Just hours after her husband Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for masterminding a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, Ruth Madoff expressed shock and dismay at her husband's behavior, telling reporters, "This is not the man I owned nine homes with."
"When you spend hundreds of millions of dollars with someone, you think you know him," she said. "I guess I was wrong."
Mrs. Madoff said she was kept "totally in the dark" about her husband's activities because he used a clever cover story: "He told me he was hiking the Appalachian Trail."
BusinessInsider.com: The International Energy Agency released its mid-year oil market report this week. It helps explain the recent behavior of oil prices.
First, demand is dropping, which is what caused the price collapse. Second, however, production is also collapsing--even faster than demand.
The other factor in the recent price increase, according to the IEA, is the weak dollar.
(Bloomberg) -- Swiss banks are shutting the accounts of Americans as the U.S. Internal Revenue Service accelerates the hunt for tax dodgers.
UBS AG and Credit Suisse Group AG, the country’s biggest banks, have told Americans to move their money into specially created units registered in the U.S., or lose their accounts. Smaller private banks such as Geneva-based Mirabaud & Cie. are closing all accounts held by U.S. taxpayers.
While the banks declined to say how many people are affected, more than 5 million Americans live abroad, including about 30,000 in Switzerland, according to estimates from American Citizens Abroad in Geneva. Swiss banks must register with the Securities and Exchange Commission to provide services for those customers.
“My bank doesn’t want to do that, so we wouldn’t accept an investment account for a U.S. person,” said Pierre Mirabaud, chairman of Mirabaud & Cie. and the Swiss Bankers Association, during a lunch at the American International Club of Geneva.
SEC registration means clients don’t enjoy the protection of Swiss banking secrecy laws, which make it a crime for money managers to disclose the names of clients without their consent.
... AND MISH EXPLAINS WHY HE MUST NOT BE REAPPOINTED!
"Bernanke is a disingenuous liar with a memory problem. He is also an economic dunce who does not understand the cause of great depression nor could he spot a housing/credit bubble visible to nearly every blogger in the country. However, like his mentor Greenspan, Bernanke believes that every problem can be cured by throwing money at it. Finally, he is a creative, political power grabbing hack who gives memorable speeches about throwing money out of helicopters."
From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they're about to do it again!
This is a revealing article from Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone magazine.
The bank's unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pump-and-dump scam, manipulating whole economic sectors for years at a time, moving the dice game as this or that market collapses, and all the time gorging itself on the unseen costs that are breaking families everywhere - high gas prices, rising consumer-credit rates, half-eaten pension funds, mass layoffs, future taxes to pay off bailouts. All that money that you're losing, it's going somewhere, and in both a literal and a figurative sense, Goldman Sachs is where it's going: The bank is a huge, highly sophisticated engine for converting the useful, deployed wealth of society into the least useful, most wasteful and insoluble substance on Earth - pure profit for rich individuals.
They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They've been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s - and now they're preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.
If you want to understand how we got into this financial crisis, you have to first understand where all the money went - and in order to understand that, you need to understand what Goldman has already gotten away with. It is a history exactly five bubbles long - including last year's strange and seemingly inexplicable spike in the price of oil. There were a lot of losers in each of those bubbles, and in the bailout that followed. But Goldman wasn't one of them.
The Liberal-Democratic wing of the ruling Establishment Party pushed through a climate-change bill that upset members of the Conservative-Republican wing of the same Establishment Party. The Republicans squawked that the voluminous bill was not even available for reading at the time of the vote, forgetting that the same complaint was offered when the Democrats were on the receiving end of the Republicans “Patriot Act” measure a few years back. That proposed legislation need not be in completed draft form seems to be no objection to either gang, as long as the general idea (”saving the planet” or “patriotism”) is the announced purpose! The details will be filled in by the day-to-day whims of a unitary president.
Perhaps bipartisan support for a fascist state could also be advanced by copying a piece of legislation enacted by another Western government. The statute in question read: “Whoever commits an action which the law declares to be punishable or which is deserving of punishment according to the fundamental idea of a penal law and the sound perception of the people, shall be punished. If no determinable penal law is directly applicable to the action, it shall be punished according to the law, the basic idea of which fits it best.”
This measure was enacted on June 28, 1935, by the government of Germany. As can be readily seen, the language is general enough not to require hundreds of pages of detailed prohibitions. It is certain to please both the green-shirts and brown-shirts in Washington, as well as members of the mainstream media who need not be troubled by reading, understanding, and analyzing arcane language. For all of the above reasons, Boobus would also cheer its enactment as a “practical” means for solving all of the nation’s ills!
Although the Great Depression engulfed the world economy many years ago, it lives on as a nightmare for individuals old enough to remember and as a frightening specter in the textbooks of our youth.
Some 13 million Americans were unemployed, "not wanted" in the production process. One worker out of every four was walking the streets in want and despair. Thousands of banks, hundreds of thousands of businesses, and millions of farmers fell into bankruptcy or ceased operations entirely.
Nearly everyone suffered painful losses of wealth and income.
Many Americans are convinced that the Great Depression reflected the breakdown of an old economic order built on unhampered markets, unbridled competition, speculation, property rights, and the profit motive. According to them, the Great Depression proved the inevitability of a new order built on government intervention, political and bureaucratic control, human rights, and government welfare. Such persons, under the influence of Keynes, blame businessmen for precipitating depressions by their selfish refusal to spend enough money to maintain or improve the people's purchasing power. This is why they advocate vast governmental expenditures and deficit spending — resulting in an age of money inflation and credit expansion.
Classical economists learned a different lesson. In their view, the Great Depression consisted of four consecutive depressions rolled into one. The causes of each phase differed, but the consequences were all the same: business stagnation and unemployment.
CHARLES SPEAKS SATURDAY AT THE VENERABLE ARIZONA BREAKFAST CLUB!
THE ARIZONA BREAKFAST CLUB - AN ARIZONA INSTITUTION FOR 40 YEARS -
WELCOMES CHARLES GOYETTE!
Saturday, June 27, 8:00 am
Join us as Charles' discusses the economy, his new book THE DOLLAR MELTDOWN - Future media plans - And Charles' opinion on everything!
The Arizona Breakfast Club 1501 West Bethany Home Road - Phoenix, Arizona 85015-2505 15th Ave and Bethany Home Road - Home Town Buffet - 8am-10am - $8.50 at the door includes food and drink.
IN FACT, THE LAPDOG PRESS NEVER BARKS... It just rolls over in the presence of power, presenting its soft underbelly at the sound of his master's voice!
Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com: For the last question at his press conference yesterday, Obama was asked by CNN's Suzanne Malveaux about his reaction to that video and to reports that Iranians are refraining from protesting due to fear of such violence. As Obama was answering -- attesting to how "heartbreaking" he found the video; how "anybody who sees it knows that there's something fundamentally unjust" about the violence; and paying homage to "certain international norms of freedom of speech, freedom of expression" -- Helen Thomas, who hadn't been called on, interrupted to ask Obama to reconcile those statements about the Iranian images with his efforts at home to suppress America's own torture photos ("Then why won't you allow the photos --").
The President quickly cut her off with these remarks:
THE PRESIDENT: Hold on a second, Helen. That's a different question. (Laughter.)
The White House Press corps loves to laugh condescendingly at Helen Thomas because, tenaciously insisting that our sermons to others be applied to our own Government, she acts like a real reporter (exactly as -- according to Politico's Josh Gerstein -- White House reporters "could be seen rolling their eyes and shifting in their seats" when Obama called on The Huffington Post's Nico Pitney, who has done some of the most tireless work on Iran, gave voice to actual Iranians, and posed one of the toughest questions at the Press Conference). The premise of Thomas' question was compelling and (contrary to Obama's dismissal) directly relevant to Obama's answers: how is it possible for Obama to pay dramatic tribute to the "heartbreaking" impact of that Neda video in bringing to light the injustices of the Iranian Government's conduct while simultaneously suppressing images that do the same with regard to our own Government's conduct?
...We’ll stick just to the claim that the "free-market system" gave rise to "monopolies." (For our purposes we can define a "monopoly" in the colloquial sense of a single or overwhelmingly dominant supplier of a good or service, since this is clearly the sense in which people who peddle this view intend it.) This is pretty much what every child is fed in our official propaganda centers, as indeed was I all through high school. Put forth in tandem with this claim are lurid tales of the so-called robber barons, who we’re told ruthlessly exploited the public to satisfy their insatiable greed – a human inclination that never seems to afflict our selfless public servants, I might add.
To be sure, no one should try to excuse those who sought to use state power to cripple their competitors. Burt Folsom made a helpful distinction between political entrepreneurs, who got ahead using underhanded tactics like this, and market entrepreneurs, who prospered because they produced what the public demanded at prices people could afford.
Andrew Carnegie almost single-handedly managed to reduce the price of steel rails from $160 per ton in the mid-1870s to $17 per ton in the late 1890s. Given the importance of steel to a modern economy, that massive price reduction yielded greater wealth and a higher standard of living for everyone. Carnegie was so efficient, in fact, that the 4000 people who worked at his Homestead plant in Pittsburgh produced three times more steel than the 15,000 workers at Germany’s Krupps steelworks, Europe’s most modern and renowned facility.
Likewise, John D. Rockefeller was able to reduce the price of kerosene from one dollar per gallon to ten cents per gallon. People could finally afford to illuminate their homes. Rockefeller also developed 300 products out of the waste that remained after the oil was refined. Claims that Rockefeller was an "unfair" competitor (whatever that means), the usual gripe of those who cannot deliver a product at prices that sufficiently please consumers, were laid to rest half a century ago in John S. McGee’s study for the Journal of Law and Economics. (John S. McGee, "Predatory Price Cutting: The Standard Oil (N.J.) Case," Journal of Law and Economics 1 [October 1958]: 137–69.)
We might also mention James J. Hill, who grew up in poverty but whose entrepreneurial skill helped make the Great Northern Railroad, which extended from St. Paul to Seattle, a major success without any government subsidies at all. In 1893, when the government-subsidized railroads went bankrupt, Hill’s line was able both to cut rates and turn a substantial profit.
Still another of the alleged robber barons was Cornelius Vanderbilt. In 1798 the government of New York had granted Robert Livingston and Robert Fulton a monopoly on steamboat traffic for thirty years. Vanderbilt was hired to run a steamboat between New Jersey and Manhattan in defiance of that monopoly. Vanderbilt evaded capture while at the same time charging only one-quarter of the monopolists’ fare.
After Gibbons vs. Ogden (1824) overturned New York’s steamboat monopoly, the fare for a trip from New York City to Albany dropped from seven dollars to three. The trip from New York to Philadelphia, which had been three dollars, fell to one dollar. Travelers going from New Brunswick to Manhattan now paid only six cents, and ate for free. When he moved his steamboat operation to the Hudson River, Vanderbilt charged a fare of ten cents, as opposed to the previous three dollars. Later he dropped the fare entirely, running his operation on the proceeds from concessions aboard the ship.
Even when his competitors had unfair advantages, Vanderbilt came out on top. Edward Collins received a government subsidy for his steamship business to provide mail delivery across the Atlantic – to the tune of $858,000 a year by the 1850s. When Vanderbilt entered the field in 1855, he outperformed Collins in passenger travel and mail delivery with no subsidy at all. Congress did away with Collins’ subsidy in 1858, and before long he went bankrupt.
Meanwhile, Vanderbilt was also outperforming two subsidized steamship lines that brought passengers and mail to California. They charged $600 per passenger per trip. The unsubsidized Vanderbilt charged $150 per passenger, and nothing to deliver the mail.
Forgive me, but I am supposed to fear and despise these benefactors of mankind why, exactly?
I have identified the next bubble. It has already begun. It is in full swing.
Investors want to identify the next big bubble. Some investors want to buy in now, maybe using borrowed money (margin loans) to make a killing. They are confident that they will sell out near the top. They won't. Other investors just want to avoid getting trapped. They prefer to let the first group bear the uncertainty of profiting from a bubble sector.
CONGRESSMAN CHARGES FED WITH COVER-UP IN B of A - MERRILL LYNCH "SHOTGUN WEDDING"
GEE, YOU DON'T SUPPOSE?
(Reuters) - The Federal Reserve sought to hide its extensive involvement and concerns about Bank of America Corp's acquisition of Merrill Lynch amid the latter's worsening financial condition, a top Republican congressman said on Wednesday.
"The committee has already learned that Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve made inappropriate threats to fire Bank of America management unless they went ahead with the 'shotgun wedding' that was the Merrill Lynch acquisition," Rep. Darrell Issa of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said in a statement released to Reuters.
"The Federal Reserve also engaged in a cover-up and deliberately hid concerns and pertinent details regarding the merger from other federal regulatory agencies," the statement said. The committee has obtained a number of emails and documents from the U.S. central bank about its behind-the-scenes role in the merger, according to sources familiar with documents.
As Americans struggle through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, this emergency supplemental appropriations bill sends $660 million to Gaza, $555 million to Israel, $310 million to Egypt, $300 million to Jordan, and $420 million to Mexico. Some $889 million will be sent to the United Nations for so-called “peacekeeping” missions. Almost one billion dollars will be sent overseas to address the global financial crisis outside our borders. Nearly $8 billion will be spent to address a “potential pandemic flu” which could result in mandatory vaccinations for no discernable reason other than to enrich the Pharmaceutical companies that make the vaccine.
Perhaps most outrageous is the $108 billion loan guarantee to the International Monetary Fund. These new loan guarantees will allow that destructive organization to continue spending taxpayer money to prop up corrupt leaders and promote harmful economic policies overseas.
Not only does sending American taxpayer money to the IMF hurt citizens here, evidence shows that it even hurts those it pretends to help.
Krugman's Waterloo Even though he won't act like it bothered him, Krugman has to know he got busted on the housing bubble quotes. Lilburne gives Krugman a li'l burn in this article:
And what about his strawman protests that he didn't cause the housing bubble, much less the Enron scandal or Kennedy's assassination? The man is willfully missing the point. What is damning about these quotes is not that he necessarily caused anything. What is devastating about them is that they expose the intellectual bankruptcy of his economic principles. Those who look up to him like the second coming of Adam Smith should realize that the neo-Keynesian principles that lead him to advocate aggressive interest-rate cuts and mammoth public spending now, are the very same principles that led him to advocate inducing a housing bubble then. He would himself affirm that his economic principles haven't fundamentally changed since then. So the conclusions and policy prescriptions he infers from them are just as wildly wrong now as they were then.
THE MONETIZATION OF EQUITY: Printing Money to Buy American Industry
Gary North on LewRockwell.com: The present economy is the result of Federal Reserve policy. Bernanke tried to pop Greenspan's bubbles, but without creating a major recession. That policy failed, as I predicted it would from late 2006 until late 2008.
The FED decided to lower the federal funds rate. This is what it has always done in the past. I predicted it would.
It also decided to swap Treasury debt for the banks' toxic assets. I did not predict this. This is Bernanke's uniquely innovative policy. But this policy has not led to a revival of bank lending. The FED is pushing on a string.
This does not mean that the FED's expansion of the monetary base is impotent. On the contrary, it means that the FED can buy Treasury debt, hold down Treasury interest rates, and enable the Federal government to buy equity in American businesses. The government can lend, as it lent TARP funds, at 5% per annum. The government can remain the spender of last resort. It can become the investor of last resort. This has already begun.
The FED knows it is pushing on a string. It loves that string. Why? Because that limp string – no commercial bank lending – delays the advent of price inflation. This has enabled the FED to achieve the following by doubling the monetary base (the FED's balance sheet):
1. Bail out the big banks (asset swaps)
2. Keep the banking system from imploding
3. Bail out the Federal government
4. Bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
5. Keep real estate from collapsing
6. Slow price inflation to close to zero
7. Keep T-bill rates under 0.5%
At what cost? Unemployed workers. That is a small price to pay if you are a high-salary central banker with a fully funded pension.
The FED's policies have not failed. They have succeeded beyond Bernanke's wildest expectations. Greenspan's bubbles are all popped. Price inflation is gone. There is no price deflation, either. For the first time since 1955, the FED has attained its mandate from Congress: price stability.
Greenspan's FED never attained the power over the economy that Bernanke's FED now possesses. The FED has been given almost complete regulatory control over the financial system. Congress buckled. Bernanke has been given a free ride. The Federal government now owns General Motors. Keynesianism is having its greatest revival in 30 years.
MILK, BUTTER, CHEESE: Prices Set to Skyrocket Next Year!
PRODUCERS SQUEEZED! CONSUMERS TO BE MILKED!
June 22 (Bloomberg) -- Dino Giacomazzi, whose great- grandfather started the Giacomazzi Dairy in Hanford, California, in 1893, said he had no choice in February but to slaughter 100 cows, or 11 percent of his herd. Rising feed prices and a world surplus meant it cost as much as $17 to produce $10 of milk.
“Producers are in an absolute state of panic,” said Giacomazzi, 40. “To spend 100 years building a dairy business and see much of that equity disappear in a year is very troubling.”
Farmers plan to shift the pain to consumers. The National Milk Producers Federation in Arlington, Virginia, will pay dairies to slaughter 103,000 U.S. cows in coming months. Milk futures prices will double next year to a record $23 per 100 pounds (43.5 kilograms) as the herd shrinks by 171,000 head, the most since 1989, said Michael Swanson, a senior economist at Wells Fargo & Co., the largest lender to U.S. farmers.
The cuts will lead to the first two-year drop in output in four decades and higher prices in 2010 for butter, cheese, milk and the non-fat dry powder that’s a benchmark for global exports, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts. Futures for delivery in September 2010 trade 56 percent above today’s prices on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
Retail butter prices may rise above the record of $3.937 a pound and cheddar cheese may top $5.097 a pound, according to Jerry Dryer, 65, the editor of the industry newsletter Dairy & Food Market Analyst in Delray Beach, Florida.
GOVERNMENT TO INSIST YOUR KIDS HAVE A PRESCRIPTION FOR CHEERIOS!
ENOUGH TO MAKE A LIBERTARIAN OUT OF YOU!
Claims for cereal, acknowledged to be accurate, make Cheerios a drug, say out-of-their-minds federal busybodies!
Washington Times: The latest verdict from the Food and Drug Administration is that Cheerios is a drug. Parents, then, must be drug pushers.
The FDA sent a warning to Cheerios maker General Mills Inc. that it is in serious violation of federal rules.
"Based on claims made on your product's label, we have determined that your Cheerios Toasted Whole Grain Oat Cereal is promoted for conditions that cause it to be a drug because the product is intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of disease" the FDA letter said. "[Cheerios] may not be legally marketed with the above claims in the United States without an approved new drug application."
If the FDA were to win its enforcement action against Cheerios, all the boxes would have to be pulled from grocery-store shelves, and children could only get their morning "fixes" with a prescription from their doctors.
Two claims on the Cheerios cereal box upset the FDA: "Cheerios is clinically proven to reduce cholesterol 4 percent in 6 weeks" and, "Cheerios can help reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, by lowering the 'bad' cholesterol."
Susan Cruzan of the FDA's press office told The Washington Times the FDA is not objecting to the fact that clinical studies do, in fact, find that Cheerios do what General Mills claims. What concerns the FDA, according to Ms. Cruzan, is, "This is a food product, and they do have a health claim."
ANOTHER CONFIDENTIAL MEMO ON BUSH-BLAIR'S SECRET PLANS TO PROVOKE WAR!
DETAILS ABOUT FABRICATING WAR INCIDENT...
A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK's role in toppling Saddam Hussein.
The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action.
Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan "to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover". Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi leader in breach of UN resolutions.
WASHINGTON — Call it son of subprime. Experts warn that a new wave of mortgage foreclosures may be coming soon and could rival the default rates for subprime mortgages and slow efforts to find bottom in a prolonged national housing slump.
The mortgages in question are $230 billion of option adjustable-rate mortgages, creative lending products that flourished at the height of the housing boom. In an option ARM, a borrower can opt to pay less than his or her monthly balance due, and the difference is tacked onto the outstanding loan balance.
Many experts had expected an explosion of defaults in the springtime on these roughly 564,000 outstanding mortgages. However, interest rates dropped to historic lows, and that delayed the detonation of what many housing analysts still see as a ticking time bomb.
"They're probably going to default at a rate that makes subprime look like a walk in the park," warned Rick Sharga , senior vice president for RealtyTrac, a foreclosure research firm in Irvine, Calif.
One always can count on the New York Times to lie about the role of the state, and the Times especially goes bonkers when those lies involve guns. Today, long-time columnist Bob Herbert manages to take a government-caused massacre and lay it at the feet of “right-wing crazies”:
There was a wave of right-wing craziness along those lines during the Clinton administration. Four federal agents were killed and 16 others wounded in 1993 during an attempt to serve a search warrant at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex., where a stockpile of illegal machine guns had been amassed. The subsequent siege ended disastrously with a raging fire in which scores of people were killed.
In the aftermath of Waco, the N.R.A. did its typically hysterical, fear-mongering thing. In a fund-raising letter in the spring of 1995, LaPierre wrote: “Jack-booted government thugs [have] more power to take away our Constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us. …”
Of course, as we have seen in the documentary about Waco, it did not exactly occur the way that Herbert says. However, since Herbert did not approve of the Branch Davidians, then they deserved to be shot and immolated. Yes, this is a columnist from that “civil-liberties-loving” NYT where lies abound. From the denial of the Ukraine famine to the predations of Michael Nifong, one can count on the NYT to be out front with the Big Lie.
On Jan. 27, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Congress, "The spigot of defense funding opened by 9/11 is closing." Right after Gates' defense budget was released on May 7, the Pentagon's comptroller, Robert Hale, confirmed to the press: "The spigot is starting to close." A closing spigot implies less money, but the new 2010 defense budget shows quite clearly that the spigot is not closing; it's stuck - full on. Not counting the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon's annual appropriations for 2009 were $514 billion. For 2010, Gates is requesting $534 billion. The flow is to increase by $20 billion.
Comptroller Hale also told the press, "We don't have a plan be yond 2010." He said there would not be one until after the Defense Department completes its review of strategy, programs and policy - the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).
Actually, there is a plan for the out-years "beyond 2010." It's in the budget that President Barack Obama approved and sent to Congress that same May 7.
“A beam of enlightened thinking in a sea of delusional complacency.”
—Nouriel Roubini
How did our great country, a bastion of capitalism, devolve into a Bailout Nation where gains were privatized and losses were socialized? What turned us into a nanny state for well-paid bankers? Barry Ritholtz examines these questions and much more in BAILOUT NATION: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy by Barry Ritholtz (May 2009; $24.95; 978-0-470-52038-3).
A top economic blogger and media commentator, Barry Ritholtz provides a searing indictment of the U.S. financial and political establishment, in what is certain to be the definitive book on the financial crisis of 2008. As Rex Nutting of Marketwatch said, “Ever since the housing bubble started to unravel, Ritholtz’s blog has been a must-read, not only for his sharp analyses, but also for his highly entertaining rants against the stupidity of our biggest financial institutions, both public and private. Now Ritholtz brings the same intelligence and moral outrage to BAILOUT NATION, where we discover that the only thing crazier than the housing bubble is the government’s bumbling attempts to keep the damage contained.”
Ohhhhh Paul Krugman..... Why do you always have to hurt my brain so much? In all honesty, I have committed far too much time to Paul Krugman over the past several months. I've read his blog posts somewhat regularly, and as such, I've been exposed to far more nonsense than any human should legitimately or willingly submit to. Yet here I am again, compelled to blow even more of my life on the diminutive yet disturbingly egotistical professor.
For those of you who aren't particularly aware of the Krugman, he is a blogger for the New York Times and is their resident "expert" on economics. He also won the Nobel memorial prize in Economics a few years back for his work in International Trade - which I haven't read but I hear is actually rather worthwhile, and pro-free trade/anti-protectionism... Which is weird given that his political proclivities run entirely the other direction. But of course, you can't fair very well with actual, legitimate peer-review in economics if you only write partisan hackery... Fortunately for Krugman however, that's the New York Times' specialty... Art, Reason, and Liberty blog
"One of the funny aspects of being a somewhat, um, forceful writer is that I'm regularly accused of all sorts of villainy. I was personally responsible for the demise of Enron; my nonexistent son worked for Hillary; etc.. The latest seems to be that I called for the creation of a housing bubble." Krugman
Mark Thornton at the Mises blog has caught up with him HERE.
THERE'S ONLY ONE PARTY. I CALL IT THE WASHINGTON PARTY!
THESE ARE OBAMA'S WARS NOW!
On Monday the Democrat controlled House voted 226-202 to approve a rushed $106 billion dollar war spending bill, guaranteeing more carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan (and lately Pakistan)...
No longer can the blame for the turmoil in Iraq and Afghanistan rest at the feet of George W. Bush alone. This is now Obama’s War on Terror, fully funded and operated by the Democratic Party.
All this begs a few questions: If not now, when exactly will Obama’s policies be scrutinized with the same veracity that Bush’s were? When will the media end its love affair with Obama and hold his feet to the fire like they did Bush once the wheels fell off the war in Iraq?
... If these questions are not answered soon, we are in many more years of war and bloodshed, funded by US taxpayers and approved by a Democrat controlled White House and Congress.
THE MYSTERY OF THE SMUGGLED $134.5 BILLION U.S. BEARER BONDS!
IT IS AN IMPORTANT STORY... AND THEREFORE NEGLECTED BY THE LAPDOG PRESS!
Given that the discovery of $134.5 billion of bearer bonds in the suitcases of two Japanese nationals in Chiasso, Italy on the border of Switzerland qualifies as one of the largest smuggling operations in history, and given the various implications of such an act and the possible players involved, the silence regarding this huge story is simply stunning. It is not a huge story, per se, because of the counterfeiting operation, because accusations and revelations of massive money counterfeiting operations have occured in the past. It is a huge story, rather, due to all the inconsistencies of the story and the potential explanations that could explain these inconsistencies. The larger story at hand is, who are the players (nations) involved, and what was the intention of this likely counterfeiting operation?
The Federal Reserve, already arguably the most powerful agency in the U.S. government, will get sweeping new authority to regulate any company whose failure could endanger the U.S. economy and markets under the Obama administration's regulatory overhaul plan.
The final plan due to be released on Wednesday -- which originally aimed to streamline and consolidate banking and securities regulation in one or two agencies -- now is expected to sidestep most jurisdictional disputes and simply impose across the board standards to be applied by all financial regulators, according to administration and industry sources.
The most likely candidate for elimination is the Office of Thrift Supervision, whose failure to detect and forestall problems at Countrywide, IndyMac, Washington Mutual and other freewheeling mortgage lenders is thought to have contributed to the financial crisis.
"What we're trying to do is focus on the things that were at the core of the problems we saw in the crisis," said Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner at a Time Warner Economic Summit in New York on Monday.
THE LONG-TERM DECLINE OF THE IRANIAN THEOCRACY HAS BEEN SET IN MOTION...
... AND PAT BUCHANAN SAYS THE OBAMA POLICY OF EXTENDING IRAN AN OPEN HAND IS WORKING!
For the Iranian theocracy has just administered a body blow to its legitimacy in the eyes of the Iranian people and the world.
Before Saturday, the regime could credibly posture as defender of the nation, defiant in the face of the threats from Israel, faithful to the cause of the Palestinians, standing firm for Iran’s right to enrich uranium for peaceful nuclear power.
Today, the regime, including the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is under a cloud of suspicion that they are but another gang of corrupt politicians who brazenly stole a presidential election to keep themselves and their clerical cronies in power.
What should we do now? Wait for the dust to settle.
No U.S. denunciation of what took place in Iran is as credible as the reports and pictures coming out of Iran. Those reports, those pictures are stripping the mullahs of the only asset they seemed to possess – that, even if fanatics, they were principled, honest men.
Karen Kwiatkowski, LewRockwell.com: On his 85th birthday, corporate son, Vice President, President, father of our second Great Leader after FDR and before Obama, plane jumper, former CIA Director, and Bonesman George H.W. Bush has become as honest as a babe.
According to a recent bubbly and adoring news article in the Washington Times, "When asked directly whether the CIA lies "all the time," Mr. Bush said it does not.
The CIA does not lie all the time.
So there.
I recently read Russ Baker’s Family of Secrets, because Lew interviewed Russ Baker and it sounded great. The book delivers, although I suspect there are a lot of Bush family secrets that remain unexposed. I am personally curious about any Bush secret recipes on the back burner back in March 1981. As history, the Wikipedia version of the Reagan assassination attempt reads like a CIA moonlighter’s script for a movie of the week.
Baker’s research led him back to the days of the JFK assassination, where HW, or "Poppy" Bush was not where he said he was, after all these years. You’ll have to read the book for a real, and real interesting, lesson in modern American democracy.
During the "wide-ranging" interview Poppy gave to the salivating Washington Times, he had shared this observation:
I think people are alarmed now. There's too much government intervention into everything – putting people on the boards of directors. Too much. And too much spending," Mr. Bush said. "I think people are, you know, understandably concerned about some of the things that are going on now.
Non-interventionist conservatives, libertarians, historians, economists, and thinking people everywhere have been "alarmed" for decades, and most today have realigned portfolios, gotten passports, and planned their bug out locations. So what "people" are alarmed now, according to Poppy? Apparently, Poppy’s friends and cohorts who aren’t getting picked to lead the interventions. What people are "understandably concerned?" Apparently, Poppy’s friends and cohorts who aren’t getting invited to sit on the fasci-boards as either the government partner or the corporate partner.
Poppy also doesn’t believe the rumors that the GOP is dead. What the GOP needs, Poppy suggested, is a good dose of his good son, Jeb, who just got back from a "‘listening tour’ with other prominent Republican leaders as part of a new party effort dubbed a ‘Conversation for a New America.’"
I am not making this up.
Poppy’s good son Jeb believes that listening to good ideas and alternative voices will help the GOP recover power. Good ideas and alternative voices from everyone except those from the only activated and vibrant remnant of the GOP – Paulians who embrace the idea of a constitutional republic.
Krugman writing about (and in) the 2001 recession: "A few months ago the vast majority of business economists mocked concerns about a ''double dip,'' a second leg to the downturn. But there were a few dogged iconoclasts out there, most notably Stephen Roach at Morgan Stanley. As I've repeatedly said in this column, the arguments of the double-dippers made a lot of sense. And their story now looks more plausible than ever.
The basic point is that the recession of 2001 wasn't a typical postwar slump, brought on when an inflation-fighting Fed raises interest rates and easily ended by a snapback in housing and consumer spending when the Fed brings rates back down again. This was a prewar-style recession, a morning after brought on by irrational exuberance. To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble." Krugman NYT
"Even if you don't have the authorities -- and frankly I didn't have the authorities for anything -- if you take charge, people will follow."
- Henry Paulson
George Will, Washington Post: Last September, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson testified to the Senate that TARP money was necessary for ailing "financial institutions." Nowhere in the bill's 169 pages was there any reference to government funding of "automobile" or "manufacturing" companies. In November, Paulson told a House committee: "I've said to you very clearly that I believe that the auto companies fall outside of [TARP's] purpose." Then advocates of a Detroit bailout proposed legislation to authorize that. It failed. So President Bush's Treasury Department gave an "interpretation" of the law that ignored the unambiguous terms of the pertinent legislation, the history of its enactment and Treasury's own prior interpretations of it.
IT'S A PRETTY SLOPPY CASE OF ELECTION THEFT WITH AHMADINEJAD GETTING ROUGHLY THE SAME VOTE TOTAL IN ALL OF IRAN'S DIVERGENT PROVINCES!
Near closing time of the polls, mobile text messaging was turned off nationwide Security forces poured out into the streets in large numbers
The Ministry of Interior (election headquarters) was surrounded by concrete barriers and armed men National television began broadcasting pre-recorded messages calling for everyone to unite behind the winner
The Mousavi campaign was informed officially that they had won the election, which perhaps served to temporarily lull them into complacency But then the Ministry of Interior announced a landslide victory for Ahmadinejad
Unlike previous elections, there was no breakdown of the vote by province, which would have provided a way of judging its credibility
The voting patterns announced by the government were identical in all parts of the country, an impossibility
Less than 24 hours later, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene`i publicly announced his congratulations to the winner, apparently confirming that the process was complete and irrevocable, contrary to constitutional requirements
Shortly thereafter, all mobile phones, Facebook, and other social networks were blocked, as well as major foreign news sources.
All of this had the appearance of a well orchestrated strike intended to take its opponents by surprise – the classic definition of a coup. Curiously, this was not a coup of an outside group against the ruling elite; it was a coup of the ruling elite against its own people.
IN HIS LAST MAGIC ACT $700 BILLION VANISHED IN A PUFF OF SMOKE!
Poof!
Federal Reserve boss Ben Bernanke is getting ready to pull another rabbit out of his hat and he's hoping no one figures out what he's up to. Here's the scoop; the Fed chief needs to "borrow up to $3.25 trillion in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30" (Bloomberg) without triggering a run on the dollar.
But, how? If the stock market keeps surging, investors will turn their backs on low-yielding US Treasuries and move into riskier securities hoping for better returns. The only way to attract more buyers to US debt is by raising interest rates which will kill the "green shoots" of recovery and make it harder for people to buy homes and cars. It's a conundrum.
In the next year, China will buy roughly $200 billion T-Bills while the oil-producing states and the rest of the world will add about $300 billion to their cache. That leaves more than $2 trillion for the domestic market where cash-strapped investors are likely to avoid government debt like the plague. So, who's going buy that mountain of low-yield government paper?
Jacob Hornberger, Future of Freedom Foundation asks why the Pentagon and the CIA are opposing the release of photographs that depict the torture and sex abuse of prisoners and detainees while in their custody.
Although the basis for their objection is “national security,” Hornberger arrives at a different conclusion:
"They’re keeping those photos secret not only to protect the people who actually committed these horrendous acts from criminal prosecution but also to protect themselves from an outraged citizenry whose consciences might be pierced and who just might demand full and complete official investigations and accountability."
WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE REAL WORLD TO FOOD PRICES?
FINANCIAL TIMES: After a year worrying about the piggy bank, the world economy is turning its attention to the cupboard.
Almost unnoticed, agricultural commodities prices have returned to levels last seen at the start of the 2007-2008 food crisis, prompting concerns about a fresh rise in food costs.
The increase in soyabean, corn and wheat prices - to their highest level in eight to nine months and up more than 50 per cent from their December lows - comes on the back of strong Chinese demand, a forecast of lower supply due to reduced planting, and the impact of a drought in Latin America.
Argentina's crops have been devastated.
"Agricultural markets are fairly nervous," says Sudakshina Unnikrishnan, an agricultural commodities analyst at Barclays Capital in London.
"We are not in the comfortable food surplus environment of the 1980s and 1990s."
The price of soyameal - critical for fattening livestock such as chickens and hogs - has moved above $405 a tonne, a level only seen for a brief period in 1973 and during four weeks at the peak of last year's crisis.
The rise has pushed the price of ready-to-cook chicken in the US to the highest in a decade.
Traders say hedge funds and other big institutional investors, including sovereign wealth funds from the Middle East, have poured money into the agricultural market, helping to drive commodities prices higher as the US dollar weakens.
Madam Speaker, before voting on the "cap-and-trade'' legislation, my colleagues should consider the views expressed in the following petition that has been signed by 31,478 American scientists:
"We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.''
Circulated through the mail by a distinguished group of American physical scientists and supported by a definitive review of the peer-reviewed scientific literature, this may be the strongest and most widely supported statement on this subject that has been made by the scientific community. A state-by-state listing of the signers, which include 9,029 men and women with PhD degrees, a listing of their academic specialties, and a peer-reviewed summary of the science on this subject are available at http://www.petitionproject.org/. Read the rest...
THEN READ THIS! The Life and Lonely Death of Noah Pierce
Noah Pierce’s headstone gives his date of death as July 26, 2007, though his family feels certain he died the night before, when, at age twenty-three, he took a handgun and shot himself in the head. No one is sure what pushed him to it. He said in his suicide note it was impotence—a common side effect of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It was “the snowflake that toppled the iceberg,” he wrote. But it could have been the memory of the Iraqi child he crushed under his Bradley. “It must have been a dog,” he told his commanders. It could have been the unarmed man he shot point-blank in the forehead during a house-to-house raid, or the friend he tried madly to gather into a plastic bag after he had been blown to bits by a roadside bomb, or—as the fragments of Noah’s poetry might lead you to believe—it could have been the doctor he killed at a checkpoint.
IT'S GOTTEN TO THE POINT THAT EVEN THE U.S. GOV'S HOUSE ORGAN, THE NEW YORK TIMES, IS WRITING ABOUT IT!
"America’s Sea of Red Ink Was Years in the Making!" (NOW they tell us!)
NYTimes: There are two basic truths about the enormous deficits that the federal government will run in the coming years.
The first is that President Obama’s agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying. The second is that Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested.
Jeffrey Tucker: Elgin Groseclose, an eminent monetary economist in the 20th century, rips the roof off the Federal Reserve in this wonderful history that takes us from the Fed's founding to the 1960s. He shows that the gap between the promise and the reality is shockingly massive, so much so that the Federal Reserve must be considered one of the greatest failures in the history of public policy.
My first thought when reading this book was: who these days has time for this in-depth level of research? Thanks goodness someone did it, because I've not seen what he digs up repeated in any other source. Groseclose was meticulous, having spent many years culling through the archives of every institution and person involved with Fed decision-making. In case after case, he chronicles the policy failure, and the relentless decline in money's quality from the Fed's inception and forward.
Groseclose is a case of a major figure in 20th century economic thought who has been unjustly forgotten. After his PhD (American University) he taught at the City College of New York and became the first financial editor of Fortune and served as a financial consultant to Iran, helping to restore a gold standard after the war and controlling inflation. For many years, he ran his own institute, which permitted him time to do the extraordinary research you find in this book.
As just one example, the opening chapters unearth an editorial from the New York Times, which denounces the idea of the Fed as an example of the "shallow sophistries of (Theodore) Roosevelt Socialism," and further said that the American people are too intelligent and have too much common sense to put up with a central bank like the Fed. So not only was there opposition to the Fed, it had a voice and its predictions of a coming calamity turned out to be right on.
He shows that at no time in its history has the Fed actually achieved what it promised: low inflation, economic stability, stable growth, reliable regulation of the banking system. Groseclose goes further to show that the Fed has generated unrelenting cycles and inflation and been the major fuel for the growth of government – politicizing the whole of American economic life.
It is a great pleasure for the Mises Institute to be able to bring back this book, which contains singular research and will provide outstanding source material for a new generation of anti-Fed activists.
As a side benefit, the cover art of this book – though you can't see it in this photo – is actually built by thousands of tiny paper dollars. It is $15 in the Mises store. Check it here.
STRAIGHT OUT OF THE TWILIGHT ZONE; Fed Intends to Hire Lobbyist in Campaign to Buttress Its Image.
MISH'S Eight Step Program to Improve the Fed's Image
"Before a drug addict or alcoholic can be helped, the first step is to admit there is a problem. With that in mind, I propose the following 8 step image improvement program."
The lessons our leaders didn’t learn from the Vietnam War!
Andrew Bacevich, The American Conservative: The dirty little secret to which few in Washington will own up is that the United States now faces the prospect of perpetual conflict. We find ourselves in the midst of what the Pentagon calls the “Long War,” a conflict global in scope (if largely concentrated in the Greater Middle East) and expected to outlast even General Palmer’s “Twenty-Five Year War.” The present generation of senior civilians and officers have either forgotten or inverted the lessons of Vietnam, embracing open-ended war as an inescapable reality.
To apply to the Long War the plaintive query that Gen. David Petraeus once posed with regard to Iraq—“Tell me how this ends”—the answer is clear: no one has the foggiest idea. War has become like the changing phases of the moon. It’s part of everyday existence. For American soldiers there is no end in sight.
Yet there is one notable difference between today and the last time the United States found itself mired in a seemingly endless war. During the Vietnam era, even as some young Americans headed off to Indochina to fight in the jungles and rice paddies, many other young Americans back on the home front fought against the war itself. More than any other event of the 1960s, the war created a climate of intense political engagement. Today, in contrast, the civilian contemporaries of those fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan have largely tuned out the Long War.
The predominant mood of the country is not one of anger or anxiety but of dull acceptance. Vietnam divided Americans; the Long War has rendered them inert.
ERIC MARGOLIS: – On the fourth day of the 1967 Arab Israeli War, the intelligence ship "USS Liberty" was steaming slowly in international waters, 14 miles off the Sinai Peninsula. Israeli armored forces were racing deep into Sinai in hot pursuit of the retreating Egyptian army.
"Liberty," a World War II freighter, had been converted into an intelligence vessel by the top-secret US National Security Agency, and packed with the latest signals and electronic interception equipment. The ship bristled with antennas and electronic "ears" including TRSSCOMM, a system that delivered real-time intercepts to Washington by bouncing a stream of microwaves off the moon.
"Liberty" had been rushed to Sinai to monitor communications of the belligerents in the Third Arab Israeli War: Israel and her foes, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.
At 0800 hrs, 8 June, 1967, eight Israeli recon flights flew over "Liberty," which was flying a large American flag. At 1400 hrs, waves of low-flying Israeli Mystere and Mirage-III fighter-bombers repeatedly attacked the American vessel with rockets, napalm, and cannon. The air attacks lasted 20 minutes, concentrating on the ship's electronic antennas and dishes. The "Liberty" was left afire, listing sharply. Eight of her crew lay dead, a hundred seriously wounded, including the captain, Commander William McGonagle.
At 1424 hrs, three Israeli torpedo boats attacked, raking the burning "Liberty" with 20mm and 40mm shells. At 1431hrs an Israeli torpedo hit the "Liberty" midship, precisely where the signals intelligence systems were located. Twenty-five more Americans died.
Israeli gunboats circled the wounded "Liberty," firing at crewmen trying to fight the fires. At 1515, the crew were ordered to abandon ship. The Israeli warships closed and poured machine gun fire into the crowded life rafts, sinking two. As American sailors were being massacred in cold blood, a rescue mission by US Sixth Fleet carrier aircraft was mysteriously aborted on orders from the White House.
An hour after the attack, Israeli warships and planes returned. Commander McGonagle gave the order: "prepare to repel borders." But the Israelis, probably fearful of intervention by the US Sixth Fleet, departed. "Liberty" was left shattered but still defiant, her flag flying. Read the rest... LewRockwell.com
Congressional Democrats are proving themselves to be as stupid as the Republicans. According to the Associated Press, the Democrats have reached agreement to appropriate another $100 billion to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of the year. What are the Democrats thinking? The federal budget for this year is already 50 per cent in the red.
A bankrupt government that has to send its Treasury Secretary begging to China thinks it can spend limitless amounts in a futile effort to control the culture, mores, and political system of distant Afghanistan....
Since Fed Chairman Bernanke announced his plan to purchase $1 trillion in mortgage and Treasury bonds in order to help the housing market with low interest rates, interest rates have risen. When will the Fed remember that printing money does not lower long-term interest rates?
Treasury Secretary Geithner is another economic incompetent. He told China that he stood for a “strong dollar,” but that China should let its currency appreciate relative to the dollar, which, of course, would mean a weaker dollar. He simultaneously told China that their investments in US Treasury bonds were safe.
His Chinese university audience, being economically literate, laughed at Geithner. It apparently did not dawn on the US Treasury Secretary that if Chinese money is rising in value relative to the US dollar, the value of Chinese investments in dollar-denominated US Treasury bonds is falling.
- Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration.
It’s the end of the world as the Greater Depression hits after 2010’s failed “W-recovery”
Human Events had the opportunity to interview forecaster extraordinaire Gerald Celente, President of Trends Research Institute, several days ago -- and the future he predicts looks bleak indeed. In fact, as Mr. Celente sees it, the Great Depression will seem like a mild recession as what waits for us in 2011 hits with the force of a Katrina financial hurricane.
In case you’re wondering who Mr. Celente is (if this is still possible), he’s appeared -- along with his predictions -- on Oprah, CNBC, Reuters, NBC, PBS, BBC, the Glenn Beck Show -- the list goes on an on. His Trends Report has been successfully predicting the major future trends impacting our lives for 3 decades, including calling the dot com crash back in the 1990's.
Mr. Celente's forecast on our impending future is based on his study of history. He says we are bent on destroying our currency, bankrupting our government, and unleashing a violent citizen-against-citizen eruption as the economy collapses into chaos and martial law fascism.
Quite a claim. And God help us if he is right -- again. Human Events
As they drafted his speech to the Muslim world, delivered in Cairo on Thursday, President Obama’s speech writers strove to suggest that cordiality towards Islam is soundly embedded in America’s cultural history. The first Muslim congressman, Obama confided to his vast audience across the Muslim world, was sworn into the House of Representatives with his hand on Thomas Jefferson’s copy of the Koran.
No names were mentioned, but this would have been Keith Ellison of Minnesota, a Democrat elected in 2006. On his victory night rally the local crowd shouted “Allahu Akhbar!”. During the race Ellison understandably downplayed past associations with the Nation of Islam. Obama also reminded the world that Morocco had been the first nation to recognize the infant United States, signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, which declared in its preamble that the United States had no quarrel with the Muslim religion and was in no sense a Christian country. The second US President, John Quincy Adams said that America had no quarrel with Islam.
It’s a stretch. As my father Claud said, Never believe anything till it is officially denied. Adams and Jefferson both saw it as a vital matter of national security to settle accounts with the Muslim world, as represented by the Barbary states... Alexander Cockburn, CounterPunch.org
Clusterstock.com: PIMCO's Bill Gross joins the chorus of folks concerned that our exploding deficits are leading us down the road to ruin.
The key questions here are:
"Who is going to lend us the $2 trillion a year necessary to fund this spending?" and What interest rates are they going to demand to do it?"
It used to be China who was lending us the money, but China's getting queasy, and our borrowing has now exploded far beyond what they are willing to lend.
Lots of folks, including Ben Bernanke and Bill Gross, think that one reason interest rates are spiking is that lenders are demanding higher rates of return in anticipation of all the borrowing we're going to have to do (and what that will do to the country's balance sheet). The typical way out of this problem is high inflation, which is why many economists are expecting that, too.
Tillman's mother says general lied again about his death!
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The latest explanation for why Pat Tillman's Silver Star citation failed to mention that friendly fire killed the former NFL star in Afghanistan is another lie by the U.S. military, Tillman's mother said Tuesday.
Mary Tillman was responding to remarks made Tuesday by the general nominated to lead Allied forces in Afghanistan, who apologized before a Senate committee for his role in the matter.
Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he helped expedite the Silver Star award for Tillman before confirming that the Army corporal was killed by friendly fire in 2004.
Tillman's family has long complained that the memorial service, which included the Silver Star presentation, deliberately avoided mention of fratricide.
McChrystal acknowledged the problem Tuesday, calling it a mistake. He said the Silver Star citation was "not well-written" but denied any intent to mislead.
Mary Tillman said McChrystal knew at the memorial service that her son died from friendly fire.
"McChrystal was lying," she said of his comments Tuesday. "He said he didn't know for certain Pat was killed by fratricide. That isn't true in and of itself, but the fact is, it doesn't matter whether he knew it for certain."
Army protocol at the time required families to be told of possible fratricide, whether or not it had been confirmed, she said.
She also criticized Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the ranking Republican on the committee, who questioned McChrystal on Tuesday, for "playing dumb" by not following up on McChrystal's explanation.
"If the Army chain of command didn't know what happened to Pat, why did it present us with a false story" at the memorial service? Tillman asked. "That is not an error; that is not a misstep; that is deliberate deception. McCain was at Pat's service. He was read a false narrative like the rest of us. Where is his outrage? Did he know all along?"
CONGRATULATIONS RANDY JOHNSON ON WIN NUMBER 300!!!
WASHINGTON -- The emotions finally flowed for Randy Johnson when the final out was made.
A hug for his son, who was serving as batboy. Hugs for every teammate, plus a really big one for his manager. The game ball presented to his wife as his three daughters beamed with pride. A news conference that lasted a half-hour from a player who usually doesn't have much to say. Someone even spotted a smile.
The Big Unit admits he can come across as surly, and he did his best over the past few weeks to downplay his pursuit of 300 wins. Once he got there -- with a steady, six-inning performance in the San Francisco Giants' 5-1 victory over the Washington Nationals on Thursday -- he was free to express that, yes, it really is a big deal.
"I think it kind of hit me when I walked on the field," Johnson said. "It's a long-range achievement. It's not a one-game or a one-year achievement, it's a career achievement. Who knows how many teammates I've had over my 21 years, but they had a great deal to do with my success. I'm going to think about this for a long time."... ESPN
... LIFE FOR MOST AMERICANS WILL BECOME TRULY STRESSFUL!"
Paul Craig Roberts, Counterpunch: What happens to the dollar will be the key driver of what lies ahead. The likely scenario could be nasty.
America’s trading partners do not have large enough trade surpluses to finance a federal budget deficit swollen to $2 trillion by gratuitous wars, recession, bailouts, and stimulus programs. Moreover, concern over the dollar’s future is causing America’s foreign creditors to seek alternatives to US debt in which to hold their foreign reserves.
According to a recent report in the online edition of Pravda, Russia’s central bank now holds a larger proportion of its reserves in euros than in US dollars. On May 18 the Financial Times reported that China and Brazil are considering bypassing the dollar and conducting their mutual trade in their own currencies. Other reports say that China has increased its gold reserves by 75 per cent in recent years.
China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, has publicly expressed his concern about the future of the dollar. Arrogant, hubris-filled American officials and their yes-men economists discount Chinese warnings, arguing that the Chinese have no choice but to support the dollar by purchasing Washington’s red ink. Otherwise, they say, China stands to lose the value of its large dollar portfolio.
"Bernanke's no fool; he knows his strategy won't work."
What to do? Eventually the Fed chief will arrive at the conclusion that there's only two ways out of a credit bust of this magnitude; either raise rates and crush the economy or print more money and face a funding crisis. Either way, there's a world of hurt ahead.
Last week's sudden rise in Treasury yields indicates that Bernanke is nearing the end of the line. The benchmark 10-year T-bill zoomed to a 6-month high of 3.75 percent. Investors want better returns for lending their money to Uncle Sam. That means that funding the multi-trillion dollar deficits will get harder and harder. Bernanke can purchase more long-bonds and keep interest rates low, but investors will see that he's monetizing the debt and head for the exits. Or he can raise rates to attract foreign capital and risk putting the struggling economy into a death spiral. Either way, the consequences will be dire.
On the heels of the most recent economic crisis, America is headed toward another: high inflation and dollar devaluation. The signs are clear: Federal debt is compounding while growth has stalled, and America’s foreign creditors are questioning the dollar’s reserve currency status. Meanwhile, the “hidden” federal debt, much larger than the official debt, makes things even worse.
But the good news, according to Charles Goyette, is that those who are prepared can protect themselves—and even profit—in this new era. Drawing on historical examples and a clear, down-to-earth analysis, he explains the importance of gold, silver, and other alternative investments when inflation takes off. He also gives readers the investing tools to protect their savings and capitalize on the opportunities ahead.
Savvy readers don’t have to be left holding the bag after decades of government irresponsibility.
Two years ago, Chicago Police Officer Anthony Abbate -- a gelatinous Kuiper Belt Object-sized "public servant" who, using the same kind of legerdemain federal bookkeepers employ in low-balling the budget deficit, lists his weight as 250 pounds -- was caught on video delivering a drunken beating to a 115-pound female bartender named Karolina Obrycka.
After the drunken Abbate -- a member of the Chicago PD's corruption-saturated Special Operations Section -- was told that he was cut off for the evening, he became foul-mounted and abusive and threw a garbage can.
It was at that point that Obrycka, displaying more fortitude than an entire platoon of Chicago's "Finest," got into Abbate's face and tried to escort him from the bar before anyone got hurt or any damage was done. (According to one account, she actually intervened to prevent Abbate from beating up a male bar patron.)
At one point, Abbate lost his footing, and then quickly lost what remained of his self-control.
Infuriated, Abbate threw Miss Obrycka to the floor and pummeled her mercilessly while several nominally male bar patrons conspicuously declined to come to her aid.
From the personal blog of economist Robert P. Murphy:
I am not claiming in this brief post that "evolution is bunk" or that the Genesis account is the literal history of the six days of creation. What I am saying is that you will never find such open-ended, anything-goes theorizing in any scientific field other than evolutionary biology.
Consider this article (HT2LRC) on why we bald men are actually very attractive to young women:
Although many scholars have tried to identify a useful function for human hairlessness, they have failed. Indeed Alfred Wallace, the biologist who jointly described evolution with Darwin, concluded that our hairlessness proved the existence of God. Only a supernatural being, unconcerned with natural selection, could have designed it.
But Darwin showed that hairlessness was proof of a different type of evolution, not by natural selection but by sexual selection. Under natural selection, individuals survive if they are adapted to their environments: a brown bear, being conspicuous, would not last long in the Arctic, so it evolves into a polar bear. Sexual selection is not concerned with the environment but with sex: individuals breed only if they find a mate, so animals have to attract one. Consider the peacock.
OK so already we're in trouble. The guy is going to use the example of a peacock's plumage to prove why we lost our hair. (!!)
If that were the end of the story, I might say some wise aleck remark like, "If the guy were trying to explain why women had such lush manes, compared to the meager covering of the males, then it might make sense to bring up the peacock." But I can't go that route, because the "scientific Darwinian" story gets even more convoluted:
We human beings, too, are highly selected sexually, but in our case it is women who are the peacocks: the more beautiful they are, the greater the number and quality of the men who court them. This is why, some 75,000 years ago, we made our last two evolutionary advances: we lost our body hair and we invented art....
Art and hairlessness co-evolved because they fed off each other. The girl whose skin was least hairy could paint it, tattoo it, decorate it and clothe it more adventurously than could her furry sisters. So she got more and better men. And in consequence her children - even the males, though to a lesser degree - lost their hair too. We had become the naked ape.
OK, you got that? Remember, the whole point of this story is to explain why older men with thinning hair are actually attractive to young women (despite the myths that Rogaine and others would have you believe, and despite all those male models with full heads of hair). So to do that, the story starts out with why evolution made women lose their (body) hair, which then caused their male offspring to lose their (body and scalp?) hair, even though the original motivation (sexual selection a la the peacock) never caused female baldness to become prevalent.
To repeat, I am not saying the above story is impossible. What I am saying is that the exact opposite outcome--namely, a trend of female baldness and men with much thicker hair--would have been a far more natural fit to the proferred Darwinian mechanism.
You see this all the time in pop evolutionary biological accounts, where a plausible Darwinian story is deployed when it just as easily (indeed, often more easily) could have been deployed to fit the reverse set of facts. And a lot of the people who lap this stuff up, would be the first to denounce the non-falsifiability of unscientific Intelligent Design stories.
Sexual selection is the ultimate Get Out of Jail Free card for Darwinian theories. "What, that feature makes absolutely no sense and could only hurt the survival fitness of a creature? Well, the females must be turned on by vulnerability. You've seen Beaches right?"
UPDATE: OK I went back and re-read the article, and it seems that maybe the guy just took 85% of his space to discuss something completely irrelevant to male pattern baldness. In other words, he might have been offering the above story just to motivate the connection between human hair and sexual selection. When it comes to male pattern baldness, here is the scientific hypothesis:
Men have evolved to attract women. Because only some men go bald, we must assume that different women are attracted differently. Some women will be attracted to young men, but young men are untried and therefore risky, so some women will seek sugar daddies instead. Mating with sugar daddies invokes a different set of risks but the trophy wife is nonetheless making a rational choice - one that may well have been rewarded preferentially in the Stone Age - to which she is in part guided by baldness in her man.
Ah OK, we "explain" male pattern baldness as a response to sexual selection pressures. So why haven't all men gone bald? Ah, we "must assume that different women are attracted differently." Apparently conditions in one part of the African savannah favored sugar daddies, but in another part there were trees that yielded giant coconuts to the guys with full heads of hair and who knew how to dance really well.
I'm so glad we have abandoned faith and superstition, and now embrace Reason and Science. Bob Muphy's blog
JIM ROGERS: S&P COULD GO TO 50,000; DOW TO 1,000,000...
... IF THE DOLLAR IS INFLATED TO WORTHLESSNESS!
While he's negative on US assets -- he says he's gotten rid of all of his dollars, for the most part -- he advises against shorting this market.
"It's a bear market rally. I was going to say I don't think S&P 500 will see new highs. But I have to quickly temper that by saying against the dollar because the S&P 500 could triple from here if they print enough money and the value of the US dollar collapses, then S&P could go to 50,000, Dow Jones can go to 1,00,000.
Which is one reason why I am not shorting stocks right now. Because there is a possibility of this sort of a thing. There is a possibility that stocks could go through unheard of levels, but would be in worthless currency."
I'm not even going to bother linking to a post; any reader for more than a month knows that I am expecting significant price inflation in 2010, and I think we will see it kicking in later this year. (If people want to link to my specific predictions in the comments, feel free.)
For a while I was mad because I thought Paul Krugman would be able to explain away what happened, in case I am right. But in a recent column Krugman leaves no wiggle room at all. After going through the economic analysis of why there's no inflation risk right now, Krugman says:
All of this raises the question: If inflation isn’t a real risk, why all the claims that it is?
Well, as you may have noticed, economists sometimes disagree. And big disagreements are especially likely in weird times like the present, when many of the normal rules no longer apply.
But it’s hard to escape the sense that the current inflation fear-mongering is partly political, coming largely from economists who had no problem with deficits caused by tax cuts but suddenly became fiscal scolds when the government started spending money to rescue the economy. And their goal seems to be to bully the Obama administration into abandoning those rescue efforts.
So he has no wiggle room at all. If he's accusing the people who predict inflation of doing so just to discredit Obama, then Krugman EITHER
(a) believes there is no intellectually defensible reason to predict high inflation right now, and hence that's why they must be saying it,
OR
(b) knows full well there is a risk of inflation--Krugman is a sharp guy after all--and he is himself engaging in political spin.
So if I'm right and large price inflation comes by the end of 2009, this column alone will prove that Krugman either botched his macroecon big time, or he is a character assassin. We'll let him choose, if and when the time comes. Bob Murphy's blog
Chris Hedges: War exposes the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves. It rips open the hypocrisy of our religions and secular institutions. Those who return from war have learned something which is often incomprehensible to those who have stayed home. We are not a virtuous nation. God and fate have not blessed us above others. Victory is not assured. War is neither glorious nor noble. And we carry within us the capacity for evil we ascribe to those we fight.
CHENEY FINALLY ADMITS NO LINK BETWEEN SADDAM HUSSEIN AND 9/11
... and the best he can come up with is, "It turned out not to be true."
"I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11. We had that reporting for a while, [but] eventually it turned out not to be true," Cheney conceded.
Perhaps he could at least call Hannity, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Kristol, McCain, Fox News, the War Street Journal, the NYTimes, the Washington Post, and all the other war enablers who have not yet come to terms with reality!
There's a big controversy in Detroit over whether or not GM should move from it's too-expansive, too-expensive downtown HQ in the Renaissance Center. GM's newly-expanded (and now half-empty) Tech Center is nearby, in Warren. The mayor of Warren has offered GM tax abatements to make the Tech Center its permanent home. The Tech Center is the hub of GM's auto engineering and design operations.
From a purely financial standpoint, GM, a bankrupt company that would be liquidated without the government's welfare, cannot afford to stay in the Renaissance Center. But in Detroit, this quickly becomes a race issue - like all else. Leaving Detroit always = racism. The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece stating that Obama, who is not running GM, called Detroit mayor Dave Bing and assured him that the White House fully supports GM's stay in Detroit. A quote from the piece:
We don't know whether GM should stay in Detroit. But we do know that the location of a company's headquarters is one of those decisions typically not made by people who are busy not running the company.
Indeed, the White House is so busy not running GM that Obama started making business decisions for the company, based on preference politics, the night before he announced the bankruptcy.
You are going to have to get used to the fact that you will have to spend a greater proportion of your income on food in the future – after decades of spending less.
That's according to Joakim Helenius, chairman of Trigon Agri, an integrated soft commodities producer in the Ukraine and Russia. He believes that food inflation has only just started – and he is not alone.
Commodities perma-bull Jim Rogers thinks people should not buy shares – he says they should buy commodities instead, especially agricultural commodities.
"I can think of very few industries in the world where the fundamentals are getting better. But the fundamentals of commodities are getting better, full stop," Rogers told CNBC last month.
The price of most commodities has jumped significantly this year, as the global economy slowly stutters toward recovery. The Standard
GEITHNER SAYS CHINA'S DOLLARS SAFE - STUDENTS LAUGH!
BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Monday reassured the Chinese government that its huge holdings of dollar assets are safe and reaffirmed his faith in a strong U.S. currency.
"Chinese assets are very safe," Geithner said in response to a question after a speech at Peking University, where he studied Chinese as a student in the 1980s.
His answer drew loud laughter from his student audience, reflecting skepticism in China about the wisdom of a developing country accumulating a vast stockpile of foreign reserves instead of spending the money to raise living standards at home.
China is the biggest foreign owner of U.S. Treasury bonds. U.S. data shows that it held $768 billion in Treasuries as of March, but some analysts believe China's total U.S. dollar-denominated investments could be twice as high.
Congressional Democrats are proving themselves to be as stupid as the Republicans. According to the Associated Press, the Democrats have reached agreement to appropriate another $100 billion to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of the year. What are the Democrats thinking? The federal budget for this year is already 50 per cent in the red. 
FED, TREASURY HAVE NO PLAN AND ONLY ONE OPTION!
... LIFE FOR MOST AMERICANS WILL BECOME TRULY STRESSFUL!"
"Bernanke's no fool; he knows his strategy won't work."
... IF THE DOLLAR IS INFLATED TO WORTHLESSNESS!
IT'S SO BAD THAT...
CHENEY FINALLY ADMITS NO LINK BETWEEN SADDAM HUSSEIN AND 9/11
Karen DeCoster at Lew Rockwell Blog: 
BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Monday reassured the Chinese government that its huge holdings of dollar assets are safe and reaffirmed his faith in a strong U.S. currency.
