Poll: Americans don't buy the propaganda about the supposed economic rebound

Americans in Poll Doubt Economy Rebound in Defiance of Forecasts

Americans are losing faith in the nation’s economic recovery even as forecasters expect growth to accelerate, according to a Bloomberg National Poll. Fewer people anticipate improvement in the economy’s strength over the next year than in the last survey in June, with 27 percent saying the expansion will be more robust, down from 39 percent who expected improvement three months earlier.

Forty-four percent of poll respondents say they expect the economy, which has expanded for nine consecutive quarters, to remain about the same, while 28 percent see it weakening.
“We’re still in a recession; I don’t know why they say it’s over,” says Chris Sams, 28, a disabled Navy veteran from Daingerfield, Texas. “It may be over in Washington, D.C., where the per capita income is higher than anywhere else, but down here the minimum wage is the highest wage.”

The results of the Sept. 20-23 poll reflect public impatience with an economy that has grown at an average rate of 2.1 percent since the recession’s June 2009 end, a full percentage point below the 50-year average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Growth will slip to 1.60 percent this year, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists, before rebounding to 2.65 percent growth next year. Read more >>

Elizabeth Warren Reads Riot Act to Holder for Not Prosecuting Big Bank Mortgage Fraud

Okay, so Senator Warren actually wrote a polite, detailed letter to Attorney General Holder. There was no shouting or acrimony.

However, in Washington, for a freshman senator to imply in official correspondence made public that the Department of Justice is not doing its job in investigating, prosecuting and even fining banks and secondary lenders in regards to multiple counts of mortgage lending violations is akin to a freshman at high school accusing the principal of letting teachers steal milk money from the desks of students.

It may be professional in tone, but Warren's letter is a direct challenge to the criminal impunity provided to and limited fines assessed by the DOJ on Wall Street for their multiple schemes to defraud both mortgage borrowers and investors.

The Huffington Post featured the letter, which bluntly states:

I am concerned that this might be yet another example of the federal government's timid enforcement strategy against the nation's largest financial institutions. I believe that if DOJ and our banking regulatory agencies prove unwilling over time to take the big banks to trial or even require admission of guilt when they cheat consumers and break the law -- either out of timidity or because of a lack of resources -- then the agencies lose enormous leverage in settlement negotiations.

There are a number of federal agencies involved in the lax regulation and minimal punishment (no jail time) of the financial industry for its role, particularly in the creation of a toxic subprime mortgage scam, in the economic collapse that burst open in the autumn of 2007. Read more >>

U.S. employees set to be forced to give bosses their Facebook PASSWORDS

An attempt to ban US bosses from asking employees to hand over their Facebook login details has been blocked by Congress.

A last minute alteration to the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) that would have prevented employers demanding that prospective employees disclose social media passwords as a condition of employment was voted down in the house of representatives.

The proposal, put forward by Democrat Ed Perlmutter was defeated by a 224-189 majority, according to the Huffington Post. Handing over passwords could legally be a condition of acquiring or keeping a job, said WebProNews.

Perlmutter said of his amendment before it was defeated: 'It helps the individual protect his right to privacy and it doesn't allow the employer to impersonate that particular employee when other people are interacting with that person across social media platforms. He warned of an invasion of privacy and the potential of employers to 'impersonate' employees online. Read more >>

The Section Preventing Indefinite Detention of Americans without Trial Removed from Final NDAA Bill

Michael Krieger
While the Feinstein-Lee Amendment wasn’t perfect, it was a small step forward as I outlined in my piece:  My Thoughts on the Feinstein-Lee Amendment to the NDAA.  Amazingly, this small victory has been stripped out of the final bill by our “representatives.”  If this doesn’t prove without a shadow of a doubt that this government is criminal and wants the power to lock up citizens without trial I don’t know what will.

From the Huffington Post:

WASHINGTON — Congress stripped a provision Tuesday from a defense bill that aimed to shield Americans from the possibility of being imprisoned indefinitely without trial by the military. The provision was replaced with a passage that appears to give citizens little protection from indefinite detention. Read more >>

Walmart plans to deny health insurance to employees working fewer than 30 hours/wk

Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, plans to begin denying health insurance to newly hired employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week, according to a copy of the company’s policy obtained by The Huffington Post. …

Walmart declined to disclose how many of its roughly 1.4 million U.S. workers are vulnerable to losing medical insurance under its new policy. …

Labor and health care experts portrayed Walmart’s decision to exclude workers from its medical plans as an attempt to limit costs while taking advantage of the national health care reform known as Obamacare. Among the key features of Obamacare is an expansion of Medicaid, the taxpayer-financed health insurance program for poor people. Many of the Walmart workers who might be dropped from the company’s health care plans earn so little that they would qualify for the expanded Medicaid program, these experts said.

By making the fine for not providing health care cheaper than providing health care, this was always the plan: to encourage employers to send us to the government.

Remember how Obama's big ObamaCare sell was, "You get to keep the health insurance you have"?

It was all a lie, a hustle, a con, a ruse… Read more >>

Every Warrant Submitted by the Feds to Spy on Americans Was Approved

An annual government report showed that every warrant submitted by the Feds to spy on Americans was approved by the secret FISA court in 2011.  The 1,745 total number of applications and warrants approved was a 10.5% increase over 2010. An anonymous counterterrorism official said the increase was "in response to materials seized in relation to the raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and the resulting investigations."

Although the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) is secretive and does not reveal the type of surveillance that was approved, it may be the most transparent surveillance program the Feds admit to.  At least the warrants are issued and can be counted. FISA has only been one of the tools used to spy on the communications of Americans.

Despite Obama's 2008 campaign rhetoric to end the practice of "warrantless surveillance," he not only continued the practice but fought to do so in court in a case where his Administration's only defense of claiming "state secrets" (so much for his government transparency rhetoric too) was slapped down by a judge in 2010. More...

"Banging" the U.S. Stock Market

Janet Tavakoli
Chicago residents grew up to the sound of local early morning radio rundowns of pork belly futures and other exchange traded commodities. Every trick in the book from manipulation of soybeans to silver has played out in Chicago's trading pits. Every market professional I've talked to in Chicago since Thursday is of the same opinion. It makes no difference whether human beings or computers are front running and manipulating trades. The gyrations in the market last week have the look and feel of classic market manipulation.

If you want to manipulate a market, deregulate it as much as possible. Then make it as "dark," and fast as possible. Make it hard for outsiders to view your trades as they get done, and make it even harder for anyone to figure out why you are trading. Get as much monopoly power as possible over the market. Get funding at the cheapest possible rate. The best possible rate is the near zero cost funding available from the Federal Reserve.

Next, get your "men" stationed in the most influential positions at the exchanges. Make sure your cronies have shock and awe market dominance through, say, High Frequency Trading algorithms that now make up the majority of stock trades.

Then, make sure you have advance information of major market-moving events. A bailout announcement by the European Union would do nicely. A few days before the announcement, "bang" the market. Pound down the value so you can monetize put options and other bearish instruments. Trigger customers' stop-loss orders, and pick up bargains at their expense. Then cash-in again when the market pops up on bailout news.

To paraphrase Paul Erdman's 1975 tongue-in-cheek observation: "The lack of discretion in financial and political circles these days is appalling."

Meanwhile, take the heat off of yourself by leaking "fat finger" rumors to CNBC, since they can be relied up on to repeat as gospel any self-serving news you throw at them. Did someone type billions? It should have been millions. If we want to rescue the market from the Jaws of future disasters, we have to recognize that "this was no boating (or typing) accident." The system itself is flawed.

(See also: "How to Corner the Gold Market," TSF, March 30, 2010)

The NYSE was supposed to provide market liquidity. Trading safeguards are no good unless they are system-wide. The current and former heads of the NYSE, billed as the "best and the brightest," i.e., the most connected, should be asked a few questions about High Frequency Trading and "liquidity" providers. Our mega-bank trading desks that control most of the volume on the exchanges should be called in for an accounting and justification of their trading activities. Trading patterns during last week's debacle and over the last year should be examined.

Unfortunately, as others have observed before, the SEC is both largely incompetent and captured. They are learning to crawl in the space age. Moreover, the next stop for SEC officials seems to always be a highly paid influential job at a law firm, fund, or other entity that heavily relies on Wall Street for revenues. Financial reform requires radical overhaul of our "regulators."

As for Wall Street mega-bank reform, Congress seems disinclined to break up our Too-Big-To-Fail banks, define proprietary trading, or sever Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and proprietary trading at large banks from the Federal Reserve's, i.e., taxpayers' heavy subsidies. (See also: "Goldman Sachs: Spinning Gold," Huffington Post, April 7, 2010.)

If everyone wants to stick to the story of "woe is us, we had no idea things could go this wrong," then fine. No one is in control; no one is in charge; and no one can competently regulate our current system. This is a compelling argument for immediate radical financial reform.

Murdoch is an endangered species - and he knows it

Image via CrunchBase

Make no mistake -- The Associated Press and the Rubert Murdochs of the world know the current news system is doomed. That's why they want to charge for their content -- their role is to protect power and the interests of the financial elite. The AP and Murdochs of the world want to maintain their superior priest-like positions as Godly news oligarchs. They want to stifle the new paradigm of citizen journalism that's gaining critical mass -- a paradigm where news is distributed horizontally.

Murdoch and his ilk are in imminent danger of extinction and they know it. They aren't simply going to lay down and die. They'll use every last dollar from their millions to destroy bloggers and the growing monumental shift in information gathering bloggers represent. Media moguls are aware that to some extent they have bloggers over a barrel. It costs money to finance news gathering teams across the globe. And there's only a handful of wire services that dominate the entire news landscape, a landscape all of us are imprisoned and beholden to for what the media monopoly decides is news.



Murdoch losses of $136 million this year and $57 million a year earlier, have nothing to do with free content. "Quality journalism is not cheap," said Murdoch, "and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalizing its ability to produce good reporting."

The only quality journalism and good reporting Murdoch has achieved is how well he's managed to cannibalize the truth. Murdoch's media group spews out a shameless stream of lies, deception, and propaganda. Murdoch's only interest is in preserving his media mogul status and proto-fascist, top-down structure of information distribution; the same can be said for rags like the Huffington Post that serve as a mouth piece for Obama.

Murdoch's pathetic pledge to charge for content will fail, pure and simple. He will not create a mass parade of would-be content followers. On the contrary, his pay-for-content scheme will only hasten the destruction of his entire media mega-structure. Murdoch may generate revenue from those of like minds willing to pay for his hysterical evangelistic version of news, but it will all backfire.

His greedlust will foster the healthy media competition he clearly opposes. Murdoch may succeed in attracting a small, loyal band of paying Jim Jones-like followers who will worship him as a journalistic hero, but the real heroes are bloggers forced to wade through the manure he and others call news. As it stands now, bloggers must arduously sift through information from wire agencies -- and the subsequent spin by retail outlets -- for little nuggets of truth: it's like panning for a few small specks of gold in a murky river of lies.