taylor said that while the German economy remains strong, others such as Italy's and Spain's are weakening. "You could see a scenario where the eurozone breaks up if economies continue to be so worried about inflation." European financial markets were relatively unscathed by Wall Street's crisis but traders expect there to be a backlash when stock markets open tomorrow. The Fed's plan will give 28 days of secured funding to Bear Stearns, which saw its value slashed over the week by more than a half to $3.7bn. JP Morgan will provide the funding, but the Fed will bear the risk if the loan is not repaid. Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, who pumped $200bn of loans to cash-strapped institutions last week, said more would be available to help others in distress. Source: www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/wall-street-fears-for-next-great-depression-796428.html------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ GOP Gags Witnesses on Credit Card Woes Partisan Maneuver Blocked Testimony on Fee HikesBy Mike Lillis 03/14/2008 They came to the nation’s capital this week from as far away as Denver, Chicago and Niagara Falls—five people who’d had tough experiences with their credit cards and were asked to share those tales with a House panel. Instead, they ran headfirst into the buzz-saw of Washington politics when the panel’s Republicans insisted the visitors allow their lenders to discuss their financial histories publicly—in any forum, at any time. For four of the five, it was a deal-breaker. Instead of signing the waivers (pdf) allowing them to testify Thursday, they all sat silently in the audience. "I didn’t want all my … information out there for just anybody," said Denver’s Susan Wones, who saw the interest rate of her JP Morgan Chase card jump from 0 percent to 23 percent in one month last summer, without notification or explanation. "I’m extremely upset I can’t talk about this." Marvin Weatherspoon, a grandfather from Chicago, echoed the tale. "The waiver was very vague," said Weatherspoon, who claims his card rate jumped from 4.25 percent to roughly 25 percent in the wake of one late payment to Bank of America. "It didn’t address the issues we were here to deal with." The controversy came as members of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Consumer Credit met to discuss legislation that would add a number of consumer protections to current credit card policy. Among the changes, the bill would prevent card sponsors from applying interest rate hikes to existing balances. It would also require issuers to provide 45 days notice of such hikes, and increase the minimum advance billing requirement from 14 to 25 days. Bill sponsor Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said her proposal will add balance to a market that has grown wildly off-kilter. "The credit card industry has been clear about the responsibility imposed on consumers: make your minimum payments on time and stay under your limit," Maloney said in a statement. "But what about the reciprocal responsibility of card companies?" The proposal has met considerable opposition from banks and other credit card sponsors, who argue that it would steal their power to set interest rates based on the risk of the individual card holder. Without that option, companies say, rates for everyone would rise, while many borrowers would lose their cards altogether. Most House Republicans have sided with the industry."As with any government intervention in the free market," Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), ranking member of the Financial Services Committee, said in a statement, "the bill presents a real danger of restricting the range of products and services that credit card issuers currently offer." Republicans and card sponsors both want Congress to remain on the sidelines while the Federal Reserve applies reform through regulations. Oliver Ireland, a banking consultant with the Washington-based law firm Morrison & Foerster, told lawmakers that regulators will make more precise and appropriate changes than Congress ever could. But supporters of congressional intervention say the Fed has a history of putting bankers’ interests above those of consumers. "The regulators have been lax in enacting consumer protections, except under the threat of legislation," said Lawrence Ausubel, an economics professor at the University of Maryland.At Thursday’s hearing, the first panel was to consist of five card holders who had suffered interest rate hikes or unexplained user fees despite a claimed history of responsible borrowing. The GOP waiver requirement came as a surprise, the witnesses said, not least because it surfaced just one day before the hearing. "I didn’t have time to contact a lawyer or anything," Wones said. In addition, witnesses said they were concerned with the vagueness of the one-sentence waiver language, which offered no limitations on where or when the lenders could discuss their credit histories. "I think we would have ended up in a banking journal five years from now as a case study," said Steven Autry, of Fredericksburg, Va. "I don’t know." In 1999, Autry said, he picked up a Capital One card because the 9.9 percent interest rate was advertised as "fixed for life." But last year, without indicating any problems with Autry’s credit, the company hiked his rate to 16.9 percent.Both Autry and Wones said they were prepared to sign more detailed waivers that wouldn’t give the card companies so much freedom to discuss the witnesses’ finances outside of the hearing, but the committee’s Republican staff refused to compromise. Wones said one GOP staffer "got belligerent and wasn’t happy" with her suggestions to modify the waiver. The committee’s minority office did not respond to several calls for comment. The plight of the borrowers—combined with the GOP’s efforts to silence them—have riled a number of House Democrats, some of whom accused the Republicans of protecting the credit card industry at the expense of consumers. Colorado Rep. Mark Udall (D) called Thursday’s removal of the consumer panel "a form of intimidation." "Susan Wones is not going to put the credit card companies out of business," Udall said at an impromptu gathering after the hearing. "She just wants her story to be told." Maloney has scheduled a second hearing on the topic for April 9. The New Yorker said she wants to work out a compromise allowing the same consumer witnesses to return. Meanwhile, those would-be witnesses were openly frustrated with the odd experience surrounding their canceled testimonies—not to mention the partisan animosity that has come to define Washington politics. "I couldn’t deal with this stress on a daily basis," Wones said. "I’m not sure how anyone does." Source: www.washingtonindependent.com/view/gop-gags-consumers
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Apr 9, 2008 13:49:53 GMT 4
Is an International Financial Conspiracy Driving World Events? by Richard C. Cook Global Research, March 27, 2008 "They make a desolation and call it peace." -TacitusWas Alan Greenspan really as dumb as he looks in creating the late housing bubble that threatens to bring the entire Western debt-based economy crashing down? Was something as easy to foresee as this really the trigger for a meltdown that could destroy the world’s financial system? Or was it done, perhaps, "accidentally on purpose"?And if so, why? Let’s turn to the U.S. personage that conspiracy theorists most often mention as being at the epicenter of whatever elite plan is reputed to exist. This would be David Rockefeller, the 92-year-old multibillionaire godfather of the world’s financial elite. The lengthy Wikipedia article on Rockefeller provides the following version of a celebrated statement he allegedly made in an opening speech at the Bilderberg conference in Baden-Baden, Germany, in June 1991: "We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during these years. But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government which will never again know war, but only peace and prosperity for the whole of humanity. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in the past centuries." This speech was made 17 years ago. It came at the beginning in the U.S. of the Bill Clinton administration. Rockefeller speaks of an "us." This "us," he says, has been having meetings for almost 40 years. If you add the 17 years since he gave the speech it was 57 years ago—two full generations. Not only has "us" developed a "plan for the world," but the attempt to "develop" the plan has evidently been successful, at least in Rockefeller’s mind. The ultimate goal of "us" is to create "the supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers." This will lead, he says, toward a "world government which will never again know war." Just as an intellectual exercise, let’s assume that David Rockefeller is as important and powerful a person as he seems to think he is. Let’s give the man some credit and assume that he and "us" have in fact succeeded to a degree. This would mean that the major decisions and events since Rockefeller gave the speech in 1991 have probably also been part of the plan or that they have at least represented its features and intent. Therefore by examining these decisions and events we can determine whether in fact Rockefeller is being truthful in his assessment that the Utopia he has in mind is on its way or has at least come closer to being realized. In no particular order, some of these decisions and events are as follows:The implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement by the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations has led to the elimination of millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs as well as the destruction of U.S. family farming in favor of global agribusiness.Similar free trade agreements, including those under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, have led to export of millions of additional manufacturing jobs to China and elsewhere.Average family income in the U.S. has steadily eroded while the share of the nation’s wealth held by the richest income brackets has soared. Some Wall Street hedge fund managers are making $1 billion a year while the number of homeless, including war veterans, pushes a million. The housing bubble has led to a huge inflation of real estate prices in the U.S. Millions of homes are falling into the hands of the bankers through foreclosure. The cost of land and rentals has further decimated family agriculture as well as small business. Rising property taxes based on inflated land assessments have forced millions of lower-and middle-income people and elderly out of their homes. The fact that bankers now control national monetary systems in their entirety, under laws where money is introduced only through lending at interest, has resulted in a massive debt pyramid that is teetering on collapse. This "monetarist" system was pioneered by Rockefeller-family funded economists at the University of Chicago. The rub is that when the pyramid comes down and everyone goes bankrupt the banks which have been creating money "out of thin air" will then be able to seize valuable assets for pennies on the dollar, as J.P. Morgan Chase is preparing to do with the businesses owned by Carlyle Capital. Meaningful regulation of the financial industry has been abandoned by government, and any politician that stands in the way, such as Eliot Spitzer, is destroyed. The total tax burden on Americans from federal, state, and local governments now exceeds forty percent of income and is rising. Today, with a recession starting, the Democratic-controlled Congress, while supporting the minuscule "stimulus" rebate, is hypocritically raising taxes further, even for middle-income earners. Back taxes, along with student loans, can no longer be eliminated by bankruptcy protection. Gasoline prices are soaring even as companies like Exxon-Mobil are recording record profits. Other commodity prices are going up steadily, including food prices, with some countries starting to experience near-famine conditions. 40 million people in America are officially classified as "food insecure." Corporate control of water and mineral resources has removed much of what is available from the public commons, and the deregulation of energy production has led to huge increases in the costs of electricity in many areas. The destruction of family farming in the U.S. by NAFTA (along with family farming in Mexico and Canada) has been mirrored by policies toward other nations on the part of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Around the world, due to pressure from the "Washington consensus," local food self-sufficiency has been replaced by raising of crops primarily for export. Migration off the land has fed the population of huge slums around the cities of underdeveloped countries. Since the 1980s the U.S. has been fighting wars throughout the world either directly or by proxy. The former Yugoslavia was dismembered by NATO. Under cover of 9/11 and by utilizing off-the-shelf plans, the U.S. is now engaged in the military conquest and permanent military occupation of the Middle East. A worldwide encirclement of Russia and China by U.S. and NATO forces is underway, and a new push to militarize space has begun. The Western powers are clearly preparing for at least the possibility of another world war. The expansion of the U.S. military empire abroad is mirrored by the creation of a totalitarian system of surveillance at home, whereby the activities of private citizens are spied upon and tracked by technology and systems which have been put into place under the heading of the "War on Terror." Human microchip implants for tracking purposes are starting to be used. The military-industrial complex has become the nation’s largest and most successful industry with tens of thousands of planners engaged in devising new and better ways, both overt and covert, to destroy both foreign and domestic "enemies." Meanwhile, the U.S. has the largest prison population of any country on earth. Plus everyday life for millions of people is a crushing burden of government, insurance, and financial fees, charges, and paperwork. And the simplest business transactions are burdened by rake-offs for legions of accountants, lawyers, bureaucrats, brokers, speculators, and middlemen. Finally, the deteriorating conditions of everyday life have given rise to an extraordinary level of stress-related disease, as well as epidemic alcohol and drug addiction. Governments themselves around the world engage in drug trafficking. Instead of working to lower stress levels, public policy is skewed in favor of an enormous prescription drug industry that grows rich off the declining level of health through treatment of symptoms rather than causes. Many of these heavily-advertised medications themselves have devastating side-effects. This list should at least give us enough to go on in order to ask a hard question. Assuming again that all these things are parts of the elitist plan which Mr. Rockefeller boasts to have been developing, isn’t it a little strange that the means which have been selected to achieve "peace and prosperity for the whole of humanity" involve so much violence, deception, oppression, exploitation, graft, and theft? In fact it looks to me as though "our plan for the world" is one that is based on genocide, world war, police control of populations, and seizure of the world’s resources by the financial elite and their puppet politicians and military forces. In particular, could there be a better way to accomplish all this than what appears to be a concentrated plan to remove from people everywhere in the world the ability to raise their own food? After all, genocide by starvation may be slow, but it is very effective. Especially when it can be blamed on "market forces."And can it be that the "us" which is doing all these things, including the great David Rockefeller himself, are just criminals who have somehow taken over the seats of power? If so, they are criminals who have done everything they can to watch their backs and cover their tracks, including a chokehold over the educational system and the monopolistic mainstream media. One thing is certain: The voters of America have never knowingly agreed to any of this. Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst, whose career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury Department. His articles on economics, politics, and space policy have appeared on numerous websites. His book on monetary reform entitled We Hold These Truths: The Promise of Monetary Reform is in preparation. He is also the author of Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age, called by one reviewer, "the most important spaceflight book of the last twenty years." His website is at www.richardccook.com
Richard C. Cook is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Richard C. Cook Source:www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8450Note From Michelle: More to come on similar info in future posts here.
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Apr 17, 2008 14:55:04 GMT 4
The following needs no introduction from me. Next, in what I hope is a series of articles designed to focus our attention on behind the scenes of world wide strife and misfortune, we take a close look at one of our global villains...Michelle A man-made famineThere are many causes behind the world food crisis, but one chief villain: World Bank head, Robert Zoellick
Raj PatelFor anyone who understands the current food crisis, it is hard to listen to the head of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, without gagging. Earlier this week, Zoellick waxed apocalyptic about the consequences of the global surge in prices, arguing that free trade had become a humanitarian necessity, to ensure that poor people had enough to eat. The current wave of food riots has already claimed the prime minister of Haiti, and there have been protests around the world, from Mexico, to Egypt, to India. The reason for the price rise is perfect storm of high oil prices, an increasing demand for meat in developing countries, poor harvests, population growth, financial speculation and biofuels. But prices have fluctuated before. The reason we're seeing such misery as a result of this particular spike has everything to do with Zoellick and his friends. Before he replaced Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank, Zoellick was the US trade representative, their man at the World Trade Organisation. While there, he won a reputation as a tough and guileful negotiator, savvy with details and pushy with the neoconservative economic agenda: a technocrat with a knuckleduster. His mission was to accelerate two decades of trade liberalisation in key strategic commodities for the United States, among them agriculture. Practically, this meant the removal of developing countries' ability to stockpile grain (food mountains interfere with the market), to create tariff barriers (ditto), and to support farmers (they ought to be able to compete on their own). This Zoellick did often, and enthusiastically. Without agricultural support policies, though, there's no buffer between the price shocks and the bellies of the poorest people on earth. No option to support sustainable smaller-scale farmers, because they've been driven off their land by cheap EU and US imports. No option to dip into grain reserves because they've been sold off to service debt. No way of increasing the income of the poorest, because social programmes have been cut to the bone. The reason that today's price increases hurt the poor so much is that all protection from price shocks has been flayed away, by organisations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank. Even the World Bank's own Independent Evaluation Groupadmits (pdf) that the bank has been doing a poor job in agriculture. Part of the bank's vision was to clear away the government agricultural clutter so that the private sector could come in to make agriculture efficient. But, as the Independent Evaluation Group delicately puts it, "in most reforming countries, the private sector did not step in to fill the vacuum when the public sector withdrew." After the liberalisation of agriculture, the invisible hand was nowhere to be seen. But governments weren't allowed to return to the business of supporting agriculture. Trade liberalisation agreements and World Bank loan conditions, such as those promoted by Zoellick, have made food sovereignty impossible. This is why, when we see Dominique Strauss-Kahn of the IMF wailing about food prices, or Zoellick using the crisis to argue with breathless urgency for more liberalisation, the only reasonable response is nausea. Source: commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/raj_patel/2008/04/a_manmade_famine.html
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Apr 22, 2008 11:38:05 GMT 4
More on international food shortages and riots, with the spotlight on Hati. Here we look at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the U.S. role in causing this. Links are provided at the end of this article where you can send monetary assistance to Hati, and help to change US policy on agriculture to combat worldwide hunger...Michelle America's Role in Haiti's Hunger Riots By Bill Quigley t r u t h o u t | Report Monday 21 April 2008 Riots in Haiti over explosive rises in food costs have claimed the lives of six people. There have also been food riots worldwide in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivorie, Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen. The Economist, which calls the current crisis the silent tsunami, reports that last year wheat prices rose 77 percent and rice 16 percent, but since January rice prices have risen 141 percent. The reasons include rising fuel costs, weather problems, increased demand in China and India, and the push to create biofuels from cereal crops. Hermite Joseph, a mother working in the markets of Port-au-Prince, told journalist Nick Whalen that her two kids are "like toothpicks - they're not getting enough nourishment. Before, if you had $1.25, you could buy vegetables, some rice, 10 cents of charcoal and a little cooking oil. Right now, a little can of rice alone costs 65 cents, and is not good rice at all. Oil is 25 cents. Charcoal is 25 cents. With $1.25, you can't even make a plate of rice for one child." The St. Claire's Church Food program, in the Tiplas Kazo neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, serves 1,000 free meals a day, almost all to hungry children - five times a week in partnership with the What If Foundation. Children from Cité-Soleil have been known to walk the five miles to the church for a meal. The costs of rice, beans, vegetables, a little meat, spices, cooking oil and propane for the stoves, have gone up dramatically. Because of the rise in the cost of food, the portions are now smaller. But hunger is on the rise, and more and more children come for the free meal. Hungry adults used to be allowed to eat the leftovers once all the children were fed, but now there are few leftovers. The New York Times lectured Haiti on April 18 that "Haiti, its agriculture industry in shambles, needs to better feed itself." Unfortunately, the article did not talk at all about one of the main causes of the shortages - the fact that the US and other international financial bodies destroyed Haitian rice farmers to create a major market for heavily subsidized rice from US farmers. This is not the only cause of hunger in Haiti and other poor countries, but it is a major force. Thirty years ago, Haiti raised nearly all the rice it needed. What happened? In 1986, after the expulsion of Haitian dictator Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loaned Haiti $24.6 million in desperately needed funds (Baby Doc had raided the treasury on the way out). But, in order to get the IMF loan, Haiti was required to reduce tariff protections for Haitian rice and other agricultural products and some industries, to open up the country's markets to competition from outside countries. The US has by far the largest voice in decisions of the IMF. Doctor Paul Farmer was in Haiti then and saw what happened. "Within less than two years, it became impossible for Haitian farmers to compete with what they called 'Miami rice.' The whole local rice market in Haiti fell apart as cheap, US subsidized rice, some of it in the form of 'food aid,' flooded the market. There was violence ... 'rice wars,' and lives were lost." "American rice invaded the country," recalled Charles Suffrard, a leading rice grower in Haiti in an interview with the Washington Post in 2000. By 1987 and 1988, there was so much rice coming into the country that many stopped working the land. The Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste, a Haitian priest who has been the pastor at St. Claire and an outspoken human rights advocate, agrees. "In the 1980s, imported rice poured into Haiti, below the cost of what our farmers could produce it. Farmers lost their businesses. People from the countryside started losing their jobs and moving to the cities. After a few years of cheap imported rice, local production went way down." Still, the international business community was not satisfied. In 1994, as a condition for US assistance in returning to Haiti to resume his elected presidency, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced by the US, the IMF and the World Bank to open up the markets in Haiti even more. But Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere; what reason could the US have for destroying the rice market of this tiny country? Haiti is definitely poor. The US Agency for International Development reports the annual per capita income is less than $400. The United Nations reports life expectancy in Haiti is 59, while in the US it is 78. Over 78 percent of Haitians live on less than $2 a day, more than half live on less than $1 a day. Yet, Haiti has become one of the top importers of rice from the United States. The US Department of Agriculture 2008 numbers show Haiti is the third-largest importer of US rice - at over 240,000 metric tons of rice. (One metric ton is 2,200 pounds). Rice is a heavily subsidized business in the US. Rice subsidies in the US totaled $11 billion from 1995 to 2006. One producer alone, Riceland Foods of Stuttgart, Arkansas, received over $500 million in rice subsidies between 1995 and 2006. The Cato Institute recently reported that rice is one of the most heavily supported commodities in the US - with three different subsidies together averaging over $1 billion a year since 1998 and projected to average over $700 million a year through 2015. The result? "Tens of millions of rice farmers in poor countries find it hard to lift their families out of poverty because of the lower, more volatile prices caused by the interventionist policies of other countries." In addition to three different subsidies for rice farmers in the US, there are also direct tariff barriers of three to 24 percent, reports Daniel Griswold of the Cato Institute - the exact same type of protections, though much higher, that the US and the IMF required Haiti to eliminate in the 1980s and 1990s. US protection for rice farmers goes even further. A 2006 story in The Washington Post found that the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all; including $490,000 to a Houston surgeon who owned land near Houston that once grew rice. And it is not only the Haitian rice farmers who have been hurt. Paul Farmer saw it happen to the sugar growers as well. "Haiti, once the world's largest exporter of sugar and other tropical produce to Europe, began importing even sugar - from US-controlled sugar production in the Dominican Republic and Florida. It was terrible to see Haitian farmers put out of work. All this speeded up the downward spiral that led to this month's food riots." After the riots and protests, President Rene Preval of Haiti agreed to reduce the price of rice, which was selling for $51 for a 110-pound bag, to $43 dollars for the next month. No one thinks a one-month fix will do anything but delay the severe hunger pains a few weeks. Haiti is far from alone in this crisis. The Economist reports a billion people worldwide live on $1 a day. The US-backed Voice of America reports about 850 million people were suffering from hunger worldwide before the latest round of price increases. Thirty-three countries are at risk of social upheaval because of rising food prices, World Bank President Robert Zoellick told The Wall Street Journal. When countries have many people who spend half to three-quarters of their daily income on food, "there is no margin of survival." In the US, people are feeling the worldwide problems at the gas pump and in the grocery. Middle-class people may cut back on extra trips or on high price cuts of meat. The number of people on food stamps in the US is at an all-time high. But in poor countries, where malnutrition and hunger were widespread before the rise in prices, there is nothing to cut back on except eating. That leads to hunger riots. In the short term, the world community is sending bags of rice to Haiti. Venezuela sent 350 tons of food. The US just pledged $200 million extra for worldwide hunger relief. The UN is committed to distributing more food. What can be done in the medium term? The US provides much of the world's food aid, but does it in such a way that only half of the dollars spent actually reach hungry people. US law requires that food aid be purchased from US farmers, processed and bagged in the US and shipped on US vessels - which cost 50 percent of the money allocated. A simple change in US law to allow some local purchase of commodities would feed many more people and support local farm markets. In the long run, what is to be done? The president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who visited Haiti last week, said "Rich countries need to reduce farm subsidies and trade barriers to allow poor countries to generate income with food exports. Either the world solves the unfair trade system, or every time there's unrest like in Haiti, we adopt emergency measures and send a little bit of food to temporarily ease hunger." Citizens of the US know very little about the role of their government in helping create the hunger problems in Haiti or other countries. But there is much that individuals can do. People can donate to help feed individual hungry people and participate with advocacy organizations such as Bread for the World or Oxfam to help change the US and global rules which favor the rich countries. This advocacy can help countries have a better chance to feed themselves. Meanwhile, Merisma Jean-Claudel, a young high school graduate in Port-au-Prince, told journalist Wadner Pierre "... people can't buy food. Gasoline prices are going up. It is very hard for us over here. The cost of living is the biggest worry for us; no peace in stomach means no peace in the mind.... I wonder if others will be able to survive the days ahead, because things are very, very hard." "On the ground, people are very hungry," reported Father Jean-Juste. "Our country must immediately open emergency canteens to feed the hungry until we can get them jobs. For the long run, we need to invest in irrigation, transportation, and other assistance for our farmers and workers." In Port-au-Prince, some rice arrived in the last few days. A school in Father Jean-Juste's parish received several bags of rice. They had raw rice for 1,000 children, but the principal still had to come to Father Jean-Juste asking for help. There was no money for charcoal or oil. Jervais Rodman, an unemployed carpenter with three children, stood in a long line Saturday in Port-au-Prince to get UN-donated rice and beans. When Rodman got the small bags, he told Ben Fox of The Associated Press, "The beans might last four days. The rice will be gone as soon as I get home." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He can be reached at quigley77@gmail.com. People interested in donating to feed children in Haiti should go to www.whatiffoundation.org/ People who want to help change US policy on agriculture to help combat worldwide hunger should go to: www.oxfamamerica.org/ or www.bread.org/. Source: www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042108R.shtml
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Apr 27, 2008 19:48:32 GMT 4
Winners and losers in land of starving billionairesWhy is it that there are aways those few who make out big and fill their coffers while most are down in the dirt?....Big sigh....MichelleWinners and losers in land of starving billionairesWhile having a job can mean being out of pocket, Zanu-PF elite find rich pickingsChris McGreal in Harare The Guardian Friday April 25 2008 Each day, Edwin Makotore's wife and children hit the streets to earn cash so he can pay for the privilege of working. The 38-year-old father-of-two is the only one in the family with a full-time job, but by the time he has met the soaring cost of travelling to work in a small Harare supermarket, paid out of wages wildly out of step with the 165,000% inflation rate, Makotore is out of pocket. But with only one-in-five adults in employment, a job is a far more precious commodity than money in Zimbabwe, and Makotore is not going to let it go. "My wife gives me the money to go to work each day," he said. "We can't afford to send the children to school so they go with her to the streets. She sells some small things, fruit, things like that. "One day things will get better and then it will be good to have a job. Everyone will want one. It's like an investment; I pay to keep my job because I will make money out of it one day. Until then someone makes money out of me." For now, Makotore is a loser in an economy which is shrinking faster than in any other country. But there are some who are doing well out of hyperinflation. The winners include those whose mortgages were reduced to less than a single, near-worthless banknote in a matter of months. Among the losers are the elderly, the value of their pensions slashed to nothing. But the real beneficiaries can be found in Borrowdale Brooke. This upmarket suburb in the north of Harare is a mass of construction sites and newly completed palatial homes. Besides President Robert Mugabe's own palace, built by the Chinese with a hint of the forbidden city about it, ruling Zanu-PF apparatchiks and generals have set themselves up in homes that none could afford on their official salaries.Some have become extravagantly rich by manipulating the vast gap between the official and black-market exchange rates to plunder Zimbabwe's dwindling hard currency, and buy brand new Mercedes Benz cars for £25 while the country's manufacturing sector collapses for want of money to produce crucial exports.The new rich include men such as the Zanu-PF member of parliament and party powerbroker Philip Chiyanga, who also happens to be one of Mugabe's cousins. Chiyanga owns a sprawling 30-room mansion in Borrowdale Brooke with three helicopter pads and has been seen driving a Hummer. The mansions have grown as Zimbabwe's economy has shrunk by about half over the past decade of crisis. Export earnings have dropped from about £2.3bn a year to around £750m. The manufacturing sector has halved in size and revenue from the tourist industry, once another big earner, has fallen by 75% over the same period. Many visitors now see Victoria Falls from the Zambian side and those who do cross in to Zimbabwe do not stay as long as they used to. Over the past week the black-market exchange rate for the Zimbabwe dollar has plummeted against sterling, from about Z$90m to the pound to Z$190m. The largest bank note in the country is worth about 25p. No wonder Zimbabweans call themselves starving billionaires. The currency has been driven down recently by Zimbabwe's central bank, which has been turning to the black market in a desperate search for US dollars to pay the bills, not least for electricity from Mozambique. John Robertson, a highly regarded Zimbabwean economist, said the government had also been plundering hard currency accounts held by businesses to pay off the huge costs of its election campaign, contributing to the spiral of collapse."From January, with the election campaign, the government started importing tractors and cars and television sets and all manner of things to give away. That had to be paid for and it was paid for from the foreign currency accounts," he said. Any business that exports is obliged to hand over more than 35% of the hard currency it brings back into the country to the government in exchange for Zimbabwe dollars. The rest is held by the central bank and is theoretically available to pay for imports necessary to the business. But many are finding that they have to wait for up to four months for the money, and some do not receive it at all. "It got worse and worse," said Robertson. "Businesses have incurred debts and they are not paying them. The suppliers, mostly in South Africa, found they can no longer trust people in Zimbabwe to pay, so they've stopped supplying." That has left some manufacturers unable to produce and export, another blow to the country's hard currency earnings. Even entirely locally produced commodities such as cotton and tobacco, once big money earners for Zimbabwe, have been hit because they require imported pesticides, fertiliser and fumigants. Last year the government introduced drastic price cuts and controls to try and curb raging inflation, but the measures proved a miserable failure. Retailers were ordered to slash prices. Buyers surged into the shops to pick up electronic goods and luxury items at a fraction of their value - but when the shelves were empty, products were not restocked. For a select few all of this is an opportunity. They deal in the official exchange rate of Z$30,000 to the US dollar - meaning they can buy hard currency at one three thousandth of what it costs on the street. Such rates are only available to Zimbabwe's super elite."Only senior people can get that, but those that do make a fortune," Robertson said. "They buy dollars at the official exchange rate and then go off and buy a Mercedes in South Africa for what is in reality just a few dollars. They import it, sell it and make a killing.
"These are the same people who are running a lot of the food imports. They take a billion [Zimbabwe] dollars, change it to rand at the official rate and buy in South Africa for next to nothing."Some economists trace the start of the economic downturn back to the mass printing of money to payoff war veterans who were threatening Mugabe a decade ago. But Robertson says the most significant blow to the economy was the redistribution of white-owned farms without maintaining productivity. "Those 4,500 farms were Zimbabwe's biggest industry," he said. "They accounted for 17% of GDP in their own right but more than 50% when you take into account the other industries they were supporting. "They employed large numbers of people, they accounted for half the export earnings. The farmers were also the biggest users of other industries such as insurance and engineering." There is no chance that the land redistribution will be reversed. It has overwhelming support among black Zimbabweans as a policy, if not how it has been handled. The redistributed farms are now run on feudal lines with Zanu-PF acting as overlord and anyone wanting to stay on the land required to pay suitable political and, in some cases financial, homage. Those who dissent, and that includes overt support for the opposition, are thrown off.What industry remains is subjected to the "indigenisation law". This requires foreign and white-owned public companies to sell or give half of their shares to black Zimbabweans. In the view of some, it is just another form of plunder. As a result many of the jobs once considered the least desirable are now amongst the most sought after. There was a time when being a domestic worker was considered close to the bottom of the pile. It was poorly paid and often required women to be away from their families. But today it is a prized role, as it comes with free accommodation, water, electricity and, crucially, no travel costs. Robertson wonders how long Zimbabwe's economy can keep going. "Everything seems so untenable and so absurd you can't believe there are people out there trying to keep it on the road. They're breathing life into a dead horse. You have to admire it I suppose," he said. 165,000%The current level of inflation means the income of most Zimbabweans is way out of line with the cost of living Z$190mThe black-market exchange rate for Zimbabwe dollars to the pound. Last week the rate was Z$90m to the £1 Z$30,000The amount needed to buy a US dollar under the official exchange rate, only available to the elite £25The cost of a Mercedes Benz bought using hard currency from reserves exchanged at the official rate £750mThe amount Zimbabwe earned from exports last year, which was about a third of the amount a decade ago 35%The proportion of hard currency from export sales that businesses have to hand over to the government Source: www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/25/zimbabwe
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on May 7, 2008 10:03:20 GMT 4
The Kingdom of America Or, This Ain't No Arthurian Romance!
By Michelle
The conditions under which men lived were much the same as in all kingdoms. Most of the people were poor beyond belief, and moreover they had no possible way of escaping from that plight of poverty. They were in a complete state of slavery to the rich.
Naturally enough, among the rich there was a constant struggle for power. The poor worked for them so that they had nothing else to do except increase their riches. All their power lay in the amount of wealth to which they could lay claim.
Since they could not come by their wealth through hard work because the poor released them from that necessity, there was no way of increasing riches except by seizing others' property. And since no one would allow his property to be taken without protest, the struggle for possession kept men fighting. Their real work was fighting and they did it with pleasure. Naturally, they did not do battle; it was for them to send those beneath them off to war. Their reward was more lands and all the resources wherein.
So the downtrodden, suffering poor remained downtrodden and poor, and expected nothing else. The rich remained arrogant and overbearing, and there was no one to protest. Between them was a gulf so wide and so deep that no one in his right mind would try to cross it.
When things become too unbearable we usually look for help, and expect to find it in some leader. It may be a new President, or king, or leader of religion, but it must be somebody new and strong and wise, somebody who has our interests at heart. To such a man [or woman] we give our support. About such a man [or woman] we like to hear stories and to tell them. We build up around him [or her] the kind of good life which we want him/her to have.
So, the serfs of America turn to their leader:
There is no opposition from any section of the political establishment or either party to the blank check for Wall Street. The Fed’s massive intervention to shore up the banks has received the endorsement of the Democratic Congress. No congressional investigations of any substance have been launched to uncover the unprecedented scale of fraud and swindling that underlay the banking debacle. No one is being called to account.
In addition, all three of the candidates vying to succeed George W. Bush in the White House—John McCain for the Republicans, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democrats—declared their support for the Fed action, ensuring that the pro-Wall Street policy will continue in the next administration.US payrolls shrank by 20,000 jobs in AprilNet job loss in 2008 at 260,000By Barry Grey 3 May 2008 The Labor Department reported Friday that the US economy lost a net total of 20,000 jobs in April, marking the fourth consecutive month of overall job losses. The employment report, combined with other data on economic growth, retail sales, consumer spending and wages, provides a picture of an economy sinking deeper into recession and a population in increasingly desperate financial straits. While the net job loss reported by the Labor Department was lower than most economists’ predictions, it nevertheless confirms that the crisis ignited by the collapse in the housing and credit markets is dramatically impacting production, sales and consumption, and driving down working class living standards.April’s job losses followed upwardly revised losses of 81,000 in March and 83,000 in February. Payrolls also fell by 76,000 jobs in January. The payroll decline would have been far worse except for a spurt of new jobs in the generally low-paying service sector. Service industries added 90,000 jobs, the most since last December. Most of them came in the health care and professional technical services sectors. Massive job losses continued in construction and manufacturing. A net total of 61,000 construction jobs were lost in April, the largest number for that sector since 103,000 were cut in February 2007. Since peaking in September 2006, some 457,000 construction jobs have been lost. Goods-producing businesses cut 110,000 jobs, the largest number of job reductions since January 2002. This followed a loss of 88,000 jobs in this sector in March. Factory payrolls slumped by 46,000 workers. Retail payrolls declined by 26,000, after falling 19,300 a month earlier. The report confirmed that wage growth has slowed dramatically and is trailing behind inflation. Workers’ average hourly earnings rose in April by 1 cent, or 0.1 percent, the least since October. In a separate report issued on Wednesday, the Labor Department revealed that wages and benefits, adjusted for inflation, were down 0.6 percent in the first three months quarter of 2008 compared with a year earlier. Employers are reducing work hours and overtime, further slashing take-home pay. The average work week declined to 33.7 hours from 33.8 hours. Average weekly hours worked by factory workers deceased to 40.9 from 41.2, while overtime fell to 3.9 hours from 4.0 hours. That brought average weekly earnings down by $1.45 to $602.56 last month. The official unemployment rate for April declined marginally to 5 percent from 5.1 percent in March. However, this reduction was the result of an increase in part-time jobs. The number of workers with full-time jobs actually declined. An alternative Labor Department measure of the unemployment rate, which includes people who have stopped looking for work and those working part-time because they can’t find full-time work, rose a tenth of a percentage point to 9.2 percent. Moreover, the number of people remaining on jobless rolls—called continuing claims—rose 74,000 to 3.02 million, the first time in four years the number has exceeded three million. Since midweek, a number of major companies have announced plans for layoffs. * General Motors on Wednesday said it was slashing production of full-sized trucks and SUVs, eliminating 3,550 jobs. * Home Depot announced a major retrenchment on Thursday, saying it was halting plans to open about 50 new US stores and closing 15 existing stores over the next seven weeks. As many as 1,300 employees could lose their jobs. * Sun Microsystems posted a net loss of $34 million for its third quarter and announced plans to cut up to 2,500 jobs. * Health care giant Johnson & Johnson announced Wednesday it was eliminating 400 sales jobs in the US by the year’s end. These job cuts are in addition to ongoing layoffs in the financial sector. Wall Street banks and securities firms have slashed 48,000 jobs in the past ten months. A raft of other data released over the past several days indicates that the economic slowdown is accelerating and points to even bigger job losses in the coming weeks. The Commerce Department reported on Wednesday that the US economy had grown by an anemic 0.6 percent in the first quarter of 2008. But even this marginal growth was due entirely to a rise in exports, resulting from the sharp decline in the value of the dollar, and a buildup of inventories. Excluding inventories, US gross domestic product shrank at a 0.2 percent pace, the first contraction in more than 16 years. Excluding both inventories and exports, the economy contracted at a 0.4 percent rate, the first such decline since the end of 1991. The underlying data on consumer spending, business investment and construction all showed a sharp contraction. “You’re seeing a sharp slowdown in domestic demand,” Michael T. Darda, chief economist at MKM Partners, told the Wall Street Journal. The buildup of inventories portends a major pullback in the coming months. As the New York Times noted on May 1, “If business does not swiftly improve, allowing factories to sell the products they have piled up, firms are likely to lay off workers at a more aggressive clip. “Even if business picks up and orders materialize, averting broader layoffs, factories will probably not need to produce as many new things in coming months, prompting some to trim working hours and purchases of materials.” The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) issued a report this week showing a continuing slowdown in manufacturing. Its index of factory activity for April was 48.6, the same as the month before. A number below 50 indicates contraction. The index, based on a survey of purchasing managers, showed a retrenchment in new orders and production, as well as a rise in prices paid to suppliers. The impact of soaring food and gasoline prices on consumer demand has hit the auto industry particularly hard. Industry figures released Thursday showed that autos sold at a lower-than-forecast rate of 14.4 million units per year in April, the slowest since 1998. GM officials estimated that the industry’s seasonally adjusted annual selling rate in April was at its lowest since 1992. A Commerce Department report released Thursday showed an accelerating decline in consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of GDP in the US. Consumer spending grew by only 0.1 percent in March, when adjusted for inflation, after remaining flat in February. Sales of big-ticket items declined in March. In the first quarter, sales of those goods plummeted 6.1 percent. “What you’ve got here is a very dramatic consumer slowdown,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics. “It’s much more severe than anything we saw in 2001,” he added, referring to the last recession. Slumping consumer spending is wreaking havoc among major retail firms, sparking a wave of bankruptcy filings, store closings and the cancellation of expansion plans. Besides Home Depot’s announcement of store closings and layoffs, homes goods retailer Linens ‘n Things on Friday said it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and disclosed plans to close 120 stores. The company employs 17,500 people. This followed bankruptcy filing announcements by Sharper Image and Lillian Vernon in February. Foot Locker plans to close 140 stores over the next year, Ann Taylor will close 117, and the jeweler Zales will close 100. Women’s clothing retailer Charming Shoppes, which owns Lane Bryant and Fashion Bug, is closing at least 150 stores. Wilsons the Leather Experts will close 158. Pacific Sunwear is shutting a 153-store chain called Demo. Starbucks will close 100 stores. JC Penney recently announced it will open 36 stores this year, down from the 50 initially planned. Lowe’s said it was delaying the opening of 20 stores this year, mostly in California and Florida. The International Council of Shopping Centers predicts 5,770 store closings in 2008, up 25 percent from 2007. The store closings and delayed openings will have a ripple effect throughout the economy, depressing sales tax revenues and eliminating work for commercial construction firms. While the deepening slump is having a devastating impact on working class families, Wall Street is celebrating a major stock market rally. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed Friday at 13,058, its high point for the year. The stock market is up almost 11 percent in the last few weeks, and high-yield, low-grade junk bonds are once again soaring, along with bank stocks and credit derivatives. As the New York Times put it on Friday, “Main Street may be struggling, but Wall Street is on a bit of a roll.” “There has been a huge change of sentiment in all of the markets,” said William Knapp, investment strategist for MainStay Investments, a division of New York Life. “A lot of the fear has been gone.” It is no mystery what has caused this remarkable shift in market sentiment. It began with the Federal Reserve’s rescue of Bear Stearns in March and its decision to directly lend money to the big Wall Street investment banks.
This was a signal that the US government would marshal all of its resources to prevent a collapse of a major Wall Street financial house and rescue the financial elite from the consequences of its own reckless pursuit of super-high investment returns by means of vastly inflated home values and the creation of a huge credit bubble.
The reverse side of this coin is a deepening assault on the jobs, wages and living standards of working people, in order to place the full burden of the financial crisis on their backs.While hundreds of billions of dollars have been made available to Wall Street firms—indeed, only minutes before the jobs figures were published on Friday, the Fed said it would increase its auctions of cash to banks and expand the collateral it takes on from bond dealers —virtually nothing has been done either by the Bush administration or the Democratic Congress to provide relief to families facing the loss of their homes, crushing debts and soaring food and gasoline prices.It is estimated that 10 million American home owners are “under water”—meaning they owe more on their mortgage loans than their homes are worth on the market. Foreclosure filings are soaring, having risen in the first quarter of this year more than 112 percent over the same period in 2007. But the Bush administration’s housing relief program, FHA Secure, has so far aided only about 2,000 homeowners who were clearly behind in repaying their loans. The administration insists that only “deserving” home owners should be helped—a standard that clearly does not apply to bank CEOs, who have appropriated hundreds of millions in compensation while running their companies into the ground. The Democrats, for their part, are promoting a bill that would help a mere fraction of distressed home owners refinance their mortgages, while providing no relief for the hundreds of thousands who have already lost their homes. To qualify, home owners would have to prove their ability to repay new, federally insured loans. Democrats promoting the bill, such as Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, say it could help up to 1.5 million home owners. (In fact, they know the bill will not be enacted due to opposition from the Bush administration and Republican legislators).But there were already 1.2 million loans in foreclosure as of January, and one analyst at Credit Suisse projects that falling home prices, tighter lending standards and job cuts could lead to an additional 2.8 million foreclosures in 2008 and 2009. Source:www.wsws.org/articles/2008/may2008/jobs-m03.shtml------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ As gas prices and oil profits soar, Bush promotes giveaways to corporationsBy Joe Kay 30 April 2008 US President George W. Bush used a White House press conference Tuesday to trot out his familiar litany of right-wing proposals, ostensibly intended to address rising gas prices and the growing economic crisis facing millions of Americans. The proposals are all designed in one way or another to increase the power of the oil companies, even as these conglomerates have begun posting record profits for the first quarter of 2008. Bush proposed opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling, increasing incentives to companies for refinery construction, and blocking new regulations and emissions targets for domestic energy producers.Bush sidestepped questions on his administration’s position on a limited proposal, advanced by Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate John McCain, for a summer moratorium on the federal gas tax. Such a move would have only a marginal impact on gasoline prices. Bush said there was no “magic wand” to deal with gasoline prices, and he blamed Congress for blocking previous energy bills that included some of his proposals. Rising gasoline prices are beginning to have a major impact on the living standards of millions of people in the United States and internationally. In the US, prices on Monday topped $3.60 a gallon, a record in inflation-adjusted terms and more than 21 cents above the price just two weeks ago. The price for diesel fuel, used in trucks, tractors, and other vehicles, is at a record $4.20 a gallon. According to a poll conducted on behalf of the Kaiser Family Foundation, 44 percent of the American population now cites the price of gasoline as a “serious problem”—more than any other economic concern. The effects are predictably felt most keenly by those earning the least. About 63 percent of those with incomes of less than $30,000 said gasoline prices were a serious problem.In a country where the automobile is the primary and often only available means of transportation, it is not uncommon for a worker to have to fill his or her gasoline tank several times a week, compounding the impact of any price increase and putting a severe dent in household budgets already strained by rising food and other costs.In some parts of the country, gasoline prices are soaring much higher than the national average. In San Francisco, California, average prices topped $4.00 a gallon over the weekend. The statewide average was $3.91. In Europe, prices are sharply higher as well. In England, where regressive taxes make up much of the price, gasoline is close to £1.10 per liter, or about $10 a gallon.In the US and in England, many independent truckers are unable to turn a profit off hauling goods, as the cost of filling a tank with diesel can now exceed $1,200. The cost of transport often exceeds truckers’ pay. On Monday, about 100 truckers staged a protest in Washington, while dozens converged on London. Independent truckers staged slowdowns and stoppages throughout the country at the beginning of the month.Within this context, the position of the Bush administration is essentially to do nothing. White House press secretary Dana Perino emphasized this point on Monday, saying, “I think it would be disingenuous and unfortunate for American consumers for them to be led to believe that there is a short-term fix [to gasoline prices]. There’s not going to be one.” The proposals from the Democrats are no more serious. In addition to the tax moratorium, Clinton is proposing a suspension of oil input into the Strategic Petroleum reserve, a marginal increase in spending on alternative energy sources, and an increase in fuel economy over a period of 20 years. Obama has rejected the tax moratorium on the grounds that companies would just increase their prices to make up the difference, and supports fuel economy standard increases and alternative energy investment. None of the candidates are capable of raising the basic issue: that the energy market, so critical to the livelihood of billions of people and to the functioning of the world economy, is largely controlled by private companies, and that these companies exercise enormous influence over the political establishment in the US.As usual, the oil companies and wealthy investors are reaping fortunes off of the economic hardship inflicted upon the vast majority of the population. The current sharp spike in gasoline prices has been driven largely by the rise in crude oil prices, which reached close to $120 a barrel on Monday—once considered an unimaginable price. The average price of oil in the first quarter was $97.94, up 68.9 percent from a year ago. There are a number of factors behind the increase in oil prices, including rising demand from China and India and a weak US dollar, in which oil is priced. One of the principal factors, however, is the flood of cash into basic commodities, including oil and food, as wealthy investors have liquidated holdings in more risky financial assets and are looking for hedges on inflation. This is creating a new bubble in commodity markets, forcing billions of people around the world to pay the higher prices generated by artificial demand. Whatever the cause, the rise in oil prices has been a boondoggle for oil companies, which have begun announcing their first quarter 2008 profits this week. Europe’s two biggest oil producers, Royal Dutch Shell and BP, announced profits on Tuesday that far exceeded analysts’ expectations. The combined profit for the two companies was close to $17 billion—$9.08 billion for Shell and $7.6 billion for BP. These figures include earnings attributed to the rise in oil prices. If this rise is factored out (as is done in the so-called current cost of supplies figures), Shell’s profits were $7.8 billion and BP’s were $6.6 billion. That is, at least $2 billion in profit for the two companies can be attributed solely to the recent rise in oil prices.Analysts expect the profits for Exxon Mobil, the largest private energy company, to soar to $11.2 billion in the first quarter, an increase of 22 percent over 2007. If the company’s profits exceed expectations, however, it could beat its fourth quarter profits from 2007 of $11.66 billion—the record for a US company. Of course, the top executives and investors will benefit enormously from these windfalls. Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson received an 18 percent raise in 2007, pulling in $21.7 million. The oil companies will also give back billions to investors in the form of stock buybacks and dividends.The news from Shell and BP came as a surprise to analysts, who have been concerned about profit troubles in the refinery component of production, which transforms crude oil into useable products like gasoline and diesel. Giants like Shell and BP, and US companies Exxon and Chevron, are vertically integrated, including in their operations both oil extraction and refining. In fact, independent refinery operations are fairing poorly, which could indicate that gasoline prices will continue their upward march over the next several weeks as refiners struggle to raise their own profits. Valero Energy, a refiner, reported a 77 percent drop in first quarter net income on Tuesday, complaining that it had been unable to shift all of its increased costs (from purchasing crude oil) onto consumers. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, “While the price of gasoline has been rising at the pump, those increases have so far been modest in comparison to oil. In a bid to save their bottom lines, companies operating refineries, especially on the West Coast, are reducing their output. That would likely drive fuel prices higher.” The Sacramento Bee reported that some of California’s refineries “have had problems returning to full production following their usual winter-spring overhauls,” and that this has contributed to the near-$4 a gallon price of gasoline in that state. There are indications that refiners have in the past artificially manipulated capacity and downtime in order to influence prices. The integrated oil giants can make windfall profits on either the oil extraction or refining (the upstream or downstream) sides of the energy market. Last summer, when gasoline prices were at $3.22 a gallon, much of the profits were booked on the refining end, and attributed to a shortage in refining capacity. This has been the long term trend, as oil companies have shut down refineries in response to low prices.
In this context, Bush’s insistence Tuesday that Congress grant incentives to increase refining capacity is absurd. Bush noted on several occasions, “It’s been more than 30 years since America built its last refinery.” This fact—an indictment of the state of American infrastructure— has been a product of a deliberate policy of reducing refining capacity in order to force gasoline prices up. The oil companies have no interest in building new refineries, with or without tax incentives. Prices of basic foods such as rice and wheat also have soared in recent months. Among the factors behind this price explosion is the shift to ethanol production, which has increased demand on some food items, particularly corn in the US. Ethanol production, which Bush championed on Tuesday, has largely been intended as a boondoggle for agribusiness. Also on Tuesday, Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world’s largest processors of grains and other foods, posted a 42 percent increase in its quarterly profits ending on March 31.The ability of the oil companies to maintain record profits has been facilitated greatly by the enormous consolidation of the industry over the past 20 years. The top five energy companies now control about 15 percent of global oil production, more than 50 percent of US domestic refinery capacity, and 62 percent of the retail gasoline market. The entire structure of energy production on a global scale is completely irrational. However, the consolidation of the energy industry has made the rational solution clearer: There is no conceivable reason why these giant corporations—which straddle the globe in search of profits, have done much to encourage war and colonial occupations in key strategic areas, and have worked assiduously to block any attempt to deal with global warming—should remain in the hands of private individuals and under the sway of the profit motive.Instead, the giant productive forces that control the lives of billions—including the energy and food infrastructure of the globe—must be transferred into public utilities, socially owned and democratically controlled. Source: www.wsws.org/articles/2008/apr2008/gas-a30.shtml
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on May 15, 2008 13:34:23 GMT 4
The Myth of "Underdevelopment" Why are third world countries [Africa, Asia, Latin America, Middle East] so much poorer than Europe, North America, and Japan? Here's a short [4.5 minute] educational video for you on the effects of colonialism of the Third World.
That's history, how these countries were underdeveloped, making them ripe for foreign investors to pick clean. The plans of the Imperialistic Money Masters, nowadays, has been put on steroids, you might say, where the goal is the 'Third Worldsation' of the entire planet, including the united States.
Give it a look, folks....it is an easily viewed/loaded video, for those with limited systems....MichelleThe Myth of "Underdevelopment" Michael Parenti The myth of progress
Peasants in Central America in the 1950s were better nourished than their descendants today.
What happened?
The same thing that has happened all over the Third World.
The gangster-corporate state has become more effective at extracting wealth from poorly armed countries. View video: www.brasschecktv.com/page/318.html
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on May 23, 2008 8:58:57 GMT 4
Well, Let's Just Stick It To The Little Guy
A planned markup of the Housing bill should occur this week, after Banking Committee Chairman Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) delayed the legislation last Thursday. Dodd is working with ranking member Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) to reach a deal on a proposed homeowner bailout. Under the legislation, the Federal Housing Administration would insure $300 billion in new loans. Banks could then work with homeowners threatened with foreclosure to renegotiate mortgages.
Critics have argued the legislation is actually a bailout to financial institutions, since banks would have the final say on whether to rehabilitate mortgages. In addition, the Dodd-Shelby deal to use money allocated for an affordable housing trust fund to pay for the mortgage rescue has drawn fire from a number of charitable organizations.....Michelle Low-Income Renters to Pay for Housing BailoutMonday 19 May 2008» by: Dean Baker, t r u t h o u t | Perspective Unfortunately, that is not a joke. [See release, below] This appears to be the latest gem to come from our leaders in Congress. Just to remind everyone of where things stand, Congress was wrestling with the situation of several million low- and moderate-income families, who are facing foreclosures on their homes. The main problem here is that they were pushed to buy over-priced homes in bubble-inflated markets. Making matters worse, many of these homeowners were also the victims of subprime mortgage scams. They got loans that started with relatively low teaser rates. These rates then reset, typically after two years, to much higher rates that made the mortgages unaffordable. This is bad news not only for the homeowners facing the loss of their homes, but also for the banks that will take large losses foreclosing on homes that now sell for much less than the money owed on the mortgage. Congress' answer to this problem is a complex bailout scheme in which it would have the Federal Housing Authority guarantee new lower interest rate mortgages. The new mortgages would pay off the first mortgages at 85 percent of the appraised value of the house. While the banks will still lose money under this plan, they will almost certainly end up much better off than if the situation was just left to the market. In fact, since the banks decide which loans get into the program, it is virtually guaranteed that they will come out ahead. Homeowners can benefit also, in that many will be able to stay in their homes with more affordable mortgages. However, in many of the bubble-inflated markets such as San Diego, Los Angeles and Boston, the new mortgages are still likely to cost far more than renting comparable units, draining money away from other necessary expenses, such as health care and child care. Furthermore, since prices are still falling rapidly in these areas, it is unlikely these homeowners will ever accumulate equity. For homeowners in these bubble-inflated areas, the banks will be the main beneficiaries of this bailout. It would be possible to prevent this problem by restricting the guarantee prices to some multiple of rents. Rents never got out of line with fundamentals even at the peak of the bubble. For example, if the guarantee price was set at a multiple of 15 times the appraised rent on a property, it would offer greater assurance the homeowner was not paying too much on their mortgage and might also accumulate some equity in their home. Congress has shown little interest in ensuring the new guarantee prices reflect fundamentals, making it likely many of the people "helped" under the program will end up facing foreclosure a second time. However, to make matters worse, they came up with the idea of financing the plan by taking away a stream of funding that had been dedicated to help low-income renters. That's right; Congress wants to take away money from low-income renters to help bankers that made bad loans in the housing bubble. As we all know, when the banks are in trouble, it is not the time to talk about the free market. The real painful part of this story is it would be very easy to help the real victims in this story: the low- and moderate-income homeowners, who were suckered into buying homes at bubble-inflated prices with bad mortgages. Congress could just temporarily change the rules on foreclosure to allow moderate-income homeowners facing foreclosure the option to stay in their home paying the fair market rent. This would provide these families with housing security. At least as important, it is likely to result in many of these families remaining in their houses as homeowners, since banks will have a strong incentive to negotiate new terms on mortgages in order to avoid becoming landlords. And the best part of this story is that families would benefit from this change the moment Congress passed the law. There is no need for a new bureaucracy or any taxpayer dollars. That is what Congress would do if it was serious about helping families facing foreclosure. Unfortunately, the banks seem to rank higher in its concerns - remember, just three years ago, it made the bankruptcy laws more stringent (applied retroactively), to boost bank profits. Apparently, the banks rank so high Congress is even prepared to take money away from low-income renters to meet their needs. Stealing candy from babies would be a step up for this crew.» Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of "The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer" (www.conservativenannystate.org). He also has a blog, "Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues. You can find it at the American Prospect's web site. Source: www.truthout.org/article/low-income-renters-pay-housing-bailout------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ POTENTIAL DEAL ON SENATE HOUSING BILL WOULD STEAL FROM THE POORMay 16, 2008 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 16, 2008 Contact: Sheila Crowley 540-907-2993 sheila@nlihc.org POTENTIAL DEAL ON SENATE HOUSING BILL WOULD STEAL FROM THE POORWASHINGTON, DC - Responding to pressure from Ranking Member Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee appears to be on the verge of diverting funds designated for a housing trust fund for housing for the poorest Americans to pay for Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd’s (D-CT) new program to refinance homeowners facing foreclosure.In his bill “The Federal Housing Finance Regulatory Reform Act of 2008,” Chairman Dodd proposes to allow the Federal Housing Administration to insure refinanced mortgages of homeowners who face foreclosure. The Congressional Budget Office estimates this new program creates a potential liability for the federal government of $1.7 billion. Reports are that Senator Shelby will only agree to the new FHA program if it is paid for by non-taxpayer funds. Senator Dodd’s bill also creates a housing trust fund with resources from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to build or preserve rental housing for extremely low and very low income people. Senator Shelby wants those funds to be used to pay for the new FHA program instead. “After the $30 billion taxpayer guaranteed bail out of Bear Sterns and the $25 billion Senate-passed taxpayer funded bail out for homebuilders, for Committee Republicans to insist that the taxpayers should not pay $1.7 billion to prevent homeowners from losing their homes, has to be called what it is - hypocrisy,” said Sheila Crowley, President of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. In a letter today to Chairman Dodd, the National Housing Trust Fund Campaign urged him to “identify other resources to pay for the new FHA program besides the only ones in this broad housing package that are dedicated to serving the poorest families in our country.” A provision in the Federal Housing Finance Regulatory Reform Act that was authored by Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) would establish a housing trust with funds generated by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac estimated to be about $500,000,000 a year. Trust fund dollars would go to the states to distribute to housing providers to build and operate rental housing that is affordable to families in the low wage work force and to seniors and disabled people on fixed income. Today, 71% of extremely low income renter households spend more than half of their income for housing, leaving them at risk of homelessness. The Banking Committee will mark-up the Federal Housing Finance Regulatory Reform Act of 2008 on Tuesday, May 20. The National Housing Trust Fund Campaign calls on the members of the Banking Committee to reject the Shelby proposal and preserve the housing trust fund to help the people with the most serious housing problems, including those who have no home at all. The National Low Income Housing Coalition is a membership organization dedicated solely to ending America’s affordable housing crisis. NLIHC educates, organize and advocates to ensure decent, affordable housing within healthy neighborhoods for everyone. The National Low Income Housing Coalition recognizes journalists who do an exemplary coverage of the affordable housing crisis. For more information, go to www.nlihc.org/cndma. ©2008 National Low Income Housing CoalitionSource:www.nlihc.org/detail/article.cfm?article_id=5134&id=48
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on May 30, 2008 4:56:41 GMT 4
When Celebrities Are Presented as Moral Heroes Case in Point: Tiger Woods
I am literally sick of celebrities, politicians, and other people passing themselves off as champions for some moral or righteous cause when their bread is buttered by those who bring just the opposite into our world, their lifestyles take more than anyone's reasonable share in the world, or their abundant ownership and lifestyle destroys or leaves harmful ecological footsteps across the globe....Michelle When Tiger Met Chevron... Dave Zirin: Woods's partnership with Chevron makes a mockery of his late father's hopes for him. By Dave Zirin May 22, 2008 Tiger Woods is perhaps the most famous, and most dominant, athlete in the world today. The 32-year-old golfer with the multicultural background he once proudly described as "Cablinasian" has somehow accomplished the impossible: made golf on a Sunday must-see TV. Woods is a trailblazer and already a legend for his ability to perform when the spotlight is at its hottest. But he has also established a reputation for reticence when confronted with the real world off the greens. For all his cultural capital, Woods has refused to take stands on issues that should hit close to home, such as restricted golf courses, or even when the Golf Channel's Kelly Tilghman suggested young PGA players "lynch him in a back alley" in a "joke" about how they might overcome his dominance. Tiger has largely maintained the tight-lipped silence of a Benedictine monk. After the lynching comment, ESPN's Scoop Jackson became so frustrated with this disciplined quietude he wrote, "Because of who he is, Tiger Woods has the power to make people listen. Not just hear his words--but embrace what he has to say.... It's a stand he needs to take because people who change the world eventually have to take stands. Whether strong or silent, good or evil, they take stands not to prove their beliefs, but to rectify a situation or condition." His defenders have always said that behind the scenes Woods has been an agent for change, and that he shouldn't be criticized just because he does his good deeds without media fanfare. They say he wields that influence through his nonprofit Tiger Woods Foundation. Go to the website, and a virtual Woods walks right onto your screen and welcomes you to a place where "kids can achieve anything." The site boasts: "more than 10 million young people have benefited from the Tiger Woods Foundation since its inception in 1996. What started out with limited access throughout America, now reaches out to young people around the world." Yet now the Foundation is "reaching around the world" in a way that has human rights activists concerned about a business partnership that smells like sulfur. The Tiger Woods Foundation has entered into an extensive five-year partnership with Chevron Corporation, with the oil and energy giant becoming the title sponsor of the Tiger Woods Foundation World Challenge Golf Tournament. "Chevron has a track record and a commitment to bettering the communities where they operate," Woods said in a press release on April 3. And Chevron's executive vice president chimed in, "Chevron, Tiger and the Tiger Woods Foundation share similar values...as well as a deep commitment to make a difference in local communities." They have certainly "made a difference in local communities," but it's nothing they should be bragging about, and certainly nothing with which Woods should want his name attached. Chevron is in full partnership with the Burmese military regime on the Yadana gas pipeline project, the single greatest source of revenue for the military, estimated at nearly $1 billion in 2007, nearly half of all the country's revenue. These are the same people who are blocking international aid workers from assisting the victims of Cyclone Nargis. The death toll has been estimated at 78,000, but this number can explode as disease spreads and help isn't allowed through the military lines. Even the US State Department has called the actions of the government "appalling." Ka Hsaw Wa, co-founder and executive director of EarthRights International, wrote in an open letter to Woods, "I myself have spoken to victims of forced labor, rape, and torture on Chevron's pipeline--if you heard what they said to me, you too would understand how their tragic stories stand in stark contrast to Chevron's rhetoric about helping communities." ERI's request to meet with Woods or someone from the foundation has been met with silence But while the Burmese junta's crimes are localized in Southeast Asia, Chevron is global. Lawsuits have been issued against Chevron's toxic waste dumping in Alaska, Canada, Angola, California. Then there's the matter of 18 billion gallons of toxic waste the company has been accused of dumping in the Amazon. In a US District Court in San Francisco, the case of Bowoto v. Chevron, Nigerian plaintiffs have accused Chevron of actually arming and outfitting Nigerian oil security forces to shoot and kill protesters. Judge Susan Illston has refused to dismiss the case because, as Democracy Now! recently reported, "evidence show direct links to Chevron officials."
When pressed for comment, Tiger Woods Foundation President Greg McLaughlin issued this statement to The Nation: "The Foundation's vision is to help young people reach their full potential. All our partners share in this vision, allowing us to make a positive impact in millions of young lives." That response, to very serious and very direct charges, is the golf equivalent of a triple bogey.
President McLaughlin should think more seriously about what Chevron is and what they do: they pollute, they destroy, they conspire with dictators, and heaven help anyone who gets in their way. Now they want to burnish their "brand" by partnering with Tiger Woods. Tiger's late father Earl, once said of his son, "He will transcend this game...and bring to the world...a humanitarianism...which has never been known before. The world will be a better place to live in...by virtue of his existence...and his presence."
The partnership with Chevron makes a mockery of Earl Woods's hopes.
To use an analogy from a different sport, the ball is now in Tiger's court. Will he allow himself to be tamed by corporate interests, or will he roar?
Dave Zirin is the author of Welcome to the Terrordome: the Pain Politics and Promise of Sports (Haymarket) and the forthcoming A People's History of Sports in the United States (The New Press). and his writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Sports Illustrated.com, New York Newsday and The Progressive. He is the host of XM Radio's Edge of Sports Radio.
Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
Source: www.thenation.com/doc/20080609/zirin
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Jul 8, 2008 8:05:15 GMT 4
Gather with your neighbors and round your wagons, Folks, 'cause a bad moon's a risin'. I detest posting negative news, but you'd be foolish not to pay attention to what people outside the mainstream spin are telling us. Strenghten your community ties, people.....You'll need each other MichelleUSDollar on Edge, Gold on VergeJim Willie CB Jim Willie CB is the editor of the "Hat Trick Letter" Jul 3, 2008 Use this link to subscribe to the paid research reports, which include coverage of several smallcap companies positioned to rise during the ongoing panicky attempt to sustain an unsustainable system burdened by numerous imbalances aggravated by global village forces. An historically unprecedented mess has been created by compromised central bankers and inept economic advisors, whose interference has irreversibly altered and damaged the world financial system, urgently pushed after the removed anchor of money to gold. Analysis features Gold, Crude Oil, USDollar, Treasury bonds, and inter-market dynamics with the US Economy and US Federal Reserve monetary policy.The USDollar is on the edge of the chasm again. The nonsense has been cast aside about a bank recovery, a housing stabilization, and an economy that can withstand a spillover. How incredible it is to see grown adults accept such marketing and promotional drivel. Wake up and smell the blood! The US financial and economic system has never been so vulnerable in almost a century. What we see now is far more dangerous than the 1970 decade, characterized by vast cost shocks. Back then, China was not a player. Its current presence puts a price ceiling on finished product pricing power, and even more importantly, on wages broadly in the labor market. Households cannot afford higher prices, as bankruptcy pain escalates. Other key differences are discussed in the upcoming July Hat Trick Letter. The US financial networks and media seem to describe the entire set of symptoms that constitute near systemic collapse, without ever mentioning the potential for collapse. My view is that the banks will lead the process. They, for the most part, will be making giant strides into mine fields, after having held themselves back on accounting shenanigans. Their structured vehicles laden with acidic cargo have been circling the cities for some time now, but must soon return to the company back lots where their destruction might spread to the vital corporate centers. Most banks will dilute themselves into oblivion, as they stave off bankruptcy, improve their liquidity, and deal with the steady stress of insolvency. Some banks have begun to call in healthy loans in order to maintain cash positions. Some are kiting on deposits, borrowing them illicitly during an unsanctioned three-day period of sinister shifts. Some like Wachovia and Key are dead but have not admitted it. Most are demanding that good borrowing customers jump through hoops endlessly. A couple big Wall Street investment banks are probably walking dead also, such as Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch. On the next round, they will tend to take each other down together. General Motors is being prepared by financial funeral directors as we speak. See the Merrill Lynch downgrade. The dead are downgrading the dead! Preparations are being made to relax official rules in order to facilitate bank failures, reported in the news without bother of implications cited. Treasury Secy Paulson wants 'additional emergency authority' to limit financial market disruptions. Translated, that means he wants relaxation of bailout mechanisms, loan extension facilities, and other bank sector subsidies, even as handouts and corrupted doles are to be widened. He cites powerful negative forces from energy prices, bank & bond crises, and the housing decline. He uses the word 'liquidation' rather openly, much like 'fire' in a theater. He talks openly about orderly liquidation of large financial institutions. Implied is more JPMorgan assumption of monumental books of business, otherwise known as casino games. Many such security assets have no market anymore. Try selling a subprime mortgage bond these days, or a leverage bond composed of the same decomposing debris! He is trying for a second time to propose a blueprint for regulatory overhaul to benefit the Wall Street elite banks that caused most of the Western world financial destruction. When the USGovt seeks to enact reform, Paulson wants them to reach for his blueprint. Imagine hurricane preparations devised by town officials, with nobody changing daily activity and habits. For two decades, the public has subsidized corrupt, crooked, conniving Wall Street elitists without a peep of objection. The problem is that the public citizenry in the Untied States is profoundly ignorant, based upon lack of reliable information and lack of ability to discern much beyond video games and reality television shows and new hamburger options and Hollywood star drug habits. The majority is clueless, while the enlightened few feel helpless to contend with a corrupted system that controls the media networks, regulatory bodies, and law enforcement. Lawsuits against JPMorgan have all failed. Challenges against the USTreasury on gold management have all failed, yet are ongoing. Challenges against the commodity exchanges on oversized short position concentration have all failed. Meanwhile, most Wall Street information shared publicly is patently untrue, self-serving, and acts as part of their corporate brokerage trading strategies. In order to act defensively in defiance, one must invest in gold and silver, or else buy into an energy firm. Last week the US Federal Reserve blinked. This week they are hiding. They have no policy options left. They are backed into a corner. They can defend the USDollar and further kill both housing and credit starved commerce, or they can bow to the stock market with further stimulus to the USEconomy and invite additional grand increases to cost structures again. The USFed has suffered some rather substantial damage to its private portfolios. This is unprecedented. They are not an altruistic organization, but rather the most parasitic exploitative financial organization ever to operate on US soil, outside organized crime. Heck, they are Ruling Elite organized crime in league with the USGovt! That is just another description of my oft-quoted theme of the Fascist Business Model in full force since year 2000. That is the legacy of the current administration. Now the Intl Monetary Fund has decided to conduct an investigation into the financial management of the US banking system! This is totally unprecedented. The German journal Der Spiegel wrote that the IMF had informed US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke of its plans for a general examination of the US financial system. The IMF board of directors has ruled that a so-called Financial Sector Assessment Program is to be carried out in the United States. This, according to the German journal, "is nothing less than an X-ray of the entire US financial system No Fed chief in US history has been forced to submit to the kind of humiliation that Ben Bernanke is facing." For some reason, the entire story escaped the intrepid lapdog US press network system. We would live in a different world if all financial network news was from public funded commentators. My view is that some sort of powerful steps are being taken to perhaps wrest control of the US banks away from Americans, after declaring them to be a high risk to the global financial system. In 2001, reports came out that the Bank For Intl Settlements in Basel Switzerland had declared the Soviet Union a geopolitical security risk. After large loans were called for repayment, the Soviet Union collapsed. Back then, the BIS also announced that the US banking system represented a similar financial risk to the global economy. One must wonder if some profound changes are soon to come. USDOLLAR ON EDGE OF BREAKDOWN The USDollar is showing early signs of breakdown. Look closely not at the critical support levels from March and April, but rather the intermediate pattern. If the intermediate pattern on display over the last four months is ignored, and a simplistic view is taken of critical April support levels continuing to hold, then one might conclude 'No Big Deal' on the recent USDollar move down in the last couple weeks. However, if that intermediate pattern is viewed in technical terms, one must conclude that the US$ DX index has begun a breakdown. At 72.10 late in the day Wednesday, the breakdown continues almost silently. Gold and silver prices have responded. Notice the 200-day moving average held firm since the bounce began in March and April. One can easily now call that bounce as utterly feeble. It enabled a vividly clear pause pattern. Those who call the bounce as the beginning of a US$ recovery are exaggerating, undoubtedly motivated by the vested interests of Wall Street to support trade of their own private book of investments. The US$ DX index has broken below the clearly defined bearish pause flag pattern, one found in classical technical chart textbooks. The MACD cyclical index shows a definite downward direction in the upper chart portion. The crossover in this moving average convergence divergence index is early but profoundly clear. The biggest confirmation one can point to on the USDollar weakness, extended from the USEconomic weakness, is the big decline in the 2-year USTreasury Bill yield. It has continued to fall from the time of last week's article about the market response to the USFed that blinked. With a 2-year USTBill yield now at 2.60%, some conclusions can be drawn. An economic recession is confirmed. The USFed has had a rate cut taken off the table. More price inflation is coming, permitted as a harsh secondary expense for treating the worst recession the nation will see in 70 years. A credit derivative accident spawned from higher long-term rates cannot be permitted, but might occur anyway despite all the wizards best efforts. One should regard all talk of crude oil speculation to account for its price rise as pure distraction from the clear and powerful USDollar risk of further breakdown. The euro currency has been the principal beneficiary of the USDollar weakness in the last couple weeks. It is back over 158, after having flirted with the 154 handle for a spell, just enough to fool the silly casino players on Wall Street. In fact, today it is near the 159 level. The euro now threatens all-time 160 high established in April, having surpassed both the May and June highs. Europe has problems, but they also have a trade surplus and an official interest rate not so absurdly low as the American rate. The EU economy is totally bifurcated, with southern nations under extreme duress while Germany is now running essentially flat. Maybe the Germans running the Euro Central Bank are attempting to fracture their monetary union? Any official interest rate hike ordered by the Euro Central Bank, which meets on Thursday, would be ill-advised. They might do so anyway, but watch for them to take it back later this autumn if they are so unwise as to do so. The subtle punishment will be a euro well past 160 toward 170 in the exchange rate, which will interrupt European exporters severely. The British pound sterling has actually risen also, despite its utterly pathetic set of fundamentals. Without its lofty official interest rate, the sterling would be panhandling with licensed hired vagrants outside the FOREX trading halls. The currencies are analyzed in more depth in the Hat Trick Letter reports. The one loud fundamental behind the USDollar weakness is the endless war. Its costs are one billion straws on the camel's back. Its sacred status should be more debated, especially since it has contributed in an important way to the destruction of the national finances. The debate on private profiteering and military contract corruption, not to mention its high priority for contraband trafficking, should begin, except for loud cries against the patriotism of such critics. The conclusion is that patriots should be silent to profiteering, corruption, and trafficking. Go figure! A side comment on yet another doctored statistic. The number of soldier deaths in Iraq & Afghanistan is officially tied to those who die with boots on Iraqi and Afghan soil, excluding all soldiers who die following serious wounds in Qatar, Kuwait, Persian Gulf naval vessels, German hospitals, Walter Reed Hospital, and so on. My sources report that the war death count is 3x to 5x higher than the official count, thus another falsified statistic. This writer wants America safe, but the real threats reside in Wall Street, the USGovt, and the ancillary agencies. GOLD ON VERGE OF BREAKOUT The gold price leads the precious metals. Simultaneous with the US$ weakness, the gold price has lifted above the May high. No resistance exists between the 950-960 ribbon and the all-time 1030 high registered in March. The retest of the May low has been successful. Its price now stands just shy of 950 late on Wednesday. Notice the 200-day moving average held in support, guiding FOREX traders. A powerful reversal seems evident as a bowl-shaped pattern. A sharp uptrend in the MACD is also clear in the cyclical index. In my view, the fundamentals are present for a triumphant challenge of the 1000 mark. When 1000 is indeed broken, look for a powerful breakout to at least reach 1100, and probably shoot up to 1200 quickly. Recall that we are still in the slow gold season, so prepare for something very big during the typically strong season. The USFed has no market friendly options left. Such is the plague of stagflation, as all options are seen as deeply harmful to one or another large segment of the USEconomic total system. With no hint anymore of deceptive USFed rate hikes, with continuing bank crisis mired in insolvency and soon bankruptcies, with continuing housing glut weighing down the entire economy, with enormous costs strains led by energy and food, the USEconomy is absolutely certain to serve as a big drag on the global economy with its recession. Its denied recession has given ground to a new debate on how deep the recession will be. Of course, unelected minions in the USGovt and entrenched conmen on Wall Street will continue to harp on how we have avoided a recession, all stupid talk of self-serving nature. As the USGovt reacts to recession and the end effect for handouts of beans & rice to the bedeviled citizenry, gold will react to the inflation behind the solutions. As the USFed and Dept of Treasury react to the banking debacle extended from mortgage bonds, gold will react to the inflation behind the solutions. The bigger problem is that the solutions will not solve much of anything, and will be required on a repeated basis. My theme of 'Vicious Cycles' directing the destruction in the meltdown have become more widely recognized. Each treatment of subsidies, liquidity measures, handouts, and bailouts will be followed by more of the same. Nothing has been solved. Structural breakdown needs more than a run through the car wash with a Wall Street wax job in order to produce deep reform. The silver price improvement has finally caught up to that of the gold price. Its monster 70 cent move up on Tuesday brought a smile to my face. When 21 is indeed broken, look for a powerful breakout to at least reach 25, and probably shoot up to 30. Recall that we are still in the slow precious metal season, so prepare for something very big. The central banks own no silver. The commodity trading pits are under pressure to deny delivery. Shortages are reported by both the USMint and diverse coin dealers. Some silver merchants report continued brisk trade, the only arena not flashing red lights. FINALLY SOME MOVEMENT IN MINERS Finally the precious metal mining stocks have picked themselves off the ground. A nice reversal pattern is evident on the weekly chart. Previous charts are shown in daily terms. Notice the W-shaped reversal pattern, better known as a 'Reverse Head & Shoulders' pattern of bullish type. The neckline lies at 460. The head has a bottom located at the 400 mark loosely determined. So in the intermediate term, expect a move to 520 on the reversal, surely enough to challenge the March high. Time must be spent with the right side action at the 440-460 ribbon of resistance. True to form, Wednesday saw a down move, which will build the right side shoulder. The next move over 460 on the HUI index will trigger a big upleg. A challenge toward the 520 high will come in a matter of weeks, not months. The reversal move will offer strong momentum for that challenge. Expect new breakout highs before September is over, probably far earlier, like later in July or in August. Last year in surprising fashion, powerful moves were seen in gold and the USDollar during the usually quiet early August timeframe. Expect the same this summer. Notice the 20-week moving average has provided support in December 2007, in February, in March, and might again now. The 'Head' of the reversal pattern found support from the 50-week moving average this spring. Given that support from the 50wMA, one should expect strong support from the 20wMA this summer. An important final point must be made. During the springtime correction, the 20wMA never went below to cross the 50wMA. This implies the bull market in mining stocks remains intact. Try telling that to the Canadian Junior mining stocks though. Their day is coming. The low sentiment could mark its bottom. The July Hat Trick Letter will display the HUI versus S&P500 stock index ratio. It shows a tremendous reversal recently. In other words, as the mainstream 'Paper-based' stocks in the S&P stock index have suffered, the HUI mining stocks have advanced forward. The negative correlation is very favorable for precious metal investors involved with mining stocks. In the last two months, some important points should be kept in mind. The bigger mining companies must replace depleted reserves. They are turning to the successful explorers, case in point being both Goldcorp and Barrick. They are not interested in acquisitions of mid-sized junior miners, but rather the explorers that possess expertise in exploration and discovery of valuable ore deposits. A bidding round of junior miners is not only likely, it is also guaranteed. My eye is set upon the hedge funds who are in many cases employing spread trades, going long the large mining stocks and going short the explorer speculative mining stocks. Expect hedge funds to take heavy losses. Some actually believe that Barrick is a ringleader behind providing capital not to fund their own mining operations, but to New York and London hedge funds to suppress the small gold mining firms. Others believe that Goldman Sachs has abused its managed GDX exchange traded fund, as they short the entire sector by shorting the entire index. One should consider the possibility that either or both the GLD or SLV exchange traded funds, managed by the cartel members JPMorgan and Barclays respectively, might be assisting in suppression of mining stocks in order to acquire them later for a price as cheap as a song. This pair of titans surely is shorting gold and silver with paper futures contracts. We live in a corrupt financial world. Its mafia dons reside in New York and London. THE HAT TRICK LETTER PROFITS IN THE CURRENT CRISIS. From subscribers and readers: "Your unmatched ability to find and unmask a string of significant nuggets, and to wrap them into a meaningful mosaic of the treachery-cum-stupidity which comprise our current financial system, make yours the most informative and valuable of investment letters. You have refined the 'bits-and-pieces' approach into an awesome intellectual tool." (RobertN in Texas) "I am astonished at the level and depth of your writing. There is, to my knowledge, no one who comes close to your commitment to finding the truth and putting it out there for us. I am hooked. You tower above your competition. Keep it up." (DavidP in Florida) "Your reports scare the hell out of me every month, probably more so over time, since so many of your predictions have turned out to be very accurate. I am afraid you might be right that by the end of 2008, we are in a pretty severe situation, with civil unrest and blatant and severe financial stress on Main Street." (GeorgeC in Minnesota) "You are able to consume and regurgitate complicated information into layman's terms. It shows that you understand your subject well. It is very easy to take complicated material and repackage it as complicated material. You, however, have the ability to take the complicated and make it understandable to the common man." (RickS in California) Jul 2, 2008 Jim Willie CB Jim Willie CB is the editor of the "HAT TRICK LETTER" email: jimwilliecb@aol.com Willie Archives website: Golden Jackass subscribe: Hat Trick LetterJim Willie CB is a statistical analyst in marketing research and retail forecasting. He holds a PhD in Statistics. His career has stretched over 25 years. He aspires to thrive in the financial editor world, unencumbered by the limitations of economic credentials. Visit his website at www.GoldenJackass.com.Source:www.321gold.com/editorials/willie/willie070308.html
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Jul 18, 2008 12:23:11 GMT 4
Depositors told to remain calm or face arrestA failed institution's federal takeover....The FBI is investigating possible fraud at IndyMac, the California lender which was seized by regulators last Friday after America's biggest high street bank failure for two decades.....Customers withdrew $1.3bn in 10 days. An estimated 10,000 customers could lose unprotected deposits of some $1bn. Expect to more of this, folks. What we're talking about here affects the upper middle class. The federal insurance program guarantees $100,000 of savings for each depositor. How many banks will fail and how much will be guaranteed until the FDIC refuses to pony up anymore is anyone's guess.........MichelleCops to IndyMac customers: Remain calm or face arrestDaily News Wire Services Article Last Updated: 07/15/2008 09:25:40 AM PDT Police ordered angry customers lined up outside an IndyMac Bank branch to remain calm or face arrest Tuesday as they tried to pull their money on the second day of the failed institution's federal takeover. At least three police squad cars showed up early Tuesday as tensions rose outside the San Fernando Valley branch of Pasadena-based IndyMac. Federal regulators seized Pasadena-based IndyMac on Friday and reopened the bank Monday under the control of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Deposits to $100,000 are fully insured by the FDIC. Worried customers with deposits in excess of insured limits flooded IndyMac Bank branches on Monday, demanding to withdraw as much money as they could or get answers about the fate of their funds. When it was clear some wouldn't get in before closing, FDIC employees apparently took down names and told them to return Tuesday. Other customers began lining up at 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, and by dawn, tensions escalated because people on the list were getting priority. By 8 a.m., about 50 people on the list waited in one line and many more waited in another. Five people were allowed in at a time. Customers became infuriated, and police told them they could be arrested if they didn't remain calm. Police stood by at some other branches around Southern California but there were no other reports of problems. Source: www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_9887404------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ FBI fraud inquiry after IndyMac collapseAndrew Clark in New York The Guardian, Thursday July 17, 2008 Article history The FBI is investigating possible fraud at IndyMac, the California lender which was seized by regulators last Friday after America's biggest high street bank failure for two decades. Law enforcement sources told the Associated Press that the inquiry revolved around home loans made by IndyMac to risky borrowers and was focused on the bank itself, rather than on individuals who ran it. The FBI declined to comment on IndyMac specifically, although a spokesman said the scope of the bureau's examination of the sub-prime mortgage industry had broadened from 19 inquiries to 21 since April. A spokesman said: "We receive information from a variety of sources on a daily basis, and we have an obligation to review each allegation on its merits." Banking regulators took over IndyMac after a run on deposits, as customers withdrew $1.3bn in 10 days. At its peak, IndyMac had assets of $32bn. Under a federal insurance scheme, the first $100,000 of savings for each depositor is guaranteed. But anxious customers continued queueing outside branches to withdraw savings this week. Pasadena-based IndyMac is the fifth US bank to close this year, and is the biggest failure since the Chicago bank Continental Illinois collapsed in 1984. An estimated 10,000 customers could lose unprotected deposits of some $1bn. A New York senator, Charles Schumer, who wrote a public letter in June raising concerns about lax lending at IndyMac, has been blamed by the Office of Thrift Supervision for inciting panic among customers. Schumer argues that the OTS is responsible for allowing the bank to become vulnerable in the first place. IndyMac's demise has prompted jitters about other regional banks. Seattle-based Washington Mutual and Ohio's National City Corporation were obliged to issue statements denying liquidity crises this week after their shares plunged.Source:www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jul/17/subprimecrisis.useconomy
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Jul 21, 2008 10:55:16 GMT 4
Let the Lawsuits Begin: Banks Brace for a Storm of LitigationEllen Brown, July 13th, 2008 www.webofdebt.com/articles/bracing-storm.php In an article in The San Francisco Chronicle in December 2007, attorney Sean Olender suggested that the real reason for the subprime bailout schemes being proposed by the U.S. Treasury Department was not to keep strapped borrowers in their homes so much as to stave off a spate of lawsuits against the banks. The plan then on the table was an interest rate freeze on a limited number of subprime loans. Olender wrote: “The sole goal of the freeze is to prevent owners of mortgage-backed securities, many of them foreigners, from suing U.S. banks and forcing them to buy back worthless mortgage securities at face value – right now almost 10 times their market worth. The ticking time bomb in the U.S. banking system is not resetting subprime mortgage rates. The real problem is the contractual ability of investors in mortgage bonds to require banks to buy back the loans at face value if there was fraud in the origination process. “. . . The catastrophic consequences of bond investors forcing originators to buy back loans at face value are beyond the current media discussion. The loans at issue dwarf the capital available at the largest U.S. banks combined, and investor lawsuits would raise stunning liability sufficient to cause even the largest U.S. banks to fail, resulting in massive taxpayer-funded bailouts of Fannie and Freddie, and even FDIC . . . . “What would be prudent and logical is for the banks that sold this toxic waste to buy it back and for a lot of people to go to prison. If they knew about the fraud, they should have to buy the bonds back.”1The thought could send a chill through even the most powerful of investment bankers, including Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson himself, who was head of Goldman Sachs during the heyday of toxic subprime paper-writing from 2004 to 2006. Mortgage fraud has not been limited to the representations made to borrowers or on loan documents but is in the design of the banks’ “financial products” themselves. Among other design flaws is that securitized mortgage debt has become so complex that ownership of the underlying security has often been lost in the shuffle; and without a legal owner, there is no one with standing to foreclose. That was the procedural problem prompting Federal District Judge Christopher Boyko to rule in October 2007 that Deutsche Bank did not have standing to foreclose on 14 mortgage loans held in trust for a pool of mortgage-backed securities holders.2 If large numbers of defaulting homeowners were to contest their foreclosures on the ground that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue, trillions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) could be at risk. Irate securities holders might then respond with litigation that could indeed threaten the existence of the banking Goliaths. States Leading the ChargeMBS investors with the power to bring major lawsuits include state and local governments, which hold substantial portions of their assets in MBS and similar investments. A harbinger of things to come was a complaint filed on February 1, 2008, by the State of Massachusetts against investment bank Merrill Lynch, for fraud and misrepresentation concerning about $14 million worth of subprime securities sold to the city of Springfield. The complaint focused on the sale of “certain esoteric financial instruments known as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) . . . which were unsuitable for the city and which, within months after the sale, became illiquid and lost almost all of their market value.”3 The previous month, the city of Baltimore sued Wells Fargo Bank for damages from the subprime debacle, alleging that Wells Fargo had intentionally discriminated in selling high-interest mortgages more frequently to blacks than to whites, in violation of federal law.4Another innovative suit filed in January 2008 was brought by Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson against 21 major investment banks, for enabling the subprime lending and foreclosure crisis in his city. The suit targeted the investment banks that fed off the mortgage market by buying subprime mortgages from lenders and then “securitizing” them and selling them to investors. City officials said they hoped to recover hundreds of millions of dollars in damages from the banks, including lost taxes from devalued property and money spent demolishing and boarding up thousands of abandoned houses. The defendants included banking giants Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Citigroup. They were charged with creating a “public nuisance” by irresponsibly buying and selling high-interest home loans, causing widespread defaults that depleted the city’s tax base and left neighborhoods in ruins. “To me, this is no different than organized crime or drugs,” Jackson told the Cleveland newspaper The Plain Dealer. “It has the same effect as drug activity in neighborhoods. It’s a form of organized crime that happens to be legal in many respects.” He added in a videotaped interview, “This lawsuit said, ‘You’re not going to do this to us anymore.’”5The Plain Dealer also interviewed Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, who was considering a state lawsuit against some of the same investment banks. “There’s clearly been a wrong done,” he said, “and the source is Wall Street. I’m glad to have some company on my hunt.” However, a funny thing happened on the way to the courthouse. Like New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General Dann wound up resigning from his post in May 2008 after a sexual harassment investigation in his office.6 Before they were forced to resign, both prosecutors were hot on the tail of the banks, attempting to impose liability for the destructive wave of home foreclosures in their jurisdictions. [see the first post on this page...M]But the hits keep on coming. In June 2008, California Attorney General Jerry Brown sued Countrywide Financial Corporation, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, for causing thousands of foreclosures by deceptively marketing risky loans to borrowers. Among other things, the 46-page complaint alleged that: “‘Defendants viewed borrowers as nothing more than the means for producing more loans, originating loans with little or no regard to borrowers’ long-term ability to afford them and to sustain homeownership’ . . . “The company routinely . . . ‘turned a blind eye’ to deceptive practices by brokers and its own loan agents despite ‘numerous complaints from borrowers claiming that they did not understand their loan terms.’ “. . . Underwriters who confirmed information on mortgage applications were ‘under intense pressure . . . to process 60 to 70 loans per day, making careful consideration of borrowers’ financial circumstances and the suitability of the loan product for them nearly impossible.’ “‘Countrywide’s high-pressure sales environment and compensation system encouraged serial refinancing of Countrywide loans.’”7 Similar suits against Countrywide and its CEO have been filed by the states of Illinois and Florida. These suits seek not only damages but rescission of the loans, creating a potential nightmare for the banks. An Avalanche of Class Actions?Massive class action lawsuits by defrauded borrowers may also be in the works. In a 2007 ruling in Wisconsin that is now on appeal, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman held that Chevy Chase Bank had violated the Truth in Lending Act by hiding the terms of an adjustable rate loan, and that thousands of other Chevy Chase borrowers could join the plaintiffs in a class action on that ground. According to a June 30, 2008 report in Reuters: “The judge transformed the case from a run-of-the-mill class action to a potential nightmare for the U.S. banking industry by also finding that the borrowers could force the bank to cancel, or rescind, their loans. That decision was stayed pending an appeal to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is expected to rule any day.“The idea of canceling tainted loans to stem a tide of foreclosures has caught hold in other quarters; a lawsuit filed last week by the Illinois attorney general asks a court to rescind or reform Countrywide Financial mortgages originated under ‘unfair or deceptive practices.’ “. . . The mortgage banking industry already faces pressure from state and federal regulators, who have accused banks of lowering underwriting standards and forcing some borrowers, through fraud, into costly adjustable loans that the banks later bundled and sold as high-interest investment vehicles.” The Truth in Lending Act (TILA) is a 1968 federal law designed to protect consumers against lending fraud by requiring clear disclosure of loan terms and costs. It lets consumers seek rescission or termination of a loan and the return of all interest and fees when a lender is found to be in violation. The beauty of the statute, says California bankruptcy attorney Cathy Moran, is that it provides for strict liability: the aggrieved borrowers don’t have to prove they were personally defrauded or misled, or that they had actual damages. Just the fact that the disclosures were defective gives them the right to rescind and deprives the lenders of interest. In Moran’s small sample, at least half of the loans reviewed contained TILA violations.8 If class actions are found to be available for rescission of loans based on fraud in the disclosure process, the result could be a flood of class suits against banks all over the country.9 Shifting the Loss Back to the BanksRescission may be a remedy available not only for borrowers but for MBS investors. Many loan sale contracts provide by their terms that lenders must take back loans that default unusually quickly or that contain mistakes or fraud. An avalanche of rescissions could be catastrophic for the banks. Banks were moving loans off their books and selling them to investors in order to allow many more loans to be made than would otherwise have been allowed under banking regulations. The banking rules are complex, but for every dollar of shareholder capital a bank has on its balance sheet, it is supposed to be limited to about $10 in loans. The problem for the banks is that when the process is reversed, the 10 to 1 rule can work the other way: taking a dollar of bad debt back on a bank’s books can reduce its lending ability by a factor of 10. As explained in a BBC News story citing Prof. Nouriel Roubini for authority: “ ecuritisation was key to helping banks avoid the regulators’ 10:1 rule. To make their risky loans appear attractive to buyers, banks used complex financial engineering to repackage them so they looked super-safe and paid returns well above what equivalent super-safe investments offered. Banks even found ways to get loans off their balance sheets without selling them at all. They devised bizarre new financial entities - called Special Investment Vehicles or SIVs - in which loans could be held technically and legally off balance sheet, out of sight, and beyond the scope of regulators’ rules. So, once again, SIVs made room on balance sheets for banks to go on lending.
“Banks had got round regulators’ rules by selling off their risky loans, but because so many of the securitised loans were bought by other banks, the losses were still inside the banking system. Loans held in SIVs were technically off banks’ balance sheets, but when the value of the loans inside SIVs started to collapse, the banks which set them up found that they were still responsible for them. So losses from investments which might have appeared outside the scope of the regulators’ 10:1 rule, suddenly started turning up on bank balance sheets. . . . The problem now facing many of the biggest lenders is that when losses appear on banks’ balance sheets, the regulator’s 10:1 rule comes back into play because losses reduce a banks’ shareholder capital. ‘If you have a $200bn loss, that reduced your capital by $200bn, you have to reduce your lending by 10 times as much,’ [Prof. Roubini] explains. ‘So you could have a reduction of total credit to the economy of two trillion dollars.’”10 You could also have some very bankrupt banks. The total equity of the top 100 U.S. banks stood at $800 billion at the end of the third quarter of 2007. Banking losses are currently expected to rise by as much as $450 billion, enough to wipe out more than half of the banks’ capital bases and leave many of them insolvent.11 If debtors were to deluge the courts with viable defenses to their debts and mortgage-backed securities holders were to challenge their securities, the result could be even worse.
Putting the Genie Back in the Bottle
So what would happen if the mega-banks engaging in these irresponsible practices actually went bankrupt? These banks are widely acknowledged to be at fault, but they expect to be bailed out by the Federal Reserve or the taxpayers because they are “too big to fail.” The argument is that if they were allowed to collapse, they would take the economy down with them. That is the fear, but it is not actually true. We do need a ready source of credit, so we need banks; but we don’t need private banks. It is a little-known, well-concealed fact that banks do not lend their own money or even their depositors’ money. They actually create the money they lend; and creating money is properly a public, not a private, function. The Constitution delegates the power to create money to Congress and only to Congress.12 In making loans, banks are merely extending credit; and the proper agency for extending “the full faith and credit of the United States” is the United States itself.
There is more at stake here than just the equitable treatment of injured homeowners and investors in mortgage-backed securities. Banks and investment houses are now squeezing the last drops of blood from the U.S. government’s credit rating, “borrowing” money and unloading worthless paper on the government and the taxpayers. When the dust settles, it will be the banks, investment brokerages and hedge funds for wealthy investors that will be saved. The repossessed will become the dispossessed; and unless your pension fund has invested in politically well-connected hedge funds, you can probably kiss it goodbye, as teachers in Florida already have.
But the banking genie is a creature of the law, and the law can put it back in the bottle. The imminent failure of some very big banks could provide the government with an opportunity to regain control of its finances. More than that, it could provide the funds for tackling otherwise unsolvable problems now threatening to destroy our standard of living and our standing in the world. The only solution that will be more than a temporary fix is to take the power to create money away from private bankers and return it to the people collectively. That is how it should have been all along, and how it was in our early history; but we are so used to banks being private corporations that we have forgotten the public banks of our forebears. The best of the colonial American banking models was developed in Benjamin Franklin’s province of Pennsylvania, where a government-owned bank issued money and lent it to farmers at 5 percent interest. The interest was returned to the government, replacing taxes. During the decades that that system was in operation, the province of Pennsylvania operated without taxes, inflation or debt.
Rather than bailing out bankrupt banks and sending them on their merry way, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) needs to take a close look at the banks’ books and put any banks found to be insolvent into receivership. The FDIC (unlike the Federal Reserve) is actually a federal agency, and it has the option of taking a bank’s stock in return for bailing it out, effectively nationalizing it. This is done in Europe with bankrupt banks, and it was done in the United States with Continental Illinois, the country’s fourth largest bank, when it went bankrupt in the 1990s.
A system of truly “national” banks could issue “the full faith and credit of the United States” for public purposes, including funding infrastructure, sustainable energy development and health care.13 Publicly-issued credit could also be used to relieve the subprime crisis. Local governments could use it to buy up mortgages in default, compensating the MBS investors and freeing the real estate for public disposal. The properties could then be rented back to their occupants at reasonable rates, leaving people in their homes without the windfall of acquiring a house without paying for it. A program of lease-purchase might also be instituted. The proceeds would be applied toward repaying the credit advanced to buy the mortgages, balancing the money supply and preventing inflation.
Local and Private Solutions
While we are waiting for the federal government to act, there are also private and local possibilities for relieving the subprime crisis. Chris Cook is a British strategic market consultant and the former Compliance Director for the International Petroleum Exchange. He recommends getting all the parties to settle by forming a pool constituted as an LLC (limited liability company), in a partnership framework that brings together occupiers and financiers as co-owners under a neutral custodian. The original owners would pay an affordable rental, and the resulting pool of rentals would be “unitized” (divided into unit interests, similar to a REIT or real estate investment trust). Among other advantages over the usual mortgage-backed security, there would be no loans at interest, since the property would be owned outright by the LLC. Eliminating interest substantially reduces costs. The former owners would be able to occupy the property at an affordable rental, with the option to buy an equity stake in it. For the banks, the advantage would be that they would be able to find investors again, since the risk would have been taken out of the investment by insuring full occupancy at affordable rates; and for the investors, the advantage would be a secure investment with a dependable return.14
Carolyn Betts is an Ohio attorney who served in Washington as issuer’s counsel for MBS trusts formed by various federal governmental entities, and represented Resolution Trust Corporation in its auction of defaulted commercial mortgage loans during the last real estate crisis. She proposes a squeeze play by the states, in the style of that brought against the tobacco companies by a consortium of state attorneys general in the 1990s. She notes that at the end of 2007, at least 20% of the funds held by the Ohio Public Employees’ Retirement System (PERS) were in mortgage backed securities and similar investments. That makes Ohio public money a major investor in these mortgage-related securities. Ohio governments have an interest in not having homes foreclosed upon, since foreclosures destroy local real estate markets, contribute to lower tax revenues and losses on PERS investments, and cause a strain on state and local affordable housing systems. A coordinated series of actions brought by state attorneys general could eliminate the culpable banker middlemen and return the properties to local ownership and control.
Andrew Jackson reportedly told Congress in 1829, “If the American people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution before morning.” A wave of private actions, class actions and government lawsuits aimed at redressing injurious banking practices could spark a revolution in banking, returning the power to advance “the full faith and credit of the United States” to the United States, and returning community assets to local ownership and control.
1 Sean Olender, “Mortgage Meltdown,” San Francisco Chronicle (December 9, 2007). 2 See Ellen Brown, “The Subprime Trump Card,” webofdebt.com/articles, June 26, 2008. 3 Greg Morcroft, “Massachusetts Charges Merrill with Fraud,” MarketWatch (February 1, 2008). 4 Henry Gomez, Tom Ott, “Cleveland Sues 21 Banks Over Subprime Mess,” The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, January 11, 2008). 5 Ibid. 6 Marc Dann Resigns as Attorney General,” NBC24.com (May 14, 2008). 7 E. Scott Reckard, “California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown Sues Countrywide,” Los Angeles Times (June 26, 2008). 8 Cathy Moran, “And the Truth (in Lending) Shall Set You Free,” mortgagelawnetwork.com (June 11, 2008). 9 Gina Keating, “Mortgage Ruling Could Shock U.S. Banking Industry,” Reuters (June 30, 2008). 10 Michael Robinson, “City of Debt Shows US Housing Woe,” BBC News (December 30, 2007). 11 “Is the Latest Liquidity Crunch in Remission?”, NakedCapitalism.com (March 26, 2008). 12 See E. Brown, “Dollar Deception: How Banks Secretly Create Money,” webofdebt.com/articles (July 3, 2007). 13 For more on this funding solution and why it would not inflate prices, see E. Brown, “Waking Up on a Minnesota Bridge: How to Solve the Infrastructure Crisis Without Selling Off Our National Assets,” webofdebt.com/articles (August 4, 2007). 14 Cook, “Peak Credit and a Flight to Simplicity,” Asia Times (April 3, 2008).
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Ellen Brown, J.D., developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are webofdebt.com and ellenbrown.com.
Source: www.webofdebt.com/articles/bracing-storm.php
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Jul 28, 2008 14:57:37 GMT 4
Are Fannie and Freddie Screwed? Bush Hopes SoBy Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted July 21, 2008. Bush has set about destroying the decades-old lenders for good, plunging his knife into the backs of programs that helped normal Americans.President Bush made it his sub rosa mission to end the hegemony of these two Democrats-in-waiting companies. I don't even think he understood what the guarantee was or what they were supposed to do. -- Jim Cramer, "An Elegy for Fannie and Freddie" In January, I wrote a cultural analysis of the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, more casually known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and how the Bush administration might be trying to take them down. Ex-CEO Franklin Delano Raines was in court and accusing Bush of what the Washington Post described as "a coordinated plan within the Bush administration to depress Fannie Mae's stock price," which would have gotten more play in the press were it not for the fact that Raines was accused by Fannie Mae's overseer, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), of skimming millions off the top for himself. The soap opera thickened under the weight of the fact that OFHEO director James B. Lockhart was not only a Bush contributor but a loyalist who went to school with him at Yale. And while the two parties, and their political parties, waged war with each other over control of two government-sponsored entities, the housing meltdown caught serious fire. It has since cratered. But my piece fell on deaf ears, except for those belonging to motivated professional and armchair economists who love to explore the nether regions of history, finance and hyperreality. Because hyperreality is exactly what the rampant securitization of the debt and housing markets has wrought since George W. Bush took office and, paraphrasing popular stock blowhard Jim Cramer, set about destroying the decades-old lender for good, plunging yet another knife into the back of not Franklin Delano Raines, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and his New Deal. So here we are, months later, and the shit has hit the fan. The world, it seems, has awoken to the fact that Fannie and Freddie own trillions in worthless debt, which will need to be owned, which is to say bought, by the government rather than the shareholders who ditched them. And although CNN fool Glenn Beck may still want to attack FDR for nationalizing finance, it is neither his nor the American people's fault that the banks pimped corrupt schemes like CDOs and SIVs. It is those banks, and their accessories in the real estate and finance markets, that logged trillions in inflated debt without checking to see if the money was going to ever really come in. After all, as I argued in the earlier piece, FDR defeated Hitler, Mussolini and the Great Depression by pulling the nation together, rather than tearing it apart. That latter fuck-up has been left to the Bush administration's economic and geopolitical gamesmanship. If you're going to know anything about Fannie and Freddie, know this: They used to be government agencies and were created to help responsible Americans get loans for houses. In 1968, they were privatized and therefore deregulated, which is to say, profitable for the few and corrupt for the many. As Paul Krugman puts it in the otherwise weak analysis "Fannie, Freddie and the Threat of Economic Meltdown," "Profits are privatized but losses are socialized."The problem is that Fannie and Freddie still carry the imprimatur of the government, offering options that no other lending institutions can offer. In other words, they talk private but walk public. Because of the implicit guarantee that the government would bail them out, which it is now going to have to do, they never had to raise enough cash to cover their asse(t)s. They didn't have to insure their solvency with actual liquidity, just crunch numbers in hyperreal stratagems and come out ahead. This is primarily why they are an epicenter of politicized appointments and economic corruption. They are the ultimate rich asshole's playground. Do whatever you want, they invite, and the maid will clean it up. Go ahead and trash the place. Daddy's got cash. Except he doesn't. The maid, in this instance, is you and I, who have been subsidizing the shenanigans of the Bush administration and its colluders in government, realty and finance. They admittedly hatched a daring plan: Even if you were smart enough not to drink the housing Kool-Aid, you're still going to pay, a lot. At last report, Fannie and Freddie held nearly $5 trillion in mortgage debt; add that to the taxpayers' books, and America's public debt skyrockets by 50 percent. Meanwhile, the executives, hedge funders, bankers and further suits feeding at the trough make off with billions in subsidies, earnings and bonuses, leaving the public and its once-proud lending institutions for dead. "[Bush] probably just said, "We have banks, good banks, like Washington Mutual and Countrywide; why do we need Fannie Mae, which just makes money for the Democrats?'" posits Cramer in "An Elegy for Fannie and Freddie." "So, over a multiyear scheme, he hamstrung the agencies and let the private banks take over lending and securitizing pretty much anything." Once the dust settles, those banks, and their customers and shareholders, might be as screwed as Americans who have to now watch their public debt jump by half because of scams they couldn't sort out, even if they had the right calculators. Only days ago, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation assumed control of the bridge bank IndyMac, which was founded by hated housing fire starters Countrywide Financial, as panicked depositors fought cops and each other trying to withdraw their money. Earlier this year, the Federal Reserve abandoned decades of practice and started directly lending to the dirty investment banks, brokering a deal that gave the corrupt Bear Stearns to Lehman for a song. It was a disastrous move that matched nicely with the Fed's cushy interest-rate policy. Today, the Securities and Exchange Commission blocked the short-selling, naked and otherwise, of Fannie and Freddie shares, and is considering extending the practice to the market at large.Meanwhile, a bottom to the madness and loss is nowhere in sight, just in time for the election. Mission accomplished? You bet. The White House always wins. See more stories tagged with: housing crisis, bush, freddie mac, fannie mae Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.Source: www.alternet.org/workplace/91765/?page=entireTwo More Banks Fail --Regulators Seize First Heritage, First National Bank of Nevada 26 Jul 2008 Federal regulators shut down two national banks late Friday in the latest chapter of the credit crisis, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. successfully protected all depositors by selling the accounts to Mutual of Omaha Bank. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a division of the Treasury Department, revoked the charters of First National Bank of Nevada, based in Reno, Nev., and First Heritage Bank of Newport Beach, Calif. The FDIC was appointed receiver of both banks. CLIP: online.wsj.com/article/SB121703904765687047.html?mod=googlenews_wsjFirst National Bank of Arizona closes 25 Jul 2008 According to the First National Bank of Arizona's web site, the bank has closed its doors as a financial institution. The notice on their web site says that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a government agency, ordered the closure. The FDIC was named the receiver, and all deposit accounts have been transferred to Mutual of Omaha Bank, based out of Omaha, Nebraska. The site also claims that there is no notice given to customers for a financial institution's closing. CLIP: www.azfamily.com/news/homepagetopstory/stories/phoenix_local_news_072508_bank-closes.1ac152f.html
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Aug 11, 2008 3:54:10 GMT 4
The Fire This Time?Two articles for you today, Folks.
First up from David Michael Green. He's got much to say that will fire up united States' citizens; we're gettin' shafted again while the rich get bailed out only to increase their wealth. Americans are working themselves to exhaustion, with little to show for their precious time at the grind. Those who still think we've got the land of opportunity here, please note the author's statement: Nowadays, no industrialized country in the world has workers who put in more hours per year than the US.
The second from Bill Moyers, with a 'novel' look at politics today. 'Novel' because one normally has found this rampant type of corruption only in books....and he likens it to some very good novels, favorites of mine as a matter of fact. As interesting as that is to me, the things reported on here are downright depressing and tick me off.......Big Time!
MichelleThe Fire This Time?8/7/2008 1:58:04 PM Eastern Daylight Time by: David Michael Green Any American who’s been on the planet for more than a few years has lived through a series of economic ups and downs – what economists call the business cycle. These booms and busts seem to follow one another as inevitably as sunset does sunrise. Phil Gramm hasn’t apparently noticed, but we’re now pretty deep into an economic downturn – whether or not it officially qualifies as a recession yet or is simply on the way to becoming one. But two things are especially striking about this particular iteration of our economic malaise. One is that we never quite seem to have had the boom we were supposed to get in between this bust and the last one. Gross domestic product, the key single indicator of economic health used to measure the state of the economy, has done reasonably well since the downturn that began in 2000. So has the stock market, and so, especially, have the one percent or so of the richest Americans, who have lately transitioned from being ridiculously rich to obscenely rich.Most of the rest of us, on the other hand, may be excused for wondering when the good times hit, ‘cause we somehow missed it. It’s funny (hah-hah, right?), but in the go-go late 1990s, some economists were wondering whether Alan “The Second Coming” Greenspan and Robert “Token Wall Street Pseudo-Democrat” Rubin hadn’t actually killed the business cycle forever, with only good times to come for generations on end. Ironically, the subsequent decade may be considered to have posed the same question, only with a very different meaning. Given the absence of any serious recovery content in the latest alleged recovery, maybe the business cycle is dead – only not with permanent boom, but permanent bust, instead. In truth, though, we may come to look upon years like 2004 or 2005 as the good ol’ days. That’s because the second unique thing about the present downturn is the depth of down to which we may now be turning. I’m sure somebody was relieved when George Bush recently informed the country that the economic fundamentals are solid, but it sure wasn’t me. Hard as it is to imagine that this president could get something wrong or speak, uh, somewhat less than candidly, my fear is that conditions are quite the opposite of those the cheerleader-in-chief portrayed. I remember well the recessions of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. This one doesn’t feel anything like those. It seems a lot bigger. My fear is that the bottom may be falling out. My fear is that it’s the fire this time. I’m not an economist (not that economists so very often know what the hell they’re talking about either), so I will readily admit that I don’t have a lot of expertise on this question. But I will say one thing with confidence, however, even as a economics dilettante (in political science we call those people ‘angry voters’). And that is that there are incredible signs of economic thin ice almost anywhere you turn today. The national debt has never been higher. Consumer debt has never been higher. Savings have never been lower. The trade deficit has never been higher. The dollar is spectacularly weak. Foreclosures are mushrooming. Quality jobs are disappearing in droves. People are working longer to maintain the same standard of living, or often less. Employers are economizing, among other ways, by cutting healthcare benefits. Real estate values are plummeting. Sure, it’s a great time to be a bankruptcy lawyer or a repo man, but probably most of us would agree that keeping people in those two fields well employed isn’t worth the trade-off of having an economy in the toilet.George Bush has laughingly admitted that he got “gentlemen’s C’s” when he was in college (those are what the rest of us, whose daddies don’t endow library wings at Ivy League schools, refer to as F’s ), so perhaps that explains his misreading of the economy. For us folks not laughing quite so hard at his little riff out of the “Humor for Plutocrats” textbook, the real question, given the above-referenced indicators, is what in the world would it take for the Boy Wonder to finally say that the fundamentals of the economy are not sound? Does China have to start actually mailing him a monthly rental invoice for use of the White House? Does real estate have to lose fully half its value, rather than ‘merely’ 25 percent? Does the dollar need to become even more worthless than the 1930s Deutschmark for him to be concerned (“Get your wheelbarrows while they’re hot, ladies and gentlemen, right over here!”)? Or must low-hanging billionaires have to painfully downscale their lifestyles into those of impoverished multi-millionaires before he could perceive the hurt? You wanna talk fundamentals, George? Let’s talk about some really fundamental fundamentals. And, no, I don’t mean yields-per-acre, pork belly futures or worker-productivity-to-energy-input ratios, dude. There’s no question that America has historically been an industrious, innovative and hard-working country. We still are today, though the hard-working part has gotten simultaneously more hard, less rewarding, and less driven by desire for advancement than need for survival. Perhaps the paradigmatic moment of our time was Clueless George on the campaign trail in 2004, gushing over a woman he met who said she worked three jobs to keep afloat. For Bush, it was an ‘only in America’ moment – completely oblivious, as he seemed to be, that this represents almost nobody’s vision of the good life. Well, almost nobody. One imagines that Dick Cheney was smiling in the wings of that event, thinking to himself: “Once we get all of them doing that, our work here will be done!”. Nowadays, no industrialized country in the world has workers who put in more hours per year than the US. None has such a glaring absence of economic support programs as America does, either.But we’ve worked hard here, historically, like the good Protestants we are, and we’ve been technologically innovative and admirably determined in achieving our far-reaching aspirations. That’s all good stuff, but just the same, though, there’s been an undeniable dark side to the phenomenal success of the American economy. We’ve worked hard to produce a lot, true, but we’ve also – in a word – stolen a lot as well. We stole from indentured servants from the beginning. We stole from Native Americans within minutes of landing here, and never stopped until we’d grabbed all the land and resources we wanted, leaving them casinos and poverty in return. We harnessed yokes around Africans and imported them as if they were agricultural beasts of burden, and continued to do so for centuries. We built our economic accomplishments on the backs of near-slave immigrant laborers, from Chinese coolies to Mexican wetbacks, along with Irish, Italian, German, Jewish and a whole lot of other nationalities in-between. We stole fully half of Mexico following a trumped-up war no less bogus than the current one in Iraq, then we did the same for Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines and more. We broke the backs of labor movements in order to enrich a few owners while grinding ‘human resources’ into impoverishment and early death. We exploited the entire continent-and-a-half of Latin America, installing local dictators in country after country who got personally wealthy by doing the oppressive and murderous dirty work for American resource extraction corporations. We assigned to women endless domestic chores without the slightest compensation, nor political power, nor even ownership of family wealth. These are the obvious thefts – and there is no more accurate word for it – by which we’ve massively enhanced our wealth over a period of centuries. But there are less obvious ones as well. We have raped the environment for precisely the same purposes. You can get a lot wealthier a lot faster by not concerning yourself (or even paying compensation for) the environmental destruction caused by manufacturing, mining, drilling and more, than you would by having to be responsible for those very real costs of your enterprise. Economists like to gently refer to such factors as ‘externalities’. That’s a polite way to describe a process by which the rich get even richer through offloading the costs of their business to you and me, and keeping the profits for themselves.Not content with any of that, however, we’ve also lately been engaged in other, new and improved, more subtle forms of national wealth theft. Rampant consumerism based on little plastic cards is quite effective, leaving costs to others, like our children. So is – as exhausted consumerism now heads for the ditch – turning our houses into piggy banks to keep an economy artificially afloat, until that can no longer be sustained either. Or running incredible trade deficits, or radically deflating the value of our currency to keep sales of American goods abroad halfway viable. Another nice trick you can do is run up the national debt and leave that to your kids as well. You can also ignore your infrastructural repair and development needs so people can party on now, instead of paying the taxes necessary to keep the economy strong for the next generation. Talk about eating your young. One of the best of all these games over last decades has been the uninhibited agenda of economic globalization which has now managed to successfully export American white collar jobs to India, right behind the blue collar ones that previously went to China. That was supposed to make us all richer, remember? Some people indeed are. Those without jobs, or working for half what they used to make, aren’t in that small group however.What all of these ploys have in common is that they are all methods allowing one to live larger than we’re rightfully entitled to. Slavery is the most obvious example. You wanna live the good life? The most basic formula ain’t that hard to figure out. Kidnap some dude from a less technologically developed part of the world, terrorize him with overwhelming force and psychological violence to go along with the real kind, then watch as he plows your field while you sit on the porch sipping Mint Juleps. Then, repeat. This is the most obvious example, yes, but really no different in principle from ripping off your own kids with tax ‘cuts’ unaccompanied by spending cuts, which drive up the national debt and hand the next generation the bill. Plus interest. Or stealing in the form of externalizing costs for remediating environmental destruction while the eco-evildoers go off scot-free with grossly inflated profits (indeed, in some cases, these would be non-existent profits, were the real costs to have been factored in). And so on, and so on. The work of Reaganism-Bushism is nowadays finally beginning to be recognized for what it is. Americans have not felt such economic insecurity since the Great Depression. Whether the epiphany will come in time for them to finally recognize and give leave to the kind folks who dismantled the Good Times of previous generations, is unclear. A very possible scenario is that McCain barely wins in November – on the strength of fear, racism and the usual Rovian smear tactics – literally just months before economic anxiety finally crests over into newfound consciousness and rage. That would feel like a giant version of 2005, when Americans were frightened into re-electing the Little Tyrant, and almost immediately began to regret their choice. This was truly another paradigmatic moment, as Bush did his usual blustering performance, bragging about his mandate and the political capital he now planned to start spending. As he quickly found out when he tried to rip-off the Social Security system, and as his job approval ratings continued to sink until just about nobody other than a few crackers in the Texas Hill Country still thought he was doing a good job, the only mandate he had actually garnered was to be someone other than the cartoon caricature of a would-be president that Rove had turned John Kerry into (with the latter’s ample assistance). If McCain once again drags the spent and stinking carcass of kleptocratic robber baron public policy across the finish line in November, while the economy continues to deteriorate, he’ll have only two choices on coming to office. One would be to abandon his party once and for all in a sort of reverse version of the U-turn Francois Mitterrand famously executed, moving from socialism to mixed economy capitalism during the 1980s. McCain might actually relish that notion. He probably hates the crap he’s had to take from the bastards who rule his party nearly as much as the rest of us do. Plus he may know he’s a one-term president no matter what, so what’s he got to lose? And we know that he admires Teddy Roosevelt most of all the former presidents, and such a move would be right out of TR’s playbook. His other choice would be to continue to hew closely to right-wing orthodoxy while the ground disintegrates below our feet. This would surely please Grover Norquist and all the billionaires whose massive earnings are maybe off by ten percent lately (boo-hoo, fellas), but if he did this my guess is that the rest of the country might well turn on him with some caged-animal ferocity raging behind bared teeth. For reasons which still entirely elude me (though which nowadays probably have a lot to do with simply waiting it all out), the public massively disapproves of the Bush administration, but does nothing about it. My gut tells me, however, that having their hopes quashed once again as things get worse, and the guy they’ve just reluctantly chosen president continues the same destructive policies of doing nothing but making the rich richer, is a bridge too far. At the risk of mixing metaphors, I wouldn’t want to be John McCain on the day that particular dam breaks. But the bigger point is simply this. Americans historically did well by working hard, educating themselves and bringing clever innovation to the table. But for just as long they got really rich by stealing the extra wealth, whether from someone else’s labor, from their neighbors, from the environment in which we live, or from the future.What if there are no more piggy banks from which to steal? What happens if the US economy has finally hit the wall of remorseless reality, and can only produce what it can honestly produce? What happens to the American economy and American standards of living if all the gimmicks have been exhausted? The fire this time? Source: www.regressiveantidote.net/Articles/The_Fire_This_Time.html------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A Novel Approach to PoliticsFriday 08 August 2008 by: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, t r u t h o u t | Perspective ABC News's political blog, "The Note," points out this week that Paris Hilton is issuing policy statements while John McCain nominates his wife for a topless beauty contest. The world's turned upside down. Who could blame a person for thinking that chronicling such oddness is beyond the skills of simple journalists? This is a job for the novelists. Here, for example, is something straight out of Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities." Are you ready for this? The Wall Street Journal reports that, "At a time when scores of companies are freezing pensions for their workers, some are quietly converting those pension plans into resources to finance their executives' retirement benefits and pay. In recent years, companies from Intel Corporation to CenturyTel Inc. collectively have moved hundreds of millions of dollars of obligations for executive benefits into rank-and-file pension plans. This lets companies capture tax breaks intended for pensions of regular workers and use them to pay for executives' supplemental benefits and compensation." Everyone knows we've been living through one of the great redistributions of wealth in American history - from the bottom up. But this takes the cake, because our tax dollars are subsidizing this spectacular round of robbing the poor to pay off the rich. Sad to say, it's not fiction. And how about this: On the campaign trail, John McCain has been sounding like Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry, preaching the gospel of oil drilling. Sure enough, like all other evangelists, who promise heaven and pass the collection plate, the offerings roll in. The web site Campaign Money Watch reports that companies lusting to drill offshore have been raining dollars on McCain ever since he saw the light. Earlier this summer, John B. Hess, of Hess Oil, no less, convened his cronies at the ritzy 2l Club here in New York City and collected $285,000 for McCain and the Republican National Committee. And you thought those rallies recently staged in Washington for more oil drilling were just spontaneous gushers of affection from politicians who give billions in subsidies to ... big oil companies. Edna Ferber, those strike-it-rich Texas tycoons in your novel "Giant" would feel right at home. Barack Obama's more the Horatio Alger dime novel type, with his rags-to-riches backstory and his emphasis on the little people who've funded his campaign. But not so fast. This is one little David who's got a lot of corporate Goliaths on his side, too. Big oil has greased the wheels of his campaign machine - albeit far less than John McCain's - and a third of his contributions have come from donations of $1,000 or more. That translates into 112 million bucks - more, in fact, than John McCain has raised from his rich pals. And although he boasts that he won't take cash from lobbyists or political action committees registered with the feds, two-thirds of Obama's high rollers come from sectors with a keen interest in what government can giveth and taketh away - entertainment, real estate, law and securities and investments. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers; Obama's been ringing some platinum-plated doorbells. Finally, here's one to send Ayn Rand spinning: The White House projects next year's federal budget deficit at a record $482 billion, and that's not counting a possible $25 billion bailout of mortgage banks Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Or the total costs of fighting in the Middle East, largely kept in the bottom drawer where they're hard to find. Yet this week, our Government Accountability Office issued a report concluding that by year's end, the Iraqi government - the regime in power because we put them there - may have a budget surplus as high as $79 billion. Iraq, as in "war-torn" Iraq. A surplus! Seventy-nine billion after we've poured $100 billion a year into that country and more than 4,100 American lives - so far. Seventy-nine billion based on the record prices we're paying at the gas pumps, and they're not spending it on rebuilding, on getting their electrical systems back on the grid, constructing schools and hospitals and housing, making sure everyone has food and clean water. Between 2005 and 2007, the GAO report says, only 10 percent of the Iraqi budget went toward reconstruction of their own country, which means that, once again, American taxpayers have been picking up the slack - $48 billion US allocated for reconstruction costs since we rolled into Baghdad more than five years ago. By the way, that includes $33 million for a new hotel, office complex and shopping mall at the Baghdad airport. Admittedly, a lot of those billions doubtless line the pockets of American contractors who've done little if any of what they were hired to do - and endangered Iraqis and our own troops with shoddy, dangerous workmanship. But remember what former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress back in 2003, before the war? "We're dealing with a county that can really finance its own reconstruction," he said, "and relatively soon." Remember, too, what Colin Powell told President Bush before we invaded Iraq - you break it, you buy it. Julius Caesar came, saw and conquered. George W. Bush broke and bought, and we just keep paying, in money and blood, while billions of oil profits pile up in Iraq as "surplus." ------- Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday nights on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers. Source: www.truthout.org/article/a-novel-approach-politics
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