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Friday 07.13.2012
The price of gold has been manipulated.
This is more scandalous than Libor
By Thomas Pascoe - Telegraph.co.uk
The new media and the 24-hour news cycle have a great deal to answer for, not least encouraging a political class which would otherwise be happily engaged expensing duck houses into the belief that it should demonstrate perpetual action on our behalf – hence the endless stream of badly drafted legislation from the corridors of Whitehall.
It does, however, reveal things that would otherwise be ignored. The issue of manipulation in the gold market which I wrote about last week is a case in point. The ball of half-truths and downright lies which have surrounded the issue for a long time is beginning to unspool in an issue internet activists kept alive long before it was acknowledged by the mainstream media.
Are Banks Raiding 'Allocated' Gold Accounts?
by George Washington - LewRockwell.com
In 2007, Morgan Stanley paid out $4.4 million to settle a class-action lawsuit by its clients after Morgan Stanley charged them to buy and "store" precious metals for them, but neither bought or stored the metals.
(Similarly, a 2011 class-action lawsuit filed in federal court in New York accused UBS Financial Services of misleading silver investors and harging them storage fees for metal that was never actually purchased, segregated, and stored for them.)
Avery Goodman points out that Morgan Stanley has once again just launched a similar scam, offering "allocated" metals, but gaming the definition so that the holdings are not really allocated.
Crash Warning
by Jeff Nielson - LewRockwell.com
Regular readers of my work know that I have been outlining (and warning people about)two potential economic scenarios; as the West's terminally-ill economies lurch towards their final collapse. These hollowed-out, debt-saturated economies would (will) either crash under the weight of their own insolvency; or our governments will create a hyperinflation death-spiral – in a last desperate attempt to avoid that bankruptcy event.
While both paths represent utter, economic suicide; the road to ruin is much different in these two scenarios. This has severely limited the investment options and strategies for any prudent investor. Forced not only to "play defense" with our investing but to prepare for two more-or-less opposite events has made precious metals the one asset class which can protect investors from either of these fates.
A scandal over rate-fixing is about to hit the US
By Roland Jones - MSNBC.MSN.com
It may seem like just another obscure banking scandal at a 322-year-old British bank, but there are a number of good reasons why you should care about the LIBOR rate-rigging scandal now roiling the world's biggest and most powerful banks, including that it probably cost you money if you own a mortgage.
In late June, Barclays paid $453 million to regulators in the U.K and the U.S. to settle accusations that it had tried to influence LIBOR, or the London interbank offered rate -- a benchmark interest rate that affects the price at which consumers and companies across the world borrow funds.
Barclays' Diamond turns to top lawyer for Libor scandal
By Steve Slater and Aruna Viswanatha
LONDON/WASHINGTON | Thu Jul 12, 2012 2:47pm EDT
(Reuters) - Barclays' embattled former chief executive Bob Diamond is being represented by top white-collar defense lawyer Andrew Levander in a widening scandal over the manipulation of benchmark interest rates, people familiar with the matter said.
More than a dozen current and former employees of several large banks under investigation have hired defense lawyers over the past year, but Levander's role is one of the most high-profile.
What did Tim know?
Geithner's Libor labors
By Charles Gasparino - NYPost.com
The latest development in the Libor-manipulation scandal is that the banks weren't really fixing the price of the key interest rate in total secret — US regulators were aware of the sleazy activities at the time, and seemed to have done nothing.
Which should surprise no one.
I can't tell you how much federal officials knew about the activities of Barclay's, JPMorgan, Citigroup and the other big banks at the center of the maelstrom. In coming weeks, both Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will inevitably discuss the mess when they appear before Congress.
Keiser Report: Ponzi Overdose (E313)
In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss the naked crime wave resulting from an overdose of synthetic stimulants like quantitative easing, bailouts and low interest rates. In the second half of the show Max talks to Ian Fraser of IanFraser.org about the Li(e)bor scandal and other banking crime waves emerging from the City of London.
Jim Grant Discusses The Fed's 'Backward Shooting Gun', And Black Walnut Tree Treasury Replacements
by Tyler Durden - ZeroHedge.com
Yesterday, when discussing the forthcoming implications of the Libor scandal, we said that in the barrage of coming lawsuits, "the entity that will be sued by proxy is the Federal Reserve, whose Federal Funds rate is really the setter for the baseline Libor rate." This claim came at an opportune time, just hours before one of the Fed's most vocal critics (and gold standard advocates), Jim Grant, appeared on TV to discuss precisely the same thing. Best summarizing his position is a cartoon that appeared in a recent issue of Grant's Interest Rate Observer in the context of Lieborgate, and who is really at fault here.
We Are at a Turning Point
by Andrew P. Napolitano - Lew Rockwell.com
Presently in America, nearly half of all households receive either a salary or substantial benefits from the government. Presently in America, nearly half of all adults pay no federal income taxes. Presently in America, the half that pay no income taxes receive the bulk of their income courtesy of the government, but ultimately from the half that do. This money is extracted involuntarily from the paying half by a permanent bureaucracy that extracts and gives away more each year no matter who is running the government. The recipients of these transfer payments rely upon them for subsistence, so they have a vested financial interest in sending to Washington those who will continue to take your money and give it to them.
The Market Has Spoken, and It Is Rigged
By SIMON JOHNSON - NYTimes.com
In the aftermath of the Barclays rate-fixing scandal, the most surprising reaction has been from people in the financial sector who fully understand the awfulness of what has happened. Rather than seeing this as an issue of law and order, some well-informed people have been drawn toward arguments that excuse or justify the behavior of the Barclays employees.
This is a big mistake, in terms of the economics at stake and the likely political impact.
The behavior at Barclays has all the hallmarks of fraud – intentional deception for personal gain, causing significant damage to others.
Four Reasons To Be Even Less Optimistic About The Global Financial System Than You Were Last Month
By Michael Snyder - TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com
The cracks in the ice are getting bigger. At this point it is really hard to have much confidence in the global financial system at all. They told us that MF Global was an isolated incident. Well, the horrific financial scandal over at PFGBest is essentially MF Global all over again. They told us that we would not see a huge wave of municipal bankruptcies in the United States. Well, three California cities have declared bankruptcy in less than a month. They told us that we could have faith in the integrity of the global financial system. Well, now we are finding out that global interest rates have been fixed by insiders for years. They told us that Greece was an isolated problem and that none of the larger European nations would experience anything remotely similar. Well, what is happening in Spain right now looks like an instant replay of exactly what happened in Greece. So who are we supposed to believe? Why does it seem like nearly everything that "the authorities" tell us turns out to be a lie? What else haven't they been telling us?
Banking and Monetary System
They Own It All... and YOU
By Greg McCoach - WealthDaily.com
It governs everything we do...
And yet 95% of the population is totally in the dark regarding this topic.
I am talking about the complete and criminal hijacking of our country and money by a very small but extremely powerful group of men: the elitist bankers.
Few understand how our system works — or how the original system given to us by our Founding Fathers has already been circumvented.
Henry Ford understood what happened to us and proclaimed the following statement many years ago when the biggest parts of the hijacking occurred:
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
$10 Billion Away From $10 Trillion
Submitted by Tyler Durden - ZeroHedge.com
According to the just released M2 update, the broadest publicly tracked monetary aggregate (because the Fed doesn't have enough money to keep track of M3) just hit $9,991.5 billion, a $43 billion increase from last week. In other words, this is the last week in which M2 is under $10 trillion. So enjoy it while the "complete lack of penetration" of the monetary base into broader monetary aggregates, and of the Fed's reserves so tightly locked up in bank vaults, is still only 13 digits (most of it comprising of bank deposits which of course represent no inflationary threat at all). Next week it will be a record 14 digits for the first time, and well on its way to surpassing the $15 trillion held in the deposit-free shadow banking system as the importance (and inflationary convexity) of the two is rapidly interchanged.
Keiser Report: From Tommy Guns to Credit Guns (E312)
In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss bankers robbing Central Banks and governments because that's where the credit is and the modern Central Bank robbing banker uses his Tommy gun of choice - the derivative (along with the occasional 'accidental transfer'). In the second half of the show Max talks to Ellen Brown about the European Stability Mechanism as a permanent bailout fund for the rich.
Combating Widespread Currency Manipulation
By Joseph E. Gagnon - Peterson Institute for International Economics
This Policy Brief identifies the 20 most egregious currency manipulators over the past 11 years. Four groups of countries stand out: (1) longstanding advanced economies such as Japan and Switzerland; (2) newly industrialized economies such as Israel, Singapore, and Taiwan; (3) developing Asian economies such as China, Malaysia, and Th ailand; and (4) oil exporters such as Algeria, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.
Although currency manipulation to boost trade balances is a violation of the Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), there is currently no procedure to punish or curtail it. The best forum for sanctions against currency manipulators is the World Trade Organization (WTO), operating in consultation with the IMF. Countries affected by currency manipulation would be authorized to impose tariffs on imports from manipulators. In order to get manipulators to agree to this change in international rules, the main targets of currency manipulation—the United States and the euro area—may have to play tough. One strategy would be to tax or otherwise restrict purchases of US and euro area financial assets by currency manipulators.
Fractional Reserves and Economic Instability
Mises Daily: by John P. Cochran
Fractional-reserve banking has historically been viewed by some economists and most monetary cranks as a panacea for the economy — a source of easy credit and new purchasing power to quicken trade. Better economists, however, recognized fractional-reserve banking with its ability to create credit, Mises's (1971, pp. 268–69) circulation credit or Rothbard's (1994) deposit banking, as a major source of financial and economic instability. The establishment of a central bank was often, when not driven by fiscal priorities of government, an attempt to achieve the first while mitigating or eliminating the second. For the United States, in particular, the effort was perhaps misguided. Per Vera Smith (1990 [1936], p. 166)
Euro tumbles as Asian funds shun EU chaos
The euro has plunged to multi-year lows against a range of currencies on fears of a deepening slump in Italy and Spain, and ugly disputes between eurozone leaders.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
The single currency has been sliding relentlessly since the European Central Bank cut its discount rate to zero last week, triggering an exodus of money market funds, but has now broken key resistance levels watched by technical analysts.
It tumbled to 0.7882 against sterling today, the lowest since late 2008, overpowering efforts by the Bank of England to weaken the pound with its latest £50bn burst of quantitative easing.
Rick Santelli and Nigel Farage: The Euro Debt Mess
Comeback kid
America's economy is once again reinventing itself
The Economist.com
ALMOST the only thing on which Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger, agree is that the economy is in a bad way. Unemployment is stuck above 8% and growth probably slipped below an annualised 2% in the first half of this year. Ahead lie the threats of a euro break-up, a slowdown in China and the "fiscal cliff", a withering year-end combination of tax increases and spending cuts. Mr Obama and Mr Romney disagree only on what would make things worse: re-electing a left-wing president who has regulated to death a private sector he neither likes nor understands; or swapping him for a rapacious private-equity man bent on enriching the very people who caused the mess.
US June Deficit: $60 Billion, $17 Billion Worse Than Prior Year
Submitted by Tyler Durden - ZeroHedge.com
The good news: the deficit in June was $59.7 billion, just on top of expectations of $60.0 billion. The bad news: the June deficit was $59.7 billion, following $125 billion in May (and yes, right after that shocking and one-time, tax return driven $59 billion surplus in April), and $16.7 billion higher compared to last June. Total debt in June increased by $85.7 billion so more or less in line. The cumulative deficit in Fiscal 2012 is now $904 billion through June, compared to $970 billion last year over the same period. Will this ever change? Not as long as profligate spending-encouraging record low yield is there. Tune in next month when we find that the July deficit was about $140 billion in line with historical data.
Regulators' Shake-Up Seen as Missed Bid to Police JPMorgan
BY JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG
AND BEN PROTESS - NYTimes.com
After the financial crisis, regulators vowed to overhaul supervision of the nation's largest banks.
As part of that effort, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in mid-2011 replaced virtually all of its roughly 40 examiners at JPMorgan Chase to bolster the team's expertise and prevent regulators from forming cozy ties with executives, according to several current and former government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
But those changes left the New York Fed's front-line examiners without deep knowledge of JPMorgan's operations for a brief yet critical time, said those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because there is a federal investigation of the bank.
How Your Bank Account Could Disappear
By Jeff Nielson - BullionBullsCanada.com
On the same morning we hear that ¼ of Wall Street executives think that fraud is a necessary part of "doing business" in the financial sector, we hear of a second "MF Global". The U.S.'s so-called regulators are now reporting that somewhere around $220 million in customer funds is "missing" at a financial institution known as PFGBest; once again closing the barn door after all the cows have run off.
With at least one out of every four bankers at U.S. Big Banks (that's how many admitted to being crooks in the survey) thinking that stealing is part of their job descriptions, it's very important for people to realize how little protection there now is between these thieves andyour bank accounts. Based on the writing of a number of other individuals with more expertise in these markets, it is apparently an inherently fraudulent banking process known as"rehypothecation" which is allowing the mass-plundering of accounts at U.S. financial institutions, with other Western financial regulatory authorities also rubber-stamping this relatively new form of bankster crime.
Jobs, the real fiscal cliff, Obamanomics
Baltimore takes lead in suit against banks
over alleged Libor manipulation
By Michael A. Fletcher - WashingtonPost.com
Dozens of states, cities and other government entities are exploring whether they lost money because of the alleged manipulation of a crucial benchmark used to set interest rates on hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of loans and investments.
Baltimore City is leading a federal lawsuit against the group of big banks that set Libor, the London interbank offered rate, accusing it of conspiring to suppress the benchmark. The banks named in the case include JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Barclays, CitiBank and Deutsche Bank.
U.S. probing failed broker PFGBest's use of small auditor
By Sarah N. Lynch and Nick Carey | Reuters - ChicagoTribune.com
WASHINGTON/CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. futures industry investigators are looking into why Iowa-based collapsed brokerage PFGBest used a tiny accounting firm that appears to be operating from inside a suburban Chicago home to audit its books, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Experts said the use of such an auditor should have been a red flag to regulators of a futures brokerage with more than $500 million in assets and several hundred employees across the United States as well as in Shanghai and Canada.
The Chronology Of A Collapse:
Santelli's Primer On The PFG Debacle
Submitted by Tyler Durden - ZeroHedge.com
There remains some confusion about the timing of actions around the PFG Best disaster. From withdrawn salary cuts to liquidation-only orders to forced liquidations from Friday to today, CNBC's Rick Santelli provides a succinct and shocking insight into what real money accounts and brokers have dealt with and continue to try to comprehend. The sad truth about where the money went is summed up by his guest that "we're just hearing rumors; it could be, on a percentage basis, worse than MF Global."
The Many Collapses of Keynesianism
Mises Daily: by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.
It should be obvious to everyone but the most dedicated adherent of Keynesianism that the stimulus did not accomplish its end. The combination of outright spending by Congress, the desperate schemes to reflate the housing market, the attempt to transfuse bleeding firms with other people's money, and the creation of trillions in artificial money, has not done a thing to lift the US economy.
Actually, the reverse has been true. All these efforts have prevented the adjustment of economic forces to the postboom world. And all the resources that the stimulus consumed were extracted from the private sector, for we must always remember that government has no resources of its own. Everything it does must come from the hides of private producers and the citizenry in general, in the future if not immediately.
New foreclosure filings swell 27% in Chicago area
By Mary Ellen Podmolik - Chicaqgo Tribune staff reporter
Foreclosure filings in seven Chicago-area counties swelled during June and the second quarter, keeping pressure on a local housing market trying hard to find a bottom.
Another 6,952 homes started the foreclosure process in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Will counties, RealtyTrac data showed. That's a 27 percent increase from June 2011 when initial filings of foreclosure in the seven counties totaled 5,485. The number declined from May 2012, when 7,595 homes entered foreclosure.
Maine Governor Just Can't Stop
Comparing 'Obamacare' To The Holocaust
By EVAN MCMORRIS-SANTORO - TalkingPointsMemo.com
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) on Thursday simultaneously apologized for and doubled down on comments he made last week equating the IRS with the Gestapo.
LePage told Vermont weekly Seven Days that he understands why his claim about the IRS — voiced after the Supreme Court upheld the health care law — offended some.
"The Holocaust is probably a bad example. Americans should not forget that it did happen," he said. "I apologize to the Jewish Americans who feel offended. I also apologize to the Japanese Americans who were put in prison during World War II and I also apologize to those people who were accused of being Communists under McCarthyism, because that's not the American way."
Judge Napolitano Explains What Will Happen
If You Refuse to Pay for ObamaCare
The IRS is gearing up for its new role as health care cop. The agency, whose main responsibility is to collect taxes, will soon be in charge of enforcing ObamaCare. How can the IRS police a bill that comes with no civil or criminal penalties for those who refuse to pay?
Judge Andrew Napolitano weighed in on the issue on today's Fox and Friends, saying that if someone chooses to pass on the health care plan and pay the tax, the IRS can withhold tax refunds, put a tax lien on your house, and send threatening letters in order to collect the tax.
Napolitano said that the scary part about this law is that it provides for 16,000 new IRS agents and funds them for the first four years.
Wells Fargo pays $175M in discrimination settlement
By Pete Yost, Associated Press - USAToday.com
WASHINGTON – Wells Fargo Bank will pay at least $175 million to settle accusations that it discriminated against African-American and Hispanic borrowers in violation of fair-lending laws, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
Wells Fargo, the nation's largest residential home mortgage originator, allegedly engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers from 2004 through 2009.
United places $14B order with Boeing
Airline to take delivery of 150 737s between 2013 and 2022
By Gregory Karp - Chicago Tribune staff reporter
Two aviation giants based in Chicago, United Continental Holdings and Boeing Co., furthered an 81-year relationship Thursday by inking a deal for 150 airplanes with a total list price of nearly $15 billion.
The order, the first since United's megamerger with Continental two years ago, is for 150 Boeing 737 jets, worth $14.7 billion at list prices, the companies announced Thursday during a news conference at United headquarters in Chicago. However, most airlines don't pay full list prices, especially on large orders.
Gerald Celente - Tommy Schnurmacher Show - July 9, 2012
The Recession's Unexpected Gift:
Reviving Multigenerational Living
By Brian Stoffel, The Motley Fool - DailyFinance.com
My wife and I got a notice from our management company this week; rent will be going up 10% next year. We live fairly well below our means, so it wasn't disastrous news, but any notice of such things always sends me down a mental rabbit hole. It usually ends with me getting irrationally worried about our family's finances.
At the peak of my worries, I thought back to my friend Gabriel, who helps run his family's organic coffee farm in Costa Rica. We are about the same age, and got married within weeks of each other. But his life seems far more laid-back and less fraught with financial uncertainty.
There's one key difference between my situation and Gabriel's: He lives with family, and though my wife and I recently moved back to the Midwest to be closer to ours, my parents are still 100 miles away. That led me to ponder: Would many of our financial anxieties disappear if we adopted a similar practice in America?
The Real Class Warfare is Baby Boomers
Vs. Younger Americans
Hey kids, Mom and Dad are screwing you.
By Nick Gillespie - Reason.com
Hey kids, wake up! Stop playing your X-Box while listening to your Facebooks on the iPod and wearing your iPad with the cap turned backwards with the droopy pants and the bikini underwear listening to Snoopy Poopy Poop Dogg and the Enema Man and all that!
Take a break from getting yet another tattoo on your ass bone or your nipples pierced already! And STFU about the 1 Percent vs. the 99 Percent!
You're not getting screwed by billionaires and plutocrats. You're getting screwed by Mom and Dad.
Systematically and in all sorts of ways. Old people are doing everything possible to rob you of your money, your future, your dignity, and your freedom.
Will President Obama Surrender
the United States Constitution
to United Nations Governance?
By: Leauxryda - NavyGentleman.com
"Our common goal is clear: a robust and legally binding Arms Trade Treaty that will have a real impact on the lives of those millions of people suffering from the consequences of armed conflict, repression and armed violence,"….."It is ambitious, but it is achievable." UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon
In a mere couple of weeks, (July 27th as being reported), the President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama will under all expectations sign the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, which many believe will be the end of the 2nd Amendment of our Constitution, as we know it.
This is not new. The UNATT has been in the works for years and on October 14, 2009 in a statement presented by Hillary Clinton and the State Department that it would overturn the position of former President George W. Bush, which opposed a UN Arms Trade Treaty, on the insistence that national controls were better.
The Road to Totalitarianism
Mises Daily: by Henry Hazlitt
In spite of the obvious ultimate objective of the masters of Russia to communize and conquer the world, and in spite of the frightful power which such weapons as guided missiles and atomic and hydrogen bombs may put in their hands, the greatest threat to American liberty today comes from within. It is the threat of a growing and spreading totalitarian ideology.
Totalitarianism in its final form is the doctrine that the government, the state, must exercise total control over the individual. The American College Dictionary, closely following Webster's Collegiate, defines totalitarianism as "pertaining to a centralized form of government in which those in control grant neither recognition nor tolerance to parties of different opinion."
New CIA Scanner Rolled Out Soon
by TSA Can Surveil You on a Molecular Level
By Kurt Nimmo - Infowars.com
The Department of Homeland Security and the national security state are determined to convert the nation's airports into Gestapo zones where citizens are subjected to the latest high-tech surveillance technology.
The latest example: the CIA's technology front group, In-Q-Tel, has subcontracted with a cutting edge company to develop a molecular-level scanner that Homeland Security plans to install in airports.
Government Plans to Use Super Lasers that Can Sense Drugs, What You Had for Breakfast
The Department of Homeland Security is planning to use an improved laser scanner system that can detect every molecule in and on you from as far as 164-feet away. The technology, developed by Genia Photonics, can pick up on everything from illegal drugs, to cancer, to what you had for breakfast. Patrick Jones has the full story.
Bob Barr: Feds Determined
To Label Conservatives 'Thought Criminals'
by Paul Joseph Watson, InfoWars - LewRockwell.com
Former Congressman Bob Barr has slammed as "frightening," "bizarre," and "insidious" a new study funded by the Department of Homeland Security with lists 'liberty lovers' as right-wing terrorists, noting that the federal government is determined to re-define legitimate political beliefs as thought crimes.
As we reported last week, a study produced by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland with the aid of $12 million dollars in DHS funding characterizes Americans who are "suspicious of centralized federal authority," and "reverent of individual liberty" as "extreme right-wing" terrorists.
Nationwide utility payment scam hurts thousands
By Scott Bauer, Associated Press - USAToday.com
MADISON, Wis. – As much as President Obama wants your vote, he's not actually offering to pay your monthly bills.
But thousands of Americans have been persuaded otherwise, falling victim to a fast-moving scam that claims to be part of an Obama administration program to help pay utility bills in the midst of a scorching summer.
The scheme spread quickly across the nation in recent weeks with help from victims who unwittingly shared it on social media sites before realizing they had been conned out of personal information such as Social Security, credit card and checking account numbers.
New Facebook Mobile Ads Push Privacy Limits
Facebook will launch a second mobile ad product which will serve ads to users based on which other apps they've downloaded onto their phones—raising concerns over privacy, according to the Wall Street Journal:
... ads for apps directly in a users' News Feed on their mobile devices, whether the consumer has noted an interest in that company or not,
Facebook engineers have built technology that lets the company track what apps people have on their phones and target ads based on that information, these people said.
Previously, Facebook largely served ads keyed by users' own preferences, friends, and their Likes. Sponsored stories, for instance, Facebook's first mobile ad product, serves ads triggered by users' brand mentions in their status updates.
Scenes Of Despair
By Michael Snyder - TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com
Sometimes it can be easy to forget that behind all of the horrible economic numbers that we hear about are millions of real people that have had their lives absolutely devastated by this economy. Elderly couples are being brutally evicted from their homes, young families are living in their cars, terminally ill people are dying because they cannot afford medication that they need and millions of parents can't sleep at night as they wrestle with anxiety over not being able to provide for their children. Often those that lose their jobs or their homes discover that people start looking at them very differently and that there is very little compassion out there these days. As you will read about below, one major U.S. bank is even kicking an elderly woman with stage 4 breast cancer out of her home because she cannot make her full mortgage payment each month. When the next major global financial catastrophe happens, we are going to see a whole lot more economic despair. Will society respond to that crisis by becoming warmer and more compassionate, or will the world around us become even more cold and even more cruel? As bad as things are right now, it truly is frightening to think about what the world is going to look like after the next major economic downturn.
USDA Admits Exterminating Birds, Crops, and Bees
WorldTruth.tv
The USDA has been under fire recently for its admitted assault against nature, after multiple investigations have uncovered its deliberate tampering with both plants and animals alike. One such investigation has put an end to the mystery surrounding the death of millions of birds, with USDA documents revealing the organization's role in the massive slaughter. In addition to the mass bird killings, it turns out the USDA was fully aware that a highly-popular herbicide chemical was a known bee-killer, which may have aided the bee decline. The USDA has also threatened the genetic integrity of the nation's crops. Information has surfaced regarding the USDA's illegal approval of Monsanto's biotech crop, sugar beets. These crimes are simply an excerpt from the long list of USDA crimes that are continually being exposed.
NINETY MILES AN HOUR DOWN A DEAD END STREET
POSTED BY ANN BARNHARDT - JULY 12, AD 2012 11:39 AM MST
People are emailing asking what firm I recommend.
NONE.
GET OUT.
GET OUT.
GET OUT.
GET OUT.
GET OUT.
GET OUT.
GET OUT.
GET OUT.
GET OUT.
The ENTIRE SYSTEM is totally, completely corrupt and therefore NO FIRM IS SAFE. Don't be stupid. Don't be obtuse. Snap yourself out of the Stockholm Syndrome that you are clearly stuck in. Get ALL MONEY out of the ENTIRE FINANCIAL SYSTEM, including stocks, bonds, retirement accounts, futures, EVERYTHING...
HANK SNOW-NINETY MILES AN HOUR DOWN A DEAD END
Yahoo confirms theft of 450K unencrypted passwords
'Utter negligence,' says expert about latest online business black eye that included disclosure of .gov and .mil account info
By Gregg Keizer - Computerworld.com
Computerworld - Yahoo today confirmed that 450,000 unencrypted usernames and passwords were stolen Wednesday from one of its services, although it downplayed the threat.
"We confirm that an older file from Yahoo! Contributor Network, previously Associated Content, containing approximately 450,000 Yahoo! and other company usernames and passwords was compromised yesterday, July 11," Yahoo said in a statement forwarded by a company spokeswoman Thursday.
Summer's Biggest Solar Storm
(And Northern Lights Show) to Hit Earth Friday
By Dave Mosher - Wired.com
A giant solar flare shot out of a sunspot Thursday, hitting Earth with a powerful burst of X-ray and ultraviolet radiation. Solar researchers expect a small geomagnetic storm to follow and strike Earth this weekend, causing minor satellite glitches and major northern lights shows.
At 12:11 p.m. EDT, the flare began unleashing about a billion hydrogen bombs' worth of energy. Radiation temporarily jammed some radio frequencies for about an hour.
Right behind the flare is a belch of solar atmosphere called a coronal mass ejection, or CME, which is now traveling toward Earth at about 3.1 million mph. The resulting solar storm should start on Earth on Friday and conclude by Saturday's end.
Obama's China Card?
By Malcolm Fraser, former prime minister of Australia
Project-Syndicate.org
MELBOURNE – According to the United States Federal Reserve, Americans' net worth has fallen 40% since 2007, returning to its 1992 level. Progress towards recovery will be slow and difficult, and the US economy will be weak throughout the run-up to November's presidential and congressional elections. Can any incumbent – and especially President Barack Obama – win re-election in such conditions?
To be sure, the blame for America's malaise lies squarely with Obama's predecessors: Bill Clinton, for encouraging the Fed to take its eye off financial-market supervision and regulation, and George W. Bush, for his costly wars, which added massively to US government debt. But, come Election Day, many (if not most) Americans are likely to ignore recent history and vote against the incumbent.
Over 200 massacred
in Syrian government forces attack: activists
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Erika Solomon
AMMAN/BEIRUT | Thu Jul 12, 2012 7:25pm EDT
(Reuters) - More than 200 Syrians, mostly civilians, were massacred in a village in the rebellious Hama region when it was bombarded by helicopter gunships and tanks and then stormed by militiamen, opposition activists said.
If confirmed, it would be the worst single incident of violence in 16 months of conflict in which rebels are fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad and diplomacy to halt the bloodshed has been stymied by jostling between world powers.
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