We'll see...

Last year we were supposed to hit by more hurricanes brought on by global wwarming. Here's the chart...OOPS!!!

Top US official warns of 'heavy' hurricane season

US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned Wednesday that a "heavy" US hurricane season could be in store, after briefing President Barack Obama on latest forecasts.

Obama gathered top disaster preparedness officials, state and local authorities and non-profit groups for a White House meeting on the first day of the Atlantic hurricane season to discuss this year's predictions.

The season, which runs to November 30, will feature atmospheric conditions which experts predict will lead to formation of 12 to 18 named tropical storms, of which six to 10 could become hurricanes, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

"Right now, it looks like that there could be a heavy hurricane season, but that doesn't speak to landfall," Napolitano told reporters at the White House.

"So we need to be prepared for landfall, if it happens.

"The bottom line for the president was... that this team have been planning, coordinating, organizing, recognizing each other's strengths and leveraging those strengths as we head into the hurricane season," she said.

"Our big question to the public right now: are you ready? Do you know what to do?"

Obama's briefing included Craig Fugate, administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, NOAA head Jane Lubchenco and National Hurricane Center director Bill Read.

"The president stressed the importance of this team approach and engaging the entire nation in emergency preparedness," the White House said in a statement.

Obama has made multiple trips in recent weeks to victims of killer tornadoes and floods which have ripped across the US heartland, even before hurricane season begins to threaten American shores.

The political risks of a failure to prepare or respond to natural disasters give White House aides sleepless nights.

The botched handling of Hurricane Katrina, which flooded New Orleans in 2005, was seen as a devastating political blow from which then-president George W. Bush never recovered.

NOAA forecasts reveal elevated threats this year to the United States and nations around the Caribbean and predict between three and six major hurricanes of Category 3 intensity or higher on the five-level Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale.

Skies have been generally calm across the Atlantic, and NOAA and other meteorological websites predicted no drama in the opening days of the season. The peak Atlantic storm period is August to early October.

Link:
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/06/top-us-official-warns-of-heavy.html

EU failure...

Nigel Farage: Trapped Inside an Economic Prison

I'll believe it when I see it...

TSA Caving To Pat Down Pressure?

Paul Joseph Watson

Following pressure from lawmakers that resulted in the Department of Justice resorting to threats of federal blockades last week to stymie a bill in Texas that would have made TSA groping a felony, a top Transportation Security Administration official has indicated that the agency might be about to cave on its aggressive pat down procedures.

During a roundtable session in Anchorage Alaska hosted by U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, TSA Field Operations Manager Scott Johnson said the agency was “considering changes in its screening techniques,” reports the Associated Press.

Instead of groping young children and searching babies’ diapers, the TSA is looking at treating passengers differently based on their potential risk, a policy that would “rank populations of air passengers as more or less potentially dangerous.”

“There are probably people that we have to take a closer look at than others,” said Johnson.

However, subjecting individuals deemed suitable for a “closer look” by the TSA to more aggressive screening may have little to do with stopping terrorists considering the fact that the TSA apparently judges the biggest threat to be journalists who criticized the agency and were then put on a watch list as a form of punishment.

“This whole idea of risk assessment … trying to determine what’s high risk, what’s a low risk, how they manage that, I think was a good statement and a new policy that they have,” said Senator Begich, noting that body scanners which do not show intimate details of a person’s naked body are in the pipeline. However, worries about the radiation threat posed by such devices, an even bigger concern, were not addressed.

The round table session was organized by Republican State Rep. Sharon Cissna’s United States for Travel Freedom Caucus, a group that is pushing for legislation to be enacted across the country that would ban TSA molestation.

Cissna, a 68-year-old cancer survivor who suffered molestation and abuse in her youth, made shock waves back in February when she refused to submit to a TSA grope-down and was subsequently prevented from flying from Seattle, Washington to her home in Alaska.

“It’s a paradigm shift that has gone on here, where suddenly it’s all right to teach kids that it’s all right to have strangers touching them in the most personal places,” she said.

Last week, the Department of Justice and the TSA used financial terrorism to nix HB 1937 in Texas, a bill that would have made it “A criminal act for security personnel to touch a person’s private areas without probable cause as a condition of travel or as a condition of entry into a public place,” shortly before the legislation looked to be on its way to passage in the Senate having passed the Texas House unanimously.

The DOJ and Homeland Security intimidated lawmakers into dropping the bill after they threatened to shut down all the airports in Texas and prevent any commercial flights from operating out of or entering the state.

While any change in policy by the TSA should be welcomed, let’s not forget that following the national outcry at the end of last year against intrusive airport screening that was spearheaded by the Drudge Report, John Pistole’s promise that the TSA was looking at making the process “less intrusive” was never fulfilled, and if anything the grope-downs became more aggressive, with TSA goons directly sticking their hands down people’s pants.

Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/tsa-caving-to-pat-down-pressure.html

This is good...

Fox News hacked? - RT

RT responds to criticism...

RT vs Mainstream Media

What's up with that?

78 percent of Pakistani children with polio were given polio vaccines

In the last year, as Pakistan has lost favor with the US and UNICEF, polio virus has paralyzed increasing numbers of Pakistani youth, casting doubt on the good intentions of those who fight polio. To make matters worse, most of the new cases have occurred in children already vaccinated. Is the US attempting to fight Pakistan by tainting inoculation doses?

The medical data suggests that the vaccine has changed in its efficacy against the disease. Last year, there were 136 cases of infected youth, and 107 of these had been administered multiple polio vaccinations. These figures are the largest the Polio Global Eradication Initiative has seen since 2006, despite heavy treatment in the most affected areas, South Punjab and the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA).

Even the more peaceful provinces have suffered. As reported by the Pakistan Daily times, there were 10 cases of polio in Sindh province in the first four months of the year. The article morbidly notes each of the cases, citing the children's names and the number of vaccinations they had received before the onset of polio virus: "Mohammad Asif, aged 40 months with all his limbs affected... was administered oral anti polio vaccine (OPV) four times... The three and a half years old Ameera... had one of her arms and legs paralyzed... Ameera was first of the confirmed cases of polio during the current year."

As one might imagine, Pakistani citizens are beginning to suspect foul play. Dr. Mazhar Khamisani, a manager of the health department in Sindh has noted that he has seen Pakistani parents begin to refuse treatment and do so on repeated occasions. And how could we, when confronted with the facts, ask them to do otherwise?

The type of polio vaccine administered may be a significant cause of the problem. There are two main types of polio vaccine, Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV) and Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV). The first of these uses dead cells of poliomyelitis. IPV was developed by Jonas Salk before being disseminated throughout the US in the 1950s, to quell the outbreak that was then infecting roughly 22,000 American children each year. Within 20 years, polio was all but forgotten in America.

However, The Polio Global Eradication Initiative chooses to use the second type, Oral Polio Vaccine. OPV was developed by Albert Sabin and runs the virus through a number of animals in order to weaken the strain rather than kill it. The weakened strain is then injected into children, whose immune systems are strong enough to defeat the infection. It is easy to see how treatment could backfire, in cases when the strain has not been weakened enough for human contact.

Despite the fact that it was not widely disseminated in the US, possibly because of the dangers associated with its use, OPV is the vaccine of choice in countries like Pakistan because, soon after vaccination, weakened virus can be found in children's fecal matter. Immunity can then spread to communal water sources and increase immunity for greater portions of the population. So even if parents refuse OPV treatment, their children may still receive it indirectly through the drinking water.

Historically, there have been cases of outbreak when a weakened strain becomes strong enough to infect rather than immunize. In these cases, OPV is typically replaced by IPV because it is no longer considered safe. But OPV is still the vaccine of choice in Pakistan, even as it continues to prove its potency to the Polio Global Eradication Initiative. Why?
One explanation is that researchers have not collected enough data yet to say with certainty whether the vaccine is causing the outbreak. But how much longer will this go on?

It is equally plausible that the vaccine is not being handled properly. If the requisite temperature is not maintained, the vaccine can be rendered completely ineffectual. In remote areas, where power can be disrupted for hours and even days, the OPV treatments may have exceeded their temperature requirements and consequently lost their usefulness from temperature fluctuations. But surely, medical practitioners would know if their vaccine had potentially been compromised.

Unfortunately, both of these possibilities point to some kind of negligence. Either the doctors administering treatment are aware that their vaccine may not have the capacity to immunize their patients, or the people in charge are disseminating harmful vaccinations, then playing the victim to the 'inconclusiveness of the data' when it is clear that something has gone awry.

The Polio Global Eradication Initiative receives the majority of its funding through UNICEF and the US, both of which are beginning to look at Pakistan as an enemy, rather than a friend. Are political relations trickling down to the medical practitioners who are supposedly fighting a disease, not a country?

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/032587_polio_vaccines_Pakistan.html#ixzz1O7L8D7WN

This is what climate change is really all about...

Obama's Commerce Nominee: Cap and Trade Good for ‘Hiding’ Carbon Taxes
By Matt Cover

John Bryson, President Obama’s nominee to head the Commerce Department, told a University of California Berkeley audience in 2010 that a cap and trade system was a good way to hide a carbon tax from the public.

Bryson, formerly the CEO of Edison International, said that a carbon tax was the new “third rail” of politics because politicians wouldn’t want to tax energy directly.

“I think it’s still unlikely there’ll be a carbon tax bill because I think in the end a very high percentage of the members of Congress think it’s kind of the third rail to support a tax, even if it’s a carbon tax,” Bryson said.

“Greenhouse gas legislation, either with a tax or with cap and trade – which is a more complicated way of getting at it but it has the advantage of politically sort of hiding the fact that you have a tax – but that’s what you’re trying to do,” he added.

Bryson said that carbon taxes – whether open or hidden in a cap and trade regime – were still not the best way to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gasses. The best way, he said, was a robust system of regulations that penalized energy producers for producing more energy than the government deemed necessary.

“In the great debate between economists and others about whether we ought to be proceeding primarily with market signals or regulatory steps, I believe we ought to do both,” He said. “But the regulatory steps act right now [with] immediate requirements.”

Bryson explained that setting high targets for renewable energy production was the best way to go, rather than waiting for a carbon tax to take effect in the market.

“At our company [Edison International] for example we have quite a large wind energy business across the United States – the drivers are the portfolio standards, the renewable portfolio standards, those are mandates – it’s like the investor-owned utilities in California – 33 percent [renewables] by 2020. That’s a driver. You’re not messing around with what’s the price signal going to be. If you don’t get that done, you get penalized in a big way.”

Read more:
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/commerce-nominee-bryson-cap-and-trade-go

"It’s really nothing new to this administration or the last to flush the US Constitution down the toilet."

Police State Interrogations: Obama Rolls Back Miranda Rights
by Mac Slavo

It’s really nothing new to this administration or the last to flush the US Constitution down the toilet. Terrorism, it seems, is reason enough. In the latest attack on individual freedoms and Constitutional protections we see further chipping away of the 5th amendment as the Obama administration adopts a new policy which essentially waives Miranda rights if interrogators believe the information is related to terrorism and must be acquired in a timely fashion:

A Federal Bureau of Investigation memorandum reviewed by The Wall Street Journal says the policy applies to “exceptional cases” where investigators “conclude that continued unwarned interrogation is necessary to collect valuable and timely intelligence not related to any immediate threat.” Such action would need prior approval from FBI supervisors and Justice Department lawyers, according to the memo, which was issued in December but not made public.

…

Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said the memo ensures that “law enforcement has the ability to question suspected terrorists without immediately providing Miranda warnings when the interrogation is reasonably prompted by immediate concern for the safety of the public or the agents.” He said “the threat posed by terrorist organizations and the nature of their attacks – which can include multiple accomplices and interconnected plots – creates fundamentally different public safety concerns than traditional criminal cases.”

Source: WSJ

The obvious dangers are, of course, that this new “policy” will be turned against the American people on a wholesale basis. It’s important to note, however, that this new policy is just that, a policy – it is not legislation – and the Miranda protections have not been eliminated. This new policy is to be used only in exceptional cases related to terror suspects, and information acquired in instances where the Miranda warning was not given to suspects remains inadmissible in court.

The problem is, that over the last 10 years the definition of what is or is not a terrorist has evolved. In 2002, a terrorist was a foreigner who attacked US interest at home or abroad. Today, by all accounts, the meaning of “terrorist” has broadened significantly, with various levels of terrorist activities. If you’re a survivalist type, fly a Gadsden flag, or engage in your First Amendment right of free speech through protest, for example, you could very well be considered a low-level terror suspect.

It may be hard to believe but it’s true. The infamous leaked MIAC report highlights exactly these types of individuals as being potential threats, a.k.a. domestic terrorists.

This is where the real issues with the rolling back of Miranda warnings arises. While inadmissible in court for traditional crimes, under the Patriot Act evidence doesn’t matter. The very fact that one’s Miranda warnings are waived suggests in and of itself that you are deemed a threat to public safety under terrorism definitions. This means that it is not only possible, but likely, as has been the case with terror suspects in the past, that those who have their Miranda rights waived by investigators can be held indefinitely without trial – or evidence – under U.S. anti-terrorism laws.

In essence, any activity deemed to be a threat to the public welfare could be deemed an “exceptional case” under this new policy, potentially leading to charges being filed not under criminal law, but terror law. It’s an easy way out for those law enforcement / anti-terror agencies that would question a suspect without the benefit of advising them of their Miranda rights. If a mistake is made by law enforcement and prosecutors, no problem, because they can detain, try, judge and punish in secret courts, where Constitutional protections don’t exist.

The hypocrisy in this new Miranda Rights roll back is shocking, especially when you consider that a week after this policy shift announcement the Obama administration was generating buzz regarding federal crack downs on civil rights abuses by big city police forces:

In a marked shift from the Bush administration, President Obama’s Justice Department is aggressively investigating several big urban police departments for systematic civil rights abuses such as harassment of racial minorities, false arrests, and excessive use of force.

In interviews, activists and attorneys on the ground in several cities where the DOJ has dispatched civil rights investigators welcomed the shift. To progressives disappointed by Eric Holder’s Justice Department on key issues like the failure to investigate Bush-era torture and the prosecution of whistle-blowers, recent actions by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division are a bright spot.

In just the past few months, the Civil Rights Division has announced “pattern and practice” investigations in Newark, New Jersey and Seattle. It’s also conducting a preliminary investigation of the Denver Police Department, and all this is on top of a high-profile push to reform the notorious New Orleans Police Department – as well as criminal prosecutions of several New Orleans officers.

While it’s clear that law enforcement agencies have been progressively overstepping their bounds on various civil rights issues, it is ironic that the Obama administration would aggressively pursue civil rights violations on a local and State level considering that not a week earlier that very same administration directly attacked one of the most basic American freedoms: The right to remain silent.

It’s a bizarro world, indeed.

Link:
http://lewrockwell.com/slavo/slavo40.1.html

What comes after the dollar?

After the Dollar: What Comes Next?
by Peter Schiff

THE DOLLAR'S TERRIBLE FATE

My readers are familiar with my forecast that the US dollar is in terminal decline. America is tragically bankrupt, unable to pay its lenders without printing the dollars to do so, and enmeshed in an economic depression. The clock is ticking until the dollar faces a crisis of confidence like every other bubble before it. The key difference between this collapse and, say, the bursting of the housing bubble is that the US dollar is the backbone of the global economy. Its conflagration will leave a vacuum that needs to be filled.

Mainstream commentators often discuss three main contenders for the role: the euro, the yen, or China's RMB (known colloquially as the "yuan"). These other currencies, however, each suffer from a critical flaw that makes them unready to carry the reserve currency role in time for the dollar's collapse. When it comes to fiat alternatives, it appears the world would be going out of the frying pan and into the fire.

EURO: FRAYING AT THE EDGES

The euro is a ten-year-old experiment in uniting divergent political, economic, and cultural interests under one monolithic fiat currency held in the hands of one very powerful central bank.

If managed correctly, such a currency could serve to keep its member-governments honest – but that is not the world in which we live. Instead, the fiscally irresponsible members are discussing ditching the currency at the first sign of trouble. That is, they'd rather have their own national currencies to inflate in order to cover over their burdensome public debts. So, in order to keep the euro together, creditor states have been strong-armed into bailouts of the debtors – even though such measures violate the compact that created the common currency.

The question becomes: how long do Germans – still wrought with the memory of Weimar hyperinflation and the rise of the Third Reich – want to keep printing euros to pay the debts of the spendthrift Greeks? How many German politicians will ride to electoral victory on promises of unending bailouts and higher prices across Europe? This is the fundamental flaw of the euro.

And, of course, Greece isn't the only problem. Ireland and Portugal are vying for second-worst debt crisis in Europe. Spain, representing over 12% of eurozone GDP, saw sovereign yields jump from 4.1% at the beginning of 2010 to 6.6% by the end of the year. Yields on most other eurozone countries have been rising as well – a clear indication that the eurozone is an increasingly risky bet.

While a euro secession by the PIGS could actually leave a stronger currency region at the end, it would be a traumatic event. That prospect is undermining confidence in the euro at just the time when the world is considering where to go next.

Perhaps a mature currency that didn't falter so easily amidst the recent global financial crisis would be a good contender for the world's reserve. The euro, by contrast, is both young and in serious trouble. If less than two-dozen nations are too immense a burden for the euro to shoulder, should we expect better results when it's stretched across two hundred?

YUAN: CAPITALIST COUNTRY, COMMUNIST CURRENCY

The investment community is slowly coming around to my long-held excitement about the miraculous growth of China. This is no frenzy. In fact, if anything, I think many are still too skittish when it comes to this market. Yet, those that are jumping on the bandwagon are now proclaiming the Chinese yuan as the logical successor to the dying dollar. But while China is becoming an immense economic force, the yuan itself is hobbled by the country's communist past.

Foremost, China enforces stern capital controls on the yuan. A reserve currency must be freely and easily exchangeable with other currencies. Even within China's borders, one cannot exchange large amounts of yuan for dollars or any other currency.

China is slowly undertaking reforms to relieve these controls, but remember they were not put there arbitrarily. The controls allow China to suppress the value of the yuan, thereby maintaining artificially high exports, among other consequences. If China allowed the yuan to trade freely, it would lose the power it maintains over its money – and by extension, its people.

Let's remember that all fiat currencies are routinely manipulated and inflated. The People's Bank of China has reported M2 growth of over 140% in the past five years – almost entirely to maintain a stable exchange rate with a depreciating dollar. Given rampant inflation, combined with exchange restrictions and a serious lack of transparency, the yuan is simply not ready for primetime.

YEN: BLACK HOLE OF DEBT

The Japanese yen is the third amigo at the international fiat fiesta. While it doesn't suffer the structural risks of the euro, the yen is subsisting in an environment of massive sovereign debt. Japan's debt-to-GDP ratio is the highest of any developed country at 225%, meaning there is a perpetual impetus to print more yen to pay it back. The yen must endure this debt-noose, making it a poor alternative to the USD, which suffers the very same problem.

While I believe Japan is in a much better position because it generally maintains a net trade surplus and because most of their debt is held domestically, it's still not a stable unit with which to conduct world trade.

Perhaps more importantly, with a world seeking yen reserves, the price of yen would increase drastically. This is politically unpalatable in Japan, where the export lobby is constantly trying to push the yen down to boost their sales overseas.

These two factors combine in such a way as to make the yen a plainly infeasible reserve currency. The appreciation in yen value would simultaneously make Japan's debt problems worse and cause its export industry to suffer greatly, meaning that Japan probably doesn't want this role any more than we want her to have it.

As an aside, if you type "yen as reserve currency" into Google, it will ask, "Did you mean: yuan as reserve currency?" I guess even the world's smartest search engine doubts the yen could fill that role.

THE SIMPLEST ANSWER IS OFTEN THE BEST

As J.P. Morgan famously said to Congress in 1913, "gold is money and nothing else." Morgan meant that gold was unmatched in its effectiveness as a store of value and medium of exchange.

Given that his namesake bank started accepting physical gold bullion this past February as counterparty collateral, why should the trend of a widespread return to gold be considered only a remote possibility? On the contrary, it should be expected – if for no other reason than every other currency is fundamentally dismal.

Markets are powerful things, and require a reliable medium of exchange. The call for sound money is not just philosophical; it is derived from the market itself. Throughout human history, merchants have always turned to pure gold and silver over every pretender. This is not the first experiment in a paper money system, nor is it the first widespread debasement of money. In fact, the lessons of history were impressed upon our well-read Founding Fathers to the point that they included the following clear language in the Constitution: "No state shall... make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts."

While it has always been possible that another fiat currency would rise up to take the dollar's place, and thereby keep this irrational experiment in valueless money going awhile longer, the particular circumstances that abound today make it seem less and less likely to me. Instead, I'm seeing signs that the world is moving back to gold at a breakneck speed.

This is a return to normal and has many positive implications for the global economy. It's certainly a trend we can all welcome, and profit from.

Link:
http://lewrockwell.com/schiff/schiff126.html

"The Bush/Cheney regime brought democracy and accountable government to an end. If Obama doesn't finish the process, the next in line will."

Hail Caesar
by Paul Craig Roberts

Although the financial press speculates about a downgrade of the US government's credit rating and default if political impasse prevents the debt ceiling from being raised in time, I doubt anyone really believes that the debt ceiling will not be raised. It is just all a part of the political theater of the next couple of months.

Republicans will blame the budget deficit and accumulated national debt on Medicare and Social Security. Wall Street sees billions of profits in privatizing either, and debt rating agencies will oblige their Wall Street paymasters by opining from time to time that US Treasury bonds might be downgraded unless "entitlements can be addressed and the deficit brought under control."

Democrats will say that the budget deficit cannot be addressed without an increase in tax revenues, especially from the rich whose incomes have exploded upward while their tax rates have declined.

All the while the pressure of an approaching deadline for default will be used to reshape the US social contract, most likely in the further interest of the rich.

However, regardless of whether the debt ceiling is raised, the US government is not going to go out of business. Why does anyone think that the President, who does not obey the War Powers Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, US and international laws against torture, or any of the laws and procedures that guard civil liberty, is going to feel compelled to obey the debt ceiling?

As long as the US is at war, the American President is a Caesar. He is above the law. The US Justice (sic) Department has ruled this, and Congress and the Courts have accepted it.

Moreover, the Federal Reserve is independent of the government. In its approach to regulatory matters and bailouts, the Fed has ceased to follow its own rules. Regardless of the debt ceiling, the Fed will continue to purchase the Treasury's bond issues, and the Treasury will continue to fund the federal deficit with the proceeds. If Goldman Sachs is too big to fail, certainly the US government is.

As Congress has abandoned its powers over war, how can Congress hold on to its powers over spending? It cannot. Indeed, an impasse between the political parties over the debt ceiling would be welcomed by the executive branch as more proof that Congress is incapable of doing its part in governing and, therefore, the task has of necessity passed to the executive branch, which already does most of it.

If the President can declare on his own authority, without statutory basis and in defiance of the US Constitution, that he can assassinate US citizens who he considers to be a threat to national security, he certainly can declare that default is a threat to national security and that it is within his powers as commander-in-chief to ignore the debt ceiling.

Indeed, the executive branch would jump at the chance. Then it could reshape the budget to its own pleasing without having to consult Congress on spending any more than the executive branch consults Congress on war.

The Bush/Cheney regime brought democracy and accountable government to an end. If Obama doesn't finish the process, the next in line will.

Link:
http://lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts311.html

The economy is slowing down? When was it ever moving fast?

Global Financial Markets Tremble As Bad Economic News Continues To Pour In

As the U.S. economy starts to slow down once again, global financial markets are beginning to tremble. Over the past couple of weeks, all kinds of bad economic news has been pouring in. The ADP jobs report was a "disaster", the housing numbers are dismal, manufacturing has slowed way down and consumer confidence is dropping like a rock. The Democrats and the Republicans are bickering over the debt ceiling and this is causing a lot of uncertainty as well. All of this bad news is starting to spook investors. On Wednesday, the Dow was down 279 points and the NASDAQ was down 65 points. It was the worst day of the year for the Dow, and many are wondering what is going to happen next if we see even more bad economic data. QE2 is slated to end at the end of the month, and already the bond markets seem to be anticipating QE3. If the U.S. economy enters another significant downturn during the second half of 2011, it seems quite likely that the Federal Reserve would attempt to do something to stimulate the economy and that would probably mean more money printing.

This article is essentially the second part to an article I wrote yesterday about how we are seeing warnings about the next financial collapse all over the place right now. Panic is building and a lot of investors are trying to figure out where to put their money. Suddenly everyone seems a whole lot less optimistic than they were a couple of months ago.

Michael Sheldon, the chief market strategist at RDM Financial, believes that all of the bad economic news we are seeing right now is clear evidence that we are entering an "economic slump"....

"Initially, we just had bad news from the weekly jobless claims data, but now we're starting to see a broad-based economic slump."

So what are some of the numbers that have investors so concerned?

Mike Riddell, a fund manager at M&G Investments in London, recently explained to CNBC why he is so alarmed right now....

"US house prices have fallen by more than 5 percent year on year, pending home sales have collapsed and existing home sales disappointed, the trend of improving jobless claims has arrested, first quarter GDP wasn’t revised upwards by the 0.4 percent forecast, durables goods orders shrank, manufacturing surveys from Philadelphia Fed, Richmond Fed and Chicago Fed were all very disappointing."

The bad economic news just keeps rolling in. It is almost as if someone has slammed on the economic brakes.

The following are a few more examples of the bad economic numbers that have come out over the past couple of days....

*According to the latest ADP Employment Services report, private employers in the United States only added 38,000 jobs last month. That number had been expected to be somewhere around 175,000. This jobs report is being called a "disaster".

*Manufacturing activity in May was much lower than most economists were projecting. The following is how CNBC described the newest numbers from ISM....

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said its index of national factory activity fell to 53.5 in May from 60.4 the month before. The reading missed economists' expectations for 57.7.

*Moody's downgraded Greek debt again on Wednesday, and stated that they believe that there is a 50/50 chance that Greece will default. This time Moody's downgraded Greek debt by three levels all the way down to Caa1, and that caused the euro to fall like a rock.

To get an idea of just how imbalanced the European financial system has become at this point, just check out this article.

*Earlier this week it was announced that U.S. home prices have declined 5.1% from a year ago. Sadly, U.S. home prices have now fallen more than they did during the entire Great Depression.

*As I mentioned yesterday, the consumer confidence index fell from 66 in April to 60.8 in May.

So what is causing all of this?

Well, the truth is that the "sugar high" that the U.S. economy has been enjoying is coming to an end.

QE2 is almost over and the vast majority of the federal "stimulus money" has been spent. Now the federal government is talking about getting spending under control and we are seeing austerity programs being implemented on the state and local level from coast to coast.

But without massive intervention by the Federal Reserve and by the U.S. government will the U.S. economy be able to stand?

Douglas Borthwick, a managing director with Faros Trading in Stamford, Connecticut is not optimistic....

"The sugar high that has buoyed the U.S. economy over the past six months is wearing out, and there is little in economic growth or foundation to show for it."

The truth is that the Fed and the U.S. government went all-out in an attempt to keep the economy from falling into a total depression. The U.S. government has been running budget deficits well in excess of a trillion dollars and the Fed has been printing money like mad. If these measures are removed, the economic crisis we are experiencing might just get a whole lot worse.

How much worse?

Well, just check out what Peter Yastrow, a market strategist for Yastrow Origer, recently told CNBC....

"Interest rates are amazingly low and that, thanks to Ben Bernanke, is driving everything," Yastrow said. "We’re on the verge of a great, great depression. The [Federal Reserve] knows it."

Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama keep talking about the "economic recovery" but most Americans know better.

According to one new poll, 66% of Americans believe that we are still in a recession.

Perhaps this is a sign that the American people are starting to wake up to the new economic realities that we are facing.

The U.S. economy is being ripped apart and shredded. Thanks to our short-sighted trade policies, the Chinese economy has roared to life while the U.S. economy continues to ship jobs and factories overseas.

But instead of facing up to our economic problems and coming up with some solutions, our nation has been on a horrific debt binge over the last couple of decades in a desperate attempt to maintain our standard of living.

One of the reasons why I pound on the economic news day after day is so that more people will really understand what is going on and will start to wake up.

In fact, if you have a family member of a friend that just doesn't get it, the following is a great article to share with that person: "50 Things Every American Should Know About The Collapse Of The Economy".

Look, even Barack Obama says that the present state of affairs is "unsustainable" and that changes have to be made.

But if the U.S. government decided that it was going to go to a balanced budget tomorrow, that would suck approximately a trillion and a half dollars out of the economy.

What do you think would happen if that came to pass?

Of course by going into even more debt we are destroying the economic future of our children and our grandchildren.

We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and we expect future generations to pay it off.

It is absolutely disgusting what we have done and it is thievery on the highest level.

Everyone knows that we are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world and that at some point it is going to pop.

Perhaps the best we can hope for at this point is for a little bit more time before economic disaster strikes.

Unfortunately, all of the latest economic news seems to be pointing toward another economic slowdown.

Hold on to your seats.

Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/global-financial-markets-tremble-as-bad-economic-news-continues-to-pour-in

Here's another person from the inside who tells the truth about the phony war on terror...

Part 1 - Susan Lindauer - Intel Agent On The Patriot Act, CIA Coverup Of 9-11 & Iraq

Worse than Bush? It appears to be so...

Worse Than a Third Bush Term?

Anthony Gregory

If in 2008 someone had said that Obama’s war policy would be more belligerent and costlier than another round of Bush’s, nearly no one would have believed it. Bush started a preventive war in Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands without any credible correlation to U.S. security, except perhaps a very negative one. He turned a hunt for bin Laden into an excuse to stumble around in Afghanistan at great cost without any clear idea of how the war and occupation were going to improve the situation there. He spent a trillion dollars, just in direct costs, and lost 4,000 American troops in these aggressive and endless wars.

Obama came along and promised to make it all better. Before he was a U.S. senator, he opposed the U.S. war in Iraq. As a presidential candidate, he vowed to exercise more restraint and wind down the U.S. presence in Iraq.

At the same time, Obama pledged to "refocus America on the greatest threat to our security—the resurgence of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan" and to "deploy at least two additional combat brigades" to that theater of war. Some pro-peace Obama voters rationalized this one way or another, saying the Afghanistan war was less unreasonable than Iraq, or that Obama was just trying to get elected and would prove a more peaceful president overall than Bush (or McCain).

In my new Independent Institute policy report, "What Price War? Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Costs of Conflict," I assess the numbers and come to a disturbing conclusion: The heightened conflict in Afghanistan has in a sense offset the decline of hostilities in Iraq, a decline we could have expected anyway, and in all other areas of foreign policy and national security, Obama has essentially continued and expanded Bush-era policies.

First, on Iraq, it is true that Obama, unlike Bush and the Republicans, thought the U.S. shouldn’t have begun that war. But once it started, like all too many Democrats, Obama thought it best to stay the course. "There’s not much of a difference between my position on Iraq and George Bush’s position at this stage," Obama famously said way back in October 2004. As a senator, he voted for Iraq war funding, unlike the truly antiwar folks in Congress, and in 2008 he told Bill O’Reilly that the horrible surge had "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams."

And here’s the dirty little secret: Although the Iraq war has indeed calmed down since Obama took power, this was going to happen anyway. Bush signed the Status of Forces Agreement in 2008 setting forth the withdrawal schedule that Obama is mostly following—if anything, Obama has slowed it down a bit. A third Bush term would have almost surely overseen the same Iraq policy we have now. On the other hand, it would have also probably continued "neglecting" Afghanistan, in contrast with Obama’s energetic escalation of that war.

In Afghanistan, 499 U.S. troops died last year and 317 the year before. Bush’s last full year—2008—saw "only" 155 U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan, and this was the deadliest year for Americans in Afghanistan during the whole of the Bush administration. The troop presence has about tripled from the height of the Bush years. Overall, thanks to the Afghanistan escalation, there were more U.S. military fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan last year and the year before than in the last year under Bush. This doesn’t even touch on the vast rise in contractors in Afghanistan, which obscures the full cost of the war. In the first half of 2010, more civilian contractors died than U.S. troops.

Meanwhile, 2010 was the deadliest year for Afghan civilians since the first year of the war. And in Pakistan, Obama has significantly increased the use of drone attacks, which were minimal until Bush’s last year in 2008, during which 33 such horrible bombings were launched. That number more than tripled for 2010.

Of course, there is also the financial cost. Obama promised to "go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that don’t work" with "one of the biggest savings" to come from a "change [to] our policy in Iraq." But these savings in Iraq—again, savings that a third Bush term likely would have seen as well—have almost been absorbed by the rise in costs in Afghanistan. Adjusted for inflation, the U.S. spent about $171 billion on the two wars in FY 2010. Only Bush’s last two years of war cost more. Yet in 2003, 2004, and 2005, few American critics of Bush thought he was squandering too little on militarism.

Up until March, one thing that could be said of Obama is that, unlike Bush, he didn’t actually start a whole new war without anything resembling a justification and with questionable constitutional legitimacy. But now he has adopted a version of the Bush doctrine of preventive war in Libya, a presidential war that was started without even a nod from Congress and has raged on for more than two months in violation of the War Powers Resolution. This war, like Iraq, rests on the concept of world peace through democratization by force, but unlike his predecessor,Obama didn’t even try to convince his country that it was necessary to counter an impending danger to national security.

Bush’s first term was still perhaps more of a warmongering disaster than Obama’s has been so far. But we must look at the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy at the end of the Bush years and conclude that Obama has not just stayed the course, he has stepped on the gas. He has vastly expanded the war in Afghanistan, upped the violence in Pakistan, continued the Bush path on Iraq, bombed Yemen and Somalia, and started a new war with Libya. On the civil liberties and human rights fronts, he has invoked the Espionage Act more than all earlier presidents combined, persecuted whistleblowers, covered up torturers, and abused habeas corpus and the Fourth Amendment as much as Bush. And surely bin Laden could have been found without these monstrous policies.

It would have been bad enough if, as some cynics warned, nothing changed in national-security policy with Obama in charge. But even that would be better than what we’ve seen. At least a lot fewer people would be dying in Afghanistan and we wouldn’t be at war with Libya.

Link:
http://uruknet.com/?p=m78261&hd=&size=1&l=e

See, it wasn't that much...

Obama Bailout of Gov’t Motors to Cost Taxpayers at Least $14 Billion

James R. Healey

A report today from the president’s National Economic Council says the government will lose less than $16 billion — which would amount to 20% of the $80 billion spent to bail out the U.S. auto industry.

The government money was spent chiefly to invest or offer loans to General Motors and Chrysler. Both have been repaying debt and the government has been trying to extricate itself from ownership interests in both.

Read more:
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2011/06/feds-us-to-lose-only-20-of-80-billion-auto-bailout-money/1

Crash coming and Fed knows it...

Strategist: World On The Verge Of Great, Great Depression And The Fed Knows It

Steve Watson

A notable market strategist has told CNBC that the world is on the verge of the largest financial meltdown in history, warning that Wall Street is at a loss as to what to do regarding the ailing economy.

“Interest rates are amazingly low and that, thanks to Ben Bernanke, is driving everything,” said Peter Yastrow, of Yastrow Origer.

“We’re on the verge of a great, great depression. The [Federal Reserve] knows it.” the futures trader added.

“What we’ve got right now is almost near panic going on with money managers and people who are responsible for money,” he said. “They can not find a yield and you just don’t want to be putting your money into commodities or things that are punts that might work out or they might not depending on what happens with the economy.”

Yastrow described betting against the U.S. economy as “a huge mistake”, adding that he would not sell stocks at this point.

Any bears out there better be careful because the dividend yields on these stocks look awesome relative to all the other investment vehicles out there,” Yastrow said. “So bears are going to have to find a new way to express their discontent with the U.S. economy.”



Meanwhile, gold spiked today on the news that a third round of so-called quantitative easing on behalf of the Federal Reserve is in the works.

“There’s a lot of iffiness about the end of QE2 and questions about whether there will be a QE3,” said Matt Zeman, a strategist at Kingsview Financial in Chicago. “There’s a serious soft patch in economic data, and the Fed is not going to be able to raise interest rates anytime soon. That’s going to be a dollar negative and gold positive.”

Gold futures hit a four-week high today as the dollar slumped to a three week low and equities continued to decline.

Futures for August delivery reached $1,551.60, the highest since May 2, before dropping back to to $1,550.30, still a rise of $13.50, or 0.9 percent.

“The dollar is starting to weaken again,” said Frank McGhee, the head dealer at Integrated Brokerage Services LLC in Chicago. “Stocks are selling off, and there’s a flight to quality into gold.”

Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/strategist-world-on-the-verge-of-great-great-depression-and-the-fed-knows-it.html

History stuff: RFK Assassination 43 years ago...

CNN: NEW RFK ASSASSINATION RECORDING!!!



Another report...

ABC: TWO GUNS USED IN RFK ASSASSINATION

Do you think your military experience will get you a job? Think, again...

Military experience not marketable?

This is the guy who is cutting the education budget and laying off teachers because of a budget shortfall...

Gov. Christie arrives at son's high school baseball game in State Police helicopter

Gov. Chris Christie arrived at his son's baseball game this afternoon aboard a State Police helicopter.

Right before the lineup cards were being exchanged on the field, a noise from above distracted the spectators as the 55-foot long helicopter buzzed over trees in left field, circled the outfield and landed in an adjacent football field. Christie disembarked from the helicopter and got into a black car with tinted windows that drove him about a 100 yards to the baseball field.

During the 5th inning, Christie and First Lady Mary Pat Christie got into the car, rode back to the helicopter and left the game. During a pitching change, play was stopped for a couple of minutes while the helicopter took off.

Link:
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/05/gov_christie_arrives_at_sons_h.html

They are getting the printing presses ready for some more phony money...

Fed Ready to Print More Funny Money on QE3 Rumors
Kurt Nimmo

Simon Maughn, co-head of European equities at MF Global, has told CNBC that a third round of so-called quantitative easing is in the works. The private Federal Reserve will again become the marginal buyer of bonds.

The latest effort by the Fed to finance the government’s staggering deficit will end in June.

If the private Federal Reserve owned by offshore banksters stops this lending scheme, interest rates will rise significantly which in turn will exert tremendous pressure on the American public. If interest rates surge anytime soon, millions of indebted Americans may default on their debt, thereby bankrupting the American financial institutions, as Puru Saxena, founder of Puru Saxena Wealth Management, notes.

“The bond market is going in one direction which is up-falling yields which is telling you quite clearly the direction of economic travel is downwards. Downgrades. QE3 (a third round of quantitative easing) is coming,” Maughn told the business news network. “The bond markets are all smarter than us, and that’s exactly what the bond markets are telling me.”

“What’s interesting in the bond markets over the last couple of sessions is, you’ve seen human traders trying to step in and call this turn in the market the same way that equities have done … and they have just been mowed down by the quant funds which are all about leverage, all about momentum and are betting on bond prices going up,” Maughn said.

“One more big injection of cash into the bond market should take you through at least the summer season into the beginning of the fourth quarter.”

“That cash injection will have the normal inflationary knock-on impact, driving back up commodities, supporting industrial stocks, dragging the financials up with them… I think it’s all about the monetary injection trade,” Maughn told CNBC...

Read more:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/fed-ready-to-print-more-funny-money-on-qe3-rumors.html

Jet fighters scrambled over dispute about a reclined seat. Where were they on 9/11?

Airplane annoyance leads to brouhaha in the skies over D.C.

Before things got out of hand, it was a typical annoyance that happens once a flight gets airborne: A passenger hit the recline button and sent his seat intimately close to the lap of the guy sitting behind him.

What followed wasn’t typical at all: a smack to the head, peacemakers diving about the cabin to intervene and a pair of Air Force F-16 fighter jets scrambling into the night skies over Washington.

It happened late Sunday, just after a United Airlines Boeing 767 bound for Ghana with 144 passengers took off from Dulles International Airport.

Not long after the 10:44 p.m. departure for the overnight flight, the offending seat was lowered into the offended lap, and a fight ensued. A flight attendant and another passenger jumped in between, said sources familiar with the incident who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to provide details.

The pilot has complete authority over the aircraft, a United spokesman said, and he decided to return to Dulles to sort things out rather than continue the transatlantic flight to Ghana when he was unsure of the scope of the problem.

Airline and Homeland Security Department officials said they had no other details on the incident.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, pilots have learned to be wary. In recent years, disturbances have revealed terrorist attempts to ignite explosives hidden in shoes and underwear. Air Force fighter jets stand ready to respond to situations such as this one, in which passengers, who might be terrorists, cause trouble in flight.

Link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-common-airplane-annoyance-leads-to-a-costly-brouhaha-in-the-skies-over-dc/2011/05/31/AGrlMcFH_story.html?hpid=z2

More Ron Paul...

Ron Paul "We Don't Even Know How Many Wars We Are In!"

And they want more...

One percent holds 39 percent of global wealth

Around one percent of households have 39 percent of the globe's wealth according to a study published Tuesday, pointing to increased inequalities in the wake of the global downturn.

The number of millionaire households across the globe increased 12 percent in 2010, according to The Boston Consulting Group report, increasing millionaires' share of wealth from 37 percent in 2009.

Despite being at the epicenter of the global financial meltdown, the United States had by far the most millionaires last year, with 5,220 millionaire households, and increase of 1.3 percent from the previous year.

Japan was second with 1,530 and China third with 1,110.

But it is emerging markets in Asia that can expect to see the biggest growth, increasing their share of wealth by 2.9 percentage points in 2010.

Tiny Asian economic powerhouse Singapore boosted the highest number of households with more than a million dollars under management.

Over 15 percent of households in the city state have over a million dollars in assets under management, well ahead of the Switzerland and the oil-rich Arabian Gulf states.

Link:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/31/one-percent-holds-39-percent-of-global-wealth/

Ron Paul is the man...

Rep. Paul to Fed: Tell Us Everything, or Else
By Peter Barnes

The chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the Federal Reserve demanded Tuesday that the Fed fully disclose details of billions -- perhaps trillions -- in secret emergency loans it made to almost every major bank in the U.S. and overseas during the financial crisis or face a congressional subpoena for the information.

In an interview with Fox Business, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Financial Services subcommittee on domestic monetary policy, said he wants to know “how much, when, where and why” from Fed officials when they testify about the loans at a subcommittee hearing Wednesday.

“We’re going to get to the bottom of what the Fed did during the big bailout a couple of years ago,” Paul said. “We have some precise questions. I imagine we won’t get all of them answered tomorrow because they’ll do a little bit of stonewalling, I’m sure.”

“If they don’t answer, they’ll hear from us,” he said. “We can use the subpoena power and say, ‘Look, you have to bring us the records.’ ”

The big loans started in 2007 and were disclosed in April under Freedom of Information Act requests by FOX Business and Bloomberg News after a two-year legal battle with the Fed and banks by the news organizations.

Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2011/05/31/rep-paul-fed-tell/#ixzz1O1QcgG7w

We knew it was coming a long time ago...

Suddenly Everyone Is Warning About The Next Financial Collapse

Are we about to see a repeat of 2008 (or something even worse)? Suddenly all kinds of people are coming out of the woodwork and warning that we could be on the verge of the next major financial collapse. Of course many economists and financial pundits just enjoy hearing themselves talk, and sometimes they will make outrageous claims just to get attention, but when so many ominous warnings come out all at once it does tend to make one sit up and take notice. The truth is that global financial markets are even more vulnerable today than they were in 2008, and all over the globe we are seeing trouble signs. Japan is trying to recover from the worst natural disaster that they have ever seen and they are dealing with a nuclear crisis that never seems to end. The Europeans are trying to put another bailout package for Greece together and about a half dozen more European nations that are drowning in debt will need bailouts after that. In the U.S., there are all kinds of signs pointing to the collapse of the economy and the politicians in Washington D.C. continue to "kick the can down the road" and hope that our economic problems will somehow fix themselves. Oil prices are incredibly high and turmoil is sweeping the globe. Conditions are certainly developing that could bring about a "perfect storm" and cause another global financial collapse.

The following is just a sampling of the financial warnings that we have seen in recent days from some prominent voices....

*Economist Nouriel Roubini: "I think right now we’re on the tipping point of a market correction. Data from the U.S., from Europe, from Japan, from China are suggesting an economic slowdown."

*Jim Rogers: "I would expect to see some serious problems in the foreseeable future….By 2011, 2012, 2013, 2013, I don’t know when, we’re going to have an economic slowdown again."

*Mark Mobius, the executive chairman of Templeton Asset Management’s emerging markets group: "There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis."

*David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Indices: "Home prices continue on their downward spiral with no relief in sight."

*Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of DoubleLine Capital: "I think we're looking at some type of echo in the credit crisis coming up here. That's what I'm afraid of."

*Carl Icahn: "I do think that there could be another major problem. Now, will it happen next week, next year, i don't know and certainly nobody knows, but i don't think that the system is working properly. I really find it amazing that we're almost back to where it was, where there's so much leverage going on in the investment banks today. There's just way too much leverage and way too much risk-taking, with other people's money."

Sadly, the world really did not seem to learn much of anything from 2008. Global financial markets are still pretty much operating the same way that they did before the last crisis.

But back before the crisis in 2008 things were much more stable around the globe.

When the horrible earthquake and tsunami struck Japan earlier this year, most economists brushed it off and believed that Japan would be "resilient" and would bounce back very quickly.

At the time, I went directly against the mainstream consensus with this article: "14 Reasons Why The Economic Collapse Of Japan Has Begun".

I followed that up with another article entitled "The Japanese Economy Is In Much Bigger Trouble Than Most People Think".

So who was right?

Well, it turns out that Japan is now officially in a recession. Their economy contracted at a 3.7 percent annualized rate during the first quarter.

As bad as that number is, just remember that the tsunami did not even hit until March 11th.

So what is the 2nd quarter number going to look like?

There is often a lag between a disaster and the economic effects of the disaster. The economic impact of this nightmare is going to be felt in Japan for many years to come. In fact, it is going to be very interesting to see what kind of earnings reports we seeing coming out of Japan in the months ahead.

The economic problems in Japan are also really starting to be felt around the rest of the globe. The other day, USA Today published an article with the following headline: "U.S. economy damaged more than thought by Japan quake".

Amazingly, everyone seems to be really surprised that the worst tsunami in modern history is having a significant economic impact.

Meanwhile, the crisis at Fukushima just continues to get worse.

In case you haven't noticed, the Japanese are not even close to finding a solution to this crisis.

If you want to get a good idea just how bad things are getting around Fukushima, just read this article by Natural News: "Land around Fukushima now radioactive dead zone; resembles target struck by atomic bomb".

The mainstream media has been doing their best to downplay the crisis at Fukushima, but the truth is that it is now a worse disaster than Chernobyl and life in that region will never be the same again.

Conditions are also ripe in Europe for another financial collapse.

Have you been watching what has been going on in Greece?

It's crazy. Without another bailout the Greek government will soon start defaulting on their debts.

The EU and the IMF don't want to give Greece more bailout money unless there are some significant "strings" attached. But they also know that if Greece is not bailed out it will cause complete chaos in the financial markets.

The Greek population does not want more bailouts and more austerity. There have been protests all over the country. Greek citizens have been pulling billions out of Greek banks as the country descends into chaos.

In the end, another bailout deal will get pushed through and the can will be kicked down the road a little while longer.

But what about all of the other European nations that need bailouts?

The government of Ireland is already indicating that they may need another bailout.

Portugal, Spain and Italy (along with several other European nations) are also teetering on the brink of financial disaster.

Most Americans do not realize it, but the European sovereign debt crisis really could set off another global financial crash. Everyone really should be watching Europe. It is going to be a very interesting summer.

Of course the United States continues to be an economic basket case.

More depressing housing data came out today. U.S. home prices are now 5.1% lower than they were a year ago and they have fallen back to mid-2002 levels. CNN is declaring that a housing "double-dip" has been confirmed.

Sadly, U.S. home prices have now fallen farther during this economic downturn than they did during the Great Depression.

Also, the consumer confidence index fell from 66 in April to 60.8 this month.

Americans are becoming more pessimistic about the economy.

According to Gallup, 41 percent of Americans believed that the economy was "getting better" at this time last year. Today, that number is at just 27 percent.

We are seeing a tremendous about of inflation in 2011, but incomes are not rising. Unemployment is still rampant and very few jobs are being created. What is even sadder is that a very high percentage of the jobs that are being created are part-time or temporary jobs.

But this was supposed to be the "recovery". Barack Obama and the Congress pushed through "stimulus package" after "stimulus package". We added trillions to our national debt. The Federal Reserve has been printing money like crazy. An all-out effort was made to pump up the U.S. economy in the short-term.

So after all of that, is this what the "recovery" is going to look like?

Meanwhile, all of those efforts have also made our long-term economic problems even worse.

Because of our exploding national debt and the reckless money printing by the Federal Reserve, faith in the U.S. dollar is dying. Even the United Nations is warning of a potential dollar collapse.

We are in big, big trouble.

This is about as good as things are going to get for the U.S. economy. Despite unprecedented efforts, the U.S. economy is still struggling mightily and our long-term economic problems are scarier than ever.

Sadly, most Americans still believe that wonderful economic times are on the way. Most believe that this downturn is just temporary and that things will soon be better than ever.

How do you think they are going to feel when they find out the truth?

Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/suddenly-everyone-is-warning-about-the-next-financial-collapse

"Your actions overseas are placing our freedoms here at home in ever-greater jeopardy."

An Open Letter to the Troops: You’re Not Defending Our Freedoms
by Jacob G. Hornberger

Dear Troops:

Yesterday – Memorial Day – some people asserted, once again, that you are “defending our freedoms” overseas.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Those people are just repeating tired old mantras. The reality is that you are not defending our freedoms with your actions overseas. In fact, it is the exact opposite. Your actions overseas are placing our freedoms here at home in ever-greater jeopardy.

Consider your occupation of Iraq, a country that, as you know, never attacked the United States, making it the defender in the war and the United States the aggressor. Think about that: Every single person that the troops have killed, maimed, or tortured in Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

Yet, the countless victims of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have friends and relatives, many of whom have become filled with anger and rage and who now would stop at nothing to retaliate with terrorist attacks against Americans.

Pray tell: How does that constitute defending our freedoms?

It was no different prior to 9/11. At the end of the Persian Gulf War, the troops intentionally destroyed Iraq’s water and sewage facilities after a Pentagon study showed that this would help spread infectious illnesses among the Iraqi people.

It worked. For 11 years after that, the troops enforced the cruel and brutal sanctions on Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. (See “America’s Peacetime Crimes against Iraq” by Anthony Gregory.) You’ll recall U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it.”

By “it” she meant the attempted ouster of Saddam Hussein from power. You will recall that he was a dictator who was the U.S. government’s ally and partner during the 1980s, when the United States was furnishing him with those infamous WMDs that U.S. officials later used to excite the American people into supporting your invasion of Iraq.

The truth is that 9/11 furnished U.S. officials with the excuse to do what their sanctions (and the deaths of all those Iraqi children) had failed to accomplish: ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein and replacing him with a U.S-approved regime.

That’s what your post-9/11 invasion of Iraq was all about – to achieve the regime change that the pre-9/11 deadly sanctions that killed all those children had failed to achieve.

No, not mushroom clouds, not freedom, not democracy, and certainly not defending our freedoms here at home. Just plain old regime change.

In the process, all that you – the troops – have done with your invasion and occupation of Iraq is produce even more enmity toward the United States by people in the Middle East, especially those Iraqis who have lost loved ones or friends in the process or simply watched their country be destroyed.

In principle, it’s no different with Afghanistan. I’d estimate that 99 percent of the people the troops have killed, maimed, or tortured in that country had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.

Why did you invade Afghanistan or, more precisely, why did President Bush order you to do so?

No, not because the Taliban participated in the 9/11 attacks and, no, not because the Taliban were even aware that the attacks were going to take place

President Bush ordered the troops to invade Afghanistan – and, of course, kill Afghan citizens in the process – because the Afghan government – the Taliban – refused to comply with his unconditional extradition demand. You will recall that the Taliban offered to turn bin Laden over to an independent tribunal to stand trial upon the receipt of evidence from the United States indicating his complicity in the 9/11 attacks.

Bush responded to the Taliban’s offer by issuing his order to the troops to invade Afghanistan, kill Afghans, and occupy the country. In the process, U.S. officials installed one of the most crooked, corrupt, and dictatorial rulers it could find to govern the country, one who is so incompetent he cannot even hide the manifest fraud by which he has supposedly been elected to office.

In the process of installing and defending the Karzai regime, the troops have killed brides, grooms, children, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, and countrymen, most of whom never attacked the United States on 9/11 or at any other time. They simply became “collateral damage” or “bad guys” for having the audacity to oppose the invasion and occupation of their country by a foreign regime. (It should be noted for the record that U.S. officials considered these types of “bad guys,” as well as Osama bin Laden and other fundamentalist Muslims, to be “good guys” when they were trying to oust Soviet troops from Afghanistan.)

Was there another way to bring bin Laden to justice? Yes, the criminal-justice route, which was the route used after the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

That’s right. Same target, different date. In fact, the accused terrorists – Ramzi Yousef in 1993 and Osama bin Laden in 2001 – were ultimately located in the same country, Pakistan.

In Yousef’s case, he was arrested some three years after the attack, brought back to the United States, prosecuted, and convicted in federal district court. He’s now serving a life sentence in a federal penitentiary.

No invasions, no bombings, no occupations, no killing of countless innocent people, no torture, no war on terrorism, and no anger and rage that such actions inevitably would have produced among the victims, their families, and friends.

In bin Laden’s case, we instead got a military invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, where the troops have killed, maimed, tortured, and hurt countless people who had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

How in the world have your invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq defended our freedoms here at home? Indeed, how have the assassinations and bombings in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and who knows where else defended our freedoms?

All these things have accomplished is keeping foreigners angry at us, thereby subjecting us to the constant and ever-growing threat of terrorist retaliation here at home. As I have pointed out before, the U.S. military – that is, you, the troops – have become the biggest terrorist-producing machine in history. Every time you kill some Iraqi or Afghan citizen, even when accidental, ten more offer to take his place out of anger and rage.

That’s the same thing that was happening prior to 9/11. In fact, there were some, including those of us here at The Future of Freedom Foundation, who were warning prior to 9/11 that unless the U.S. Empire stopped what it was doing to people in the Middle East (including the deadly sanctions on Iraq, the support of Middle East dictators, the stationing of U.S. troops near Islamic holy lands, and the unconditional money and armaments to the Israeli regime), Americans would be increasingly subject to terrorist attacks. On 9/11, we were proven right, unfortunately. (See Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire by Chalmers Johnson.)

How does the constant threat of terrorist retaliation arising from your actions in Iraq and Afghanistan make us freer here at home, especially when you – the troops – are responsible for engendering the anger and rage that culminates in such threats, owing to what you are doing to people over there?

Consider also what the U.S. government does to our freedoms here at home as a direct consequence of the terrorist threat that you, the troops, are producing over there. It uses that threat of terrorism to infringe upon our freedoms here at home! You know what I mean – the fondling at the airports, the 10-year-old Patriot Act, the illegal spying on Americans, the indefinite detention, the torture, the kangaroo tribunals, Gitmo, and the entire war on terrorism – all necessary, they tell us, to keep us safe from the terrorists – that is, the people you all are producing with your actions over there.

In other words, if you all weren’t producing an endless stream of terrorists with your invasions, occupations, torture, assassinations, bombings, and Gitmo, the U.S. government – the entity you are working for – would no longer have that excuse for taking away our freedoms.

This past Sunday, the Washington Post carried an article about American wives who were recently greeting their husbands on their return from Afghanistan. Newlywed Anne Krolicki, 24, commented to her husband on the death of one of her friends’ husband: “It’s a pointless war,” she said.

That lady has her head on straight. She’s has a grip on reality, doesn’t deal in tired old mantras, and speaks the truth. Every U.S. soldier who dies in Iraq and Afghanistan dies for nothing, which was the same thing that some 58,000 men of my generation died for in Vietnam.

Please don’t write me to tell me that you all are good people or that you’re “patriots” for simply following whatever orders you are given. All that is irrelevant. What matters is what you are doing over there. And what you are doing is not defending our freedoms, you are jeopardizing them

Sincerely,

Jacob G. Hornberger
President
The Future of Freedom Foundation

Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/hornberger/hornberger187.html

"...the Democrats and Republicans are all part of the same bloodthirsty gang."

The Heavy Cost of the Bush-Obama Murder Rampage
by Anthony Gregory

In every election cycle, the politicians love to pretend there is a difference among them on the foreign policy questions. Yet on these issues of unsurpassed importance, we see the Democrats and Republicans are all part of the same bloodthirsty gang.

On the superficial level of presidential politics, Obama and Bush appeared light-years apart. They play opposites in the DC-approved official culture war between those who pretend to be genuine red-blooded Americans of the heartland and those who feign an understanding of the beleaguered urban minorities and oppressed underclass, when in truth both perfectly embody the same Wall Street-Pentagon-friendly power elite. This is most clearly seen in their virtually identical approach toward empire.

After 9/11, Bush could have used his Republican bonafides to stress not pacifism but at least the humble foreign policy he had promised. We shouldn’t be "an arrogant nation," he famously said in his October 11, 2000, debate with Al Gore. "[O]ne way for us to end up being viewed as the ugly American is for us to go around the world saying, we do it this way, so should you."

But instead, Bush used 9/11 as an excuse to expand the federal government more than had happened in decades, gut the Bill of Rights, and start two major wars to "democractize" Afghanistan and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands, maybe more than a million innocents, were slaughtered in his wars. He left America in low morale, bankrupted from his recklessness, bloodied from battle, with thousands of Americans having returned in flag-draped caskets.

Obama in 2008 gave even more lip service to foreign policy humility than did Bush in 2000, or at least was perceived this way, and somehow everyone believed it. He said Bush made a terrible mistake in invading Iraq. He said we could save a fortune and restore American honor by withdrawing.

Yet here we are, over two years into his presidency, and the mountain of corpses continues to rise. In Afghanistan, there were more civilian deaths last year than any time since the war began. In Pakistan, Obama has unleashed unspeakable terror with his drone attacks, deploying more than three times as many last year as Bush did in 2008. This killing spree has greatly exacerbated a refugee disaster, wherein a million or two have been displaced from their homes.

But of course, most Americans don’t care about the death of foreigners. Non-Americans are barely human. Yet even by purely U.S.-centric standards, the Obama model of war has amounted to a continuation of the Bush trajectory. My new Independent Institute policy report, What Price War? Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Costs of Conflict, goes into the numbers and cuts through the rhetorical fog of partisan nonsense.

Last year, 559 American troops died in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is ninety more than died in Bush’s last full year – 2008 – in office. Both 2009 and 2010 were far bloodier for Americans in Afghanistan than any year under Bush. In 2008, Bush’s deadliest year for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, 155 died there – fewer than half of the 317 who fell in 2009 and fewer than a third of the 499 who fell last year.

Even conservative Americans should be alarmed by this, and liberal peaceniks should be horrified that their man has apparently increased U.S. belligerence from its 2008 levels, by which point U.S. casualties were winding down from their peak during Bush’s most lethal years. All Americans have to be concerned with the financial cost too. Obama repeatedly promised to save money from the Iraq adventure and devote the savings to other priorities – which he has, more or less. Yet the U.S. was going to begin drawing down in Iraq anyway: Bush signed the Status of Forces Agreement in 2008, setting a timetable for Iraq similar to what we’ve seen followed under Obama.

Overall, the heightened violence in Afghanistan has meant a war price tag rivaling the worst days of war criminal George W. Bush. Even adjusting for inflation, in 2006, Bush was spending about $133 billion on his two wars in 2011 dollars. Last year, the cost was up to $170 billion. Then we have the record-busting Pentagon budgets that the Democrats have given us.

Obama could have gotten away with a more modest policy than Bush, simply by continuing on the path set at the beginning of 2009. But he wanted to show that the Republicans had "neglected" Afghanistan and so he tripled the U.S. troop presence, from just over 30,000 soldiers at the end of the Bush era to the 100,000 or so that are there now. This puts aside the vast increase in contractors, as I discuss in the report.

Obama has also bombed Somalia and Yemen and started a fresh new major war with Libya, in violation of the War Powers Act, the Constitution, and all semblance of common sense. So far, according to Defense Secretary Gates, the cost has been over $750 million. This particular battle costs about $40 million a month in direct costs, but I’m sure the Republicans are still patting themselves on the back for saving $5 million a year by cutting federal funding for NPR.

All of this ignores the more hidden costs of war: The uncounted thousands of innocents blown to bits and otherwise slaughtered because Obama doesn’t want to appear "weak" in Afghanistan; the civil liberties violations that have only accelerated under this president; the many thousands of Americans injured and psychologically traumatized; the economic opportunities vanquished because of the trillions in resources devoted to and destroyed in these wars.

Concerning all the permanent fixtures of the American state – the trillions in entitlements, the national police power, the Fed and the armies of regulators – Obama has continued and expanded upon nearly everything we had under Bush, just as Bush ramped up what he inherited from Clinton and on and on going back decades. Nowhere is the tragic bipartisan continuity in U.S. policy starker than in the area of war. Yet as I note in my paper, there was no reason to expect otherwise: candidate Obama said Iraq was a mistake, but he praised the horrible surge and voted to continue funding the war, vowing the whole time to expand operations in Afghanistan.

Millions thought Obama would bring home the troops, wind down the wars, stop killing so many civilians, and save money while he was at it. Sadly, the murder rampage continues without interruption, only with a greater emphasis on picking on some nations rather than others and a different rhetorical cloak to obscure the evil of the slaughter. Hawks decry Obama as a pacifist who hates American power and doves often praise him for being more thoughtful than his reckless warmongering predecessor. The only real question is which dishonest characterization is the greater obscenity.

Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory215.html