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Friday 11.04.2011

Gold targets $2350 as Wave 5 begins, $1680 critical
By David Banister - CommodityOnline.com
It’s been several weeks since I’ve written about Gold and we have had a wild ride since the $1910-$1920 highs in August. At the time as we approached I forecasted a major correction was due and we were shorting the rise from $1862-$1910 prior to a huge $208 drop that took place over just a few days. We covered our short at $1725 and then Gold rallied back to a double top at $1920 and then fell back to $1531.
That pullback to $1531 qualifies as a Fibonacci retracement of the 34 month rally from $681 to $1920, and would also qualify for a price low for a 4th major wave correction. My initial targets for the Gold pullback were $1480-$1520 if the $1650 area was violated. Most recently we have seen Gold run up to 1681 which is another Fibonacci resistance zone a few times and then back off to the low $1600’s.

US Mint's gold bullion coin sales at lowest level in October
WASHINGTON (Commodity Online): The United States Mint witnessed lowest monthly sales of the year in OCtober while Silver bullion sales remained at elevated levels. However, silver bullion coin sales marked a decline from the strong numbers of the previous month.
The United States Mint offers 22 karat American Gold Eagles in one ounce, half ounce, quarter ounce, and tenth ounce sizes. Their other gold bullion option is the 24 karat American Gold Buffalo coins available in one ounce size only. For the month, total sales across all options reached 62,500 ounces. This was comprised of 46,000 one ounce Gold Eagles, 12,500 one ounce Gold Buffaloes, and the balance in fractional Gold Eagles.

G-20 Urges EU to Quell Crisis as Greece Teeters
By Simon Kennedy and Henry Meyer - Bloomberg.com
World leaders expressed impatience and irritation with Europe’s inability to defeat its two-year financial crisis as they urged swift resolution for the sake of the global economy.
With Greece's debt-ridden government at risk of collapsing as soon as today, Group of 20 chiefs meeting in Cannes, France, yesterday pushed European authorities to flesh out and enact a week-old rescue plan that has already shown signs of unraveling.
"We are grappling with a lack of confidence in markets that leaders will act," Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said in the French seaside resort. "It is therefore very important for leaders to act."

Greece Hold’em – Calling Papandreou’s Bluff
BY RYAN PUPLAVA CMT - FinancialSense.com
Note: Texas Hold'em is a high-stakes poker match consisting of five shared cards dealt on the table, the first three called "the flop", the fourth referred to as "the turn", and the fifth as "the river". With each consecutive move, as the stakes increase, a number of players are often eliminated along the way.
The Flop
As most of our readers are well aware by now, Papandreou shocked the markets on Monday, at about 2:00 p.m. EST, by announcing plans to hold a confidence vote and a subsequent referendum on the Eurozone debt deal as a last resort to build support within his government. (Trying to pass the buck, huh?) The reason for the dodge: further austerity measures would likely result in more social chaos in Greece. The uncertainty rippled through financial markets this week. Papandreou thought he’d play his hand in the Greek bailout politics but later in the week, his bluff was called.

Greek Leader Calls Off Referendum on Bailout Plan
By RACHEL DONADIO and NIKI KITSANTONIS - NYTimes.com
ATHENS — In a tumultuous day of political gamesmanship, Prime Minister George A. Papandreou called off a referendum on Greece’s new debt deal with the euro zone on Thursday after winning a measure of support from his opposition and managing to repair, at least for a day, a major rupture in relations with Europe.
The decision to abandon his idea of holding a popular vote on the European debt deal did not end the political turmoil here; Mr. Papandreou still faces a rebellion in his own Socialist Party and the fury of some opposition figures, and he will have to weather a difficult confidence vote on Friday. But talk of a possible unity government eased international fears of immediate new elections and a looming default if he did not survive in office, cheering markets in Europe and abroad.

Greek PM Papandreou 'ready to drop' bailout referendum
BBC.co.uk
Greek PM George Papandreou has said he is ready to drop a proposed referendum on the country's eurozone bailout deal.
He said he was focusing on talks to secure opposition support in parliament which would make the vote unnecessary.
His announcement of a referendum angered European leaders and sent shockwaves through its markets.
The main opposition has called for his resignation and snap elections, and walked out of a debate in parliament ahead of a confidence vote on Friday.
Mr Papandreou's Socialist party (Pasok) holds a slim majority in parliament, 152 out of 300 seats.

Whispers of Return to Drachma Grow Louder in Greek Crisis
By LANDON THOMAS Jr. - NYTimes.com
The political upheaval in Athens has suddenly made the once unspeakable — Greek debt default — a distinct possibility.
So now it is time to ponder the once unthinkable: that Greece might end its 10-year use of the euro and return to its former currency, the drachma.
Such a move is still officially anathema in Athens. But a growing body of economists argues that it would be the best course, whatever the near-term financial and economic implications. And now, with a referendum on the European-led bailout facing Greek voters, a vocal minority that has long called for a return to the drachma might find itself with a growing group of listeners.

Greece has to exit the Euro or hang itself
NEW YORK (Commodity Online): The possibility of a return to the drachma has raised its head after Papandreou said a referendum on Europe’s rescue package will confirm Greece’s membership of the Euro.
There are increasing calls in Greece for a return to the drachma – polls show 33% in favour of a return to the Greek drachma at this time.
The fact that it is impossible for Greece to regain competitiveness while clinging to the Euro is becoming increasingly evident. Prominent economists such as Nouriel Roubini, as well as investor George Soros have said as much and influential voices in Greece are now questioning the wisdom of clinging to the Euro.
In short, either Greece has to exit the Euro and if they do not do that, they will be hanging themselves.

Papandreou Struggles to Hold on To Power
By Maria Petrakis and Natalie Weeks - Bloomberg.com
Prime Minister George Papandreou struggled to hold on to power after Greece’s largest opposition party rebuffed his overtures to form a national government, raising the prospect of elections that could delay aid needed to prevent default.
Opposition leader Antonis Samaras rejected sharing power with Papandreou and called on the premier to quit. Papandreou, 59, scrapped a referendum on an accord with the European Union to avert a split in his party before a confidence vote scheduled for midnight tonight.
"I never excluded any topic from the discussion, not even my own position," Papandreou told lawmakers in Parliament. "I am not tied to a particular post. I repeat I am not interested in being re-elected but just in saving the country."

Greece PM Papandreou faces fresh call to resign
BBC.co.uk
Greece's centre-right opposition has demanded Prime Minister George Papandreou resign, throwing into disarray plans for a unity government.
Opposition leader Antonis Samaras also called for snap elections before leading his MPs in a dramatic walkout of parliament.
Mr Papandreou's government faces a crucial confidence vote on Friday.
He earlier said that opposition support could mean dropping controversial plans for a referendum on an EU bailout.
Mr Papandreou had faced a rebellion in his governing Socialist party (Pasok) over the proposed referendum, which sent markets into turmoil.
The BBC's Gavin Hewitt in Athens says Greece had seen 24 hours of political horse trading and power struggles.

Obama's Reelection Could Hinge on Greece
As he attends the G-20 summit in Cannes, the president has added incentive to prevent European debt from slowing the U.S. recovery
By George E. Condon Jr - TheAtlantic.com
There is no Cannes primary on the U.S. political calendar. But what happens in the south of France over the next two days while President Obama is at the G-20 Summit may have as much to do with his political fate in 2012 as anything happening in Iowa or New Hampshire. From his first meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, which will happen a little after 4 a.m. EDT Thursday, until he departs for home Friday afternoon, the president will be focused on a worsening European crisis that threatens to complicate his own reelection.

BNP Paribas Writes Down Greek Debt as Earnings Slump
BY DAVID JOLLY - NYTimes.com
PARIS — BNP Paribas, France’s largest bank, reported a sharp decline in its third-quarter profit on Thursday and said it was writing off 60 percent of the value of its holdings of Greek debt, a belated acknowledgment that the loans were largely unrecoverable.
The bank, based in Paris, said it was setting aside about 2.1 billion euros ($2.9 billion) of the value of its Greek sovereign debt, while also writing down about 116 million euros of exposure to Greek corporate bonds.
BNP said it was also moving to reduce its exposure to the debt of troubled European governments, selling 1.9 billion euros worth of Greek sovereign debt, 8.2 billion euros of Italian debt and 2.5 billion euros of Spanish debt, more than $16 billion.

Berlusconi Arrives at G-20 'Empty-Handed'
After Vowing Economic Overhaul
By Lorenzo Totaro - Bloomberg.com
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi arrived at today’s Group of 20 summit with pressure mounting on him to overhaul Italy’s economy after European leaders for the first time raised the prospect of the euro area splintering.
Berlusconi is going "to Cannes empty-handed," Il Sole 24 Ore, Italy’s leading financial daily, said in a front-page editorial. The Cabinet last night only agreed on a "mini-plan" to fight the debt crisis, rather than accelerating a promised economic revamp through an emergency decree, the Milan-based newspaper said.
Italy's 10-year bond yield rose to a euro-era record today after Berlusconi's Cabinet only included some promised measures in an amendment to a spending bill that Parliament must pass this month. The amendment will be presented next week and the government will seek a confidence vote on the bill, an Italian government official told reporters in Cannes, France.

Solutions from a CFR globalist...

6 Ways That World Governments
Can Address the Global Economic Crisis
Ideas for the G-20 meetings in Cannes today
By Stewart M. Patrick, senior fellow - Council on Foreign Relations
Leaders of the Group of Twenty (G20) meet on the French Riviera this week, but their stay on the Cote d'Azur will be anything but relaxed. The world economy is in deep trouble again, plagued by sovereign debt crises in Europe and the United States, persistent global imbalances and currency misalignments, low growth and stubborn unemployment in developed countries, and inflationary pressures in emerging economies. A year ago at Seoul, the G20 seemed finally poised to transition from an emergency crisis committee to a global economic steering group. The Cannes summit finds the G20 once again at the heart of the maelstrom, in full crisis-management mode.
The narrowed Cannes agenda reflects this reality. When France assumed the G20's rotating presidency a year ago, President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed a sweeping summit agenda. Paris' ambitions included an overhaul of the international monetary system and comprehensive "global governance reform"--including enlargement of the UN Security Council.

Corzine Forgot Lessons of Long-Term Capital
By Roger Lowenstein - Bloomberg.com
Thirteen years ago, when the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management was desperately negotiating with Wall Street banks for a bailout, Jon Corzine, the chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), called John Meriwether, LTCM’s founder, and read him the riot act. Wall Street would invest, Corzine said, but "JM" would have to accept more controls, including strict supervision over his firm’s trading limits.
Corzine, I wrote soon after, "understood the flaws" at LTCM better than anyone. The firm had no controls over risk limits, no accountability to anyone who wasn't a trader.
Corzine was also tempted by the upside of high-risk trading -- and by Meriwether in particular. Perhaps his admiration for Meriwether didn’t begin when they were classmates at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, in the early 1970s, but it blossomed soon after, when Corzine became a bond trader at Goldman and Meriwether one at Salomon Brothers.

THE WHOLE AGENDA RADIO SHOW GUESTS
BOB CHAPMAN AND STEVE LENDMAN

SEC Said to Review Possible Insider Trading in MF Bonds
By Joshua Gallu and Shannon D. Harrington - Bloomberg.com
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is reviewing trades inMF Global Holdings Ltd. (MF) convertible bonds to determine whether some investors sold the debt based on confidential information before the firm’s demise, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Investigators are in part focusing on trades that were made ahead of announcements that the firm’s credit rating had been downgraded, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the matter isn’t public.

With few options, Fed turns to 'jawboning'
By John W. Schoen, Senior Producer - MSNCB.com
With little ammunition left in its armory, the Federal Reserve has entered the "jawboning" phase of its campaign to spur stronger economic growth.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his fellow policymakers emerged from a two-day meeting to declare they planned no major changes in their policy of using low interest rates to get the job and housing markets back on track. In a statement, the Fed pointed to a recent improvement in the outlook but warned that the recovery is still very fragile.

Get Ready for Another Big Bailout
BY DOUG HORNIG - FinancialSense.com
Thanks to an outpouring of complaints and a reversal of similar plans by major competitors, Bank of America finally canceled its plan to start charging customers a $5 fee to use their debit cards for purchases. The plan had particularly rankled those who contend that it had nothing to do with covering legitimate expenses and everything to do with covering bad bets that the bank has made in other areas. (The amount the bank charges merchants for its service is about three times what it actually costs to process a transaction.)

Dollar Holds Two-Day Decline Versus Euro
Before Reports on U.S. Employment
By Candice Zachariahs and Monami Yui - bloomberg.com
The dollar held a two-day drop versus the euro before data forecast to show U.S. jobs growth slowed and the unemployment rate was unchanged, supporting the case for the Federal Reserve to consider monetary easing.
Europe’s common currency climbed versus the greenback yesterday, paring this week’s drop, after Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou signaled he won’t call for a referendum on a bailout plan. The yen is set for its first five-day drop against the dollar in three weeks after Japan on Oct. 31 sold its currency to curb appreciation.
"If you get a better-than-expected payrolls result, but it’s not good enough to bring the unemployment rate down, then that will probably keep expectations that there may be further policy easing down the track alive," said John Kyriakopoulos, Sydney-based head of currency strategy at National Australia Bank Ltd. That "tends to hurt the U.S. dollar," he said.

The End of the Credit Card?
A new app called Card Case
foretells a world without cash and plastic
By Farhad Manjoo - SilverBearCafe.com
Paying for stuff with your phone sounds awesome until you stop to think about it. It seems like every major tech company, including Google, is touting the fact that we'll soon be able to buy anything and everything by waving our phones against a pay pad. Wait a second: Why is this supposed to be any better than pulling out a credit card? It's not faster, it's not more convenient, and it's not any safer. Plus, many phones - and most stores' pay pads - don't yet have the necessary "near-field communication" chips required for these sorts of transactions, so the whole idea is kind of a fantasy anyway.
I pointed out this flaw several months ago, and I still haven't heard any good argument for why we should be paying for stuff with our phones. Sure, I'd like to ditch my wallet, and I'd love if old-school shops and services (like buses and parking meters) stopped requiring cash. But if we're going to adopt some new way of paying, shouldn't we choose something with obvious advantages over how we do things now?

Canadian Dollar Rises
as Greece Scraps Referendum,
Buoying Demand for Risk
By Chris Fournier - Bloomberg.com
Canada’s dollar rose for a second consecutive day after Greece signaled that it won't hold a referendum on its financial rescue, encouraging demand for higher-yielding assets.
The Canadian currency advanced earlier versus its U.S. counterpart as the European Central Bank lowered its benchmark interest rate and Group of 20 leaders discussed a bigger role for the International Monetary Fund in the European debt crisis. Canadian government bonds fell for a second day.
"People are feeling a little bit more comfortable with the outlook for the markets," said Kathy Lien, director of currency research at the online trading firm GFT Forex, by phone from New York. "They’re relieved to see one of the major uncertainties eliminated,” she said, referring to the referendum. "That’s why the Canadian dollar is trying to climb higher."

The Collapse of the Tower of Financial Babel
By Ashvin Pandurangi - SilverBearCafe.com
The Tower of Babel, according to the Book of Genesis,was an enormous tower built in the plain of Shinar.
According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar, where they resolved to build a city with a tower "with its top in the heavens...lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the Earth."
God came down to see what they did and said: "They are one people and have one language, and nothing will be withholden from them which they purpose to do." So God said, "Come, let us go down and confound their speech." And so God scattered them upon the face of the Earth, and confused their languages, and they left off building the city, which was called Babel "because God there confounded the language of all the Earth."(Genesis 11:5-8).

Glendale Westgate City Center now owned mostly by lenders
by Rebekah L. Sanders - The Arizona Republic
Westgate City Center is now almost completely owned by its lenders.
An auction Thursday wrested control of the last major part of the complex from developer Steve Ellman, after foreclosure proceedings split the property in two this summer.
Lender Credit Suisse received no offers for the second parcel, after setting an opening bid of $25 million, said trustee Scott Klundt of Phoenix-based Quarles & Brady LLP. The 95 acres of open land and parking lots near Glendale Avenue and Loop 101 was planned for future Westgate development.

Chicago: Forcing Banks to Secure Foreclosed Homes
By AMY BIEGELSEN - TheAtlanticCities.com
Raccoon infestations. Squatters. Fires. Drug dealers.
Second Ward Chicago Alderman Robert Fioretti has a lot of headaches thanks to vacant properties in his district. The foreclosure crisis has only compounded them.
The thing that really gets Fioretti, though, is how many of these headaches are minutes from schools. The Basil campus of the Chicago International Charter School, for instance, has 515 vacant houses in its immediate neighborhood, many of them bank-owned foreclosures. One mother in his ward told him she instructs her daughter to avoid one walking to school along one block that has boarded up buildings on both sides. "She sees lights on in the buildings at night," he says. "I have heard that kind of thing over and over and over again."

Charles Biderman - CEO of Trimtabs - "The Global Write Off"
Trimtabs follows the flow of money into and out of the stock market. This video contains a money flow forecast comparing a flat economy versus a stable-rising market. When the market goes up its easy to make money. This easy money means that we have tons of people in hedge and mutual funds who may not have jobs shortly. Unfortunately, our money seems to be in a state of drawdown by retirees and pension funds, as corporations account for most of the current inflows. These inflows would be impossible without easy money policy by government actions. Money has been created magically. Do we need to hit rock bottom? It appears that we must

Who Are the Long-Term Unemployed?
Derek Thompson - TheAtlantic.com
Nearly a third of the 14 million Americans who are officially unemployed have been out of work for more than a year, enough to fill the state of Louisiana. That share of total unemployment has grown by 50 percent since December 2009. These aren't merely the long-term unemployed, a term the Bureau of Labor Statistics defines as being out of work for more than six months. These are the long-long-term unemployed. The 52-weekers.
What do we know about them? The Pew fiscal analysis of the long-term unemployed gives us a picture. They tend to be older. Forty-five percent of the unemployed people over the age of 55 have been out of work for more than a year. They also tend to be
less educated. More than a third of those unemployed without a college degree have been out of work for more than a year. Where they work is harder to say. The industries with the highest shares of long-term unemployment are mining and financial activities, which are also among the highest-paid. But transportation and manufacturing also suffer high long-term unemployment rates, despite representing more middle- and low-wage jobs.

15 Trillion Dollars In Debt,
45 Million Americans On Food Stamps
And Zero Solutions On The Horizon
TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com
How does a country end up 15 trillion dollars in debt? 30 years ago, we were just a little over a trillion dollars in debt. How in the world do supposedly rational people living in "the greatest nation on earth" allow themselves to commit national financial suicide by allowing government debt to explode like that? It almost seems like there should be some sort of official ceremony in Washington D.C. to commemorate this achievement. It really takes something special to be able to roll up 15 trilliondollars of debt. To get to this level, we really had to indulge in some wild spending. For example, did you know that the U.S. national debt grows by more than 2 million dollars every single minute? All of this debt has fueled an unprecedented boom of prosperity for the last 30 years, but now that prosperity is drying up. Today, there are over 45 million Americans that are on food stamps. America is being deindustrialized at a blinding pace and there are not nearly enough jobs for everyone. Poverty is exploding all over the nation, and millions of families have lost their homes to foreclosure. Unfortunately, there are zero solutions on the horizon. The leaders of both major political parties seem even more clueless right now than in past years. We really could use some hope, but hope is in very short supply.

Will the Ohio Healthcare Freedom Amendment End Obamacare? Tea Party Leader Chris Littleton on Mandates, Markets, and Occupy Wall Street
Jim Epstein & Nick Gillespie - Reason.com
.... Littleton's group is pushing an upcoming ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution to prevent citizens' involuntary participation in any health-insurance system. The U.S. Supreme Court is widely expected to issue a ruling on the constituationality of what's known as the "individual mandate" in Obamacare and Littelton thinks passage of the Ohio Healthcare Freedom Amendment will give his state unique legal standing: "This is citizen-initiated, which is very unique. If it passes, Ohio will be the only state that's done something like that." While most challenges to the individual mandate revolve around the limits of Congress' commerce clause powers, Littleton believes the amendment will activate due process and 10th Amendment considerations.

Will the Ohio Healthcare Freedom Amendment Sink Obamacare?

What's the Matter With Oakland?
By Megan McArdle - TheAtlantic.com
Cards on the table: y'all know that the Occupy protests and I don't agree politically. Nonetheless, I've been basically supportive of their right to protest, sympathetic to their frustrations with the system, and interested in their problems (and solutions) of self organization in a rather chaotic and fluid situation. Unless there were clear and dramatic harms to the community, I figured the cops should leave them alone until the protests dispersed naturally.

This Is Only Just The Beginning
TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com
For a long time, there have been those that have warned that economic riots are coming to this nation. Anger and frustration with the economy and with our financial system have grown to unprecedented levels, and this has fueled the rise of the various protest movements that we have seen over the last couple of years. People are fed up and they want solutions. Unfortunately, anger and frustration can express themselves in dangerous and unpredictable ways. What we have seen in Oakland, in Seattle and in other major U.S. cities this week is only just the beginning of the massive economic riots that are coming to this country. Yes, "anarchists" were responsible for quite a bit of the violence that we have seen this week, but they were not the only ones involved. Some protesters were getting violent too, and there has also been quite a bit of police brutality. Of course the vast majority of Occupy Wall Street protesters do not want anything to do with violence and they recognize that violence is not the answer. But that is the thing with anger and frustration. It is hard to contain them in neat, self-disciplined packages. As the economy continues to get worse, the protests will grow and unfortunately so will the violence. You can preach the benefits of non-violence all day long to some people but they just will not get it. America has reached a turning point, and what we are seeing now is only just the beginning of the madness. In the years ahead we are going to see rioting that is going to be absolutely unprecedented.

Apple’s Siri is eating Google's lunch
By Nigam Arora - MarketWatch.com
Apple’s Siri is beginning to eat Google's lunch. Google has spread its wings, but Google's bread and butter is still selling advertising on search pages. Siri from Apple is the start of disintermediation from Google search.
Siri is a voice controlled virtual personal assistant from Apple that relies on artificial intelligence. When I asked Siri to find the best Indian restaurant nearby, it came up with the right answer. It did not answer with the nearest restaurant but found the highest rated restaurant nearby. Before Siri, I would have gone to Google and searched for an Indian restaurant. Google would have made money if I clicked on any one of a number of advertisements for restaurants on the search page. Siri completely bypassed Google and went to a data base called Yelp.

Businesses to be hit as Google starts charging for maps service
By DANIEL BATES - DailyMail.co.uk
Google's services have famously been built on the principle of offering something for nothing.
But that approach is over - at least where Google maps is concerned.
The 'API' - script that allows sites to build Google Maps into their sites or apps will no longer be free for heavy users from January 1, 2012.
Google is keen to emphasise, though, that the changes won't hit sites or apps who are light users of Google Maps.
Ordinary restaurants or hotels, say, won't be affected.
To be charged, you have to hit 25,000 map loads per day.
But a substantial number of sites could be affected. Worldwide, there are 1,115,421 different websites and apps using Google Maps into their site, according to site metric specialist Builtwith.

US: Russia, China stealing online from US companies
BBC.co.uk
China and Russia are the most active perpetrators of economic cyber-espionage against US companies, a US intelligence report says.
The report specifically cited Chinese "actors" and Russian intelligence as the top culprits.
Robert Bryant, US national counterintelligence executive, told reporters that online spying is "a quiet menace to our economy".
Both China and Russia's embassies have denied the allegations.
The report, titled Foreign Spies Stealing US Economic Secrets in Cyberspace, says both private firms and cybersecurity experts have reported an "onslaught" of computer network intrusions that they say originated from China.

What George Washington Thought About the Constitution
Hint: He probably wouldn't agree with Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas -- By Andrew Cohen - TheAtlantic.com
One of the joys of reading Ron Chernow -- one of the joys of reading any great historian -- is learning new detail and nuance about long-ago great events. I've known for years what Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Adams thought of the Constitution. But I never really knew precisely where George Washington stood -- apart from the general view that he supported strong federal authority and stayed purposely aloof from the sturm und drang of the 1787 Convention.

Further Collisions of Old Wiretapping Laws,
New Technologies, and Police Who Claim a Right to Privacy
By Lucy Steigerwald - Reason.com
An Oregon Court of appeals recently ruled that a man who taped his own traffic stop in 2008 should not have been arrested for that act, even though Oregon is one of the many states with a frustratingly vague wiretapping law. (Though not one of the 12 that officially require both parties to consent.)
So says Oregonlive.com:

The Eugene Police officer who pulled over Shane Neff had already told the motorist that he was recording their interaction with his in-car patrol camera. A majority of judges ruled that was enough notice, and Neff needn't announce to the officer that his phone also was capturing their conversation....
[Neff's attorney said the] 33-year-old dad, was doing nothing wrong on Nov. 4, 2008 when Eugene Officer Sam Ou ran Neff's license plate through his computer, then stopped Neff because he mistakenly believed Neff had a suspended license.

The Drone War Coming to a Town Near You?

Argentina Wants To Keep Its Inflation in the Bag
Seth McKelvey - Reason.com
Argentina's novel solution to inflation? Silence anyone with evidence that it exists. The Argentinian government issued $125,000 fines and criminal charges to at least two private economists who published data contradicting official inflation figures, The Washington Post reports.
Plenty of people aren't buying the official numbers, however:
"No one believes the government’s statistics — not the [International Monetary Fund], not the World Bank, not the U.N.," said Robert Shapiro, who helps oversee a Washington group lobbying for Argentina to pay its debt to American investors. "You can't change underlying economic reality by decreeing it isn’t so."...

Abbas, Palestinians Take a Destructive Detour
on Road to Statehood
Bloomberg.com
Unesco chose a poor time to return to its foolish ways. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which had shed its reflexive anti- Americanism (and resultant ban on U.S. funding) in 2002, overstepped into politics this week, voting overwhelmingly to give membership to Palestine as an independent state.
The minor tragedy here is that, by law, the U.S. cannot provide financing to any UN group that recognizes Palestinian statehood. So the vote will cost Unesco about $80 million a year, or 22 percent of its budget. Director-General Irina Bokova is pleading for special treatment from Washington, but the State Department was correct in saying it would comply with Congress’s intent. She might enlist one of the wealthier of the 107 nations that voted in favor -- France or Saudi Arabia, perhaps -- to make up the shortfall.

US and Israeli Tech Teams Develop "Malworm"
to Take Down Iran's Computer Software
by: Richard Sale, Truthout | Report
Facing mounting concern about Iran's nuclear program, a top US and Israeli technical team has developed an improved computer "malworm" designed to take down all of Iran's computer software.
According to former and serving US intelligence officials, leaders of the three major software companies, Sergey Brin at Google, Steve Ballmer at Microsoft and Larry Ellison at Oracle have been working with Israel's top cyber warriors and have now come up with a new version of a Stuxnet-like worm that can bring down Iran's entire software networks if the Iranian regime gets too close to breakout, according to US intelligence sources.

Thanks To Obama,
The Al-Qaeda Flag Is Now Flying
High And Proud Over Libya
EndOfTheAmericanDream.com
The Al-Qaeda flag has been flying high over Libya and the governments of the western world that helped remove Gaddafi from power don't seem to mind at all. The flag, which contains the phrase "there is no God but Allah" with a full moon underneath, has been photographed flying beside the new national flag of Libya at the courthouse in Benghazi. The courthouse in Benghazi is where the "rebels" established their provisional government, and it is where the "media center" for communication with foreign journalists was located during the fight against Gaddafi. So it isn't as if the al-Qaeda flag has been flying over some insignificant building. But this should be no surprise. It has been known all along that al-Qaeda was very heavily represented in the army of "the rebels" and among the leadership of "the rebels". Now, thanks to Obama, they have taken over Libya and they intend to impose a brutal form of Sharia law on the entire Libyan population.

UK and U.S. 'draw up joint plan to attack Iran':
Evidence of nuclear programme raises tension in Middle East
JohnMcCarthy90066
The UK and U.S. are drawing up plans to attack Iran amid growing tensions in the Middle East, it was claimed last night.
Barack Obama and David Cameron are preparing for war after reports that Iran now has enough enriched uranium for four nuclear weapons.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hardline regime in Tehran has been linked to three assassination plots on foreign soil, according to senior officials in Whitehall.
Iran has come sharply back into focus following the end of the Libya conflict.
And the unrest has been inflamed by sabre-rattling from top politicians in Israel.
Yesterday it was revealed that Tel Aviv had successfully test-fired a rocket capable of carrying a nuclear warhead which could strike Iran.

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