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I have believed for some time that the Summer of 2010 will be pivotal for this country's future.... it's coming... the mother of all tests...
I think they will wait for a crash, jam through a second stimulus... then tighten rates (end of summer 2010)
Get ready for shorts.... next few months may make higher gains in the market, but the eventual crash IS COMING.
Bradley chart tells all, and has matched the swings exactly in the past.... check it out.
It's a deal.... I'm looking to elk hunt this year... I have bartered in the past and it makes the most sense. The gubment won't let us privatize because they will pull our licenses to practice medicine if we don't stay within the system.
Ron Paul: Health Care Bill Could Kill The Dollar
Posted By admin On November 9, 2009 @ 9:26 am In Featured Stories | 117 Comments
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, November 9, 2009
If the Obama administration keeps its promise in guaranteeing not to raise taxes to pay for universal health care, the only way to cover the costs will be for the Federal Reserve to print even more money out of thin air, a process that will kill the dollar and lead to lower living standards for all Americans, warns Congressman Ron Paul.
In his weekly Texas Straight Talk telephone update, Dr. Paul said that Saturday night’s passage of the health care bill in Congress will lead to a further devastation of the American economy and the greenback.
The Congressman highlights the fact that the health care reform package is already twice as expensive as originally forecast and that estimates of past health care spending programs have been off by as much as 100 per cent, “So there is no telling what the actual cost will be,” states Paul, adding that government intervention has always been expensive and historically has routinely led to waste, fraud and abuse.
Paul labeled the bill “completely unconstitutional” and accused Washington of “torturing the numbers” rather than facing the truth and warned, “If health care reform does indeed pass, we should not be under the illusion that it will be free, they will have to get the money from somewhere.”
Dismissing claims that the government will get the money from cutting wage fraud and abuse, noting that this was intrinsic to government programs, Paul said that if the administration doesn’t raise taxes and premiums, “This can only then put more pressure on the Fed to print the money out of thin air,” resulting in an even greater acceleration in the weakening of the dollar.
“This new monumental pressure could very well be the straw that will break the dollar’s back,” warns Paul.
“Foreign creditors are already nervous about continuing to invest in the U.S. because of our skyrocketing debt – the explosion of debt that is certain to accompany the enactment of this national health care bill can only add to that nervousness,” said the Congressman.
Paul concluded by warning that a government takeover of health care will take a flawed system and make it “immeasurably worse”.
Listen to Dr. Paul’s comments via the You Tube clip below.
Most importantly... all capitation on awards and attorney's fees in medical malpractice cases has been REMOVED by this bill. Not one drop of Tort reform... in fact a total retreat in the other direction. As a physician I'm stuck in the middle.... a health program that does not allow me to test or fully treat patients, and when the outcome is poor... I'm left out in the wind to lawsuits.... I hope i can even stay in practice when my malpractice sky rockets, because it most definitely will.
The attorney's get their redistribution of wealth.... good luck finding a doctor because many will not afford to be able to practice. Plus, this bill explicitly overrides the states limitations and caps on lawsuits should they have them in place as they do in my state.... yup, seems real Constitutional.
I will definitely check him out.... we need some Constitutional conservatives on the playing field that can articulate the merits of accountability and responsibility to the American populace... let's hope they have not been dumbed down too far.
I have been locating food sources for the eventual dollar collapse... plus a little R & R.
These lawyers like to use language variations to basically say NOTHING...
"I'm not going to kill you, I'm just going to deprive you of your life...." Hmmm... that doesn't sound so bad.
Nice!! Ron Paul in 2012.... could not be worse than what's being offered to us so far.
German Weimar Republic in the early 1920s and the U.S. - Troubling similarities
http://www.nowandfutures.com/us_weimar.html
The German Hyperinflation, 1923
Excerpt from Paper Money by "Adam Smith," (George J.W. Goodman), pp. 57-62.
In the mid-1960s, money manager George J.W. Goodman began to write a series of irreverent and witty columns for New York magazine under the borrowed name of capitalism's founding theorist, Adam Smith. As "Adam Smith," Goodman went on to write several bestsellers about economics, the stock market, and global capitalism, among them The Money Game, Supermoney, and Paper Money, from which this account of the Weimar Republic's disastrous hyperinflation is excerpted.
Essay
Before World War I Germany was a prosperous country, with a gold-backed currency, expanding industry, and world leadership in optics, chemicals, and machinery. The German Mark, the British shilling, the French franc, and the Italian lira all had about equal value, and all were exchanged four or five to the dollar. That was in 1914. In 1923, at the most fevered moment of the German hyperinflation, the exchange rate between the dollar and the Mark was one trillion Marks to one dollar, and a wheelbarrow full of money would not even buy a newspaper. Most Germans were taken by surprise by the financial tornado.
"My father was a lawyer," says Walter Levy, an internationally known German-born oil consultant in New York, "and he had taken out an insurance policy in 1903, and every month he had made the payments faithfully. It was a 20-year policy, and when it came due, he cashed it in and bought a single loaf of bread." The Berlin publisher Leopold Ullstein wrote that an American visitor tipped their cook one dollar. The family convened, and it was decided that a trust fund should be set up in a Berlin bank with the cook as beneficiary, the bank to administer and invest the dollar.
In retrospect, you can trace the steps to hyperinflation, but some of the reasons remain cloudy. Germany abandoned the gold backing of its currency in 1914. The war was expected to be short, so it was financed by government borrowing, not by savings and taxation. In Germany prices doubled between 1914 and 1919.
After four disastrous years Germany had lost the war. Under the Treaty of Versailles it was forced to make a reparations payment in gold-backed Marks, and it was due to lose part of the production of the Ruhr and of the province of Upper Silesia. The Weimar Republic was politically fragile.
But the bourgeois habits were very strong. Ordinary citizens worked at their jobs, sent their children to school and worried about their grades, maneuvered for promotions and rejoiced when they got them, and generally expected things to get better. But the prices that had doubled from 1914 to 1919 doubled again during just five months in 1922. Milk went from 7 Marks per liter to 16; beer from 5.6 to 18. There were complaints about the high cost of living. Professors and civil servants complained of getting squeezed. Factory workers pressed for wage increases. An underground economy developed, aided by a desire to beat the tax collector.
On June 24, 1922, right-wing fanatics assassinated Walter Rathenau, the moderate, able foreign minister. Rathenau was a charismatic figure, and the idea that a popular, wealthy, and glamorous government minister could be shot in a law-abiding society shattered the faith of the Germans, who wanted to believe that things were going to be all right. Rathenau's state funeral was a national trauma. The nervous citizens of the Ruhr were already getting their money out of the currency and into real goods -- diamonds, works of art, safe real estate. Now ordinary Germans began to get out of Marks and into real goods.
Pianos, wrote the British historian Adam Fergusson, were bought even by unmusical families. Sellers held back because the Mark was worth less every day. As prices went up, the amounts of currency demanded were greater, and the German Central Bank responded to the demands. Yet the ruling authorities did not see anything wrong. A leading financial newspaper said that the amounts of money in circulation were not excessively high. Dr. Rudolf Havenstein, the president of the Reichsbank (equivalent to the Federal Reserve) told an economics professor that he needed a new suit but wasn't going to buy one until prices came down.
Why did the German government not act to halt the inflation? It was a shaky, fragile government, especially after the assassination. The vengeful French sent their army into the Ruhr to enforce their demands for reparations, and the Germans were powerless to resist. More than inflation, the Germans feared unemployment. In 1919 Communists had tried to take over, and severe unemployment might give the Communists another chance. The great German industrial combines -- Krupp, Thyssen, Farben, Stinnes -- condoned the inflation and survived it well. A cheaper Mark, they reasoned, would make German goods cheap and easy to export, and they needed the export earnings to buy raw materials abroad. Inflation kept everyone working.
So the printing presses ran, and once they began to run, they were hard to stop. The price increases began to be dizzying. Menus in cafes could not be revised quickly enough. A student at Freiburg University ordered a cup of coffee at a cafe. The price on the menu was 5,000 Marks. He had two cups. When the bill came, it was for 14,000 Marks. "If you want to save money," he was told, "and you want two cups of coffee, you should order them both at the same time."
The presses of the Reichsbank could not keep up though they ran through the night. Individual cities and states began to issue their own money. Dr. Havenstein, the president of the Reichsbank, did not get his new suit. A factory worker described payday, which was every day at 11:00 a.m.: "At 11:00 in the morning a siren sounded, and everybody gathered in the factory forecourt, where a five-ton lorry was drawn up loaded brimful with paper money. The chief cashier and his assistants climbed up on top. They read out names and just threw out bundles of notes. As soon as you had caught one you made a dash for the nearest shop and bought just anything that was going." Teachers, paid at 10:00 a.m., brought their money to the playground, where relatives took the bundles and hurried off with them. Banks closed at 11:00 a.m.; the harried clerks went on strike.
The flight from currency that had begun with the buying of diamonds, gold, country houses, and antiques now extended to minor and almost useless items -- bric-a-brac, soap, hairpins. The law-abiding country crumbled into petty thievery. Copper pipes and brass armatures weren't safe. Gasoline was siphoned from cars. People bought things they didn't need and used them to barter -- a pair of shoes for a shirt, some crockery for coffee. Berlin had a "witches' Sabbath" atmosphere. Prostitutes of both sexes roamed the streets. Cocaine was the fashionable drug. In the cabarets the newly rich and their foreign friends could dance and spend money. Other reports noted that not all the young people had a bad time. Their parents had taught them to work and save, and that was clearly wrong, so they could spend money, enjoy themselves, and flout the old.
The publisher Leopold Ullstein wrote: "People just didn't understand what was happening. All the economic theory they had been taught didn't provide for the phenomenon. There was a feeling of utter dependence on anonymous powers -- almost as a primitive people believed in magic -- that somebody must be in the know, and that this small group of 'somebodies' must be a conspiracy."
When the 1,000-billion Mark note came out, few bothered to collect the change when they spent it. By November 1923, with one dollar equal to one trillion Marks, the breakdown was complete. The currency had lost meaning.
What happened immediately afterward is as fascinating as the Great Inflation itself. The tornado of the Mark inflation was succeeded by the "miracle of the Rentenmark." A new president took over the Reichsbank, Horace Greeley Hjalmar Schacht, who came by his first two names because of his father's admiration for an editor of the New York Tribune. The Rentenmark was not Schacht's idea, but he executed it, and as the Reichsbank president, he got the credit for it. For decades afterward he was able to maintain a reputation for financial wizardry. He became the architect of the financial prosperity brought by the Nazi party.
Obviously, though the currency was worthless, Germany was still a rich country -- with mines, farms, factories, forests. The backing for the Rentenmark was mortgages on the land and bonds on the factories, but that backing was a fiction; the factories and land couldn't be turned into cash or used abroad. Nine zeros were struck from the currency; that is, one Rentenmark was equal to one billion old Marks. The Germans wanted desperately to believe in the Rentenmark, and so they did. "I remember," said one Frau Barten of East Prussia, "the feeling of having just one Rentenmark to spend. I bought a small tin bread bin. Just to buy something that had a price tag for one Mark was so exciting."
All money is a matter of belief. Credit derives from Latin, credere, "to believe." Belief was there, the factories functioned, the farmers delivered their produce. The Central Bank kept the belief alive when it would not let even the government borrow further.
But although the country functioned again, the savings were never restored, nor were the values of hard work and decency that had accompanied the savings. There was a different temper in the country, a temper that Hitler would later exploit with diabolical talent. Thomas Mann wrote: "The market woman who without batting an eyelash demanded 100 million for an egg lost the capacity for surprise. And nothing that has happened since has been insane or cruel enough to surprise her."
With the currency went many of the lifetime plans of average citizens. It was the custom for the bride to bring some money to a marriage; many marriages were called off. Widows dependent on insurance found themselves destitute. People who had worked a lifetime found that their pensions would not buy one cup of coffee.
Pearl Buck, the American writer who became famous for her novels of China, was in Germany in 1923. She wrote later: "The cities were still there, the houses not yet bombed and in ruins, but the victims were millions of people. They had lost their fortunes, their savings; they were dazed and inflation-shocked and did not understand how it had happened to them and who the foe was who had defeated them. Yet they had lost their self-assurance, their feeling that they themselves could be the masters of their own lives if only they worked hard enough; and lost, too, were the old values of morals, of ethics, of decency."
The fledgling Nazi party, whose attempted coup had failed in 1923, won 32 seats legally in the next election. The right-wing Nationalist party won 106 seats, having promised 100 percent compensation to the victims of inflation and vengeance on the conspirators who had brought it.
US Dollar As Reserve Currency Not Working Very Well
By Kris Sayce • September 10th, 2009 • Related Articles • Filed
http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/us-dollar-as-reserve-currency-not-working-very-well/2009/09/10/
Kris SayceKris Sayce began his financial career in the City of London as a broker specializing in small cap stocks listed on London's Alternative Investment Market (AIM). At one of Australia's leading wealth management firms, Kris was a fully accredited adviser in Shares, Options and Warrants, and Foreign Exchange. Kris was instrumental in helping to establish the Australian version of the Daily Reckoning e-newsletter in 2005. In late 2006, he joined the Melbourne team of the leading CFD provider in Australia.
We read with interest earlier this week a call by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development for a new global reserve currency.
Apparently the current set-up of having the US dollar as a reserve currency isn't working very well.
They're quick learners at the UN obviously!
Their report makes some of the right noises, "The dollar-based reserve system is increasingly challenged." Hmm, a slight understatement there. If "increasingly challenged" is a euphemism for "dead" then we'd agree.
But we don't think that's what they mean.
So, what do they plan replacing it with?
Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs. If you've got no idea what that means, it's simple.
An SDR is something made up by the boffins at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to act as an "international reserve asset."
The rationale for the creation of the SDR was that "the international supply of two key reserve assets - gold and the US dollar - proved inadequate for supporting the expansion of world trade and financial development that was taking place."
Look, your editor won't pretend to be a grade 'A' student of monetary theory, but to us the creation of the SDR is part of the reason the global economy is in the current mess.
That gold was deemed to be inadequate for "supporting the expansion of world trade and financial development" tells you that's when the Western world begun its massive spending spree.
Back in 1969 with the creation of the SDR.
A spending spree that couldn't be achieved just through stealing money from citizens through the tax system, but one which could only be kept going by the creation of more money.
It was, you could argue, the beginning of the 'consume, don't produce' Western economies.
The problem that SDRs 'solved' was the ability to crank up the printing press. Of course that didn't happen straight away. There's always a transition with these things.
First, as it happens, like the US dollar, the SDR was backed by gold. But if you're creating a new reserve that you want to be more flexible than gold (ie. You want to print more money and spend it), then backing it with gold isn't going to work.
Because backing a currency with gold helps to maintain the value of the paper currency. If you know that your $1 note is redeemable for a set quantity of gold then it will maintain value.
It means the banks can't - or shouldn't - create more paper money than the reserves they have in gold to back it up.
Simply put, it creates and requires discipline. Something that bankers and governments in the 1960s weren't happy with. The 'inflexibility' of gold makes it harder to for governments to spend and makes it harder for banks to lend.
Therefore the creation of the SDR was a stepping stone to abandoning the reserve status of gold. And sure enough, four years after the SDR was invented, US President Richard Nixon closed the gold window at the Federal Reserve and there was no longer any obligation for US dollars to be exchanged for a fixed weight of gold.
Instead the US dollar was backed by nothing, and so the SDR was backed by the US dollar and other currencies which were also backed by nothing.
Yet it is this 'worthless' SDR which is being touted as the new reserve currency.
But why should the SDR make any difference? It won't. An SDR is just a weighted basket of other currencies. Unless it is backed by something tangible, such as gold, then it will prove to be equally as worthless as the US dollar it is replacing.
Perhaps, bankers and governments will see the error of their ways and make a call for these new SDRs to be back by gold...
Not a chance.
There are several reasons for that. One, as I mentioned above, is that gold forces a government and its central bank to be disciplined. It cannot circulate more money without having a corresponding increase in its gold reserves.
If it were to do so then the paper money - or certificates - would not be fully backed by gold. This would cause the value of the paper to decrease - the greater supply of one thing relative to another devalues it.
If people got wind that the central bank was printing more money without increasing its reserve of gold, there would be an increased demand for physical gold. There would be a run on the banks.
The other problem gold has is an image problem. Take this comment from a recent article by Alan Kohler over at Business Spectator:
"But while there's no doubt the gold will continue to be underpinned by the demise of the dollar, it is not a currency. I can't go into JB Hi-Fi with a lump of it and buy a TV."
"Central banks around the world own about 26,000 tonnes of it, which represents 8.5 per cent of total reserves, but it's not legal tender. It's just a commodity they got stuck with because it used to be a currency a long time ago and will never be again."
It's fairly common of the attitude the mainstream press has to gold. They don't understand that it is a store of value.
Kohler claims you can't go into JB Hi-Fi and buy a TV with a lump of gold. He's quite correct on that score. But it wasn't so long ago that is effectively what consumers did. Maybe not for TVs but for other items.
Under a gold standard where your dollar was backed by gold, consumers were exchanging a gold backed dollar for goods. It was an exchange of gold for goods, only that a paper note was used as a proxy.
What's so crazy about that? Nothing.
But if you look at Kohler's other comment about 26,000 tonnes of gold being only 8.5% of total reserves it gives the game away for the real reason bankers and governments don't want a gold backed currency.
Inflation.
It's no coincidence that since the early 1970s global paper currencies have lost about 90% of their value. Virtually every currency you name is worth significantly less today than it was thirty-odd years ago.
That's not because prices have risen, it's because currencies have become devalued.
As Kohler, perhaps unwittingly admits, central banks and governments have embarked on a massive money printing exercise.
If paper money still had the backing of gold then global economies would not have one-tenth of the current problems we are currently facing.
The fact that the UN and other government organizations are proposing to replace one currency backed by nothing with another currency backed by nothing signals they are either ignorant or are intentionally pursuing policies guaranteed to deliver economic destruction.
And more importantly to you, to guarantee the continued devaluation of your money and wealth.
Dollar loses reserve status to yen & euro
By PAUL THARP
Last Updated: 3:16 AM, October 13, 2009
Posted: 1:44 AM, October 13, 2009
Ben Bernanke's dollar crisis went into a wider mode yesterday as the greenback was shockingly upstaged by the euro and yen, both of which can lay claim to the world title as the currency favored by central banks as their reserve currency.
Over the last three months, banks put 63 percent of their new cash into euros and yen -- not the greenbacks -- a nearly complete reversal of the dollar's onetime dominance for reserves, according to Barclays Capital. The dollar's share of new cash in the central banks was down to 37 percent -- compared with two-thirds a decade ago.
Currently, dollars account for about 62 percent of the currency reserve at central banks -- the lowest on record, said the International Monetary Fund.
Bernanke could go down in economic history as the man who killed the greenback on the operating table.
After printing up trillions of new dollars and new bonds to stimulate the US economy, the Federal Reserve chief is now boxed into a corner battling two separate monsters that could devour the economy -- ravenous inflation on one hand, and a perilous recession on the other.
"He's in a crisis worse than the meltdown ever was," said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. "I fear that he could be the Fed chairman who brought down the whole thing."
Investors and central banks are snubbing dollars because the greenback is kept too weak by zero interest rates and a flood of greenbacks in the global economy.
They grumble that they've loaned the US record amounts to cover its mounting debt, but are getting paid back by a currency that's worth 10 percent less in the past three months alone. In a decade, it's down nearly one-third.
Yesterday, the dollar had a mixed performance, falling slightly against the British pound to $1.5801 from $1.5846 Friday, but rising against the euro to $1.4779 from $1.4709 and against the yen to 89.85 yen from 89.78.
Economists believe the market rebellion against the dollar will spread until Bernanke starts raising interest rates from around zero to the high single digits, and pulls back the flood of currency spewed from US printing presses.
"That's a cure, but it's also going to stifle any US economic growth," said Schiff. "The economy is addicted to the cheap interest and liquidity."
Economists warn that a jump in rates will clobber stocks and cripple the already stalled housing market.
"Bernanke's other choice is to keep rates at zero, print even more money and sell more debt, but we'll see triple-digit inflation that could collapse the economy as we know it.
"The stimulus is what's toxic -- we're poisoning ourselves and the global economy with it."
New currency challenge US dollar
LEFTIST Latin American leaders agreed today on the creation of a regional currency, the Sucre, aimed at scaling back the use of the US dollar.
Nine countries of ALBA, a leftist bloc conceived by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, met in Bolivia where they vowed to press ahead with a new currency for intra-regional trade to replace the US dollar.
"The document is approved,'' said Bolivia's President Evo Morales, who is hosting the summit.
The new currency, dubbed the Sucre, would be rolled out beginning in 2010 in a non-paper form.
That move echoes the European Union's introduction of the euro precursor, the ECU, an account unit designed to tie down stable exchange rates between member states before the national currencies were scraped.
ALBA's member states are Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Dominica, Saint Vincent and Antigua and Barbuda.
The currency, which was backed in April this year, is named after Jose Antonio de Sucre, who fought for independence from Spain alongside Venezuelan hero Simon Bolivar in the early 19th century.
The bloc also called for the replacement of the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, which arbitrates international contract disputes and has probed a slew of disputes involving ALBA members and western energy firms.
Most ALBA members have already withdrawn from the organisation, with Ecuador announcing last July that it would pull out of the group.
Yesterday Bolivian media reported the country intents to nationalise a electricity distribution firm owned by Spain's Red de Electrica de Espana.
It is just the latest in a series of nationalisations in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.
In May, Venezuela nationalized 74 energy services firms operating in the oil-rich Maracaibo Lake region.
Bolivia's Evo Morales has indicated that parts for his country's energy and rail sectors will be nationalised.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/breaking-news/new-currency-to-challenge-us-dollar/story-e6freuz9-1225787799184
'Nazi Pelosi:' Health-care, D.C. demeaned
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2009/10/nazi_pelosi_healthcare_dc_deme.html
gnuk, gnuk, gnuk
The science that is being ignored to increase the cash drain on Americans... leading to our inevitable economic collapse.
Enjoy.
http://junkscience.com/Greenhouse/index.html
U.S. inflation bond demand robust amid weak dollar
Mon Oct 26, 2009 3:37pm EDT
By Richard Leong
NEW YORK, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Monday's scramble for 5-year bonds that protect against inflation suggests that investors are uneasy about the potential of rising prices as the dollar weakens and government borrowing continues to surge.
Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities are an inflation hedge because the principal and interest payments on these bonds keep pace with a pickup in inflation.
The bidding for the $7 billion worth of TIPS offered by the Treasury Department was the strongest in 12 years, data showed, while the yield gaps between TIPS and regular Treasuries widened, reflecting persistent inflation concerns in some corners of the market.
The yield gaps, known as breakevens, briefly turned negative last year on the fear of possible deflation -- a sustained period of falling prices -- rather than inflation. They have been steadily widening this year, but are still at a historically narrow level.
"It was a great auction," said Michael Pond, Treasury and TIPS strategist at Barclays Capital in New York. "It's a realization that the market may have been pricing too low for inflation."
Monday's wider breakevens, however, will unlikely worry the Federal Reserve, which will hold a policy meeting next week. The Fed is widely expected to stick to the near-zero interest rate policy it adopted last December.
Most Fed policymakers seem more concerned right now in keeping a nascent U.S. economic recovery on track. High unemployment and a fragile housing market could derail the recovery, economists say.
The Fed's tolerance about inflation comes even as the weak U.S. currency has driven up the prices of gold, oil and other dollar-denominated commodities. If the price rise is sustained, it mean eventually higher costs for U.S. producers and consumers. For details, see [ID:nN26194750]
"Breakevens are still low and there are no indications that inflation expectations are getting out of hand," Barclays' Pond said.
Five-year breakevens grew to 1.61 percent on Monday from 1.57 percent late on Friday. This meant they were performing like regular five-year Treasuries. Five-year breakevens were at minus 0.22 percent at start of the year.
The five-year TIPS offering is part of this week's record $123 billion bond supply from the U.S. Treasury Department which issued more than $1.5 trillion new debt last fiscal year.
TIPS, created back in 1997, make up about 8 percent of the $6.6 trillion in U.S. government debt outstanding, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.
Besides inflation concerns, Monday's sizzling TIPS auction results underscored increasing investor demand to diversify from regular Treasuries.
"In the beginning that was the TIPS selling point and (it) seems like the market is realizing this again today," said George Goncalves, head of interest rates strategy at Cantor Fitzgerald in New York.
The Treasury has asked bond dealers for feedback on how it should increase its issuance of TIPS amid rising demand from overseas central banks.
Rates mixed at weekly Treasury auction
(AP) – 2 hours ago
WASHINGTON — Interest rates on six-month Treasury bills rose for the second straight week in Monday's auction after nearly two months of record-lows, while rates on three-month bills fell.
The Treasury Department auctioned $29 billion in three-month bills at a discount rate of 0.075 percent, down from 0.080 percent last week. It was the lowest level since those bills averaged 0.070 percent two weeks ago.
Another $30 billion in six-month bills was auctioned at a discount rate of 0.185 percent, up from 0.170 percent last week. It was the highest level since those bills averaged 0.190 percent three weeks ago. It also marked the second straight week that rates on six-month bills rose after nearly two months of lows not seen during the half-century the government has been issuing the bills weekly.
But both three-and six-month bills remain at historically low levels, as the recession has cut demand for credit among consumers and businesses. The low rates also reflect a move by the Federal Reserve to keep a key short-term interest rate at a record low in an effort to jump-start economic activity.
The discount rates reflect the Treasury bills auctioned Monday sold for less than face value. For a $10,000 bill, the three-month price was $9,998.10, while a six-month bill sold for $9,990.65. That would equal an annualized rate of 0.076 percent for the three-month bills, and 0.188 percent for the six-month bills.
Separately, the Federal Reserve said Monday that the average yield for one-year Treasury bills, a popular index for making changes in adjustable rate mortgages, rose to 0.39 percent last week from 0.36 percent the previous week.
UPDATE 1-US Treasury schedules record $123 bln bond auction week
Thu Oct 22, 2009 12:00pm EDT
(adds quote)
By Burton Frierson
NEW YORK, Oct 22 (Reuters) - The U.S. government on Thursday announced a record volume of $123 billion worth of bond auctions next week, but there was little reaction in financial markets even though the amount of supply came at the high end of analysts' expectations.
The figure beats the previous record of $115 billion set in July and includes two-, five- and seven-year notes in tandem with an offering of previously issued five-year Treasury Inflation Protected Securities.
Analysts had expected next week's total coupon supply to come in at $121 billion to $122 billion.
"I thought it was on the heavy side but the supply for the most part has been getting taken down just because there is a lot of cash out there looking for a safe home," said Mary Ann Hurley, vice president of fixed-income trading at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Seattle.
"I think there should be some concession before the auction. No matter how you slice it even if it came in as expected it still would be a lot of supply to take down in four days."
Upside surprises came in a slightly larger-than-expected seven-year note sale of $31 billion and a chunkier TIPS offering of $7 billion.
The government will also sell $44 billion of two-year notes, and $41 billion worth of five-year notes.
U.S. Treasury debt prices took the announcement in stride, remaining steady at lower levels on the day US10YT=RR.
Investors have kept a close eye on U.S. debt auctions this year in light of the government's burgeoning budget deficit. During a brief period in May some questioned the longevity of the United States' prized AAA rating.
The U.S. budget deficit hit a record $1.4 trillion in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30 as the deep recession and a series of bank rescues cut a gaping hole in public finances.
In terms of the economy, the budgetary shortfall amounted to a massive 10 percent of total U.S. economic output, the most for any budget shortfall since World War Two, and the White House has forecast deficits of more than $1 trillion through fiscal 2011.
I really needed this laugh...
AP declared Obama “Kenyan-Born”
John Charlton
The Post & Email
October 16, 2009
What most people know is that the Associated Press (AP) is one of the largest, internationally recognized, syndicated news services. What most people don’t know that is in 2004, the AP was a “birther” news organization.
How so? Because in a syndicated report, published Sunday, June 27, 2004, by the Kenyan Standard Times, and which was, as of this report, available at
http://web.archive.org/web/20040627142700/eastandard.net/headlines/news26060403.htm
The AP reporter stated the following:
Kenyan-born US Senate hopeful, Barrack Obama, appeared set to take over the Illinois Senate seat after his main rival, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race on Friday night amid a furor over lurid sex club allegations.
This report explains the context of the oft cited debate, between Obama and Keyes in the following Fall, in which Keyes faulted Obama for not being a “natural born citizen”, and in which Obama, by his quick retort, “So what? I am running for Illinois Senator, not the presidency”, self-admitted that he was not eligible for the office. Seeing that an AP reporter is too professional to submit a story which was not based on confirmed sources (ostensibly the Obama campaign in this case), the inference seems inescapable: Obama himself was putting out in 2004, that he was born in Kenya.
The difficulty in finding this gem of a story is hampered by Google, which is running flak for Obama: because if you search for “Kenyan-born US Senate” you wont find it, but if you search for the phrase without quotes you will find links which talk about it.
For those who believe what they see, here is the screen capture of the page from the Kenyan Sunday Standard, electronic edition, of June 27, 2004 — Just in case that page is scrubbed from the Web Archive:
kenyan born
Readers should take note that this AP story, was syndicated world-wide, so you should be able to find it in major newspapers, archived in libraries world-wide. If any reader does this, please let The Post & Email know, so that we can publish a follow up-story. You can scrub the net, but scrubbing libraries world-wide is not so easy.
Hanen of Sentinel Blog Radio broke the public news of the existence of this AP story at on October 14, 2009 at 12:31 pm. However, The Post & Email can confirm that a professional investigator had uncovered this story months ago, and that certified and authenticated copies of this report, meeting Federal Rules of evidence, have already been prepared and archived at many locations nationwide.
It should be noted that on January 8, 2006, the Honolulu Advertiser also reported that Barack Hussein Obama was born outside the United States.
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2006/Jan/08/ln/FP601080334.html
A Chronology of Deceit
One can now ask an important question which has not yet been emphasized enough: “Just when did Obama begin to publically claim he was born in Hawaii?” This question is distinct from the question, “Just where in fact was Obama born?”, and from the other question, “What do official documents say about where he was born?”
Regarding his claims, we can summarize what is known:
1. As of Monday, Aug. 28, 2006, Obama’s Campaign was putting out that he was born in Hawaii. This is known from the introductory speech given by Prof. George A. O. Magoha, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nairobi, on the occasion of a speech given there by Senator Obama that day. (One presumes that the Vice-Chancellor was given notes from the Obama campaign, as is customary on such occasions)
2. From the newspaper reports above, it is clear that the Obama campaign was putting out that he was born in Kenya, or overseas, during the period of June 27, 2004, until January 8, 2006.
3. In October of 2004, during the ABC Chicago Affiliate’s broadcast of the Obama-Keyes debates, Obama openly admitted — he conceded — that he was not a natural born citizen. (C-Span aired the uncut version of the debates, which contained this exchange, in the second half of April, 2005)
4. It is known from a classmate of Obama at Harvard University, that while at Harvard, Obama at least on one occasion admitted that he was born in Kenya. (This friend went on record on a call in radio program in Idaho in early July, 2009)
If any reader can find a link which documents a claim to a birth location before Aug. 28th, 2006, which differs from this timeline or which supports it; please let The Post & Email know of it, by posting it in the comment section below.
In a follow up report, The Post & Email has published a brief analysis of the Google Newspaper archive, which shows that Obama’s story changed after June 27, 2004.
Finally, that the AP did cover this story, reprinted by the East African Standard, can be seen from the citation made to AP stories about it (Jack Ryan dropping out of the race), in the following contemporary news articles, which however are incomplete:
June 25, 2004 — http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,123716,00.html
June 26, 2004 — Bellview News Democrat
June 26, 2004 — AP Online Story by Michael Tarm
June 25, 2004 — AP Syndicated Story by Maura Kelly Lannan
(Second Source on June 26, 2009, which cites Associated Press Special Correspondent David Espo and reporter Dennis Conrad as contributors to this report)
(Third Source, The Ledger, print edition of June 26, 2009: partial republication)
Archived AP news story from 2004.... I thought he was born American? These people really don't like following our Constitution do they?
Kenyan-born Obama all set for US Senate
Sunday, June 27, 2004
Kenyan-born US Senate hopeful, Barrack Obama, appeared set to take over the Illinois Senate seat after his main rival, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race on Friday night amid a furor over lurid sex club allegations.
The allegations that horrified fellow Republicans and caused his once-promising candidacy to implode in four short days have given Obama a clear lead as Republicans struggled to fetch an alternative.
Ryan’s campaign began to crumble on Monday following the release of embarrassing records from his divorce. In the records, his ex-wife, Boston Public actress Jeri Ryan, said her former husband took her to kinky sex clubs in Paris, New York and New Orleans.
http://eastandard.net/images/current/nh-obama.jpg
Barrack Obama
"It’s clear to me that a vigorous debate on the issues most likely could not take place if I remain in the race," Ryan, 44, said in a statement. "What would take place, rather, is a brutal, scorched-earth campaign – the kind of campaign that has turned off so many voters, the kind of politics I refuse to play."
Although Ryan disputed the allegations, saying he and his wife went to one ‘avant-garde’ club in Paris and left because they felt uncomfortable, lashed out at the media and said it was "truly outrageous" that the Chicago Tribune got a judge to unseal the records.
The Republican choice will become an instant underdog in the campaign for the seat of retiring Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald, since Obama held a wide lead even before the scandal broke.
"I feel for him actually," Obama told a Chicago TV station. "What he’s gone through over the last three days I think is something you wouldn’t wish on anybody."
The Republican state committee must now choose a replacement for Ryan, who had won in the primaries against seven contenders. Its task is complicated by the fact that Obama holds a comfortable lead in the polls and is widely regarded as a rising Democratic star.
The chairwoman of the Illinois Republican Party, Judy Topinka, said at a news conference, after Ryan withdrew, that Republicans would probably take several weeks to settle on a new candidate.
"Obviously, this is a bad week for our party and our state," she said.
As recently as Thursday, spokesmen for the Ryan campaign still insisted that Ryan would remain in the race. Ryan had defended himself saying, "There’s no breaking of any laws. There’s no breaking of any marriage laws. There’s no breaking of the Ten Commandments anywhere."
—AP
http://web.archive.org/web/20040627142700/eastandard.net/headlines/news26060403.htm
Bookmark this website...
http://www.thecomingdepression.info/
Jim Rogers "Quite Sure" Gold Will Hit $2000, Dollar Will Lose Reserve Status
Posted Oct 12, 2009 09:00am EDT by Aaron Task in Newsmakers, Commodities
Related: GLD, GDX, TIP, TBT, SLV, ^DJI, ^GSPC
Famed investor Jim Rogers is "quite sure gold will go over $2000 per ounce during this bull market."
Rogers' confidence gold will continue to rally stems from a view the U.S. dollar is on its way to losing status as the world's reserve currency.
"Is it going to happen? Yes," Rogers says. "I don't like saying it [and] I'm extremely worried about it but we have to deal with the facts. America is not getting better [and] the dollar is going to be replaced just like pound sterling [was]."
Rogers didn't offer a timetable, and it's likely gold would exceed $2000 per ounce if the dollar were to lose its reserve status.
Still, "I wouldn't buy gold today," Rogers says. "I think I'll make more money in other commodities, which are cheaper," as discussed in more detail here.
Among many others, Rogers is "worried about the fact the U.S. government is printing huge amounts, spending gigantic amounts of money it doesn't have," the investor and author says. "People are very worried [and] skeptical about paper money [and] looking for places to protect themselves. The best way is to buy real assets. [That] has always protected one during currency turmoil, and it will again."
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/352044/Jim-Rogers-%22Quite-Sure%22-Gold-Will-Hit-2000-Dollar-Will-Lose-Reserve-Status?tickers=GLD,GDX,TIP,TBT,SLV,^DJI,^GSPC&sec=topStories&pos=9&asset=&ccode=
Go Ron Paul....
The Mayan calendar was limited by their own science and math.... it's their version of the year 2000 turnover problem... it means nothing. Everyone is just making up the hype.
The harvest never stops for this regime... every week they grab for more of our Freedoms and individual rights. it will make the transition "easier" for our Government if they are more in control when the dollar collapses.
Now Obama Wants to Ban Sport Fishing
More Hope and Change...
Here's Obama's latest assault on our rights-- He wants to ban sport fishing.
Obama may enjoy fishing but he won't let you.
The American Sportfishing Association reported:
A sweeping oceans and Great Lakes management policy document proposed by the Obama Administration will have a significant impact on the sportfishing industry, America’s saltwater anglers and the nation’s coastal communities. The draft policy, the Interim Report of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, issued on September 17, will govern federal Pacific and Atlantic Ocean waters and Great Lakes resource conservation and management and will coordinate these efforts among federal, state and local agencies. This past June, President Obama created the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, led by the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), to develop a draft national policy and implementation strategy for conserving and managing the United States ocean territory and the Great Lakes.
“In regards to recreational fishing specifically, it is a long-standing policy of the federal government to allow public access to public lands and waters for recreational purposes consistent with sound conservation including the nation’s wildlife refuges, national forests, and national parks and should be reflected in a national policy for the oceans and Great Lakes. In fact, the use of public resources by recreational anglers is essential to the conservation model used in this country for fish and wildlife management,” said ASA Ocean Resource Policy Director Patty Doerr.
Doerr further said, “As with any good federal policy decision, discussions about measures that may restrict public access to public resources must involve an open public process, have a solid scientific basis and incorporate specific guidelines on implementation and follow-up. We are very concerned about the abbreviated 90 day timeline which forced the Task Force to issue this policy document prematurely. The implications of such a policy are vast and nationwide. Therefore, the review process should be very deliberate and go well beyond the 30 days public review and comment period which started on September 17.” The Task Force's Interim Report is currently under a 30-day public review and comment period.
Since 1950, with the passage of the Sport Fish Restoration Act, anglers and the sportfishing industry have provided the bulk of funding for fisheries conservation and management in the United States through fishing license fees and the federal manufacturers excise tax on recreational fishing equipment. According to NOAA Fisheries, saltwater anglers contribute over $82 billion annually to the economy. Despite taking only three percent of the saltwater fish harvested each year, the recreational sector creates nearly half the jobs coming from domestic saltwater fisheries.
Dollar Devaluation A Means To Cope With Debt
Bob Chapman
The International Forecaster
October 11, 2009
The number of Americans filing first- time claims for unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest since January, a sign the labor market is deteriorating more slowly as the economy emerges from the recession.
While the figures indicate improvement, government data last week showed more job cuts than forecast for September and a rising jobless rate.
Applications fell by 33,000 to 521,000, lower than forecast, in the week ended Oct. 3, from a revised 554,000 the week before, Labor Department data showed today in Washington. The total number of people collecting unemployment insurance dropped in the prior week to the least since March.
While the figures indicate improvement, government data last week showed more job cuts than forecast for September and a rising jobless rate. President Barack Obama pledged to “explore any and all additional measures” to spur growth, as last week’s report underscored that gains in consumer spending may be hard to sustain once stimulus programs expire.
“The pace of job losses has slowed,” Steven Wood, president of Insight Economics LLC in Danville, California, said before the report. Even so, he said, mounting unemployment will mean “sluggish economic growth over the next year.”
Economists forecast weekly claims would drop to 540,000 from a previously reported 551,000, according to the median of 45 projections in a Bloomberg News survey. Estimates ranged from 530,000 to 560,000.
Continuing claims dropped by 72,000 to 6.04 million in the week ended Sept. 26 from 6.11 million in the prior week.
Nationwide, the number of long-term unemployed people hit a record 5.4 million in September, or 35.6% of the jobless.
The U.S. House approved $82.8 billion for federal nutrition programs ranging from food stamps to school lunch on Wednesday, including a plan to compensate poor families for lunches missed during flu epidemics.
The money is part of a $121 billion funding bill for the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration for the fiscal year that began Oct 1. Nutrition spending would rise by $6.6 billion from fiscal 2009, a reflection of the recession. [Pure socialism]
Measured in euros, U.S. per capita GDP is down 25% since 2000. Bond buyer Bill Gross of the Pimco fund summed up the situation nicely in a recent CNBC interview. Asked whether low interest rates will weaken the dollar, the influential allocator of global capital said: “I think that’s part of the administration’s plan. It’s obviously not announced—the ’strong dollar’ is always the policy, so to speak. One of the ways a country gets out from under its debt burden is to devalue.”
Investors have been playing this weak-dollar trade for years, diverting more and more dollars into commodities, foreign currencies and foreign stock markets. This is the Third-World way of asset allocation.
Corporations play this game for bigger stakes, borrowing billions in dollars to expand their foreign businesses. As the pound slid in the 1950s and ’60s and the British Empire crumbled, the corporations that prospered were the ones that borrowed pounds aggressively in order to expand abroad. Though British equities rose in pound terms, they generally underperformed gold and foreign equities. At the end of empire, the giant sucking sound was from British capital and jobs moving offshore as the pound sank.
From the euro perspective, the S&P peaked at 1700 in 2000, finally re-attained 1100 in the 2007 bubble, fell below 600 in March and now stands at 700 (see nearby chart). With most of the market capitalization of U.S. stocks held by Americans, the dollar devaluation has caused a massive decline in the U.S. share of global wealth.
The U.S. Commerce Department launched an investigation Wednesday into whether to impose antidumping and countervailing duties on imports of certain seamless steel pipes from China.
The State of Illinois’ pile of unpaid bills has grown to a record-breaking $3 billion. The comptroller reported corporate income tax receipts down $77 million for July through September; sales tax receipts, down $244 million; personal income tax receipts, down $251 million.
It appears destined for a taxpayer bailout in the next 24 to 36 months,” said Edward Pinto, a consultant who was chief credit officer from 1987 to 1989 for Fannie Mae.
In a sign that more banks are under great pressure from the recession, 34 financial institutions did not pay their quarterly dividends in August to the Treasury on funds obtained under the Troubled Asset Relief Fund (TARP). The number almost doubled from 19 in May when payments were last made, and also raised questions about Treasury’s judgment in approving these banks as “healthy,” a necessary step for them to get TARP funding.
“Perhaps the Treasury made assumptions that were a little bit too rosy,” says Walter Todd, who invests in banks at Greenwood Capital. “My question is also whether the Treasury is staffed adequately to handle this tremendous undertaking.”
The U.S. government ended its 2009 fiscal year with a deficit of $1.4 trillion, the biggest since 1945, the Congressional Budget Office reported.
The deficit amounted to 9.9 percent of the nation’s economy, triple the size of the shortfall for 2008.
The nonpartisan CBO said yesterday the government was squeezed on both sides of the budget ledger in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. Tax revenue fell by $420 billion, or 17 percent, to the lowest level in more than 50 years.
Individual income taxes, the biggest source of tax receipts, fell by 20 percent, the agency said. Corporate income taxes dropped by 54 percent, reflecting the slow economy. At the same time, federal spending rose by 18 percent, the CBO said. About half of the spending increase, $245 billion, was driven by the costs of bailing out the financial industry and taking over mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The spending increases and tax cuts included in the economic stimulus package approved in February added almost $200 billion to the 2009 deficit, the CBO said.
After three years of major increases in federal Pell grants for needy college students, President Obama aims to boost the aid further with $40 billion in funding over the next decade. But even that influx might not ensure that the grants will recover and sustain the purchasing power they once held.
Experts agree on the reason: soaring college costs.
In the late 1970s, the maximum Pell award covered more than two-thirds of tuition and fees for a public four-year university. In the 1980s, it covered roughly half of such expenses. In the last school year, it covered about a third.
Used vehicle prices shot to an all-time high last month, spurred by falling inventories, according to a closely watched barometer of the second-hand car business.
For those in the market for a used car, that’s not necessarily bad news, said Tom Webb, chief economist at Manheim Consulting, which produces the index of the used car market. That’s because the value of trade-in vehicles are fetching record prices, he said.
But those buying their first car or who aren’t looking to trade in a vehicle will find themselves stuck paying the higher price, Webb said.
The Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index rose 6.9% in September to a record high of 118.5. The index is adjusted for vehicle mix and seasonality. A value of 100 represents used vehicle prices in January 1995.
The index reflects the wholesale, or trade-in, value of vehicles. But Webb said retail prices move “pretty much in lockstep” with wholesale values.
The main driver behind higher used car prices is falling wholesale vehicle supply, Webb said. This summer’s wildly popular cash for clunkers program sent new vehicle sales soaring, taking dealers by surprise and clearing out inventories.
Even though new car sales dropped off in September, auto factories struggled to catch up and inventories remained low.
In addition, he blamed falling vehicle turnover from rental car companies, many of whom have taken a beating in the economic recession.
Home sellers cut their asking prices by a total of $28.4 billion to attract buyers as the real estate recovery stalled, Trulia Inc. said.
The average discount was 10 percent as of Oct. 1, the San Francisco-based real estate data provider said today. Homes listed for more than $2 million were cut the most, with owners taking an average of 14 percent off the original price. Luxury homes accounted for 25 percent of all of the reductions.
Sales of existing U.S. homes unexpectedly fell in August for the first time since March, according to the National Association of Realtors, signaling the recovery will be slow to gain speed. The median price dropped 12.5 percent from August 2008.
Consumers have to be slashing the prices of the homes they list,” Pete Flint, chief executive officer of Trulia, said in an interview. There’s a “significant inventory” of homes for sale. “You’re still going to see further price declines before the market stabilizes in 2010.
Half of the 10 states with the highest percentage of discounted homes are in the Northeast: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire and New Jersey.
A third of residences for sale in those states were reduced at least once, Trulia said. New York, California and Florida accounted for 35 percent of the total value of price cuts nationally. In Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, Wyoming, Hawaii, Utah and California, sellers have dropped an average of 13 percent off the original price, according to Trulia.
Inventories at U.S. wholesalers dropped in August for a 12th consecutive month, clearing the way for a pickup in orders as sales improve.
The 1.3 percent decrease in stockpiles was larger than anticipated and followed a revised 1.6 percent drop in July, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. Wholesale inventories have had the longest series of declines since records began in 1992. Sales climbed 1 percent, the biggest gain since June 2008.
Distributors will likely increase bookings after companies drew down inventories at a record pace in the first half of the year. The gains may give the world’s largest economy a boost in the early stages of a recovery as American factories rev up assembly lines to prevent stockpiles from dwindling even more.
[This is truly unbelievable, this is the same man that is extending the war in Afghanistan into Pakistan. It shows you how much control the Illuminati has. Next we will read the President’s dog has been made ambassador to Kenya.] U.S. President Barack Obama was named the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday: “For his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
The announcement came early this morning, and comes as President Obama is considering how much to increase troop levels in the war in Afghanistan.
As the sky hinted at dawn, U.S. soldiers went hunting for Taliban in the Arghandab Valley. They had satellite-linked monocles to display the locations of platoons. They could summon an aerial drone to buzz overhead with a surveillance camera. They could call on Kiowa helicopters for search-and-destroy missions.
On this mission, however, one of their most valuable assets was an informant: a farmer with a taste for opium.
“It all came down to one guy who said, ‘The Taliban stole my motorcycle.’ He was high, and he was pissed, and he give us the tip on where to find them,” said Sgt. Kenneth Rickman, 34, of Vandalia, Ill.
The U.S. trade deficit unexpectedly narrowed in August as exports climbed to the highest level of the year and oil imports plunged.
The gap fell 3.6 percent to $30.7 billion from a revised $31.9 billion in July, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. A rebound in auto making contributed to a jump in exports to Canada, while a drop in the number of barrels of petroleum bought abroad swamped an increase in fuel prices.
More than $2 trillion in government stimulus programs are reviving demand from Asia to Europe, ensuring American factories benefit from growing sales overseas as the dollar falls. Gains in production and the need to replenish depleted inventories mean imports will probably also grow in coming months.
“The credit crisis has forged an even larger gap between the rich and poor, though it might not last for long,” writes Ian Mathias in today’s issue of The 5. “The richest 10% of Americans made at least $138,000 each this year, according to Census data released last week. That’s a record high 11.4 times the average income for the opposite end of the spectrum: the poverty line around $12,000. Pre-crisis multiples were closer to 11.2.
“The middle class is getting credit crunched too. The median household income has fallen $1,860 over the last year – wiping out a decade of slow gains – to $50,303.
“But if history is any guide, this trend may be near its peak. At present, about a quarter of America’s total income is earned by 1% of its population (amazing, eh?). That level has only been attained once in US history – ironically, 1928, right around the start of the last economic depression. What followed then was a 50-year trend in the other direction.
America's Demise has a cheer leader...
Speaking of Alex and the Demise we await....
http://www.infowars.com/the-truth-on-the-dollar-demise/
No doubt that there is still honor left in a few... may they have the strength to see us through this.
War Criminal Obama Deserves An Oscar, But Not A Nobel Peace Prize
Paul Joseph Watson
Friday, October 9, 2009
In a world where war criminals like Tony Blair are rewarded and those that oppose war criminals, like the Iraqi shoe thrower Muntadhar al-Zeidi, are imprisoned and tortured, it comes as no surprise that another war criminal – Barack H. Obama – has been rewarded for his stoic service to imperial bloodletting with the Nobel Peace Prize.
The man who gallantly promised “change” from the Bush regime’s illegal wars and a return to diplomacy over belligerency in dealing with Iran, has perpetuated the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq while expanding another in Pakistan and becoming belligerent towards Iran.
How in anyone’s mind can such behavior constitute a move towards peace?
Obama has done nothing to dismantle the sprawling network of well over 700 U.S. military bases all over the world.
Instead of coming to an understanding with Iran over their nuclear power program, Obama gleefully read from his trusty teleprompter and crafted the hoax that the Iranian nuclear facility at Qom was an evil secret that the Iranians had kept hidden from America as part of a clandestine agenda to build nuclear weapons. In reality, Iran had followed precisely the guidelines set out by the IAEA on when to report the facility and the U.S. had known about it for several years anyway.
Obama’s slick propaganda in expressing his shock at the “discovery” of the plant was worthy of an Oscar but not a Nobel Peace Prize, since the scam has increased the likelihood of sanctions on Iran that will only accelerate the path to war.
By dutifully playing his part in this contrived hoax, Obama was mimicking the tactics of how George W. Bush sold the attack on Iraq.
As Paul Craig Roberts wrote, “By accusing Iran of having a secret “nuclear weapons program” and demanding that Iran “come clean” about the nonexistent program, adding that he does not rule out a military attack on Iran, Obama mimics the discredited Bush regime’s use of nonexistent Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” to set up Iraq for invasion.”
The fact that Obama launched himself into the role of war hawk in an effort to propagandize for belligerency towards Iran completely discredits the claim by Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland that Obama “Has been a key person for important initiatives in the U.N. for nuclear disarmament and to set a completely new agenda for the Muslim world and East-West
Obama’s acting skills in front of a teleprompter and his slick rhetoric about peace and diplomacy may look good on the surface, but the reality of what he has actually done to further the PNAC agenda for endless war underlines why the award of the Peace Prize is a sick joke.
If Obama intended to bring peace to the world, then why were his early appointments mostly neo-liberal war hawks who have a history of backing military adventurism?
If Obama is such a huge peacenik, then why has he sent 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan already, with tens of thousands more at least on the way?
If Obama plans to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq and bring peace to the region, then why has he gone back on his promise and ensured that tens of thousands of U.S. troops will remain in the country?
If Obama is so deserving of being recognized for his efforts towards peace, then why has he intensified the Bush-era missile drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan that have killed and injured countless innocent civilians?
If Obama is so interested in promoting peace, then why does he protect war criminals who have violated the Geneva Conventions from prosecution?
Beyond the meaningless platitudes served up by his fellow elitist snobs, the true hilarity of Obama receiving the prize was illustrated by just a couple of individuals who the corporate media dared to quote.
Issam al-Khazraji, a day laborer in Baghdad, told Reuters: “He doesn’t deserve this prize. All these problems — Iraq, Afghanistan — have not been solved…The man of ‘change’ hasn’t changed anything yet.”
“Liaqat Baluch, a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a conservative religious party in Pakistan, called the award an embarrassing “joke.”
“By implementing his war continuation plan, Obama will complete the work of Bush and his militarist clique,” writes author Chris Floyd, and in doing so send, “an apparently endless stream of American troops to die — and, in even greater numbers, to kill — in a criminal action that has helped bankrupt our own country while sending waves of violent instability and extremism around the world. It will further enfilth a cesspool of corruption and war profiteering that has already reached staggering, world-historical proportions.”
Floyd encapsulates perfectly why Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize award is a disgusting farce, an insult to those who really are fighting for peace in the world, and just another reminder that the Nobel Peace Prize represents little more than a gaggle of back-slapping elitists who bestow awards upon each other so that they can pose as global saviors to the public when in reality they are mostly a bunch of crooks, con-artists and deceivers.
Third Reich on Healthcare... go silver! (plug)
Active Duty Troops In Iraq Are Wearing Oath Keeper Tabs
http://www.infowars.com/active-duty-troops-in-iraq-are-wearing-oath-keeper-tabs/
Dear Senator:
You already know that the phony Baucus bill:
* Is predicated on $283 billion in phony “cuts” which have never, never ever been realized since a similar commitment to cut Medicare costs in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 — and will never, never ever be realized under the Baucus bill;
* Requires massive numbers of Americans to have government-approved insurance which the CBO predicts will be more expensive than current policies;
* Refuses to provide a cost for these policies, making it almost certain that more and more Americans will find insurance beyond their reach;
* Has no legislative language and nothing but a CBO “guesstimate” of the cost and benefits, based on a summary.
On the basis of the summary, the Baucus bill tells us virtually nothing about what kind of policy Americans will be required to purchase under penalty of law — nor the consequences. It does say that the “Secretary of HHS [Kathleen Sebelius] would be required to define and update the categories of treatments, items, and services…” within an insurance plan which would be covered in a policy constituting “required minimum health coverage.”
This could spell trouble for gun owners.
It is nearly certain that coverage prescribed by the administration will, to control costs, exclude coverage for what it regards as excessively dangerous activities. And, given Sebelius’ well-established antipathy to the Second Amendment — she vetoed concealed carry legislation as governor of Kansas — I presume she will define these dangerous activities to include hunting and self-defense using a firearm. It is even possible that the Obama-prescribed policy could preclude reimbursement of any kind in a household which keeps a loaded firearm for self-defense.
This is, of course, in addition to the certainty that minimum acceptable policies will dump my gun information into a federal database — a certainty that is reinforced by language in the summary providing for a study to “encourage increased meaningful use of electronic health records.”
Incidentally, failure to comply would subject the average family to $1,500 in fines — and possibly more for a household with older teens. And, although a Schumer amendment purports to exempt Americans from prison sentences for non-purchase of an ObamaPolicy — something which was never at issue — it doesn’t prohibit them from being sent to prison for a year and fined an additional $25,000 under the Internal Revenue Code for non-payment of the initial fines.
Please oppose the Baucus bill.
Sincerely,