Heartland Coin Gallery - Economic & Financial News Headlines

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Wednesday 06.06.2012

Gold still drawing flight to quality buying
NEW YORK (Commodity Online): Comex gold is continuing to draw a safe-haven bid, said Stephen Platt, senior account executive with Archer Financial Services.
He cites follow-through buying in the aftermath of a surge Friday following a weak U.S. jobs report.
He continued that, "The market responded in force, given the weak and deteriorating economic prospects. The building worries about building budget deficits in Europe and the U.S."

The Banking Plan That Could Be A Game-Changer for Gold
By MoneyMorning.com.au
Gold soared 4.1% on Friday – its biggest one-day jump in about 10 months.
This massive move in gold was on the back of a lousy US jobs report. I mean really lousy. Just four months ago, the US economy created 243,000 new jobs in a month. This has fallen steadily to the current pace of just 69,000.
In a country of 311 million people, 69,000 jobs don't even touch the sides. So the unemployment rate actually climbed for the first time in a year, creeping back up to 8.2%.

Silver: A Tier-1 asset for all investors
By Dr Jeffrey Lewis - CommodityOnline.com
In recent years, precious metals, most notably silver and gold, have played an unusual dual role as both monetary and non-monetary commodities. That may be in the process of changing for major financial institutions to favor holding metals as collateral as the Basel Committee ponders allowing banks to use gold as a Tier 1 capital asset.
Despite its well established and richly deserved safe haven status, gold is currently considered a Tier 3 asset. Ironically, this places the yellow metal lower on the asset totem pole than un-backed government bonds, which currently have low or even negative yields on an inflation-adjusted basis.

The Silver squeeze: Bank runs versus EU short covering?
By Dr Jeffrey Lewis - CommodityOnline.com
According to Google Trends, the number of Internet searches for the phrase "bank run" has reached an all-time high, demonstrating just how concerned many intelligent people are becoming over the stability of the global banking system.
Amid these troubling times for financial institutions, silver is continuing to shine as the "poor man's gold" that will provide a safe haven investment asset if paper currencies lose even more of their already tenuous credibility.

America In Decline:
The Soul Crushing Despair Of Lowered Expectations
By Michael Snyder - TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com
All over America tonight there are people that believe that their lives are over. When you do everything that you know how to do to get a job and you still can't get one it can be absolutely soul crushing. If you have ever been unemployed for an extended period of time you know exactly what I am talking about. When you have been unemployed for month after month it can be very tempting to totally cut yourself off from society. Those that are kind will look at you with pity and those that are cruel will treat you as though you are a total loser. It doesn't matter that America is in decline and that our economy is not producing nearly enough jobs for everyone anymore. In our society, one of the primary things that defines our lives is what we do for a living. Just think about it. When you are out in a social situation, what is one of the very first things that people ask? They want to know what you "do". Well, if you don't "do" anything, then you are not part of the club. But the worst part of being unemployed for many Americans is the relentless pressure from family and friends. Often they have no idea how hard it is to find a job in this economy - especially if they still have jobs. Sometimes the pressure becomes too great. Sadly, we are seeing unemployment break up a lot of marriages in America today. Things are really hard out there right now. A very large number of highly educated Americans have taken very low paying service jobs in recent years just so that they can have some money coming in even as they "look for something else". Unfortunately, in many cases that "something else" never materializes. In the past, America was "the land of opportunity" where anything was possible. But today America has become "the land of lowered expectations" and the worst is yet to come.

Collapse At Hand
By Paul Craig Roberts.org
Ever since the beginning of the financial crisis and quantitative easing, the question has been before us: How can the Federal Reserve maintain zero interest rates for banks and negative real interest rates for savers and bond holders when the US government is adding $1.5 trillion to the national debt every year via its budget deficits? Not long ago the Fed announced that it was going to continue this policy for another 2 or 3 years. Indeed, the Fed is locked into the policy. Without the artificially low interest rates, the debt service on the national debt would be so large that it would raise questions about the US Treasury's credit rating and the viability of the dollar, and the trillions of dollars in Interest Rate Swaps and other derivatives would come unglued.

Craig R. Smith:
I believe we are on the edge
of another Lehman-type meltdown
By Kenneth Schortgen Jr - Examiner.com
On June 2, precious metals expert and Chairman of Swiss America Trading Corporation, Craig R. Smith, sent out an urgent email blast stating that after the economic events that took place on Friday, the markets are primed for a new Lehman-type meltdown, similar to what took place in the financial system in 2008.
In thirty years of overseeing Swiss America I have never before sensed the urgent need to communicate recent events with our 40,000 clients as I do today. This is the first urgent warning I have ever written.

CBO Warns of Looming Fiscal Crisis as Debt Soars
By ERIC PIANIN, The Fiscal Times
Anew analysis by the non partisan Congressional Budget Office suggests that the U.S. could face another devastating fiscal crisis. The CBO report says that federal debt held by the public will reach nearly 70 percent of the overall U.S. economy by the end of the year -- the highest percentage since shortly after World War II.
If current policies are continued, federal debt would grow rapidly from its already high level, exceeding 90 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 2022, according to the report issued on Tuesday. After that, the growing imbalance between revenues and spending, combined with spiraling interest payments, would swiftly push debt to higher and higher levels. Debt as a share of GDP would exceed its historical peak of 109 percent by 2026, and it would approach 200 percent in 2037.

CBO: Federal debt to double in 15 years
Fiscal challenges worst since WWII
By Stephen Dinan and Susan Crabtree-The Washington Times
Federal debt will double by the middle of the next decade and reach more than twice the size of the entire U.S. economy by 2037 unlessCongress changes course on taxes and spending, the Congressional Budget Office said in its latest analysis Tuesday.
The CBO said it's the country's worst fiscal picture since a brief period during World War II, when spending ballooned to fund the military campaign but returned to normal soon after the war ended.

ECB sits on fence
Frustrated ECB seen unlikely to move just yet
Some economists see scope for rate cut or additional LTRO
By William L. Watts, MarketWatch
FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) — Mario Draghi's frustration is showing, but he remains unlikely just yet to spur the European Central Bank to ride to the rescue of Spain and the troubled euro zone when policy makers meet Wednesday, according to several economists.
"The ECB may do nothing […], waiting to see instead how developments in Greece and Spain pan out. But that will only keep euro-zone peripheral government bond markets and the single currency under pressure," said Mansoor Mohi-uddin, head of foreign-exchange strategy at UBS.

In euro region, fate of banks and governments is tied
By Howard Schneider - WashingtonPost.com
The roots of the economic crises in Greece, Ireland and Portugal were distinct, but the countries' problems shared a common feature: In each, the financial fortunes of the government and the banking system were intertwined, and as one staggered, the other began to falter as well.
Early on in the European crisis, analysts and organizations such as the International Monetary Fund recognized that the banks and governments in the euro zone were joined at the hip. Banks are heavy investors in government bonds, and governments provide the ultimate guarantees for the financial system. The two systems rise and fall together.

IMF says euro needs master plan, not deadline
REUTERS - FiscalTimes.com
RIGA (Reuters) – Euro zone leaders need a master plan and "collective determination" to rescue the common currency, but not necessarily a deadline, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said on Tuesday.
U.S. billionaire George Soros said on Saturday that the euro zone had three months to solve the debt crisis.
"I'm not a great fan of those target headlines that keep being missed anyway," Lagarde told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a conference in the Latvian capital.

Spain makes plea for EU aid for troubled banks
Spain has admitted for the first time that it can no longer raise money on the global markets or roll over its sovereign bonds, threatening to set off a dangerous escalation of Europe's debt crisis.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
Premier Mariano Rajoy said the country is "in an extremely difficult situation" and called on Europe to stand by the mutual obligations of euro membership. "Europe must say where it is going and show that the euro is an irreversible project that is not in danger, that helps nations in difficulty," he told Spain's senate.
Treasury minister Cristobal Montoro confessed that Spain can no longer raise money. "The market is no longer open. The risk premium is telling us that Spain as a state has a problem accessing the market when we need to refinance our debt."

Will Germany, Not Greece, Exit the Eurozone?
By SUZANNE MCGEE, The Fiscal Times
Until very recently, most of the buzz surrounding the possible breakup of the Eurozone has revolved around the prospect of Greece abandoning the euro in favor of the drachma once more. But over the course of May, it has become increasingly evident that the country that is out of step with its peers isn't Greece, but rather Germany.
The healthiest economy in the Eurozone, which swallowed its own dose of tough austerity medicine a few years ago, Germany has had no compunction in insisting that its fellow members in the single-currency community follow suit today. That is entirely logical; to the extent that they don't and that bailouts are required, Germany is going to have to shoulder the lion's share of the costs of any emergency financial assistance.

Germany weighs up federal Europe plan to end debt crisis
Calls for 'banking union' to save euro after Paris and Brussels support Spain's plea for EU rescue of its beleaguered banks
By Ian Traynor in Brussels and Giles Tremlett in Madrid - The Guardian
Europe's leaders appear to be edging towards an ambitious and controversial new blueprint for a federalised eurozone after Paris and Brussels threw their weight behind Spain's pleas for an EU rescue of its beleaguered banks.
At the start of three weeks likely to be crucial to the survival of the euro, the new French government and the European commission voiced strong backing for a new eurozone "banking union" to save the single currency.

EU Crisis: How to Avert a Global Economic Depression
By PATRICK SMITH, The Fiscal Times
Remember back in the 1990s, when globalization was supposed to be the greatest thing since Saran Wrap? Maybe someday it will prove to be so, but right now we are walking on the dark side of the moon. Everything seems to happen in concert, or like a chain reaction, in a globalized economy, and that is what we are entering into now. Europe's problems are spreading to the U.S., and both of them are sendingChina and India toward their second economic downturns since 2008.
Only a few months ago, Europeans looked to China to help fortify bailout mechanisms that would keep the EU's ailing peripheral nations afloat. That option is off the table.

Merkel: eurozone needs more EU supervision
BY VALENTINA POP - EUObserver.com
BRUSSELS - German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday (4 June) said she supports more integration in the eurozone - a veiled reference to pooling debt provided EU institutions gain more supervisory powers.
"We need more Europe, not less, especially in the eurozone. This means that EU institutions, the EU commission included, should be granted more possibilities to control. Otherwise it would be impossible for a currency union to work," Merkel said alongside EU commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso who visited her in Berlin ahead of a 28-29 June summit.

George Soros's speech on the "Euro bubble"
Remarks at the Festival of Economics, Trento Italy
George Soros
Ever since the Crash of 2008 there has been a widespread recognition, both among economists and the general public, that economic theory has failed. But there is no consensus on the causes and the extent of that failure.
I believe that the failure is more profound than generally recognized. It goes back to the foundations of economic theory. Economics tried to model itself on Newtonian physics. It sought to establish universally and timelessly valid laws governing reality. But economics is a social science and there is a fundamental difference between the natural and social sciences. Social phenomena have thinking participants who base their decisions on imperfect knowledge. That is what economic theory has tried to ignore.

Lagarde responds to Soros:
Eurozone needs a master plan, not a deadline
(Reuters) - Euro zone leaders need a master plan and "collective determination" to rescue the common currency, but not necessarily a deadline, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said on Tuesday.
U.S. billionaire George Soros said on Saturday that the euro zone had three months to solve the debt crisis.
"I'm not a great fan of those target headlines that keep being missed anyway," Lagarde told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a conference in the Latvian capital.

Two Fed officials cool to more monetary easing
By Mark Felsenthal
(Reuters) - Two top Federal Reserve officials on Tuesday suggested the U.S. central bank is not preparing to ease monetary policy at a meeting later this month, saying the economic outlook had not deteriorated to the point where action was warranted.
Both James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, and Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher were cool to the idea of new monetary stimulus in response to weak U.S. economic data and boiling financial tensions in Europe.

Fed's Bullard:
Weak May Jobs Report
Doesn't 'Substantially Alter' Outlook
By Kristina Peterson - NASDAQ.com
ST. LOUIS--May's weak jobs report was "disappointing" but doesn't substantially alter the economic outlook for 2012, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said in prepared remarks on Tuesday.
Making changes to U.S. monetary policy will not alleviate pressures in Europe, the source of anxiety over a potential global slowdown, Bullard said in remarks prepared for a Tuesday speech at a housing forum hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center and Jack Kemp Foundation in St. Louis, Mo.

Here Comes The Hilsenrath Leak:
"Fed Considers More Action"
Submitted by Tyler Durden - ZeroHedge.com
Three months ago, just when things looked like they were about to turn south, the Fed's trusty mouthpiece, Jon Hilsenrath, made it clear that the market can stop falling as the Fed was "considering" sterilized QE, or more Twist, something we explained later would be impossible in the current format as the Fed would run out of sub 3 Year paper by the end of August. It did however halt the drop in stocks for a month or two until Europe became permanently unfixed. Hilsenrath then cralwed back into his WSJ cubicle. Until today: two weeks before the all critical June 20 FOMC meeting, the faithful Fed scribe has been charged with his latest leak commission: "Fed Considers More Action Amid New Recovery Doubts." And as it has been leaked (now that people have actually done the appropriate math), so it shall be.
From the WSJ:
Disappointing U.S. economic data, new strains in financial markets and deepening worries about Europe's fiscal crisis have prompted a shift at the Federal Reserve, putting back on the table the possibility of action to spur the recovery.

Fed faces political heat in weighing more economic stimulus
By Zachary A. Goldfarb - WashingtonPost.com
With Europe falling deeper into crisis and Congress paralyzed, only one institution may have the flexibility to try to keep the U.S. economic recovery on track: the Federal Reserve.
But the Fed faces a daunting burden. Any new action could provoke tough political criticism. Republicans, in particular, have expressed deep concern about the measures taken by the Fed to support the economy — and could be doubly upset if new efforts goose the stock market and are perceived to work in favor of President Obama's reelection.

Fed Considers More Action Amid New Recovery Doubts
[Google title for free access]
BY JON HILSENRATH - WSJ.com - $$
Disappointing U.S. economic data, new strains in financial markets and deepening worries about Europe's fiscal crisis have prompted a shift at the Federal Reserve, putting back on the table the possibility of action to spur the recovery.
Such action seemed highly unlikely at the central bank's April meeting, when forecasts for growth and employment were brightening. At their policy meeting this month, Fed officials will weigh whether the U.S. economic outlook is deteriorating enough to justify new measures to boost growth, according to interviews and Fed speeches.

Save Us, Ben Bernanke, You're Our Only Hope
How Star Wars tells you everything you need to know about the miserable U.S. recovery and the Federal Reserve that has failed to improve it.
By Matthew O'Brien - TheAtlantic.com
This may not be our darkest hour, but the disappointing May jobs report showed the U.S. economy once again slowing towards stall speed. It's not just the anemic 69,000 jobs the economy added last month. More disconcerting were the sharp downward revisions to previous months. It looks like we could be in for an unwelcome rerun of the summer doldrums we have gotten to know all too well in 2010 and 2011.
Markets have a bad feeling about this. It isn't just about the deteriorating U.S. outlook. Europe and China are turning to the dark side of growth too. The euro is continuing its game of Schrödinger's currency: At any moment it is both saved and doomed. Right now, it's looking more and more doomed. Then there's theslowdown in China -- along with India and Brazil. These economies powered global growth during the dark days of 2008 and 2009, but seem certifiably wobbly now.

The only thing worse than the economy
is Obama talking about it
By Charles Hurt - WashingtonTimes.com
If you are wondering why President Obama and his supporters spend so much time in this election condescending to female voters, jabbering about gay marriage and contraception, or whether Mr. Obama really was born in Kenya, it is because they simply cannot talk about the economy.
And when they do, they quickly make clear why they work so hard to avoid any discussion of it.
The Obama campaign made a rare foray this past week into the economy with a television ad attacking Mitt Romney's economic record as governor of Massachusetts. OK, stop laughing.

Government Down $16 Billion on GM Bailout
BY DANIEL HALPER - WeeklyStandard.com
Mitt Romney maintains that "President Barack Obama is holding on to the government's stake in General Motors to avoid an embarrassing financial loss before the election, and says he'd sell the stock quickly if he wins the White House," according to the Detroit News, which recently interviewed the Republican presidential candidate.
"There is no reason for the government to continue to hold (its GM stake)," Romney tells the news outlet. "The president is delaying the sale of the shares to try and avoid the story that the taxpayer took another loss. I would get the company independent from the government and run for the interests of the consumer and the enterprise and its workers -- not for the political considerations of government officials."

The Real Bombshell in the MF Global Post Mortem
NakedCapitalism.com
John Giddens, the bankruptcy trustee in MF Global, garnered headlines Monday by saying that he will decide in the next 60 days whether to filing suits against Jon Corzine and other officers for breach of fiduciary duty and negligence and against JP Morgan if he is unable to come to a settlement. JP Morgan so far has returned roughly $518 million in MF Global assets and $89 million in customer monies, a meager recovery relative to $1.6 billion in missing customer funds.
The report Giddens released Monday is thorough and confirms many of the observations made in journalistic accounts of the firm's collapse, particularly regarding inadequate risk and accounting controls, JP Morgan's aggressive posture greatly increasing the liquidity squeeze. It also makes clear that this is an interim report, and unlike the trustee's report on Lehman, says that reaches no conclusion regarding legal strategies, including whether prosecutions are warranted.

Western banks 'reaping billions from Colombian cocaine trade'
While cocaine production ravages countries in Central America, consumers in the US and Europe are helping developed economies grow rich from the profits, a study claims
By Ed Vulliamy - Guardian.co.uk
The vast profits made from drug production and trafficking are overwhelmingly reaped in rich "consuming" countries – principally across Europe and in the US – rather than war-torn "producing" nations such asColombia and Mexico, new research has revealed. And its authors claim that financial regulators in the west are reluctant to go after western banks in pursuit of the massive amount of drug money being laundered through their systems.
The most far-reaching and detailed analysis to date of the drug economy in any country – in this case, Colombia – shows that 2.6% of the total street value of cocaine produced remains within the country, while a staggering 97.4% of profits are reaped by criminal syndicates, and laundered by banks, in first-world consuming countries.

US Already in 'Recession,' Extend Tax Cuts: Bill Clinton
By: Jeff Cox - CNBC.com
Former President Bill Clinton told CNBC Tuesday that the US economy already is in a recession and urged Congress to extend all the tax cuts due to expire at the end of the year.
In a taped interview aired on "Closing Bell," the still-popular 42nd president called the current economic conditions a "recession" and said overzealous Republican plans to cut the deficit threaten to plunge the country further into the debt abyss. Clinton's office released a statement after the interview.
"What I think we need to do is find some way to avoid the fiscal cliff, to avoid doing anything that would contract the economy now, and then deal with what's necessary in the long term debt-reduction plans as soon as they can, which presumably would be after the election," Clinton said.

The failed mission of the FHA – supporting high home prices
when your mission is affordability. Low interest rates are a reflection of a global financial crisis and not a healthy economy.
DoctorHousingBubble.com
The fog of low interest rates is really clouding the judgment of many prospective buyers. The reason we have low interest rates isn't because the economy is booming or things are going strong for the state. The reason interest rates are low is because of the second round financial crisis in Europe but also the Federal Reserve pushing rates to their lower bound range. In other words low interest rates are a reflection of how bad the overall global economy is. California is in bad shape yet pocket market delusion is back in full force. Even when you talk to people they transform into real estate zombies when it comes to buying a home. "I've been waiting too long and need to buy! These historically low rates are encouraging me to squeeze into a home." Of course, if you plan on staying put this might make sense but people need to realize that rates this low are a major anomaly yet are buying as if this is the status quo. You make money on the price of the asset and not so much on the financing.

Distressing Mortgage Conditions
By Phil Izzo - WSJ.com
Though mortgage distress peaked in 2010, many areas of the country continue to struggle and some regions are getting worse, according to data presentedby Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard.
"We should expect and plan for slow adjustment in housing markets," Bullard said. The Fed official presented the following charts. (View them all as a slideshow) They show a relatively healthy mortgage market in 2006, with the primary area of distress centered around the region hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina.

The Growing Unemployed: A Case of Benign Neglect
By MARK THOMA, The Fiscal Times
The high unemployment rate ought to be a national emergency. There are millions of people in need of jobs. The lost income as a result of the recession totals hundreds of billions of dollars annually, and the longer the problem persists, the more permanent the damage becomes. Why doesn't the unemployment problem get more attention? Why have other worries such as inflation and debt reduction dominated the conversation instead? As I noted at the end of my last column, the increased concentration of political power at the top of the income distribution provides much of the explanation.
Consider the Federal Reserve. Again and again we hear Federal Reserve officials say that an outbreak of inflation could undermine the Fed's hard-earned credibility and threaten its independence from Congress. But why is the Fed only worried about inflation? Why aren't officials at the Fed just as worried about Congress reducing the Fed's independence because of high and persistent unemployment?

Out of Touch:
Obama's DOL Thinks Jobless
Should Use Unemployment Insurance to Start Businesses
By Celia Bigelow - CNSNews.com
Forget about paying the rent - the Obama administration wants jobless Americans to use unemployment insurance to start a business.
The Department of Labor recently released guidelines for Self-Employment Assistance Programs (SEAs) that will allow unemployed entrepreneurs to continue to collect unemployment benefits while attempting to start-up a business. The $35 million grant is part of the Middle Class Tax-Relief and Job Creation Act that was signed by President Obama.
Entrepreneurship, job creation, small businesses—sounds great, eh?

Pensions Are Deferred Compensation—
a Lot of Deferred Compensation
By Jason Richwine - Heritage.org
Last week, The Heritage Foundation released important new research on the real cost of public pensions. In response, many different public-sector advocates have offered the same, curious, fallacious argument.
Heritage found that, in Wisconsin, for example, total pension costs are more than two-and-a-half times what government actuaries estimate. (The difference is due to government actuaries not adjusting for the possibility that pension funds will fail to hit their target rates of return.) Excessive pension costs help to push total compensation for Wisconsin public workers ahead of comparable private workers in the state, even after the reforms signed by Governor Scott Walker (R).

Walker Wins Wisconsin Recall
By ERIC KLEEFELD - TalkingPointsMemo.com
Republican Gov. Scott Walker has won the Wisconsin governor's recall over Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, holding onto his job after his push to slash collective bargaining rights for public employees sparked intense statewide backlash.
Walker's win caps a chaotic year in Wisconsin, marked by heated demonstrations, endless campaigning and a flood of outside money, all of which vaulted the state from ordinary battleground to Ground Zero of the national political debate — and elevated Walker to national superstardom among the Republican faithful.

Governor Walker's Victory Spells Doom For Public Sector Unions
By Bill Frezza, Contributor - Forbes.com
Public sector unions have reached their high water mark. Let the cleanup begin as the red ink recedes.
Despite a last-minute smear campaign accusing Scott Walker of fathering an illegitimate love child, the governor's recall election victory sends a clear message that should resonate around the nation: The fiscal cancer devouring state budgets has a cure, and he has found it. The costly defeat for the entrenched union interests that tried to oust Walker in retribution for challenging their power was marked by President Obama's refusal to lend his weight to the campaign for fear of being stained by defeat. We'll see how well this strategy of opportunistic detachment serves in the fall as Obama reaches out to unions for support.

Wisconsin Gov. Walker Survives Recall Challenge
By DOUGLAS BELKIN, COLLEEN MCCAIN NELSON
and CAROLINE PORTER - WSJ.com - $$
MADISON, Wis.—Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker survived a recall election Tuesday, dealing a blow to organized labor, unsettling President Barack Obama's re-election strategy and signaling to Republican lawmakers across the nation that challenging government unions could pay political and fiscal dividends.
Mr. Walker had 58% of the vote with 33% of the state's precincts reporting, while his opponent, Tom Barrett, the Democratic mayor of Milwaukee, had 42%. Turnout was said to be heavy.

Wisconsin Recall: While Walker Rallies, Obama Tweets
By NICK CAREY, Reuters - TheFiscalTimes.com
Wisconsin voters will decide today whether to throw Governor Scott Walker out of office in a rare recall election forced by opponents of the Republican's controversial effort to curb collective bargaining for most unionized government workers.
The rematch with Milwaukee's Democratic Mayor Tom Barrett, who Walker defeated in a Republican sweep of the state in 2010, is the end-game of six months of bitter fighting in the Midwestern Rust Belt state over the union restrictions Walker proposed and enacted. The recall election in closely divided Wisconsin, which helped elect Democrat Barack Obama as president in 2008, is seen as a dress rehearsal for the 2012 U.S. presidential election in November.

Wisconsin Recall On Track For Massive Turnout
By ERIC KLEEFELD - TalkingPointsMemo.com
After more than a year of buildup, turnout in the Wisconsin recall is on track to be huge.
Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl told TPM that as of 4 p.m. Central Time, the city was at roughly 50 percent turnout — and that if typical turnout patterns were to pan out, in which turnout doubles after the workday, the city could reach 100 percent turnout.
Last week, the state Government Accountability Board, which oversees elections in the state, predicted that turnout could be in the range of 60-65 percent — more typical of a presidential election, rather than the mid-term gubernatorial races. And at the rate things are going in the city's major population centers, that prediction could well pan out.

CNN says exit polls show Wisconsin recall election tied
REUTERS - TheFiscalTimes.com
MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – Exit polls show the Wisconsin recall election on Tuesday is essentially tied between Republican Governor Scott Walker and Democratic challenger Tom Barrett, CNN said.
The CNN data is based on interviews with voters after they cast ballots and not on actual results.
Most polling stations closed at 8 p.m. CT (9 p.m. EDT), although voters in line to were allowed to cast ballots after the official deadline. First results were expected to begin trickling in from around the state soon after the polls closed, although the winner might not be known for hours.

More Than 40 Percent of Americans
Are on Some Government Program
Patrick Tyrrell - Heritage.org
How many Americans depend on a government program for a basic (or not so basic) need? According to recently released Census Bureau data and Heritage Foundation calculations, the number is 128.8 million. That is the number of individuals directly receiving aid that they depend on for their daily consumption of things such as rent, prescription drugs, and higher education.
That is 41.3 percent of theU.S.population as of July 2011.
The Wall Street Journal puts the number of people living in a household where at least one member receives help at an even higher 49.1 percent.

Assassin-in-Chief
By Tom Engelhardt - Truthdig.com
Be assured of one thing: Whichever candidate you choose at the polls in November, you aren't just electing a president of the United States; you are also electing an assassin-in-chief. The last two presidents may not have been emperors or kings, but they—and the vast national-security structure that continues to be built-up and institutionalized around the presidential self—are certainly one of the nightmares the founding fathers of this country warned us against. They are one of the reasons those founders put significant war powers in the hands of Congress, which they knew would be a slow, recalcitrant, deliberative body.

10 Signs That The Highways Of America
Are Being Transformed Into A High Tech Prison Grid
By Michael Snyder - EndOfTheAmericanDream.com
Once upon a time, the open highways of America were one of our greatest symbols of liberty and freedom. Anyone could hop in a car and set off for a new adventure at any time and even our music encouraged us to "get our kicks on route 66". But today everything has changed. Now the highways of America are being steadily transformed into a high tech prison grid. All over the country, thousands upon thousands of surveillance cameras watch our highways and automated license plate readers are actually being used to track vehicle movements in some of our largest cities. Many state and local governments have come to view our highways as money machines and our control freak politicians have established a vast network of toll booths, red light cameras and speed traps to keep cash endlessly pouring in. If all of that wasn't enough, TSA "VIPR teams" are now hitting the interstates and conducting thousands of "unannounced security screenings" each year. Driving on the highways of America used to be a great joy, but now "Big Brother" is rapidly sucking all of the fun out of it. Eventually, it may get to the point where Americans simply dread having to go out on the highway.

A Facebook crime every 40 minutes:
From killings to grooming
as 12,300 cases are linked to the site
By JACK DOYLE - DailyMail.co.uk
A crime linked to Facebook is reported to police every 40 minutes.
Last year, officers logged 12,300 alleged offences involving the vastly popular social networking site.
Facebook was referenced in investigations of murder, rape, child sex offences, assault, kidnap, death threats, witness intimidation and fraud.
The vast majority of cases involved alleged harassment or intimidation by cyber-bullies, according to figures obtained under a Freedom of Information request.

Existence Of 'God Particle' Will Be Determined Soon,
Possibly This Summer
By CARL FRANZEN - TalkingPointsMemo.com
The half-century-long hunt for the ellusive Higgs boson — a yet-unobserved particle that physicists theorize is responsible for giving all matter mass in the universe and has been nicknamed "the god particle" — could be quickly coming to an end, according to the scientists looking for it.
But wait, haven't we heard that one before? Indeed, the scientists on the front lines of the search, those running high-energy particle physics experiments using the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), have for the past two years repeatedly stated that they were on the verge of confirming or ruling out the existence of the elusive Higgs.

Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan:
SpaceX Destroying America from Within
Tim Cavanaugh - Reason.com
The successful first mission of SpaceX's Dragonsupply module has reignited a curmudgeonly contretemps: Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan – commanders, respectively, of Apollos 11 and 17 – have no kind words for private space startups, and NASA's first flight director indirectly blames companies like SpaceX for the decline of the United States.
The former astronauts showed their years in 2011 House testimony, but SpaceX founder Elon Muskhad a chance to discuss Armstrong and Cernan's skepticism of commercial spaceflight recently with the Tiffany Network's 60 Minutes:

Your Domestic Drone News:
Boeing Tested a Drone Capable of Staying in Flight
For Four Days and the EPA is Using Drones
to Observe Cattle (Hopefully)
Lucy Steigerwald - Reason.com
The Los Angeles Times notes that Boeing Co. recently tested a new kind of hydrogen-propelled drone capable of staying in flight for four days. Currently most drones can stay aloft for about 30 hours, which is obviously already superior to manned aircraft. The Phantom Eye circled the Mohave Desert for 28 minutes on June 1, but then had a problem with the landing gear and broke on landing.
With a 150-foot wingspan and an egg-shaped fuselage, the drone was built at Boeing's Phantom Works complex in St. Louis with engineering support from its facilities in Huntington Beach. The drone is designed to spy over vast areas at an altitude of up to 65,000 feet.

Syria ousts western diplomats
Assad regime declares 17 foreign diplomats
unwelcome after co-ordinated expulsion
of Syrian ambassadors by western states
By Julian Borger and agencies - Guardian.co.uk
Syria has severed almost all its remaining diplomatic links with the west, declaring that envoys from the US and most of western Europe were no longer welcome in Damascus, in a tit-for-tat response to the expulsion of Syrian diplomats last week.
The Assad regime announced that 17 diplomats from the US, UK, Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany and Canada were considered "personae non gratae" as well as the entire Turkish mission in Damascus.

Any International Syrian Solution Is Tangled Up in Russia
By William Pfaff - Truthdig.com
International sentiment favoring foreign intervention in Syria's crisis can only have been strengthened by recent evidence of how divorced Syrian President Bashar al-Assad seems now to be from the reality of what is taking place in his country.
His Sunday address to a newly elected Syrian Parliament consisted of still more of his familiar harangue holding foreign interests and international terrorists—al-Qaida included—responsible for the civil uprising in his country. According to the U.N., this conflict now has claimed 10,000 or more civilian victims.

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