bigeye.com
We can break the mainline media's strangle-hold on the American people by PAMPHLETEERING -- The American Revolution's 1st Strategy. Transcribe, layout, print, and distribute the below:
What is happening here in (insert your area here) is happening all across America. Older persons who planned and looked forward to secure and peaceful retirements have seen pensions, savings accounts, and incomes sharply reduced. Their futures and those of their children and grandchildren seem increasingly bleak.
Working Americans who depend upon steady paychecks to meet living expenses for themselves and their families have been hit hard. Unemployment eventually spells disaster for them. Rising living costs, uninsured medical expenses, and temporary layoffs have swelled the ranks of families dependent upon social welfare. Those still employed have a huge bulk of their earnings confiscated in the form of 'income taxes' and retain barely enough to support their families. Having nothing left to spare, they are financially unable to help less fortunate neighbors.
The social 'safety net' for Americans is breaking as financial programs, states, cities, and more and more people approach financial bankruptcy. Social service agencies, churches, and private charities are stretched very thin. Money taken from Americans together with huge sums created through inflating the nation's money supply is spent on wars waged after bullying public support through scare tactics accompanied by governmental propaganda that later proves to have been blatant lies.
American armed forces, instead of being used for the nation's defense, are employed to protect and to further financial interests of a wealthy few, bankers and multi-national corporations. Young Americans die or are critically injured in this charade. Surviving veterans return home to little in the way of opportunity. Largely overlooked, many become part of our nation's huge and growing homeless population.
Misinformation continues to be spread by mainline media which now speaks incessantly of foreign countries, tribesmen, terrorists, trivia, and celebrities instead of addressing critical issues facing the lives of Americans, our reputation as citizens of a responsible nation, and critical issues faced within our own communities.
Such problems have not been created by you and by me. They are the result of policies arrogantly and unlawfully implemented by only a very few. A handful of men and women, raised in and belonging to a privileged minority, now control the reins of a government that has now fully discarded Constitutional precepts upon which America was founded.
These few pursue a policy of aggressive warfare and of world conquest for the purpose of militarily and financially subjugating humanity worldwide. Their goal is to gain full access to the entire resources on this planet and to control existing governments.
Rationalizing such a policy by invoking a vision of world peace through their own one-world government, what Bilderbergers now define openly as a "new world order", is the height of hubris and personal hypocrisy. It is simply the ages old lust of a few for ultimate power, a natural failing understood by the founders of our country.
Wielding unbridled power, with the conviction that they alone have the intelligence and the vision required to lead and to control mankind, they have foolishly 'killed the goose that laid the golden egg' in the United States. They are today creating havoc, both here and abroad.
We are not fomenting violent revolution. It is our goal to inform and to recommend ways in which We the People of this nation, under our Constitution, and given more than two-hundred years of experience, can begin to solve these problems before they overwhelm us completely.
If we wish to do this peacefully and intelligently we need your involvement. We, right here in this community, can join hundreds of other like-minded groups. By forming a huge coalition, overlooking differences and focusing on areas in which we agree, we intend to do this job democratically. We need your support and cooperation. this is a battle that we MUST win for ourselves and our descendants. PLEASE JOIN US NOW.
(INSERT YOUR GROUP'S CONTACT DATA HERE)
Friday, January 1, 2010
US Steps up Drone Attacks, Assassinations in AfPak “Surge”
Image via Wikipedia
Bill Van Auken
Missiles from US Predator drones struck a village in Pakistan over the weekend, killing at least 13 people. The attack coincided with reports of intensified operations by US Special Forces killing squads on the Afghanistan side of the border.
Amounting to targeted assassinations, these forms of warfare are the most evident feature in the first stages of the “surge” ordered earlier this month by President Barack Obama, who is sending at least 30,000 more US troops into Afghanistan.
The methods are indicative of a dirty colonial-style war to suppress resistance to an occupation that is aimed at establishing Washington’s dominance in the energy-rich and strategically vital region of Central Asia.
Citing Pakistani officials, the Lahore-based daily The Nation reported Sunday that the death toll in a drone attack on a village in North Waziristan had risen to 13. Two missiles reportedly struck a compound in Saidgi village, about four miles from North Waziristan’s principal town, Miranshah.
The drones continued hovering over the area, while a US B-52 bomber also conducted over-flights, terrorizing the local population, according to Pakistani media reports.
The missile strike marked the third such attack on North Waziristan since December 17. The area is part of Pakistan’s northwest tribal region, which has been used by elements of the Afghan resistance, backed by fellow Pashtun tribesmen in Pakistan, to launch attacks on the US-led occupation forces in Afghanistan.
The deadly drone campaign has been directed by the US Central Intelligence Agency, using a clandestine airfield in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan and with CIA operatives sitting in front of video screens in Langley, Virginia, directing the missiles to their targets. The Pentagon is reportedly conducting its own drone attacks.
The Obama administration has sharply escalated the drone attacks, launching more than twice as many over the past year as the Bush administration carried out in its last year in office. The secretive nature of the CIA program is designed in large part to obscure the horrific toll in civilian lives inflicted through the firing of Hellfire missiles into Pakistani villages.
As with virtually all of these attacks, the US media parroted unnamed intelligence officials in claiming that the victims of the latest missile strike were all “militants,” without any corroboration of who had been killed.
The Lahore newspaper The News, citing figures supplied by Pakistani officials, reported in April that 687 civilians had been killed in approximately 60 drone strikes that had been carried out since January 2008. Given that fatality rate, with nearly 30 drone attacks having been launched since, the number of Pakistani civilians slaughtered in this fashion could easily have topped 1,000.
Over the last two years, the Pakistani government—both that of military dictator Pervez Musharraf and that of his successor, Pakistan People’s Party President Asif Ali Zardari—had worked out a modus operandi with Washington whereby Pakistan publicly protested the drone attacks and demanded that they cease, while behind the scenes giving them a green light.
US officials had portrayed the missile strikes as an attempt to kill leaders of al Qaeda. The latest series of attacks, however, has been launched specifically against Afghanistan resistance elements that US military and intelligence agencies refer to as the Haqqani network, named for its leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, who operated out of the same North Waziristan sanctuary in the 1980s. Then he was one of the principal recipients of US arms and aid in the CIA-backed war against the Soviet-aligned regime in Kabul.
Since the announcement of the Afghanistan surge, Washington has been pressing the Pakistani government to send its troops against the Haqqani group and other forces aligned with the Afghan Taliban operating out of North Waziristan, just across border from Afghanistan. Islamabad has refused, however, citing its ongoing military campaign in South Waziristan, which is part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).
The campaign in South Waziristan is directed against Pakistani Islamist insurgents blamed for a series of attacks across the northwest of the country.
As the Washington Post pointed out, the Pakistani government concluded a truce with the local warlord in North Waziristan, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, in return for his forces keeping out of the fighting in the south.
“Missile strikes on his territory could endanger that deal,” according to the Post, which added, “However, the United States has indicated in the past that it will not hesitate to launch the drone-fired missiles if it tracks down an important target.”
In recent weeks, US officials and military commanders have ratcheted up the pressure on the Pakistani government, warning that if it did not act in North Waziristan, the US military and CIA would intervene unilaterally.
The New York Times reported Monday that the US military is making increasing use of its secretive Special Operations units as a key component of Obama’s Afghanistan “surge.” These forces—including the Army Delta Force and Navy Seals—are employed in finding and killing Afghans who are identified as leaders or supporters of the fight against the US-led occupation of their country.
Raids by Special Operations forces had been halted last February on the orders of the head of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), Vice Admiral William McRaven. The raids were inflicting so many civilian casualties that they were generating popular support for the insurgents that outweighed the military importance of killing supposed leaders of the resistance. The suspension of these operations lasted only two weeks.
Now, General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, has ordered that these attacks by Special Operations troops be greatly expanded. Before assuming command in Afghanistan, McChrystal had been McRaven’s predecessor as head of JSOC, where units under his command were implicated in the torture of detained civilians in Iraq.
The unleashing of these clandestine units against suspected leaders of the Afghanistan resistance will undoubtedly mean another sharp increase in the killing of civilian men, women and children.
The Times also reported that similar death squad operations are being mounted across the border in Pakistan, under the direction of the CIA.
Citing an unnamed official in Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Times reported that there have been “more than 60 joint operations involving the ISI and the CIA in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Baluchistan in the past year.”
According to the paper, “the missions included ‘snatch and grabs’—the abduction of important militants—as well as efforts to kill leaders.”
The surge ordered by Obama will mean a sharp escalation of the violence on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, as well as an intensification of the social and political crisis gripping the entire region as a result of the US war.
Both Afghanistan and Pakistan were included among the countries confronting the 10 worst humanitarian crises in an annual listing released by the French-based medical aid group, Doctors without Borders.
“Afghan civilians endured increasing levels of violence throughout the country” over the past year, the group reported. The fighting has brought the country’s health care system to the brink of collapse, and Afghans needing medical care “must now make an impossible choice: risk traveling hundreds of miles through a war zone to seek a medical care or allow a condition to worsen until it becomes life-threatening only to arrive at a health structure where services are greatly diminished.”
US-led occupation forces, the report said, “have co-opted [medical] assistance for ‘hearts and minds’ initiatives, occupied hospitals, and arrested patients in their beds.”
Pakistan “was convulsed by intense violence throughout 2009,” the report stated, worsening an already desperate situation. “Across the country, people suffer from a general lack of health care, and Pakistan features one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the region.”
The campaigns by the Pakistani military, egged on by Washington, created more than 2 million refugees from the Swat Valley and another 300,000 from North Waziristan, according to Doctors Without Borders. The military offensive forced the group to halt its medical assistance in Swat Valley, where it had supported the local hospital and provided ambulance services.
Hospitals and health clinics set up in displacement camps in neighboring districts were “overwhelmed,” the group reported, with patients suffering from “serious war-related injuries, among them children with gunshot- and explosive-related wounds.”
The past year has also seen a precipitous rise in the number of US troops killed and wounded. Fatalities in Afghanistan for US occupation forces have reached 310 since the beginning of 2009, double the number killed last year. Roughly 2,500 American troops have been wounded during the same period, many of them suffering amputations and severe burns and head injuries resulting from roadside bomb attacks.
As US military commanders readily acknowledge, the pouring of 30,000 more American troops and tens of thousands more private military contractors into Afghanistan will mean a dramatic increase in the killing and dying produced by the eight-year-old US war.
Also see The NY Times purified report: "CIA takes on expanded role on front lines"
CIA private army of the president
An interesting documentary where Professor Chalmers Johnson speaks about how his ideas and knowledge changed throughout his life. Some of the subjects are:
CIA private army of the president
CIA disastrous intervention: Iran government of 1953
The CIA couldn't detect the Soviet Union Economy was coming apart
Nigerian Terrorist Attack Was Staged by CIA
rt.com
The recent failed attack on a US passenger jet traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit was a set-up provocation controlled by US intelligence, author and journalist Webster Tarpley stated to RT.
“[The terrorist’s] father, a rich Nigerian banker, went to the US embassy in Nigeria on November 19 and said ‘my son is in Yemen in a terrorist camp, do something about this.’ Nevertheless, the son is allowed to buy a ticket in Ghana, paying cash, $2,800, for a one-way ticket,” Tarpley said.
The recent failed attack on a US passenger jet traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit was a set-up provocation controlled by US intelligence, author and journalist Webster Tarpley stated to RT.
“[The terrorist’s] father, a rich Nigerian banker, went to the US embassy in Nigeria on November 19 and said ‘my son is in Yemen in a terrorist camp, do something about this.’ Nevertheless, the son is allowed to buy a ticket in Ghana, paying cash, $2,800, for a one-way ticket,” Tarpley said.
After that, a mentally deficient young man who doubtfully could make it from one gate to another managed to illegally enter Nigeria and get on a plane to Amsterdam.
“There was a well-dressed Indian man who brought him to the gate and said, ‘my friend does not have a passport, get him on, he is Sudanese, we do this all the time – that is impossible!” said Tarpley.
TARPLEY.net
Nigerian Terrorist Patsy Yet Another CIA Ploy in US-backed Buildup of al Qaeda in Yemen Civil War
Tarpley tells RT that the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is not a matter of unconnected dots, but rather that of a protected patsy or puppet deliberately used by the US intelligence community for a Christmas Day provocation designed to facilitate US meddling in the civil war in Yemen, which is where Umar Farouk allegedly trained and was given his PETN device. Banker’s son Umar Farouk had been denied an entrance visa to Great Britain , and had been denounced to the US Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria as a possible terrorist by his own father in mid-November.
His one-way ticket to Detroit was bought in Ghana for cash, and he reportedly entered Nigeria illegally. In Amsterdam , he was assisted at the Northwest Airlines gate by a “well-dressed Indian” who explained that Umar Farouk had no passport. He did have PETN, the same substance supposedly used by the mentally impaired shoe bomber Richard Reid in his abortive attack of eight years ago. In spite of all this, Umar Farouk’s US entry visa was never revoked, he never made it onto the no-fly list, and he was never thoroughly searched.
These egregious lapses in normal procedure show that Umar Farouk was part of an orchestration sponsored by the CIA, which has now yielded 4 solid days of media hysteria. Obama has formulated his new version of the Axis of Evil, composed of Afghanistan-Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.
In Yemen, a civil war pits the Saudi-backed central government against the Iranian-backed Shiite Houthi rebels, whom the US has bombed at least twice this month. The goal here is to play Iran against Saudi Arabia so as to weaken both the pro-Moscow Achmadinejad government in Iran, and also those Saudi forces that are fed up with their status as a US protectorate. The US is openly now sponsoring a regroupment of “al Qaeda” (the CIA Moslem legion) in Yemen , including by sending fighters direct from Guantanamo .
The new CIA-promoted entity synthetic entity is “Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula or AQAP, a gaggle of US patsies, dupes, and fanatics which is claiming credit for the Umar Farouk incident. The US hopes to further dominate the exit from the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, while also easing pressure on the battered US dollar by jacking up the price of oil in an atmosphere of tension on the Arabian peninsula. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is now Totalitariano to the left, and Incompetano to the right. Rather than harassing travelers, she should resign or be fired along with the other corrupt, bungling, or complicit officials of the Obama administration involved in this false flag provocation.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Obama is the leader of a contemporary Oceania
Image by lungstruck via Flickr
Welcome to Orwell’s World 2010
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a superstate called Oceania, whose language of war inverted lies that “passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’, ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’.”
Barack Obama is the leader of a contemporary Oceania. In two speeches at the close of the decade, the Nobel Peace Prize winner affirmed that peace was no longer peace, but rather a permanent war that “extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan” to “disorderly regions and diffuse enemies”. He called this “global security” and invited our gratitude. To the people of Afghanistan, which America has invaded and occupied, he said wittily: “We have no interest in occupying your country.”
In Oceania, truth and lies are indivisible. According to Obama, the American attack on Afghanistan in 2001 was authorised by the United Nations Security Council. There was no UN authority. He said the “the world” supported the invasion in the wake of 9/11 when, in truth, all but three of 37 countries surveyed by Gallup expressed overwhelming opposition. He said that America invaded Afghanistan “only after the Taliban refused to turn over [Osama] bin Laden”. In 2001, the Taliban tried three times to hand over bin Laden for trial, reported Pakistan’s military regime, and were ignored. Even Obama’s mystification of 9/11 as justification for his war is false. More than two months before the Twin Towers were attacked, the Pakistani foreign minister, Niaz Naik, was told by the Bush administration that an American military assault would take place by mid-October. The Taliban regime in Kabul, which the Clinton administration had secretly supported, was no longer regarded as “stable” enough to ensure America’s control over oil and gas pipelines to the Caspian Sea. It had to go.
Obama’s most audacious lie is that Afghanistan today is a “safe haven” for al-Qaeda’s attacks on the West. His own national security adviser, General James Jones, said in October that there were “fewer than 100” al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. According to US intelligence, 90 per cent of the Taliban are hardly Taliban at all, but “a tribal localised insurgency [who] see themselves as opposing the US because it is an occupying power”. The war is a fraud. Only the terminally gormless remain true to the Obama brand of “world peace”.
Beneath the surface, however, there is serious purpose. Under the disturbing General Stanley McCrystal, who gained distinction for his assassination squads in Iraq, the occupation of one of the most impoverished countries is a model for those “disorderly regions” of the world still beyond Oceania’s reach. This is a known as COIN, or counter-insurgency network, which draws together the military, aid organisations, psychologists, anthropologists, the media and public relations hirelings. Covered in jargon about winning hearts and minds, its aim is to pit one ethnic group against another and incite civil war: Tajiks and Uzbecks against Pashtuns.
The Americans did this in Iraq and destroyed a multi-ethnic society. They bribed and built walls between communities who had once inter-married, ethnically cleansing the Sunni and driving millions out of the country. The embedded media reported this as “peace”, and American academics bought by Washington and “security experts” briefed by the Pentagon appeared on the BBC to spread the good news. As in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the opposite was true.
Something similar is planned for Afghanistan. People are to be forced into “target areas” controlled by warlords bankrolled by the Americans and the opium trade. That these warlords are infamous for their barbarism is irrelevant. “We can live with that,” a Clinton-era diplomat said of the persecution of women in a “stable” Taliban-run Afghanistan. Favoured western relief agencies, engineers and agricultural specialists will attend to the “humanitarian crisis” and so “secure” the subjugated tribal lands.
That is the theory. It worked after a fashion in Yugoslavia where the ethnic-sectarian partition wiped out a once peaceful society, but it failed in Vietnam where the CIA’s “strategic hamlet program” was designed to corral and divide the southern population and so defeat the Viet Cong -- the Americans’ catch-all term for the resistance, similar to “Taliban”.
Behind much of this are the Israelis, who have long advised the Americans in both the Iraq and Afghanistan adventures. Ethnic-cleansing, wall-building, checkpoints, collective punishment and constant surveillance – these are claimed as Israeli innovations that have succeeded in stealing most of Palestine from its native people. And yet for all their suffering, the Palestinians have not been divided irrevocably and they endure as a nation against all odds.
The most telling forerunners of the Obama Plan, which the Nobel Peace Prize winner and his strange general and his PR men prefer we forget, are those that failed in Afghanistan itself. The British in the 19th century and the Soviets in the 20th century attempted to conquer that wild country by ethnic cleansing and were seen off, though after terrible bloodshed. Imperial cemeteries are their memorials. People power, sometimes baffling, often heroic, remains the seed beneath the snow, and invaders fear it.
“It was curious,” wrote Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four, “to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same, everywhere, all over the world … people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same people who … were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world.”
Taxpayer losses from Fannie and Freddie top $400 billion
Bloomberg
Taxpayer losses from supporting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will top $400 billion, according to Peter Wallison, a former general counsel at the Treasury who is now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
“The situation is they are losing gobs of money, up to $400 billion in mortgages,” Wallison said in a Bloomberg Television interview. The Treasury Department recognized last week that losses will be more than $400 billion when it raised its limit on federal support for the two government-sponsored enterprises, he said.
The U.S. seized the two mortgage financiers in 2008 as the government struggled to prevent a meltdown of the financial system. The debt of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks grew an average of $184 billion annually from 1998 to 2008, helping fuel a bubble that drove home prices up by 107 percent between 2000 and mid-2006, according to the S&P/Case- Shiller home-price index.
The Treasury said on Dec. 24 it would provide an unlimited amount of assistance to the companies as needed for the next three years to alleviate market concern that the government lifeline for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the largest source of money for U.S. home loans, could lapse or be exhausted.
Lax regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac led to the mortgage companies taking on too many risky loans, Wallison said.
“It turns out it was impossible to regulate them,” he said. “They were too powerful.” He said no one knows how much will be needed to keep the companies solvent.
From 1990 to 1999, Wallison served on the board of directors of MGIC Investment Corp., the largest U.S. mortgage insurer, including a stint on the audit committee, according to Bloomberg data and company filings.
The continued government support of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac makes buying their debt a good investment, Wallison said.
“It was always safe to buy these notes,” he said. The U.S. government was always going to stand behind them. They’re as good as Treasury notes.”
Taxpayer losses from supporting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will top $400 billion, according to Peter Wallison, a former general counsel at the Treasury who is now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
“The situation is they are losing gobs of money, up to $400 billion in mortgages,” Wallison said in a Bloomberg Television interview. The Treasury Department recognized last week that losses will be more than $400 billion when it raised its limit on federal support for the two government-sponsored enterprises, he said.
The U.S. seized the two mortgage financiers in 2008 as the government struggled to prevent a meltdown of the financial system. The debt of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks grew an average of $184 billion annually from 1998 to 2008, helping fuel a bubble that drove home prices up by 107 percent between 2000 and mid-2006, according to the S&P/Case- Shiller home-price index.
The Treasury said on Dec. 24 it would provide an unlimited amount of assistance to the companies as needed for the next three years to alleviate market concern that the government lifeline for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the largest source of money for U.S. home loans, could lapse or be exhausted.
Lax regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac led to the mortgage companies taking on too many risky loans, Wallison said.
“It turns out it was impossible to regulate them,” he said. “They were too powerful.” He said no one knows how much will be needed to keep the companies solvent.
From 1990 to 1999, Wallison served on the board of directors of MGIC Investment Corp., the largest U.S. mortgage insurer, including a stint on the audit committee, according to Bloomberg data and company filings.
The continued government support of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac makes buying their debt a good investment, Wallison said.
“It was always safe to buy these notes,” he said. The U.S. government was always going to stand behind them. They’re as good as Treasury notes.”
20 million-plus collect unemployment checks in '09
CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER
A record 20 million-plus people collected unemployment benefits at some point in 2009, a year that ended with the jobless rate at 10 percent.
As the pace of layoffs slows, the number of new applicants visiting unemployment offices has been on the decline in recent months. But limited hiring means the ranks of the long-term unemployed continues to grow, with more than 5.8 million people out of work for more than six months.
The number of new claims for jobless benefits dropped last week to 432,000, the Labor Department said Thursday, down sharply from its late March peak of 674,000. The decline signals that the economy could begin adding a small number of jobs in January, several economists said.
Still, hiring is unlikely to be strong enough to quickly bring down the unemployment rate, which fell from 10.2 percent in October to 10 percent in November. December's rate will be announced Jan. 8.
Companies will remain cautious about adding staff until they are confident the economic recovery is sustainable -- something they remain unsure about as consumers and businesses keep a lid on spending, and as the government begins to wind down various stimulus programs.
The Federal Reserve and private economists expect joblessness to stay above 9 percent through the end of 2010.
The slow pace of hiring will force Congress and the Obama administration in 2010 to spend as much as $70 billion to extend jobless aid for the long-term unemployed, or else let benefits -- which were extended several times in 2009 -- expire for millions of people.
"Fewer people are getting fired, but nobody is finding a job," said Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak.
Thursday's report illustrates the two different trends: first-time jobless claims are falling as layoffs ease, but the total number of people collecting unemployment checks is still rising.
More than 10.1 million people collected jobless benefits in the week of Dec. 12, the latest data available. That's up by about 200,000 compared with the previous week.
That figure includes 5.3 million people receiving the 26 weeks of aid customarily provided by the states, and 4.8 million people that have shifted to the extended benefit programs enacted by Congress over the past two years and paid for by the federal government. Unemployment insurance averages about $300 per week.
But the extensions are set to expire in February. That could mean as many as 1 million people would run out of unemployment aid in March, according to the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit group.
The total number of people who at one point collected benefits in 2009 -- roughly 20.7 million -- is also a record. A larger proportion of the unemployed received jobless benefits in the last steep recession in 1981-82, but the work force has grown by about one-third since then.
Fifteen million Americans are out of work, an increase of 3.8 million since the start of 2009. There are six unemployed people, on average, for each available job. And the so-called underemployment rate, counting part-time workers who want full-time jobs and laid-off workers who have given up their job hunt, stands at 17.2 percent.
Budget-strapped state governments will struggle with higher spending on unemployment insurance in 2010. States are required to set aside money in a trust fund to pay jobless benefits, but 25 have already run through their funds and have borrowed $26 billion from the federal government.
The Labor Department has projected that 40 states may need to borrow as much as $90 billion by 2012.
Thirty-five states have already increased the unemployment insurance taxes they levy on employers for 2010, according to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. Some are also cutting benefits as they try to reduce the size of budget shortfalls that are expected to reach $180 billion in the coming fiscal year.
The drain on federal and state finances could force Congress to consider raising the federal unemployment insurance tax, which is currently 0.8 percent on the first $7,000 of wages, or making other changes.
A record 20 million-plus people collected unemployment benefits at some point in 2009, a year that ended with the jobless rate at 10 percent.
As the pace of layoffs slows, the number of new applicants visiting unemployment offices has been on the decline in recent months. But limited hiring means the ranks of the long-term unemployed continues to grow, with more than 5.8 million people out of work for more than six months.
The number of new claims for jobless benefits dropped last week to 432,000, the Labor Department said Thursday, down sharply from its late March peak of 674,000. The decline signals that the economy could begin adding a small number of jobs in January, several economists said.
Still, hiring is unlikely to be strong enough to quickly bring down the unemployment rate, which fell from 10.2 percent in October to 10 percent in November. December's rate will be announced Jan. 8.
Companies will remain cautious about adding staff until they are confident the economic recovery is sustainable -- something they remain unsure about as consumers and businesses keep a lid on spending, and as the government begins to wind down various stimulus programs.
The Federal Reserve and private economists expect joblessness to stay above 9 percent through the end of 2010.
The slow pace of hiring will force Congress and the Obama administration in 2010 to spend as much as $70 billion to extend jobless aid for the long-term unemployed, or else let benefits -- which were extended several times in 2009 -- expire for millions of people.
"Fewer people are getting fired, but nobody is finding a job," said Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak.
Thursday's report illustrates the two different trends: first-time jobless claims are falling as layoffs ease, but the total number of people collecting unemployment checks is still rising.
More than 10.1 million people collected jobless benefits in the week of Dec. 12, the latest data available. That's up by about 200,000 compared with the previous week.
That figure includes 5.3 million people receiving the 26 weeks of aid customarily provided by the states, and 4.8 million people that have shifted to the extended benefit programs enacted by Congress over the past two years and paid for by the federal government. Unemployment insurance averages about $300 per week.
But the extensions are set to expire in February. That could mean as many as 1 million people would run out of unemployment aid in March, according to the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit group.
The total number of people who at one point collected benefits in 2009 -- roughly 20.7 million -- is also a record. A larger proportion of the unemployed received jobless benefits in the last steep recession in 1981-82, but the work force has grown by about one-third since then.
Fifteen million Americans are out of work, an increase of 3.8 million since the start of 2009. There are six unemployed people, on average, for each available job. And the so-called underemployment rate, counting part-time workers who want full-time jobs and laid-off workers who have given up their job hunt, stands at 17.2 percent.
Budget-strapped state governments will struggle with higher spending on unemployment insurance in 2010. States are required to set aside money in a trust fund to pay jobless benefits, but 25 have already run through their funds and have borrowed $26 billion from the federal government.
The Labor Department has projected that 40 states may need to borrow as much as $90 billion by 2012.
Thirty-five states have already increased the unemployment insurance taxes they levy on employers for 2010, according to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. Some are also cutting benefits as they try to reduce the size of budget shortfalls that are expected to reach $180 billion in the coming fiscal year.
The drain on federal and state finances could force Congress to consider raising the federal unemployment insurance tax, which is currently 0.8 percent on the first $7,000 of wages, or making other changes.
Afghans burn Obama effigy over civilian deaths
Raw Story/AFP
Protesters took to the streets in Afghanistan on Wednesday, burning an effigy of the US president and shouting "death to Obama" to slam civilian deaths during Western military operations.
Hundreds of university students blocked main roads in Jalalabad, capital of eastern Nangahar province, to protest the alleged deaths of 10 civilians, mostly school children, in a Western military operation on Saturday.
"The government must prevent such unilateral operations otherwise we will take guns instead of pens and fight against them (foreign forces)," students from the University of Nangahar's education faculty said in a statement.
Marching through the main street of Jalalabad, the students chanted "death to Obama" and "death to foreign forces", witnesses said.
The protesters torched a US flag and an effigy of US President Barack Obama in a public square in central Jalalabad, before dispersing.
"Our demonstration is against those foreigners who have come to our country," Safiullah Aminzai, a student organiser, told AFP.
"They have not brought democracy to Afghanistan but they are killing our religious scholars and children," he added.
Civilian deaths in the eight-year war to eradicate a Taliban-led insurgency are a sensitive issue for the Afghan public, and fan tensions between President Hamid Karzai and the 113,000 foreign troops supporting his government.
A similar protest was planned in Kabul against the "killing of civilians, especially the recent killing of students in Kunar by foreign forces," said organisers from the youth wing of Jamiat Eslah, or the Afghan Society for Social Reform and Development.
"The demonstration is to show our hatred, anger and sorrow about the current situation," said Sayed Khalid Rashid.
"Our main request is that the American and NATO forces must leave the country and Afghan people must have political autonomy," he said, adding that he expected hundreds of people to turn out for the march through western Kabul.
Karzai "strongly condemned" the Kunar deaths, which have not been confirmed by either NATO or the US military, and ordered an immediate investigation.
"Initial reports indicate that in a series of operations by international forces in Kunar province... 10 civilians, eight of them school students, have been killed," his office said.
The operations in Kunar, which borders Pakistan, are being led by US Special Forces, a senior Western military official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
"They have been killing a lot of Taliban and capturing a lot of Taliban," the official said.
The operations were conducted independently of the more than 110,000 NATO and coalition forces fighting to eradicate the Taliban, he said.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), asked to comment on reports of the Kunar deaths, said it had no activities in the region at the time. US Special Forces operate separately from ISAF.
The head of the investigation team dispatched by Karzai to Kunar, Asadullah Wafa, said he met officials and residents of Narang district, south of the provincial capital of Asad Abad, but had no further details.
The United Nations released figures this week showing that civilian deaths rose 10.8 percent in the first 10 months of 2009 to 2,038, up from 1,838 for the same period of 2008.
The UN calculations show the vast majority, or 1,404 civilians, were killed by insurgents fighting to overthrow Karzai's government and eject Western troops.
But extremists rarely claim responsibility for attacks that kill large numbers of civilians, instead blaming foreign forces in an increasingly effective propaganda campaign.
The Taliban rely increasingly on homemade bombs, which exact a horrific toll on civilians and military alike, with foreign troop deaths at a record 508 this year.
Protesters took to the streets in Afghanistan on Wednesday, burning an effigy of the US president and shouting "death to Obama" to slam civilian deaths during Western military operations.
Hundreds of university students blocked main roads in Jalalabad, capital of eastern Nangahar province, to protest the alleged deaths of 10 civilians, mostly school children, in a Western military operation on Saturday.
"The government must prevent such unilateral operations otherwise we will take guns instead of pens and fight against them (foreign forces)," students from the University of Nangahar's education faculty said in a statement.
Marching through the main street of Jalalabad, the students chanted "death to Obama" and "death to foreign forces", witnesses said.
The protesters torched a US flag and an effigy of US President Barack Obama in a public square in central Jalalabad, before dispersing.
"Our demonstration is against those foreigners who have come to our country," Safiullah Aminzai, a student organiser, told AFP.
"They have not brought democracy to Afghanistan but they are killing our religious scholars and children," he added.
Civilian deaths in the eight-year war to eradicate a Taliban-led insurgency are a sensitive issue for the Afghan public, and fan tensions between President Hamid Karzai and the 113,000 foreign troops supporting his government.
A similar protest was planned in Kabul against the "killing of civilians, especially the recent killing of students in Kunar by foreign forces," said organisers from the youth wing of Jamiat Eslah, or the Afghan Society for Social Reform and Development.
"The demonstration is to show our hatred, anger and sorrow about the current situation," said Sayed Khalid Rashid.
"Our main request is that the American and NATO forces must leave the country and Afghan people must have political autonomy," he said, adding that he expected hundreds of people to turn out for the march through western Kabul.
Karzai "strongly condemned" the Kunar deaths, which have not been confirmed by either NATO or the US military, and ordered an immediate investigation.
"Initial reports indicate that in a series of operations by international forces in Kunar province... 10 civilians, eight of them school students, have been killed," his office said.
The operations in Kunar, which borders Pakistan, are being led by US Special Forces, a senior Western military official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
"They have been killing a lot of Taliban and capturing a lot of Taliban," the official said.
The operations were conducted independently of the more than 110,000 NATO and coalition forces fighting to eradicate the Taliban, he said.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), asked to comment on reports of the Kunar deaths, said it had no activities in the region at the time. US Special Forces operate separately from ISAF.
The head of the investigation team dispatched by Karzai to Kunar, Asadullah Wafa, said he met officials and residents of Narang district, south of the provincial capital of Asad Abad, but had no further details.
The United Nations released figures this week showing that civilian deaths rose 10.8 percent in the first 10 months of 2009 to 2,038, up from 1,838 for the same period of 2008.
The UN calculations show the vast majority, or 1,404 civilians, were killed by insurgents fighting to overthrow Karzai's government and eject Western troops.
But extremists rarely claim responsibility for attacks that kill large numbers of civilians, instead blaming foreign forces in an increasingly effective propaganda campaign.
The Taliban rely increasingly on homemade bombs, which exact a horrific toll on civilians and military alike, with foreign troop deaths at a record 508 this year.
Banks Spend Millions to buy off Congress
IMF Report: Lobbying and the Financial Crisis
Introduction:
On December 31, 2007, the Wall Street Journal reported that Ameriquest Mortgage and Countrywide Financial, two of the largest mortgage lenders in the nation, spent respectively $20.5 million and $8.7 million in political donations, campaign contributions, and lobbying activities from 2002 through 2006. The sought outcome, according to the article, was the defeat of anti-predatory lending legislation. In other words, timely regulatory response that could have mitigated reckless lending practices and the consequent rise in delinquencies and foreclosures was shut down by some mortgage lenders.
Such anecdotal evidence suggests that the political influence of the financial industry contributed to the 2007 mortgage crisis,which, in the fall of 2008, generalized in the worst bout of financial instability since the Great Depression. However, formal analysis of these assertions has so far remained scant. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine empirically the relationship between lobbying by financial institutions and mortgage lending in the run-up to the financial crisis.
We construct a unique dataset combining information on mortgage lending activities and lobbying at the federal level by the financial industry. By going through individual lobbying reports, we identify lobbying activities on issues specifically related to rules and regulations of consumer protection in mortgage lending, underwriting standards, and securities laws (henceforth, the “specific issues”).
The paper focuses on the mortgage lending behavior and performance of financial institutions. First, we analyze the relationship between lobbying and ex-ante characteristics of loans originated. We focus on three measures of mortgage lending: loan-to-income ratio(which we consider as a proxy for lending standards), proportion of loans sold (measuring recourse to securitization), and mortgage loan growth rates (positively correlated with risktaking).
Next, we analyze measures of ex-post performance of lobbying lenders. In particular, we explore whether, at the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) level, delinquency rates – an indicator of loan quality - are associated with the expansion of lobbying lenders’ mortgage lending. More...
Introduction:
On December 31, 2007, the Wall Street Journal reported that Ameriquest Mortgage and Countrywide Financial, two of the largest mortgage lenders in the nation, spent respectively $20.5 million and $8.7 million in political donations, campaign contributions, and lobbying activities from 2002 through 2006. The sought outcome, according to the article, was the defeat of anti-predatory lending legislation. In other words, timely regulatory response that could have mitigated reckless lending practices and the consequent rise in delinquencies and foreclosures was shut down by some mortgage lenders.
Such anecdotal evidence suggests that the political influence of the financial industry contributed to the 2007 mortgage crisis,which, in the fall of 2008, generalized in the worst bout of financial instability since the Great Depression. However, formal analysis of these assertions has so far remained scant. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine empirically the relationship between lobbying by financial institutions and mortgage lending in the run-up to the financial crisis.
We construct a unique dataset combining information on mortgage lending activities and lobbying at the federal level by the financial industry. By going through individual lobbying reports, we identify lobbying activities on issues specifically related to rules and regulations of consumer protection in mortgage lending, underwriting standards, and securities laws (henceforth, the “specific issues”).
The paper focuses on the mortgage lending behavior and performance of financial institutions. First, we analyze the relationship between lobbying and ex-ante characteristics of loans originated. We focus on three measures of mortgage lending: loan-to-income ratio(which we consider as a proxy for lending standards), proportion of loans sold (measuring recourse to securitization), and mortgage loan growth rates (positively correlated with risktaking).
Next, we analyze measures of ex-post performance of lobbying lenders. In particular, we explore whether, at the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) level, delinquency rates – an indicator of loan quality - are associated with the expansion of lobbying lenders’ mortgage lending. More...
Morgan Stanley accused of conspiring with rating agencies to defraud investors
Reuters
Morgan Stanley has been sued by a Virgin Islands pension fund that accused the Wall Street bank of defrauding investors by marketing $1.2 billion (753 million pounds) of risky mortgage-related notes that it expected to fail.
Morgan Stanley has been sued by a Virgin Islands pension fund that accused the Wall Street bank of defrauding investors by marketing $1.2 billion (753 million pounds) of risky mortgage-related notes that it expected to fail.
The lawsuit filed December 24 in Manhattan federal court said Morgan Stanley collaborated with credit rating agencies Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's to obtain "triple-A" ratings for notes marketed in 2007 as part of a collateralized debt obligation (CDO) known as Libertas.
According to the complaint, the CDO was backed by low-quality assets, including securities issued by subprime lenders New Century Financial Corp, which quickly went bankrupt, and Option One Mortgage Corp, then owned by H&R Block.
The complaint alleged Morgan Stanley knew the CDO's assets were far riskier than the ratings suggested, but was "highly motivated to defraud investors" with pristine ratings because it was simultaneously "shorting" almost all the assets. This was a bet that their value would fall, which they did in 2008.
"Morgan Stanley was betting the entire investment it was promoting would fail," according to the complaint, which was made available on Tuesday. "The firm achieved its objective."
Alyson Barnes, a Morgan Stanley spokeswoman, declined to comment. S&P spokesman Frank Briamonte had no immediate comment. Moody's did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Moody's, a unit of Moody's, and S&P, a unit of McGraw-Hill Cos, were not named as defendants.
Many banks face lawsuits from investors who say they were misled into investing in securities they believed were safe but which were in fact tied to risky subprime mortgages.
Morgan Stanley is also a defendant in a closely watched case in the same Manhattan court that concerns whether rating agencies deserve free speech protection for their opinions.
The December 24 complaint said Morgan Stanley knew securities in the Libertas CDO were suffering a dramatic rise in delinquencies, but provided a misleading "risk factor" in a prospectus that rising delinquencies "may" hurt values in the $1 trillion residential mortgage-backed securities market.
It called this representation "analogous to Captain Smith's telling passengers of the Titanic that some ships have 'recently sunk' in the Atlantic and therefore 'our ship may sink,' without mentioning the facts that his ship struck an iceberg, had a hole in it, and was filling with water."
The lawsuit seeks class-action status, and also seeks compensatory and punitive damages, among other remedies. It was filed by Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP, a law firm specializing in securities class-action lawsuits.
Morgan Stanley shares were up 22 cents at $29.51 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
The case is Employees' Retirement System of the Government of the Virgin Islands v. Morgan Stanley & Co et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 09-10532.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Half of Europe Veering Towards Bankrputcy
TERENCE ROTH -WSJ
After two years of crashing banking systems and economic recession, the euro zone enters 2010 with a full-blown debt crisis.
After two years of crashing banking systems and economic recession, the euro zone enters 2010 with a full-blown debt crisis.
The European Commission warns that public finances in half of the 16 euro-zone nations are at high risk of becoming unsustainable.
Chartbook: Euro Zone at Risk
Half of the 16 euro-zone countries are deemed to be at "high risk" in terms of the sustainability of their public finances. See an overview of each country's economic data.
Governments will spend the next year and beyond balancing the urgent need to fix public-sector debt and deficits -- without imperiling what appears to be a feeble economic recovery.
Even the staunchest optimists in Brussels and Frankfurt see a rocky process, with rating firms poised for more downgrades and bond markets meting out daily judgment over how governments are doing.
Greece and Spain saw their ratings downgraded. Ireland and Portugal have been warned they could be next. Even broader downgrades threaten if other European governments don't shape up.
Fitch warns in a December report that particularly the U.K. (which isn't in the euro zone) and Spain and France (which are) risk being downgraded if they don't articulate more-credible fiscal-consolidation programs during the coming year given the pace of fiscal deterioration.
With the young currency bloc facing the first major test of its fiscal reliability, financial markets are hedging their bets.
The euro ended 2009 slipping off its highs for the year and bank stocks were sliding on perceptions that their government-bond holdings could lose value. Economists worry the fiscal damage could take years to repair. The recession that has gripped the euro zone since mid-2008 collapsed tax revenues and sent welfare costs soaring.
Billions of euros dedicated to fiscal-stimulus plans and bank bailouts completed the devastation to government finances.
Investors also worry about the danger of a "double dip" European recession if governments get the timing and pace of budget consolidation wrong and choke off the recovery.
That prospect comes alongside concerns of more ratings downgrades and higher default risk if governments act too slowly.
Budget deficits for the region as whole in 2009 swelled to 6.4% of gross domestic product from 2% the year before. The EU forecast sees that gap widening to nearly 7% in 2010 before the worst is over.
European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet says he worries that runaway government borrowing could undermine his ability to hold down inflation, and wasted no opportunity to cajole governments back into line. But ECB officials also acknowledge that countries such as Greece and Spain may need to move earlier in reducing deficits and the amount of debt flooding European bond markets.
By contrast, Germany and France will increase spending to add fresh fiscal stimulus in 2010, in France's case swelling its budget gap to more than 8% of GDP next year, according to EU projections. The concern in Berlin and Paris is that rising unemployment, a lagging indicator that continues to rise in the early stages of recovery, will do enough to limit domestic demand without the governments also turning off the taps too early.
The fiscal juggling acts within a multinational currency union frame the test that worried skeptics before the euro's launch a decade ago.
They said a monetary union unsupplemented by a political union risked a fiscal free-for-all among governments, especially in a full-blown recession. The next year will be a good time to prove them wrong.
The focus in early 2010 will remain on Greece and its budget deficit at 12.7% of GDP, four times the EU limit. The Greek government is trying to hammer together a political consensus in parliament for a plan to bring down public spending without triggering more social unrest seen in the country's streets at the close of 2009.
Europe has told Athens that it has to get itself into shape without outside help. Not many Europe watchers believe the euro zone would allow one of its own to go into default, discrediting the euro currency and the philosophy of a monetary commonwealth behind it.
If things did get that far, euro-zone governments would be expected to rush in with a rescue plan to absorb some of Greece's debt, or issue guarantees.
As if to cover all possibilities, ECB legal counsel Phoebus Athanassiou in December discussed in a working paper how and under what conditions a euro-zone country might withdraw or be expelled from the currency union.
But Brussels is still taking a hard line. The European Commission, in its latest quarterly economic report issued in December, said the strong reaction in financial markets to signs of fiscal laxness highlights the priority of getting a handle on runaway government spending.
It called Greece "a source of serious concern," but urged other member states to bring public finances into sustainable parameters of borrowing and debt.
The ECB is equally unforgiving. "One has to be very clear: The ECB has no mandate or intention to take into account the situation of a specific country, especially not with regard to public finances," Ewald Nowotny, the Austrian member of the ECB's Governing Council, said in a December interview with The Wall Street Journal.
That leaves it up to national leaders to take the pain to the people with varying combinations of more taxes, deeper spending cuts and scaled-back social programs. The tale of what Europe's big fiscal crackdown will look like, and how it will be received, will unfold over the next two years. The first chapter in Europe's big fiscal crackdown comes in January, when Greece is due to submit what is expected to be a radical fiscal overhaul.
Write to Terence Roth at terence.roth@wsj.com
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Nearly One in Five EU Residents Struggle to Cope Financially
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BRUSSELS -- In July 2009, at a time when several European economies were just coming out of recession, nearly one in five (18%) European Union residents said their household had at some time in the past year run out of money to pay ordinary bills or to buy food or other daily consumer items.
Romanians (45%) and Latvians (40%) were most likely to say they had run out of money to pay for essential goods and services in the 12 months before the survey. In a number of other eastern European countries, such as Hungary, Bulgaria, and Lithuania, about a third of respondents said their household had gone through a similar experience. However, far fewer residents reported such problems in Denmark (5%), the Netherlands (8%), Sweden and Luxembourg (both 9%), and Germany (10%).
Looking ahead to the next 12 months, slightly more than one-quarter (26%) of EU residents expected their household's financial situation to deteriorate. More than half (55%) of respondents expected that their household's financial situation would be stable and 16% anticipated that their household's financial situation would improve.
Residents in Latvia (65%) and Lithuania (58%) were the most likely to expect their household's financial situation to be worse in the 12 months following the poll. At least 4 in 10 residents expected the same in Hungary (48%), Ireland (43%), Estonia, Greece, and Romania (all 41%).
Among the least likely to be pessimistic about their household's future financial situation (that is, thinking it would deteriorate) were those in Denmark (10%), Finland and Sweden (both 15%), Luxembourg (17%), and Austria (18%). Furthermore, at the time of the survey, at least one in five respondents in Sweden (24%) and Denmark (21%) expected an improvement in their household's financial situation in the year to come.
The EU residents most likely to expect their household's financial problems to get worse in the next 12 months were the unemployed (33%), retirees (31%), and those aged 55 and older (31%). Furthermore, 42% of those residents who had been unable to pay essential bills thought their household situation would get worse, compared with 23% of those who never had that experience.
These results show the picture of how EU residents were coping with the effects of the financial crisis in July 2009. Early next year, we will publish another article on this same topic.
Eurobarometer Reports
Gallup conducts Flash Eurobarometer surveys for the European Commission. These surveys enable European policymakers to hear the voices of EU residents in the 27 member states. Gallup has worked with the Commission on more than 90 Flash Eurobarometer surveys (with close to 1.5 million interviews) on subjects from the euro to consumer protection and from higher education to the financial crisis.
Read the full report online.
Sign up for Gallup e-mail alerts or RSS feeds
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Monday, December 28, 2009
Oil crisis: uprisings from Nigeria to Peru
Image via Wikipedia
In the past few days, the wars over the world’s natural resources have been rekindled from the Amazon to the Niger Delta.
This week, a landmark legal settlement brought a decisive, though partial, end to a bloody chapter in the history of Nigeria’s Ogoni people.
Shell agreed to a $15.5 million settlement in a lawsuit, brought in US federal court, accusing the company of massive human rights abuses. The case stemmed from the government executions of activists, including groundbreaking environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who resisted the company’s decades-long plunder of Nigeria’s natural resources. Although Shell did not officially acknowledge its complicity, the Center for Constitutional Rights, which helped litigate the suit, called the settlement a victory in the broader movement to hold corporations accountable on human rights.
Oil and gas development in the Niger Delta has devastated the region’s fragile ecosystem and left indigenous peoples in deep poverty.
About one third of the settlement award will go toward a development fund for the Ogoni people. But some, reports the Daily Independent of Lagos, were dismayed that the legal maneuver seems to have spared the company—with its deep history of imperialism and exploitation—from being fully brought to justice. One Ogoni activist expressed worry that the payout will not be primarily used to restore and provide closure to the Ogoni as a whole: “We are still waiting to see how events unfold. It is not only the Ogoni Nine that died in the struggle, and it will be a disaster if anybody thinks otherwise.”
There are already opportunities to test whether Wiwa v. Shell marks a real turning point in environmental and human rights struggles.
In Peru's Bagua Province, a popular uprising has led to bloodshed and political chaos. Indigenous groups have protested against investment laws that threaten to carve up more of the Amazon rainforest for drilling and logging operations. After thousands tried to blockade an oil pipeline and highway last week, a deadly clash with riot police led to the deaths of 30 protesters and 24 police officers, according to the BBC.
Some activists say police have stolen and dumped bodies in the Marañón river in a cover-up attempt, reports IPS News. The government, meanwhile, continues its military clampdown, and publicly blames the violence on the Peruvian Rainforest Inter-Ethnic Development Association (AIDESEP), a broad federation of indigenous groups. AIDISEP leader Alberto Pizango has sought refuge with the Nicaraguan embassy in Lima.
The protesters were reportedly armed with spears, against the guns of the police. Edwin Montenegro, an activist representing the Amazon district of Condorcanqui, told IPS:
"After we draw up a list of our brothers and sisters who were killed, we will continue our protes... The government thinks that we have chickened out, but that will never happen. The blood of their brothers and sisters is an incentive to the Awajun people. The state has provoked us.”
With domestic politics taking center stage in Washington, the strife in Bagua may seem distant. But the investment policies, some of which have been suspended in the wake of the protests, are part of Peru's effort to facilitate a lucrative business deal with the United States, the Peru Free Trade Agreement.
Will the future of indigenous struggles be channeled into legal battlegrounds, as with the Shell lawsuit—or will the failure of government to provide real redress inspire more direct action in defense of basic rights? A federal courtroom rendered one kind of victory for some of the most disenfranchised people in the Niger Delta. Would Congress go a step further in opening a space for human rights in the Amazon?
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Parabolic Gold Price Rise Imminent
John Embry
As the gold price is set to appreciate for the ninth consecutive year, investors that have accumulated investments tied to the gold price such as gold-backed ETFs and gold stocks have been amply rewarded. The gold sector has been one of the best performing asset classes over the past decade as investors have pushed gold to record highs above $1,200 per ounce in an effort to diversify out of the U.S. dollar and other global fiat currencies - which have been debased by both politicians and central banks through persistent deficits and rising debt levels. One of the oldest and foremost bulls on the gold price and gold mining stock sector has been Sprott Asset Management, the Canadian-based hedge fund controlled by Eric Sprott. In the latest edition of Investor’s Digest of Canada, John Embry, Sprott’s Chief Investment Strategist, wrote a piece titled, “Gold bull has many years, thousands of dollars to go.”
Mr. Embry begins by providing a history lesson on the volatile relationship between the gold price and central banking. He argues that for the past 15 years, central banks such as the U.S. Federal Reserve have been flooding the market with very large quantities of the yellow metal in order to suppress the price of gold - thereby allowing the U.S. dollar to maintain its preeminence as the world’s reserve currency while easy monetary policies are pursued. While this strategy worked exceptionally well in the 1990s as the gold price held below $400 per ounce, it has been particularly ineffective over the past decade, as a huge amount of fund flows has pushed the price of gold from below $300 per ounce to an all-time nominal high of $1,226.50 per ounce in early December.
Embry goes on to reiterate his disdain for the actions of the central banks, stating that history has demonstrated that in the long run government intervention in the free market does not work. As evidence of this, he cites the successful efforts of central banks to depress the gold price during the 1960’s - which was followed by a subsequent 2,300% rise during the 1970s. Accordingly, “markets that have been artificially capped tend to catapult upwards when the suppression ultimately fails. In my opinion, the last experience in the 60s and 70s was a mere bagatelle in comparison to what is happening today,” argues Embry. To support this claim, he suggests that as much as 15,000 tonnes of gold have hit the market in the past 15 years, relative to just 3,000 tonnes in the 60s and 70s.
For those who claim that gold is in a bubble phase, Embry strongly disagrees and argues that gold has received very little attention from the general investing public and not anywhere near the level of coverage from the financial media that would exist if gold was a bubble. Furthermore, according to Mr. Embry, in a true gold bubble gold mining companies and gold producers would be generating extraordinary earnings - a situation that is not occurring, despite the strong rise in the gold price over the past decade.
Going forward, Embry believes another chief factor for the ongoing gold bull market will be the lack of gold mine supply. He cites an absence of quality projects ready for gold mining, further environmental and geopolitical issues, continuing capital constraints, and a “chronic shortage of skilled miners and competent mine builders.” The decline in gold mine supply will continue “for some time, irrespective of what the gold price does.”
Embry highlights recent commentary from Aaron Regent, the CEO of Barrick Gold (ABX), the world’s largest gold mining company, who stated that global gold production was in terminal decline and went so far as to use the term “peak gold.” In addition, Embry provides comments from the research and technical director of a Cape Town, South Africa-based consultancy, who stated that the famous Witwatersrand goldfields - the largest goldfield ever discovered and one that constitutes roughly 10% of the world’s gold supply - are approximately 95% exhausted. Add to this backdrop the declining supply of central bank gold and heightened investment demand for gold, and the Sprott team opines that the necessary ingredients for a significant rise in the price of gold are in place.
Embry concludes his piece by boldly stating that “I now firmly believe that the chances of gold ever trading below $1,000 per ounce are becoming increasingly remote.” He does add one caveat however - if the global economy suffered a “catastrophic deflationary collapse, gold could briefly be swept under but would then emerge with even greater relative strength as the only true safe haven.” Nevertheless, Embry believes the chances of such a deflationary collapse are very small given the pure fiat currency environment that exists.
He believes that gold is “going to stage a parabolic rise from current levels shortly” and that gold “remains one of the best supply-demand imbalance stories I have ever encountered in my career.” Such a bold claim by an experienced, successful money manager indicates just how much upside potential could remain in gold’s bull market.
As the gold price is set to appreciate for the ninth consecutive year, investors that have accumulated investments tied to the gold price such as gold-backed ETFs and gold stocks have been amply rewarded. The gold sector has been one of the best performing asset classes over the past decade as investors have pushed gold to record highs above $1,200 per ounce in an effort to diversify out of the U.S. dollar and other global fiat currencies - which have been debased by both politicians and central banks through persistent deficits and rising debt levels. One of the oldest and foremost bulls on the gold price and gold mining stock sector has been Sprott Asset Management, the Canadian-based hedge fund controlled by Eric Sprott. In the latest edition of Investor’s Digest of Canada, John Embry, Sprott’s Chief Investment Strategist, wrote a piece titled, “Gold bull has many years, thousands of dollars to go.”
Mr. Embry begins by providing a history lesson on the volatile relationship between the gold price and central banking. He argues that for the past 15 years, central banks such as the U.S. Federal Reserve have been flooding the market with very large quantities of the yellow metal in order to suppress the price of gold - thereby allowing the U.S. dollar to maintain its preeminence as the world’s reserve currency while easy monetary policies are pursued. While this strategy worked exceptionally well in the 1990s as the gold price held below $400 per ounce, it has been particularly ineffective over the past decade, as a huge amount of fund flows has pushed the price of gold from below $300 per ounce to an all-time nominal high of $1,226.50 per ounce in early December.
Embry goes on to reiterate his disdain for the actions of the central banks, stating that history has demonstrated that in the long run government intervention in the free market does not work. As evidence of this, he cites the successful efforts of central banks to depress the gold price during the 1960’s - which was followed by a subsequent 2,300% rise during the 1970s. Accordingly, “markets that have been artificially capped tend to catapult upwards when the suppression ultimately fails. In my opinion, the last experience in the 60s and 70s was a mere bagatelle in comparison to what is happening today,” argues Embry. To support this claim, he suggests that as much as 15,000 tonnes of gold have hit the market in the past 15 years, relative to just 3,000 tonnes in the 60s and 70s.
For those who claim that gold is in a bubble phase, Embry strongly disagrees and argues that gold has received very little attention from the general investing public and not anywhere near the level of coverage from the financial media that would exist if gold was a bubble. Furthermore, according to Mr. Embry, in a true gold bubble gold mining companies and gold producers would be generating extraordinary earnings - a situation that is not occurring, despite the strong rise in the gold price over the past decade.
Going forward, Embry believes another chief factor for the ongoing gold bull market will be the lack of gold mine supply. He cites an absence of quality projects ready for gold mining, further environmental and geopolitical issues, continuing capital constraints, and a “chronic shortage of skilled miners and competent mine builders.” The decline in gold mine supply will continue “for some time, irrespective of what the gold price does.”
Embry highlights recent commentary from Aaron Regent, the CEO of Barrick Gold (ABX), the world’s largest gold mining company, who stated that global gold production was in terminal decline and went so far as to use the term “peak gold.” In addition, Embry provides comments from the research and technical director of a Cape Town, South Africa-based consultancy, who stated that the famous Witwatersrand goldfields - the largest goldfield ever discovered and one that constitutes roughly 10% of the world’s gold supply - are approximately 95% exhausted. Add to this backdrop the declining supply of central bank gold and heightened investment demand for gold, and the Sprott team opines that the necessary ingredients for a significant rise in the price of gold are in place.
Embry concludes his piece by boldly stating that “I now firmly believe that the chances of gold ever trading below $1,000 per ounce are becoming increasingly remote.” He does add one caveat however - if the global economy suffered a “catastrophic deflationary collapse, gold could briefly be swept under but would then emerge with even greater relative strength as the only true safe haven.” Nevertheless, Embry believes the chances of such a deflationary collapse are very small given the pure fiat currency environment that exists.
He believes that gold is “going to stage a parabolic rise from current levels shortly” and that gold “remains one of the best supply-demand imbalance stories I have ever encountered in my career.” Such a bold claim by an experienced, successful money manager indicates just how much upside potential could remain in gold’s bull market.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Instant Karma: New US War Target Gets Its Own Terror Icon
Chris Floyd
Wow, that didn't take long at all. Scant days after the American war machine took the cloaking device off its direct military involvement in Yemen, we have an alleged attempted terrorist attack by an alleged attempted terrorist who, just scant hours after his capture, has allegedly confessed to getting his alleged attempted terrorist material from ... wait for it ... Yemen!
Wow, that didn't take long at all. Scant days after the American war machine took the cloaking device off its direct military involvement in Yemen, we have an alleged attempted terrorist attack by an alleged attempted terrorist who, just scant hours after his capture, has allegedly confessed to getting his alleged attempted terrorist material from ... wait for it ... Yemen!
Yemen-trained terrorists on the loose in American airplanes! At Christmas! Great googily moogily! It's a good thing our boys are on the case over there right now, pounding the holy hell outta some of them Al Qaeder ragheads! And to think, a few pipsqueaky fifth columnists had been starting to wonder why we were killing dozens of innocent civilians on behalf of an authoritarian regime embroiled in a three-way civil war on the other side of the world.
Well, now they have their answer, by God! Alleged attempted terrorists allegedly trained in Yemen! What else do you need -- a freaking warrant or something? We would obviously be justified in nuking that desert hell-hole and everybody in it! Just think of it -- some guy with some kind of something on an airplane, right there in the Heartland! You gonna stand for that? Exterminate the brutes!
And yet, because we are good, because we are godly, because our heart is always in the right place, even when -- as President Obama himself admitted in his noble Nobel Speech -- we sometimes make mistakes, we have not brought down the full force of the iron rod that God himself has placed into our hands for the chastisement and right order of the world. No, there will be no nukes falling on the children of Yemen tonight. But boy howdy, they'd better get ready for some sure-enough heavy ordnance -- fired from distant ships, from far-flung bases and from computer consoles in leafy Stateside suburbs, where you can bravely kill some alleged attempted somebody-or-other (and everyone in their immediate vicinity), and still make it home in time to to eat supper with the kids.
So here we are. Just one day after the alleged attempted terrorist incident in Detroit, we already have headlines blaring in the New York Times, the "paper of record," tying the alleged attempt to Yemen. How quick and convenient is that? Already the echo chamber is roaring with the all-justifying cacophony: "Terror, Yemen, al Qaeda, Homeland, Bomb, Terror, Yemen, Yemen, al Qaeda."
And it must be true, right? I mean, just look at how well-sourced the NYT story is. "A law enforcement official" -- Police captain? State trooper? G-Man? Traffic cop? -- said that the alleged attempted terrorist said he'd got his "explosive chemicals" from Yemen. (Elsewhere in the paper, other unnamed officials told NYT reporters that the alleged material strapped to the alleged attempted terrorist was "incendiary," not explosive. But who cares? "Bomb, Terror, Yemen!")
Of course, the NYT noted that "authorities have not independently corroborated the Yemen connection claimed by the suspect" (nor, they could have added, have they independently corroborated that the claim was actually made), but still, the completely anonymous "law enforcement official" said that the suspect's claim "was plausible," and even added: "I see no reason to discount it."
Well, it doesn't get more solid than that, does it? They nailed that story down so tight you couldn't pry it open with God's own crowbar. An anonymous source confirmed the plausibility of his own claim. Man, that's ironclad. It's certainly good enough to light up the media firmament with headlines linking "terror in the Heartland" with the empire's newest killing field in a volatile foreign land.
And it turns out that the suspected attempted terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was already on the radar of our all-encompassing security services -- just like the last Muslim terrorist in the heartland, Major Nidal Hasan. (And, for that matter, just like many of those accused of carrying out the 9/11 attack.) As in almost all of these cases, the question arises: Who is running whom? (For more, see "Darkness Renewed: Terror as a Tool of Empire.")
But this query is precisely the kind of pantywaist handwringing that rightly goes down in the flood of the he-man Homeland Security strutting that always follows these incidents. As we noted here the other day, there's no time for depth, context, history -- or even facts -- when the "frame" is screaming "Terror!"
In any case, whatever facts about the case -- or rather, shards and splinters of filtered information -- that are allowed to emerge from the depths of the security apparat, you can be absolutely sure that, as always, the "facts will be fixed around the policy."
And what is that policy? Why, endless war, of course! The American war machine (which now dominates most of "civilian" society as well) is like a shark: it must keep moving, and feeding, or die. "Terror, Bomb, Yemen!"
Goldman Sachs and Others Investigated for Betting Against Securities They Created
Image via CrunchBase
Betting against their own securities has prompted numerous investigations of Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street institutions. Prior to the financial collapse, Goldman and others figured out a way to package risky securities, such as subprime mortgages, and sell them to investors who were told they were buying sound investments. Little did the investors know that the firms selling the synthetic collateralized debt obligations (or CDOs) turned around and bet that the CDOs would fail—costing pension funds and insurance companies billions of dollars.
“The simultaneous selling of securities to customers and shorting them because they believed they were going to default is the most cynical use of credit information that I have ever seen,” Sylvain Raynes, an expert in structured finance at R & R Consulting in New York, told The New York Times. “When you buy protection against an event that you have a hand in causing, you are buying fire insurance on someone else’s house and then committing arson.”
In addition to Goldman, CDOs were sold and bet against by Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and Tricadia Inc.—an investment company whose parent firm’s CDO management committee was overseen by Lee Sachs. Sachs is now a special counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The schemes are now being investigated by Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission and Wall Street’s Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
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