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Tuesday 01.24.2012

A U.S. Sovereign Debt Crisis?
Author: Jonathan Masters, Associate Staff Writer - CFR.org
Fiscal policy is set to take center stage in Washington this week as Congress prepares for its conference committee on the payroll tax cut extension (The Hill), and the Senate votes on the contentious issue of raising the debt ceiling (FoxNews) again. The U.S. national debt recently topped $15.23 trillion (USAToday), roughly equal to the size of the entire economy, and has raised fears among some that the country is marching headlong into a debt crisis akin to that of some nations in the eurozone.

Gordon Chang: Inflation nudging Chinese to buy more gold
By Daniela Cambone - CommodityOnline.com
Vancouver (Kitco News) -- Surging Chinese Gold imports reflect increased wealth but it also may be the result of consumer fears that inflation is higher than the government admits, according to an author who contends there are dark days ahead for the country.
In an interview on the sidelines of the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference here, Gordon Chang said China may be on the edge of serious economic slowdowns and said gold purchases may mirror some of the fears of the populace. Chang was also a speaker at the conference, which is sponsored by Cambridge House International.

There will be a run on gold
stored in the US by European countries
NEW YORK (Commodity Online): There would be a run,by European countries, on the Gold they have stored at the New York Fed, said Jim Sinclair in an interview with KWN.
When asked him if the IMF would be selling any gold:
"No. The role of gold has changed and gold is moving more toward the central bank then away from it. On top of that you have seen a significant amount of media attention towards, ‘Where is our gold?’ This is taking place in the European press."

Why Gold at $6000/oz before 2014
By Hubert Moolman
If the current Gold bull market was to follow the timing and extent of the 70s bull market, the gold price would reach $6000 before 2014. See charts below.

Silver: An amazing rise in price
By Tim Iacono - CommodityOnline.com
A stronger euro and a weaker dollar have worked wonders for the once-thought-dead Gold bull market and Silver turned in its most impressive weekly performance in almost three months as the world continues to marvel at the surging demand for precious metals in China, a trend that could accelerate as policy makers there shift from fighting inflation to spurring growth.
For the week, spot gold rose 1.7 percent, from $1,639.70 an ounce to $1,667.00, as silver surged over the $30 an ounce mark, rising 8.2 percent from $29.77 an ounce to $32.20. Gold is now up 6.4 percent for the year, but down 13.3 percent from its high last summer, while the silver price is up 15.6 percent in 2012 but remains 34.9 percent below its early-2011 peak.

Investing in Gold, Silver, Agriculture, & Energy -
Interview with Charles Goyette

Silver to shoot up from $32 to $58-60/oz by September 2012
By Peter Cooper
Pop down to the Old Gold Souk in Deira, part of the modern city of Dubai and the hottest selling item is a 1kg bar of Silverthese days. Ejaz Ilyas, director of Karachi Jewellers said in an interview, they are selling 600 to 700 of these $1,300 bars each month with a 4.1 per cent profit margin.
Silver is more profitable than gold
'It is far more profitable to trade silver than gold where the margin is much smaller,' said Ejaz Ilyas.
'We get a lot of passing tourists who buy 1kg silver bars. I was born in Dubai and spent most of my professional life in London but business is better here now. Even a modest shop in this souk does well.'

Gold outperformed majority of assets in 2011: WGC
NEW YORK (Commodity Online): The year 2011 turned out to be another positive year for the yellow metal, marking the 11th consecutive year of price increases, according to World Gold Council (WGC).
After a tumultuous year in financial markets around the world, gold was one of few asset classes to deliver positive returns . WGC said that gold outperformed a large majority of assets, including oil, on a risk-adjusted basis during a year of marked uncertainty and increased volatility. It performed its role as a vehicle for diversification and risk management.

What Is 'Stable Value' In Currency Terms?
By Nathan Lewis, Contributor - Forbes.com
The reason that we use gold, in a gold standard system, instead of, say, orange juice, is because we are trying to accomplish a goal, and gold is the best way to do so. Our goal is to create a currency of stable value.
"Why do you use titanium to build a nuclear submarine?" one could ask. "Why not copper? Or ‘pork bellies’? Isn’t it completely arbitrary? A mere superstition?" These people always think they are very sophisticated.

Gerald Celente on Trend Forecasting
and the Crisis of Western Civilization
TheDailyBell.com - interview with Gerald Celente
....Daily Bell: Okay. Here are some more trends questions ... some subjects, in no particular order. Give us some trends feedback, please. In other words, put them into economic and sociopolitical context for our readers. First one, the West – where are we headed?
Gerald Celente: The West is headed to dictatorship. It's already happening. The merger of state and corporate power is by definition called fascism. I just mentioned the Defense Authorization Act. Before you had that you had the abrogation of the Constitution under Bush, with the Patriot Act, which Obama reinstated and made even tougher by signing this bill. When I say the merger of state and corporate powers, look at the $16.1 trillion that the Federal Reserve has funneled into businesses around the world. Whatever happened to that thing called capitalism? This is not capitalism; it's fascism! The more societies break down and the bigger the screw-ups at the top, the harder they clamp down on the bottom. You see it going on around the world; they call it austerity measures. How about calling it enslavement?

Dodging a Bullet, from a Machine Gun
BY JOHN HUSSMAN PHD - FinancialSense.com
Leading economic evidence continues to teeter at levels that have always and only been breached in recessions, but the sharp deterioration we initially observed late last year has been followed by modest stabilization - though still near the area that has historically marked the entry to economic contraction. The uncertain outcome and the incomplete view evoke a line from Leon Russell - "I'm up on a tightwire, one side's ice and one is fire... but the top hat on my head is all you see."

If The U.S. Government Keeps Spending Money Like This We Are Doomed And If The U.S. Government Stops Spending Money Like This We Are Doomed
TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com
If you increased your credit card spending by a couple thousand dollars per month would your lifestyle improve? Of course it would. By going into large amounts of debt, it is possible to live a lifestyle that you can't really afford, at least for a while. But if you keep racking up huge amounts of credit card debt every single month, eventually it gets to a point where it is extremely difficult to even keep up with the minimum monthly payments and the credit card companies will not lend you any more money. Well, on a larger scale it is the same thing with government debt. Right now, the U.S. government is spending more than a trillion dollars more than it takes in every year. Even if the U.S. government spends all of that money on incredibly stupid stuff, it still gets into the pockets of ordinary Americans.

Iran’s currency tumbles to new record low
Citizens scramble for gold
NowLebanon.com
The Iranian currency, the rial, tumbled Monday in black market trading to a new record low against the dollar, news agencies said, as the EU moved to impose an oil embargo and fresh sanctions on Tehran.
The unofficial rate in central Tehran was around 20,500 rials to the dollar, the official IRNA news agency reported.
The rate showed a 12-percent rise for the US currency since last Wednesday when it was changing hands at 18,000 rials on the black market.

Americans Are Deleveraging, But Not Because They Want To
Submitted by Tyler Durden - ZeroHedge.com
As comparisons between US and European debt to GDP levels and the finger-pointing of who is deleveraging more continues, McKinsey notes (in their quarterly Debt and Deleveraging article) that there may be a light at the end of the tunnel for the US as private-sector deleveraging has been rapid since 2008. However, reading on a little, we find that the light at the end of the tunnel may well be the front of the oncoming train of financial distress as some two-thirds of the 4% ($584bn) in US household debt deleveraging is from defaults on home-loans (and other consumer debt)! Of course, with homebuilder stock prices surging (notably rather dramatically relative to lumber or ABS/CMBS), consensus has once again agreed that the bottom in housing is in. McKinsey's initial forecast that the pent-up foreclosures and implicit deleveraging will bring us back to trend by 2013 seems like a pipe-dream and we tend to agree with their more conservative perspective that reversion in household debt will not be to trend but to pre-credit-bubble levels, implying a 22% further reduction (or a couple more trillion dollars of defaults).

Staring into the Abyss
BY JOHN MAULDIN - FinancialSense.com
....Europe's leaders are committed to keeping both the euro and the eurozone as it is. But for it to do so, everything must change, as the wonderful quote from the 1958 Italian novel suggests. This is no easy task, as no one wants a change that will impact them negatively; and there is no change that will allow things to stay the same that does not impact all severely, as we will see. In the third part of a continuing series, we look at the actual options that are available on the menu of choices, or as one group called it, the menu of pain. I offer some guideposts that we should watch for along the way, and end by offering a suggestion as to what Europe should do. As has been the case in this series, I do my best to offend everyone at some point. If by some small, unintended oversight I do not, then wait another week, I will get to you. What else are friends for?

Goldman Says U.S. Data Look Better Than They Are: Economy
By Bob Willis - Bloomberg.com
A decline in unemployment and pickup in manufacturing point to accelerating U.S. growth. Some economists say the numbers may not be as good as they look.
One reason: the severity of the economy’s plunge in late 2008 and early 2009 after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed threw a wrench into models used to smooth the data for seasonal changes, according to analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Nomura Securities International Inc.

Marc Faber - CNBC 8 Interview - 19 Jan 2012

Things That Make You Go Hmmm...
BY GRANT WILLIAMS - FinancialSense.com
It's no secret that the U.S. is completely unable to withstand higher interest rates and so, to maintain low rates, they have chosen to go down the path of Quantitative Easing or, to use the vernacular, moneyprinting. As a consequence, there are multiple trillions of dollars of freshly printed money currently waiting to be unleashed into the wild ($1.6 trln alone just sitting on deposit at the Fed in return for 0.25% interest).

Warning: QE3 is coming in March
NEW YORK (Commodity Online): For the politicians, Europe is a potential fiscal nuclear device that needs to be disarmed. According to a recent article by Al Field posted at www.24hgold.com, if just 10% of euro interest rate derivatives produce losses, it could cost the world banking system $22 trillion. That is enough to effectively bankrupt it.
This is one black swan that could well make a crash landing... and soon. You can bet none of this has been lost on the U.S. Federal Reserve either.

Fed likely to hint of no rate increase before 2014
By Martin Crutsinger - AP - WashingtonTimes.com
WASHINGTON — It could be quite a while yet before the Federal Reserve starts raising the interest rates it’s kept at record lows for three years.
Maybe not before 2014.
That’s the thinking of many analysts as the Fedprepares this week to provide more explicit clues about how long short-term rates will likely stay near zero.
Starting when their policy meeting ends Wednesday, Fed members plan to forecast the direction of those rates four times a year. The clearer guidance will accompany the Fed’s usual quarterly predictions of growth, unemployment and inflation.

Federal Reserve to disclose more details
on plans for low interest rates
By Zachary A. Goldfarb - WashingtonPost.com
The Federal Reserve, which took aggressive action in response to the U.S. financial crisis and more recently to help keep European banks in good health, has been divided for months over whether to take major new actions to bolster the nation’s slow economic recovery.
Instead, at its first meeting of the year this week, the Fed is planning to take a more incremental step: disclosing more detail about its plans to keep interest rates low for at least the next year and a half.

Obama to Use Pension Funds
of Ordinary Americans
to Pay for Bank Mortgage "Settlement"
by Yves Smith - NakedCapitalism.com
Obama’s latest housing market chicanery should come as no surprise. As we discuss below, he will use the State of the Union address to announce a mortgage “settlement” by Federal regulators, and at least some state attorneys general. It’s yet another gambit designed to generate a campaign talking point while making the underlying problem worse.
The president seems to labor under the misapprehension that crimes by members of the elite must be swept under the rug because prosecuting them would destablize the system. What he misses is that we are well past the point where coverups will work, and they may even blow up before the November elections. If nothing else, his settlement pact has a non-trivial Constitutional problem which the Republicans, if they are smart, will use to undermine the deal and discredit the Administration.

NYSE-Deutsche Boerse
Said to Lack Support to Overturn EU’s Takeover Veto
By Aoife White and Nandini Sukumar - Bloomberg.com
NYSE Euronext (NRX) and Deutsche Boerse (DB1) AG are unlikely to garner enough support from European Union commissioners to overturn a looming veto over their plan to create the world’s largest exchange, according to four people familiar with the situation.
The EU’s antitrust chief, Joaquin Almunia, won’t face significant opposition from other EU commissioners to his proposal to block the deal at a Feb. 1 meeting, said the people who can’t be identified because the discussions aren’t public. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, is led by 27 commissioners drawn from each of the bloc’s member states. They must jointly approve EU decisions.

Germany, France press for rapid Greek debt deal
By Jan Strupczewski and Andreas Rinke
(Reuters) - Euro zone finance ministers Monday rejected as insufficient an offer made by private bondholders to help restructure Greece's debts, sending negotiators back to the drawing board and raising the threat of Greek default.
At a meeting in Brussels, ministers said they could not accept bondholders' demands for a coupon of four percent on new, longer-dated bonds that are expected be issued in exchange for their existing Greek holdings.

Germany Proposes Combining Rescue Funds
By James G. Neuger and Brian Parkin - Bloomberg.com
Germany floated the idea of combining Europe’s two rescue funds, in a concession to bolster the fight against the fiscal crisis as Greece bargained with bondholders over debt relief.
Germany may be open to boosting the combined aid limit from 500 billion euros ($651 billion) when a permanent fund runs alongside the temporary fund starting in July, government officials in Berlin said. The need for a beefed-up fund was dramatized by haggling between Greece, the trigger of the two- year-old crisis, and its creditors over debt reduction to stave off default.

DEBT LIMIT - (parody)
A GUIDE TO AMERICAN FEDERAL DEBT MADE EASY.

Debt-Driven Doldrums or the Promise of Prosperity:
America at a Crossroads
Speaker: Rob Portman, U.S. Senator, Member, Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction
Presider: Stephen Friedman, Chairman, Stone Point Capital
CFR.org
....SENATOR ROB PORTMAN (R-OH): (Applause.) Steve, thank you very much.
What Steve didn't mention is that I was one of those members of Congress that always came up to the White House when Steve was the director of the National Economic Council to give him advice and counsel, which he acted like he actually listened to sometimes. And it was great having Steve there. He was a breath of fresh air, both because he brought that private-sector experience and because of his style. You know, he woke up every morning, when he was in that job -- which is a tough job -- trying to figure out what was best to grow our economy, and never considering partisan advantage and never considering extraneous issues. So he served President Bush well during that first term.

Stunning: Elitists Are Planning on Taking Down Capitalism
by Robert Wenzel - LewRockwell.com
This is very serious. The elitist power grab is going right at the heart of capitalism. Of course, they have always been for central control, with them in control, but now they are calling out capitalism, directly. as an inferior product.
On Friday, I attacked Larry Summers for blaming the current crisis on capitalism. I thought he was a lone wolf attempting to see how far the anti-capitalist agenda could be pushed. I was wrong.
It appears Summers simply fired the first shot in a new aggressive move by elitists to discredit capitalism outright. The elitists are gathering in Davos, Switzerland right now for the 2012 World Economic Forum.

Corzine Sued for RICO Violation by MF Global Customers
By Linda Sandler - BusinessWeek.com
Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Jon Corzine, MF Global Holdings Ltd.’s former chief executive officer, was sued under U.S. racketeering law by commodity customers alleging he and other executives “unlawfully” took money from their accounts and failed to segregate their money as the law requires.
The suit alleges that hundreds of millions of dollars were transferred from customers’ accounts to other MF Global units, at a time when the company was short of cash and faced calls for collateral as its risky Eurobond and other investments fell in value.

USA Today Gives JP Morgan Free Pass
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
Last week, I saw an interview in USA Today with JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Maria Bartiromo of CNBC was the reporter; so, I am not surprised to see a very soft ball story. I don’t know what you would call this kind of reporting, but it’s not journalism. To me, it’s a PR piece for Dimon and JP Morgan. USA Today gave a sloppy wet kiss and a free pass to Dimon to say whatever makes the bank look good. When asked about how his industry was "demonized," Dimon said, “What I would hope for: that there is no so-called pressure in the industry. That we had rational collaboration about how to build a great country with great rules and regulations that allow business to thrive. If business doesn’t thrive, it hurts America.” (Click here for the complete PR interview from USA Today.) In other words, if we don’t thrive, you don’t thrive. So, don’t even think about punishing us.

How the Great Recession
and the Slow Recovery Compare Historically
By Paul Swartz and Neil Bouhan - TheAtlantic.com
The following charts provide a series of answers, plotting current indicators (in red) against the average of all post-World War II recoveries (in blue). The x-axis shows the number of months since the end of the recession. The dotted lines are composites of prior recoveries representing the weakest and strongest experiences of the past. The recovery's start date is set using the recession dates established by the National Bureau of Economic Research's Business Cycle Dating Committee. By the committee's methodology, the current recovery began in June 2009. Despite some bright news recently, the pictures underline the economy's weakness since that date.

Top Justice officials linked to mortgage banks
Pressure rises on Justice to open wide-ranging probe of mortgage servicers -- Reuters - MSNBC.MSN.com
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who's Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows.
The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington's biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.

U.S Cities going broke and for sale

Home buying could soon beat renting
By John W. Schoen, Senior Producer - MSNBC.com
Falling home prices have sent many would-be buyers to the sidelines. If all goes well, record low interest rates and rising rents may soon prompt some of them to take a second look at buying.
Unfortunately, that's a big "if," according to Paul Diggle, a housing economist at Capital Economics.
Much of the decision to buy a house still depends on your personal finances and preferences, your career or family life, or level of financial security.
But if you’re comparing just the cost of owning and renting, buying a house may soon be the better choice, according to Diggle.

* * * * *

If The TSA Will Treat Senator Rand Paul Like A Scumbag,
What Will They Do TO YOU?
EndOfTheAmericanDream.com
On Monday, U.S. Senator Rand Paul was detained by the TSA for about two hours at an airport in Nashville. By doing so, TSA officials directly violated the U.S. Constitution and they demonstrated once again why the rest of the world is coming to regard us as a bunch of disgusting, arrogant "pig people". Do we really want to get such a bad reputation that virtually nobody will ever want to visit this country? We are going to absolutely destroy our tourism industry with this nonsense. Yes, we all want to fly safely, but other countries get the job done without their security officials running around acting like a bunch of Nazi prison guards. The TSA should be shut down, but if Congress wants it to continue to exist it should be given a dual mandate. It should be directed to protect the dignity of the American people first, and the safety of the American people second. If those running the TSA don't believe that this is possible, then they should be immediately replaced, because there are a whole lot of good people out there that could get the job done. Right now, TSA officials are treating American citizens like they aren't even human. The truth is that Rand Paul got off easy compared to what has happened to many other Americans. As I have written about previously, some elderly Americans have been strip-searched, some have had their adult diapers removed, and some have even been left covered in urine by invasive TSA searches. If the TSA will treat Senator Rand Paul like a scumbag, and if they will brutally strip-search elderly women, than what do you think they are going to do to you when the time comes?

Rand Paul Detained by TSA

Ron Paul Slams "Out Of Control Police State"
After Rand Paul Detained By TSA
Congressman renews his call to abolish agency that "gropes and grabs" Americans
By Steve Watson - Infowars.com
GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul issued the following statement on his campaign website this afternoon, following his son Rand’s treatment at the hands of the TSA in Nashville.

"The police state in this country is growing out of control. One of the ultimate embodiments of this is the TSA that gropes and grabs our children, our seniors, and our loved ones and neighbors with disabilities. The TSA does all of this while doing nothing to keep us safe.
"That is why my ‘Plan to Restore America,’ in additional to cutting $1 trillion dollars in federal spending in one year, eliminates the TSA.

Senator Paul refuses airport patdown after alarm
By Thomas Ferraro and John Crawley
(Reuters) - Republican Senator Rand Paul was stopped at an airport on Monday for setting off an alarm and refusing a patdown, prompting his father, U.S. presidential candidate Ron Paul, to accuse security officials of being part of an "out of control" police state.
In a harshly worded attack on the Transportation Security Administration, which handles security screenings at U.S. airports, Ron Paul, known for his strident libertarian views, said the TSA "gropes and grabs our kids and our seniors and does nothing to keep us safe."

Sen. Rand Paul Questions Invasive TSA Searches - 06/22/11

TSA Directly Violated US Constitution
By Detaining Senator Rand Paul
By Steve Watson - Infowars.com
In preventing Kentucky Senator Rand Paul from flying to Washington this morning, the TSA directly violated the law as written in the US Constitution.
The Constitution specifically protects federal lawmakers from being detained while en route to Washington DC.
Article I, Section 6 states:
"The Senators and Representatives…shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same…."

America After Dark:
Desperate Meth Heads, Rampant Human Trafficking
And Millions Of Criminal Predators Searching For A New Victim
TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com
When the sun goes down every night, America becomes a very frightening place. There are communities all over the country where drug dealing, human trafficking and gang violence have gotten so out of control that authorities don't really know what to do about it. In America tonight, thousands of meth heads will break into homes as they desperately search for enough money for another hit. In America tonight, thousands of children will be sold for sex at truck stops and on street corners. In America tonight, millions of criminal predators will be searching for a new victim. From the top levels of the federal government all the way down to the most depraved criminals on the street, America is rotting. Once upon a time our tremendous affluence masked the moral decay that was happening in this nation, but now that the economy is falling apart the damage to the fabric of our society is being revealed. We have become a nation of addicts, junkies, thrill seekers and predators. When we finally see the U.S. economy fully collapse, millions of desperate, angry and depraved monsters will take out their sick frustrations on all the rest of us.

Why Apple says it can't build an iPhone in the US
It's not just about cheap labor — flexibility in staffing, supply chains and reconfiguring factories matter
By CHARLES DUHIGG and KEITH BRADSHER, NYTimes - MSNBC.MSN.com
When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley’s top luminaries for dinner in California last February, each guest was asked to come with a question for the president.
But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?

Who Buys All Those Google Ads?
An Infographic Breakdown
By John C Abell - Wired.com
Google cleared $37.9 billion in 2011 revenue, which equates to more than $3 billion a month, mostly from those little text ads next to your search results that neither you or anybody you know will admit to ever clicking on.
Insurance and finance buys for Google Adsense words accounted for $4.2 billion of that total — more than 10 percent — according to Larry Kim, the founder of Wordstream, a company that sells software to analyze text ad campaigns and commissioned the infographic above. The most expensive search term in that niche was "Self employed health insurance" — not surprising in the aftermath of the recession and the Affordable Care Act, which will eventually require nearly everyone to have health care insurance (unless the Supreme Court nullifies the law later this year).

US and China engaged in a new arms race?

U.S. lauds EU for embargo on Iranian crude oil
Move could spur rise in gas prices
By Guy Taylor-The Washington Times
U.S. leaders praised the European Union’s embargo on Iranian oil Monday, even though it triggered a jump of more than $1 per barrel in global oil prices and signaled the potential for a rise in U.S. gasoline prices in the weeks ahead.
Iranian officials called the embargo an act of "psychological warfare," and lawmakers renewed threats to block the Persian Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s crude oil is transported.

How Iran May Trigger Accidental Armageddon
By Jeffrey Goldberg - Bloomberg.com
One of the arguments often made in favor of bombing Iran to cripple its nuclear program is this: The mullahs in Tehran are madmen who believe it is their consecrated duty to destroy the perfidious Zionist entity (which is to say, Israel) and so are building nuclear weapons to launch at Tel Aviv at the first favorable moment.
It’s beyond a doubt that the Iranian regime would like to bring about the destruction of Israel. However, the mullahs are also cynics and men determined, more than anything, to maintain their hold on absolute power.

What Will Happen With Iran?
BY JR NYQUIST - FinancialSense.com
Will there be a war in the Persian Gulf in 2012? Will America provoke Iran, or secretly encourage an Israeli attack? There is a way to answer these questions with a high degree of confidence.
For the last several years there has been a persistent rumor that Washington plans to preemptively strike Iran (to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power). Despite all the hand-wringing, no attack has occurred – and for good reason. The United States learned a hard lesson after the invasion of Iraq. War is expensive and the path to victory is not easy. Furthermore, there are economic consequences for attacking Iran; namely, higher oil prices.

Update on Fukushima
Submitted by George Washington - ZeroHedge.com
FUKUSHIMA RADIATION SPREADS WORLDWIDE
The University of California at Berkeley detected cesium levels in San Francisco area milk above over EPA limits … and even higher than they were 6 months ago.
Finnish public television says that cesium from Fukushima has been detected in lichens, fungi and elk and reindeer meat in Finland.
The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency confirmed a radiation cloud over the East Coast of Australia.
The West Coast of Canada is getting hit by debris from Japan … and at least some of it is likely radioactive.

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