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Youth Recognizing Value of Conservative Ideas
Unemployment among the young has opened their eyes
to the detrimental
effects of Obama's policies.
September 21, 2010 - by Zach Howell
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Recently, the New York Times ran a front-page article that highlighted the
fact that young voters are disaffiliating from the Democratic Party at a record
rate. The article was based on a Pew poll that showed Obama’s favorability
margin among 18-29 year old voters had narrowed by almost 20%. But what
the article didn’t dive into were the reasons behind this decline, and what
the ramifications for Democrats will be come November.
The February Pew poll showed that only 54% of young voters approved of
the president’s performance in office. But February was a long time ago.
The federal government hadn’t rammed through a health-care bill that does
nothing to improve costs or quality of coverage, the student loan process
hadn’t been seized, and the Gulf hadn’t been contaminated.
While all of those events have been detrimental to his approval ratings across the board, none have been more damaging to his favorability among young people than the report that came out in August showing that nearly 20% of young adults can’t find work. At a time when the government has added $4.71 trillion to the national debt, 1 in every 5 kids can’t get a job? It has become crystal clear that the more the government wastefully spends, the less ability Americans have to find employment opportunities.
So the fact is this: every child born in this country today owes at least $118,000 to the national debt alone. But if they can’t find work, how do they pay off this debt? All of a sudden it has become clear to my generation that the man that so many enthusiastically voted for wasn’t who he claimed to be. His true intentions have been exposed, and his political stances are now clearly defined. Across the nation, young people are breaking up with the Democrats, and looking to the power of conservative ideas such as fiscal responsibility and individual initiative. Expect a Republican resurgence this November.
Oh how Mahmoud loves that UN stage. And four sets of
binding UN sanctions on Iran since 2006 are no bar to the
UN podium. Right now, for the sixth time in six years,
Iran’s Bloviator-in-Chief, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is
attending the annual opening of the United Nations
General Assembly in New York. He’s scheduled to speak
Tuesday at the UN’s conference on central planning for
the planet, a.k.a., the UN’s Millennium Development
Goals. He’s also due to speak Thursday afternoon,
among the lineup of heads of state on the first day of
this year’s General Assembly debate (which isn’t so
much a debate as a parade of potentates, strutting
the stage).
But that doesn’t begin to convey Ahmadinejad’s zeal
for UN speaking platforms. When he finishes his double
whammy UN performance this week, he will have racked
up seven speeches from UN stages over the past two
years alone. Along with his General Assembly speeches
of 2008 and 2009, that would include his histrionics on the
UN stage in Geneva (the April 2009 Durban Review bigots’
conference on bigotry); his trip to the UN stage in
Copenhagen (Dec. 2009, Climate Debauch); and his
appearance at the UN’s New York headquarters earlier this year (May 2010, Nuclear Nonproliferation review). And of course in June 2008, making his first trip to Western Europe, he made use of the stage at a UN Food Summit in Rome to launch one of his trademark attacks against Jews.
Each of these visits tends to be quite a production — replete with TV interviews, press conferences, receptions, dinners with select diplomats and journalists, and an entourage of many dozens, shacked up with massive security in a five-star hotel — this week, at the Hilton.
Early in this game, in 2006, when Ahmadinejad was making his second trip to the General Assembly’s annual opening in New York, there were various suggestions for how to handle it. Some said, arrest him. Some said, expel him. My view was that the best compromise would have been to simply move the UN – lock, stock and perorating Ahmadinejad — to Iran. Let the Iranian government pick up the tab, save American taxpayers billions in the process, and Ahmadinejad could declaim there daily, to his heart’s content.
Obviously that’s not going to happen. The UN isn’t going anywhere, especially with U.S. taxpayers now picking up the lion’s share of the tab for the UN’s current $2 billion-plus renovation. But maybe there’s another way to address Ahmadinejad’s evident affinity for the place. Don’t let him leave. Keep him at the UN. Just keep him there, year round.
Surely Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon can find Ahmadinejad a UN sinecure — preferably one he can’t refuse. Perhaps the UN could build him his own special stage, and put him on display, daily, as one of the talking exhibits featured in the UN Guided Tours — “Early 21st Century Messianic Despot: Discovered Intact at the Hilton Hotel, 2010.” It might bore the visiting schoolkids silly. But think of the endless interview opportunities for CNN, ABC, and MSNBC! If Ahmadinejad insists on becoming a fixture of the UN stage, well, the least we can do is extend a helping hand. I’d wager a lot of Iranians back home would be delighted with the new setup.
September 22, 2010
Much more has been revealed about Obamacare since President Obama, Harry Reid
and Nancy Pelosi pushed the bill on Americans six months ago. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP
file)
Six months ago, President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi rammed Obamacare down the throats of an unwilling American public.
Half a year removed from the unprecedented legislative chicanery and backroom
dealing that characterized the bill's passage, we know much more about the bill than we
did then. A few of the revelations:
» Obamacare won't decrease health care costs for the government. According to
Medicare's actuary, it will increase costs. The same is likely to happen for privately
funded health care.
» As written, Obamacare covers elective abortions, contrary to Obama's promise that
it wouldn't. This means that tax dollars will be used to pay for a procedure millions of
Americans across the political spectrum view as immoral. Supposedly, the
Department of Health and Human Services will bar abortion coverage with n
ew regulations but these will likely be tied up for years in litigation, and in the end
may not survive the court challenge.
» Obamacare won't allow employees or most small businesses to keep the coverage they have and like. By Obama's estimates, as many as 69 percent of employees, 80 percent of small businesses, and 64 percent of large businesses will be forced to change coverage, probably to more expensive plans.
» Obamacare will increase insurance premiums -- in some places, it already has. Insurers, suddenly forced to cover clients' children until age 26, have little choice but to raise premiums, and they attribute to Obamacare's mandates a 1 to 9 percent increase. Obama's only method of preventing massive rate increases so far has been to threaten insurers.
» Obamacare will force seasonal employers -- especially the ski and amusement park industries -- to pay huge fines, cut hours, or lay off employees.
» Obamacare forces states to guarantee not only payment but also treatment for indigent Medicaid patients. With many doctors now refusing to take Medicaid (because they lose money doing so), cash-strapped states could be sued and ordered to increase reimbursement rates beyond their means.
» Obamacare imposes a huge nonmedical tax compliance burden on small business. It will require them to mail IRS 1099 tax forms to every vendor from whom they make purchases of more than $600 in a year, with duplicate forms going to the Internal Revenue Service. Like so much else in the 2,500-page bill, our senators and representatives were apparently unaware of this when they passed the measure.
» Obamacare allows the IRS to confiscate part or all of your tax refund if you do not purchase a qualified insurance plan. The bill funds 16,000 new IRS agents to make sure Americans stay in line.
If you wonder why so many American voters are angry, and no longer give Obama the benefit of the doubt on a variety of issues, you need look no further than Obamacare, whose birthday gift to America might just be a GOP congressional majority.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Obamacare-is-even-worse-than-critics-thought-960772-103571664.html#ixzz10Zozvuux
Much more has been revealed about Obamacare since President Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi pushed the bill on Americans six months ago Read more at the Washington Examiner: t
By Bridget Johnson - 09/25/10 11:25 AM ET
The White House on Saturday invoked the state secrets privilege to
toss a lawsuit brought by civil liberties groups against an assassinati
on plan against terrorists that would also target a U.S. citizen.
Anwar al-Awlaki, an alleged al-Qaeda regional commander born in New
Mexico and reportedly hiding in Yemen, has been linked to the Fort Hood
shootings and the attempt by a Nigerian man to blow up an airliner over
Detroit on Christmas Day. The cleric, author of "44 Ways to Support Jihad,"
also reportedly inspired the Times Square car bombing attempt in May, and
placed a fatwa on Seattle Weekly cartoonist Molly Norris for suggesting a
controversial “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day”.
He's said to be on a U.S. list that approves death or capture of key terrorist
suspects. The 39-year-old's placement on the list in April made him the first
U.S. citizen to land on the CIA targeted kill list.
Al-Awlaki's father enlisted the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights to challenge the program in court and declare the targeted killings unconstitutional.
The lawsuit also aimed to block the assassination green light against al-Awlaki, and compel the U.S. government to disclose the guidelines for putting a U.S. citizen on such a list.
According to the Associated Press, the administration invoked the rule that asserts court proceedings and evidence revealed in such would endanger national security. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in the declaration filed in federal court, said he was invoking the military and state secrets privilege because of information that could be disclosed on possible military operations in Yemen.
"I am invoking the privilege over any information, if it exists, that would tend to confirm or deny any allegations in the complaint pertaining to the CIA," CIA Director Leon Panetta's court statement said.
"The idea that courts should have no role whatsoever in determining the criteria by which the executive branch can kill its own citizens is unacceptable in a democracy," the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement, according to AP. "In matters of life and death, no executive should have a blank check."
Nasser al-Awlaki previously told the Times of London that U.S. authorities should pursue charges against his son in court if they thought him to to be guilty of a crime.
"What the U.S. government is doing is against the American constitution," he said from Yemen. "If Anwar has done anything wrong he should be prosecuted, not targeted by a drone."
In a January interview with CNN, the senior al-Awlaki said his son was not a member of al-Qaeda and not hiding out with the terror group in Yemen.
"What do you expect my son to do? There are missiles raining down on the village," he said. "He has to hide. But he is not hiding with al-Qaeda; our tribe is protecting him right now. My son is (a) wanted man, he's cornered, that's the problem I am facing."
The father added, "He's not Osama bin Laden."
The White House maintains that al-Awlaki is a direct and serious threat to national security. In July, the Treasury Department froze his assets.
In April, Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) introduced a resolution urging that al-Awlaki be stripped of his citizenship. It has 17 co-sponors and remains in a House subcommittee.
Source:
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/120907-white-house-invokes-state-secrets-privilege-to-block-lawsuit-on-targetd-killings
The contents of this site are © 2010 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.
Comments (46)
Infowars.com
September 28, 2010
Update: UT Law has canceled John Lott’s talk.
Infowars.com has learned that an open carry event was scheduled on the UT campus today, the
scene of a shooting earlier today. From the Students for Liberty website:
On Tuesday, September 28 at 6:00pm, a coalition of student organizations on the University of
Texas Austin campus, including the Libertarian Longhorns, the UT Students for Concealed Carry
on Campus, the UT Objectivism Society and the UT Federalist Society, will be hosting John Lott,
famed defender of gun rights and author of the book “More Guns, Less Crime”.
Lott’s work in “More Guns, Less Crime” is commonly cited by many liberty-minded people when
arguing against gun control laws, and Lott will be sharing some of his expertise in this field to the
audience of students and members of the community of Austin.
Austin has been a hot-bed of debate over the potential of state laws being passed that would make
it legal for a person to carry a concealed handgun on college campuses.
If you are in the Austin area on the 28th, stop by the UT Law School and hear John Lott discuss the
negatives of gun control and the positives of a free society!
The fact that the shooting occurred prior to the talk is, to say the least, highly suspicious.
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
September 29, 2010
On November 1, boarding an aircraft in the United States will become more intrusive. That’s when the
Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration will begin enforcing
something called “Secure Flight.”
In June, DHS boss Janet Napolitano announced “that 100 percent of passengers traveling within the
United States and its territories are now being checked against terrorist watchlists through the
Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) Secure Flight program,” as recommended by the 9/11
white wash commission.
Under the program, destined to be a bureaucratic nightmare, TSA goons wearing blue latex gloves will prescreen a passenger’s name, date of birth, and gender against government watchlists for domestic and international flights, according to a TSA press release. “Individuals found to match watchlist parameters will be subjected to secondary screening, a law enforcement interview or prohibition from boarding an aircraft, depending on the specific case.”
If you think only Muslims and shady characters from Yemen or Pakistan will be double checked, think again. Recall the nightmare experienced by Jan Adams and Rebecca Gordon, two peace activists who were detained in San Francisco in September, 2002, a couple weeks after the first anniversary of the day we were told cave-dwelling Muslims made NORAD stand down. The pair were searched and interrogated after the TSA claimed their names resembled “those of suspected criminals or terrorists,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported son September 27, 2010.
“One detainment forced a group of 20 Wisconsin anti-war activists to miss their flight, delaying their trip to meet with congressional representatives by a day. That case and others are raising questions about the criteria federal authorities use to place people on the list — and whether people who exercise their constitutional right to dissent are being lumped together with terrorists,” the newspaper also reported.
Meanwhile, supposed terrorists are allowed to board planes, for instance Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the fizzle pants non-bomber. It was no secret Abdulmutallab had “multiple communications” with Islamic extremists in Londonistan, the home base of MI6 groomed patsies, dupes, and mental deficeints.
Abdulmutallab was also allowed to get a visa, just like Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who was on a terrorist watch list at the time and would later as a star patsy be convicted in the first WTC bombing case. In 2006, investigative reporters discovered that the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency specialized in deliberately keeping some suspected terrorists off the US international no-fly list. In order to make sure its dupes and patsies are allowed to travel unrestricted, the CIA has operatives inside the Federal Air Marshal Service.
It is not a coincidence the absurdly over-hyped fizzle pants non-bombing was staged on Christmas day over Detroit as Congress was talking about reforming the Constitution nullifying Patriot Act. Moreover, in the months following the orchestrated event, the government’s no-fly list doubled, from about 3,400 people to about 6,000 people, a senior intelligence official told USA Today in March.
The TSA also used the Times Square non-bombing to tweak its no-fly list procedures. “The Transportation Security Administration has implemented a new rule requiring airlines to check the no-fly list within two hours after being notified of a special update,” Fox News reported after Faisal Shahzad’s cobbled together barbeque canister bomb failed to explode.
The Secure Flight program was not designed to prevent terrorists from boarding planes. It will be implemented next month as part of an effort to expand the government control grid and get commuters acclimated to submitting to absurd mandates that are obviously unconstitutional.
As Paul Joseph Watson noted earlier today, the government is moving forward in its efforts to impose its police state control and submission grid on the American people. It has now moved its naked body scanner technology from airports to the streets and highways of America. “Body and vehicle scanners are just one tool authorities plan to implement on a widespread basis as part of our deepening decline into a hi-tech militarized police state,” writes Watson. “The implementation of ‘Checkpoint USA’, where citizens are routinely stopped, searched and radiated by federal VIPER teams is further evidence of how America is crumbling into a Soviet-style police state where the presumption of innocent until proven guilty is abolished and the 4th amendment eviscerated.”
Secure Flight is yet another step in that direction. It may appear innocuous, but is in fact designed to get citizens accustomed to government officials micromanaging every aspect of their daily lives, be it at the airport or at the local mall.
As an antiterror measure, the US government has deployed mobile X-ray technology to randomly scan cars and trucks. But the measure is riling privacy proponents.
*
Using the Z Backscatter Van, officials detected drugs hidden in the
body of this pickup truck.
By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / September 29, 2010
Atlanta
For many living in a terror-spooked country, it might seem like a great
government innovation: Use vans equipped with mobile X-ray units to
scan vehicles at major sporting events, or even randomly, for bombs
or contraband.
Skip to next paragraph
Related Stories
* Two alternatives to full-body scanners
* Detroit attack: terrorist once again confounds airport security
* With full-body X-ray, a closer look at air travelers
But news that the US is buying custom-made vans packed with something called backscatter X-ray capacity has riled privacy advocates and sparked internet worries about "feds radiating Americans."
"This really trips up the creep factor because it's one of those things that you sort of intrinsically think the government shouldn't be doing," says Vermont-based privacy expert Frederick Lane, author of "American Privacy." "But, legally, the issue is the boundary between the government's legitimate security interest and privacy expectations we enjoy in our cars."
American Science & Engineering, a Billerica, Mass.-company, tells Forbes it's sold more than 500 ZBVs, or Z Backscatter Vans, to US and foreign governments. The Department of Defense has bought the most for war zone use, but US law enforcement has also deployed the vans to search for bombs inside the US, according to Joe Reiss, a company spokesman, as quoted by Forbes.
On Tuesday, a counterterror operation snarled truck traffic on I-20 near Atlanta, where Department of Homeland Security teams used mobile X-ray technology to check the contents of truck trailers. Authorities said the inspections weren't prompted by any specific threat.
The mobile X-ray technology works by bouncing narrow X-ray streams off an object like a car and then analyzing the scatter rate of the returning rays. Operators can then locate less-dense objects that could be bodies or bombs.
Backscatter X-ray is already part of an ongoing national debate about its use in so-called full body scanners being deployed in many US airports. In that case, US officials have said they will not store or share the images and will use masking technology to avoid revealing details of the human body. Nevertheless, information security advocates have filed suit to stop their deployment, citing concerns about privacy.
Security experts say expanding the X-ray technology for use on American streets is a powerful counterterror strategy. They also point out the images do not not offer the kind of detail that would be embarrasing to anyone. Moreover, law enforcement already has broad search-and-seizure powers on public highways, where a search warrant is often not needed for officers to instigate a physical search.
But others worry that radiating Americans without their knowledge is evidence of gradually eroding constitutional protections in the post-9/11 age.
"Regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of national security … you have to be realistic that this is another way in which the government is capturing information they may lose control over," says Mr. Lane. "I just have some real problems with the idea of even beginning a campaign of rolling surveillance of American citizens, which is what this essentially is."
Steve Watson
Infowars.com
October 2, 2010
US Governments Human Experimentation Apology: Theyre Only
Sorry They Were Caught 011010tuskegee
The US government has today apologised for intentionally infecting
almost 700 people in Guatemala with sexually transmitted diseases
in the 1940s, however, it has not apologised for countless other
similar atrocious experiments and programs that it has engaged in
and continues to engage in, amounting to an all out biological and
chemical warfare attack on humanity.
NBC News today carries the story that Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen
Sebelius have offered extensive apologies for actions taken by
the U.S. Public Health Service between the years of 1946-48.
During this time, US medical researchers, along with the
Guatemalan government, intentionally infected 696 Guatemalan
men and women with gonorrhea and syphilis without their
knowledge or permission.
Subjects, who were hand picked from groups of soldiers, prisoners and institutionalized mental patients, were infected through direct inoculation and visits from infected prostitutes.
They were then encouraged to spread the disease around and, by all accounts, hundreds were never offered treatment.
Nothing of any use was ever gleaned from the study, the purpose of which the government maintains was to determine whether syphilis could be prevented by penicillin.
Records of the program were hidden, but recently discovered by Professor Susan M Reverby of Wellesley College, upon researching and writing about the similarly horrific Tuskegee experiment, in which hundreds of working class African American in Alabama, were diagnosed with syphilis but never told and instead allowed to die as part of a government experiment to study the disease.
Treatment was actively withheld from the men, yet they were told they were being treated for “bad blood”. The experiment ran from 1932 until it was exposed in 1972.
In her article titled “Normal Exposure’ and Inoculation Syphilis: A PHS ‘Tuskegee’ Doctor in Guatemala, 1946-48″, Professor Reverby explains how a Public Health Service
physician called Dr. John C. Cutler was recruited to take part in Tuskegee in the 1960s after being involved in the earlier Guatemala experiment.
The article states:
Cutler and the other physicians chose men in the Guatemala National Penitentiary, then in an army barracks, and men and women in the National Mental Health Hospital for a total of 696 subjects. Permissions were gained from the authorities but not individuals, not an uncommon practice at the time, and supplies were offered to the institutions in exchange for access. The doctors used prostitutes with the disease to pass it to the prisoners (since sexual visits were allowed by law in Guatemalan prisons) and then did direct inoculations made from syphilis bacteria poured onto the men’s penises or on forearms and faces that were slightly abraded
when the “normal exposure” produced little disease, or in a few cases through spinal punctures. Unlike in Alabama, the subjects were then given penicillin after they contracted the illness. However, whether everyone was then cured is not clear and not everyone received what was even then considered adequate treatment.
Yet the PHS was aware then that this was a study that would raise ethical questions. For as Surgeon General Thomas Parran made clear “’You know, we couldn’t do such an experiment in this country.” Deception was the key here as it had been in Tuskegee. Much of this was kept hushed even from some of the Guatemalan officials and information about the project only circulated in selected syphilology circles. When it proved difficult to transfer the disease and other priorities at home seemed more important, Cutler was told to pack up and come back to the States.
Reverby also uncovered similar experiments carried out on American prisoners:
In 1944 the PHS had done experiments on prophylaxis in gonorrhea at the Terre Haute Federal Penitentiary in the United States. In this prison, the “volunteers” were deliberately injected with gonorrhea (which can be cultured), but the PHS had found it difficult to get the men to exhibit infection and the study was abandoned.
Her article also refers to research that details how experimentation on American prisoners became institutionalized, with inmates being exposed to everything from viruses causing warts and herpes to Malaria, and even agents of chemical warfare.
In 1997 Reverby was a member of the group that lobbied President Bill Clinton to offer a public apology to those who survived the Tuskegee experiment and their families.
Now there comes a similar apology regarding the Guatemala project:
“The sexually transmitted disease inoculation study conducted from 1946-1948 in Guatemala was clearly unethical,” today’s US government statement reads. “Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health. We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices.”
There is a pattern here – the government only apologizes when the facts are exposed. They are not sorry for carrying out the experiments, rather they are merely sorry for getting caught.
There are countless other examples of the US government having illegally tested and used bio-weapons on its own citizens.
Declassified documentation of the Program F fluoride study, for example, has revealed that atomic researchers secretly gathered and analyzed blood and tissue samples from citizens of Newburgh, New York from 1945 to 1956, with the cooperation of State Health Department personnel, in order to study of the health effects of fluoridating public drinking water.
The documents show that much of the original proof that fluoride is safe for humans in low doses was generated by A-bomb program scientists, who had been secretly ordered to provide “evidence useful in litigation” against defense contractors for fluoride injury to citizens. The first lawsuits against the U.S. A-bomb program were not over radiation, but over fluoride damage, the documents show, because fluoride, one of the most toxic substances known to man, was the key chemical in atomic bomb production.
Now more than two thirds of U.S. public drinking water is fluoridated.
Where is the apology for this experiment on unwitting Americans?
Another example comes in the form of Project SHAD, in which live toxins and chemical poisons were knowingly used on American servicemen on American soil.
The Pentagon’s biowarfare program has long been in operation and US citizens have never been spared from experimentation.
Other cases involve spraying clouds of bacteria over San Francisco, releasing toxic gases into the New York subway, holding open-air biological and chemical weapons tests in at least four states in the 1960s, the list goes on, and these are only the declassified known examples.
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Where are the apologies for these experiments on unwitting Americans?
Bob Chapman
The International Forecaster
October 1, 2010
It is interesting to watch Wall Street defy reality. This is a scene
we’ve observed since the early 1960s, the effect of debt on the
economy and the nation and in turn on its currency. The result
of the profligacy over all those years is the biggest bull market
in history in gold and silver. As we write gold is toying with
$1,300 and silver with $21.50. Each day a new high is reached
in spite of a pending options expiration and the perpetual
market rigging and manipulation by the US government.
Government goes on its merry way because they have a Federal Reserve. There will be no cutback in deficit spending.
Photo: Ken Mayer.
One of the things that astound us is that few professionals have
seen this coming over the past 10-1/2 years, and even those that
do believe do not think this is an earth-shaking event. What we
are about to experience is an event that only occurs every 300 to
500 years. All we can imagine is that they have a very limited perspective of history and particularly economic and financial history.
Unbeknownst to most gold and silver shares, coins and bullion have been under accumulation since 2000, by the smart money. Gold alone on a compound basis has been up just under 20% annually. It should also be noted that gold demand rose 36% in the second quarter.
Several events of recent vintage have changed the atmosphere in which gold and silver reside. Six or eight months ago the major NYC banks arranged for a major rally in the dollar, which ran from 74 to 89. It is now back to 79. The problems in Greece were the catalyst, as well as other EU-euro zone member problems. This caused the euro to fall from $1.50 to $1.19. It is now at $1.35. This temporarily boosted the dollar. About 11 weeks ago we predicted a new quantitative easing program in the US and it was put into operation about a month ago. This is the way the Federal Reserve again intends to keep the US economy from collapsing. The result of this move is that again foreign central banks are moving to cheapen their currencies, because the dollar is again falling in value. That is reflected in the increasing foreign exchange dollar reserves of many countries. What they do to cheapen their currencies in US dollar terms is to print their own national currency and purchase dollars. With those dollars they buy US Treasuries or spend them. That process cheapens their currency in dollar terms. This is called intervention.
The prevailing attitude is that if a nation doesn’t cheapen its currency others will and that would leave a nation at a disadvantage in terms of trade and pricing exports. This has been going on for years and US administrations have overlooked the practice. That is because it cheapens exports into the US, holds down inflation and creates buyers for Treasury and Agency bonds and US stocks and investments. Unfortunately for the US other nations have decided US debt is so onerous that they are diversifying into other currencies, purchasing items such as commodities and in some cases buying gold. The argument against gold has been that there is no interest on the investment. They perpetually do not understand that gold has been appreciating in value for the last ten years just shy of 20% annually. Thus their argument for not owning gold is incorrect. It has cost nations dearly and will continue to do so. The real reason that they do not purchase gold is because of pressure from the US government.
The most visible intervention in the currency markets was that of Japan in a desperate attempt to cheapen the value of the yen in violation of agreements with other major nations. Their manipulation into the $4 trillion Forex market was totally unsuccessful. Japan and others are faced with increases in money and credit by the Fed in its efforts to again liquefy the US economy. Any attempt to fight another $2.5 trillion by foreign nations is going to be futile. The currencies of almost every nation will rise and there is little they can do about it. The US dollar has been abandoned in an effort to save an American economy that is in serious trouble. The currency devaluations will come, but will be unsuccessful. Russia is an exception and has thus far failed to use stimulus to weaken its rouble. Every time the IMF tries to suppress gold prices with its gold sales, Russia is right there buying it up, which must infuriate the elitists in Europe and the US. Almost 2/3s of their economy’s growth loss has been due to drought and fires, but with close to $500 billion in foreign exchange, they have no trouble buying gold, which puts those reserves at close to 24 million ounces. It is an easy way to dump dollars.
Over and over again we hear central banks worldwide announcing how they are going to defend their currencies in order to keep their exports inexpensive. We wonder when someone in Washington is going to catch on to what has been perpetually done to injure the US economy? Free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing doesn’t work. It has cost 8 million American jobs over the past 12 years and lowered wages from $30.00 an hour to $14.00 an hour, and caused a depression. British mercantilism has never worked except for those demeaning their currencies. The only answer for America is to impose stiff tariffs on foreign goods and services and junk NAFTA, CAFTA and the WTO. Just look at what China has done as an example. The yuan is undervalued by 40% and they could care less. They keep right on devaluing their currency and then complain about the loss in the value of the dollar and US Treasuries they buy as a result of currency manipulation. If the US is ever to survive economically they have to put an end to criminal devaluations.
Government goes on its merry way because they have a Federal Reserve. There will be no cutback in deficit spending.
All the government has to do is request that the Fed purchase their debt and they do so by creating money and credit out of thin air. This is monetization and it’s inflationary. This is how government pays for mandated services. The taxes for such were already extracted from the public, but unbeknownst to most of the public these funds have already been spent. This is how Social Security, Medicare and all those other bailout services are being funded. Foreigners are buying only 25% of US government debt. The slack is and has been assumed by the Fed, which the people eventually get to pay for. Today we are in a lull, a sort of magical time, when the very superstructure of the system is being destroyed, but it is not particularly noticeable. The economy, we might add, is going sideways, with the assistance of $2.5 trillion a year. That can last for several years but in the end inflation goes rampant and sometimes becomes hyperinflation as we have seen in the Weimar Republic and most recently in Zimbabwe. Inflation, as consumers can attest to, is already climbing and the roar of higher inflation is not far off. One of the events that will kick that off will be bank lending of the funds they hold, some $1.5 trillion, which presently are sterilized, but become monetized once they are lent or spent. We can assure you that day is just over the horizon. This, once raging, will cause political, social and perhaps military conflict. If you look back in history when such problems existed those in power create another war or they subject their own people. Historically this hasn’t been difficult, but today is different, because talk radio and the Internet have allowed people to know and understand what has been and will be forced upon them and by whom.
Richard Russell:
They call it competitive devaluations or more vulgarly “beggar thy neighbor.” In the new rough world of 2010, every nation wants to export. The biggest aids in exporting are (1) cheap labor, (2) access to ample raw materials, (3) a “cheap,” low-priced, competitive currency. China keeps its yuan on the “cheap” side by forcing it below the purchasing power of the dollar. Treasury Secretary Timmie Geithner and more recently, Barack Obama himself, have been badgering the Chinese to halt their “manipulations” and to allow the yuan to float higher. China’s answer is “We can’t hear you,” and when pressed further the Chinese retort, “We’ll allow the yuan to float when it serves China’s purposes.” In order to compete with the mighty Chinese exporting machine, the rest of the Asian nations force their currencies down. The net result is a series of competitive devaluations. The sum of the story is that every nation wants to export. and no nation wants a strong currency. So what’s the US’s answer? Our answer is that if China won’t allow the yuan to rise, then we’ll flood the market with new dollars and allow the dollar to sink. That’s the trade-off, China must allow the yuan to rise or the US will set off quantitative easing #2. The US must be competitive, even if we have to sacrifice the almighty dollar. The Chinese complain that to allow their currency to rise too far will mean millions of their factories will be forced into bankruptcy and millions of Chinese will lose their jobs. China’s reserves include a staggering $2.5 trillion in dollar-denominated US securities (mostly treasuries). If the dollar sinks, China stands to lose hundreds of billions of dollar in purchasing power. China, it seems to me, is stalling, playing for time, while it gets rid of its dollar liabilities by switching to shorter maturities, by increasing its mix of other currencies while decreasing its dollar position, and by buying gold with its dollars. Meanwhile, the Fed’s policy-makers are ready to take the big gamble with the dollar. At last Tuesday’s meeting, Fed Chairman Bernanke hinted that the Fed is ready to flood the system with additional dollars in a campaign to push longer-term interest rates lower, and to pressure the dollar to the downside. This announcement served to drive the dollar index down to its lowest level since last March.
Last week the Dow rose 2.4%, S&P 2.1%, Nasdaq 3.5% and the Russell 2000 rose 3%. Cyclicals rose 1.9%; transports 1.8%; consumers 2.1%; utilities 2%; banks 0.2%; broker/dealers were unchanged; high tech rose 2.6%; semis 3.5%; Internets rose 3.9% and biotechs 1.5%. Gold bullion rose $22.00, the HUI rose 2% and the USDX rose 2.6% to 79.28.
Two-year T-bills fell 2 bps to 0.43%; ten-year T-notes fell 14 bps to 2.60% and 10-year German bunds fell 8 bps to 2.34%.
The Freddie Mac 30-year fixed mortgage rates were unchanged at 4.37%, the 15’s were unchanged at 3.82%, one-year ARMs rose 6 bps to 3.44% and 30-year jumbos rose 1 bps to 5.33%.
Fed credit fell $2.8 billion, as Fed foreign holdings of Treasury and Agency debt rose $3.7 billion. Custody holdings for foreign central banks have increased $258 billion YTD, or by 12% annualized and YOY they are up 12.6%.
Total money market funds fell $10.6 billion to $2.803 trillion. Total commercial paper jumped $27.8 billion to $1.064 trillion.Rumors persist that Bank of America just received $13 billion in emergency funds to keep the bank solvent. The word is HSBC has problems as well.
SIPC has $1.2 billion and can borrow $2.5 billion from the Treasury. This certainly is not much money for the undertaking they are involved in.
The August Chicago Fed National Activity Index fell 0.53 to after being down 0.11 in July.
On Friday regulators seized three corporate credit unions and will have to repackage $50 billion in troubled assets.
We have been warning you on credit unions. This is just the beginning.
Regulators shut two more banks bringing the 2010 total to 127.
Record-low interest rates are stoking the biggest increase in U.S. share buybacks ever. American companies announced $55.9 billion in repurchases since June, data compiled by Birinyi Associates Inc. show. That adds to $93.5 billion in the second quarter and $108.3 billion during the first three months of the year, compared with $125 billion in all of 2009. Corporations are using debt to pay for buybacks.
Leveraged-loan returns rose to their highest level of the year this week as Brickman Group Holdings Inc. took advantage of investor demand and marketed a loan without financial-maintenance requirements. Investors in search of extra yield have turned to high- risk, high-return loans, driving supply to more than double this year and allowing companies to bring so-called covenant-lite deals to market. Those loans are devoid of restrictions such as a mandate on maximum leverage, or debt to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
Bank of America has been busted using some seriously outrageous tactics to try to collect debts so small they’re barely worth the paper they’re written on.
It wasn’t until ABC News ambushed BOFA CEO Brian Moynihan Michael-Moore style outside his office that the firm finally responded by firing its debt-collection firm.
Regulators announced a rescue of the nation’s so-called wholesale credit
unions…Friday’s moves include the seizure of three wholesale credit unions and an unusual plan by government officials to manage $50 billion of troubled assets inherited from failed institutions. To help fund the rescue, the National Credit Union Administration plans to issue $30 billion to $35 billion in government-guaranteed bonds, backed by the shaky mortgage-related assets.
Bernanke and the NY Fed are boosting stocks ahead of the November election. If the GOP takes control of at least one chamber of Congress, Ben’s ways and means of rigging and bailing out will be audited.
The Fed did a $3.89B POMO on Friday. For the week, the NY Fed monetized $11.15B of Treasuries. At 14 to 1 bank leverage, this is sizable juice. Hedge funds can employ even greater leverage.
Heavy dollar inflows into Brazil could pose credit risks for the country’s banking system, Brazilian Central Bank chief Henrique Meirelles said Friday, defending his bank’s intervention measures in the foreign exchange market.
Ergo, the world is accelerating its beggar they neighbor competitive currency debasement scheme instead of allowing the necessary economic and financial restructuring. Soon, more of the market will become alarmed at increasing central bank and sovereign credit risk. Then this inflate of die party will get very interesting.
A Return to Beggar They Neighbor? Beggar-thy-neighbor currency devaluations proved ruinous for the global economy in the 1930s. Is the world setting off down the same slippery slope again? As in the 1930s, competitive devaluations, whether by fair means or foul, are likely to increase international tensions and risk protectionist responses. Meanwhile, they will do nothing to address the global imbalances that led to the crisis or tackle the chief problem facing the advanced economies today: lack of domestic demand in many countries.
Japan Signals Determination on Yen Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara said that Japan’s government is determined to prevent further appreciation of the country’s currency and raised the possibility of further government intervention to curb the yen’s rise.
What More Fed Easing Means For Markets: ‘America On Sale’
“The Fed is going to do whatever it takes to support this market. They don’t care what it is.”… “Investors are looking at what the news is and they’re reacting to it, and the reaction isn’t necessarily a healthy one at all times,” says Andre Julian, CFO and senior market strategist at OpVest Wealth Management in Irvine, Calif. “They’ve lost perspective on the long term: What are we going to do with inflation? What are we going to do when the dollar isn’t worth as much?”
A Grand Unified Theory on Market Manipulation [August 2, 2009]
A limiting factor is that the rules of the game have changed quickly, and what we believe is important to the major players now may not necessarily have been important twelve or even six months ago… The theory for which we have the greatest supporting evidence of manipulation surrounds the fact that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRNY) began conducting permanent open market operations (POMO) on March 25, 2009 and has conducted 42 to date.
These days are highly correlated with strong paint-the-tape closes, with the theory being that the large institutions that receive the capital injections are able to leverage this money by 100 to 500 times and
http://www.precisioncapmgt.com/wp-content/uploads/PCM-A_G.U.T._of_Market_Manipulation.pdf
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Gold is the final refuge against universal currency debasement States accounting for two-thirds of the global economy are either holding down their exchange rates by direct intervention or steering currencies lower in an attempt to shift problems on to somebody else, each with their own plausible justification. Nothing like this has been seen since the 1930s.
The managers of all four reserve currencies are playing fast and loose: the Fed is clipping the dollar; the Bank of England is clipping sterling; the European Central Bank is buying the bonds of EMU debtors to stave off insolvency, something it vowed never to do just months ago; and the Bank of Japan has just carried out two trillion yen of “unsterilized” intervention…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8026324/Gold-is-the-final-refuge-against-universal-currency-debasement.html
Policy makers must do more than print money and hope for the best Quantitative easing might seem the easiest option but it is storing up major problems for the future.
The regulatory failure that brought the Western world to this impasse and the gross irresponsibility shown by the investment banks and ratings agencies is shocking. Central bankers lowered rates in the aftermath of 9/11 and the dot-com crash, then kept them low for far too long so pumping up the biggest
credit bubble in history.
Now, the Western world’s policy response amounts to printing money and heaping debts upon debts, while shoving the banking sector’s losses on to the general public – and, particularly, their children and grandchildren. This is perhaps the most systematic act of inter-generational theft the world has ever seen.
But that’s not the point at least for now. The point for now is that QE and the related fiscal boosts simply are not working.
As Simon Johnson has written: “The finance industry has effectively captured our government and recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform.” Strong words from a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund but no less true for that.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/liamhalligan/8025121/Policy-makers-must-do-more-than-print-money-and-hope-for-the-best.html
An intriguing pick-up in Treasury settlement fails First, there’s been a relatively strong burst of settlement failures in the US Treasury repo market in the last week.
According to data compiled the New York Fed, ‘failures to receive’ shot up to 87,173 versus 14,356 the previous week, while ‘failures to deliver’ hit 85,827 versus 9,377 the highest since January 6, 2010 on both counts. Meanwhile something else that’s curious in the market. If you’re interested in trading the 30-year spot-future basis, there’s a potentially interesting arbitrage opportunity that’s opened up since about August. [US 30-year bonds are out of whack with USZs.]
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2010/09/24/352581/an-intriguing-pick-up-in-treasury-settlement-fails/
The explanation for both of the above noted conditions is: the system is running out of deliverable product because it is still too levered, with the Fed’s NZIRP and QE as a driving dynamic.
The use of derivatives has “far exceeded any pressing need for hedging in real markets or financial markets and has become a kind of speculative instrument,” the 83-year-old former central banker said…“It’s going to take a long time to repair the basic disequilibrium in the economy,” Volcker said.
The substantial drop in credit card debt in the United States since early 2009 has been widely attributed to newly frugal consumers. But analysts say that a significant portion of the decline is actually the result of financial institutions writing off billions of dollars in credit card debt as losses…
A study released last week by Evolution Finance’s CardHub.com, calculated that financial institutions charged off about $20 billion each quarter from early 2009 through early 2010, about equal to the amount of the decline in outstanding credit card debt…
President Barack Obama’s $30 billion small community business lending program faces one big challenge: many of the community banks and businesses it’s supposed to help don’t want it…
Bank executives say their customers don’t want loans, even at low interest rates, because the sluggish economy has chilled expansion plans. Some say the federal money isn’t worth it because they fear it will come with too much regulatory oversight. “We have taken a strategic decision not to have our primary regulator, the government, also be a partner in our bank,” said William Chase Jr., CEO of Triumph Bank in Memphis.
Tens of thousands of people will lose their jobs within weeks unless Congress extends one of the more effective job-creating programs in the $787 billion stimulus act: a $1 billion New Deal-style program that directly paid the salaries of unemployed people so they could get jobs in government, at nonprofit organizations and at many small businesses.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation postponed its decision on approving a rule that would study failures of mega-banks so that its bankruptcy doesn’t affect the markets.
The rule based on the Dodd-Frank Act was expected to be adopted, but instead the agency decided to discuss a proposal on the subject. The proposal is expected to be discussed with the Financial Stability Oversight Council before its approval.
A second proposal on the subject will also be introduced by the agency in Q1 of 2011. This may include methods to examine how funds are deployed in the recovery process and how taxpayer funds will be recovered from the industry.
Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)
The United States on Monday set final duties ranging up to 61 percent on hundreds of millions of dollars of copper pipe from China in one of several disputes causing friction between the two countries.
The U.S. Commerce Department announcement came one day after Beijing slapped final duties ranging from 50.3 percent to 105.4 percent on chicken parts from the United States.
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