YouTube Added: 12.12.2012
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Russia Raps US Decision To Recognize Syria Opposition
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
– Russia raps US decision to recognize Syria opposition (PressTv, Dec 12, 2012):
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says he is “surprised” that the US will recognize the so-called National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
“I was somewhat surprised to find out” about the recognition announcement, Lavrov was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying on Wednesday.
Read moreRussia Raps US Decision To Recognize Syria Opposition
Sweden: Mystery Orb Crash: ‘It Was Like Armageddon’
– Mystery orb crash: ‘It was like Armageddon’ (The Local, Dec 12, 2012):
“It lit up the sky and flew over us, then we heard an explosion,” witness Jessica Berg told the Aftonbladet newspaper.
“It was very weird. Uncomfortably weird.”
Another witness, 24-year-old Sandra, thought the light may have been due to fireworks, but began to wonder when she never heard an accompanying pop.
“Then I thought it was a comet because it looked a little like an orb. It was red with a yellow sheen that surrounded and followed it,” she told the paper.
“It looked like something was falling from the sky like in a film, like Armageddon or something.
Read moreSweden: Mystery Orb Crash: ‘It Was Like Armageddon’
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: Obdurate Washington – ‘The Evil In Washington Is Driving Us Into Nuclear War And Into The Destruction Of Life On Earth’
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.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
– Obdurate Washington (Paul Craig Roberts, Dec 11, 2012):
With its power declining, Washington was not able any longer to keep Russia out of the World Trade Organization. Congress showed its spite over its impotence by hooking the normalizing of trade with Russia to what is called the “Magnitsky rule.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20634768
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: More Phony Employment Numbers – Actual Unemployment Rate Is 22,9%
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.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
– More Phony Employment Numbers (Paul Craig Roberts, Dec 8, 2012):
Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) calls the government’s latest jobs and unemployment reports “nonsense numbers.”
Read moreDr. Paul Craig Roberts: More Phony Employment Numbers – Actual Unemployment Rate Is 22,9%
New DARPA Technology: Magic Foam Injected Into The Body To Stop Major Bleeding (Video)
– Magic Foam Can Be Shot Into The Body To Stop Major Bleeding (POPSCI, Dec 11, 2012):
The new DARPA-developed technology is aimed at buying soldiers enough time to get medical care.
Following the debut of an amazing new shapeshifting material that could improve drug delivery, military-tech wing DARPA has unveiled this equally impressive polymer foam. Just inject two liquids where a soldier is bleeding, and the chemicals react, creating a foam that presses against an internal wound and stanches the flow of blood. That buys at least a precious hour to find medical care.
About 85 percent of preventable battlefield deaths are from internal wounds that need surgery or other in-hospital treatment. There’s often just not enough time to transport a soldier from a firefight to a place where they can get the right medical attention. But during testing on pigs, DARPA says the foam increased the chances of survival after three hours from 8 percent to 72 percent, and surgeons removing the foam could do it in less than one minute.
Arsenal Medical, the company that received funding from DARPA to research the foam, says it’s working on a version for civilian use while DARPA is looking for FDA approval. Hopefully we’ll see it soon–and not need it.
[Arsenal Medical via CNET]
There’s a Problem With Kicking the Can Down the Road
– There’s a Problem With Kicking the Can Down the Road (azizonomics, Dec 12, 2012):
“There is a problem with kicking the can down the road.”
– Ben Bernanke, December 12, 2012I’ve taken this quote out of context — Bernanke was actually talking about the fiscal cliff, and not monetary policy. But kicking the can down the road is exactly what Bernanke is doing in his domain.
Instead of letting the shadow banking bubble burst and liquidate in 2008, Bernanke has allowed it to slowly deflate, all the while pumping up the traditional banking sector with heavy, heavy liquidity:
It’s been one long, slow brutal grind:
The Fed continues to fight a losing battle, in which it has no choice but to offset any ongoing deleveraging – be it through maturities, prepays, or counterparty failure, or just simple lack of demand for shadow funding conduits – in the shadow banking system.
Trillions and trillions of liquidity later, Bernanke is barely keeping the system afloat:
Read moreThere’s a Problem With Kicking the Can Down the Road
First Hong Kong, Now Aussie Central Bank Gets Ugly Case Of Truthiness
“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. … This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”
– Alan Greenspan“By a continuing process of inflation , governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
– John Maynard Keynes
Quantitative easing = printing money = creating money out of thin air = increasing the money supply = inflation = hidden tax on monetary assets = theft!
– First Hong Kong, Now Aussie Central Bank Gets Ugly Case Of Truthiness (ZeroHedge, Dec 12, 2012):
It seems the AsiaPac central bankers did not get the ‘shut up and print’ memo as today during another speech, an Australian central banker followed Hong Kong’s lead and pronounced quantitative easing as potentially harmful and the volatility-dampening effects of excess monetary policy as “ultimately inimical to financial stability and hence macroeconomic stability.” In the speech below Glenn Stevens (RBA Governor) provides some much-needed doses of sanity to the grossly addicted world desirous of moar money printing.
“Central banks can provide liquidity to shore up financial stability and they can buy time for borrowers to adjust, but they cannot, in the end, put government finances on a sustainable course… They can’t shield people from the implications of having mis-assessed their own lifetime budget constraints and therefore having consumed too much.“
Why are these AsiaPac bankers breaking ranks with the status quo? Perhaps they see a looming threat and prefer to front-run their governments’ demands to “get to work”.
Must Read:
Challenges Of Central Banking – Glenn Stevens (RBA Governor)
Monday marked the 70th anniversary of the commencement of operations of the Bank of Thailand, on 10 December 1942. Conceived under war-time occupation, the Bank has grown to be a key institution in Thailand. It is a pleasure and an honour to come to Bangkok to take part in one of a series of events to mark the anniversary, and I want to thank Governor Prasarn for the invitation.
Read moreFirst Hong Kong, Now Aussie Central Bank Gets Ugly Case Of Truthiness
Gold – It’s Time
In the last few years gold and silver bottomed out around Christmas.
– Gold – It’s Time (ZeroHedge, Dec 12, 2012):
Authored by Lee Quaintance and Paul Brodsky of QBAMCO,
Gold bugs can’t understand how the public can be so unaware, how highly intelligent policy makers can be so immoral, and how the mainstream media can be so incurious. We can’t understand why more men and women in the investment business haven’t joined some of the more successful ones that have come around to precious metals and have taken substantial positions in them for their funds and personal accounts. The list of high profile independent-minded investors that have come out of the proverbial closet is impressive and growing: Kyle Bass, John Paulson, David Einhorn, George Soros, Bill Gross and Paul Singer, to name only a few.
55 Reasons Why California Is The Worst State In America
– 55 Reasons Why California Is The Worst State In America (Economic, Collapse, Dec 12, 2012):
Why in the world would anyone want to live in the state of California at this point? The entire state is rapidly becoming a bright, shining example of everything that is wrong with America. It is so sad to watch our most populated state implode right in front of our eyes. Like millions of Americans, I was quite enamored with the state of California when I was younger. The warm weather, the beaches, the great natural beauty of the state and the mystique of Hollywood all really appealed to me. At one point I even thought that I wanted to move there. But today, hordes of Californians are racing to get out of the state because it has become a total nightmare. It is the worst state in the country in which to do business, taxes were just raised even higher, unemployment is more than 20 percent higher than the national average and the state government is drowning in debt. Meanwhile, poverty, gang activity and crime just seem to get worse with each passing year. On top of everything else, the insane politicians in Sacramento just keep on passing more laws that make the problems that the state is facing even worse. Unfortunately, what is happening in California may be a preview of what is coming to the entire nation. The old adage, “as California goes, so goes the nation”, has been proven to be true way too many times.
In dozens of different ways, the state of California is showing the rest of us what not to do. Will we learn from their mistakes, or will we follow them into oblivion? Please share the list below with as many people as you can. In addition to a large amount of new research, this list also pulled heavily from one of my previous articles and from outstanding research done by Richard Rider.
The following are 55 reasons why California is the worst state in America…
Read more55 Reasons Why California Is The Worst State In America
Fukushima Worker: Radioactive Water Might Overflow … Due To Lack Of Tanks
– Fukushima worker “Contaminated water might overflow due to the lack of tanks” (Fukushima Diary, Dec 12, 2012):
On 11/27/2012, Fukushima diary warned about the serious shortage of contaminated water storage on the column.
(cf. [Column] X-day – when Fukushima plant discharges millions of tones of the contaminated water to Pacific ocean [Link])
According to the tweets of actual Fukushima worker Happy11311, the contaminated water storage is being the urgent problem in Fukushima plant.
Contaminated water might overflow due to the lack of the tanks.
Read moreFukushima Worker: Radioactive Water Might Overflow … Due To Lack Of Tanks
HSBC: The Drug World’s Local Bank
– HSBC: The drug world’s local bank (Independent, Dec 11, 2012):
HSBC prides itself on being the “world’s local bank”. Yet it could have done without the kind of international exposure that upset United States senators this summer and the one that today resulted in it paying $1.9bn (£1.2bn) to settle a money-laundering probe.
As the senators tell it, and as the prosecutors allege, HSBC was used by a diverse customer base including Mexican drug gangs looking to funnel cash into the US and Iranians seeking to skirt US sanctions.
Yesterday, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said that, starting in the early 1990s, the bank had “moved hundreds of millions of dollars through the US financial system on behalf of Iranian, Burmese, Sudanese, Libyan and other clients”. In the process, it had flouted US sanctions by “concealing the illegal nature of these transactions and deceiving US banks into processing illegal wire payments”.
Inside China’s Grueling Toy Factories: ‘The Real Toy Story’ (Photos)
– Inside China’s Grueling Toy Factories (Business Insider, Dec 12, 2012):
China makes more toys than any other country in the world. In fact, a whopping 75 percent of toys come from the nation of nearly 1.4 billion people.But China’s rise in the world of manufacturing comes at a price.
Click here to go inside the factories >
Even though China has had rapid economic growth in the past decade, more than 482 million Chinese — that’s 36 percent of the population — live on less than $2 per day, according to global anti-poverty nonprofit War On Want.
Plus, 85 percent of China’s poor live in rural areas. Extreme poverty forces many of them to leave the countryside in search of employment in urban areas.
German photographer Michael Wolf has taken a phenomenal series of photos he calls “The Real Toy Story” that shows what workers’ lives are like as they make all those toys.
Wolf’s photographs come from visits to five toy factories around mainland China. He has given us permission to share them with you here.
Sorry Protesters: Your Jobs Are Being Sent To China And They Aren’t Coming Back
And elite puppet Romney would have made no difference compared to elite puppet Obama.
– Sorry Protesters: Your Jobs Are Being Sent To China And They Aren’t Coming Back (Economic Collapse, Dec 11, 2012):
Did you see the huge crowds of protesters that flooded the Michigan Capitol on Tuesday? They were there to protest two bills there were being considered by the state legislature that would limit the power of unions in the state. Michigan lawmakers approved the bills and this absolutely infuriated the protesters. There is a lot of passion on both sides of this debate, but I am afraid that both sides in this debate are missing the bigger picture. If we keep shipping millions of our jobs to China, there isn’t going to be work for anyone no matter how much power unions have or don’t have. During the month of October, the U.S. trade deficit increased to 42.2 billion dollars. Our trade with China accounted for most of that deficit. Our trade deficit with China in October increased to a new all-time one month record of 29.5 billion dollars. Nearly 30 billion dollars that could have gone to U.S. businesses and U.S. workers went to China instead. Since 1975, a total of about 8 trillion dollars that could have gone to U.S. businesses and U.S. workers went to the rest of the world instead. Shiny new factories are going up all over China, and meanwhile our once great manufacturing cities are degenerating into desolate wastelands. So what is going to happen when all of the good paying manufacturing jobs are gone? Are we all going to fight bitterly over whether we should unionize the low paying jobs that remain at places such as Wal-Mart and McDonalds? Such an approach is not going to bring back prosperity to America. We desperately need to start building things and start creating real wealth inside this country once again. We desperately need to stop sending tens of thousands of businesses, millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of our national wealth out of the country. Unfortunately, I don’t see anyone out there holding protests about our trade deficit. Nobody really seems to care, so our economy will continue to bleed good jobs and the middle class will continue to be destroyed.
Read moreSorry Protesters: Your Jobs Are Being Sent To China And They Aren’t Coming Back
US Rakes Up Nearly $300 Billion Deficit In First Two Months Of Fiscal 2013
– U.S. Rakes Up Nearly $300 Billion Deficit In First Two Months Of Fiscal 2013 (ZeroHedge, Dec 12, 2012):
To paraphrase Tim Geinter: “Risk of the Fed ever ending its monetization? No risk of that.” Why? Because as the FMS just reported, the February budget deficit was $172 billion, up $52 billion from a month ago, and $35 billion from a year ago. In brief: in the first two months of Fiscal 2013, the US accumulated a $292 billion budget deficit (compared to $236 billion a year ago), a number which is simply scary when annualized. What does this mean? That as long as the Treasury runs $1+ trillion budget deficit, the Fed will never, ever be allowed to stop monetizing, especially with China and the other legacy foreign borrowers just saying nein. Which in turn means that it will now be in the Fed’s favor to paint the economy with uglier colors (recall that the Fed now needs unemployment deterioration to have infinite free monetization reign). Does this mean that going over the Cliff is now an absolute certainty.
How A Handful Of Unsupervised MIT Economists Run The World
– How A Handful Of Unsupervised MIT Economists Run The World (ZeroHedge, Dec 12, 2012)
Berkshire Seeks To Avoid 2013 Tax Hike, Buys Back BRK Shares
– Berkshire Seeks To Avoid 2013 Tax Hike, Buys Back BRK Shares (ZeroHedge, Dec 12, 2012):
Define irony: when the most vocal supporter of a dramatic change to the existing tax policy takes advantage of the last few days of the old one…
- BERKSHIRE HAS PURCHASED 9,200 OF CLASS A SHRS AT $131,000-SHR
- BERKSHIRE RAISED PRICE LIMIT FOR BUYBACKS TO 120% BOOK VALUE
- BERKSHIRE MAY BUY ADDED SHRS AT NO MORE THAN 120% BOOK VALUE
- BERKSHIRE BOOSTS BUYBACK PRICE LIMIT TO 120% BOOK VALUE VS 110%
A total $1.2 billion spent to avoid a few hundred million in new taxes. And now back to the hypocrticy of the “Buffett tax”, and “Patriotic Millionaires for America.” In other news, total donations to pay down the debt in Fiscal 2013 (starting October 1): $290,195.03.
Full release:
Read moreBerkshire Seeks To Avoid 2013 Tax Hike, Buys Back BRK Shares
Mother Who Is ‘Better Off On Benefits’ Spends £2,000 On Christmas With 20 Presents For Each Of Her Children
Expensive: Miss Broderick is planning on buying iPads and gold earrings among other gifts for her daughters
– Unemployed single mother on benefits who spends £2,000 on Christmas with 20 presents for each of her children (Daily Mail, Dec 11, 2012):
While many families are worrying about how to afford Christmas this year, one jobless single mother has revealed she receives so much in benefits she has £2,000 to spend on designer gifts, clothes and partying.
Mother-of-two Leanna Broderick plans to buy 20 presents for each of her children, including Burberry and Ralph Lauren outfits, iPads and gold jewellery.
The 20-year-old, who has never worked, claims nearly £15,500 a year in state handouts.
She claims she is better off on benefits and would not get a job unless she could continue her luxury lifestyle, which includes designer outfits, holidays abroad, clubbing, lunches out and expensive gifts for her daughters Zelekah, two, and Zakirah, one.
‘Last year, I saved £2,500 and my kids had 50 presents each, including Burberry and Ralph Lauren clothes and dolls, DVDs and CDs.
‘This year, I’ve saved £2,000 and they’ll get 20 presents each, including iPads and a new Disney-themed bedroom to share, with designer wall art and bed linen,’ she said.
She is also buying gold earrings for Zelekah, who has pierced ears, and keeping £300 for the sales and £150 for a New Year’s Eve outing.
Miss Broderick, who left school at 16 with no GCSEs, said: ‘I don’t care if people get annoyed. I don’t take advantage, I just choose to save – it’s smart.’
She said there was ‘no point’ earning less in a minimum wage job and having to pay for childcare on top.
Obama Nazi Youth Brigade In Effect In America (Video)
YouTube Added: 08.12.2012
Commentary at YouTube by ‘MrAnomilus’:
Hitler did it.
Stalin? did it.
Mao did it.
Now Obama is doing it.
Flashback:
– Boy Scouts Train to Become Homeland Gestapo (Infowars)
– US wants to enlist Girl Scouts to combat pandemics, terror attacks and other disasters (AP)
– Obama calls for Civilian National Security Force (Chicago Tribune, July 3, 2008)
“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set,” he said Wednesday. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”
“We will ask Americans to serve,” the Illinois Democrat said. “We will create new opportunities for Americans to serve.” (…as slaves!)
Austrian Civil Servant Blows $440 Million In Taxpayer Funds On Risky Derivatives
– Austrian Civil Servant Blows $440 Million In Taxpayer Funds On Risky Derivatives (ZeroHedge, Dec 11, 2012):
It is oddly ironic that on the day the US bailout of AIG is complete, and with a “profit” at that, the spin goes, even if the spin ignores that the “profit” was only purchased at the expense of trillions in sovereign debt issuance and near immediate monetization by the Fed, which has onboarded a mindbogling amount of duration risk (from under $500MM in DV01 in 2008 to over $2.5 billion currently, but nobody will discuss this issue as few if any grasp just how much risk exposure the Fed has shifted away from entities such as AIG), that we learn just how far the abuse of virtually free taxpayer funds goes. Only instead of some US government apparatchiks blowing through billions in some concrete government building in downtown D.C., we go to the birthplace of Mozart, in Salzburg, Austria to learn that a “civil servant gambled hundreds of millions of euros of taxpayers’ money on high-risk derivatives.”
While this is merely one incident in a faraway land, what it does show is that in an environment in which cheap money is handed out loosely by the government (of which the US government is most guilty) the opportunity cost for prudent, fiducariy responsibility is very low, and it is only a matter of time before the new normal moral hazard rears its ugly head, as one after another more such incidents will come to light. And just like housing could never go down in the credit bubble years, so the Fed is perceived as infallible in the current latest, greatest and luckily final, peak bubble. Just like housing, the Fed is infallible until it fails.
Read moreAustrian Civil Servant Blows $440 Million In Taxpayer Funds On Risky Derivatives
Obama Now Formally Recognizes Syrian ‘Opposition’ Group
(Commentary and links down below.)
President Barack Obama participates in an interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House, Dec. 11, 2012.
– Obama Recognizes Syrian Opposition Group (ABC News, Dec 11, 2012):
In a diplomatic shift, President Obama said today his administration now formally recognizes the newly-formed, leading coalition of Syrian rebels who are fighting to topple Syria’s embattled President Bashar Assad.
“We’ve made a decision that the Syrian Opposition Coalition is now inclusive enough, is reflective and representative enough of the Syrian population that we consider them the legitimate representative of the Syrian people in opposition to the Assad regime,” Obama said.
The announcement, made during an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Barbara Walters, grants new legitimacy to the rebel group and marks a new phase in U.S. efforts to isolate the Assad regime.
“It’s a big step,” Obama said of the decision. The United States follows Britain and the European Union, both of which last month recognized the Syrian opposition group.
Read moreObama Now Formally Recognizes Syrian ‘Opposition’ Group
U.S. Army Starts Targeting Children
– U.S. Army Starts Targeting Children (ZeroHedge, Dec 11, 2012):
Obama and the American military label all young men – between the ages of say 15 and 35 – who happen to be in battle zones as suspected insurgents who they can target and kill.
Under the Bush administration, children were tortured.
Now, the U.S. military is starting to target children for assassination in battle zones. As the Nation reports:
In a despicable article in Military Times, the US military says that children are legitimate targets in the war in Afghanistan because sometimes the Taliban and other insurgents use kids.
In the original incident, which I cited in October, The New York Times reported it this way:
The X-47B Unmanned Combat Air Systems (UCAS) Demonstrator Taxies On The Flight Deck Of The USS Harry S. Truman (Video)
YouTube Added: 10.12.2012
Description:
ATLANTIC OCEAN (Dec. 9, 2012) – The X-47B Unmanned Combat Air Systems (UCAS) demonstrator taxies on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75). Harry S. Truman is the first aircraft carrier to host test operations for an unmanned aircraft. Harry S. Truman is underway supporting carrier qualifications. (Northrop Grumman video by Dave Buchanan/ Released)