ARTICLE: For the Government Cheese Lovers

Gift: President Obama receives a Green Bay Packers jersey bearing Charles Woodson's name from Wisconsin governor Scott Walker (centre) and Green Bay mayor James Schmitt in Wisconsin today

President Obama’s rallying cry for Americans to pull together quickly unravelled today as government economists revealed the biggest budget gap in U.S. history.  The weak economy and a new round of tax cuts will push up the U.S. deficit this year to almost $1.5 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

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ARTICLE: Social Security fund slides into permanent deficit

"It means that Social Security is increasingly adding to our long-term fiscal problem, and it's happening now," said Eugene Steuerle, a former Treasury official who is now a fellow at the Urban Institute think tank.  It's a bad time for the nation to be hit with more financial problems. The federal budget deficit will surge to a record $1.5 trillion flood of red ink this year, congressional budget experts estimated Wednesday, blaming the slow economic recovery and a tax cut law enacted in December.

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ARTICLE: Paper Money Madness - Inflation-Fueled Economic Growth Does Not Indicate That An Economy Is Getting Stronger

Imagine if suddenly everyone in the United States had the amount of money they owned instantly doubled. Would the U.S. economy be twice as healthy? Of course not. Very quickly prices would rise to meet the new level of money.  Well, in the United States today our "authorities" are pumping massive amounts of new dollars into the system. That is one reason why so many people are so upset about the Federal Reserve's "quantitative easing 2" program.


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ARTICLE: Internet Shut Down Amid Egypt Protests; Social Outcry Strengthens

This Internet restriction seems to be in response to the massive growth of social networking and the direct impact it has had on mobilization against “a regime that is not listening, is not acting,” according to opposition leader, and Nobel Peace laureate, Mohamed ElBaradei.  Friday is set to intensify as a groundswell of support for social change has been charted by social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook, which showed exponentially increased traffic before revealing a sharp decrease that indicated the cutoff.

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ARTICLE: Egypt - Internet down, police counterterror unit up

Internet service in Egypt was disrupted and the government deployed an elite special operations force in Cairo on Friday, hours before an anticipated new wave of anti-government protests.  The developments were a sign that President Hosni Mubarak's regime was toughening its crackdown following the biggest protests in years against his nearly 30-year rule.

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ARTICLE: Internet Down in Egypt

The Associated Press reported from Cairo that internet access went dark ahead of what are expected to be huge protests Friday against 82-year-old President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule. E-mails Threat Level sent to sources in Cairo went unanswered. And links to Egyptian-based blogs we’ve been following are not available.


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ARTICLE: Spy Networks to be Given Immunity

New York Republican Peter King has introduced a bill that would protect the army of citizen spies Homeland Security hopes to recruit under Janet Napolitano’s “See Something, Say Something” snoop campaign from lawsuits brought by innocent people wrongly accused of being terrorists or extremists.

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REPORT: Panel Spreads Financial Crisis Blame

A group tasked with investigating the financial crisis for Congress has reportedly heaps blame on former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, his predecessor Ben Bernanke and Wall Street executives in a report to be released on Thursday.

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ARTICLE: Wall Street Partying in Davos as Crisis Angst Fades

Banks will be spending on parties. JPMorgan upgraded its cocktail reception to the Kirchner Museum from last year’s event at the Tonic Piano Bar at Hotel Europe Davos. Bank of America’s Moynihan and the firm’s other top executives will meet clients for drinks on Jan. 27 at the Steigenberger Grandhotel Belvedere -- the same night Morgan Stanley’s Mack is hosting a private dinner at restaurant Gasthaus in den Islen. Standard Chartered Plc and Deutsche Bank AG are both hosting events at the Belvedere the following night.

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ARTICLE: F.A.A. Official Scrapped Tape of 9/11 Controllers' Statements

At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that same day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said in a report today.  The taping began before noon on Sept. 11 at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center, in Ronkonkoma, on Long Island, where about 16 people met in a basement conference room known as "the Bat Cave" and passed around a microphone, each recalling his or her version of the events a few hours earlier.


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ARTICLE: 9/11 "black box" cover-up at Ground Zero?

“The CVRs and FDRs from American 11 and United 175” - the two planes that hit the Trade Center - “were not found.”  And officials for the FBI - which oversaw the cleanup at Ground Zero - and the New York City Fire Department repeated this week that the devices were never recovered.  The “black boxes” - actually orange - could have provided valuable new information about the worst terror attack to ever take place on American soil.  “It's extremely rare that we don't get the recorders back. I can't recall another domestic case in which we did not recover the recorders,” Ted Lopatkiewicz, spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, told CBS News in 2002. However, officials said little of the jets was recovered.


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ARTICLE: U.S. says U.N. expert should be fired for Sept 11 remarks

U.S. academic Richard Falk wrote in a blog this month that there had been an "apparent cover-up" by U.S. authorities over the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which hijackers flew airliners into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon near Washington, killing more than 3,000 people.


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ARTICLE: Billionaire Movers

Billionaires haven’t been sitting still in the start of this new decade. Eric Schmidt, who recently stepped aside as Google’s CEO to become chairman, received a $100 billion equity award as he filed to sell a small portion of his large stake in Google.


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ARTICLE: Unusual Wave of Violence Strikes Police Officers

One possible explanation for the spike in shootings is that many police departments increased their emphasis on executing arrest warrants against repeat violent offenders.  Mr. Wexler and several senior police officials said they also believed that the shootings reflected a broader lack of respect for authority in American society.

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ARTICLE: Bullish Paulson Gains $1 Billion On Citi Stake

A few years ago, hedge fund manager John Paulson made billions when he bet the housing market would collapse. Now, he’s made $1 billion betting on a bank that perpetuated the housing bubble.  "In addition to maneuvering our investment strategy based on where we are in the economic cycle, a large part of our success has been based on anticipating market events before they are generally recognized."

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ARTICLE: 1,000 tax haven subsidiaries of the top 20 companies

The biggest corporations are unlikely to be evading tax in the same way as individuals, but through their networks of subsidiaries they can structure their affairs to avoid tax.

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ARTICLE: Tough times for men and women in blue

“Florida has never seen a streak like this. I don’t think anybody has.”  “They are shooting at people they know have guns,” Johnson said. “I don’t know what’s going on out there, but I’ve never seen it like this. I do see the developing of a callousness. It’s almost as if shooting a police officer has lost its shock effect.”

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ARTICLE: UK's top 20 companies have 1,000+ offshore subsidiaries

"When Barclays boss Bob Diamond confirmed that the bank had about 300 subsidiaries in tax havens there were gasps of dismay at a Treasury Select Committee hearing earlier this month..."

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ARTICLE: Black Star News, Investigative Paper, Reports on Guyanese Immigrant's Struggle for Her Business

Christine Persaud built a multi-million dollar business from scratch in 1997 in Queens, New York. She has been tangled in dispute involving the business but she's confident pending investigations which were reported on in The Black Star News, that full control will be restored to her



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ARTICLE: 20 Things That You Should Not Read If You Do Not Want To Become Very Angry

While it certainly does not hurt to "stay positive" and to "have faith" when there is some basis in reality for doing so, but what the mainstream media is asking us all to do is to stick our heads in the sand and to pretend that all of our horrific economic problems are not even there.  Until we recognize exactly what our problems are and how bad they have gotten we will never be able to come up with the appropriate solutions.

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ARTICLE: Genetically modified crops are the key to human survival, says UK's chief scientist

It is estimated that by 2030 more than 60% of the population will be living in cities and will no longer be involved in growing crops or raising domestic animals. And on top of that the world's population is getting more prosperous and able to pay for more food."


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ARTICLE: Another Expert “Speaks Out" regarding 9/11 and Controlled Demolition

"You don’t get to those temperatures with scattered office fires or even jet-fuel-fed office fires. You get to maybe half that temperature.”  In addition to pointing out that jet fuel burning in open air is unable to create these phases, Dr. Farrer goes on to address the theories proposed by those who claim that some of the physical evidence we see was created during the clean-up of Ground Zero after 9/11.

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ARTICLE: 'Prince of Mercenaries' who wreaked havoc in Iraq turns up in Somalia

The project, which emerged yesterday when an intelligence report was leaked to media in the United States, requires Mr Prince to help train a private army of 2,000 Somali troops that will be loyal to the country's United Nations-backed government. Several neighbouring states, including the United Arab Emirates, will pay the bills.


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ARTICLE: Corporate and Congressional Disasters

Corporate crime and wrongdoing is an everyday fact of life in the United States and around the world. Still, the last year has been remarkable for a series of high-profile, deadly corporate disasters: the BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe that killed 11 workers and spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the deadly explosion at Massey's Upper Big Branch mine and unintended acceleration of Toyota cars.

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ARTICLE: Would the isolation of America persuade Obama not to veto?

If the US endorses the Whitewash Israeli inquiry into Israel’s deadly attack on the Free Gaza Flotilla last May, we’ll know that the prospects of Obama putting America’s own interest first at crunch time are very, very remote, to say the least.  A veto would protect Obama from the wrath of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress. But it would also propel America further down the road to isolation, perhaps to the point where, like Israel, it was regarded as a pariah state by much of the world. Can Obama or any American president really afford that?

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VIDEO: We have two economic and financial Americas

One of poverty and advancing poverty and one of sumptuous wealth. The top 20% own 93% of financial assets, which could be the seeds of upheaval. The average family is one or two weeks away from starvation and debt collapse. How do you make up the difference working 34.3 hours a week as gasoline rises from $2.50 to $3.50 a gallon and the price of food advances 50%? If you do not own gold and silver related assets to offset these increases you are just plain screwed.

VIDEO: Inside Story - The new variable in Haiti

He acknowledged that under his regime, people were assassinated and suffocated - and expressed his sadness. It's not clear why Duvalier is back, but there's no doubt his presence muddies the waters of a country already mired in deep political turmoil.

ARTICLE: "An area the size of Germany and France combined is under water."

Cost estimates for the physical and economic damage of the floods are estimated as high as $13 billion, but analysts caution that the real impact won't be known for some time. The floodwaters lapping through the streets of Brisbane aren't expected to peak until Thursday, and the forecast for above average rainfall continues for the next few months.


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ARTICLE: So Where, Exactly, Did Lehman’s $130 Billion Go?

Lehman had $6 trillion of derivatives. But if they included credit default swaps, they were presumably hedged with offsetting positions, so the notional amount would way overstate real exposures. And another portion was probably plain vanilla stuff like interest rate swaps, which would not have a lot of latitude for pricing disputes.


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VIDEO: Wayne Madsen: Rahm Emanuel’s Family Ties to Mossad, and His Links to The Chicago Mob

Editor and journalist Paul Joseph Watson, talks to investigative journalist and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report, Wayne Madsen about Rahm Emanuel and his ties to mossad & the Chicago Mob.

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ARTICLE: Which Of The Currencies Of The World Is Going To Crash First?

The biggest reason for this is the horrific sovereign debt crisis that has swept the globe.  The United States, Japan and a whole host of European nations are all drowning in debt.  The U.S. and Japan are both steamrolling toward insolvency, and several European nations would have already defaulted on their debts if they had not been bailed out. 

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ARTICLE: JP Morgan Makes Big Bucks from Food Stamp Growth, Then Hires Workers in India with Our Tax Dollars

JP Morgan is the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States. JP Morgan has contracted to provide food stamp debit cards in 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. JP Morgan is paid for each case that it handles, so that means that the more Americans that go on food stamps, the more profits JP Morgan makes. Yes, you read that correctly. When the number of Americans on food stamps goes up, JP Morgan makes more money. In the video posted below, JP Morgan executive Christopher Paton admits that this is "a very important business to JP Morgan" and that it is doing very well. Considering the fact that the number of Americans on food stamps has exploded from 26 million in 2007 to 43 million today, one can only imagine how much JP Morgan's profits in this area have soared. But doesn't this give JP Morgan an incentive to keep the number of Americans enrolled in the food stamp program as high as possible?

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ARTICLE: Chinese Silver Demand Surges Incredible Four Fold in Just One Year

Chinese and most Asians have experienced the decimation of their life savings through currency debasement and hyperinflation and unlike westerners understand the importance of owning gold and silver.  Besides huge demand for silver as a savings vehicle and a store of value in China, there is also very significant industrial demand in China and internationally.

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ARTICLE: Temperature rises in the silver market

Silver tends to shadow the yellow metal. But it magnifies gold's moves in both directions, as the silver market is much smaller than its gold counterpart. Both gold and silver should continue to benefit from the "ever-declining level of faith in the integrity of the global financial system", says Gluskin Sheff's David Rosenberg.

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ARTICLE: Why the silver price is set to soar

Precious metals remain the most undervalued of all the asset classes. Precious metals, and particularly silver, remain the most undervalued of all the commodities. Silver is even more undervalued than gold and is undervalued when compared to other strategic commodities such as oil and uranium.


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ARTICLE: Did the Poor Cause the Crisis?

Acemoglu’s assessment of recent research on lobbying is that parts of the private sector wanted financial rules to be relaxed – and worked hard and spent heavily to get this outcome. The impetus for a big subprime market came from within the private sector: “innovation” by giant mortgage lenders like Countrywide, Ameriquest, and many others, backed by the big investment banks. And, to be blunt, it was some of Wall Street’s biggest players, not overleveraged homeowners, who received generous government bailouts in the aftermath of the crisis.


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ARTICLE: Sorry, Americans: Goldman kicks U.S. clients out of Facebook deal

The financial services giant said Monday that it will only be offering shares to its non-U.S. clients, a decision it attributed to the "intense media attention" the deal has attracted since it came to light earlier this month.  Keeping its Facebook coup out of the U.S. market could help Goldman steer clear of tricky questions from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which is probing the fast-growing "secondary" market for shares of privately held companies.



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ARTICLE: Facebook raises $1.5 billion

The Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) deal has two parts. The first is a $500 million investment from Goldman Sachs directly, several of the funds it manages, and Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian investment group that already owned a chunk of Facebook.  The second is a $1 billion investment from Goldman Sachs' weathy individual clients.

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ARTICLE: Facebook was the top search term in 2010 for second straight year

Social network search term tops list for fifth straight year;  Facebook top-visited Website for first year


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WEBSITE: Where is the money?

"We reported that DoD processed $1.1 trillion in unsupported accounting entries to DoD Component financial data used to prepare departmental reports and DoD financial statements for FY 2000."


David K. Steensma

Acting Assistant Inspector General

for Auditing for the DoD

US Dept of Defense (DoD)

February 26, 2002


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WEBSITE/ARTICLES: The Missing Money - Trillions of Dollars are missing from the U.S. Government

Trillions of dollars are missing from the US government. What's going on? Where is the money? How could this happen? Where are the checks and balances? How much more has gone missing? What would happen if a corporation failed to pass an audit like this? Or a taxpayer? Who is responsible for this? Would your banks continue to handle your bank account if you behaved like this? Would your investors continue to buy your securities if you behaved like this? Learn more in the articles below.


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ARTICLE: Did Blackwater Founder Fund Somalia’s Pirate Fighters?

In 2008, Blackwater announced it was “ready to assist the shipping industry,” with a .50-cal-equipped pirate-hunting ship fashioned out of an oceanographic research boat. Alas, those plans got knocked off course as crewmembers began suing the company for discrimination. Did Prince want one more shot at the pirates and the terrorists — and the government paychecks?



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ARTICLE: Taliban Made Us Wipe Village Out

Danger Room raised questions yesterday about how the 1-320th knew for sure that it didn’t kill any civilians, as it didn’t clear the village ahead of the bombardment. Gunhus declined to talk about Tarok Kolache in significant detail. But he said generically that when troops encounter villages filled with improvised explosive devices, they’ll have “stacked” information from surveillance eyes overhead and local villagers on the ground convincing them that civilians aren’t present before they “reduce” an area.


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ARTICLE: Swiss Court Reverses Award of Duvalier Millions

“This is a public relations disaster for Switzerland,” said Mark Pieth, a Swiss professor with a long resume in international corruption cases such as the U.N. oil-for-food scandal.  In the decision, the Federal Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s ruling that the money should have gone to aid groups working in the impoverished nation because the statute of limitations on any crimes committed by the Duvalier clan would have expired in 2001.

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ARTICLE: The Mines and Minds Are in China

If you look at China’s rare earth industry, you will see that it has undergone a major transformation. China, which once focused on exporting rare earths in their raw forms, has shifted its end goal from production to innovation. In the 1970s, China was just exporting rare earth mineral concentrates. By the 1990s, it began producing magnets, phosphors and polishing powders. Now, it is making finished products like electric motors, batteries, LCDs, mobile phones and so on.

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ARTICLE: Path Is Sought for States to Escape Debt Burdens

Unlike cities, the states are barred from seeking protection in federal bankruptcy court. Any effort to change that status would have to clear high constitutional hurdles because the states are considered sovereign.  But proponents say some states are so burdened that the only feasible way out may be bankruptcy, giving Illinois, for example, the opportunity to do what General Motors did with the federal government’s aid.

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VIDEO: Americans abandoning dollar to bank with China?

Chinese president Hu Jintao has called the US dollar dominated world currency a product of the past, indicating moves to eventually make the Yuan a new global bill. American customers can now open an account with The Bank of China, one of the country's main state owned lenders, and swap their dollar for Yuan.

VIDEO: DEATH OF THE DOLLAR... & BULLION CONFISCATION?

A must-listen interview with Jeff Nielson.

ARTICLE: Can the U.S. Compete on Rare Earths?

China's recent embargo on shipments on the crucial minerals to the United States, Europe and Japan raised new concerns about Beijing's monopoly, and added urgency to efforts by other countries to develop their own source of the minerals, for which demand is growing.

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ARTICLE: Is Law School a Losing Game?

His secret, if that’s the right word, is to pretty much ignore all the calls and letters that he receives every day from the dozen or so creditors now hounding him for cash.




“And I don’t open the e-mail alerts with my credit score,” he adds. “I can’t look at my credit score any more.”  Mr. Wallerstein, who can’t afford to pay down interest and thus watches the outstanding loan balance grow, is in roughly the same financial hell as people who bought more home than they could afford during the real estate boom. But creditors can’t foreclose on him because he didn’t spend the money on a house. He spent it on a law degree. And from every angle, this now looks like a catastrophic investment.

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ARTICLE: China Seizes Rare Earth Mine Areas

The agency, the Ministry of Land and Resources, invoked a seldom-used mining law to take direct control of 11 rare earth mining districts in southern China.  The ministry said in a statement, posted on its Web site Wednesday and briefly mentioned Thursday by the state media, that rare earth mining in those districts, all at the southern end of Jiangxi Province, had been placed under its national planning authority.

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ARTICLE: Obama Misinforming Public About U.S. Dollar and Yuan

President Obama's comments on Wednesday in a joint press conference with Chinese President Hu Jintao, misinformed the public about potential changes in foreign exchange rates and their effects on U.S. citizens. Obama on Wednesday said that he would like to see the Chinese yuan appreciate faster in value. While Hu indicated that China is committed to allowing the free market to better dictate the value of the yuan, Obama said China is implementing their steps to allow the yuan to appreciate "not as fast as we'd like."


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VIDEO: The Black Consumer Claude Anderson [www.blackbusinessownership.com].mp4

Dr. Claud Anderson The Black ConsumerBlack Business Ownership

ARTICLE: What's causing North African unrest?

“Tunisia for example, and north Africa as a whole, is highly linked to the eurozone markets in Europe. They depend on the European market to export goods and energy and services.  “The problems in the eurozone have decreased the amount of exports from Tunisia,” continued Abu-Ismail, “and the effect on the Tunisian industrial sector is huge. " He added that Europe, which has its own economic issues, could no longer continue its role as a major destination for the unemployed of North Africa.

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ARTICLE: The yuan or the dollar, which would you bet on?

The Chinese government is making a big push to raise the stature of its currency. Hardly anyone uses it outside China. But, with China's economy now the second largest, authorities here are actively encouraging business people to use the yuan. The government is allowing Chinese companies to conduct some international business in yuan. 

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