Month: May 2009

“The Worst Is Yet to Come”: “If the consumer isn’t petrified, he or she is a damn fool.”

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“We’re now in Barack Obama’s world where money goes into the most inefficient parts of the economy and we’re bailing everyone out,” says Daviowitz, who opposes bailouts for financials and automakers alike. “The bailout money is in the sewer and gone.”

The green shoots story took a bit of hit this week between data on April retail sales, weekly jobless claims and foreclosures. But the whole concept of the economy finding its footing was “preposterous” to begin with, says Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates.

“We’re in a complete mess and the consumer is smart enough to know it,” says Davidowitz, whose firm does consulting for the retail industry. “If the consumer isn’t petrified, he or she is a damn fool.”

Davidowitz, who is nothing if not opinionated (and colorful), paints a very grim picture: “The worst is yet to come with consumers and banks,” he says. “This country is going into a 10-year decline. Living standards will never be the same.”

This outlook is based on the following main points:

  • With the unemployment rate rising into double digits – and that’s not counting the millions of “underemployed” Americans – consumers are hitting the breaks, which is having a huge impact, given consumer spending accounts for about 70% of economic activity.
  • Rising unemployment and the $8 trillion negative wealth effect of housing mean more Americans will default on not just mortgages but student loans and auto loans and credit card debt.
  • More consumer loan defaults will hit banks, which are also threatened by what Davidowitz calls a “depression” in commercial real estate, noting the recent bankruptcy of General Growth Properties and distressed sales by Developers Diversified and other REITs.

Read more“The Worst Is Yet to Come”: “If the consumer isn’t petrified, he or she is a damn fool.”

Obama orders tribunals restarted for some Guantanamo detainees

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President Barack Obama will restart Bush-era military tribunals for a small number of Guantanamo detainees, reviving a fiercely disputed trial system he once denounced but with new legal protections for terror suspects, U.S. officials said Thursday.

Obama suspended the tribunals within hours of taking office in January, ordering a review but stopping short of abandoning President George W. Bush’s strategy of prosecuting suspected terrorists.

Obama’s decision to resume the tribunals is certain to face criticism from liberal groups, already stung by his decision Wednesday to block the court-ordered release of photos showing U.S. troops abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan – a reversal of his earlier stand on making the photos public.

Related articles:
– Obama Breaks Major Campaign Promise as Military Commissions Resume, Says Amnesty International
– Obama administration seeks indefinite detention for terror suspects

Officials spoke about the military commission decision only on condition of anonymity, saying some of the details were not final. An announcement was expected Friday.

Read moreObama orders tribunals restarted for some Guantanamo detainees

Roubini: China’s yuan set to usurp US dollar as world’s reserve currency

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The Chinese yuan is preparing to overtake the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency, economist Nouriel Roubini has warned.

Professor Roubini, of New York University’s Stern business school, believes that while such a major change is some way off, the Chinese government is laying the ground for the yuan’s ascendance.

Known as “Dr Doom” for his negative stance, Prof Roubini argues that China is better placed than the US to provide a reserve currency for the 21st century because it has a large current account surplus, focused government and few of the economic worries the US faces.

In a column in the New York Times, Prof Roubini warns that with the proposal for a new international reserve currency via the International Monetary Fund, Beijing has already begun to take steps to usurp the greenback.

Read moreRoubini: China’s yuan set to usurp US dollar as world’s reserve currency

Montana bill considers return to gold, silver dollars

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Proposed bill slams Fed, allows payments in precious metals

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Montana State Rep. Bob Wagner

A bill being considered in the Montana Legislature blasts the Federal Reserve’s role in America’s money policy and permits the state to conduct business in gold and silver instead of the Fed’s legal tender notes.

Montana H.B. 639, sponsored by State Rep. Bob Wagner, R-Harrison, doesn’t require the state or citizens to conduct business in gold or silver, but it does require the state to calculate certain transactions in both the current legal tender system and in an electronic gold currency. It further mandates that the state must accept payments in gold or silver for various fees and purchases.

While Wagner was unavailable for comment, the bill’s language clearly alleges the nation’s current financial system, with its reliance on the private Federal Reserve system for money supply, is a danger to American freedom.

“The absence of gold and silver coin, whether in that form or in the form of an electronic gold currency, as media of exchange,” the bill states, “abridges, infringes on and interferes with the sovereignty and independence of this state … and exposes this state and Montana citizens, inhabitants and businesses to chronic problems and potentially serious crises that may arise from the economic and political instability of the present domestic and international systems of coinage, currency, banking and credit.”

Read moreMontana bill considers return to gold, silver dollars

GM plans to export cars from China to the US

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General Motors is planning to build cars in China and import them into the United States, a strategy that could trigger further job losses and union anger in the US.

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Reports in China claim GM will start shipping cars from Shanghai in 2011. Photo: AFP/Getty

A plan to shift a greater proportion of the struggling car-maker’s production overseas is still being negotiated with US politicians, who have already lent GM $15.4bn (£10.18bn) in order to keep it afloat and safeguard its 90,000 US workers.

However, a spokesman for GM in Shanghai said it was “only a matter of time” before vehicles made in China are imported into the company’s home market, in another blow to the US car industry.

Related article: GM Starts Notifying 1100 US Dealers to Be Closed (Bloomberg)

After losing $6bn in the first quarter, GM has slashed its global production by 40pc, or 900,000 vehicles. Around 13 assembly plants will be affected by shutdowns in the US. The company has a June 1 deadline to complete a restructuring or follow Chrysler into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Read moreGM plans to export cars from China to the US

Paul Craig Roberts: Who Runs America? The Impotent President

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Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.


Paul Craig Roberts

What do you suppose it is like to be elected president of the United States only to find that your power is restricted to the service of powerful interest groups?

A president who does a good job for the ruling interest groups is paid off with remunerative corporate directorships, outrageous speaking fees, and a lucrative book contract. If he is young when he assumes office, like Bill Clinton and Obama, it means a long life of luxurious leisure.

Fighting the special interests doesn’t pay and doesn’t succeed. On April 30 the primacy of special over public interests was demonstrated yet again. The Democrats’ bill to prevent 1.7 million mortgage foreclosures and, thus, preserve $300 billion in home equity by permitting homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages, was defeated in the Senate, despite the 60-vote majority of the Democrats. The banksters were able to defeat the bill 51 to 45.

These are the same financial gangsters whose unbridled greed and utter irresponsibility have wiped out half of Americans’ retirement savings, sent the economy into a deep hole, and threatened the US dollar’s reserve currency role. It is difficult to imagine an interest group with a more damaged reputation. Yet, a majority of “the people’s representatives” voted as the discredited banksters instructed.

Hundreds of billions of public dollars have gone to bail out the banksters, but when some Democrats tried to get the Senate to do a mite for homeowners, the US Senate stuck with the banks. The Senate’s motto is: “Hundreds of billions for the banksters, not a dime for homeowners.”

If Obama was naive about well-intentioned change before the vote, he no longer has this political handicap.

Democratic Majority Whip Dick Durbin acknowledged the voters’ defeat by the discredited banksters. The banks, Durbin said, “frankly own the place.”

Read morePaul Craig Roberts: Who Runs America? The Impotent President

Hundreds of Cargo Ships Treading Water Off Singapore, Waiting for Work

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Sunrise in the Strait between Indonesia and Singapore, where 735 cargo ships were gathered Tuesday because of a sharp decline in global exports.

SINGAPORE – To go out in a small boat along Singapore’s coast now is to feel like a mouse tiptoeing through an endless herd of slumbering elephants.

One of the largest fleets of ships ever gathered idles here just outside one of the world’s busiest ports, marooned by the receding tide of global trade. There may be tentative signs of economic recovery in spots around the globe, but few here.

Hundreds of cargo ships – some up to 300,000 tons, with many weighing more than the entire 130-ship Spanish Armada – seem to perch on top of the water rather than in it, their red rudders and bulbous noses, submerged when the vessels are loaded, sticking a dozen feet out of the water.

So many ships have congregated here – 735, according to AIS Live ship tracking service of Lloyd’s Register-Fairplay in Redhill, Britain – that shipping lines are becoming concerned about near misses and collisions in one of the world’s most congested waterways, the straits that separate Malaysia and Singapore from Indonesia.

The root of the problem lies in an unusually steep slump in global trade, confirmed by trade statistics announced on Tuesday.

China said that its exports nose-dived 22.6 percent in April from a year earlier, while the Philippines said that its exports in March were down 30.9 percent from a year earlier. The United States announced on Tuesday that its exports had declined 2.4 percent in March.

Read moreHundreds of Cargo Ships Treading Water Off Singapore, Waiting for Work

Obama administration seeks indefinite detention for terror suspects

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guantanamo

WASHINGTON (AFP) – As part of its plans to close Guantanamo Bay, the Obama administration is considering holding some of the detainees indefinitely and without trial on US soil, US media reported Thursday.

President Barack Obama’s “administration is weighing plans to detain some terror suspects on US soil — indefinitely and without trial — as part of a plan to retool military commission trials that were conducted for prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay,” The Wall Street Journal said.

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– Buying Brand Obama
– The AIPAC Spy Case
– Lawyers credit Obama team for dismissing AIPAC case
– Obama and habeas corpus — then and now

The proposal, which is part of the administration’s internal deliberations on how to deal with the prisoners ahead of a planned closure of the controversial US military prison next year, is being shared with some lawmakers, it added.

White House officials contacted by AFP had no immediate comment on the detainee deliberations.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who met with White House Counsel Greg Craig this week about the Guantanamo plans, told the Journal that the administration was namely seeking authority for indefinite detentions granted by a national security court.

“This is a difficult question. How do you hold someone in prison without a trial indefinitely?” asked Graham, who, along with former Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain, has pressed for reinstating the military commissions to try Guantanamo detainees.

Read moreObama administration seeks indefinite detention for terror suspects

Winnipeg researcher charged with smuggling Ebola material into U.S.

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A former researcher at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg is facing charges in the United States after allegedly trying to smuggle genetic material from the Ebola virus across the Manitoba-North Dakota border.

U.S. authorities allege Konan Michel Yao had 22 vials of the substance in the trunk of his car when he tried to cross the border on May 5. He is charged with smuggling merchandise, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 US.

Related video: Scientist attempts to smuggle 22 vials of Ebola into US

U.S. customs officers allegedly found the vials wrapped in aluminum foil inside a glove and packaged in a plastic bag, along with electrical wires.

In his affidavit, the 42-year-old researcher said he was hired by the Public Health Agency of Canada to work as a PhD fellow at the Winnipeg facility. Yao told officers he was working on a vaccine for the Ebola virus and HIV.

On Jan. 21, his last day at the lab, he said he stole 22 vials, which he described as research vectors, according to the affidavit.

Yao told officers he was taking the vials to his new job with the National Institutes of Health at the Biodefense Research Laboratory in Bethesda, Md., because he didn’t want to start from scratch in his research.

Read moreWinnipeg researcher charged with smuggling Ebola material into U.S.

Chrysler Seeks to Break 789 Dealership Contracts

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bankruptcy-court

May 14 (Bloomberg) — Chrysler LLC asked a bankruptcy judge to let it reject 789 automotive dealership agreements by June 9, many located in the suburbs of major U.S. cities.

The company wants to break contracts with about a quarter of its estimated 3,188 retail outlets, including seven dealers with AutoNation Inc., two with Lithia Motors Inc. and the Atlanta unit of Asbury Automotive Group Inc., according to a filing today in Manhattan with U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Arthur Gonzalez, who must approve the cuts.

Fiat SpA, not Chrysler, decided which dealers will be brought along to a new company to be formed with the company’s best assets and run by the Italian carmaker, according to people familiar with the matter. Trimming the bulk of dealers from urban areas will increase profitability at the remaining dealers, lawyers for Chrysler said.

Read moreChrysler Seeks to Break 789 Dealership Contracts

Bilderberg group meet in Greece – and here’s their address

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The elite meets to talk about their next creation: The Greatest Depression.

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Roger Boyes and John Carr in Athens

Don’t tell anyone, don’t breathe a word, but the world’s most powerful men are meeting secretly again to save the planet from economic catastrophe. Oh, and their address, should you want to send them your opinions, is: c/o Nafsika Astir Palace Hotel, Apollonos Avenue 40, 16671 Vouliagmeni, Greece.

Bed space is a bit tight there for the next two days while the Bilderberg illuminati hold their private conclave in the five-star Greek hotel. Every year since 1954 a club of about 130 senior or up-and-coming politicians gather at the fireside of a secluded hotel with top bankers and a sprinkling of royalty to discuss burning issues, to trade confidences and just stay abreast of the I-know-something-you-don’t-know circuit. No lists of participants are disclosed, no press conferences are held; spill the beans and you’re out of the magic circle.

For those of us standing outside the locked gates all that is left is to hope that they will sleep well, avoid jet ski injury and solve our problems for us. For the Bilderbergers it is a little like that recent MI5 recruitment ad: “See all your best work go unnoticed!”

Each country delegates two people to the steering committee that is the intellectual hub of Bilderberg. In the past Kenneth Clarke, the Shadow Business Secretary, and Martin Taylor, formerly head of Barclays Bank, have had their hand on the British tiller.

This year the club is going to talk about depression. “According to the pre-meeting booklet sent out to attendees, Bilderberg is looking at two options,” says the Bilderberg-watcher Daniel Estulin – “either a prolonged, agonising depression that dooms the world to decades of stagnation, decline and poverty – or an intense but shorter depression that paves the way for a new sustainable economic world order, with less sovereignty but more efficiency.”

Read moreBilderberg group meet in Greece – and here’s their address

Here Are a Few of the Torture Photos Obama Doesn’t Want You To See

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Obama has changed his mind, and is now trying to prevent the release of the torture photos.

Related article: President Obama Reverses Course on Releasing More Detainee Abuse Photographs

Here are just a few of the photos he doesn’t want you to see (leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald several years ago ):

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Read moreHere Are a Few of the Torture Photos Obama Doesn’t Want You To See

Ex-FBI agent: Waterboarding produced no actionable intel

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This video is from C-SPAN 3, broadcast May 13, 2009.
Download video via RawReplay.com

A former FBI agent who interrogated suspected terrorists told a Senate panel Wednesday that no actionable intelligence was gained from “enhanced interrogations” such as waterboarding.

“I strongly believe that it is a mistake to use what has become known as enhanced interrogation techniques,” said Ali Soufan who worked for the FBI from 1997 to 2005. “These techniques, from an operational perspective, are slow, ineffective, unreliable, and harmed our efforts to defeat al Qaeda.”

Soufan said that intelligent interrogation techniques used by the FBI were “in sharp contrast to the enhanced interrogation method that instead tries to subjugate the detainee into submission through humiliation and cruelty. The idea behind it is to force the detainee to see the interrogator as the master who controls his pain. It’s merely an exercise in trying to force compliance rather than elicit cooperation.”

“One major problem is that it is ineffective. Al Qaeda are trained to resist torture,” he said.

“In contrast, when we interrogated using intelligent interrogation methods [on Abu Zubaydah] within the first hour we gained important actionable intelligence.”

Read moreEx-FBI agent: Waterboarding produced no actionable intel

Domain Name Bidding War

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TRAFFIC West 2009 featured the hottest bidding war in the history of recent domain auctions.

Ad.com sold for a hefty price to a heavy hitter in the domain industry. Watch the auction bidding in action, and learn who won the domain of 2Q 2009 at domain industry’s regular U.S. conference show, in Silicon Valley!


Added: 1. Mai 2009
Source: YouTube

Records: Billions Withdrawn Before Madoff Arrest

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About $12 billion was pulled out of accounts at Bernard L. Madoff’s firm in 2008, according to several people briefed on an analysis of Mr. Madoff’s business records.

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cnbc.com

About $6 billion, or half, was taken out in just the three months before the financier was arrested in December and charged with operating an extensive Ponzi scheme, these people said.

Those figures offer a bit of hope for Mr. Madoff’s thousands of defrauded customers. Under federal law, the trustee overseeing the Madoff bankruptcy can sue to retrieve that money from the investors who withdrew it.

Indeed, the trustee, Irving H. Picard of Baker & Hostetler, filed two lawsuits on Tuesday seeking the return of a total of $6.1 billion, which he estimated had been withdrawn over the last decade.

Read moreRecords: Billions Withdrawn Before Madoff Arrest

President Obama Reverses Course on Releasing More Detainee Abuse Photographs

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change

More change!

President Obama defended his decision to fight the release of photos showing detainee abuse Wednesday afternoon, saying it would only put American troops in harms way and create a backlash against Americans.

“The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger,” the president said before departing on his trip to Arizona. “Moreover, I fear the publication of these photos may only have a chilling effect on future investigations of detainee abuse.”

The move is a complete 180. In a letter from the Justice Department to a federal judge on April 23, the Obama administration announced that the Pentagon would turn over 44 photographs showing detainee abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq during the Bush administration.

But in a letter sent this afternoon to the District Court Judge in the case, Alvin Hellerstein of the US District Court in the Southern District of New York, acting US Attorney Lev Dassin, writes that while his previous April 23 letter informed the court that the Obama administration had decided not to seek certiorari of the Second Circuit Court’s ruling to force the release of the photographs, his office had “been informed today that, upon further reflection at the highest levels of Government, the Government has decided to pursue further options regarding that decision, including but not limited to the option of seeking certiorari.”

The deadline for that decision is June 9.

The photographs are part of a 2003 Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU for all information relating to the treatment of detainees — the same battle that led to President Obama’s decision to release memos from the Bush Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel providing legal justifications for brutal interrogation methods, many of which the International Committee of the Red Cross calls torture.

Read morePresident Obama Reverses Course on Releasing More Detainee Abuse Photographs

Foreclosures rise 32 percent

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Foreclosures: ‘April was a shocker’

A record number of foreclosure filings took place during April, but the number of repossessions fell 11%.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Foreclosures in April exceeded even March’s blistering pace with a record 342,000 homes receiving notices of default, auction notices or undergoing bank repossessions, according to a regular industry report.

One of every 374 U.S. homes received a filing during the month, the highest monthly rate that RealtyTrac, an online marketer of foreclosed properties, has recorded in four-plus years of record keeping.

Related article: US Economy: Retail Sales Unexpectedly Fell in April (Bloomberg)

“April was a shocker,” said Rick Sharga, a spokesman for RealtyTrac. “I would have bet on a dip because March foreclosures were so high.

Instead, filings inched up 1% from March and rose 32% compared with April 2008.

Read moreForeclosures rise 32 percent

The Federal Reserve Can Not Account For $9 Trillion

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This video is a must watch for anyone who wants to understand just how “effective” the Fed is at safeguarding taxpayer money. Apparently nobody at the Federal Reserve has any clue where the trillions of dollars that have come from the Fed’s expanded balance sheet have gone. Additionally, nobody there seems to have any idea what the losses on the Fed’s $2 trillion portfolio really are.

As for the pittance of $9 trillion in Fed off-balance sheet transactions over the past 8 months, well, yeah, that’s also somewhere out there… Just don’t ask the Federal Reserve where.

Rep. Alan Grayson summarizes it best “I am shocked to find out that nobody at the Federal Reserve is keeping track of anything.”

(P.S. The term “anyone” is used generically, with the presumption that the Fed’s Inspector General should traditionally receive most memos on memorandum items that deal with a dollar sign and +/- 12 zeros after it).

Monday, May 11, 2009
Posted by Tyler Durden

Source: ZeroHedge

Aspartame kills fire ants … and it also kills you

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From the article:

“Fire Ant Remedy – sprinkle a packet of aspartame (Equal or NutraSweet) on the mound. Ants will be gone the next day. Anyone eating or drinking anything containing this stuff is nuts!”

Organic Fire Ant Control

fire-ants

Common Name – Fire Ant, Imported Fire Ant, Red Imported Fire Ant

Scientific Name – Order – Hymenoptera, Family – Formicidae, Solenopsis invicta

Body Length – Adults are about 1/12″ to 1/3″

Identification – Four fire ant species are found in Texas. Three are native. The imported fire ant has just about wiped out the natives. The imported fire ant builds its mounds out in the open. Mounds have no visible openings. Stings are painful and sometimes produce a unique white pustule.

Read moreAspartame kills fire ants … and it also kills you

US red ink rising even higher, to $1.8 trillion

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US red ink to top $1.8 trillion, 4 times record; gov’t borrows 46 cents for every dollar spent

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government will have to borrow nearly 50 cents for every dollar it spends this year, exploding the record federal deficit past $1.8 trillion under new White House estimates.

Budget office figures released Monday would add $89 billion to the 2009 red ink — increasing it to more than four times last year’s all-time high as the government hands out billions more than expected for people who have lost jobs and takes in less tax revenue from people and companies making less money.

The unprecedented deficit figures flow from the deep recession, the Wall Street bailout and the cost of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus bill — as well as a seemingly embedded structural imbalance between what the government spends and what it takes in.

As the economy performs worse than expected, the deficit for the 2010 budget year beginning in October will worsen by $87 billion to $1.3 trillion, the White House says. The deterioration reflects lower tax revenues and higher costs for bank failures, unemployment benefits and food stamps.

Read moreUS red ink rising even higher, to $1.8 trillion