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Plain talk, interesting data.
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Thursday, March 4. 2010
Posted by Karl Denninger in Corruption
"Now Seniors Get To Feel The Bezzle
http://market-ticker.org/archives/2033-Now-Seniors-Get-To-Feel-The-Bezzle.html
"Obama Now Selling Judgeships for Health Care Votes?
Obama names brother of undecided House Dem to Appeals Court.
BY John McCormack
March 3, 2010 6:15 PMSource Weeklystandard.com
"Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he's obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson's brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
“Scott Matheson is a distinguished candidate for the Tenth Circuit court,” President Obama said. “Both his legal and academic credentials are impressive and his commitment to judicial integrity is unwavering. I am honored to nominate this lifelong Utahn to the federal bench.”
Scott M. Matheson, Jr.: Nominee for the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
Scott M. Matheson currently holds the Hugh B. Brown Presidential Endowed Chair at the S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1985. He served as Dean of the Law School from 1998 to 2006. He also taught First Amendment Law at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government from 1989 to 1990.
While on public service leave from the University of Utah from 1993 to 1997, Matheson served as United States Attorney for the District of Utah. In 2007, he was appointed by Governor Jon Huntsman to chair the Utah Mine Safety Commission. He also worked as a Deputy County Attorney for Salt Lake County from 1988 to 1989. Prior to joining the University faculty, Matheson was an associate attorney from 1981 to 1985 at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, D.C.
Matheson was born and raised in Utah and is a sixth generation Utahn. He received an A.B. from Stanford University in 1975, an M.A. from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1980.
So, Scott Matheson appears to have the credentials to be a judge, but was his nomination used to buy off his brother's vote?
The timing of this nomination looks suspicious, especially in light Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak's claim that he was offered a federal job not to run against Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania primary. Many speculated that Sestak, a former admiral, was offered the Secretary of the Navy job."
http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-now-selling-appeals-court-judgeships-health-care-votes
"Head of 'Climategate' research unit admits sending 'pretty awful emails' to hide data
By David Derbyshire
Last updated at 2:08 AM on 02nd March 2010
"Scientists at the heart of the Climategate row were yesterday accused by a leading academic body of undermining science's credibility.
The Institute of Physics said 'worrying implications' had been raised after it was revealed the University of East Anglia had manipulated data on global warming.
The rebuke - the strongest yet from the scientific community - came as Professor Phil Jones, the researcher at the heart of the scandal, told MPs he had written 'some pretty awful emails' - but denied trying to suppress data.
On the spot: Professor Phil Jones being grilled by the Science and Technology committee in the Commons yesterday
The Climategate row, which was first revealed by the Daily Mail in November, was triggered when a hacker stole hundreds of emails sent from East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit.
They revealed scientists plotting how to avoid responding to Freedom of Information requests from climate change sceptics.
Some even appeared to show the researchers discussing how to manipulate raw data from tree rings about historical temperatures.
In one, Professor Jones talks about using a 'trick' to massage figures and 'hide the decline'.
Giving evidence to a Science and Technology Committee inquiry, the Institute of Physics said: 'Unless the disclosed emails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research and for the credibility of the scientific method.
'The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital.'
Last month, the Information Commissioner ruled the CRU had broken Freedom of Information rules by refusing to hand over raw data.
But yesterday Professor Jones - in his first public appearance since the scandal broke - denied manipulating the figures.
Looking pale and clasping his shaking hands in front of him, he told MPs: 'I have obviously written some pretty awful emails.'
He admitted withholding data about global temperatures but said the information was publicly available from American websites.
And he claimed it was not 'standard practice' to release data and computer models so other scientists could check and challenge research.
'I don't think there is anything in those emails that really supports any view that I, or the CRU, have been trying to pervert the peer review process in any way,' he said.
Professor Jones, who was forced to stand down as head of the CRU last year, also insisted the scientific findings on climate change were robust."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1254660/Climategate-expert-tells-MPs.html
Follow the money trail in ever central planning mandate they attempt force through as law to bleed us dry. Hope every one of them ends up exposed as (name the latest deception)-gate.
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"A perfect storm is brewing for the IPCC
The emerging errors of the IPCC's 2007 report are not incidental but fundamental, says Christopher Booker
By Christopher Booker
Published: 7:49PM GMT 27 Feb 2010
Source Telegraph.co.uk
"The news from sunny Bali that there is to be an international investigation into the conduct of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri would have made front-page headlines a few weeks back. But while Scotland and North America are still swept by blizzards, in their worst winter for decades, there has been something of a lull in the global warming storm – after three months when the IPCC and Dr Pachauri were themselves battered by almost daily blizzards of new scandals and revelations. And one reason for this lull is that the real message of all the scandals has been lost.
The chief defence offered by the warmists to all those revelations centred on the IPCC's last 2007 report is that they were only a few marginal mistakes scattered through a vast, 3,000-page document. OK, they say, it might have been wrong to predict that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035; that global warming was about to destroy 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest and cut African crop yields by 50 per cent; that sea levels were rising dangerously; that hurricanes, droughts and other "extreme weather events" were getting worse. These were a handful of isolated errors in a massive report; behind them the mighty edifice of global warming orthodoxy remains unscathed. The "science is settled", the "consensus" is intact.
But this completely misses the point. Put the errors together and it can be seen that one after another they tick off all the central, iconic issues of the entire global warming saga. Apart from those non-vanishing polar bears, no fears of climate change have been played on more insistently than these: the destruction of Himalayan glaciers and Amazonian rainforest; famine in Africa; fast-rising sea levels; the threat of hurricanes, droughts, floods and heatwaves all becoming more frequent.
All these alarms were given special prominence in the IPCC's 2007 report and each of them has now been shown to be based, not on hard evidence, but on scare stories, derived not from proper scientists but from environmental activists. Those glaciers are not vanishing; the damage to the rainforest is not from climate change but logging and agriculture; African crop yields are more likely to increase than diminish; the modest rise in sea levels is slowing not accelerating; hurricane activity is lower than it was 60 years ago; droughts were more frequent in the past; there has been no increase in floods or heatwaves.
Furthermore, it has also emerged in almost every case that the decision to include these scare stories rather than hard scientific evidence was deliberate. As several IPCC scientists have pointed out about the scare over Himalayan glaciers, for instance, those responsible for including it were well aware that proper science said something quite different. But it was inserted nevertheless – because that was the story wanted by those in charge.
In addition, we can now read in shocking detail the truth of the outrageous efforts made to ensure that the same 2007 report was able to keep on board IPCC's most shameless stunt of all – the notorious "hockey stick" graph purporting to show that in the late 20th century, temperatures had been hurtling up to unprecedented levels. This was deemed necessary because, after the graph was made the centrepiece of the IPCC's 2001 report, it had been exposed as no more than a statistical illusion. (For a full account see Andrew Montford's The Hockey Stick Illusion, and also my own book The Real Global Warming Disaster.)
In other words, in crucial respects the IPCC's 2007 report was no more than reckless propaganda, designed to panic the world's politicians into agreeing at Copenhagen in 2009 that we should all pay by far the largest single bill ever presented to the human race, amounting to tens of trillions of dollars. And as we know, faced with the prospect of this financial and economic abyss, December's Copenhagen conference ended in shambles, with virtually nothing agreed.
What is staggering is the speed and the scale of the unravelling – assisted of course, just before Copenhagen, by "Climategate", the emails and computer codes leaked from East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. Their significance was the light they shone on the activities of a small group of British and US scientists at the heart of the IPCC, as they discussed ways of manipulating data to show the world warming faster than the evidence justified; fighting off legitimate requests for data from outside experts to hide their manipulations; and conspiring to silence their critics by excluding their work from scientific journals and the IPCC's 2007 report itself. (Again, a devastating analysis of this story has just been published by Stephen Mosher and Tom Fuller in Climategate: The CRUtape Letters).
Almost as revealing as the leaked documents themselves, however, was the recent interview given to the BBC by the CRU's suspended director, Dr Phil Jones, who has played a central role in the global warming scare for 20 years, not least as custodian of the most prestigious of the four global temperature records relied on by the IPCC. In his interview Jones seemed to be chucking overboard one key prop of warmest faith after another, as he admitted that the world might have been hotter during the Medieval Warm Period 1,000 years ago than it is today, that before any rise in CO2 levels temperatures rose faster between 1860 and 1880 than they have done in the past 30 years, and that in the past decade their trend has been falling rather than rising.
The implications of all this for the warming scare, as it has been presented to us over the past two decades, can scarcely be overestimated. The reputation of the IPCC is in shreds. And this is to say nothing of the personal reputation of the man who was the mastermind of its 2007 report, its chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri.
It was in this newspaper that we first revealed how Pachauri has earned millions of pounds for his Delhi-based research institute Teri, and further details are still emerging of how he has parlayed his position into a worldwide business empire, including 17 lucrative contracts from the EU alone. But we should not expect the truth to break in too suddenly on this mass of vested interests. Too many people have too much at stake to allow the faith in man-made global warming, which has sustained them so long and which is today making so many of them rich, to be abandoned. The so-called investigations into Climategate and Dr Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann seem like no more than empty establishment whitewashes. There is little reason to expect that the inquiry into the record of the IPCC and Dr Pachauri that is now being set up by the UN Environment Programme and the world's politicians will be very different.
Since 1988, when the greatest scare the world has seen got under way, hundreds of billions of pounds have been poured into academic research projects designed not to test the CO2 warming thesis but to take it as a given fact, and to use computer models to make its impacts seem as scary as possible. The new global "carbon trading" market, already worth $126 billion a year, could soon be worth trillions. Governments, including our own, are calling for hundreds of billions more to be chucked into absurd "carbon-saving" energy schemes, with the cost to be met by all of us in soaring taxes and energy bills.
With all this mighty army of gullible politicians, dutiful officials, busy carbon traders, eager "renewables" developers and compliant, funding-hungry academics standing to benefit from the greatest perversion of the principles of true science the world has ever seen, who are we to protest that their emperor has no clothes? (How apt that that fairy tale should have been written in Copenhagen.) Let all that fluffy white "global warming" continue to fall from the skies, while people shiver in homes that, increasingly, they will find they can no longer afford to heat. We have called into being a true Frankenstein's monster. It will take a mighty long time to cut it down to size."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/7332803/A-perfect-storm-is-brewing-for-the-IPCC.html
Poor Pelosi can't see beyond her power grabbing arrogance.
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"Pelosi says GOP has hijacked 'tea party' movement
WASHINGTON – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is questioning whether the conservative "tea party" coalition truly represents a grass-roots movement.
In a broadcast interview, Pelosi calls tea party voters the "astroturf" movement........"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100228/ap_on_go_co/us_pelosi_tea_party
Sad we have to depend on foreign press to let us know what's happening here.
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"Debra Medina, new star of America's right, is firing up the race for Texas governor
Debra Medina of the Tea Party movement is making a Sarah Palin-like impact with policies stressing property rights and gun ownership
"Lytle is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it kind of town, one of hundreds that dot the vast flat ranchlands of southern Texas. A smear of houses by the main highway between San Antonio and Laredo. Population: 2,383. The first streets only got paved here in the years after the second world war. A sewage system took a little longer, not being built until the 1960s. In short, Lytle, Texas, has never been big enough to have much impact on the politics of the Lone Star state. And few Texas politicians have ever paid much attention to it.
Until Debra Medina, that is. When Medina breezed into Lytle's community hall the locals found themselves confronted with a Texan version of Sarah Palin. She wore a sharp scarlet skirt suit, librarian-style glasses and a puffed-up hairdo. More than 60 Lytle residents had gathered to meet her, a hefty turnout on a weekday at 11am for a Republican primary election in the race to be Texas governor. Medina has become a political phenomenon in Texas. Emerging as a genuine star of the rightwing populist Tea Party movement, she delivers a fiery message of slashing taxes and the abolition of almost all forms of federal government, and issues dire warnings that President Obama is taking America down a slippery slope to Soviet-style communism.
It's working. Previously unheard of by the vast majority of Texans, Medina has set the race for governor on fire, upsetting the primary contest between the incumbent, Rick Perry, and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.
Those gathered to see Medina in Lytle loved her. Young and old, men and women, Latino and white, listened with rapt attention as she outlined her agenda and asked them to back her in this week's first round of voting. If she can beat Hutchison into second place, she can secure a runoff against Perry. That would raise the possibility – distant but real – of a Tea Party activist capturing the government of the second biggest state in America. The Tea Party movement would have gone from being a bunch of ragtag protesters to heading one of the largest single economies in the world. "If we can change politics as usual in Texas, then we can change politics as usual across America. This is not just about Texas, but about changing the whole country," Medina told the Observer before addressing her supporters in Lytle.
She is not alone in that ambition. Across America other extreme candidates have emerged on the Republican right to challenge familiar party figures with a fiery mix of Tea Party-inspired populism. In Arizona, Senator John McCain is facing a tough re-election fight against a former congressman, JD Hayworth, who has expressed public doubts as to whether Obama was born a legitimate American citizen. In Florida the moderate Republican governor, Charlie Crist, is lagging badly in his own primary election to rightwing challenger Marco Rubio, who has the backing of local Tea Party groups.
On the right of US politics, this is big stuff. Instead of forcing mainstream Republicans to woo them for their votes, the rightwingers are now bidding for power. It is an attempt at revolution that could have huge meaning for America and the world, especially given the disastrous showing of Democrats in recent polls and elections. Medina knows this. After her speech she ended with a plea to her audience. "We can win this race," she said, then held up her hand and squeezed two fingers together. "It is this close."
Later that night, at a firemen's association hall in the much larger city of San Antonio, Medina's face stared down from a huge screen as she delivered a long policy monologue. To her audience she was the very antithesis of establishment power: a heroic revolutionary, out to destroy government and bring power to the people. "She is not a career politician. Everything she is saying will make Texas better than what it is," said Sergeant Shawn Mendoza, 30, a veteran of three tours to Iraq and Afghanistan. A few minutes later the flesh-and-blood version of Medina entered the hall. She got a standing ovation before she had said a word.
She began her stump speech again, still wearing the outfit she had in Lytle. But when it comes to speeches Medina is no Sarah Palin. She has no need to write on her hand to remember her talking points. Instead her speech was a complex walk through her extreme anti-government philosophy, citing sources as varied as the Austrian school of economics, St Augustine and modern French philosophers. She said she wanted to get rid of property taxes and allow Texans to do whatever they wanted with anything they owned, whether that was dig for oil or build an extension. There was, she said, no constitutional basis for a federal Department of Education or an Environmental Protection Agency or the Federal Reserve. Texas should assert its rights almost as a nation-state, controlling over its own National Guard units. The disdain for government was visceral. The American way, she said, was simple. "There are two rights essential to freedom: private property and gun ownership."
Such thoughts find fertile ground in Texas. This state has always had a swaggering, independent streak and a dislike for too many laws. Medina was born on a farm near the small town of Beeville in south Texas. She speaks with a homely Texas accent and worked as a nurse before entering politics at county level in the 1990s. Her bid for governor was largely ignored by the media as she crisscrossed the state for 13 months, visiting small town after small town. Gradually she crept up in the polls and forced her way into the televised debates, where she performed strongly. Campaign money began to pour in. One poll puts her as high as 24%, just behind Hutchison and within reach of catching her and forcing Perry into a runoff.
Medina believes she is not really in third place, citing the fact that the polls only telephone previous Republican primary voters, whereas she is bringing in thousands of new supporters. "I feel fantastic. I think we can win this," she said in Lytle.
Only once has Medina slipped up – in an interview she gave to the conservative radio host Glenn Beck. On his show Medina was asked if she thought the US government might have had a role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. She replied: "I don't." She then went on to expand disastrously upon that answer. "I don't have all the evidence there… I think some very good questions have been raised in that regard. There are some very good arguments and I think the American people have not seen all the evidence there, so I have not taken a position on that," she said.
Those comments provided ample ammunition for her political rivals. Her march forward in the polls was halted and some of her advances chipped away. The only time Medina appeared unnerved in Lytle or San Antonio was when a woman in the audience mentioned the Beck interview and asked her if she was a "Truther", in reference to the conspiracy theory that the government planted bombs to blow up the World Trade Centre. Medina looked flustered and started to answer before saying suddenly: "No! No!" and moving on to a new question.
But such areas are the home ground of the Tea Party movement. At almost any Tea Party event it is easy to meet Truthers or Birthers or those who believe Obama is a closet Stalinist or a Nazi or a Muslim fundamentalist or indeed all three together, no matter how blindingly contradictory such beliefs are. In San Antonio one member of the audience wore an Oath Keepers T-shirt. Oath Keepers are a group of veterans, soldiers or police officers who fear their own government is about to attack the American people or round up conservatives into concentration camps. The oath they have sworn to keep is to refuse to obey such orders. That sort of thing remains a fundamental problem for the politicians from the Tea Party seeking high office.
Calvin Jillson, a political scientist at Dallas's Southern Methodist University, believes the Tea Party can be understood as the latest in a long line of explosions of political rage in America. They include the Populist party that won elections in several states during the 1890s recession and the millions who voted for Ross Perot's presidential candidacy in the 1980s. "These things happen but they burn out like a prairie fire. We are in the middle of it right now but when the economy picks up it will fade away," Jillson said.
Yet the crowd in Lytle could not see any sign of economic recovery. Their rage did not feel like it would fade away. "I'm so mad, it's like chewing nails," said Lytle businesswoman Priscilla Squires, 60. She saw this week's primary as the start of fundamental change in America, while the experts say Medina's Tea Party will crash against the barricades of the ballot box. They are probably right. Yet Texas has always been a little different. "I don't think a Medina win is likely," said Jillson "But nothing is impossible. This is Texas after all."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/28/tea-party-debra-medina-texas
"Bank of America Gaming Government Loan Guarantees
Submitted by bmoreland on 02/26/2010 11:22 -0500
Source ZeroHedge.com
"I have long suspected that it was only a matter of time before banks began to adjust their Collection efforts to reflect Government Guarantees on their loan portfolios.
Simply put, imagine you are a bank with $100 billion in loans. Of this, $20 Billion is guaranteed by the government, $80 billion is your own money. If you managed the collection organization responsible for servicing this debt wouldn't you be just a wee bit tempted to make sure that your $80 billion was getting the priority?
The table below details the past 12 quarters of Total Loans for Bank of America along with the portion that is Noncurrent:
The Noncurrent percentage has jumped from 5.30% in Q3 to 6.75% in Q4. Quarter on Quarter there is another $12.44 Billion in Noncurrent loans.
The next table details the same 12 quarters and reviews what portion of the Noncurrent loans are guaranteed by the Government (er, you and me the taxpayer):
Bank of America has had a massive jump in the Noncurrent loans that are Governement Guaranteed. The Quarter on Quarter jump is... wait for it... $11.40 Billion.
So, magically, the incremental $12.44 Billion that has become Noncurrent Quarter on Quarter at Bank of America has a guarantee on $11.40 Billion. Nearly 92% of the jump in their Noncurrent loans are covered by us, the taxpayer.
This is no consipiracy theory discussion - these are cold hard facts supporting what any reasonable actor would do in the situtation. If the government is going to cover my losses on a portion of my loan portfolio I can well guarantee you I'd be moving my best collectors to the portfolio I'm responsible for. The government can have my new hires, my undesirables, my slow workers, etc...
I highly doubt that we'll ever hear about this, but this is yet another massive shift from the taxpayer to the banks."
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/bank-america-gaming-government-loan-guarantees
"Man who broke the Bank of England, George Soros, 'at centre of hedge funds plot to cash in on fall of the euro'
By Karl West
Last updated at 8:52 AM on 27th February 2010
Source DailyMail.co.uk
(photo) "The man about to break the euro? George Soros is said to be placing large bearish bets against the single currency
"A secretive group of Wall Street hedge fund bosses are said to be behind a plot to cash in on the decline of the euro.
Representatives of George Soros's investment business were among an all-star line up of Wall Street investors at an 'ideas dinner' at a private townhouse in Manhattan, according to reports.
A spokesman for Soros Fund Management said the legendary investor did not attend the dinner on February 8, but did not deny that his firm was represented.
At the dinner, the speculators are said to have argued that the euro is likely to plunge in value to parity with the dollar.
The single currency has been under enormous pressure because of Greece's debt crisis, plus financial worries in Portugal, Italy, Spain and Ireland.
But, it has also struggled because hedge funds have been placing huge bets on the currency's decline, which could make the speculators hundreds of millions of pounds.
The euro traded at $1.51 in December, but has since fallen to $1.34. Details of the secretive dinner emerged days after Mr Soros, chairman of Soros
Fund Management, warned in a newspaper article that the euro could 'fall apart' even if the European Union can agree a deal to shore up support for stricken Greece.
Mr Soros, who made more than $1billion by currency speculation when the pound was ejected from the Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday in 1992, believes the structure of the euro is 'patently flawed'.
(photo) Hitting back: Greek PM George Papandreou blames 'speculators' for preying on the country's troubles
He said: 'Makeshift assistance should be enough for Greece, but that leaves Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland.
'Together they constitute too large a portion of euroland to be helped in this way.'
He believes that unless the European Commission is given sweeping powers over taxation and spending, the single currency will always be vulnerable to financial turbulence in individual states.
'If member countries cannot take the next steps forward, the euro may fall apart,' he added.
Last night, Greek prime minister George Papandreou hit back at the 'speculators' who he blames for preying on the country's troubles.
Following a visit by EU economic inspectors and experts from the International Monetary Fund, he told the country's parliament that the worst fears about Greece's economy had been confirmed.
Greece is desperate to restore the confidence of investors in its debt after revealing that the previous government understated its budget deficit by half.
Outlining the precarious nature of Greece's finances, Mr Papandreou said: 'There is only one dilemma: Will we let the country go bankrupt or will we react?
'Will we let the speculators strangle us, or will we take our fate in our own hands?'
The Greek leader also called for more help from the EU with its debt crisis. Until now, the EU has offered political support but no bailout.
(photo) With friends like this: The cover of the German magazine 'Focus' this week, which shows the Venus de Milo giving the finger by a headline accusing Greece of swindling its way into the euro
(photo) Row: Greek daily Eleftheros Typos ran this depiction of the statue of the goddess Victoria, atop the Siegessaeule in Berlin, holding a swastika earlier this week in reaction to the Focus cover
But a row is still festering between Berlin and Athens over the crisis.
(photo) Tight spot: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the situation was 'difficult'
A Greek consumer group called for a boycott of German goods today after a German magazine blasted the country as 'cheats.
The new trade war came as Angela Merkel admitted the euro is in 'a difficult situation' for the first time.
She spoke as German magazine Focus ran a cover image of the armless Venus de Milo somehow raising her middle finger under the headline 'Cheats in the euro family' to suggest that Greece deliberately misled EU peers to swindle its way into the euro.
The cover sparked outrage in Greece, prompting the demands for a boycott. A Greek newspaper has also hit back, running an image showing the statue of the goddess Victoria atop the Siegessaeule in Berlin holding a swastika.
'The falsification of a statue of Greek history, beauty and civilisation, from a time when there (in Germany) they were eating bananas on trees is impermissible and unforgivable,' a statement from the Consumer Institute (INKA) said.
'Greeks are no crooks, we want the German government to condemn this most improper publication,' said INKA president George Lakouritis.
'If you have such friends, what do you need enemies for?'
INKA distributed leaflets in central Athens and in front of German-owned consumer electronics store Media Markt, urging Greeks to heed the boycott.
Merkel's government has so far deflected appeals to promise aid to heavily indebted Greece. Opinion polls show that a majority of Germans oppose a bailout.
Germany's ambassador to Greece, Wolfgang Schultheiss, said yesterday he regretted that German press reports caused offence. 'Germany is firmly on Greece's side,' Schultheiss said after being summoned by Greece's parliament speaker Filippos Petsalnikos.
But it wasn't enough for Mr Lakouritis. 'The ambassador's statements were not satisfactory,' he said.
Yesterday Mrs Merkel admitted that Greece's debt crisis has plunged the euro into a ‘difficult situation'.
The admission from the leader of Europe's biggest economy prompted fresh fears about the collapse of the single currency.
In the gravest sign yet of the international threat posed by Greece’s crippling debt crisis, Mrs Merkel warned for the first time that the eurozone faces a ‘ dangerous’ period."
Would be nice to have stock in companies which make printing presses for the Fed.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=alet_UTqF04M
A friend sent this. Mind boggling if it proves true.
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"Dropping the H-BombHow dangerous is a "herpes bomb"?
Amy Bishop
"News reports suggest that Amy Bishop, the biology professor who shot six of her colleagues at the University of Alabama-Huntsville on Feb. 12, may also have planted a "herpes bomb"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/us/21bishop.html?ref=us
in the building where she worked. Bishop conducted research on the virus as a post-doctoral fellow. Would a herpes bomb be dangerous?
Probably not. The herpes virus is fragile, minimally transmissible, and rarely deadly, which is why no government or terrorist group has ever made a herpes-based device, as far as we know. Herpes virions can't survive the heat of an explosion, and they don't spread well through the air. (Varicella, or chicken pox, is the only common member of the herpes family that can go airborne, but most adults are immune to the disease, so it wouldn't make a good weapon.) In order for a herpes bomb to make anyone sick, the virus particles would first have to survive the explosion and then be thrown into direct contact with a victim's mucosal surface, like the insides of his mouth or genitals, or into his eyes. They could also land on a wound or open sore, and thus enter his bloodstream directly. Plus, if Bishop's bomb hasn't gone off yet, it probably expired several days ago. Herpes can't last more than a couple of days outside the body at room temperature, even in a pH-balanced saline solution.
It's not easy to build a biological weapon, even if you do have a big enough supply of virus particles. Soviet and American experts spent years developing a form of Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis virus that could be deployed in a military context. They first had to derive a particularly tough strain. Then they formulated a chemical shell to protect it from the hot and dry explosion required to disperse the virus, and also to give it some added bulk so the victim's breath wouldn't blow it right back out after it landed inside the mouth, throat, or lungs. (The ideal diameter is between one and three microns. Herpes, like many viruses, is around one-tenth that size.) It is unlikely that an assistant professor with no professional experience in biological weapons development would have the expertise to accomplish these steps.
The anthrax letters of 2001—which seem to have been the work of a sophisticated scientist—were among a very small number of terror attacks in which aerosolized pathogens were used to infect the intended victims. Those with less expertise are better off using food- or waterborne pathogens. The Rajneeshees, a religious cult in Oregon, managed to infect 751 people in 1984 with Salmonella by contaminating restaurant salad bars. In any event, Bishop seems to have had enough experience to know that a bomb would be an impractical method of infecting her colleagues. Instead, she might have tried contaminating their laboratory equipment or pouring a saline solution containing the virus into their water bottles."
Explainer thanks Bryan R. Cullen of Duke University, Nishal Mohan of the Federation of American Scientists, Patricia Spear of Northwestern University, and Raymond Zilinskas of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies."
"Annals of Government Medicine
February 24, 2010 Posted by John at 9:55 PM
Patients were routinely neglected or left "sobbing and humiliated" by staff at an NHS trust where at least 400 deaths have been linked to appalling care.
An independent inquiry found that managers at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust stopped providing safe care because they were preoccupied with government targets and cutting costs. ...
Staff shortages at Stafford Hospital meant that patients went unwashed for weeks, were left without food or drink and were even unable to get to the lavatory. Some lay in soiled sheets that relatives had to take home to wash, others developed infections or had falls, occasionally fatal. Many staff did their best but the attitude of some nurses "left a lot to be desired".
Attitudes under socialism generally leave a lot to be desired.
The report, which follows reviews by the Care Quality Commission and the Department of Health, said that "unimaginable" suffering had been caused.
Unimaginable suffering--that pretty much sums up government-controlled medicine. That's our future, though, if the Democrats get their way. They care only about their own power, not about the quality of your medical care."
Is McCain the pharmaceutical conglomerate's latest sock puppet?
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The Codex Alimentarius Commission, organized by the United Nations in the 1960s, is charged with “harmonizing” food and supplement rules between all nations of the world. Under Codex rules, even basic vitamins and minerals require a doctor’s prescription. The European Union already has adopted Codex-type regulations, regulations that will be in effect across Europe later this year. This raises concerns that the Europeans will challenge our relatively open market for health supplements in a WTO forum. This is hardly far-fetched, as Congress already has cravenly changed our tax laws to comply with a WTO order.
Like WTO, CAFTA increases the possibility that Codex regulations will be imposed on the American public. Section 6 of CAFTA discusses Codex as a regulatory standard for nations that join the agreement. If CAFTA has nothing to do with dietary supplements, as CAFTA supporters claim, why in the world does it specifically mention Codex?
Unquestionably there has been a slow but sustained effort to regulate dietary supplements on an international level. WTO and CAFTA are part of this effort. Passage of CAFTA does not mean your supplements will be outlawed immediately, but it will mean that another international trade body will have a say over whether American supplement regulations meet international standards. And make no mistake about it, those international standards are moving steadily toward the Codex regime and its draconian restrictions on health freedom. So the question is this: Does CAFTA, with its link to Codex, make it more likely or less likely that someday you will need a doctor’s prescription to buy even simple supplements like Vitamin C? The answer is clear. CAFTA means less freedom for you, and more control for bureaucrats who do not answer to American voters.
Pharmaceutical companies have spent billions of dollars trying to get Washington to regulate your dietary supplements like European governments do. So far, that effort has failed in America, in part because of a 1994 law called the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. Big Pharma and the medical establishment hate this Act, because it allows consumers some measure of freedom to buy the supplements they want. Americans like this freedom, however – especially the health conscious Baby Boomers.
This is why the drug companies support WTO and CAFTA. They see international trade agreements as a way to do an end run around American law and restrict supplements through international regulations.
The largely government-run health care establishment, including the nominally private pharmaceutical companies, want government to control the dietary supplement industry – so that only they can manufacture and distribute supplements. If that happens, as it already is happening in Europe, the supplements you now take will be available only by prescription and at a much higher cost – if they are available at all. This alone is sufficient reason for Congress to oppose the unconstitutional, sovereignty-destroying CAFTA bill."
July 19, 2005
Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul261.html
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"Most are familiar with those commercials on television promoting prescription drugs that supposedly offer relief from a variety of ailments, if one would only pressure one’s doctor to obtain them. They have become a source of great entertainment and amusement to some, the kicker coming at the end of each commercial when the FDA-approved medication’s obligatory litany of warnings and dangerous side effects is recited: “Tell your doctor if....” and “Side effects may include.....” Some of the warnings are mild like diarrhea and constipation, some list serious effects like cancer or tuberculosis, and others admit that sometimes even death can result.
The point here is that these are all FDA-approved drugs being advertised and used extensively. Drugs that can cause serious diseases like lymphoma. Drugs that can kill. The FDA’s dismal safety record is well documented; even PBS ran a Frontline special that investigated and exposed the FDA’s unsafe drug record, the influence of Big Pharma inside the FDA, and lack of long-term testing and medical review of many, many dangerous drugs. The FDA seldom removes a drug from the market even after it proves to be harmful or deadly, however they do post quarterly reports with details of the latest potentially dangerous side effects of drugs currently under investigation.
Nonetheless, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) wants this same FDA, with its dismal safety record, to regulate dietary supplements. The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA), S. 3002 (text of this bill posted on Senator McCain's website), that McCain has introduced with one cosponsor, would repeal key provisions of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) to “more effectively regulate dietary supplements that may pose safety risks unknown to consumers.”
Under attack by the DSSA is the once-protected field of supplements, as they have always been considered food. Potencies would have to be reduced to comply with what appears to be a plan modeled after the European Food Safety Authority. A new list of “Accepted Dietary Ingredients” would be “prepared, published, and maintained by the Secretary,” in the future. That’s a bit like being handed a blank check and told to fill it out later as one wishes. It could certainly be used to severely limit access to, and even production of, hundreds of life-sustaining and essential mineral, herb, and vitamin products.
All ingredients contained in each supplement would have to be disclosed at the time the company registers all of its “manufactured, packaged, held, distributed, labeled or licensed,” products with the FDA. An onerous burden would be placed on the shoulders of suppliers and retailers of dietary supplements, as they would have to “obtain written evidence” from the seller that the product is registered as required by law, and keep that documentation on file. Monetary penalties for non-compliance “may, in addition to other penalties imposed in this section, be fined not more than twice the gross profits or other proceeds derived from the manufacture, packaging, holding, distribution, labeling, or license of such dietary supplement.” Those are very broad dictates and most likely subject to even broader interpretation.
The McCain bill would change existing mandatory serious adverse reporting regulations, requiring minor adverse effects to be reported as well so that the FDA could arbitrarily pull supplements off the shelves or reclassify them as drugs. This immediate recall authority would be granted to the “Secretary upon determination,” that there is a “reasonable probability” that the product is “adulterated” or “misbranded.” Adulterated in this bill takes on a whole new expanded definition: “A dietary supplement which contains a new dietary ingredient shall be deemed adulterated under section 402(f) unless there is a history of use or other evidence of safety.” The development of new products that contain newly discovered nutritional components may be entirely quashed.
The hypocritical contrast between the regulation of drugs that can kill and the proposed hyper-regulation for food products -- vitamins, minerals, herbs -- is as plain as the nose on everyone's face.
A Pandora’s box of intended and unintended legal complications and government harassment of nutritional supplement manufacturers and sellers could very well be unleashed if this bill is passed. There are already existing laws on the books that protect consumers from misbranded, fraudulent, or contaminated products. Granting the FDA additional regulatory authority over nutritional supplements seems a bit suspicious, especially considering the influence the enormous pharmaceutical industry has wielded over the research, development, and approval process inside the FDA. Let’s face it, the FDA has been no friend and often has been positively antagonistic toward the nutritional supplement industry. Therefore one wouldn’t set the wolf to guarding the sheep without dire consequences.
In this perverted overly-regulated country, food is now toxic, and drugs and chemicals are safe for ingestion, no matter the harm that results. This inversion should remind us that those who best have the consumers health and safety interests at heart are the consumers themselves. It is big government that has a proven track record of not protecting the public. And it is big government that is seeking to take away yet another individual freedom, the right to choose one’s own treatment. (Where is the pro-choice crowd on this one; the ones that claim, “my body, my choice?”)
Contact your federal legislators and urge them not to cosponsor, support, or vote for such a power-grabbing, bill. Let them know Americans want unrestricted access to nutritional supplements, and the government out of their health choices.
Sen. McCain described his bill as a “no brainer.” For constitutionalists it’s a “no brainer” that it should be rejected for the dictatorial, power-grabbing, choice-limiting attack on the nutritional marketplace and individual freedoms that it is."
http://www.jbs.org/health-care-freedom-blog/5957-proposed-dietary-supplement-regulatory-bill
Heads up, pay close attention as to what we may be on the hook to bail out. Yesterday I posted that AIG seems to be holding its hand out for another bail out due to guarantees written in Greece. Now this.
2010 elections are going to be very interesting indeed.
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Source The Market Ticker
Wednesday, February 24. 2010
Posted by Karl Denninger in Federal Reserve at 21:03
"Repeal Of Law Needed NOW
Watch this clip, right near the end. 4:30 into the clip onward.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urkJ2WCQ5R0
Yes, Ron Paul went off on quite the rant.
But that last minute......
The Federal Reserve has the authority to buy the debt of any foreign government, essentially obligating The US Taxpayer to bail them out!
Bernanke says he has no plans, but notice that he did not say they have never done such a thing.
Hmmm.... two-line bill to revoke that BS anyone?
Anyone?"
http://market-ticker.org/archives/2003-Repeal-Of-Law-Needed-NOW.html
Another opinion about the econonomy with charts. You decide.
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"The Ultimate Ponzi Scheme – FDIC is Backing $5.3 Trillion through the Deposit Insurance Fund that now has a Balance of -$20.8 Billion. FDIC has Cash and Marketable Securities of $66 Billion. Is that Really Enough to Back Every Account for $250,000?
Posted by mybudget360Greece is in severe financial trouble and if this information is correct our government has placed us on the hook to bail them out, along with other EU countries.
The entire article from Market Ticker deals with some metaphors which should not be taken out of context ..... therefore if you're a skim scanner with limited attention span don't bother. Otherwise it's a very good read for fiscal conservatives worried about the economic future of this nation.
Hmmmm .... while we're worried about Obamacare being shoved down our throats we won't notice another AIG bailout to bail out Greece and other EU countries now will we??????????????? Interesting timing indeed.
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Excerpted from The Market Ticker
".........You haven't seen the half of what happened though - not yet. It appears that AIG - the company we have bailed out (thus far) to the tune of some $100 billion plus, in fact isn't done. It appears they may have written credit protection on Greece. If this allegation by the German equivalent to The New York Times is true Americans are going to be asked to pay billions of dollars - or more likely, hundreds of billions (since Greece is almost certainly not the only place - try Spain, Portugal, Ireland, etc) to bail out a bunch of FOREIGN NATIONS.
Do you both think Americans can and will pay that bill? A bill that has been forced on us, and yet benefits not The United States economy, but foreigners?
Wars - big wars - start over much less, my friends.
Oh, and let's not forget - some 30% of Greece's workers went out on strike to protest their "austerity measures." That's right - one in three.
The Fed and our fabulous Treasury Secretary already gave tens of billions of our hard-earned money to foreign banks to prop them up via AIG. That was just a down payment; now we all get to - quite literally - buy all their houses over in Europe. They get to keep living in them. ........"
http://market-ticker.org/archives/1993-How-Long-Before-You-Wake-Up,-Politicos.html
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Sunday, February 21, 2010
"German Paper Says AIG May Have Sold CDS on Greece
Source NakedCapitalism.comFrom FAZ,. Note the text below, translated by EuroSavant, replaces an earlier GoogleTranslate version. You can read an English version of the entire article here.
http://www.eurosavant.com/2010/02/21/cds-just-another-evanescent-bubble/
In the larger scheme of things, this example shows how AIG could have, and probably did, serve to channel funds from the public at large to speculators.
London investment bankers name AIG as a further CDS-seller. That company had to be nationalized during the financial crisis due to its having written insolvency insurance on American mortgages. This debt-load would have led to the collapse of the world’s biggest insurer. Prior to the financial crisis AIG is said to have widely held State credit-risk. If yet-larger insurance positions on Greece exist, then the American government would have a strong interest in preventing that country’s insolvency.
Even if these are mere rumors about the Greek banks and AIG, this example makes clear the weakness of CDS markets. This protection is sold by banks or insurers who themselves have access only to limited capital resources. They have as a rule clearly lesser credit-worthiness than the states for which they are selling insolvency protection. Insurance by CDS could turn out to be just a bubble."