Top 25 Censored Stories for 2010

Project Censor's Top Censored Stories of 2009/2010

• 1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street
• 2. US Schools are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s
• 3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates
• 4. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina
• 5. Europe Blocks US Toxic Products
• 6. Lobbyists Buy Congress
• 7. Obama’s Military Appointments Have Corrupt Past
• 8. Bailed out Banks and America’s Wealthiest Cheat IRS Out of Billions
• 9. US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza
• 10. Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate
• 11. Private Corporations Profit from the Occupation of Palestine
• 12. Mysterious Death of Mike Connell—Karl Rove’s Election Thief
• 13. Katrina’s Hidden Race War
• 14. Congress Invested in Defense Contracts
• 15. World Bank’s Carbon Trade Fiasco
• 16. US Repression of Haiti Continues
• 17. The ICC Facilitates US Covert War in Sudan
• 18. Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature
• 19. Bank Bailout Recipients Spent to Defeat Labor
• 20. Secret Control of the Presidential Debates
• 21. Recession Causes States to Cut Welfare
• 22. Obama’s Trilateral Commission Team
• 23. Activists Slam World Water Forum as a Corporate-Driven Fraud
• 24. Dollar Glut Finances US Military Expansion
• 25. Fast Track Oil Exploitation in Western Amazon

Jobless claims rise for second week in a row

Andre Damon
Initial jobless benefit claims in the US rose the second time in a row last week, undermining claims that the recovery in corporate profits is translating into improved employment conditions for workers.

Filings for the week ending December 12 reached 480,0000, up 7,000 from the previous week, according to the report issued Thursday by the Labor Department. The figure was significantly higher than predicted by economists surveyed in a Dow Jones poll, who expected jobless claims to fall by 9,000.

The increase follows an unexpected jump in the number of new claims the previous week, when filings reached 474,000. That figure was revised downward slightly in the latest report to 473,000. Claims for continuing jobless benefits, paid to workers who have remained unemployed, also rose by 5,000 to 5,186,000.

New York had the largest increase in new claims. The state registered 16,344 new applications, which the Labor Department report attributed to layoffs in the service sector, construction and transportation.

The number of jobless claims rose in 45 states, and decreased in eight. The four-week level of jobless claims fell slightly, despite the second consecutive increase in new filings.

The Labor Department report also showed that a growing number of people are collecting extended unemployment insurance benefits. That figure reached 4.73 million after growing by 144,000 last week, according to partial data included in the report. The extended benefits, provided by the federal government for laid-off workers whose state benefits have expired, are scheduled to expire at the end of the year, and Congress has yet to authorize new extended benefits. This could leave millions of workers without any jobless benefits.

The continued increase in the number of people collecting unemployment benefits reflects the growing ranks of workers who are unable to find employment. “People who have already lost their job are having incredible difficulty finding a job,” wrote Dan Greenhaus of Miller Tabak, a Wall Street firm.

The latest figures add to concerns that economic growth in 2010 will be lower than that for the second half of 2009, dragged down by the expiration of government stimulus programs, continued unemployment, and falling wages.

Persistent high unemployment is leading millions of people who have lost their jobs to apply for federal disability programs, according to a recent analysis of Social Security Administration data made by MSNBC. New applications for disability benefits rose 17 percent in fiscal year 2009, reaching 3 million. Filings for fiscal year 2010 are expected to jump another 10 percent.

Meanwhile, mass layoffs continue. Reynolds American, one of the largest US tobacco companies, announced this week that it will cut 400 jobs. ArcelorMittal SA plans to cut 10,000 jobs in Europe, the US and other regions, according to a recent leak to the Wall Street Journal. The company has already reduced its capacity utilization to 70 percent in response to the downturn, and does not plan to change this figure over the next four years.

Large-scale layoffs will continue in the coming year, according to a survey of corporate chief financial officers conduced by Duke University and CFO magazine. The executives surveyed expect to cut their workforces by 1.6 percent in the US.

Despite the improvement in business profitability, most of the executives surveyed said that they don’t expect employment to reach normal levels until 2011 at the earliest. Some 61 percent of executives said their companies had lowered overtime in 2009, while 40 percent implemented other cuts, including furloughs and benefit reductions.

Three quarters of the companies said they had cut their work forces in recent years. Two thirds said they did not expect to bring those jobs back in 2010. At the same time, the surveyed CFOs expected their companies’ earnings to rise by 7.4 percent next year.

Gerald Celente - 2010 TRENDS, include: Terrorism, Economic Crash, Civil Unrest

Gerald Celente on Jeff Rense. 2010 TRENDS include terrorism, economic crash, civil unrest, Depression.

High-level officials warn economic crisis could lead to world-wide unrest

washingtonsblog.com

Numerous high-level officials and experts warn that the economic crisis could lead to unrest world-wide - even in developed countries:

• Today, Moody's warned that future tax rises and spending cuts could trigger social unrest in a range of countries from the developing to the developed world, that in the coming years, evidence of social unrest and public tension may become just as important signs of whether a country will be able to adapt as traditional economic metrics, that a fiscal crisis remains a possibility for a leading economy, and that 2010 would be a “tumultuous year for sovereign debt issuers”.

• The U.S. Army War College warned in 2008 November warned in a monograph [click on Policypointers’ pdf link to see the report] titled “Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development” of crash-induced unrest:

  The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse,” “purposeful domestic resistance,” “pervasive public health emergencies” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.” The “widespread civil violence,” the document said, “would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” “An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home,” it went on. “Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD [the Department of Defense] would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance,” the document read.

• Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said:

  "The global economic crisis ... already looms as the most serious one in decades, if not in centuries ... Economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they are prolonged for a one- or two-year period," said Blair. "And instability can loosen the fragile hold that many developing countries have on law and order, which can spill out in dangerous ways into the international community."***
  
  "Statistical modeling shows that economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one-to-two-year period."***
  
  “The crisis has been ongoing for over a year, and economists are divided over whether and when we could hit bottom. Some even fear that the recession could further deepen and reach the level of the Great Depression. Of course, all of us recall the dramatic political consequences wrought by the economic turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, the instability, and high levels of violent extremism.”
  
  Blair made it clear that - while unrest was currently only happening in Europe - he was worried this could happen within the United States.
  
  [See also this].
  

• Former national security director Zbigniew Brzezinski warned "there’s going to be growing conflict between the classes and if people are unemployed and really hurting, hell, there could be even riots."
  

• The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned the the financial crisis is the highest national security concern for the U.S., and warned that the fallout from the crisis could lead to of "greater instability".

Others warning of crash-induced unrest include:

• The head of the World Trade Organization

• The head of the International Monetary Fund (and see this)

• The head of the World Bank

• Senator Christopher Dodd

• Congressman Ron Paul (radio interview on March 6, 2009)
  

• Britian's MI5 security agency

• Leading economic historian Niall Ferguson

• Leading economist Marc Faber and billionaire investor Jim Rogers

• Leading economist Nouriel Roubini

• Leading economist John Williams

• Top trend researcher Gerald Calente

• European think tank Leap2020

Talk of Recovery is a Shameless Lie

Mission Not Accomplished
Peter Schiff
Although Barack Obama has refrained, at least for now, from delivering triumphant speeches in a naval flight suit, there is nevertheless a strong tone of accomplishment emanating from the President and his deputies. Over the weekend, top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers even pronounced that the recession is now over. Without hedging his bets, Summers declared that thanks to the Obama Administration's wise stewardship, economic stimuli, and emergency bailouts, another Great Depression, set up by the prior Administration, had been narrowly averted. Summers saw no impediments to the return of sustainable growth. He may as well have delivered these remarks from the deck of an aircraft carrier.

I hate to shoot down these high-flying expectations, but the economy is not improving. All that has changed is that we are now more indebted to foreign creditors, with even less to show for it. Washington's current policies have once again deferred the fundamental, market-driven reforms needed to redirect us onto a sustainable path. Instead, through aggressive monetary and fiscal stimuli, we are trying to re-inflate a balloon that is full of holes. This was the Bush Administration's exact response to the 2002 recession. It's shocking how few observers note the repeating pattern, especially the fact that each crash is worse than the last.

Obama's claim of success largely derives from the slowing tally of job losses, the seemingly renewed strength in the financial system, the pickup in home sales and home prices, and the positive GDP figures. But these 'achievements' fall apart under close examination.

First, a closer look at the jobs numbers shows that employment improved in sectors that benefited most directly from monetary or fiscal stimulus: government, healthcare, financial services, education and retail sales. Meanwhile, sectors such as manufacturing continued to shed jobs at an alarming rate. These dynamics actually exacerbate our economic imbalances. Recent trade deficit figures (in which the deficit-reduction trend of early 2009 has sharply reversed) show how this employment growth is preventing needed rebalancing. Essentially, the Administration is nurturing firms that cannot survive without subsidies and support.

Once stimulus is removed, the "saved" jobs will be among the first to go. If the President has not figured this out yet, I am sure Fed Chairman Bernanke has. As a result, the market should discount as pure bluff any claims from the Fed about an eventual "exit strategy" from current stimuli. Such an "exit" would bring about Bernanke's greatest fear — spiking unemployment.

Second, major investment and commercial banks are not back on their feet, but remain fundamentally insolvent. Their current business model of risk-free speculation depends upon the maintenance of government backstops, the continued availability of cheap money from the Fed, and the use of accounting gimmicks that allow them to conceal losses behind phony assumptions.

Third, while it is true that home prices have stopped falling, this represents failure, not victory. True success would be a drop in home prices to a level that homebuyers could actually afford. Instead, we have maintained artificially high prices with tax credits, subsidized mortgage rates, low down payments, and foreclosure relief. With 96% of new mortgages now insured by federal agencies, market forces have been completely removed from the housing equation. With so many government programs specifically designed to maintain artificially high home prices, devastating long-term consequences for our economy are inevitable.

Finally, it is true that the GDP yardstick shows an economy returning to growth. However, as I have often repeated, this measure has deep flaws that render it almost useless for judging the soundness of an economy. Currently, the figures are merely reporting increasing indebtedness as growth. Using GDP as the main financial indicator is equivalent to judging a man's success by the cost of his house, car, and wristwatch. Rather than gauging income, these figures merely indicate a level of spending and have nothing to do with earning power.

Paul Volcker, the only independent voice in the Administration, has not been deceived by his colleagues' sunny claims. He recently noted that our economy still evidences "too much consumption, too much spending relative to our capacity to invest and export" and that the problem is "involved with the financial crisis but in a way [is] more difficult than the financial crisis because it reflects the basic structure of the economy." Yet, President Obama has chosen not to address these concerns.

As Summers and Obama like to point out, the vast majority of economists take it on faith that, with the right finesse, the stimulus can be withdrawn without pushing the economy back into recession. But based on the distortive effects of stimuli and bailouts, our economy has adapted to a climate where cheap credit is not only plentiful but critical.

Eventually, the cheap credit will dry up. Not because the Fed decides it should, but because our foreign creditors stop lending. When that happens, this Administration will look as clueless about economics as the last one was about the pitfalls of nation-building.

But for now, the chattering classes believe strong government action has delivered us from calamity. For them, at least, it's "mission accomplished!"

The 2010 Food Crisis Means Financial Armageddon

Eric deCarbonnel
There is overwhelming, irrefutable evidence that the world will run out of food next year. When this happens, the resulting triple digit food inflation will lead to the collapse of the dollar, the treasury market, derivative markets, and the global financial system. The US will experience economic disintegration.

Over the last two years, the world has experience faced a series of unprecedented financial crisis: the collapse of the housing market, the freezing of the credit markets, the failure of Wall Street brokerage firms (Bear Stearns/Lehman Brothers), the failure of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the failure of AIG,

Iceland’s economic collapse, the bankruptcy of the major auto manufacturers (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler), etc… In the face of all these challenges, the demise of the dollar, derivative markets, and the modern international system of credit has been repeatedly anticipated and feared. However, all these doomsday scenarios have so far been proved false, and, despite tremendous chaos and losses, the global financial system has held together.

The 2010 Food Crisis is different. It is THE CRISIS. The one that makes all doomsday scenarios come true. The government bailouts and central bank interventions which have held the financial world during the last two years will be powerless to prevent the 2010 Food Crisis from bringing the global financial system to its knees.

Astounding lack of awareness

The world is blissful unaware that the greatest economic/financial/political crisis ever seen is a few months away. While it is understandable that general public has no knowledge of the economic pandemonium headed their way, that same ignorance on the part of professional analysts, economists, and other highly paid financial "experts” is mind boggling, as it takes only the tiniest bit of research to realize something is going critically wrong in agricultural market.

USDA estimates for 2009/10 are an insult to common sense.

All someone needs to do to know the world is headed is for food crisis is to stop reading USDA’s crop reports predicting a record soybean and corn harvests and listen to what else the USDA saying.

Specifically, the USDA has declared half the counties in the Midwest to be primary disaster areas this year, including 274 Midwest counties in the last 30 days alone. These designated are based on the criteria of a minimum of 30 percent loss in the value of at least one crop in a county. The chart below shows counties declared primary disaster areas by the Secretary of Agriculture and the president of the United States.



The same USDA that is predicting record harvests is also declaring disaster areas across half because of catastrophic crop losses! To eliminate any doubt that this might be an innocent mistake, the USDA is even predicting record soybean harvests in the same states (Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama) where it has declared virtually all counties to have experienced 30 percent production losses. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that these conflicting accounts mean the USDA is lying.

USDA motivated by fear of higher food prices

The USDA is terrorized by the implications of higher food prices for the US economy, most likely because it realizes the immediate consequence of sharply higher food will be the collapse of the US Treasury market and the dollar, as desperate governments and central banks dump their foreign reserves to appreciate their currencies and lower the cost of food imports. Fictitious USDA estimates should be seen as proof of the dire threat posed by higher food prices, as the USDA would not have turned its production estimates into a grotesque mockery of reality if it didn't believe the alternative to be apocalyptic.

Dynamics behind 2010 Food Crisis

Early in 2009, the supply and demand in agricultural markets went badly out of balance. The world was experiencing a catastrophic fall in food production as a result of the financial crisis (low commodity prices and lack of credit) and adverse weather on a global scale. Meanwhile, China and other Asian exporters, in effort to preserve their economic growth, were unleashing domestic consumption long constrained by inflation fears, and demand for raw materials, especially food staples, was exploding as Chinese consumers worked their way towards American-style overconsumption, prodded on by a flood of cheap credit and easy loans from the government.

Normally, food prices should have already shot higher months ago, leading to lower food consumption and bringing the global food supply/demand situation back into balance. This never happened, because the USDA, instead of adjusting production estimates down to reflect decreased production, has been adjusting estimates upwards to match increasing demand from china. In this way, the USDA has brought supply and demand back into balance (on paper) and temporarily delayed rise in food prices by ensuring a severe food shortage in 2010.

USDA induced overconsumption leading to disaster

It is absolutely key to understand that the production of agricultural goods is a fixed, once a year cycle (or twice a year in the case of double crops). The wheat, corn, soybeans and other food staples are harvested in the fall/spring and then that is it for production. It doesn’t matter how high prices go or how desperate people get, no new supply can be brought online until the next harvest at the earliest. The supply must last until the next harvest, which is why it is critical that food is correctly priced to avoid overconsumption, otherwise food shortages will occur.

The USDA, by manufacturing the data needed to keep the supply demand in balance, has ensured that agricultural commodities are incorrectly priced, which has lead to overconsumption and has guaranteed disaster next year when supplies run out.

Obama's Dog and Pony Show with Bankers

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Tom Eley
Obama holds stage-managed meeting with Wall Street bankers
The stated aim of the gathering of Wall Street bankers at a private White House meeting with President Barack Obama on Monday was to cajole the nation's largest financial institutions into offering loans to cash-starved businesses and consumers.

In reality, the event was a media exercise designed to placate growing popular anger toward the Obama administration. The true nature of the event was not lost on its attendees. “It's a PR [public relations] stunt,” an unnamed CEO flatly told Time magazine prior to the meeting.

Attending were Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Ken Lewis of Bank of America, Richard Fairbank of Capital One, Bob Kelly of Bank of New York Mellon, Ken Chenault of American Express, and Ron Logue of State Street Bank. Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, John Mack of Morgan Stanley, and Dick Parsons of Citigroup joined the meeting via video conference.

The nation's biggest banks will soon hand out year-end executive bonuses totalling in the tens of billions. This conspicuous display of bank prosperity comes just over one year after the US Treasury and Federal Reserve began to funnel trillions of dollars to the finance industry. This ensured that the banks would profit from the economic crisis that they precipitated through rampant financial speculation.

The vast majority of the population continues to suffer through the nation's worst social crisis since the Great Depression. One in six workers is without a job or underemployed. For those who have work, speed-up and pay and benefit cuts are the rule. The foreclosure crisis continues. Hunger is at a record high. The destruction of the social safety system by cash-strapped states is accelerating, and the Obama administration is readying years of budget austerity to right the US fiscal crisis at the expense of the working class.

Appearing on the CBS news program “60 Minutes” on Sunday evening, Obama acknowledged the anger. Referring to the Wall Street financiers as “fat cat bankers,” Obama noted, “They're still puzzled why is it that people are mad at the banks.”

“Well, let's see,” Obama continued, “you guys are drawing down 10, 20 million dollar bonuses after America went through the worst economic year that it's gone through in decades, and you guys caused the problem. And we've got 10 percent unemployment.”

Obama did not mention that this is an outcome of the policies of his own administration, which has overseen the Wall Street baillout and has explicitly campaigned to oppose any measure that would curb executive pay. Meanwhile, it has spearheaded the attack on workers' pay, including through the forced bankrupcy of General Motors and Chrysler.

Monday's meeting comes nine months after a similar meeting at the White House in March. Then, Obama pledged not to take any measures that would impinge on the interests of the financial oligarchy. Bank of America's Lewis said at the time that he was confident that no “punitive” actions would be taken after the “pleasant” meeting. (See “Obama holds ‘very pleasant’ meeting with top US bankers”)

While the media had predicted that Obama's criticisms on “60 Minutes” meant he would shame the executives or give them a “dressing down” on Monday, by all accounts the meeting was likewise as pleasant as it was unsubstantial. No transcripts of the discussion have been released.

Richard Davis, CEO of US Bancorp, told the media “there wasn't a lot of disagreement.” “He didn't call us any names,” Davis said, referring to Obama's “fat cat” reference on “60 Minutes.”

Obama pleaded with the bank executives to “explore every responsible way” to increase lending “to help creditworthy small and medium-sized businesses.” Over the past year, a general lack of cash liquidity has forced many businesses to fold, scale back operations, and lay off workers.

Last fall, Obama, President George W. Bush, and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, among others, justified the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) as critically necessary in order to “jump start” or “open the spigot” of lending. Since then every facet of the Wall Street bailout, including the unaccounted trillions extended to the banks from the Federal Reserve, has relied on the same rationale.

But all evidence shows that the banks have hoarded the cash or used it to engage in new forms of speculation. Overall loan volume continued to fall from the second to third quarters this year, according to recent data.

What the banks have made liquid has not been invested in production. Instead much of it has been been shifted into new asset bubbles, primarily in Asia. From this and other speculative practices the banks have made windfall profits only one year after they teetered on the brink of collapse.

The banks have used some of these profits to pay back TARP funds in order to escape modest limitations on executive pay. Citigroup and Wells Fargo became the latest Wall Street firms to do so, announcing Monday they would pay back $20 billion and $25 billion, respectively. They join Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley.

Obama also implored the bankers to “close the gap” between their declared support for finance reform and their vocal opposition to the regulatory bill passed by the US House of Representatives last week, even though the proposed law would, if anything, expand possibilities for financial speculation.

Such hypocritical entreaties from the president characterized the meeting. There was no mention of any penalties or consequences to banks that fail to increase their lending. Unsurprisingly, results were slim, with only Bank of America announcing it intends to make $5 billion more available to small and medium-sized businesses, a drop in the bucket compared to the enormous need for capital and liquidity.

Wall Street executives' determination to not lend to the productive sectors of the economy―while rewarding themselves billions in compensation―is not a question of morality, nor is it an aberration. It arises from the historical decay of capitalism and its turn to evermore parasitic forms of financial speculation.

While media accounts attempted to present the gathering as an example of Obama “taking on” the bankers, they could not conceal the real relationship of forces. The Obama administration's efforts to put on the show of getting tough produced the opposite image, that of the president as willing supplicant before the masters of Wall Street.

It is significant that Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Mack of Morgan Stanley, and Parsons of Citigroup did not attend in person. While their last-minute cancellations were chalked up to weather―fog in the Washington DC area delayed some flights on Monday morning―they more likely aimed a rebuke at Obama over his “fat cats” comments. Parsons was already a substitute for Citi CEO Vikram Pandit, whose decision to skip the event was attributed to his bank's negotiations with the Treasury to pay back TARP.

“The President has real problems only the banks can help him solve,” according to Time magazine. “On jobs, housing and the strength of the economy, he needs bankers to change their behavior, and there's only so much he can do to force them. So when he sits down with the financial industry elite on Monday, he may talk tough, but he'll also be asking for their help.”

The admission that a democratically elected president has no power over a handful of financiers is an acknowledgement of the oligarchic character of US society. The financial aristocracy in fact controls every lever of state power and dictates economic and social policy. Obama is their representative.

Al Gore Caught Lying at Copenhagen Summit

Image by Steve Rhodes via CrunchBase

Andrew Thomas
Al Gore shoots self, climate summit in foot
Oh dear. Saint Al Gore, the man who invented both the internet and anthropogenic global warming and made himself obscenely rich in the process, has banged yet another nail into the rickety coffin of the global warming religious cult by coming out with what scientists describe as 'a complete load of bollocks' at the Copenhagen climate worryfest.

Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, claimed that the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years. One would think that in the light of the Climategate scandal, the Blessed Al would make sure that his data was accurate and pretty much bullet-proof, but sadly he merely added to the pantheon of completely fabricated climate stats.

In his speech, Gore said: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

Unfortunately, the scientist whose research was quoted by Gore, Doctor Wieslav Maslowski, rather pissed on his chips by stating:

“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at. I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

A Gore spokesman backpedalled furiously, saying that the figure quoted was merely a ballpark figure that was mentioned in a conversation between the two men a few years ago.

The Copenhagen conference was already looking pretty much dead in the water yesterday after the African delegation walked out in protest at Danish moves to ignore emissions targets agreed at the Kyoto conference in 2007. Gore’s gaffe makes it look very much as if no meaningful agreement will be reached before the conference ends.

Gore’s speech was slammed by climate scientists, one of which, Jim Overland from the US Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said: “This is an exaggeration that opens the science up to criticism from sceptics. You really don’t need to exaggerate the changes in the Arctic.”

Maslowki, who works at the US Naval Postgraduate School in California, said that he expects some ice to remain beyond 2020: “I was very explicit that we were talking about near-ice-free conditions and not completely ice-free conditions in the northern ocean. I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this. It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at, based on the information I provided to Al Gore’s office.”

Credit Rating Agency Scam and Latest Dollar Rally

AL MARTIN via conspiracyplanet.com
The deteriorated credit ratings of sovereign debt, especially as we see it in Dubai, Greece and Ukraine, etc., has rankled global equity markets.

This has also driven money into the US Dollar and is primarily responsible for the recent rally we've seen in the Dollar.

Sovereign debt is the debt of foreign nations, Second and Third World governments, denominated in a currency other than its own, to wit US Dollars, Yen, Pounds or Euros.

This sovereign debt has been sold and is payable in a currency other than that of the issuing country.

Usually the largest amount of sovereign debt outstanding is denominated in US Dollars and Japanese Yen.

So what does the credit rating downgrade of the government debt of Greece and Dubai debt really mean?

This is a problem which everyone knows about, but which has been, until recently, successfully hidden by what I call the Wanton Bullish Shills in the media.

Credit ratings agencies, like Standard & Poors, Moody's and Fitch's, are being disingenuous at best regarding their rating system.

They are independent for-profit corporations, yet they masquerade as allegedly objective credit ratings agencies in a monopolistic role deciding what is "credit-worthy” or not.

The problem with the credit rating agencies is the inherent conflict of interests and since there are only three of them, universally recognized by the central banks, the IMF, BIS, etc., they can get away with it.

The credibility of the credit rating agencies has obviously been hurt because they dragged their feet in downgrading Credit Default Swaps (CDS) and Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDOs) in 2007-2008.

The credit quality of that debt was obviously deteriorating, and it also pointed out the flaws in the credit rating agencies, namely that they are paid by the very same issuers of the debt they are rating.

The principal problem is that every effort that the Democrats have made to make the ratings agencies truly independent by either making them some sort of quasi-government entity, or by creating a so-called payment pool, or even a securities transaction tax that would be paid by the industry into a common pot that would then be managed by either the FDIC or SIPC, which in turn would pay the credit rating agency.

That would remove the direct connection between the issuers of securities and the credit rating agencies who are rating them. Every effort to make them more independent has been stifled by the Republicans.

And what about the weakness in the credit ratings of the sovereign debt of Greece and Ukraine? The agencies had been warning for the last half of 2009 that problems were coming in the Greek, Hungarian, Latvian, Ukrainian, etc. economies. They had acted to downgrade the sovereign debt of these nation-states.

In fact now Moodys, Standard and Poors and Fitch's have a total of 37 nation-states on their downgrade list. These are not Third World nation states, whose credit quality is perennially "junk" status anyway. What has become more troublesome is the sharp deterioration in the credit quality of so-called Second World nation state issuers as well. This would include Spain, Iceland, Greece Hungary etc.

At the same time, the credit rating agencies have also been warning First World nation-states like the United States and Britain that they can also lose their AAA credit ratings if they do not rein in their budget deficits.

Japan has also received similar warnings since the Japanese are now running a debt to GDP ratio of about 130%.

CIA, FBI, Even IRS, Monitor MySpace, Twitter, Facebook

No surprise here.
NYT
The government is increasingly monitoring Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites for tax delinquents, copyright infringers and political protesters. A public interest group has filed a lawsuit to learn more about this monitoring, in the hope of starting a national discussion and modifying privacy laws as necessary for the online era.

Law enforcement is not saying a lot about its social surveillance, but examples keep coming to light. The Wall Street Journal reported this summer that state revenue agents have been searching for tax scofflaws by mining information on MySpace and Facebook. In October, the F.B.I. searched the New York home of a man suspected of helping coordinate protests at the Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh by sending out messages over Twitter.

In some cases, the government appears to be engaged in deception. The Boston Globe recently quoted a Massachusetts district attorney as saying that some police officers were going undercover on Facebook as part of their investigations.

Wired magazine reported last month that In-Q-Tel, an investment arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, has put money into Visible Technologies, a software company that crawls across blogs, online forums, and open networks like Twitter and YouTube to monitor what is being said.

This month the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law sued the Department of Defense, the C.I.A. and other federal agencies under the Freedom of Information Act to learn more about their use of social networking sites. More...