400 richest Americans now worth $2 trillion

CNBC's Robert Frank.
The 400 richest Americans are now worth a combined $2 trillion, according to Forbes. That sets a record, Forbes said, and marks a jump from last year's total of $1.7 trillion.

The average net worth of a Forbes 400 member is now $5 billion—also the highest ever. And the costs of being part of the 400 Club rose to $1.3 billion.

But it's the $2 trillion number that remains the most interesting. The 400 richest are now worth more than the GDPs of many nations—and they are worth more than most governments spend or tax.

Here is some perspective on what the 400 richest Americans are really worth.

$2 trillion is more than the combined net worth of half of all Americans. The bottom half, of course.
$2 trillion is more than the annual GDP of Italy, Mexico or Canada.
$2 trillion is equal to the Federal Reserve's holdings of publicly traded U.S. Treasurys.
$2 trillion is the estimated size of the underground economy, mostly unreported income.
$2 trillion would fund all government spending through July of this year.
$2 trillion is equal to about two-thirds of all taxes to be collected in the U.S. for 2013.
$2 trillion would pay for all of the existing home sales in the U.S. in 2012 AND 2013 year-to-date.

US spied on Brazil, Mexico presidents

The US National Security Agency spied on the communications of the Brazilian and Mexican presidents, accessing the Mexico leader's emails before he was elected, Brazil's Globo television reported.

Rio de Janeiro-based journalist Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for the Guardian newspaper who obtained secret files from NSA leaker Edward Snowden, told Globo on Sunday that a document dated June 2012 shows that Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's emails were being accessed.

That was a month before his election. The NSA also intercepted some of Pena Nieto's voicemails. The communications included messages in which the future leader discussed the names of potential cabinet members. A Mexican foreign ministry spokesman told AFP he had seen the report but had no comment. A presidency spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

As for Brazil's Dilma Rousseff, the NSA said in the document that it was trying to better understand her methods of communication and interlocutors using a program to access all Internet content the president visited online.

Rousseff, who is due to make a state visit to Washington in October, held a working meeting to study the revelations in the Globo report, the channel said.

"If these facts prove to be true, it would be unacceptable and could be called an attack on our country's sovereignty," Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Cardozo said. Read more >>

NSA collecting data from billions of calls, e-mails in Latin America

A Brazilian newspaper on Tuesday published an article it said is based on documents provided by the former American contractor Edward Snowden asserting that the United States has been collecting data on telephone calls and e-mails from several countries in Latin America, including important allies such as Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.

The paper, O Globo, based in Rio de Janeiro, says the documents show the National Security Agency amassed military and security data on countries such as Venezuela, an American adversary that has been accused of aiding Colombia’s Marxist rebels and maintaining close ties with Iran. But the documents also show that the agency carried out surveillance operations to unearth inside commercial information on the oil industry in Venezuela and the energy sector in Mexico, which is under state control and essentially closed to foreign investment.

U.S. officials have declined to address issues about intelligence gathering or the O Globo report, except to issue a statement saying that “we have been clear that the United States does gather foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations.” Read more >>

Large Cash Transactions Banned In Mexico

Outgoing Mexican President Felipe Calderon has signed into law a ban on large cash transactions. The ban will take effect in about 90 days and it is part of a broader effort to control monetary flows within the country.

Under the law, a Specialized Unit in Financial Analysis operating within the Attorney General’s Office will be created to investigate financial operations “that are related to resources of unknown origin.”

For real estate transactions, cash payments of more than a half million pesos ($38,750) will be forbidden and, for automobiles or items like jewelry, art, and lottery tickets, cash payments of more than 200,000 pesos ($15,500) will be forbidden. The law carries a minimum penalty of five years in prison. Read more >>

Attempts to Avoid Food Crisis May Worsen Problem

Attempts by major food importing nations to shelter their populations from the effects of a U.S. drought may make a bad situation worse, five years after the last jump in crop prices provoked rioting in some of the world's most fragile states.

Many governments have watched on the sidelines as a drought in the U.S. farm belt sent prices of corn (maize) soybeans and wheat soaring, hoping that the market would eventually ease. However, their nerve seems to have broken with Mexico, the world's second biggest corn importer which suffered "tortilla riots" in 2007, making a huge purchase last week.

With fears growing that drought will also cut the wheat harvest in the Black Sea region, buyers in the turbulent Middle East are now also pouring on to the markets.  "A cascade effect is not inconceivable and may well be taking place - wheat prices have shot up nearly 50 percent since the beginning of July," said J.Peter Pham, a director with U.S. think tank the Atlantic Council.

"If such proves to be the case, some of the most fragile states may well be shaken," added Pham, who also advises U.S. and European governments on strategic issues. Read more >>

USDA partnering with Mexico to boost food stamp participation

The Mexican government has been working with the United States Department of Agriculture to increase participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps.

USDA has an agreement with Mexico to promote American food assistance programs, including food stamps, among Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals and migrant communities in America.

“USDA and the government of Mexico have entered into a partnership to help educate eligible Mexican nationals living in the United States about available nutrition assistance,” the USDA explains in a brief paragraph on their “Reaching Low-Income Hispanics With Nutrition Assistance” web page. “Mexico will help disseminate this information through its embassy and network of approximately 50 consular offices.”

The partnership — which was signed by former USDA Secretary Ann M. Veneman and Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Luis Ernesto Derbez Bautista in 2004 — sees to it that the Mexican Embassy and Mexican consulates in America provide USDA nutrition assistance program information to Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals working in America and migrant communities in America. The information is specifically focused on eligibility criteria and access.

The goal, for USDA, is to get rid of what they see as enrollment obstacles and increase access among potentially eligible populations by working with arms of the Mexican government in America. Benefits are not guaranteed or provided under the program — the purpose is outreach and education. Read more >>

Former Fukushima Worker: The Country Will be Evacuated if No. 4 Collapses

 Enenews.com
 Chris Canine has 15 years experience as a Health Physics Technician, Chemist and Radiation Safety Instructor. He has worked at over 20 plants throughout the United States, Japan and Mexico — including Fukushima #1 and #2 in the late 1970′s.

Chris Martenson Interviews Marc Faber on The FED

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeIn this podcast, Marc explains his views on why:

* Government intervention into the free markets has been increasing since the early 1980s (S&Ls, Mexico, LTCM, etc) and is the root cause of our issues, as each intervention brings the system further off track
* The principal vehicle for this intervention, the Fed, has a near-perfect track record of creating unsustainable asset bubbles (to which it is largely blind) when it intervenes
* Since its founding, the Fed has been dedicated to expansionary monetary policy. When looking at history, there's an argument to be made that per capita price management in the US was better under the gold standard we had before the Fed.
* We're on a direct path to higher inflation, despite the Fed's preference for raising the deflation spectre and citing the low (and ridiculously-calculated) CPI.
* While the Fed is printing money with abandon right now (e.g. buying all new Treasury issuances for the next six months), doing so is raising the risk of a hyperinflationary currency collapse.
* US government bonds are a disasterous investment going forward (even if the deflationists are right).
* The revolving door between Wall Street and Washington motivates our leadership to preserve the status quo, which is corrosive to markets because smaller investors are waking up to the fact that the rules are stacked in favor of the big players. Investing as we have historically thought of it is dead.
Read more...

Whirlpool To Lay Off Workers - jobs to Mexico

(Times Record - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX)

A Whirlpool official has confirmed its Fort Smith plant will see layoffs in October and November.

A news release from the company did not include how many workers will be laid off.

In the release, Jill Saletta, director of external communications at Whirlpool, states: "Plant management has confirmed that they anticipate some layoffs to take place in October and November.

"The October layoffs are due to the end of production of counter-depth refrigerators at the plant, which we announced to employees at the end of 2009. November layoffs are anticipated due to softening of demand, which is typical at this time of year."

The production of counter-depth refrigerators is moving to a plant in Mexico.

Whirlpool is based in Benton Harbor, Mich. The Fort Smith factory manufactures side-by-side refrigerators and icemakers. It employs about 1,030 hourly workers and another 140 salaried there.

The Fort Smith plant has seen waves of layoffs in recent years. As recently as 2006, the Fort Smith plant employed about 4,600.

Mexcian drug smugglers launder funds through Wachovia/Wells and Bank of America

Image by Lachlan via Flickr

Bloomberg -- Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.

They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else.

The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August 2010 issue.

This was no isolated incident. Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers -- including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.

The admission came in an agreement that Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia struck with federal prosecutors in March, and it sheds light on the largely undocumented role of U.S. banks in contributing to the violent drug trade that has convulsed Mexico for the past four years.

‘Blatant Disregard’

Wachovia admitted it didn’t do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. That’s the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history -- a sum equal to one-third of Mexico’s current gross domestic product.

“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” says Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case.

Since 2006, more than 22,000 people have been killed in drug-related battles that have raged mostly along the 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) border that Mexico shares with the U.S. In the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, 700 people had been murdered this year as of mid- June. Six Juarez police officers were slaughtered by automatic weapons fire in a midday ambush in April. More...

Relief wells: "You have to hit something the size of a dinner plate miles into the earth"

Image via Wikipedia

Drilling relief wells to stop Gulf oil leak poses challenges
Rebecca Mowbray
The Times-Picayune

With the "top kill" declared a failure and BP moving on to less-desirable options to stop its well from continuing to shoot thousands of barrels of oil each day into the Gulf of Mexico, the grim reality set in that the company may be unable to stop the oil until it completes the first of two "relief wells" in August.

BP has been attempting to contain or stop the flowing oil since its Macondo well exploded April 20, killing 11 people. But the ultimate solution to permanently cap the well is to inject concrete from wells drilled in from the side.

With short-term efforts failing, officials locally and in Washington are beginning to contemplate that the oil could spew until the height of hurricane season.

"There could be oil coming up until August, when the relief wells are dug, " White House energy and climate change adviser Carol Browner said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday morning. "We are prepared for the worst. ... We will continue to assume that we move into the worst-case scenario."

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said he got weak in the knees at the Plaquemines Parish Seafood Festival when he saw the news on a Blackberry that efforts to plug the raging well with drilling mud and rubber pieces had failed.

"We're not counting on anything until this relief well is drilled, " Nungesser told CNN Saturday night.

But relief wells are something that, fortunately, engineers don't have to do very often. Drilling the relief well also can be fraught with challenges -- especially working in deep water on a well that has already had problems with gas bubbles.

"You have to hit something the size of a dinner plate miles into the earth, " said Richard Charter, a senior policy adviser at the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife, who follows spills around the world. "Even in a shallow-water blowout, the drilling of a relief well can be complicated and problematic."

On Sunday, the White House said the government had insisted that BP drill two relief wells instead of one to ensure that it can reach the original well without problems.

Making progress

The company appears to be making progress. Spokesman Graham MacEwen said Friday that the first relief well has now reached 12,090 feet below the floor of the rig, 5,000 feet from the sea floor.

BP interrupted drilling last week to install a blowout preventer, the safety device that's supposed to seal a well in an emergency, but which failed to do so on the main well.

The second relief well, MacEwen said, is 8,650 feet below the floor of the rig.

The relief wells start about a half mile from the original site and try to meet the original at a diagonal.

Drilling a well involves using a pipe that unfolds section by section like an antenna, only upside down.

With each section, the company drills and then pulls out the pipe and puts in casings to form the sides of the well.

Drills are equipped with directional sensors that do three-dimensional surveys to help workers see where the drill bit is and what it's encountering, while metal detectors help guide it toward the metal in the original well.

Once the drills intersect with the original well, typically just above or below where the problem occurred, cement is pumped in to seal it.

Dave Rensink, president-elect of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, said that drilling a relief well is not that different from drilling a regular well, except that the target is much smaller.

"The only problem is really finding it, " Rensink said of the original well. "You're trying to intersect the well bore, which is about a foot wide, with another well bore, which is about a foot wide. The probability of finding it the first time ... is probably pretty low."

When the company drills into the well casing but misses the right spot, it will need to set a cement plug.

As BP tries to meet the original well, it will need to have plenty of mud on hand, because when the drill actually connects, the mud from the relief well will have a tendency to get sucked into the lower pressure of the original well, and drillers could lose control of the relief well.

"That clearly is a risk. They need to be very specifically prepared when they penetrate the existing well bore, " Rensink said. "You want to make sure you're not creating a problem in your relief well that's the same problem as on your existing well."

No guarantee on timing

With the failure of the top kill, BP plans to cut off the broken riser pipe and install a cap with a "straw" in it that could siphon oil up to a drill ship.

The company may also try installing a new blowout preventer on top of the broken one and using it to try to shut off the well.

Even if the company goes that route and it succeeds in stemming the flow of oil, BP will still move forward with drilling the relief wells because it will enable the company to seal off the top and bottom of the well, making the fix more durable.

But examples from elsewhere in the world show there's no guarantee on the timing, and that drilling a relief well can be dangerous.

The world's worst well blowout and oil spill, the Ixtoc I well in Mexico's Bay of Campeche, was ultimately stopped with a relief well after a containment dome, junk shot and top kill failed, but it took nearly 10 months.

The oil platform sat in about 150 feet of water and blew out in early June 1979 at a depth of 11,625 feet.

According to a 1981 report from the Society of Petroleum Engineers detailing how Pemex, the Mexican state oil company, stopped the well, engineers decided to start drilling two relief wells at the end of June.

Progress was slow. It took one well until Nov. 20 to reach the original well, and the second took until Feb. 5, 1980.

Shutting down the main well took multiple attempts in February and March 1980 as Pemex shot drilling mud through both wells and gradually decreased the flow of oil.

The oil stopped flowing on March 17, and then it took a few more weeks to plug the wells with cement, wrapping up the operation in early April.

The blowout, according to the Society of Petroleum Engineers, lasted for nine months and 22 days.

Tyler Priest, a historian at University of Houston who has written a book about the history of offshore drilling, said Pemex thought it would go a lot faster. He cited a headline in the Aug. 6, 1979, issue of Oil & Gas Journal that reads, "Pemex: Ixtoc may flow until Oct. 3."

"They initially estimated three months. It took them almost 10, " Priest said.

'More caution' needed

Certainly, the technology today is much more advanced than when engineers fought to shut down Ixtoc, but even in modern context, relief wells don't always go smoothly.

Last August, the Thai company PTT Exploration and Production Co. was drilling the Montara well in 260 feet of water in the Timor Sea off of Australia when it well blew up and began leaking oil into the ocean.

It took 10 weeks and five tries for the drilling rig brought in to drill the relief well to hit its target about 8,600 feet below the sea floor. On the last try, there was another rig explosion, which burned for two days.

The oil was finally stopped on Nov. 3, and it took until mid-January to cap the well, according to news reports.

A final report from the Australian government on the Montara incident is due June 18.

Like the Montara well, BP's Macondo well has already shown itself to have pockets of gas big enough to interrupt drilling.

Weeks before the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, workers on the rig experienced a gas kick so intense that they abandoned any "hot work" -- smoking, welding, cooking or any other use of fire -- for fear of an explosion.

Don Van Nieuwenhuise, a University of Houston geologist, said that BP will have to tread carefully to avoid the problems encountered at Montara.

"You have to be very careful, because you don't want to have another blowout if you hit petroleum or gas in another level, " Van Nieuwenhuise said. "Any relief or kill well needs to be drilled with more caution than the first well, because you don't want a repeat performance."

Van Nieuwenhuise speaks from experience. In 1979, he worked on killing a gas well in the Gulf of Mexico that blew up when workers ran out of drilling mud. Even though it was only in about 60 feet of water, it took about four and a half months to cap the well by drilling a relief well because of concerns about pockets of gas. "We had to stop drilling every 500 feet, " said Van Nieuwenhuise, who was working for Mobil in New Orleans at the time.

Better drilling technology today, Van Nieuwenhuise said, should make the job easier, but the key is to know where the drill bit is in relation to formations of oil and gas in the area.

BP said it's mindful of the risks and is proceeding cautiously with the relief wells.

"We've got many many safety systems in place, both procedural and technical, " MacEwen said. "We're constantly measuring the pressure in the well."

Wachovia laundered $420 billion in drug money

Image via Wikipedia

Wachovia to Pay $160 Million to End Money Laundering Probe

Bloomberg
Wells Fargo & Co.’s Wachovia Bank agreed to pay $160 million to resolve a criminal investigation of how drug cartels used the bank to launder money through Mexican exchange houses.

The government agreed to defer prosecution on a criminal charge that Wachovia, once the fourth-largest U.S. bank, failed to set up an effective anti-money laundering program from 2003 to 2008. Wachovia admitted failing to monitor $420 billion in transactions through exchange houses, known as casas de cambio.

Wachovia admitted “serious and systemic” violations of the Bank Secrecy Act that let drug cartels launder at least $110 million through exchange houses. Drug dealers used Wachovia accounts to buy airplanes, and U.S. authorities seized “at least four” of those aircraft with more than 20,000 kilograms in cocaine, Wachovia admitted in U.S. District Court in Miami.

“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations while laundering at least $110 million in drug proceeds,” Jeffrey Sloman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said yesterday at a Miami news conference.

The violations were the largest ever of the Bank Secrecy Act, which is designed to curb money laundering, authorities said. Wells Fargo, based in San Francisco, bought Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia Corp. at the end of 2008.

“This was a systemic breakdown at Wachovia which allowed approximately $420 billion to go unmonitored,” Sloman said.

Remedial Measure

Wells Fargo has cooperated in the investigation and must take remedial measures before the government will dismiss the criminal charge. The bank will forfeit $110 million and pay a $50 million fine. Prosecutors have “no evidence that Wells Fargo Bank’s anti-money laundering program is deficient,” prosecutors said in court papers.

“Wells Fargo learned about these matters before acquiring Wachovia and established reserves in prior periods that will fully cover the settlement amounts,” the bank said in a news release. Wachovia “exited all relationships with foreign money exchange houses” by early 2008, it said.

The casas de cambio, which are not banks, allow people and businesses in Mexico to exchange or wire transfer the value of currency to bank accounts in the U.S. and other countries, according to Wachovia’s 12-page factual statement entered with the deferred-prosecution agreement.

Bank’s Admission

“The nature of the CDC business allows money launderers the opportunity to move drug dollars that are in Mexico into CDCs and ultimately into the U.S. banking system,” Wachovia admitted. “Once the drug dollars were placed into CDCs, they were readily wire transferred into bank accounts of CDCs at Wachovia.”

Wachovia admitted offering correspondent banking services to 22 CDCs through three methods: wire-transferring money on behalf of third-party customers; accepting bulk cash transfers made by armored cars and other methods; and accepting checks and traveler’s checks put in pouches or digitally scanned through “remote deposit capture.”

From May 2004 to May 2007, Wachovia processed at least $373 billion in wire transfers on behalf of CDCs, the bank admitted. It processed $4.7 billion in bulk cash and $47 billion in RDC deposits for all correspondent banking customers, including Mexican CDCs, Wachovia admitted.

Wachovia didn’t admit that it knew the $420 billion it failed to monitor were drug proceeds.

Open Door

“When the bank failed to have effective anti-money laundering procedures in place, it allowed these traffickers to use the bank to their will,” said Mark Trouville, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in Miami.

Trouville said Mexican and Colombian drug dealers used the bank to buy planes that moved drugs from South America.

Asked if Wachovia knew it was drug money, Trouville said, “I don’t think I can comment on whether Wachovia knew it was drug money. There were no effective procedures in place to be able to tell them that.”

The investigation began in 2005 when a drug-sniffing dog detected narcotics on a plane at a municipal airport in the Miami area, Sloman said. Investigators then traced the money to buy the plane to a Mexican exchange house, the prosecutor said.

Parts of the drug and money-laundering probe have become public, and some are still going on, Trouville said.

The case is USA v. Wachovia Bank, 10-cr-20165, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida (Miami).

D225G Ukraine Norway Link and China Spread

Recombinomics Commentary 14:15
November 25, 2009
The same mutation has been found in both fatal and mild cases elsewhere, including in Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Ukraine, and the United States, said the WHO.

WHO's spokeswoman in Beijing, Vivian Tan, said the agency is aware of three such cases in China that occurred in June and July that were similar to the cases being investigated in Norway. Tan said WHO had no information on the cases mentioned in the Xinhua report Wednesday.

There is no evidence the mutated swine flu virus is circulating widely in the world, Tan said, but since it has been linked to deaths in Norway and elsewhere, investigators are focusing on whether this mutation could be a marker for more severe disease.

The above comments are associated with a report of eight D225G isolates with in China. Genbank has three of the sequences, as noted earlier. The increase in examples to eight is not surprising since D225G was in four of four fatal cases in Ukraine and reports from Norway cited detection in three isolates, 2 fatal and 1 severe case who had recovered.

However, 25 HA sequences deposited at Genbank had an HA sequence that contained D225G, A/Norway/2924/2009, but also had the wild type sequence, raising concerns that D225G was circulating as a mixture that was most easily detected in lung samples, because the D225G was more than a "marker". It is a polymorphisms that was found in 1918 and 1919 samples which were well characterized for receptor binding properties, which indicated the change conferred increased binding to gal 2,3 receptors which are present in lung.

Concerns that this receptor binding domain change was widely circulating were increased because an HA marker on the Norway isolate with D225G was found on additional isolates in Norway, and worldwide (see list here). This marker was also in the HA sequences from the fatal cases in Ukraine. Full sequences from one of the Norway isolates, A/Norway/3364-2/2009, were deposited, and a marker on the NA sequence matched isolates with the HA marker, linking this broader set of isolate from Norway with the Ukraine sequences, which also had the NA marker, as did multiple other isolates (see list here).

These associations link Ukraine to Norway, but the D225G polymorphism has jumped onto multiple genetic backgrounds, which are widespread, increasing concerns the D225G is circulating undetected because it is concentrated in lung tissues and is poorly represented in nasopharyngeal swabs. Release of full sequences from China, as well as Norway, would be useful.

Ukraine Dead Approach 400 - D225G Spreads
Recombinomics Commentary 23:30
November 24, 2009
1,679,237 Influenza/ARI

99,661 Hospitalized

397 Dead

The above figures from the latest daily update from the Ukraine Ministry of Health support a decline in the rate of increases of cases and deaths, but the total is now almost 400 fatalities (see map). The spread was likely slowed by the country-wide closing of schools along with warmer weather. However, it is likely that the virus will return as temperatures drop and the traditional flu season begins, although it is unclear if seasonal flu will be in circulation in 2010.

The receptor binding domain change, D225G, was in four of four sequence from fatal cases, raising concerns that the 2,3 alpha specificity of D225G drove the H1N1 to the lungs and the total destruction. Three patients in Norway were said to also have D225G, and two of the three died while the third had been in serious condition. 25 HA sequences from Norway were deposited at Genbank, but only one had D225G, and it was a mixture. In Brazil both patients with D225G in lung samples had died, and the case in China had been in serious condition.

However, the severity of the infection may be related to the ratio of sequences with and without D255G, as well as viral load, because milder cases involving D225G have also been reported in the United States and Hong Kong.

More detail on additional cases, including sequences from upper and lower respiratory tract from the same patient would be useful.

Vigilante Justice Across Mexico

Ioan Grillo - GlobalPost
MEXICO CITY, Mexico — The five teenage boys slump against the wall of a dark house and eye the camcorder nervously. Suddenly, a fist enters the frame smacking one of the boys in the face. Then the barrel of an automatic rifle appears and the teenagers’ expressions turn to terror.

“Why are you here?” shouts a voice.

“For robbing,” one of the boys mumbles.

“You see. You were little rats and now look at you,” replies the interrogator.

The torture video of the five alleged house burglars was posted on the internet last week. It is the latest sign of brutal vigilante justice spreading across Mexico.

As kidnappings, muggings and car jackings spiral out of control, and the authorities appear increasingly impotent, shadowy groups have been advocating justice by the sword.

In other recent cases, alleged kidnappers and car thieves have been abducted and murdered and had their corpses dumped in public places along with threatening notes.

There are also rising cases of mobs lynching alleged thieves and leaving them beaten, naked and tied up.

“The government is failing to provide security and people are turning to some brutal alternatives,” said Rossana Reguillo, who studies crime and violence at the Jesuit University of Guadalajara. “This is not something that has always been around in Mexico. It is a new phenomenon that has been growing since 2000.”

In the latest case, the five teenagers were abducted after they allegedly robbed a house in the town of Tepic in the Pacific state of Nayarit.

The boys — all students of a local high school — were taken to an abandoned building where they had their heads shaved and then were beaten by fists and rifle butts and threatened at gun point, as shown on the video. One of the torturers is heard on the film saying he is the man whose house was robbed.

The teenagers were also forced to perform sexual acts — including kissing each other in front of the camera — as a humiliation. The gunmen are heard threatening to cut their hands off unless they comply.

After being held all night the students were dumped naked on the street and then attended at hospital for injuries including broken ribs.

The torture film was posted on YouTube under the title “Little Rats of Tepic.” YouTube’s monitors quickly removed it from the site, flagging it as unsuitable content.

Following an outcry over the film, police on Monday arrested four building workers for the torture.

However, one of the boys said they had first been arrested by state police and it was the officers themselves who turned them to the vigilantes. The Nayarit police chief denies the charge, saying officers did not question the boys until after they had been tortured.

The incident sparked disgust and condemnation from many.

“Opening the door to justice by your own hand is an enormous step back to a state of barbarism and lack of culture,” said Huicot Rivas, the president of Nayarit’s Human Rights Commission. “In a democratic state, crime can never be used to combat crime.”

However, others cheered on the vigilantes for trying to clean up the streets.

“For me the men who made this video are heroes. I sincerely admire them,” wrote a reader on the website of Mexican newspaper El Universal. “In Mexico, we need death squads to hunt and exterminate rats and kidnappers without further expense to society and the without human rights people getting in the way.”

“I recognize that this is not the correct way to administer justice but I can’t deny that it makes me happy that this type of thing happens,” wrote another reader.

Such feelings reflect desperation among many in Mexico about the lack of security. Amid a drug war that has left thousands dead, rates of anti-social crimes such as kidnapping and carjacking have risen to become among the worst in the world. At the same time, conviction rates for these relatively minor crimes are as low as 5 percent.

Many readers of newspapers have also written in to commend shadowy vigilante groups that have publicly announced their appearance in crime-plagued communities.

One such group called the Popular Anti-Drugs Army materialized among farming towns in the southern state of Guerrero.

Displaying blankets with written messages on bridges and buildings, the group claimed to be made up of family men who had come together to force drug dealers off the street.

“We invite the people to join our struggle and defend our children who are the future of Mexico,” it said on one of the blankets.

The group has been linked to several killings, including the decapitation of an alleged drug dealer in December.

Following stories of that slaying, readers hailed the efforts in some Mexican media outlets.

“My sincerest congratulations to these brave men with their courage and determination,” wrote a reader of Mexican newspaper Milenio. “God help them with their noble cause.”

Investigators suspect that organized-crime groups themselves could be behind many of the vigilantes. While the gangsters traffic drugs to the United States, some are against selling them in their own communities and are opposed to criminals such as muggers and kidnappers.

A similar situation emerged in Colombia in the 1990s, when paramilitary groups both trafficked drugs and enforced the law against petty crooks in the fiefdoms they controlled.

The investigator Reguillo says that while it may not get as bad as Colombia, the vigilantism does pose a real threat to the Mexican state.

“When armed groups administer their own justice, this represents an alternate power,” she said. “This a major problem for democracy in Mexico.”

The Lies Exposed, All the Global Elite Have Left Is Pure Force

Chris Hedges

"The leaders of the G-20 are meeting to try and salvage their power and money after everything that has gone wrong," said Benedicto Martinez Orozco, co-president of the Mexican Frente Autentico del Trabajo (FAT), who is in Pittsburgh for the protests. "This is what this meeting is about."

The draconian security measures put in place to silence dissent in Pittsburgh are disproportionate to any actual security concern. They are a response not to a real threat, but to the fear gripping the established centers of power. The power elite grasps, even if we do not, the massive fraud and theft being undertaken to save a criminal class on Wall Street and international speculators of the kinds who were executed in other periods of human history. They know the awful cost this plundering of state treasuries will impose on workers, who will become a permanent underclass. And they also know that once this is clear to the rest of us, rebellion will no longer be a foreign concept.

The delegates to the G-20, the gathering of the world's wealthiest nations, will consequently be protected by a National Guard combat battalion, recently returned from Iraq. The battalion will shut down the area around the city center, man checkpoints and patrol the streets in combat gear. Pittsburgh has augmented the city's police force of 1,000 with an additional 3,000 officers. Helicopters have begun to buzz gatherings in city parks, buses driven to Pittsburgh to provide food to protesters have been impounded, activists have been detained, and permits to camp in the city parks have been denied. Web sites belonging to resistance groups have been hacked and trashed, and many groups suspect that they have been infiltrated and that their phones and e-mail accounts are being monitored.

Our global economy, like our political system, has been hijacked by a tiny oligarchy, composed mostly of wealthy white men who serve corporations. They have pledged or raised a staggering $18 trillion, looted largely from state treasuries, to prop up banks and other financial institutions that engaged in suicidal acts of speculation and ruined the world economy. They have formulated trade deals so corporations can speculate across borders with currency, food and natural resources even as, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, 1.02 billion people on the planet struggle with hunger. Globalization has obliterated the ability of many poor countries to protect food staples such as corn, rice, beans and wheat with subsidies or taxes on imported staples. The abolishment of these protections has permitted the giant mechanized farms to wipe out tens of millions of small farmers-2 million in Mexico alone-bankrupting many and driving them off their land. Those who could once feed themselves can no longer find enough food, and the wealthiest governments use institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization like pit bulls to establish economic supremacy. There is little that most governments seem able to do to fight back.

But the game is up. The utopian dreams of globalization have been exposed as a sham. Force is all the elite have left. We are living through one of civilization's great seismic reversals. The ideology of globalization, like all utopias that are sold as inevitable and irreversible, has become a farce. The power elite, perplexed and confused, cling to the disastrous principles of globalization and its outdated language to mask the political and economic vacuum before us. The absurd idea that the marketplace alone should determine economic and political constructs caused the crisis. It led the G-20 to sacrifice other areas of human importance-from working conditions, to taxation, to child labor, to hunger, to health and pollution-on the altar of free trade. It left the world's poor worse off and the United States with the largest deficits in human history. Globalization has become an excuse to ignore the mess. It has left a mediocre elite desperately trying to save a system that cannot be saved and, more important, trying to save itself. "Speculation," then-President Jacques Chirac of France once warned, "is the AIDS of our economies." We have reached the terminal stage.

"Each of Globalization's strengths has somehow turned out to have an opposing meaning," John Ralston Saul wrote in "The Collapse of Globalism." "The lowering of national residency requirements for corporations has morphed into a tool for massive tax evasion. The idea of a global economic system mysteriously made local poverty seem unreal, even normal. The decline of the middle class-the very basis of democracy-seemed to be just one of those things that happen, unfortunate but inevitable. That the working class and the lower middle class, even parts of the middle class, could only survive with more than one job per person seemed to be expected punishment for not keeping up. The contrast between unprecedented bonuses for mere managers at the top and the four-job families below them seemed inevitable in a globalized world. For two decades an elite consensus insisted that unsustainable third-world debts could not be put aside in a sort of bad debt reserve without betraying Globalism's essential principles and moral obligations, which included an unwavering respect for the sanctity of international contracts. It took the same people about two weeks to abandon sanctity and propose bad debt banks for their own far larger debts in 2009."

The institutions that once provided alternative sources of power, including the press, government, agencies of religion, universities and labor unions, have proved morally bankrupt. They no longer provide a space for voices of moral autonomy. No one will save us now but ourselves.

Allen Stanford May Have Ties To Satanic Cult and Drug Money

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

R. Allen Stanford’s relationship with the chief regulator of his Antigua bank was closer than most, reports the NYTimes:

At a meeting in 2003, they became blood brothers, cutting their wrists and mixing their blood in a “brotherhood ceremony” that Mr. Stanford’s chief financial officer said promoted an elaborate scheme to hide a multibillion-dollar fraud from American and other regulators.

The assertion that the two took a “blood oath” was laid out in a plea agreement signed by the officer, James M. Davis, and filed Thursday. After the pact, Leroy King, Antigua’s chief banking supervisor, called Mr. Stanford “Big Brother.” He received Super Bowl tickets, valued at thousands of dollars, for himself and his girlfriend. And he accepted regular bribe payments from a secret Swiss bank account that Mr. Davis said he was told to handle by Mr. Stanford.

...the plea agreement offered an assortment of new details, particularly about the relationship between Mr. Stanford and Mr. King, who ran Antigua’s Financial Services Regulatory Commission for much of the last decade. He has been arrested in Antigua and is awaiting extradition to the United States. Shortly after their 2003 blood-brother ceremony, which also included a second, unnamed Antiguan regulator...

Mr. Justin Simon [Attorney General of Antigua and Barbuda] said in an interview that he had become aware of the blood-brotherhood ceremony from his own sources. “It is believable,” he said. “As far as how many people are involved, we are still investigating.”

The FBI and other agencies have been conducting an ongoing investigation of Stanford since 2008 for possible involvement in money laundering for Mexico's Gulf Cartel.

Background on Gulf Cartel:

The Gulf Cartel (Spanish: Cártel del Golfo) is a Mexican drug trafficking cartel based in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. The cartel is present in 13 states with important areas of operation in the cities of Nuevo Laredo, Miguel Alemán, Reynosa and Matamoros in the northern state of Tamaulipas; it also has important operations in the states of Nuevo León and in Michoacán.[1] The Gulf Cartel traffics cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin across the U.S.-Mexico border to major cities in the United States. The group is known for its violent methods and intimidation, and works closely with corrupt law officials and business people in Mexico as well as in the United States.

Aside from earning money from the sales of narcotics, the cartel also extorts "taxes" from local businesses in exchange of "protection". Anyone passing narcotics or aliens through Gulf Cartel territory is subject to payment of these "taxes" to the cartel. The Gulf cartel does not limit itself solely to narcotics trafficking, as they are known to kidnap people for ransom money."

Investigative sources told ABC...that mexican authorities had seized one of Sir Allen's private jets as part of an inquiry into the cartel's activities. Inside the cabin of the Gulfstream jet police found cheques connected to it.

In February 2009, the Guardian reported:

An FBI source close to the investigation would not give exact details but confirmed the agency was looking at links to international drug gangs as part of the huge investigation into Stanford's banking activities. Reports in the US have said Mexican authorities have detained one of Stanford's private planes as part of an investigation into possible links to the Gulf Cartel. It has been alleged cheques found inside the plane were linked to the cartel, which is one of the most violent criminal organisations in the world.

Sources in the US Drug Enforcement Administration also confirmed that while the investigations into Stanford's affairs were "with the FBI and Securities Exchange Commission, there may well have been a trail connecting his Mexican affairs to narco-trafficking interests. So far as we understand from information partially in the public domain, this has pertained to the Gulf Cartel, and items found aboard a private light aircraft. I think we'll find that any possible drug-related trail and SEC priorities are not all in the same frame."

Asked whether the aircraft seizures were an isolated incident in the overall investigation, the official said: "It's not going to be as if they would check every plane. Any connections to the narcos would have been followed for some time, and US law enforcement has been working with Mexico's banking regulators on a vast range of investigations, including Stanford's interests, for some time.

Also in February 2009, Barbados Money Laundering and Offshore Business Advisory reported:

Stanford May Have Laundered Drug Money for Mexican Cartel

I have been following the Sir Allen Stanford scandal for a while, and now the talk has turned to money laundering, which is the topic of this blog.

An ABC News article (see below) said:
“Authorities say Stanford could potentially face criminal charges of money laundering and bribery of foreign officials.“

The article continued:

“… checks found inside the [Stanford's] plane were believed to be connected to the Gulf cartel, reputed to be Mexico’s most violent gang.”

At least one high-level member of the previous Barbados Labour Party Government has had official business dealings with Sir Allen. I am not casting aspersions, I am just making the point that Sir Allen touched many lives. People from all over the Caribbean, including Barbados, are involved, legitimately or otherwise, with Sir Allen’s business. Probing questions are likely to be asked.

At this point in time, there are probably a few Barbadians who are sick with worry over this investigation. The problem is that even if a person acted in good faith in his/her dealings with Sir Allen, suspicions may arise. Will the FBI’s investigation reach the shores of Barbados? Does the US have an extradition treaty with Barbados?

ABC News: Accused Financier Under Federal Drug Investigation, by JUSTIN ROOD and BRIAN ROSS – February 18, 2009

Authorities tell ABC News that as part of the investigation, which has been ongoing since last year, Mexican authorities detained one of Stanford’s private planes. According to officials, checks found inside the plane were believed to be connected to the Gulf cartel, reputed to be Mexico’s most violent gang. Authorities say Stanford could potentially face criminal charges of money laundering and bribery of foreign officials.

Authorities say the SEC action against Stanford Tuesday may have complicated the federal drug investigation.

The ABC article continues:

A video posted on the firm’s web-site shows Stanford, now sought by U.S. Marshals, being hugged by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and praised by former President Bill Clinton for helping to finance a convention-related forum and party put on by the National Democratic Institute.

Sir Allen’s generosity was not confined to Democrats. He is reported to have helped the disgraced Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

Are Barbadian politicians required to report political donations? Barbados Free Press irreverently asks the question: “How Many “Political Donations” Did Sir R. Allen Stanford Give To Barbados Politicians?”

Sir Allen lived in the Caribbean, and demonstrated an interest in local affairs. He had close ties with P.M. Bird of Antigua [NY Times]:

Around that time, Mr. Stanford had also become an adviser to Lester Bird, then Antigua’s prime minister, who formed a banking advisory board to clean up the country’s image. Mr. Stanford’s bank was the largest bank regulated by the board. The project was paid for by the Antiguan government from money lent or granted by Mr. Stanford.

This man has gone from being a hero to a villain in a very short space of time. This reminds me of the “Lord Conrad Black” story. Here are the similarities:

• both men were fabulously rich and from rich countries
  
• both settled in a poor Caribbean countries, where they were involved with politics
• both are reported to have made political contributions to multiple political candidates in different countries
  
• both received titles
• both were charged with fraud

In March 2009, "Illuminati Under the Microscope" writes:

The following article provides linkage between a ruthless drug gang in Mexico, known as the Gulf Cartel and its close association with the suspected satanic cult known as "Saint Death" or in Spanish "La Santa Muerte" and the Bush and Biden clans.

BACKGROUND ON GULF CARTEL:

This Mexican organized crime syndicate has its roots in bootlegging booze / alcohol into the USA through smuggling routes in northern Mexico. www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Cartel .

See also:

www.janes.com/news/lawenforcement/jir/jir071205_1_n.shtml

BACKGROUND ON LA SANTA MUERTE CULT:

The image is that of a skeleton dressed in clothing similar to that worn by the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Catholic patroness of Mexico for the past 500 years. www.witchesbrew.builderspot.com/page/page/2215114.htm / http://www.santamuerte.galeon.com/ /

www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1671984,00.html / www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Muerte .

GULF CARTEL EXTENSIVE LINKS TO LA SANTA MUERTE HUMAN SACRIFICE:

"...they were taken there by members of the Gulf Cartel and they were executed at the Santa
Muerte shrine. ... I believe it was an offering to Santa Muerte at the same time." www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2177281/posts .

ELEVEN DECAPITATED BODIES - "Police say they acknowledged belonging to the Zetas, a
group of hit men tied to the Gulf Cartel. The suspects have not yet been charged." www.azstarnet.com/sn/byauthor/255507 .

STANFORD FINANCIAL alleged links to GULF CARTEL:

www.bloggingstocks.com/2009/02/19/stanford-financial-as-drug-money-launderer/ and www.newsbizarre.com/2009/02/allen-stanford-gulf-cartel-drug-lord.html also www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6907429&page=1 .

BIDEN FAMILY employment with a subsidiary of STANFORD:

This particular link shows that Biden's son runs AMTRAK. www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,1881353 / Multiple stories on the Biden Crime.

BUSH FAMILY LINKS TO MEXICO GULF CARTEL:

www.elandar.com/bush/amigos.html /

JEB BUSH links to STANFORD:

www.larouchepac.com/news/2009/02/19/bush-pioneer-goes-down-drug-money-laundering-scandal.html .

BUSH FAMILY ties to suspected SATANIC CULT - Yale SKULL AND BONES SOCIETY:

www.hereinreality.com/familyvalues.html

Wall Street has been laundering drug money for years as this 1994 Seattle Times News article suggests. Feds Probe Wall Street Firms For Laundered Drug Money 1994 - Seattle Times Staff: Seattle Times News Services

NEW YORK - Federal investigators are probing several brokerage firms on suspicion of laundering illegal drug profits, The Wall Street Journal reported today.

People close to the investigation told the paper and court documents show that $10 million has been seized from accounts at Merrill Lynch, Dean Witter, Prudential Securities and PaineWebber for alleged violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Law.

Federal agents from the Treasury Department's U.S. Customs Service and the Internal Revenue service are also investigating transactions at Bear Stearns, the paper said.

Federal agents told the paper that brokerage firms are becoming the choice for drug dealers to make their profits look like they were made legally, because of the globalization of the securities business and a loophole in how cash is defined in the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act.

Banks have fallen out of favor for drug profits because all transactions that exceed $10,000 have to be reported to the IRS under the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act, the paper said.

The Banking Industry´s Dirty Little Secret: Money Laundering For The Drug Cartels

February 2009 - Dave Gibson

The United Nation´s Office on Drugs and Crime Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa recently told the Austrian magazine Profil that drug money has been the only thing that has kept many major banks in business.

Costa said: "In many instances, drug money is currently the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system´s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor."

Costa went on to say that UNODC has discovered that "interbank loans were funded by money that originated from drug trade and other illegal activities." Incredibly, he said there were "signs that some banks were rescued in that way."

In the last few years, large banks have been getting into the remittance industry, which sends over $50 billion annually from the U.S. to Latin America. While much of the money is sent from laborers in this country back home to their families, drug traffickers heavily use remittances as a way to send their profits south of the border.

The banks charge very high fees for the service.

In 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Justice Department has opened an investigation into money transfers conducted by Wachovia bank. It is alleged that Wachovia transferred funds from drug deals in the United States to Mexican and Columbian money-exchange houses, or casas de cambio.

There are countless casas de cambio just inside the Mexican border.

The following is a portion of the report which appeared in the Wall Street Journal on April 26, 2008:

"Wachovia built up its ties to casas de cambio as a way to tap the Hispanic market, which doesn´t always bank through traditional Main Street outlets. Wachovia served as a larger partner, holding the foreign-exchange houses´ deposits and providing back-office services. In 2005, it introduced the Dinero Directo card to facilitate cross-border remittances."

"The bank pushed into the business despite concerns from U.S. law enforcement that such firms were sometimes used to launder drug money. Wachovia declined to discuss why it pursued this business despite the warnings."

"Internal emails and documents filed in federal courts in Miami, Chicago and New York describe former ties between Wachovia and money-changing firms. In a case in U.S. court in Miami, federal agents seized more than $11 million in 23 Wachovia accounts belonging to Casa de Cambio Puebla…Mexican police raided Puebla offices last fall, alleging relationships with a major drug cartel."

However, Wachovia is only one of many U.S. banks to come under investigation for laundering drug cartel profits.

The following is a short list of banks which have resolved cases of money laundering, to avoid federal prosecution (Source: U.S. Justice Dept.):

2008, Sigue Corp. was alleged to be part of $24.7 million in suspicious funds in processed remittances. They forfeited $15 million and avoided prosecution.

2007, Union Bank of California was discovered to be laundering drug cartel profits through casas de cambio. The bank forfeited $21.6 million and avoided prosecution.

2007, American Express International Bank failed to report $55 million passing through the accounts of known drug traffickers. They paid $65 million in fines and avoided prosecution.

2006, Bank Atlantic paid a $10 million fine to avoid prosecution, when an undercover investigation discovered that drug profits were being laundered through one of their branch locations.

As part of their deferred prosecution, the banks agreed to reform their practices as well as submit to federal oversight.

Of course, this practice involves very large banks and very large amounts of money.

After an investigation of Union Bank of California, the Justice Department claimed that the bank failed "to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program."

One case involved two drug traffickers using accounts from Ribadeo Casa de Cambio in order to transfer millions of dollars in drug proceeds. Federal prosecutors discovered $295 million in transfers from several Union Bank accounts back to their account, with only $29 million ever being repaid.

Prosecutors faulted Union Bank not only for failing to corroborate the legitimacy of the transfers, but prosecutors allege, the bank ignored the large volumes of traveler's checks with sequential numbers, large cash deposits and wire transfers strategically structured below federal reporting limits.

While ignorance may be bliss, it would be difficult for the banks to declare it as a defense. Since the mid-1990s, U.S. bank regulators and drug enforcement investigators have been warning U.S. banks that Mexican casas de cambio pose a great money-laundering risk.

Recently, both U.S. and Mexican authorities have taken a much tougher approach in policing the operations of the foreign-exchange firms. The Mexican Attorney General's office says some of the casas de cambio are part of an elaborate system which funnels drug money through U.S. banks, on to European banks and then back to the U.S. and Latin America.

This new and vigorous effort is undoubtedly in response to not only the extreme violence taking place in Mexico, as that nation´s powerful drug cartels threaten to topple the government, but to the growing presence the cartels now have in the U.S. as well.

Of course, it is not only the drug traffickers and low-level operatives who transfer drug profits through U.S. banks.

In 1998, the brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas, Raul Salinas was caught transferring hundreds of millions of dollars out of Mexico to Citibank in New York. Citibank was then sending the money to banks in Switzerland.

The Salinas family is believed by both U.S. and Mexican law enforcement to have received nearly a billion dollars from Mexican and Columbian drug cartels. Raul Salinas was released from prison in 2005, after serving ten years for the murder of his brother-in-law.

Upon consideration of the fact that many U.S. banks have engaged in laundering drug profits for the powerful and violent cartels, the $700 billion bank bailout engineered by Bush administration Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson seems even more questionable.

The fact that none of that bailout money went to help homeowners facing foreclosure, combined with the Treasury´s refusal to specifically tell Congress where $200 billion of it went makes you wonder if the relationship between the banks and the drug cartels goes far beyond what we are being told by the Justice Department.

Record Decline in North American Trade

The Journal of Commerce reports the steepest decline on record for North American trade using surface transportation:

Trade using surface transportation between the United States, Canada and Mexico dropped 35.4 percent in May, the largest year-over-year decline on record for the North American Free Trade Agreement partners, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

In the eighth consecutive month of falling trade, imports from Canada and Mexico to the United States in May were down 38.1 percent from May 2008 while exports from the United States declined 32 percent.

The value of North American surface trade dropped to $47.9 billion in the fifth consecutive month with a year-to-year decline of greater than 27 percent. Trucks carried 72.4 percent of the total.

Surface transportation trade between the United States and Canada totaled $29.2 billion in May, down 40.3 percent compared to May 2008. The value of imports carried by truck was 35.7 percent lower, while the value of exports carried by truck was 33.4 percent lower during this period.

U.S.–Mexico surface transportation trade totaled $18.6 billion in May, down 26 percent compared to May 2008. The value of imports carried by truck was 23.4 percent lower, while the value of exports carried by truck was 21.1 percent lower than in May a year ago.