News

Non tutti sanno che: per la vergogna, nelle classifiche internazionali non viene indicata la percentuale di italiani che vive al di sotto della fascia di povertà (provate a mettere "below the poverty line" e "Italy" nei motori di ricerca...)

Per uscire dalla crisi: 10.000 euro a tutti, subito - come anticipo sulla restituzione del signoraggio...Yes We Can!

Italia 2008: 307 miliardi di euro, il 53,36% delle entrate, il costo del pizzo del signoraggio BCE [+ di 10k euro x famiglia]

Appuntamenti

- 5th annual AMI 2009 Monetary Reform Conference - Roosevelt University in Chicago, Sept. 24–27, 2009

- Convegno VERSO LA MONETA DEL BENESSERE Come uscire dalla finanza distruttiva - CEN SER, V.le Porta Adige, 45, ROVIGO, dalle 15,00 alle 19,30, domenica 8 marzo 2009

- AMI: Free Monetary Seminar in Chicago at Roosevelt University on Wednesday evening, March 4th, 6:30 PM at the Spertus Room, 2nd floor: "How our ridiculous banking and monetary system brought down the US and World economies"

The G20 Must Discuss Monetary Reform at its 2nd April Meeting and We Must Make Sure It's On Their Agenda

Attualità di febbraio 2009  
Since early 2007 76 banks have "imploded"
Since late 2006 70 major builders have "imploded" - plus 49 additional tiny implosions
Since late 2006 at least 109 funds at 66 outfits have "imploded"

Monete "altre"         Moneta Democratica: il primo passo necessario per la liberazione dell'Europa

How mobile phone banking is empowering the poor - by: Natasha Elkington, Reuters AlertNet, 13 Feb 2009
M-PESA, which was set up by Vodaphone and funded through DFID, now has 5 million users in Kenya, more than all the bank accounts. It is being expanded to support salary payments, bill payments and social benefit payments (this can be a good tool to expand the local currency business model)

Il Grembo, Villaggio della Decrescita Felice - Stargate per la transizione o scialuppa di salvataggio? - di Luca Boccalatte, 20 Febbraio 2009
Il centro costituirà laboratorio per la conservazione e la propagazione delle abilità artigianali in via di estinzione, e si proporrà come “propulsore” per la nascita di nuovi Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale e per servizi di scambio del tempo (anche promuovendo l’utilizzo dei buoni SCEC) e di condivisione delle risorse (car pooling, ecc.)

Chinese offered consumer tickets - By Olivia Chung, Asia Times, Feb 14, 2009
The local government issued 100 million yuan worth of coupons for low-income families before the lunar new year, an important two-week holiday which this year ran from January 26. Sales of Hangzhou-made home appliances doubled during the holiday period compared with the same period last year, according to local officials. Four big shopping malls received 1.52 million yuan worth of coupons, redeemed against 5.4 million yuan worth of goods, one said. A 65-year-old Hangzhou native named Zhang said he and his family used coupons worth 300 yuan at a supermarket on January 24 when the coupons took effect, buying traditional coats and ingredients for the New Year's Eve dinner - an important reunion occasion for families.. The city's senior Communist Party official Wang Guoping told a conference this month that local civil servants might receive part of their wages in shopping vouchers, according to a Metropolitan Express report on February 9. "They are to receive about 5% to 10% of their wages in the form of shopping vouchers," Wang was quoted as saying. The mayor and Wang "will take the lead and all civil servants will follow", he said

Japan to issue Government currency ?
Japan Finance Chief May Consider No-Interest Bonds - By Keiko Ujikane and Matthew Benjamin, Bloomberg, Feb. 18, 2009
Operation DEMAGNETIZE: FIRST, under Shoichi Nakagawa the Liberal-Democrat Party proposes to issue sovereign state notes (debt-free currency as the old JFK 'United States Notes' and the old Italian 'Biglietti di stato a corso legale'); SECOND, Shoichi Nakagawa is dismissed as minister under 'appearing drunk at G7 in Rome'...; THIRD, the newly appointed minister Yosano dismissed the LDP proposal for the government to print money as a “a futile idea.” Can you connect the dots?
Appointed Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano, suggests considering additional economic measures [including Government currency and zero interest bond] - Asahi Shimbun,  February 17 2009 (ore locali 23:43)

(VIDEO 1) (VIDEO 2) (VIDEO 3) (VIDEO 4)
Japan To Issue Government (versus Bank of Japan) Currency? - By: Darrel Whitten, dbFX, February 10, 2009
Government issues of paper currency are not that unusual in history. During the Meiji Era (1868-1912), the government issued what were called "dajokansatsu" bills to pay for the Boshin War from 1868 to 1869. The Japanese government also printed "gumpyo" military script during the Russo-Japanese War and both world wars, while the US government printed bills to fund FDR's "New Deal" to combat the Great Depression during the 1930s. Some academics have been calling for such an issue for over 10 years
MPs step up clash with Bank of Japan - By Michiyo Nakamoto in Tokyo, Financial Times, February 5 2009
A plan to print some Y50,000bn ($546bn) worth of a new currency to fund pump-priming projects has been drawn up by influential politicians in Japan in a sign of desperation in the ruling Liberal Democratic party over the country’s failing economy. To be released on Friday, the proposals to issue government notes come amid rising frustration among politicians with the independent Bank of Japan. It has been reluctant to bow to pressure to run the yen printing presses faster to stimulate the economy. The group wants Y30,000bn of the new money to fund programmes supporting new industries and infrastructure projects, including doubling the size of Tokyo’s Haneda airport. The remaining Y20,000bn would be earmarked for government purchases of stocks and real estate [the BOJ seigniorage masters will switch to panic mode...]
The temptation of dollar seigniorage - By Kosuke Takahashi, AsiaTimes, Jan 23, 2009
Seigniorage is the revenue that a government raises by printing money. Suppose it costs one dollar to print a US$100 bill. As long as the world deems this bill worth $100, the US government receives the revenue of $99 every time it prints out a $100 bill (the difference being an approximation of the costs related to producing the bills) and circulates it to the markets at home and overseas. This is a perquisite of the US under the present world currency system. Neither Europe nor Japan, among other major economies, can enjoy the benefits of seigniorage globally because the euro and the yen have not become international settlement currencies

Bin Report n°2 - dicembre-gennaio 2009
Basic Income Network Italia - Associazione per il Reddito di Cittadinanza

 
Gasoline is expensive on the economy in Europe. The NATO Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) allows the sale of fuel coupons to authorized members of the NATO forces free of local country taxes on a controlled basis. Gas coupons are used primarily to buy gas on the economy to help defray some of the cost. Gas coupons are not expected to cover leisure activities and vacations. Italy rations gasoline to employees stationed there: 300 liters per month for most vehicles. Gas coupons are used at AGIP and some ESSO stations; they can only be purchased in Italy (Se sei un militare della NATO ti danno 300 litri di benzina al mese esentasse pagabili con la loro "moneta locale": i "NATO coupon" e la "US Forces fuel ration card", esentasse nell'area EURO)

Proposta di Banca per il Baratto con Monete Virtuali - Gianni Degli Antoni, Facebook, 16 febbraio 2009

PREPARE FOR THE BEST - By Paul Glover, City Paper (Philadelphia, Pa.), January 28, 2009
MONEY: Give yourselves credit. Dollar power dwindles because dollars are backed by less than nothing: rusting industry and $10 trillion debt. So we'll print real money -- neighborhood currencies -- backed by real people. Next Steps: Mutual enterprise systems (neither Wall Street nor Red Square) celebrate the spirit of regional enterprise when it serves community and nature. They applaud innovations -- public and private and personal -- that meet real needs. Local trading credits based on local land, skills, time and tools refresh the economy. Poverty is lack of networks more than lack of dollars, and Philadelphia has thousands of networks -- business, professional, technical, fraternal, neighborhood, church, union, electoral, senior, youth, racial, sexual, athletic, hobby, family, friends. Woven together they're a powerful base of regional trust, trade and wealth. Take your pick of neighborhood and sector currencies. Cities may not issue them but may accept them for taxes. Local Heroes: Philadelphia's 83 credit unions, Valley Green Bank, e3bank, Equal Dollars, barter exchanges and gift economy, Philadelphia Regional and Independent Stock Exchange, Philadelphia Fund for Ecological Living (PhilaFEL)

Private Coinage - by Murray N. Rothbard
How would private coinage work? In the same way, we have said, as any other business. Each minter would produce whatever size or shape of coin is most pleasing to his customers. The price would be set by the free competition of the market (Control of money decides who lives well, who works, whose house is built and repaired, who gets health care)

In onda RADIO "DANEE", MONETA COMPLEMENTARE MENEGHINA - 16 febbraio 2009

Pearls Before Breakfast - By Gene Weingarten, Washington Post, April 8, 2007
Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let's find out. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend? [experiment proves that people accept nothing as valuable unless the the elite package and approve it for them]

Declaration of the Assembly of Social Movements at the World Social Forum, January 27th - February 1st, 2009, Belem Brazil . Spectrezine, February 10, 2009
We must contribute to the largest possible popular mobilisation to enforce a number of urgent measures such as:
"Nationalising the banking sector without compensation and with full social monitoring
"Reducing working time without any wage cut
"Taking measures to ensure food and energy sovereignty
"Stop wars, withdraw occupation troops and dismantle military foreign bases
"Acknowledging the peoples' sovereignty and autonomy ensuring their right to self-determination
"Guaranteeing rights to land, territory, work, education and health for all
"Democratise access to means of communication and knowledge.

The Future of Money? With the Economy a Wreck, Alternative Currencies Could Gain Traction - by Jeff Ignatius, Reader, 04 February 2009
They're called Liberty Dollars, and they're part of a movement called "community currencies," or "alternative" or "competing" and "complementary" currencies. And with the economy seemingly getting worse each day, you're likely to hear a lot more about them

WSF Belem: concluso il World Social Forum, gli obiettivi e l'agenda dei movimenti - UniMondo, 02 Febbraio 2009
Durante il Forum è stata sperimentata la "moneta sociale" Amazonida - riporta Monica di Sisto che ha svolto per FairWatch diversi reportages da Belem. "Il 'capitale che assicura il valore della moneta è una quantità di prodotti custoditi in uno spazio chiamato "ecobanca". I produttori conferiscono un capitale di prodotti e ricevono Amazonida che consentono loro, innanzitutto, di scambiare altri prodotti e materia prima, e in secondo luogo, permettono ai partecipanti al Forum di prendere contatto con una realtà importante ed emergente in Brasile, come in tutta l'America latina"

World Social Forum adopts ‘alternative currency’ - AFP, January 31, 2009
Claudia Leite, explained as she received a handful of notes printed with Brazilian flora and fauna: “I believe in another economy, a fairer form of trade.”


Amazonida: la moneta sociale sfida il Forum - Megachip, 03/02/09
Il Forum sociale mondiale sceglie di sperimentare una moneta locale, ben accetta e ben funzionante, almeno nei 400 stand che accolgono gli oltre 1000 produttori dell'economia solidale presenti a Belém. La moneta sociale Amazonida, che vale 1 reais, in realtà, è qualcosa di più di una colorata "moneta del Monopoli" con cui giocare a comprare artigianato e cibo...

Banco solidário cria moeda especial para o Fórum Social - Por Fátima Alexandre, Faces do Brasil, 30/01/2009
"Amazônida" é uma das palavras que vem chamando atenção dos participantes do Fórum Social Mundial (FSM), que acontece em Belém, no Pará


Banco Tupinambá: iniciativa da economia solidária no FSM - Pulsar Brasil, 30/01/2009
O debate "Crédito Solidário para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável na Pan- Amazônia" trouxe ao Fórum Social Mundial a experiência do Banco Tupinambá, o primeiro banco comunitário do estado do Pará

Mosqueiro terá programa de crédito - O Liberal, 14 de Janeiro de 2009
Os clientes do Banco Tupinambá também terão direito a cartão de crédito popular, abertura de conta-corrente, recebimento de contas e boletos bancários e pagamento de benefícios do INSS e aposentadorias


Economia, reagire si può: Arcipelago Scec - di Alessandro Cascia, Ghigliottina, 2 Febbraio 2009
Intervista a Gianfranco Florio, uno dei fondatori di Arcipelago SCEC

The LiQUIDity Network - FEASTA, January 2009
The name "feasta" is an Irish word which means "in the future". Feasta believes that a radical monetary reform is one of the keys to sustainability. The new exchange system will be owned and controlled by the participants as it is they who give its units their value. It is envisaged that the users will elect a management committee which will operate under a trust deed setting out the basis on which the system is to be run. It is also envisaged that the management committee will hire a contractor to operate the system from day to day or, if the commercial banks become involved, pay a fee for the use of their systems


"Istituzione di magazzini o luoghi di deposito pubblici, dai quali, accertato il valore approssimativo delle merci consegnate, si rilascerebbe un documento o bono simile a un biglietto bancario, ammesso alla circolazione e allo sconto, tanto da render capace l'Associazione di poter continuare nei suoi lavori e di non essere strozzata dalla necessità d'una vendita immediata e a ogni patto"
"The establishment of public magazines and depots in which the approximate value of the goods or merchandise consigned having been ascertained, the Associations should receive a document or receipt negotiable in the manner of a bank-bill, by which means the Associations would be enabled to carry on their affairs without the ruinous necessity of an immediate sale without regard to prices."
- Giuseppe Mazzini, I doveri dell'uomo, 1860

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CSM NEWS          We are opposed around the world by a monolithic ruthless conspiracy - J.F. Kennedy

Il silenzio è mafioso - Beppe Grillo, 28 Febbraio 2009
Ieri il blog ha pubblicato un'intervista a Gioacchino Genchi che accusa servizi segreti e politici di essere coinvolti nella morte di Falcone e Borsellino. Genchi non è uno qualunque. E' l'uomo che secondo Berlusconi Silvio ha intercettato 350.000 italiani. La più grande spia della Storia dopo Mata Hari.Sapevo che le reazioni alle parole di Genchi, le più pesanti che io abbia mai sentito contro quello che ci ostiniamo a chiamare e pensare Stato, potevano essere solo due. Farlo passare per mitomane o il silenzio assoluto, mafioso di tutti i giornali e i canali televisivi. L'omertà ha prevalso

Se l'informazione non esiste, facciamoci noi informazione. Ci vuole un nuovo CLN. Un Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale dell'informazione. Quanto all'origine delle fortune di Berlusconi, che incamerò a cavallo fra gli anni Settanta e Ottanta  centinaia di miliardi di lire di provenienza ignota, i sospetti della Procura sono condivisi dal Tribunale... "non è stato possibile risalire... all'origine, qualunque essa fosse, lecita o illecita, dei flussi di denaro investiti nella creazione delle holding Fininvest". Ma il lettore che conosce ormai qualcosa del sistema della riserva frazionaria, se non ancora la storia vera di Carlo Ponzi, avrà già indovinato...

Chiarezza su Gioacchino Genchi - Antonio Di Pietro, 28 Febbraio 2009
I cittadini non sapranno, ad eccezione di quelli che l’informazione se la vanno a cercare piuttosto che farsela somministrare dai professionisti del torpore mediatico. Le dichiarazioni contenute in questo video sono pesanti e delle due l’una, o Gioacchino Genchi deve rispondere della gravità delle sue parole o le porte del carcere si devono aprire a molti illustri personaggi. Conosco Genchi, è una persona onesta (ndw: le persone cui si riferisce Genchi fanno parte della combriccola che ha contibuito a mantenere in piedi la truffa del debito pubblico e signoraggio privato, ai danni della popolazione italiana per oltre 60 anni. Non è che l'inizio)

SULL’ USURA, IL SIGNORAGGIO, IL DEBITO PUBBLICO E ALTRE FRIVOLEZZE - Marco Della Luna intervistato da Amanda Incardona, 28 Febbraio 2009
Non chiederti “di chi è la colpa?”. Chiediti “di chi è l’interesse?”. A chi ha giovato, e a chi giova, la cosiddetta unità d’Italia? Effettivamente il Regno delle Due Sicilie era progredito e aveva un suo equilibrio socio-economico, una sua efficienza. E’ vero che fu saccheggiato e degradato dai Savoia e dagli affaristi che stavano dietro di loro. E che poi fu abusato e degradato dal sistema politico dell’Italia “unita”. Ma non è stato degradato solo il regno, bensì anche la mentalità della gente e la sua capacità organizzativa e lavorativa...

Trial by jury returns to Japan and the lawyers aren't happy - Richard Lloyd Parry, The Times, February 28, 2009
Sixty years after being abolished by the wartime military Government, trial by jury is back and it is dividing Japan. Lawyers are worried about adapting their methods, Japanese at large seem horrified by the prospect of jury duty and judges have denounced the change as destructive tinkering.
— In Germany jury trials were abolished in 1924 because cases were thought to be too complex for juries of lay people
— France has not restored its jury system since it was abolished during the German occupation in 1941. A panel of judges and jurors sits in the higher courts
— In the US lawyers provide questionnaires of up to 100 pages to vet jurors
— South Korea introduced juries last year. (la giuria popolare è un diritto conquistato con la Magna Carta e permetterebbe al popolo di giudicare direttamente i grandi criminali odierni, i gestori del racket del signoraggio privato, che da 60 anni sfuggono *misteriosamente* alla giustizia ordinaria)

WHAT WE MUST DO -- FINAL PART - Rachel's Democracy & Health News #1000, February 26, 2009
The environmental movement has now sundered into two camps:
Camp 1. Those who understand that the modern corporation operates largely beyond the control of national governments (which was the main impetus behind the corporate "globalization" project and the creation of the World Trade Organization) and is the out-of-control behemoth chiefly responsible for destroying the planet as a place suitable for human habitation;
vs.
Camp 2. Those who are captivated or bedazzled by the corporate form and draw nourishment from it, as suckling piglets draw nourishment from their sow

US: "Interaction with State and Local Fusion Centers: Concept of Operations" - December 2008 (released by Secrecy News)
The Department of Homeland Security has produced a new "Concept of Operations" to define how the Department will support and oversee the network of dozens of "fusion centers" (= concentration camps) that have been established around the country.  The fusion centers are intended to promote a collaborative approach among federal, state and local authorities to combating terrorism and criminal activity ( = indoor usurykeeping operations to deal with social unrest). From another perspective, there is "not enough terrorism" to justify the creation and maintenance of the fusion center system. "There is, more often than not, insufficient purely 'terrorist' activity to support a multi-jurisdictional and multi-governmental level fusion center that exclusively processes terrorist activity," according to Sacramento police officer Milton Nenneman.  ("Fusion Centers Face 'Insufficient' Terrorist Activity," Secrecy News, June 3, 2008)

Un gruppo di deportati pronti per il nuovo programma di "eutanasia economica"

Usurykeeping in Afghanistan: the NATO report - MASTER NARRATIVE AS AT 6 October 2008
The Policy Action Group (PAG) was created in July 2006 at President Karzai’s behest to focus Afghan and international effort on fostering improved security within the responsibility of Regional Command (South). The PAG is Afghan-led, is supported by NATO/ISAF, UNAMA, World Bank, EU and G8 lead nations and meets bi-weekly. It has 4 working groups on security, intelligence, strategic communications and R&D

Italy’s protection of Malta against Gaddafi ‘caused’ two massacres - The Malta Independent, 8-feb-2009‎
According to Pazienza, who recently gave an interview to Milena Gabanelli that was published in La Repubblica, this is what led to the terrorist attack at the railway station of Bologna on 2 August 1980 and also to the disappearance of an Alitalia plane over Ustica some time earlier (Vedi anche: Strage Bologna, 38 deputati firmano mozione per rimuovere segreto di Stato)

LE COOPERATIVE ARGENTINE: AUTOGESTIONE OPERAIA E FABBRICHE SENZA PADRONI - Carlo Lallo
Il movimento neocooperativistico argentino nasce all’indomani del drammatico “crash” del sistema economico argentino determinato dalle politiche liberiste messe in campo dal governo Menem sotto dettatura dell’FMI negli anni ‘90, e della conseguente dissoluzione del tessuto sociopolitico che ha interessato l’Argentina in un periodo di interregno durato per ben due anni tra il 2001 e il 2003. I prodromi di questo movimento cominciano a manifestarsi già nel 1996 con i primi fenomeni delle imprese recuperate, quando alcuni collettivi di lavoratori decisero di occupare le fabbriche fallite e riattivare i macchinari ricominciando la produzione sotto autogestione operaia (con la nazionalizzazione delle banche è possibile impedire il ricatto bancario sulla forza-lavoro)

MARK SCHAPIRO AT PENN STATE - By Peter Buckland, 3E-COE.blogspot.com, February 19, 2009
[Rachel's introduction: The European Union's precautionary approach to the natural environment is driving innovation -- and gaining economic leadership -- the world over. Lack of environmental regulation is causing the U.S. to fall behind economically.]

Let's Talk About the Highly Radioactive Waste - CommonsNews.org, February 20, 2009
"Fortunately, we can use some tools to help with this impasse. One, the 'First Rule of Holes,' instructs that if one finds oneself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. Another tool is the much-underrated Precautionary Principle, which basically says that if a technology poses dire risks to the health and safety of people or the environment, it should not be implemented."

Cancer Questions Grow Around Fermi Nuclear Plant in Michigan - Michigan Messenger, February 17, 2009
"Those who create a poison are responsible for demonstrating that it is safe (this is the Precautionary Principle in public health)," Mangano told Michigan Messenger in an e-mail exchange. "But instead of utilities and the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] conducting studies, they set an arbitrary limit of radiation emissions and exposure, and declare any levels below this to be 'safe.'

Obama’s Stimulus Bill is a Banker Contrived Debt Scam - Kurt Nimmo, Infowars, February 26, 2009
It is a scam designed to turn you into a share cropper, a peasant, a modern day version of a serf indebted to international bankers

Majority Of U.S. States Join Sovereignty Movement, Assert 10th Amendment Rights - New World Liberty, February 25, 2009
A private corporation owned by a small group of people, who own over half the world’s wealth, control our currency and monetary policy through the Federal Reserve. They also have such power over the world as a whole through the World Bank, IMF, most other national central banks, numerous well-funded non-government organizations, and numerous corrupted government officials

Ron Paul Grills Bernanke: "You Can’t Reinflate The Bubble" - Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet.com, February 25, 2009
“This is the end of an era,” said the Congressman, “we can’t reinflate the bubble….if we think that we can reinflate this bubble by artificially creating credit out of thin air and calling it capital, believe me we don’t have a prayer of solving these problems - we have a total misunderstanding of what credit is versus capital.”

Expectancy of riots leads authorities to prepare for mass civil unrest - Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet.com, February 23, 2009
Urban warfare training drills are taking place across the country as top analysts as well as officials predict a potential “summer of rage” across Europe and America as civil unrest from the economic fallout builds. Earlier this month, 150 U.S. troops from the U.S. Special Operations Command whizzed around the streets of New Orleans in military helicopters and even dropped bombs in what officials described as a “training event”

Soldati americani si stanno preparando per missioni di UsuryKeeping

The Alex Jones Show - L I V E - With Edwin Vieira (mp3) - PrisonPlanet, Feb 24, 2009
Alex welcomes back to the show Dr. Edwin Vieira, the world’s most foremost authority on the role of the Constitution as it relates to money. Viera is the author of How to Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary and Pieces of Eight: The Monetary Powers and Disabilities of the United States Constitution

SAVE OUR CHILDREN: LEGALIZE DRUGS - By Frosty Wooldridge, NewsWithViews.com, February 26, 2009
After the first 12 interviews with my brother Police Officer and Detective Howard Wooldridge of Lansing, Michigan (retired) concerning the "War on Drugs," more and more Americans understand the underpinnings of how the U.S. government protracts a national taxpayer fraud. At this time, over 10,000 judges, sheriffs, cops and thousands of citizens belong to www.leap.cc or Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. After 39 years of a failed Drug War policy and 30 million citizens that served time in prison for simple drug possession, this organization educates citizens toward a more plausible future for Americans

The Marijuana Trick - Doug Yurchey, 2005
Where did the word 'marijuana' come from? In the mid 1930s, the M-word was created to tarnish the good image and phenomenal history of the hemp plant...as you will read. The facts cited here, with references, are generally verifiable in the Encyclopaedia Britannica which was printed on hemp paper for 150 years

Ex-Treasury official confirms gold suppression scheme - CHRIS POWELL, GATA, February 24, 2009
In an essay published today at Counterpunch.org, former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts confirms that the U.S. government has been leasing gold to suppress its price and support the dollar. The admission is made in the last paragraph of the essay, which is appended

The Euro, an illusory shield against crisis? - By Clotilde Mathieu, Spectrezine, February 24, 2009
The crisis shows up the very serious defects in the original conception of the euro. Entirely obsessed as they were with the stability criteria put forward by financial markets, those that championed its creation in 1999 were aiming first at a "strong euro" in the hope of luring as much capital as possible to the European market. Hence the curb on public spending (with the Maastricht treaty), and the pressure on wages through the deregulation of labour markets that diminished labour's negotiating power. "The euro has brought war over exchange rates to an end, but it has exacerbated competition over prices," rightly claimed Jean-Paul Fitoussi, president of the Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques (French Observatory of the overall state of the economy)

WHY STATES ARE SHUNNING AKA's "STIMULUS" MONEY - By Lynn Stuter, NewsWithViews.com, February 24, 2009
If a state, county or municipality accepts a grant, the recipient finds themselves subject to a virtual spider-web of laws that cannot be escaped. The effect is truly that of a fly trapped in a spider web, unable to extricate itself from the sticky mess in which it finds itself entrapped. Entrapping states, counties and municipalities, forcing them to subjugate to federal regulation is the stick that comes with the carrot of federal money

[USurykeeping Operations] "Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2008," - CRS Report, February 2, 2009
Hundreds of times in the last 210 years, the United States has deployed its military forces in conflicts abroad, although the U.S. has only formally declared war on eleven occasions. A newly updated tabulation of those military deployments -- which do not include covert actions, disaster relief, or military training exercises -- has recently been prepared by the Congressional Research Service.  A copy of the updated report was obtained by Secrecy News

Naomi Klein Interview - By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, February 2009
In 2000, she became an instant sensation when she published No Logo, which served as a manifesto for the anti-corporate, global justice movement. After that, she chronicled the rebellion against neoliberalism in Latin America. With her husband, Avi Lewis, she made a film called The Take, which is about autoworkers in Buenos Aires who occupy their idle factory. A columnist for The Nation and The Guardian, Klein published the monumental book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism in 2007, which systematically refutes the claim that democracy and free markets are inseparable. In part, the book is a history of U.S. imperialism since the overthrow of Allende’s Chile. And in part, it’s an exposé on how Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics, the U.S. Treasury, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank all do the bidding of U.S. corporations and banks, especially in times of crisis

Orwellian Doublethink: "Nationalize the banks." "Free Markets." - by Prof. Michael Hudson, Global Research, February 23, 2009
The language of deception. The rhetoric of "free markets," "nationalization" and even "socialism" (as in "socializing the losses") has been turned into the language of deception to help the financial sector mobilize government power to support its own special privileges. Having undermined the economy at large, Wall Street’s public relations think tanks are now dismantling the language itself. The popular media should not let them get away with it

On Transparency of the Fed - Ron Paul, 02-23-2009
The Federal Reserve controls the flow of money and credit in our economy because Congress has abdicated its responsibility over the nation’s currency. This process therefore occurs centrally, and almost completely outside the system of checks and balances. Because of legal tender laws, people are left with no real choice, except to build their lives and futures around this monopoly currency, vulnerable to powerful central bankers (la stessa cosa la possiamo dire per la "Banca d'Italia", la "BCE", etc.)

Book: The Emperor Wears No Clothes - By Jack Herer, 2006
This book tell about the impact of cannabis on the US economy. Hemp was legal tender (money) in most of the Americas from 1631 until the early 1800s. American farmers were by law encouraged to grow more. One could pay own taxes with cannabis hemp throughout America for over 200 years


US: Individual States Declaring Sovereignty - By NWV News writer Jim Kouri, February 23, 2009
While the mainstream news media are hyping President Barack Obama's election and the dismal economic downturn in the United States, more and more states are declaring -- or have already declared -- sovereignty. According to political experts such as strategist Mike Baker, Americans are becoming disenchanted with the federal government's lack of perspective on issues of great concern -- illegal aliens, crime, economic turmoil -- while intruding into the private lives of citizens with gun-control laws and other intrusions... "That this serve as a Notice and Demand to the federal government to maintain the balance of powers where the Constitution of the United States established it and to cease and desist, effective immediately, any and all mandates that are beyond the scope of its constitutionally delegated powers."

Bank Julius Baer millions of USD in trust for Mexican mass murderer and drug trafficker Arturo Acosta Chaparro, 1998 - Wikileaks, February 23, 2009
Bank Julius Baer trust records for Arturo Acosta Chaparro, an infamous former Mexican police chief who was responsible for the disappearance of 140 detainees in Guerrero and who was convicted of drug-trafficing. He was accused of organising the seizure, torture and murder of peasants who were suspected of helping the rebels and, with particular persistence of overseeing 'flights of death' in which well-tortured detainees were taken up in helicopters and pushed out over the ocean while still alive

The Galvin Report: Audit of 160 EU Parliament members, 2008 - From Wikileaks, February 23, 2009
The "Galvin Report", formally known as Internal Audit Report no. 06/02 of the European Parliament Internal Audit Service. The report, named after Robert Galvin, head auditor, and whose name appears on its front cover, was initially written at the end of 2006 as an audit of the expenses and allowances claimed by a sample of more than 160 MEPs. The existence of the report was kept secret until an updated version in February saw the fact of its existence made public by Chris Davies MEP. Even then, its contents remained secret. An analysis of the report has been prepared by the UK-based Tax Payers Alliance, who concurrently released another version of report, before removing it from their website. Their analysis is included in this archive. (In my opinion, the corruption that arise from the great euro-seigniorage scam "MATRIX Treaty" is sooooooo big that we need a special Court like the Star Chamber. The Star Chamber - Latin: Camera stellata - was an English court of law that sat at the royal Palace of Westminster until 1641. It was made up of Privy Counsellors, as well as common-law judges, and supplemented the activities of the common-law and equity courts in both civil and criminal matters. The court was set up to ensure the fair enforcement of laws against prominent people, those so powerful that ordinary courts could never convict them of their crimes. Court sessions were held in secret, with no indictments, no right of appeal, no juries, and no witnesses. Evidence was presented in writing)

Secret report reveals how MEPs make millions - By Jonathan Oliver, Times Online, February 22, 2009
A LEAKED internal report has revealed systematic abuses by Euro MPs of parliamentary allowances that enable them to pocket more than £1m in profits from a single five-year term, writes Jonathan Oliver. The auditor’s confidential report, suppressed by the Brussels parliament, discloses the extraordinary frauds used by MEPs to siphon off staff allowances funded by taxpayers

Dialogue: Economic Empowerment through Mobile - Vodafone
Much has been claimed for the ability of mobile networks to extend communications and consequently help the poor of developing countries participate in economic activity. This is a complicated theory to test and some have questioned its validity. They point out that it is primarily the relatively affluent people in the developing world who can afford mobile and therefore that the technology may actually increase the gap between rich and poor in the developing world

UBS Indictment, United States Disctrict Court, Case No  CR-ZLOCH  (pdf) - Cryptome, February 20, 2009

Gunther Russbacher, CIA. ONI Discusses the S&L Crisis [text & video] - RMNews, 23 February 2009
Admiral Gunther K. Russbacher was a 30 plus year veteran of the CIA and the Office of Naval Intelligence. Our Current Banking Crisis is a Replay of the S&L Scandal but on STEROIDS !

"In Italy I worked with counter revolutionaries and counter terrorists groups in liaison with Italian intelligence staff and Carabinieri. Our objective was Lotta Continua. The Brigate Rosse, I infiltrated the groups to review and construct funding for our own purposes so we could use them for our purposes. However, all that went sour. I was in Milan during the catastrophe, when they blew up the [Bologna] train station and all those people died. Also I was on the train going north to Trieste as they bombed the train out from underneath us. I worked out of the US consular general's office in Genoa, held Swiss and German passports under Gerhard Miller and Wagner. I was attached to black consular operations, a special operations group.""

Models and Pseudo-models: Economists' Artifice - by Prof. John Kozy, Global Research, February 22, 2009
Classical/neoclassical economics has now held sway for more than two hundred years, and mathematical models have been built to support it for at least half of that time. But the basic consequences of the theory have not changed materially. The cycles of boom and bust continue to reoccur. Wealth is created and then destroyed. People get jobs and lose them; get homes and lose them; save money and lose it. It is an idiotic system. How would we describe a person who built an edifice in a part of a river's floodplain that is inundated every year or so and watched his edifice disappear during each flood but continued to rebuild it in the same place? Didn't Einstein call doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result a form of insanity? The most difficult thing to explain is why apparently intelligent people are either unable or unwilling to recognize the idiocy

Debito pubblico: 1983 - 1988 sei anni di denunce, sei anni di comizi radicali (Youtube video)
BANCAROTTA FRAUDOLENTA: lo scandalo del debito pubblico

Come la banca riduce in bancarotta l'intera società (Youtube video)
Solo delle menti "confuse" possono pensare di dover "salvare" - invece che processare - gli azionisti delle banche

Did you know that there is an explicit bailout clause in the Maastricht Treaty? - EuroIntelligence, 18.02.2009
There you have it, Article 100, section 2 is the Bailout Clause. Nobody needs to circumvent any laws. If, or rather when, Ireland evokes exceptional circumstances beyond its control, there will be a meeting of finance ministers, which by a qualified majority will decide on a bail out Ireland

Economic Crisis: How the Current Financial Rescue Schemes are Following the Failed Model of the Hoover Administration - by Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, Global Research, February 21, 2009
Faced with the financial meltdown of the Great Depression, the Hoover administration created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation that poured taxpayers’ money into the coffers of the influential Wall Street banks in an effort to save them from bankruptcy. Like today’s Bush/Obama administrations, the Hoover administration used the “too-big-to-fail” scare tactic in order to justify the costly looting of the national treasury. All it did, however, was to simply postpone the day of reckoning: almost all of the banks failed after nearly three years of extremely costly bailouts schemes

An Impending Geopolitical Earthquake? - by José Miguel Alonso Trabanco, Global Research, February 21, 2009
It turns out that several European States (some with both NATO and European Union membership) are already facing sociopolitical complications that have been triggered by their severe financial and economic difficulties (lack of credit, unemployment, currency depreciation, external debt, GDP negative growth). If their situation deteriorates further, an eventual deployment of NATO troops in one or more of its members' territory is not unconceivable at all. The official purpose would be the preservation of political stability. The unofficial (and real) goal would be to prevent NATO-friendly governments from collapsing. Iceland, Romania, Hungary, Greece, Poland and even Italy and France are in a particularly dire position. According to Der Spiegel, Britain itself (the very cradle of modern finance) is "on the brink of financial ruin"

MONETIZE THIS! A BETTER WAY TO FUND THE STIMULUS PACKAGE - by Ellen Brown, OpEdNews, 2/21/09
If the Fed Can “Monetize” Private Debt, It Can Monetize Public Debt. The Fed has been a hotbed of radical, experimental activity in the past year.  Ben Gisin is a former banker who has long been tracking the Fed’s statistical releases.  He says he has never seen anything like it.  Assets have been magically appearing on the Fed’s balance sheet, and they are not coming from any traditional source...

CUMULATIVE IMPACTS: DEATH KNELL FOR COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS - By Peter Montague, Rachel's Democracy & Health News, February 19, 2009
Introduction: The impacts of our various economic activities are now adding up to a damaged world -- a world in which Earth's natural capacity for self-renewal has been exceeded and permanent degradation is evident. Our legal and regulatory systems were never intended to limit the accumulation of small impacts. Instead, U.S. law relies on cost-benefit analysis to justify individual impacts -- a practice that is now obsolete because it is destroying the planet as a place suitable for human habitation

Bailouts, Stimulus Packages or Redistribution of Assets? - By Deanna Spingola, 19 February 2009
To establish a world government, it is necessary to incrementally eradicate the constitution, bring the U.S. to her knees economically, and shackle the taxpayers to perpetual debt through bailouts and stimulus packages funded by printing billions of dollars of interest and debt-bearing Federal Reserve Notes to drastically devalue the currency in circulation thus impoverishing the taxpayers. The only benefactors are the extant banks, certain corporations and the individuals who concocted the financial disaster

Reform the Monetary System - by Mike Whitney, Global Research, February 18, 2009
A Review of Richard Cook's book "We Hold These Truths"

Il salvataggio bancario, un brutto scherzo goliardico - di Marco Saba, 16 febbraio 2009
Il cosiddetto salvataggio delle banche non può che essere definito altrimenti, alla luce del fatto che nel nostro sistema sono le banche a creare dal niente la moneta legale e creditizia, attraverso il meccanismo del "cinquantato credito" che deriva dal sistema della "riserva frazionaria" al 2% (According to LEAP/E2020, there is only one very small launch window left to prevent the worst case scenario from shaping up: the next four months, before summer 2009. Practically speaking, the April 2009 G20 Summit is probably the last chance to put on the right tracks the forces at play, i.e. before the sequence of UK and then US defaults begin. Failing which, they will lose their capacity to control events, including those in their own countries for many of them; and the world will enter this phase of geopolitical dislocation like a “drunken boat”. At the end of this phase of geopolitical dislocation, the world will look more like Europe in 1913 rather than our world in 2007)

In the summer of 1942, it was proposed to create a ghetto bank, with each resident receiving a fixed amount of money depending in which of five categories such resident belonged.  The currency was designed by Peter Kien and printed by the National Bank in Prague.  The other side of the scrip contains the printed signature of Jakob Edelstein as the "Eldest of the Jews in Theresienstdat."  The notes are dated January 1, 1943, but did not go into circulation until May, 1943

Bin Report n°2 - dicembre-gennaio 2009
Basic Income Network Italia - Associazione per il Reddito di Cittadinanza

Ben Shalom, Yigal and Yitzhak Sabato, Negative income tax and its effect on the labor market and the social security system - 5th International Research Conference on Social Security: Social security and the labour market: A mismatch?, 2007
The various plans to battle poverty among, and encourage employment of, poor working families include a grant to low-wage workers’ families that is known as negative income tax (NIT) or tax credit. The aim of this measure, implemented in various countries, is to provide adequate compensation to the working poor, to decrease poverty while increasing employment at the same time. Chapter 3 relates to fundamental matters that precede the implementation of NIT and details the alternatives that are currently being discussed and their possible application to Israel

Proposal: "The Mortgage Equity-Equalization Program" ; End Foreclosures. Empower Individual Homeowners - Global Research, February 14, 2009
How to Turn “Toxic” Assets Into Valued Assets Saving both the homeowners and the banks

If Government Can Create Money from Nothing, Why Are We Still Paying Taxes? - By Mike Adams, Natural News, February 11, 2009
End the IRS, let everybody keep the money they earn, end the stresses of April 15th, and end all the billions of dollars wasted on filing taxes, paying accountants to crunch numbers and paying government employees to figure out if those numbers were crunched correctly (the question is: if we could make it ourselves be why are we and every other nation on earth borrowing it at compound interest from merchant bankers who seem to want us dead?)

The De Moneta of Nicholas Oresme and English Mint Documents - Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd, New York, 1956
From the Mises Institute, DE MONETA (1360 a.d.) Tractatus de Origine, Natura Jure, et Mutacionibus Monetariae compositus per Magistrum Nicolaum Oresme Sacre Theologie Professorem. Nicholas maintained that money is the property of the community, not of the ruler, and that, therefore, the ruler has an obligation to preserve the purity of coinage and may not debase it. De moneta is not always a realistic reflection of late medieval economy, but it became very popular in the 17th century

DIAMO IL VOTO ALLE BANCHE - Eugenio Benetazzo, 12 febbraio 2009
Il giudizio di Presunzione di Affidabilità è stato emesso in base all'analisi di molteplici parametri che consentono di soppesare le politiche commerciali attuate dalle rispettive banche e dal grado di rischio che l'istituto potrebbe sviluppare nei prossimi mesi (tenendo presente che, ovviamente, sulla base della riserva frazionaria sono tutte insolvibili)

Crisis movie: The Take (La Toma, 2004) Youtube (1/9) (2/9) (3/9) (4/9) (5/9) (6/9) (7/9) (8/9) (9/9)
Armed only with slingshots and an abiding faith in shop-floor democracy, the workers face off against the bosses, bankers and a whole system that sees their beloved factories as nothing more than scrap metal for sale. With The Take, director Avi Lewis, one of Canada's most outspoken journalists, and writer Naomi Klein, author of the international bestseller No Logo, champion a radical economic manifesto for the 21st century. But what shines through in the film is the simple drama of workers' lives and their struggle: the demand for dignity and the searing injustice of dignity denied. You better be prepared...


A Bailout for the People: Dividend Economics and the Basic Income Guarantee - By Richard C. Cook

Financial Coup d’Etat - Catherine Austin Fitts, The Solari Report, February 2, 2009
In the fall of 2001 I attended a private investment conference in London to give a paper, The Myth of the Rule of Law or How the Money Works: The Destruction of Hamilton Securities Group. The presentation documented my experience with a Washington-Wall Street partnership that had:
    * Engineered a fraudulent housing and debt bubble;
    * Illegally shifted vast amounts of capital out of the U.S.;
    * Used “privitization” as form or piracy - a pretext to move government assets to private investors at below-market prices and then shift private liabilities back to government at no cost to the private liability holder... Slowly, as the pieces fit together, we shared a horrifying epiphany: the banks, corporations and investors acting in each global region were the exact same players. They were a relatively small group that reappeared again and again in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Asia accompanied by the same well-known accounting firms and law firms.
Clearly, there was a global financial coup d’etat underway...


After a Boom, There Will Be Scandal. Count on It. - Kurt Eichenwald, NYTimes, December 16, 2002
Abstract: Reviews the recent history of business cycles, showing that crooked behavior by corporate officials is to be expected. "It's just part of capitalism."

Monetary Policy and the U.S. Dollar - By Mike Hewitt, DollarDaze, February 10th, 2009
This essay analyzes the historic growth of the American monetary stock (or aggregates) since 1960 and looks at some recent developments revealing a marked adjustment in policy. These changes are a direct response to the on-going worldwide financial crisis that escalated in September 2008 following the collapse of Lehman Brothers


Book: Jack London, WAR OF THE CLASSES, 1905

Relative Child Poverty, Income Inequality, Wealth, and Health - Journal of the American Medical Association (pg. 425), January 28, 2009
Exposure to relative poverty or having a low socioeconomic position in childhood has been associated with increased adult morbidity [sickness] and mortality [death] resulting from (among other causes): stomach, liver, and lung cancer; diabetes; coronary heart disease; stroke; respiratory diseases; nervous system conditions; diseases of the digestive system; alcoholic cirrhosis; unintentional injuries; and homicide

Colonies found a solution for the problem of money - Ezra Pound, Radio Roma, May 28, 1942
"Class war is NOT an American product, not from the ROOTS of the nation. Not in our historic process. And the RACIAL solution, which is Europe’s solution, which is IN Europe’s process, rooted deep down, un-uprootable. What about that? You have got to, or you someday will have to study the American or United States historic process. Colonies pretty much racially homogenous: evolved. They found a solution for the problem of money, not of FIELDS against money, not of colonists, farmers FIGHTING money, but of fields AND money working together, and they found it in Pennsylvania and the world said “how marvelous.” And an UNJUST usurious monopolist government shut down on the money. Money handed out to the colonists to facilitate their FIELD production. The repayment NOT going to a set of leeches and exploiters. And the unjust monopolist government, namely the British, was hoofed out [of] the colonies 30 years later. Are you proposin’ to do the same fool thing NOW that the various London bleeders and scoundrels tried on the American colonial people? Usury penetration, and trying to throttle other field workers and planters?"

The Cook Plan (Youtube video)
Richard C. Cook proposes "A Bailout for the People: Dividend Economics and the Basic Income Guarantee."

Murdered Mexican General A Victim - But Of What? - rense.com, By Richard C. Cook, 2-9-9
Tello, 63, along with his bodyguard and a driver, were kidnapped in downtown Cancun last Monday evening, taken to a hidden location, methodically tortured, then driven out to the jungle and shot in the head... In the 1980s, after the Federal Reserve under Chairman Paul Volcker raised interest rates above 20 percent, it wrecked the U.S. manufacturing economy. The disaster turned whole areas in places like Baltimore, Detroit, and L.A. into "death zones." Poverty, despair, and crime made a comeback and hover over those areas today like dark clouds... I asked them what people did for a living now that Michigan's manufacturing industries were in such a decline. They said the young people there now make and sell methamphetamine

Town Hall Meeting In New York Canceled Due To Death Threat Against Monetary Reform Advocate Richard C. Cook - rense.com, 2-7-9
Cook has written prolifically on economic and monetary reform since retiring from the federal government as a Treasury Department analyst in 2007. During his 32-year government career he also worked for NASA and the Carter White House. Upon retirement he published his book, We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform. Through what he is calling the "Cook Plan," he is advocating a tax-free per capita payment of $1,000 per month through vouchers to be used for the necessities of life such as housing, food, and transportation. The vouchers, once redeemed, would be used to capitalize a new national network of community savings banks that would lend at low interest rates to revitalize local and regional economies


COINAGE FOR REDEEMING THE FIRST BORN: AN ANCIENT AND MODERN JEWISH RITUAL - by Ronn Berrol
The Pidyon Ha-Ben is a religious ceremony that has been practiced by the Jewish people since biblical times. In Exodus (13:2), God specifically commands to Moses this redemption, “Consecrate all of the firstborn to me, the firstborn from every womb among the Israelites”.  Later, in the desert the Jewish people lost faith in God and built a golden calf.  Only the tribe of Levi did not participate in this reversion to pagan rituals.  After this episode God commanded that the tribe of Levi would serve the Priesthood in place of the first born, and that the first born should be redeemed from the priest


"Share Our Wealth" - Huey Long of Louisiana, January 1935
"We guarantee food and clothing and employment for everyone who should work by shortening the hours of labor to thirty hours per week, maybe less, and to eleven months per year, maybe less. We would have the hours shortened just so much as would give work to everybody to produce enough for everybody."  Long was a staunch opponent of the Federal Reserve Bank. Together with a group of Congressmen and Senators, Long believed the Federal Reserve's policies to be the true cause of the Great Depression. Long made speeches denouncing the large banking houses of Morgan and Rockefeller centered in New York which owned stock in the Federal Reserve System. He believed that they controlled the monetary system to their own benefit, instead of the general public's benefit.Some economists claimed that if the Share Our Wealth plan was implemented it would bring an end to the Great Depression. They pointed out that one of the major causes of the economic downturn was the insufficient distribution of purchasing power among the population. If poor families had their incomes increased they would spend this extra money on goods being produced by American industry and agriculture and would therefore stimulate the economy and create more jobs

Huey P. Long was murdered on September 8, 1935, at 42

"So it has been that while millions have starved and gone naked; so it has been that while babies have cried and died for milk; so it has been that while people have begged for meat and bread, Mr. Roosevelt's administration has sailed merrily along, plowing under and destroying the things to eat and to wear, with tear-dimmed eyes and hungry souls made to chant for this new deal so that even their starvation dole is not taken away, and meanwhile the food and clothes craved by their bodies and souls go for destruction and ruin. What is it? Is it government? Maybe so. It looks more like St. Vitus dance."

Open letter to Dr. Joseph Stiglitz - By Richard C. Cook, DandelionSalad, 2-5-9
The debt-based monetary system acts as a parasite on the producing economy, resulting in the vast overhang of debt that can never be repaid. "Resuscitating the flow of lending" will do no good, because the collapse of consumer purchasing power due to job outsourcing and income stagnation has made it impossible for people to pay their debts. Most of this debt now needs to be written off and our producing economy restored as our chief source of wealth

Madoff Victims Lists - Cryptome, 5 February 2009
From the web site of the US Bankruptcy Court, Southern District New York

Report on the 2008 American Monetary Institute conference - by Jamie Walton, February 5, 2009

Parallels With the Great Depression - by Charles Scaliger, The New American, 04 February 2009
The RFC was an abysmal failure, though not for want of trying. Under Meyer the new vehicle for bank and railroad bailouts doled out money right and left, only to see the bank and railroad failures continue apace. Hundreds of millions of dollars poured down various RFC rat holes were lost forever by hopelessly insolvent institutions whose only remaining aim was to service their debts and provide soft landings for major investors. The promised loosening of credit never took place, and commercial lending all but disappeared. The RFC, in a word, was a huge waste of taxpayer dollars at a time when America could ill afford such coerced largesse

[fas.org] CIA: Guide to the Analysis of Insurgency
This pamphlet contains key definitions and analytic guides applicable to any insurgency.... Among other things, this guide is designed to assist in conducting a net assessment of the overall status or progress of a specific conflict, the document states.  The CIA guide is undated, but may have been written in the 1980s

Massa monetaria parallela e invisibile - Sergio Cusani, 03/02/09
Per emettere il CDO, la Banca si avvale di una istituzione finanziaria privata indipendente: Agenzia di Rating. In tal modo i CDO non rientrano nel bilancio della Banca e quindi eludono il monitoraggio degli organi di vigilanza e della Banca Centrale

The History of Money: Peru - By Mike Hewitt, DollarDaze.org, February 2nd, 2009
The Peruvian Nuevo Sol has been the most stable and reliable currency of the Latin-American region in recent years

Metafisica dell'usura - Lorenzo Chialastri, Rinascita, 30 Gennaio 2009
Lo Stato, nella rappresentazione di se stesso, nella sua forma residuale di pubblico, svolge un’insuperabile compito esattoriale per conto delle banche. Le Banche Centrali sono le uniche titolate a batter moneta, la loro proprietà è esclusivamente privata, su di esse non può essere svolto alcun controllo politico per legge. Quando lo Stato chiede alla Banca Centrale di fornirgli denaro, questa con un costo tipografico stampa moneta cartacea senza alcuna riserva aurea in deposito, e lo Stato emette titoli per uguale valore. La banca avrà la possibilità di tenerli o venderli ad altre banche centrali o a banche commerciali, alla scadenza lo Stato pagherà il corrispettivo dei titoli ai portatori. La Banca incasserà l’importo richiesto (ci vorrà una Terza Repubblica per por fine a questa infame frode?)

---

Altre News - feb 2009 (As things get worse, more people will become disillusioned with the system and look for explanations)

The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping real reason - Dick Eastman, Feb 28, 2009
Lindbergh's father blamed International Jewry for WW1, and contended the Federal Reserve was just another Jewish con. When his son Charles became a hero, the way was paved for him to run for the presidency...

Bank of England to put rates at zero, start buying everything - Gata.org, February 28, 2009

The "Great Financial Crisis": A whole new kind of struggle is emerging: Interview with John Bellamy Foster - by Mike Whitney, Global Research, February 27, 2009
The sudden fall of the governments in Iceland and Latvia as a result of protests against financial theft is remarkable, as are the widespread revolts in Greece and throughout the EU, with millions in the streets. The general strikes in Guadeloupe and Martinique, the French Antilles, and the support given to these movements by the French New Anti-Capitalist Party is a breakthrough. In fact much of the world is in ferment. Latin Americans are engaged in a full-scale revolt against neoliberalism, led by Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, and the aspiration of a new socialism for the 21st century (as envisioned also in Bolivia, Ecuador and Cuba). The Nepalese revolution has offered new hope in Asia. Social struggles on a major scale are occurring in emerging economies such as Brazil, Mexico, and India. China itself is experiencing unrest

The U.S. Economy: Designed to Fail - by Richard C. Cook, Global Research, February 28, 2009



The last desperate efforts of Japan’s colonial occupation slave regime to survive - Benjamin Fulford, 02/27/2009
Since opinion polls show the current occupation regime is going to be wiped out in a general election that has to be held by September there are plans being made to set up a new party. The foreign occupation regime and their Japanese flunkies are trying to steal money from the Japanese postal savings bank in order to finance this new party

Regulating the regulators - David Cronin, guardian.co.uk, Saturday 28 February 2009
After years of denial, the European commission has realised that financial services need regulation. But don't hold your breath. McCreevy and his aides will probably listen attentively at a conference on hedge funds that they're hosting this week, as they add a last touch of minimalist finesse to their proposals. Having opened a "public consultation" exercise on this dossier, their job is to assess a variety of options. You can be sure, though, that one option they're not examining is banning hedge funds outright, as the German authorities did before 2004

Give to the rich to help the poor? An idea worthy of Bono - Marina Hyde, The Guardian, 28 February 2009
Satire? No - a genius really has concocted a tax proposal to put our aid budget in the hands of the super-rich

Tremonti mette sotto accusa il neocapitalismo - Filippo Ghira, Rinascita, 27 Febbraio 2009
C’è da ricordare che alle riunioni del G20 partecipano anche rappresentanti della Banca Mondiale e del Fondo Monetario internazionale, cioè di due organismi che hanno contribuito massicciamente al disastro finanziario dell’autunno scorso e di quello economico che ne è conseguito, con le loro idiote imposizioni ai Paesi finanziati in nome di un Liberismo libresco e delle privatizzazioni

Central banks don't want their leased gold back - Gata.org, February 27, 2009
For years prior to 2000, gold leasing fueled what was called the gold carry trade. Investment houses leased gold from central banks, paying the central banks a tiny annual interest rate, usually well below 1 percent of the value of the gold leased, and then sold the gold into the market and invested the proceeds in government bonds, earning perhaps 5 percent annually... (it is very easy to became very rich if you have friends in the central bank...they have sovereign immunity against lawsuit - Al Capone's dream)

Franceschini: assegno a chi perde posto. La Cgil scende in piazza a Torino - Corriere della Sera, 28 febbraio 2009
Il segretario del Pd: «Berlusconi presenti decreto legge e lo sosterremo. D'Alema: «Pd, il peggio è passato»

Death Offers Lifeline to Italian Property as Economy Worsens - By Flavia Krause-Jackson and Flavia Rotondi, Bloomberg, Feb. 26, 2009
The 60 square-meter, one-bedroom abode is a steal at 195,000 euros ($251,000), says Grasso, who works for the Top Casa real estate agents in Rome. “You just have to wait a bit,” she says. By waiting, Grasso means for the owner to die. Deep in the fine print of the sale documents is a number, “88” in parentheses. It’s the seller’s age

Hungary on edge of bankruptcy - By Damien McElroy in Budapest, Telegraph, 27 Feb 2009
Hungary is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy with its citizens struggling to pay off mortages and personal loans taken out in foreign currency during one of the post-Communist era's most exhuberant booms. Hundreds of debtors in default have turned to a volunteer organisation, the Association of Bank Loan Victims, for advice on saving their homes from repossession

'There will be blood' - HEATHER SCOFFIELD, Globe and Mail, February 23, 2009
Harvard economic historian Niall Ferguson: “There will be blood, in the sense that a crisis of this magnitude is bound to increase political as well as economic [conflict]. It is bound to destabilize some countries. It will cause civil wars to break out, that have been dormant. It will topple governments that were moderate and bring in governments that are extreme."

Europe's Crisis: Much Bigger Than Subprime, Worse Than U.S. - by Henry Blodget, Yahoo!Finance, Feb 27, 2009
John Mauldin, president of Millennium Wave Advisors, was among the few analysts whose forecasts for 2008 proved accurate. Mauldin, author of the popular "Thoughts from the Frontline" e-letter, joined us to discuss the economic situation in Eastern Europe

Confidence in Asian Benevolence - By The Mogambo Guru, Daily Reckoning, 02/27/09
So, with our houses declining in value by a third, our investments down by half, higher prices for things we need to live, being laid off at increasingly alarming rates and with a government that has lost its freaking mind, it’s a wonder that any people have any confidence at all! Hahaha! Who the hell ARE those people and what are they smoking? Hahaha!

PD E IDV: VOGLIAMO LA VERITA’ SULLA SOCIAL CARD - AgenParl, 27 Febbraio 2009
I firmatari dell’interpellanza sottolineano che dal 31 dicembre 2008 sono state consegnate 520.000 social card su 1.400.000 previste e di queste risulta che circa 190mila non avevano alcuna copertura

Imploded: Heritage Community Bank, Glenwood, IL - The Bank Implode-O-Meter, 2009-02-27
Heritage Community Bank, Glenwood, IL becomes 2009 number sweet 16 today as the FDIC pulled the plug on the struggling bank

Imploded: Security Savings Bank, Henderson, NV  - The Bank Implode-O-Meter, 2009-02-27
Security Savings Bank, Henderson, NV became 2009 number 15 today as the FDIC pulled the plug on the struggling bank

Ron Paul At CPAC 2009 (videos) - The Pissed Off Citizen, February 27, 2009

[Usurykeeping] KOSOVO: UN ANNO INDIPENDENZA - di Franco Quintano e Dragan Petrovic, Misteri d'Italia, febbraio 2009
Ma cosa pensa dell'indipendenza del Kosovo?, gli chiediamo. “L'indipendenza del Kosovo non è una cosa reale, ma il frutto della volontà delle grandi potenze”, risponde. “In Kosovo la gente normale come me, anche gli albanesi, dice che prima si stava meglio. Ora a comandare sono i mafiosi, l'economia è distrutta, le fabbriche sono ferme” (Perché, in Italia invece?)

America in Critical Condition - by CJ Graham, NewsWithViews.com, February 28, 2009
"If the American People ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered..." --Thomas Jefferson

Angry Citizens Revive Boston Tea Party Protest - Jennifer Bocchieri, KAKE-10, February 27, 2009
Wichita is one of more than 40 cities that will hold simultaneous tea parties. Protesters say it’s time taxpayers to come together and demand to be heard. It was all the way back in 1773 when American colonists held the Boston Tea Party. They pitched crates of tea into the harbor to protest British taxation

Il Papa e la crisi economica mondiale: "Idolatria dietro a crollo delle banche" - la Repubblica, 26 febbraio 2009
Incontro in Vaticano con parroci e i sacerdoti della diocesi di Roma. Secondo Ratzinger "è sempre la falsificazione di Dio in Mammona che ritorna"

[Orwell's Big Brothel] CNBC analysts predicts global bank and global currency within 15 years - Prison Planet 2009 Feb 27
Same people who created present crisis are now engineering even worse crisis

Ron Paul, interviewed on the Glen Beck Show, explains the desparate push for a global monetary system - YouTube 2009 Feb 26
Global economic planning - soviet style . is doomed to fail before it start

CNBC Anchors Mortified That Ron Paul Was Allowed Air Time: “This is not going as planned” - Steve Watson, Infowars.net, Feb 26th, 2009
CNBC anchors were left dumbfounded and acted overtly cantankerous yesterday after Congressman Ron Paul’s opening statement at the House Financial Services Committee was broadcast live to an audience of millions

Annozero. L’economia in televisione - AgoraVox, 27 febbraio 2009
Gli ospiti, e soprattutto il ministro Tremonti, ovvero il fiscalista del premier Silvio Berlusconi, non hanno minimamente fatto cenno dell’enorme peso che le organizzazioni criminali hanno sulla nostra economia. Non s’è fatta menzione poi del signoraggio, tema di fondamentale importanza se si vuol realmente capire le gigantesche contraddizioni e i paradossi della situazione monetaria attuale



Gioacchino Genchi accusa - blog di Beppe Grillo, 27 Febbraio 2009
La legge è uguale per tutti. Tutti siamo sottoposti alla legge! Perché sia chiaro. Questo lo devono capire. Nel momento in cui a questi signori li si osa sfiorare solo da lontano, con la punta di una piuma, questi signori si ribellano e distruggono le persone che hanno solo il coraggio di fare il proprio lavoro. Gli italiani questo l'hanno capito. E hanno capito che questo dottor Genchi di cui hanno detto tutte le cose peggiori di questo mondo... e io adesso pubblicherò tutti i miei lavori, dal primo sino all'ultimo. E questa è l'occasione perché ci sia una resa dei conti in Italia. A cominciare dalle stragi di via D'Amelio alla strage di Capaci. Perché queste collusioni fra apparati dello Stato servizi segreti, gente del malaffare e gente della politica, è bene che gli italiani comincino a sapere cosa è stata

Appello contro la Dittatura Bancaria e Tecnofinanziaria - Movimento Zero, 26 febbraio 2009
No alla vita basata sul prestito e sull’usura
No al debito eterno degli Stati, dei Popoli e dei Cittadini
Il Popolo torni titolare della Sovranità Monetaria

Banche di governo e di rapina - Beppe Grillo, 26 febbraio 2009
Le banche e gli enti di controllo sono i primi responsabili della catastrofe finanziaria. Dov'erano in questi anni la Banca d'Italia, la Consob, l'ABI, i ministri del Tesoro? I Tremorti e i Padoa Schioppa? I Fazio e i Draghi? I Geronzi, i Passera, i Profumo? I sindaci che hanno investito in derivati le tasse dei cittadini? Gli analisti finanziari? I giornalisti economici? I Cardia e i Capuano? I titoli spazzatura, i futures senza futuro, i subprime, i Cdo, i buchi di bilancio, le esposizioni bancarie senza garanzie. Questi signori o sapevano tutto, e allora sono dei criminali e vanno perseguiti, oppure sono degli incompetenti da licenziare al più presto

Banks of the government and of robbery - Beppe Grillo, 26 February 2009
The banks and the regulatory authorities are the main ones responsible for the financial catastrophe. In the last few years, Where have the Bank of Italy, Consob, ABI, the Ministers of the Treasury been? People like Tremorti and Padoa Schioppa? Like Fazio and Draghi? Like Geronzi, Passera, and Profumo? The mayors who have invested the taxes of the citizens in derivatives? The financial analysts? The economic journalists? People like Cardia and Capuano? The rubbish shares, the futures without a future, the subprime sub-primes, the CDOs, the holes in the balance sheets, the banking liabilities without guarantees. Either these gentlemen knew everything and thus are criminals and should be prosecuted, or they are incompetents and should be sacked as soon as possible

Fiat, Pomigliano si ferma in diecimila con le tute blu - di Patrizia Capua, la Repubblica, 27 febbraio 2009
Catena su Facebook: la fabbrica non si tocca. Scajola: il governo convocherà un nuovo tavolo per l´auto nei primi giorni di marzo. Tutti in piazza per difendere la Fiat

L'Affaire des Affaires 1 : Denis Robert raconte l'avant Clearstream - 23/01/2009
L'affaire Clearstream n'est est encore qu'à ses prémices mais on la sent poindre, prête à éclater

Clearstream et le mystérieux compte « Bank Madoff » - Par David Leloup, Journaliste, Eco89, 26/02/2009
L’auteur présumé de la plus grande fraude pyramidale de l’histoire de Wall Street, le financier new-yorkais Bernard Madoff, avait-il un compte ouvert à Bruxelles dans la chambre de compensation internationale Euroclear? C’est en tout cas ce qu’affirme Clearstream, sa rivale installée à Luxembourg et Francfort. Au boulevard du Roi Albert II, à Bruxelles, Euroclear dément: "Madoff n’a pas et n’a jamais eu de compte chez nous", clame Denis Peters, le directeur de la communication (incrociando il listing del 2001 con quello del 2004, si possono identificare i conti intestati a "unpublished participant")

Il potere nell'ombra. La famiglia Wisner - di Simone Santini, ANTIMAFIA; 18 febbraio 2009
Lo scandalo dei falsi dossier Cleastream servì per nascondere lo scandalo dei VERI dossier su cui la magistratura non fece assolutamente nulla...

Optimism in the Face of Inflation - By The Mogambo Guru, Daily Reckoning, 02/26/09
I did not mention that there are only about 100 million non-government, non-taxpayer paid workers in the U.S.A., which means that there are only 100 million workers who can make a profit with which to pay taxes, which means that $5 trillion in government spending is a staggering $50,000 for Every Freaking One (EFO) of those non-government, non-taxpayer paid positions! And you think THAT is going to work out for the best? Hahahaha!

- Convegno “FermiamoLeBanche” - Hotel Nazionale, Piazza MONTECITORIO 131, ROMA, GIOVEDÌ 26 FEBBRAIO 2009, ORE 10.30
Cinque proposte per le europee e le provinciali del giugno 2009, affinché ciò che il mondo qualifica crisi si converta da subito nella massima occasione di benessere, civiltà e sviluppo della storia dell’uomo, ovvero:
1)- Abolizione del signoraggio primario e secondario - 2)- Abolizione delle imposte (IRPEF, IRES, IRAP, IVA, ecc.)
3)- Interruzione delle produzioni inutili - 4)- Istituzione dei sussidi permanenti ai disoccupati - 5)- Riconversione industriale

First Solar breaks solar energy's $1 per watt barrier - By Gail Flower, EDN News, 2/26/2009
First Solar claims to have reduced the cost of manufacturing solar modules to $0.98 per watt, a record in making solar energy affordable

Mervyn King: 'Impossible to say' how much capital needed to shore up banking system - By James Kirkup, Telegraph, 26 Feb 2009
Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, has said it is "impossible to say" how much capital will be required to shore up the British banking system (BOE is going frolic on her own)

CIA Adds Economy To Threat Updates - Joby Warrick, Washington Post, February 26, 2009
The addition of economic news to the daily roundup of terrorist attacks and surveillance reports appears to reflect a growing belief among intelligence officials that the economic meltdown is now preeminent among security threats facing the United States

Hungary on edge of bankruptcy - Damien McElroy, Telegraph, February 26, 2009
Hungarians have become aware that the fall out from their folly will stretch far from the Danube's banks. "What's happening here means that all of Europe is going to suffer because you can't have one country drop out of its element without affecting all the continent," said Mr Gulyas

Greeks shut airports, services to protest economy - Renee Maltezou, Reuters, February 26, 2009
Greeks disgruntled by their country\u2019s economic woes ramped up protests against the government, shutting down airports and disrupting many public services

[No bailout? No party!] Bailout Bank Blows Millions Partying in L.A. - TMZ, Feb 24th 2009
Now how's this for outrage? Northern Trust laid off 450 workers in December, 4% of its workforce. And here's what's absolutely amazing: The United States Government flat out gave Northern Trust the $1.6 billion in bailout money, and the bank didn't even request it! Northern Trust gave us a statement yesterday before going total radio silence. A rep for the bank acknowledges they paid for the events, but that the bailout money did not pay for the events. He claims it was paid out of the bank's customers money


Two Major Fraud Cases Reach N.Y. Federal Court - Tom Hays and Larry Neumeister, The Associated Press, February 26, 2009
Federal authorities brought charges in two major securities fraud investigations Wednesday, saying one scheme fell apart because of publicity about the Bernard Madoff scandal. In that case, New Jersey fund manager James Nicholson was accused of defrauding investors of as much as $900 million since 2004. In the second case, Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh were charged with conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud

Feds Win Detention for Disbarred Lawyer in Alleged Investment Scam - Mark Hamblett, New York Law Journal, February 26, 2009
The Bail Reform Act is getting a real workout during the latest spat of white-collar criminal prosecutions in the Southern District of New York. The government won the most recent round Wednesday when Judge Denise Cote set virtually unreachable bail conditions for Arthur Nadel, a disbarred lawyer turned hedge fund adviser accused of swindling investors out of tens of millions of dollars

Le procès de la KB-Lux va enfin débuter, 13 ans après - L'Investigateur, 25/02/2009
Le 3 avril prochain, soit 13 ans après l'ouverture de l'instruction judiciaire, le méga-dossier de fraude autour de la Kredietbank (aujourd'hui KBC) et de sa filiale luxembourgeoise KB Lux (devenue KBC European Private Banking) arrivera devant le tribunal correctionnel de Bruxelles

Altering Bailout Rules, US Moves Closer to Nationalizing Troubled Banks - Democracy Now!, February 24, 2009
With nationalized banks on the horizon, we speak to Robert Johnson, former chief economist of the Senate Banking Committee, and former investment banker turned journalist, Nomi Prins

President Ronald Reagan Was Shot Over Fed and IRS! - Rich Sheridan, Feb 24, 2009
Ronald Reagan was promptly shot after he dared to criticize the Fed, on the same day that the Pope was shot. After recovering, he changed his mind and praised the Fed. About seven US Presidents have been assassinated for not cooperating with the Transatlantic Banking Dynasties (William Henry Harrison, poisoned, in 1841, Zachary Taylor, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and John F. Kennedy 1963; 7 if FDR’s poisoning is counted)

Go Ahead, Make My Money - By The Mogambo Guru, Daily Reckoning, 02/25/09
Total Fed Credit, otherwise known as Federal Reserve Credit, ballooned by a huge $76.9 billion last week, taking the Fed’s total “help” to the scumbag banks to a nice, cool $1.9 trillion, of which a whopping $56 billion gob of the money created last week by the Fed was used by the Fed itself to buy Treasury securities for itself! Hahaha! What a scam!

Un paese di parassiti - di Alessandro Mezzano, MNP, 25 Febbraio 2009
Gli italiani residenti in Spagna possono ricevere la pensione LORDA dall’Italia e pagare qui le tasse; in tal modo risparmiano mediamente circa il 20% di tasse sulla pensione. Medicinali, in Spagna il servizio sanitario nazionale passa  TUTTE le medicine, comprese quelle che in Italia sono escluse e si debbono pagare...

Journalists’ groups blast European Commission ’spies’ smear - Spectrezine, February 24th, 2009
It is a legitimate and essential part of a democracy to allow reporters to ask searching questions and get access to documents some politicians and officials would prefer for their own vested interests to keep out of sight,” said Lorenzo Consoli, the President of API

Demise of Petters Ponzi Scheme Making Work for Minnesota Firms - Zach Lowe, The American Lawyer, February 25, 2009
Nearly a dozen Petters Group entities have filed for bankruptcy since October, when federal authorities charged Minnesota-based corporate magnate Tom Petters with money laundering, wire fraud and mail fraud in connection with an alleged Ponzi scheme that may have cost investors north of $2 billion. Now nearly 20 law firms, all with some Minnesota ties, are reaping the benefits of the civil and criminal cases linked to the Petters empire

Nation Instinctively Forms Breadline - The Onion, February 24, 2009
'What's happening here?' said a California resident after seeing a group of bankers leaning against a broken-down jalopy, their feet muddied and bare. "We've lost everything," said Janice Mann, an Iowa native, who watched helplessly as dozens of so-called Bushvilles sprung up across her state. "The land, the house—it's all gone. They say this could last an entire decade. That it's going to get worse before it gets any better."

Stanford Clients Sending Out an SOS - Wayne Tompkins, Daily Business Review, February 25, 2009
Over 20 years, R. Allen Stanford's companies and his distinctive eagle logo became an established fixture in South Florida, a key outpost of the billionaire banker's financial empire. But longtime observers say they remained suspicious. Now, in the wake of last week's SEC lawsuit accusing Stanford of a "massive" fraud, international banking attorneys are being deluged by Stanford clients fearing the worst and hoping that somehow their money can be recovered

The Fine Art of Overbilling - Brian Baxter, The American Lawyer, February 25, 2009
While the billable hour is still alive and kicking, legal bloggers are opining on some of the more nefarious means of separating clients from their hard-earned cash. And we're not talking about bill padding, but good old-fashioned, fraudulent overbilling. For instance, Bitter Lawyer features the anonymous Philadelphia Lawyer's list of eight routine overbilling scams...

Bank Of America Heiress Blasts Bank Leaders As 'Idiots' - CBS5.com, Feb 24, 2009
The granddaughter of the man who founded Bank of America in San Francisco in the early 1900s called the bank's current condition "totally repulsive" and blasted the bank's management for being "idiots." The harsh criticism from Virginia Hammerness, the heiress to A.P. Giannini's family fortune and a significant stockholder in the bank he launched, came during an interview Monday with CBS 5

How the lust for money powers the City - The Sunday Times, February 22, 2009
A former trader lifts the lid on how greed eclipses prudence

Anglo Irish Bank offices raided by Gardai - Independent.ie, February 24 2009
Fraud squad officers and white-collar crime investigators have raided the headquarters of Anglo Irish Bank, in Dublin


Beppe Grillo a Chiaiano (testo + video) - 24 Febbraio 2009
A Pomigliano d'Arco si vede la Polizia che carica gli operai, i padri di famiglia. Perché? Perché hanno presidiato l'autostrada, hanno interrotto un servizio autostradale per qualche ora. E allora se devono vigilare le autostrade perché non vanno sulla Salerno-Reggio Calabria a vigilare? Potrebbero andar lì a vigilare no? Dove la gente rimane sotto le frane!

‘We need a pay rise’ bankers demand. Clampdown on bonuses sparks City calls for 10 per cent increase in salaries - By Mathieu Robbins, Independent, 24 February 2009
“People used to, say, earn between £100,000 and £150,000 and receive bonuses of 10 times multiples of their base salary,” he continued. “But a trend is now developing where someone has a basic pay of, say, £300,000 but with bonus multiple of only two or three times that.”

ECB faces mutiny from national bank governors as recession deepens - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph, 23 Feb 2009
The European Central Bank is capitulating. Mr Trichet said the ECB has increased its balance sheet by €600bn (£525bn) since the Lehman collapse in September. The bank is providing "unlimited liquidity" in exchange for a wide range of collateral, including mortgage bonds issued for the sole purpose of extracting ECB funds

Chinese officials trained to handle social unrest - By GILLIAN WONG, AP, February 24, 2009
Thousands of Chinese police are being trained to deal with social unrest amid concerns that millions of rural workers who have been laid off due to a sharp economic downturn could take to the streets, the government said Monday

Nationalize the Banks - By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, February 2009
The banks got us into this financial mess in the first place by making unwise home loans and by speculating in unregulated credit-default swaps tied to those loans. They have taken the entire world economy down with them. They don’t deserve to be bailed out

Yen Could Crash Following Collapsing Japanese Economy - The Market Oracle, Feb 24, 2009
According to The Tokyo Shinbun , more than 30% of Japan's prefectures (governmental bodies larger than cities , towns , and villages ) have already implemented emergency economic measures of their own. Overall, unemployment rose to 4.4% in December, the worst such figure recorded in 42 years. Tent cities are growing and many public parks are now overflowing with homeless people - something I recall seeing during the depths of Japan's last “ Lost Decade .”

Domine, dirige nos - Motto of the City of London - By: Rayelan, RMNews, 24 February 2009
LORD??? Lord WHO??? Lord Dracula?? Lord Reptilus? Lord Satan?

The financial elite have been divided between gold and paper factions - Benjamin Fulford, 02/24/2009

Former Merrill Lynch CEO Ordered to Testify About Billions in Bonuses - Ieva M. Augstums and Stephen Bernard, The Associated Press, February 24, 2009
A New York judge has ordered former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain to testify about $3.6 billion in bonuses paid to Merrill employees before the company was sold to Bank of America. Initial reports of the bonuses came just days after BofA received $20 billion from the government that it said it needed to help offset the losses it was absorbing from the Merrill acquisition. New York's attorney general subpoenaed Thain last month in connection with his office's investigation into the timing of the bonuses

Worse than terrorists: City fraudsters are treated far too leniently, says former DPP - By Paul Waugh, Daily Mail, 24th February 2009
Writing in the Times, the former Director of Public Prosecutions said: 'If you mug someone in the street and you are caught, the chances are that you will go to prison. 'In recent years, mugging someone out of their savings or their pension would probably earn you a yacht.'  'In Britain, no one has any confidence that fraud in the banks will be prosecuted as a crime. But it is absolutely critical to public confidence that it should be.' (sarà ora davvero che la magistratura si dia una bella svegliata!)

Robust: Former legal chief Sir Ken Macdonald
says bank fraud is worse than terrorism

‘Black Swan’ Author Sees Trouble Exceeding 1930s - DealBook, February 23, 2009
The world has a much more complex financial system than in the 1930s, Mr. Taleb told Bloomberg Television, and that makes the current problems worse. Bonuses paid on Wall Street encouraged risk-taking with no regard for losses, he added

Will Germany deliver on devil's bargain of monetary union? - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph, February 23, 2009
Architects of EMU were well aware that a one-size-fits-all monetary policy for vastly disparate nations would create serious tensions over time. They gambled that this would work to their advantage. The EU would be forced to create new machinery to safeguard its investment in the euro. It would be a "beneficial crisis", bringing about the great leap forward to full union. We are about to find out if they were right

Gold in the Art of Bread Consumption - By The Mogambo Guru, The Daily Reckoning, 02/23/09
Stephen Harmston, erstwhile economist at Bannock Consulting, wrote that “across 2,500 years, gold has retained its purchasing power, relative to bread at least” which is seemingly proved when one considers that “It is said that an ounce of gold bought 350 loaves of bread in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who died in 562 BC” which is roughly what it buys today, a stretch of 2,500 years, while the dollar, on the other hand, has lost 97% of its buying power since 1913, less than 100 years ago, when the detestable Federal Reserve was given its diabolical unholy control of the nation’s banks and money by a corrupt Congress and allowed by a corrupt Supreme Court (e poi insistiamo a diffondere questo modello di suprema corruzione con le cosiddette operazioni internazionali di pace...e se si ribellano diciamo che i terroristi sono loro! sveglia gente!)

Allarme della Ue: "Valutare l'ipotesi di nazionalizzazione delle banche in crisi" - RaiNews24, 23 febbraio 2009
I governi valutino, ove necessario, la possibilita' di nazionalizzare le banche colpite dalla crisi. E' quanto sostiene la Commissione europea nella bozza sulle nuove linee-guida per gestire gli asset tossici e deteriorati che, salvo sorprese, sara' approvata mercoledi' (così invece di far pagare gli azionisti ed i "manager" delle banche - come sarebbe ovvio - si ribalta sul contribuente europeo tutto il fallimento. Sono le nuove frontiere europee della fatiscenza del diritto...La bancarotta fraudolenta non riguarda gli "animali più uguali". Prèmiane uno per incoraggiarne cento!)

[IRS MAFIA] Lawyer Charges IRS Retaliated Against Him for Complaint Over Agent's Practices - Mary Pat Gallagher, New Jersey Law Journal, February 23, 2009
Tax lawyer Robert Kenny says he's paying a steep price for taking on the Internal Revenue Service on behalf of clients: a retaliatory strike that has put his livelihood and his law license at risk. In a federal suit, Kenny alleges that when he complained to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration that an IRS agent was telling taxpayers to forgo representation, the IRS lodged a complaint against him. Kenny says he's gone public about the dispute to protect himself from what he calls a "Star Chamber proceeding."

Safaricom and Vodafone launch M-PESA, a new mobile payment service - 13 February 2007
Safaricom, the leading mobile communications provider in Kenya, is pleased to announce the launch of M-PESA, an innovative new mobile payment solution that enables customers to complete simple financial transactions by mobile phone. M-PESA has been developed by Vodafone, the world’s leading mobile telecommunications group, with the pilot in Kenya operated by Safaricom (Vodaphone discovered the temporary-seigniorage business)

Jean Asselborn : il faut redéfinir le secret bancaire - L'Investigateur, 22/02/2009
Avec la Suisse, le Luxembourg dispose de lois garantissant la stricte confidentialité des titulaires de comptes bancaires. Les deux pays sont régulièrement montrés du doigt pour leur défense du secret-bancaire (altrimenti si scoprirebbe chi ci guadagna veramente col racket del signoraggio...)

Credito, l'allarme di Trichet: «Il sistema è in pericolo» - ILSOLE24ORE.COM, 23 febbraio 2009
«Nelle ultime settimane sono emersi i primi segnali di un calo dell'offerta di credito». Lo ha detto il presidente della Bce, Jean-Claude Trichet, in un discorso al Cesr (Comitato di coordinamento fra le autorità di vigilanza sui mercati finanziari della Ue) a Parigi. Il fenomeno, ha spiegato, «è dovuto in modo sostanziale a fattori legati alla domanda», ma anche a decisioni sul fronte dell'offerta. «Se un tale comportamento dovesse diffondersi al sistema bancario nel suo insieme - ha ammonito - metterebbe in pericolo la stessa ragione d'essere del sistema» (colpi di coda del Grande Banchiere dell'Universo. Nota che è "il sistema" che è in pericolo, mica la popolazione!)

Antigua’s Leader Vows Cooperation With U.S. in Investigation of Its Banks - By CLIFFORD KRAUSS, NYTimes, February 22, 2009
Having seized control of Robert Allen Stanford’s two banks in recent days, Antiguan government officials are now pledging to work closely with American regulators to investigate their banking system

Il mondo provvede, l’Italia affonda - di Daniele Martinelli, 22 febbraio 2009
Le democrazie del mondo rimboccano le maniche per attutire l’impatto della recessione, l’Italia regala un milione di euro a Bonolis, costringe gli infermieri a 1.200 euro mensili quando va di lusso e dà visibilità a uno come Povia, che non sostiene i disoccupati di Pomigliano d’Arco perché “troppo pochi”...

As Doubts Grow, U.S. Will Judge Banks’ Stability - By EDMUND L. ANDREWS, NYTimes, February 22, 2009
The Obama administration will begin taking a hard look at the financial condition of the country’s 20 biggest banks this week to judge whether they could hold up even if the downturn worsens further than policy makers already expect (Yes they can - because they are allowed to create money out of thin air)

Banche allo Stato, potere alle èlite - di Daniele Martinelli, 20 febbraio 2009
Berlusconi e Tremonti gettano il sasso nello stagno e ritirano il braccio dietro la schiena. Cominciano a dire che vogliono nazionalizzare le banche, per salvare il culo alle oligarchie arricchite alle spalle dell’eterna fiducia a debito degli ignari cittadini

Baltic Currency-Peg Defense Cuts Reserves Amid Slump - By Aaron Eglitis, Bloomberg, Feb. 23, 2009
Central bankers and government officials in the three countries, across the Baltic Sea from Sweden and Finland, say they will stick to their course toward adoption of the euro. The Lithuanian litas and the Estonian kroon entered the exchange-rate mechanism, the waiting room to join the euro, in 2004, just after the nations joined the European Union

Vodafone Said to Plan Hundreds of Job Cuts in U.K. - By Simon Thiel, Bloomberg, Feb. 23, 2009
Si proteggono i profitti ma non i lavoratori: può funzionare solo adottando un reddito di cittadinanza universale

Latvian Government Resigns as Recession Deepens - By Aaron Eglitis, Bloomberg, Feb. 20, 2009
Latvia’s four-party coalition government, facing the steepest economic decline in the European Union and plunging public opinion ratings, resigned after two parties called for Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis to step down

Anarchists plan City riot for day G20 leaders arrive in London - By Robert Mendick and Nigel Rosser, Daily Mail, 20th February 2009
Anti-globalisation activists are plotting a mass demonstration against bankers in the heart of the City of London, it was revealed today. Protesters hope to mobilise 'anti-fatcat' sentiment among students and workers affected by the credit crunch as they demonstrate against the financial system, and are inviting activists to 'set up camp' in Britain's financial centre. An anarchist wrote in an online 'blog': 'The combination of the recession, the inspiration of the Greek anarchists and the G20 summit being in London on 2 April gives us the opportunity to mobilise far larger than usual numbers on to the streets... Seize the time.'

More soon than later, the Police will guess on which side they have to stand

Soros Confirms Lindsey William’s Assertion Oil is a Weapon - Kurt Nimmo, Infowars, February 20, 2009
The globalist George Soros at the elite confab last month in Davos, Switzerland, admit that the price of oil is being used as a weapon against the “enemies of the prevailing world order,” i.e, the New World Order. Soros pegs these enemies as Venezuela, Iran, and Russia (essendo entrati in modalità Muoia Sansone, gli oligarchi del Nuovo Ordine Mondiale - quello del Grande Banchiere dell'Universo -  vanno verso il suicidio economico collettivo)

Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Economic Crisis - by Stephen Lendman, Global Research, February 22, 2009

Glenn Beck scares Fox host into hiding under table - David Edwards and Muriel Kane, Raw Story, February 21, 2009
"What we are possibly looking at is something far worse than the Depression," Beck began. "We are in much greater debt as individuals. We don’t know how to grow our own food. We’re also looking at civil unrest all around the world," he continued. "You need to prepare. This is something that could be … really dangerous. … My hands, now, for the first time in my life, are shaking. … We’re running out of exit ramps here."

Unwashed Coffee Mugs: How the recession is affecting family relationships - By Emily Bazelon, Slate, Feb. 20, 2009,
Recession means worry—all too tangible worry, like making mortgage payments. And the intangible but no less consuming fear of how unemployment is affecting your laid-off wife or girlfriend—or, more often, husband or boyfriend. The data showing that men have experienced 82 percent of the recession's job losses suggest that we're in a moment of uninvited cultural shift

The famous faces that fooled Stanford clients -  Jamie Doward and Rajeev Syal, The Observer, 22 February 2009
Sir Allen Stanford's empire came crashing down last week in an $8bn fraud inquiry that is now set to extend to Britain. Jamie Doward and Rajeev Syal reveal how the Texan tycoon manipulated his links with royals, sports stars and politicians to give his credentials a veneer of credibility - and why it took so long for the alarm to sound

Israel: Treasury officials lash out at Fischer - By  JPOST.COM STAFF, Feb 22, 2009
The Treasury officials accused Fischer of acting contrary to law by instructing the BoI to buy government bonds in the stock market. "We offered a solution, but the Bank of Israel told us not to intervene," the officials reportedly said, adding that "they have come up with a grandiose plan" which won't help the economy

MONDAY - 50 AMERICAN BANKS TO BE "NATIONALIZED" - By: SCRIBE, RMNews, 22 February 2009

Silver Falls Bank, Silverton, OR - By Tony. FDIC FAILED BANKS, February 20th, 2009
The FDIC moved in without warning and seized Silver Falls Bank, Silverton, OR, making it the 14th bank closed by the agency in 2009 and the second in Oregon in eight days

[seigniorage masters under the spotlight] Ireland: Call to name the 'golden circle' as 100,000 march - By DON LAVERY and JEROME REILLY, Independent, February 22 2009
City brought to a standstill by economic protest. Outside Government buildings, Ictu general-secretary David Begg accused those responsible for the crisis of economic treason and called for those in the 'golden circle'. "We are entitled to know who they are if we are funding them," he said to huge cheers. He acknowledged the fear and anger in the community over job losses and conceded "no one is safe, there is nowhere to go"


Postcards from the Edge: the economic crisis that stretches from Wall Street to all streets - Telegraph, 21 Feb 2009
The financial crisis has moved from Wall Street to all streets, as the economic shock causes strains and suffering in every part of the world economy

[silent coup] Rothschild Agents Take 10 Key Posts In Obama Administration - By Michael Collins Piper, American Free Press, 2-21-9
Susan Rice - ambassador to the UN; Michael McFaul - head of the Russian desk at the National Security Council; Elena Kagan - solicitor general of the United States; Anne-Marie Slaughter - State Department policy planning staff; Neal S.Wolin - deputy counsel to the president for economic policy; Ezekial Emanuel - senior counselor at the White House Office of Management and Budget on health care policy; Lawrence Summers - head of the National Economic Council; Peter Orszag - director of the Office of Management and Budget; Peter Rouse - senior advisor to the president; Mona Sutphen - deputy chief of the White House staff

[tutti contro tutti] Swiss party wants to punish U.S. for UBS probe - Reuters, Feb 21, 2009
The SVP said gold stored by the Swiss National Bank in the United States should be repatriated and Switzerland should ban the sale of U.S. funds in the country to protect Swiss investors after the failure of U.S. regulators

Jim Rogers: Abolish The IMF & World Bank - Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet.com, February 16, 2009
Veteran investor says Obama stimulus package only making economic crisis worse

Ireland: 'The nation faces ruin' as our TDs squabble - By JODY CORCORAN, Independent, February 22 2009
Moves for an all-party emergency government gather momentum. But the Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny yesterday resisted such moves, calling instead for a general election. Mr Kenny also denied he had a secret meeting with a senior executive of Anglo Irish Bank, two weeks ago, during which confidential matters relating to the so-called 'golden circle' at the bank was discussed

Soros sees collapse, Volcker says it's faster than Great Depression - By Pedro Nicolaci da Costa and Juan Lagorio, Reuters, February 21, 2009
Renowned investor George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis


Roma, amministratore di condominio ucciso e nascosto in valigia - Apcom, 21 feb. 2009
La vittima è stata colpita più volte con un corpo contundente, spiegano fonti della questura, forse un martello o comunque un oggetto pesante, massacrato per alcune rate di condominio non pagate (l'ultimo ammortizzatore sociale rimane la galera)

["controllo" demografico] Economic downturn endangers German birth rate rise - Reuters, Feb 16, 2009
Germany, which is facing its worst recession since World War Two, is worried about the strain on the pension, health and welfare systems if its already aging population shrinks further. Some studies show the population could dip below 70 million by 2050 from about 82 million

CUMULATIVE IMPACTS: DEATH KNELL FOR COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS - By Peter Montague, Rachel's Democracy & Health News, February 19, 2009
Introduction: The impacts of our various economic activities are now adding up to a damaged world -- a world in which Earth's natural capacity for self-renewal has been exceeded and permanent degradation is evident. Our legal and regulatory systems were never intended to limit the accumulation of small impacts. Instead, U.S. law relies on cost-benefit analysis to justify individual impacts -- a practice that is now obsolete because it is destroying the planet as a place suitable for human habitation

Thanks for the philanthropy, billionaires. Now pay your tax - Marina Hyde, The Guardian, 21 February 2009
Stanford epitomises the uber-rich who hid behind a fig-leaf of charity while avoiding their dues and helping banks to collapse

CRISI: TREMONTI, FINORA NO CRITICITA' BANCHE MA NUOVE REGOLE. BCE FRENA - ASCA, 21-02-09
La crisi e' data dalla presenza di titoli tossici, anzi ''radioattivi'' presenti nei bilanci delle banche e per i quali servirebbe ''un contatore geiger'' e dalla inadeguatezza delle regole contabili, Basilea 2 e mark to market. ''Nessuno vuole cancellare gli hedge o gli equity fund. Ma il problema sono le regole"

CRISI: TREMONTI, ATTUALE SISTEMA REGOLE CONTABILI E' SUICIDA - ASCA, 21-02-09
"Non dico che non ci devono essere regole'' ha proseguito Tremonti ''sottolineo solo che le vecchie regole, fino al 1998, funzionavano mentre quelle nuove vanno riviste perche' hanno effetti prociclici:"

Crisi economia/ Tremonti: Cambiare regole contabili,sono suicide - Apcom, 21 feb. 2009
Le regole attuali "bloccano e distruggono il capitalismo, sembrano inventate da Bin Laden" (sembrano?)

Nazionalizzare le Banche? - LiberoReporter, 20 febbraio 2009
Molti lettori ci hanno scritto chiedendoci cosa ne pensiamo della nazionalizzazione delle banche. Argomento complesso che richiede più di qualche riflessione. Pertanto ci siamo rivolti a uno dei massimi esperti del settore, il prof. Francesco Petrino che ci spiega: "Personalmente sarei d’accordo per la nazionalizzazione delle banche, ma reputo che questa soluzione non potrà avere senso sino a quando la proprietà della moneta resterà nelle mani delle banche centrali, i cui azionisti non sono gli stati membri, ma le banche multinazionali che continueranno a beneficiare del signoraggio primario e secondario sul denaro

Anche in Sicilia i mutui in valuta hanno i giorni contati - LiberoReporter, 06 febbraio 2009
Storica sentenza del Tribunale di Agrigento che ha dichiarato privo di efficacia giuridica il contratto di mutuo in ECU stipulato dalla B.N.L. ed ha condannato la banca al risarcimento del danno morale cagionato

Ex-employees of Allen Stanford raised warnings 'years ago' - David Byers, and Matt Spence, Times Online, February 20, 2009
Senior staff at the Houston-based bank of the Texan billionaire disclosed today that they had been concerned as early as 2003 about the cricket impresario's financial dealings. However, no action was taken by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) until Mr Stanford’s operations were raided and shut down on Tuesday

Gone in 60 Days: Citi and Bank of America Won’t Live to See May - ChartingStocks, February 19, 2009

UK "could experience a crash similar to Iceland" - HedgeWeek, 18 Feb 2009,
The global financial crisis could be entering a 'new and more treacherous phase', which could push international countries to the brink of failure and further hinder the global economic recovery, according to Hennessee Group

Brzezinski: ‘Hell, There Could Be Even Riots’ - FinkelBlog, 2009/02/17
Brzezinski fears class warfare.  Not Mika. Zbigniew.  And not Barney-Frank-on-Meet-the-Press class warfare.  Real, blood-in-the-streets riots

Gold: Finding Honest Money in the Midwest - By The Mogambo Guru, The Daily Reckoning, 02/20/09
The best news is towards the end, where she reports that “any move toward a new international monetary system based on gold will more likely take place through the grass-roots efforts of Americans” like, for instance, “The Indiana Honest Money Act” which would “allow citizens the option of paying in or receiving back gold, silver or the equivalent electronic receipt as an alternative to Federal Reserve notes for all transactions conducted with the state of Indiana.”

Cash crisis forces California to free 55,000 prisoners - Guy Adams, nzherald.co.nz, Feb 15, 2009
La galera era rimasto l'ultimo ammortizzatore sociale, e ora?

Via libera Ue ai Tremonti-bond - La Stampa, 20/2/2009
L'Antitrust promuove le obbligazioni sottoscritte dal Tesoro per sostenere i capitali degli istituti quotati in Borsa. LA KROES: IL REGIME MODIFICATO GARANTISCE UNA REMUNERAZIONE ADEGUATA (domande "da Corte dei Conti": che fine ha fatto la rinazionalizzazione della Banca d'Italia aumma-aumma? Perché nessuno parla della possibilitè di emettere biglietti di stato a costo zero e a zero interessi? Non si può sapere chi-prende-cosa per non dire l'evidente?)

Czech president compares EU to Soviet Union - By CONSTANT BRAND, Associated Press Writer Constant Brand, Associated Press, Feb 19, 2009
The European Union has turned into an undemocratic and elitist project comparable to the Communist dictatorships of eastern Europe that forbade alternative thinking, Czech President Vaclav Klaus told the European Parliament on Thursday. Klaus, whose country now holds the rotating EU presidency, set out a scathing attack on the EU project and its institutions, provoking boos from many lawmakers, some of whom walked out, but applause from nationalists and other anti-EU legislators

Luxembourg: 3 500 frontaliers dehors, dont un les pieds devant - L'Investigateur, 19/02/2009
La crise financière frappe en premier les travailleurs frontaliers. Et l’un d’entre eux s’est même suicidé en se jetant du haut du bâtiment de la Dexia banque où il travaillait...

Luxembourg: Un commissaire en chef de police voleur à la « Belle Etoile » - L'Investigateur, 19/02/2009
Il a été surpris en flagrant délit par les vigiles de la grande surface...

US: 14,000 people per day now are losing their health insurance because it was provided as part of their jobs which they akso are losing - ThinkProgress, Feb 17,  2009
Since spring 2007, 3.5 million Americans have lost their health benefits and are now uninsured

The Lessons of the Stimulus Bill - By Ruth Conniff, The Progressive, February 17, 2009


Sulla base del grafico sopra, se la crisi ricalca il 29, si possono prevedere 6 milioni di morti per fame solo negli USA

Derivati: dieci amministrazioni sotto inchiesta - Veneto24.it, 18 Febbraio 2009
I fascicoli d’indagine riguardano i comuni di Venezia, Verona, Cittadella, Fonzaso, Vittorio Veneto, Conegliano, Camposampiero, Malo e Santa Maria di Sala, nonché quello di Padova, nel quale si sono registrate perdite in relazione all’acquisto di obbligazioni della banca americana Lehman Brothers, fallita lo scorso ottobre

Derivati, altri sette avvisi di garanzia - Corriere della Sera, 17 febbraio 2009
L'inchiesta sui contratti stipulati dal Comune per far fronte al debito pubblico. Gli avvisi di garanzia ipotizzano l'accusa di truffa aggravata ai danni del Comune. Nell’elenco dei nuovi indagati ci sono 3 dirigenti di JpMorgan: Luca Brusadelli, Simone Rondelli, Francesco Ferrini Rossi. Ci sono inoltre William Francis Marrone e Ludovica Bruti di Depfa, Marzia Barone di Deutsche Bank e Alessandro Foti di Ubs.

UBS Settlement Not a Complete Victory for Feds, Says Tax Lawyer - Brian Baxter, The American Lawyer, February 20, 2009
While the deferred prosecution agreement reached between Swiss banking giant UBS and federal prosecutors on Wednesday might have initially looked like a great deal for the government, in reality the Zurich-based bank isn't disclosing nearly as many client names as law enforcement officials are suggesting, says Miller & Chevalier tax partner George Clarke III. Clarke says the Justice Department's decision to file suit against UBS on Thursday in Miami is evidence of this

Berlusconi incontra Brown e spara: «Banche nazionalizzate». Poi ritratta - l'Unità, 20 febbraio 2009
Tra le diverse ipotesi sul tavolo per contrastare la crisi economica c'è anche quella della nazionalizzazione delle banche, rivela Berlusconi nella conferenza stampa a margine dell’incontro con il premier inglese Gordon Brown. «Per ora è solo un'ipotesi avanzata da qualcuno, qualcosa su cui ci stiamo esercitando - aggiunge - L’ipotesi potrebbe prevedere come impegno quello di continuare a fornire credito come prima. Ma se fosse così facile non sarebbe così arduo trovare una soluzione». Frasi abbastanza ambigue da seminare molti sospetti

Nazionalizzare le banche italiane? E' un'opzione - Teleborsa, 20 febbraio 2009
Il capo dell'esecutivo, dopo aver incontrato il Primo Ministro inglese, Gordon Brown, ha aperto alla possibilità di una nazionalizzazione delle banche. Una doccia fredda, ma ancora non si parla di nazionalizzare la rendita monetaria...

La Germania può nazionalizzare le banche - Repubblica,19 febbraio 2009
L' esproprio delle banche è in sostanza legale da ieri nella fortezza del capitalismo europeo. Messa alle strette, a causa della crisi internazionale, da una brutale recessione e dalle pesanti difficoltà del suo sistema bancario, la Germania della grosse Koalition di Angela Merkel ha varato, con una riunione straordinaria del governo, una legge che autorizza i pubblici poteri a nazionalizzare gli istituti di credito e in casi estremi a espropriare i loro azionisti

Stop Europe's great trade robbery (short video) - World Development Movement

[blackmail] Kissinger's recovery plan: NWO or 'chaos' - Australia.to
Hudson calls it “Stage One of a two-stage plan”, so far unannounced, to transfer trillions more to people who, in any sane world, would be behind bars, the purpose being to re-inflate the bubble economy that made them wealthy beyond their dreams while leaving wages stagnant and creating little meaningful work

It’s Getting Ugly: Economist Says Hoard Gold & Scotch - Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet.com, February 17, 2009
Respected economist John Williams, editor of ShadowStats.com, a popular website that tracks real inflation figures, predicts hyperinflationary depression will mean a $100 dollar bill is worth less than toilet paper

The coming purge of American puppets in Japan - Benjamin Fulford, 02/19/2009
The soon-to-be-expected de-rothschildation of the Japan central bank

About the competing plans for a new financial system - Benjamin Fulford, 02/18/2009

Il Millsgate e il Corriere della Sera - Beppe Grillo, 19 Febbraio 2009
La notizia su Berlusconi presidente del Consiglio imputato a Milano al processo Mills per il quale il corrotto è stato condannato a 4 anni e mesi ha un riquadro di 3,5x9 cm. Nel titolo non è neppure menzionato Berlusconi: "Mills corrotto. Condannato a 4 anni e mezzo". Persino il colore di richiamo di un pezzo dale dimensioni di un francobollo è studiato per non attirare l'attenzione del lettore: un azzurrino chiaro al posto del blu e del rosso usati per gli altri. Infine, l'articolo è a pagina 21, dopo i gossip e le notizie di cronaca. Licio Gelli disse: "Il vero potere risiede nelle mani dei detentori dei mass media".

4 anni e 6 mesi di galera per David Mills - di Daniele Martinelli, febbraio 17, 2009
La corte giudicante presieduta da Nicoletta Gandus ha condannato l’avvocato David Mills a 4 anni e 6 mesi per corruzione in atti giudiziari. Fu corrotto da Silvio Berlusconi con 600 mila dollari per mentire nei processi sui diritti televisivi Mediaset

Bank's Failure to Purchase Securities Alleged to Breach Consumer Fraud Act - Michael Booth, New Jersey Law Journal, February 19, 2009
The New Jersey Supreme Court is poised to decide whether a bank is liable under the Consumer Fraud Act for an employee's failure to deliver on a promise to buy securities for a client. The banking industry is watching the case closely, since a pro-plaintiff ruling carries the prospect of treble damages and counsel fees

UBS to Open Secret Swiss Bank Records - By DEVLIN BARRET, AP, 19 febbraio 2009
Banking giant UBS has agreed to pay $780 million and turn over once-secret Swiss banking records to settle allegations it conspired to defraud the U.S. government of taxes owed by thousands of American clients

Perche’ sta arrivando l’uomo forte: il default civico, II - Uriel, 18 febbraio 2009
Il problema arrivera’ quando , circa a meta’ di quest’anno, arrivera’ il tracollo delle PMI del triveneto, che e’ gia’ in fase avanzata (ne ho parlato l’anno scorso, verso novembre, sul vecchio blog, e il buon MOntezemolo ha gia’ cantato il requiem ), e contemporaneamente il tracollo dell’auto mettera’ in crisi il nordovest, mentre l’area lombarda e’ in crisi per mancanza di liquidita’ e calo dei commerci internazionali

I forni crematori di Wall Street - Uriel, 17 febbraio 2009
Certo, non c’e’ il filo spinato. Non ci sono forni, e neanche ciminiere. Ma sta di fatto che da Wall Street e’ uscito un atto cosi’ mostruosamente genocida da uccidere milioni di persone per fame. Non avranno numeri sul braccio. Non saranno di una razza specifica, a meno che i poveri non siano una razza. Ma il dato di fatto e’ che moriranno a milioni

New foreclosure defense: Prove I owe you - Chris O'Meara, AP, Feb. 17, 2009
Homeowners demand lenders produce original documents — some can’t. "I'm going to hang on for dear life until they can prove to me it belongs to them," says Kathy Lovelace, a 50-year-old divorced mother who owns a $200,000 home in Zephyrhills, near Tampa. "I'll try everything I can because it's all I have left." April Charney, head of foreclosure defense for Jacksonville Area Legal Aid in Florida, said the strategy has been so successful for her that she now travels around the country to train other lawyers in how to use it. She said she has gotten cases delayed for years by demanding that lenders produce paperwork they cannot find

The Government-Based Economy - By The Mogambo Guru, Daily Rekoning, 02/18/09
Since we have a fiat currency, a corrupt Congress and a complicit Federal Reserve, then let’s really get this thing in gear! I mean, it would be child’s play for Congress to order the Federal Reserve – which controls our banks – to put electronic money into each of our bank accounts! It’s literally as easy at that!

Bank of England votes for 'quantitative easing' - The Telegraph, February 18, 2009
The 9-0 vote by the MPC was revealed in the minutes of the meeting held on February 5. The Bank's Governor, Mervyn King, will now write to Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, to ask for approval to introduce measures aimed at raising the supply of money in the economy – known as quantitative easing

Greenspan backs bank nationalization - By Krishna Guha and Edward Luce, Financial Times, February 18, 2009
How about starting with the Federal Reserve?

The People Be Damned: President of Special Interests - By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, Counterpunch, February 18, 2009

ANALYSIS - Derivatives dispute divides Islamic finance market - By Liau Y-Sing, Reuters, Feb 6, 2009

SHAIKHA SABEEKA AND PRINCE TALAL ATTEND LAUNCH OF CREATIVITY BANK - bna.bh, February 11, 2009
SHAIKHA SABEEKA WAS SPEAKING TODAY AT THE LAUNCH OF THE CREATIVITY BANK, ATTENDED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE ARAB GULF PROGRAMME FOR UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATIONS (AGFUND) PRINCE TALAL BIN ABDUL AZIZ AL SAUD, AT THE SCW PREMISES. SHAIKHA SABEEKA COMMENDED THE SIGNIFICANT EFFORTS OF PRINCE TALAL IN DEVELOPMENT AND HUMANITARIAN AREAS WHICH BENEFITED DEPRIVED CATEGORIES OF THE SOCIETY ACROSS THE ARAB WORLD. WITH THE LAUNCH OF THE CREATIVITY BANK, BAHRAIN ACCOMMODATES A PIONEERING DEVELOPMENT PROJECT FOR THREE DECADES

Nationalists hijack Dresden ceremony in the biggest far-right demonstration since Hitler - By Tony Paterson, Independent, 14 February 2005
Holger Apfel, 33, leader of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD), which won seats in the Saxony state parliament in Dresden last October, appeared with other nationalist leaders to denounce the British and Americans as "mass murderers and gangsters". "They have left a trail of blood that stretches from Dresden to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and possibly Iran," Mr Apfel told the crowd to enthusiastic applause and chants of "murderers". He added: "We must not allow Germany to become the accomplices of American gangster policy."

Trouble at Treasury: Geithner gets the keys to the henhouse - by Mike Whitney, Information Clearinghouse - 2009-02-18
In truth, Geithner did us all a big favor on Tuesday by exposing himself as a stooge of the banking industry. Now everyone can see that the banks are working the deal from the inside. Geithner has assembled a phalanx of Wall Street flim-flam men to fill out the roster at Treasury. "His chief-of-staff is lobbyist from Goldman Sachs. The new deputy secretary of state is a former CEO of Citigroup. Another CFO from Citigroup is now assistant to the president, and deputy national security adviser for International Economic Affairs. And one of his deputies also came from Citigroup. One new member of the president's Economic Recovery Advisory Board comes from UBS, which is currently being investigated for helping rich clients evade taxes." The Obama White House is a beehive of big money guys and Wall Street speculators

Next Wave of Banking Crisis to come from Eastern Europe - by F. William Engdahl, Global Research, February 18, 2009
Moody’s Rating Service has just announced it ‘might’ downgrade a number of western European banks with large exposures to eastern Europe. On the report, the Euro fell to 2 and a half month lows against the dollar. The Moodys report mentioned especially banks in eastern Europe owned by western European banks including specifically Raiffeisen Zenetralbank Oesterreich and Sweden’s Swedbank. The public Moody’s warning will now force western banks with subsidiaries in eastern Europe to dramatically tighten lending conditions in the east at just the time the opposite is needed to keep economic growth from collapsing and thereby setting off chair-reaction loan defaults. The western banks are caught in a devil’s circle

Crunch hits Germany - by Mirko Knoche, Spectrezine, February 17, 2009
In December, German chamber of commerce chief economist Volker Treier admitted quite frankly: "Germany, as the world's leading export nation, will profit from economic stimulus programmes across the globe." In other words, Germany might adopt a risky wait-and-see policy to see the country through the crisis by taking advantage of taxpayers' money abroad

"Trust me, Queens sucks too" - Greg Palast
Here, in the comic, America's culture war and class war has moved to its inevitable bloody conclusion:  a corporate junta pretending to provide safety to war-torn New York while using high-tech military intelligence and scum-bag death squads to hold on to power

Banche e follia - di Achille della Ragione, napoli.com, 18/2/2009
Un comportamento improntato all’azzardo più che alla prudenza, una scommessa sul rischio di insolvenza, che ha caratterizzato il moderno capitalismo. Una truffa di dimensioni colossali favorita dai mancati controlli delle autorità monetarie così attente al controllo dell’inflazione tradizionale, quando la moneta accaparra beni materiali ed assolutamente inerti davanti all’ipertrofia della finanza, quando il denaro va a caccia di altro denaro. Una follia per la quale oggi i cittadini, attraverso le tasse e l’elargizione degli Stati alle banche, sono obbligati a regalare i loro soldi ad una sistema che li ha turlupinati e che non fornisce alcuna garanzia di riuscire in futuro a funzionarie in maniera più onesta e trasparente

Judge Conflict Case Tests High Court Veteran - Tony Mauro, Legal Times, February 18, 2009
With 64 oral arguments under his belt, Mayer Brown partner Andrew Frey has argued more cases to the Supreme Court than any other lawyer currently in private practice. Now he's preparing for what may be the biggest -- and most unpopular -- argument of his career, representing a West Virginia coal company accused, in effect, of buying a state Supreme Court justice through campaign donations while its case was pending before that court

2 Pa. Judges Admit Jailing Kids For Cash -  CBS News, 12 Feb 2009
Two Pennsylvania judges charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send youth 'offenders' to privately run detention centers pleaded guilty to fraud Thursday in one of the most stunning cases of judicial corruption on record. Prosecutors allege Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, possibly tainting the convictions of thousands of juvenile 'offenders.'

Soroff Fund Added to Petrobras, Potash Stakes in Fourth Quarter - By Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam and Saijel Kishan, Bloomberg, Feb. 17, 2009
Soros’s New York-based firm oversees $21 billion. Its Quantum Endowment Fund returned 8 percent last year. That compared with an average loss of 18 percent by hedge funds, according to data compiled by Hedge Fund Research Inc. of Chicago...

Geithner Pressed By G-7 to Move Faster on Bank Bailout - By Simon Kennedy and Rebecca Christie, Bloomberg, Feb. 16, 2009
“A concrete U.S. plan would have positive spillover effects on markets and economies elsewhere,” said Marco Annunziata, chief economist at UniCredit MIB in London. “They are also probably hoping Geithner unveils the magic formula, which they could then also adopt.”

UK: Even Labour MPs are shortselling the bust PM - Rachel Sylvester, The Times, February 17, 2009
The defection of the Government's welfare guru is the latest sign that Gordon Brown is sliding inexorably to defeat

Australia: SENATOR WILLIAMS TAKES FIRST STEP TO BANKING INQUIRY - February 17, 2009
New South Wales Nationals Senator John Williams today gave notice in the Senate that on the 11 th of March he will move to have a Joint Select Committee on Banking and Financial Practices established to inquire into the industry

Madoff Blames Ponzi Scheme on Youth, Immaturity - Borowitz Report, February 17, 2009
Was Only in His Sixties, Financier Explains. Reflecting on his role in the fraud, which wound up bilking $50 billion from unwitting investors, Mr. Madoff said, "I think I felt under pressure to become the biggest scumbag of all time." In other business news, GM and Chrysler revealed their rescue plans, which call for the two auto giants to stop making cars and become banks instead.

GEAB N°32 is available! 4th quarter 2009 – Beginning of Phase 5 of the global systemic crisis: phase of global geopolitical dislocation - Public announcement GEAB N°32, February 16, 2009
According to LEAP/E2020, this new stage of the crisis will be shaped by two major processes happening in two parallel sequences:
A. Two major processes:
1. Disappearance of the financial base (Dollar & Debt) all over the world
2. Fragmentation of the interests of the global system’s big players and blocks
B. Two parallel sequences:
1. Quick disintegration of the current international system altogether
2. Strategic dislocation of big global players

Finance Capitalism Hits a Wall - by Prof. Michael Hudson, Global Research, February 17, 2009
The Oligarchs’ Escape Plan – at the Treasury’s Expense

Gay Talese Extends Editorial Services to Bums - by Roy Edroso, The Village Voice, February 17, 2009
Unsolicited, Talese changed a nameless mendicant's punchy, "Homeless. Please Help," to the more poetic, "Please Support Pres. Obama's Stimulus Plan, and begin right here... at the bottom... Thank you." Talese does not report the man's response...

Dead End in Detroit for White-Collar Workers - By BILL VLASIC and NICK BUNKLEY, NYTimes, February 16, 2009
Unlike union workers laid off from idled factories, salaried workers have no safety net of health care or guaranteed income for a year. At best, it’s a small severance or buyout, and a voucher for a discount on one of the hundreds of thousands of unsold cars that G.M. or Chrysler has sitting in inventory

U.S. Accuses Texas Financial Firm of $8 Billion Fraud - By CLIFFORD KRAUSS, PHILLIP L. ZWEIG and JULIE CRESWELL, NYTimes, February 17, 2009
The Securities and Exchange Commission accused Robert Allen Stanford, the chief of the Stanford Financial Group, on Tuesday of conducting “a massive ongoing fraud” in the sale of about $8 billion of high-yielding certificates of deposit held in the firm’s bank in Antigua. Also named in the suit were two other executives and some affiliates of the financial group

London Banking Center at Core of Financial Crisis - Wasaka, February 16, 2009
New York’s normally far left Village Voice has published a revealing article, which for the first time here placed the central blame for the current major economic problems in the U.S. on the behavior of several London banks

Japan's Downturn Is Bad News for the World (?) - By MICHAEL AUSLIN, WSJ, FEBRUARY 17, 2009
The U.S. can't count on Japanese savers (taxpayers). Without massive debt purchases by Japan and China, the U.S. may not be able to finance the cost of the stimulus package indebting the taxpayers (but the U.S. can resort to  print sovereign 'US notes' to pay for the bill, like Japan is pondering right now)

UK going mad with anti-bonus fever - By Chris Hughes, breakingviews.com, 16 Feb 2009
Why would anyone take a senior job in a UK bank right now? Not for the money. The criticism of bonuses is too intense for that (after all, if the people learn the truth, they may face life sentences...)

UK: bankrupt bankers may be hired by bankrupt Treasury - February 16 2009
The chancellor is looking to hire up to 70 people, with a focus on sharpening up the Treasury’s dealings with the Square Mile

Davidowitz: "Worst Is Yet to Come:" Americans' Standard of Living Permanently Changed - YFinance, Feb 17, 2009

[selezione economica] TRIESTE, MORTO BARBONE NEL PARCHEGGIO DELLA STAZIONE - AGI, 17 feb. 2009
Sembra che l'uomo trascorresse da tempo le sue notti dove è stato trovato. Notti che però sono state particolarmente gelide

A fraud bigger than Madoff --Senior US soldiers investigated over missing Iraq 'reconstruction' billions - Independent, 16 Feb 2009
In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to 'reconstruct' Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme. In one case, auditors working for SIGIR discovered that $57.8m was sent in "pallet upon pallet of hundred-dollar bills" to the US comptroller for south-central Iraq, Robert J Stein Jr, who had himself photographed standing with the mound of money

Inquiry on Graft in Iraq Focuses on U.S. Officers - NYTimes, 15 Feb 2009
Tens of thousands of dollars stuffed into pizza boxes and delivered surreptitiously to the American contracting offices in Baghdad, and payoffs made in paper sacks that were scattered in "dead drops" around the Green Zone. Federal authorities examining the early days of the $125 billion American-led effort to 'rebuild' Iraq have significantly broadened their inquiry to include senior American military officers [Army Col. Anthony B. Bell and Lt. Col. Ronald W. Hirtle of the Air Force] who oversaw the program, according to interviews with senior government officials and court documents

Best Economic Stimulus - Suspend the Income Tax Withholding! - Rich Sheridan, Feb 18, 2009
A Call for A City of Dallas Resolution to Washington to Suspend Income Tax Withholding Presented to the Dallas City Council By Richard P. Sheridan, Professional Engineer, New York - Activist. Last Thursday, The Dallas Morning News did a great critical review of the Economic Stimulus Package. Here's the best of what this editorial said: "A deep reduction in the payrool tax workers and employers pay would have been a smarter way to rev up consumer spending and job growth."

Well here we are...the end of Planet Finance - RICHARD GRAYSON, essay published in Broadsheet, Australia, 2009
Sotheby's has just let 120 people go in the USA. In May they sold a Bacon painting for $86 million American to Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, their most recent sale failed to shift a similar one at under half the price. Galleries are shutting their doors. It is, as a friend just back from Art Basel Miami said, 'Like someone just turned a tap off.' Things are falling back to earth

CATASTROPHIC BANKERS’ RAMP TO CONTINUE UNDER OBAMA
SMALL PROBLEM: THE MARKET AND THE WORLD AREN’T BUYING IT -  Christopher Story, 15 February 2009
The reason that the banks’ derivatives assets haven’t been valued and cannot be valued is that THEY HAVE NO VALUE. They are figments of financial marketing sorcerers' imaginations. The very word 'derivative' itself contains the brazen lie that the subsequent 'Structured Products' are DERIVED from the original transaction, whereas in reality the cashflow from the original deal does not 'travel', and the subsequent parties have NO RECOURSE to the hard cashflow from the original transaction, so that they are handling phantom trades divorced from the original contract. The age of smoke and mirrors is over.

William Foxton, British Investor In Madoff Scheme, Kills Himself - Raphael G. Satter, AP, February 14, 2009

Central banks urged to buy corporate debt - By Tony Barber in Brussels, FT.com, February 16 2009
However, only the UK has yet embraced Mr Seillière’s suggestion that national governments or central banks should take the radical step of buying up the debt of ­private-sector companies outside the financial sector. The Bank of England’s asset purchase facility commenced last week. “Further exceptional measures should be considered ... For example, central banks and governments could explore options for temporary schemes to buy commercial paper and other debt instruments directly from companies.”

Roubini tells Geithner to nationalise US banks - By James Quinn, Telegraph, 16 Feb 2009
Tim Geithner must nationalise some of America's biggest banks and take the total toll of the US bail-out to around $2 trillion, according to one of the world's most prominent economists

I soldi ci sono solo per le banche - Andrea Angelini, Rinascita, 14 Febbraio 2009
Le soluzioni date in America e in Europa alla crisi finanziaria, hanno ulteriormente evidenziato che è in atto un vergognoso trasferimento di ricchezza finanziaria, che farà presto a trasformarsi in reale, da parte di chi ha e aveva già poco a chi, invece di suo, aveva molto e che continua ad avere abbastanza o troppo anche dopo aver sperperato buona parte della sua ricchezza in operazioni speculative tese ad arricchirsi ulteriormente. Il fatto nuovo, rispetto al passato, è che questo meccanismo si sta evidenziando come macroscopico agli occhi di chi è costretto ogni giorno a tirare la cinghia o si trova ormai da tempo in uno stato di autentica povertà. I potenti del mondo quindi farebbero bene a tenere “marxianamente” presente che in tal modo si è provocata una povertà di massa e al tempo stesso si è innescata una miscela pronta ad esplodere e a spazzare via con moti e rivolte di piazza un intero sistema globale basato sull’arbitrio di pochi

An Edifice of Pure Economic Crapola - By The Mogambo Guru, The Daily Reckoning, 02/16/09
“On the other hand, we call for trillion dollar stimulus plan on the basis of little more than citing John Maynard Keynes” which “gives us special license to talk economics without knowing any.” Hahaha! Exactly right! Well put! And like the guy who wears a T-shirt that proudly proclaims “I am not a gynecologist, but I’ll take a look” the results of having economic poseurs and idiots at the Federal Reserve inflict their idiotic econometric theories upon us have been Disastrously, Ruinously Bad

WHY SOME SUSTAINABLE POWER IS UNSUSTAINABLE - By Colin Barras, New Scientist, February 6, 2009
Some forms of renewable energy are dependent upon scarce metals like indium and platinum or on farmland, which is needed for food

[good news] UK Co-operative Bank ceases all investment in DU weapon manufacturers - ICBUW, 12 February 2009
Co-op becomes the first UK bank to cease investments in DU weapon manufacturers, classifying uranium weapons along with cluster bombs as indiscriminate

LIBRI: DEMOCRAZIA, LA CENTRALITA' DELLA FORMAZIONE DELLE ELITE - Adnkronos, 16 febbraio 2009
“Occorre ripartire dalle élite per migliorare le prestazioni della democrazia”. E’ questo il concetto attorno al quale ruota il nuovo libro di Mario Caligiuri, “La formazione delle élite. Una pedagogia per la democrazia”, edito da Rubbettino. Caligiuri è professore di Pedagogia della comunicazione all’Università della Calabria e di Comunicazione pubblica alla Facoltà di Scienze della Comunicazione dell’Università “La Sapienza” di Roma. E proprio a Roma presso “La Sapienza” che mercoledì 18 febbraio 2009 alle ore 19.30 al Centro Congressi  della Facoltà di Scienze della Comunicazione situato in  via Salaria 113, Caligiuri presenterà il suo lavoro, nell’ambito della iniziativa “Martedì d’autore. Opinione pubblica e democrazia a confronto”, promossa dalla Facoltà di Scienze della comunicazione, presieduta da Mario Morcellini

INVASION USA: ¡Adios! Personal banker quits over Mexican IDs - By Chelsea Schilling, WorldNetDaily, February 15, 2009
Employee acts to take America back, refuses to help illegals. A personal banker in Arlington, Va., is quitting his job after Chevy Chase Bank, one of the largest and best-known banks in the Washington, D.C., region announced it will begin accepting consular cards from customers who many suspect are illegal aliens

2 Florida banks temporarily halting foreclosures -  Yahoo!News, Feb 14, 2009
On Friday, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and major banks JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley, Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. said they were halting foreclosures for at least a month. Coral Gables-based BankUnited and Fort Lauderdale-based BankAtlantic followed suit

Wikileaks slams arrest; releases latest Afghan civilian deaths data - February 16, 2009
A confidential NATO report issued last month reveals that civilian deaths from the war in Afghanistan have increased by 46% over the past year. What McNally passed on will not cost lives in the sense that it doesn't give specific military details. But the whole point of defeating the Taliban is winning hearts and minds and stopping the population joining their cause. If they learn we're lying to them, it could become a very dangerous place. This has caused a diplomatic row and the Americans are not happy at all...

Cure omeopatiche per la crisi - Pierre Carniti, Eguaglianza e Libertà, 15/02/2009
Come fanno gli omeopati, si sta tendando di tamponare un disastro scatenato dai debiti facendo altri debiti, ma non servirà se si lascia immutato tutto il resto. In Italia, poi, non si fa neanche questo. Pochissime risorse e disperse, invece di canalizzarle in tre direzioni precise

The Grace Commission confirms the allegation that the income tax revenues go 100% to pay the interest on the national debt and not a single nickel of it goes to the government. Whatever government services we have, they are not being financed by the income tax. The underlined section of this report is from the Grace Commission that proves that none of the personal income tax goes to pay for any government services and is used to pay only the interest on the national debt. Click here to go to the bookmark now

Obama targets housing fix after stimulus victory - by Jitendra Joshi; YNews, Feb 15, 2009
Senator Lindsey Graham cited estimates that half a trillion dollars could be needed to fix the property sector, whose tailspin from boom to bust has crippled much of Wall Street and ignited the broader economic crisis. After the first round of a banking bailout and now the stimulus bill, "it makes it harder for everybody here to go back to the public and say, 'Please give us more money, because we seem irresponsible'," he said on ABC News

[Escalation]  Cassa integrazione: Bergamo chiede 10 milioni - L'Eco di Bergamo, 14 febbraio 2009
Bergamo e Ponteranica: due rapine in venti minuti - L'Eco di Bergamo, 13 febbraio 2009
Due rapine in venti minuti. Un assalto al market con pistola e cacciavite a Bergamo e un colpo in un negozio di fruttivendolo a Ponteranica (o non bastava la Social Card?)
Una famiglia su 3 non può pagare imprevisti. In Italia è record europeo dei minorenni poveri - L'Eco di Bergamo, 12 febbraio 2009
Tante famiglie italiane in difficoltà non solo di fronte a piccole spese impreviste ma anche negli acquisti quotidiani di beni di prima necessità (cosa s'inventeranno per procurarseli?)

Dinar Standard: Monthly Newsletter - Business Strategies for OIC Markets - Feb 2009: Safar 1430
This year - new opportunities emerge in manufacturing, food, and agriculture. The 2008 DS100 continues to provide the leading benchmark of the health of OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) economies. With US $1.21 trillion in total revenues and a respectable 12.3% in revenue growth over the year before, the Top 100 Companies of the OIC show resilience amidst the global economic turmoil

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn warns second wave of countries will require bail-out - Edmund Conway, Telegraph, 14 Feb 2009
A "second wave" of countries will fall victim to the economic crisis and face being bailed out by the International Monetary Fund, its chief warned at the G7 summit in Rome. The whole problem is that purchasing power must now be enticed from international investors -- the ones to whom everyone is in debt to and losing their foreclosed properties to etc. -- by more claims on their labor and property. All of our "bail" goes to the usurer Baal -- who does not recirculate it to us. Rather we must have goverment created purchasing power go right to American households from the constitutional power to regulate money and interstate trade. Social Credit could have prevented this depression and Social Credit could end it right now -- but instead we go further into debt and increase our tax burden and hand over more of our public assets and private holdings to the creditor class who take the money and invest it in other countries because they are profiting from our failure. The super rich are gaining all of the assets Americans are losing. Their wealth as creditors increases exactly as we are further crushed by debt. All of our debt is backed by the collateral we put up when we took out our loans -- and yet the Money Power -- the credit monopoly -- are the ones getting the bailout. Where are all of the unemployed -- this is no time for looking for jobs that aren't there. It is time for demanding the new president end the private credit monopoly and domination of our key institutions by agents of the International Bankers. Stop acting exactly as they must have predicted you would act when they conceived this plot against us

Highlights of The Stimulus Bill - Catherine  Austin Fitts, February 13, 2009
The Associated Press breakdown of approximately $700 billion of the $789 billion economic stimulus bill agreed to by the Senate and House

The Data Beast - Part V - Catherine Austin Fitts, February 12, 200
Before his death, Aaron Russo gave an interview about his conversations with a member of the Rockefeller family regarding plans to further centralize control of the human race...

Fraud probe into UK firm's role in collapse of world's largest insurer AIG - By Arthur Martin and Ben Laurance, Daily Mail, 12th February 2009
The probe by the Serious Fraud Office into AIG Financial Products will focus on those with ‘inside knowledge’ of the collapse

Part of the inquiry into the Mayfair-based subsidiary is likely to focus on its boss, Joseph Cassano (above)

Avv. MICHELA RUSSO: UN MILIONE DI EURO RESTITUITI AI RISPARMIATORI PER I TANGO BOND DAL TRIBUNALE DI VENEZIA – ATTENTI AI TERMINI DI PRESCRIZIONE! - Federconstribuenti, 13 febbraio 2009
La sentenza recentemente pronunciata dal Tribunale di Venezia conferma come molti risparmiatori hanno intrapreso, con successo, la via giudiziaria per riottenere quanto investito in titoli Argentina. La vicenda ha assunto notevole risalto mediatico in quanto la banca negoziatrice è stata condannata a restituire ai propri clienti un importo superiore ad € 1.000.000,00

THE FEDERAL LAND LORDING AGENDA - By Nancy Levant, NewsWithViews.com, February 14, 2009
In 1992, the United Nations stated in its blueprint for the 21st century (Agenda 21) that there is to be no privately-held property — be it land or the homes that sit upon the land — for anyone. All property, according to Agenda 21, is to be “owned” by government. Agenda 21 also details the plan for “human relocation” stating that all member nations must implement “human relocation” plans. So today, we witness flood, fire, snow and ice, and power-grid relocations — annually — and with Homeland military assistance/insistence. We, as the people of this nation, are indeed “relocating.”

A March on Washington? - by Jon Christian Ryter, NewsWithViews.com, February 14, 2009
Maybe it's time to remind the politicians on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, that they still work for us and not the bankers, industrialists and merchant princes they are endowing with taxpayer money that belongs to us, our children, our grandchildren and their children. Politicians think the taxpayer-voter-citizens are so dumb that we forget the money they throw around like it was worthless paper actually belongs to us, "the People."

Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan - Commentary by Betsy McCaughey, Bloomberg, Feb. 9, 2009
The health-care industry is the largest employer in the U.S. It produces almost 17 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Yet the bill treats health care the way European governments do: as a cost problem instead of a growth industry. Imagine limiting growth and innovation in the electronics or auto industry during this downturn. This stimulus is dangerous to your health and the economy

Pinnacle Bank, Beaverton, Oregon - By Tony, The Bank Implode-O-Meter, February 13th, 2009
Pinnacle Bank, Beaverton, Oregon hit bed rock bottom as the FDIC made it unlucky number 13, on the day before Valentines day 2009

If Eastern Europe falls, world is next - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph, February 14, 2009
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) says bad debts will top 10 percent and may reach 20 percent. The Vienna press said Bank Austria and its Italian owner Unicredit face a "monetary Stalingrad" in the East

Obscene Wealth Can Be a Deadly Sin - By Howard Bess, Consortiumnews, February 14, 2009
It is time for Christians to speak to America about our real besetting sin. Our obsessive immorality is not sexual behavior as some would have us believe. Rather it is our obsession with wealth. We as a nation have become obscenely greedy

The Oligarchy's Bailout Ball - By Michael Winship, Consortiumnews, February 14, 2009
"Like spoiled, petulant children," is how Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein described them. "These guys won't be happy until the government agrees to relieve them of every last one of their lousy loans and investments at inflated prices, recapitalize every major bank and brokerage and insurance company on sweetheart terms and restore them to the glory days, so they can once again earn inflated profits and obscene pay packages by screwing over their customers and their shareholders."

Federal obligations exceed world GDP - By Jerome R. Corsi, WorldNetDaily February 13, 2009
Does $65.5 trillion terrify anyone yet? "The federal government is bankrupt," Williams told WND. "In a post-Enron world, if the federal government were a corporation such as General Motors, the president and senior Treasury officers would be in federal penitentiary."

G7 ministers put up united front as they try to avoid a retreat into protectionism - Gary Duncan, The Times, February 14, 2009
Officials in Rome struggled to conceal their shock at much worse than expected official figures revealing that the eurozone economy shrank at a record rate in the final quarter of last year. The countries were led by Germany, where GDP went into free-fall, plunging by a startling 2.1 per cent – the worst quarterly decline since 1970

Britain’s bankers plumb new depths - Patrick Hosking, The Times, February 14, 2009
The suggestion by Lord Myners, the City minister, that some bankers simply have no sense of the broader society around them is getting harder to refute. To be preparing to pay out billions of pounds in discretionary bonuses over the next few weeks suggests an ignorance of the public mood and a single-mindedness bordering on sociopathic

US intelligence chief: World capitalist crisis poses greatest threat - By Bill Van Auken, WSWS, 14 Feb 2009
In testimony before the Senate Committee on Intelligence Thursday, Washington's new director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, warned that the deepening world capitalist crisis posed the paramount threat to US national security and warned that its continuation could trigger a return to the "violent extremism" of the 1920s and 1930s

Collapse Begins - Gerald Celente on Financial Sense for Valentine's Day - February 14th, 2009
Celente says he believes the collapse will begin at the end of February

Nigerian web scam bilked Utah out of $2.5M - By Nate Carlisle, The Salt Lake Tribune,  02/12/2009
Experts: 'Their IT people should have known better.'

GEAB N°31 is available! Phase IV of the systemic crisis: The sequence of global insolvency begins - Public announcement GEAB N°31 January 16, 2009)
According to LEAP/E2020, the trend is clear: the sequence that has begun this year is a sequence of global insolvency

Financial Crisis Called Top Security Threat to U.S. - Washington Post, 13 Feb 2009
Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair told Congress yesterday that instability in countries around the world caused by the current global economic crisis [the Bush Depression], rather than terrorism, is the primary near-term security threat to the United States. Blair also raised the specter of the "high levels of violent extremism" in the turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s along with "regime-threatening instability" [Hope springs eternal!] if the economic crisis persists over a one-to-two-year period

Regulators Close Banks in Nebraska, Florida - By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 13 Feb 2009
Regulators on Friday closed Sherman County Bank in Nebraska and Riverside Bank of the Gulf Coast in Florida, marking 11 failures this year of federally insured institutions

US: Pennsylvania Joins Sovereignty Fight - February 13th, 2009
In an attempt to proclaim and reassert Pennsylvania state government’s independence and sovereignty from the federal government, I plan to introduce a House resolution reminding federal authorities about the constitutional limitations on their powers and calling on them to cease and desist with all activities that infringe on the powers reserved to the state of Pennsylvania and its citizens

"Worst economic collapse ever" (video) - Russia Today, Feb 10, 2009
Quando la gente non ha più niente da perdere... lo perderà.

Obama's Stimulus - Not One In Congress Read It (video) - GOP Leader Boehner Floor Speech, Feb 13, 2009

Ireland to take control of banks, while plans for Fortis are rebuffed - By Matthew Saltmarsh and Eamon Quinn, IHT, February 11, 2009
The Irish government, meeting Wednesday night, approved a capital injection of €3.5 billion, or $4.5 billion, each for Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland, a Finance Ministry official said. Bloomberg News reported later Wednesday night that the ministry confirmed the move in an e-mail message. That made Ireland the first European Union country to take de facto control of all of its most important banks. Last month, the government stepped in to nationalize the teetering Anglo Irish Bank, which was No.3

California: Counties brace for missed payments from state - John Wildermuth, SFGate, February 10, 2009
"The controller shares the counties' frustration," said Hallye Jordan, a spokeswoman for Chiang. "But he has to defer payment on everything to make sure there's money for mandated expenses like debt service..."

Revealed: Pentagon ran (is running) secret prisons, sought ways to circumvent Geneva Convention against war crimes, hid prisoners from Red Cross observation, and tortured prisoners to death - to defend freedom, of course - Raw Story, February 12, 2009


'Buy gold. It'll only rise from here' - Vivek Kaul, DNA,  February 13, 2009
Can you visualise a catalysing event that will lead to the outright capitulation of the US dollar?
It's impossible to predict. It could be another major bank failure in the US. It could be when the Federal Reserve becomes the biggest buyer of US T-bonds. It could be when China or other trade surplus countries stop accumulating dollars and start spending them instead. The event causing the tipping point cannot be predicted, but once the tipping point is reached, history shows that the currency has less than a year before it totally collapses


DIVIDED: AMERICA FALLS - By Frosty Wooldridge, NewsWithViews.com, February 13, 2009
Our present economic crisis has been the result of many mistakes, not the least of which is blind trust in the belief that persons in leadership positions always had our best interests at heart, lending agencies and federal officials were persons of unquestioned honor, and that our personal and national safety was never in peril

RON PAUL: WHAT IF… The American People Learn Truth! - You Tube, February 13, 2009

American black ops in Japan are starting to be exposed - Benjamin Fulford, 02/14/2009
In what appears to be a related development, the killer of Japanese Democratic Party MP Kouki Ishii has now confessed, in a documentary released by TV Asahi, that he lied when he confessed by saying he acted alone when in fact he acted on behalf of others. Ishii was killed 4 years ago shortly before he was due to bring evidence to the Japanese parliament that would “turn Japanese politics upside down.” My sources told me he found out a large portion of Japan’s secret budget was being used to steal Japanese money to give the US military industrial gangster machine

Buy American: Protection From Yourself - By The Mogambo Guru, Daily Reckoning, 02/13/09
This is not about how we have been led down the path of destruction by the corrupt news media and the lapdog universities not doing their jobs, failing miserably, just as miserably as the Federal Reserve and the worthless trash in Congress have failed us, but about protectionism, which may be ostensibly about “saving jobs”, but it is actually about retaliation and massive tit-for-tat protectionist legislation, which makes everything that anyone buys cost more and more, making everything worse and worse, inflations spiraling until you are bankrupt and starving...

Europe's industrial base may never recover from crisis - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph, 13 Feb 2009
The European Commission has issued a red alert over the unprecedented collapse of industrial production, warning that EU states are running out of money for rescue packages (To say that a state cannot pursue its aims because there is no money, is like saying that an engineer cannot build roads because there are no kilometres...)

City trader Terry Freeman arrested over £40 million 'Ponzi' fraud - Sean O'Neill, Crime Editor, Michael Herman and Steve Bird , The Times. February 13, 2009
Detective Chief Superintendent Steve Head, of City of London police, said that his force had detected a marked rise in financial crime as the recession deepened. Mr Head said: "There is no doubt in my mind that the present economic situation has led to this rise in reporting [of fraud]

Pil: Megale (Cgil), nei prossimi mesi sara' tempesta . MF/Dow Jones, 13 Febbraio 2009
"Se a fine 2008 siamo a un -2,6% vuol dire che nei prossimi mesi ci troveremo di fronte a una vera e propria tempesta". Lo afferma il segretario confederale della Cgil, Agostino Megale, a proposito dei dati diffusi oggi dall'Istat sul Pil



All of Them Must Go - By Naomi Klein, The Nation, February 4, 2009
Watching the crowds in Iceland banging pots and pans until their government fell reminded me of a chant popular in anti-capitalist circles in 2002: “You are Enron. We are Argentina.” The pattern is clear: governments that respond to a crisis created by free-market ideology with an acceleration of that same discredited agenda will not survive to tell the tale. As Italy's students have taken to shouting in the streets: "We won't pay for your crisis!"

USA: 21 States Claiming Sovereignty - Ernest Hancock, Freedom's Phoenix, February 12, 2009
21 States Claiming Sovereignty: AZ, AL, AK, AR, CA, CO, GA, HI, ID, IN, KS, ME, MI, MO, MT, NH, NV, OK, PA, TX, & WA

Nationalize the Banks - By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, February 11, 2009
The banks got us into this financial mess in the first place by making unwise home loans and by speculating in unregulated credit-default swaps tied to those loans. They have taken the entire world economy down with them. They don’t deserve to be bailed out. If we want companies to receive loans, why not get rid of the middleman, and have the government lend directly to businesses and to homeowners?

The Economic Panic of 2009 - By Bill Bonner, Daily Reckoning, 02/12/09
Poor Barack. His whole presidency rests on getting this bailout thing right. If he does, he’ll be a hero. If he doesn’t, the economy will go into a Japan-like slump and he’ll spend his entire time in office dealing with people looking for handouts – zombie banks, comatose corporations, and desperate households. The poor bankers are playing along, of course. They’re apologizing to politicians for all the harm they’ve done. ‘Yes, we wrecked Western civilization, but we’ve said were sorry, all right? Now, can we have the money?’

SOS: Suffocating On Spending - By The Mogambo Guru, Daily Reckoning, 02/12/09
Bloomberg.com report that “The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion.” Now, I think you will agree that that is a lot of money, and Bloomberg notes that “the $9.7 trillion in pledges would be enough to send a $1,430 check to every man, woman and child alive in the world,” and is “enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages.” All I can do is hole up in the Big Beautiful Mogambo Bunker (BBMB) and whimper in fear, tapping out “SOS” on my Mogambo Interstellar Emergency Transmitter (MIET) so that intelligent beings passing through this quadrant of the galaxy will come and please, please, please rescue me from this godforsaken planet of morons, governed as it is by the worst of the worst

Tangenti, truffe e derivati nel mirino dei giudici contabili – Sabrina Lauricella, Rinascita, 12 Febbraio 2009
La Corte dei Conti punta il dito sui derivati, ma per la truffa degli 80 milioni di milioni di euro della "rendita monetaria effettiva", bisognerà aspettare ancora....

RT Guest: Gerald Celente - Russia Today, February 11, 2009
In 2009 we’re going to see the worst economic collapse ever, the ‘Greatest Depression’, says Gerald Celente, U.S. trend forecaster. He believes it’s going to be very violent in the U.S., including there being a tax revolt. G.C.: I’m not exaggerating, the facts are there. I have a saying: when people lose everything and they have nothing to lose, they lose it. You’re going to see people saying, off with their heads. There’s going to be another revolution in this country


Obama, like Bush, is Throwing Public Money into a Banking Black Hole - by Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay, Global Research, February 12, 2009
There exists a state of denial in Washington D.C. regarding the excessive debt problem, essentially because the same people who are responsible for creating the mess are in power. It doesn't matter whether a Republican or a Democratic administration is in place, they remain in charge and they rely on the same failed economic policies. The Geithner plan is the son of the Paulson plan. Both are destined to fail because they are based on a flawed diagnosis

THE HOUSE OF CARDS - CNBC presents the definitive report on the defining story of our time. CNBC correspondent David Faber investigates the origins of the global economic crisis, with first person accounts from home buyers, mortgage brokers, investment bankers and investors – most of whom let greed blind them, leading to the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. "Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters..." - internal email, Wall Street, 12/15/2006

Financial Crisis: A Short History of US Government Handouts - by Stephen Lendman, Global Research, February 12, 2009
In America today, they're called bailouts, but throughout history they were handouts. Some quite generous (though nothing like today's) and always for the privileged. Never for the public interest or greater good

'Here's the problem... people really hate you,' US bankers told - Stephen Foley, Independent, 12 February 2009
Wall Street's most powerful figures yesterday faced Congress to explain why taxpayers' money is being spent on bonuses, jets and junkets

Bubble Economy 2.0: The Financial Recovery Plan from Hell - by Michael Hudson, Global Research, February 11, 2009
The myth of “free markets” is now supposed to consist of governments withdrawing from planning and taxing wealth, so as to leave resource allocation and the economic surplus to bankers rather than elected public representatives. This is what classically is called oligarchy, not democracy

Banks' toxic debts risk overwhelming EU governments - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Bruno Waterfield, The Telegraph, February 11, 2009
While no country was mentioned, the obvious candidates are Ireland, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, and Britain -- and non-EU member Switizerland -- which all have oversized banking sectors. EU banks hold balance sheet assets of E41.2 trillion (L36.9 trillion). European Central Bank is not allowed to bail out individual states, yet national goverments do not control the monetary levers. Who is in charge then?

China to Stick with U.S. Bonds - By Henny Sender, Financial Times, February 11, 2009
A Chinese government banking official was quoted by the Financial Times today, in the story appended here, as saying that his country has no alternative to continuing its purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds even as China knows that those bonds are worth nothing

[tutti contro tutti] Feds Set Sights on 'Gatekeepers' in Fraud Investigations - Joe Palazzolo, Legal Times, February 12, 2009
Federal law enforcement officials said Wednesday they are targeting lawyers, mortgage brokers and other "gatekeepers" who perpetrated fraud that contributed to the current economic crisis -- a clear warning shot as the federal government pumps billions of dollars into the financial sector. "They have the most to lose, they're the most likely to flip, and they make the best examples," said Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Assets Relief Program, during a congressional hearing

Halliburton and KBR to Pay $579 Million in Penalties in Nigerian Bribe Case - Marcia Coyle, The National Law Journal, February 12, 2009
The Department of Justice and the SEC have won the second-largest penalties -- totaling $579 million -- for violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act against an American company involved in a 10-year scheme to bribe Nigerian government officials to obtain engineering and construction contracts. Kellogg Brown & Root agreed to pay a $402 million criminal fine. KBR's parent company, KBR Inc., and its former parent company, Halliburton, jointly agreed to pay $177 million in disgorgement of profits

Official: Wife Pulled $15 Million Before Madoff Arrest - Glen Johnson, The Associated Press, February 12, 2009
The wife of disgraced money manager Bernard Madoff withdrew more than $15 million from a firm co-owned by her husband -- including $10 million on the day before his arrest on charges he ran a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, the top securities regulator in Massachusetts said Wednesday. "We're not accusing her of anything wrong," a spokesman for Secretary of State William Galvin said. "Now, what someone in New York or the feds may think of it, may be entirely different."

King Says U.K. in Deep Recession, Pledges More Easing - By Svenja O’Donnell and Brian Swint, Bloomberg, Feb. 11, 2009
“We now expect the Monetary Policy Committee to cut rates to zero at the March meeting and introduce quantitative easing,” said Michael Saunders, chief Western European economist at Citigroup Inc. in London. That will probably include “purchases of a range of assets, including gilts but also private sector assets.” Fathom Financial Consulting, a firm founded by a group of former central bank economists, yesterday urged the government to buy houses as a means to increase the money supply

$3000-a-day jobs for Bush friends - 10 Feb 2009
Former US president George W. Bush has appointed dozens of "friends and supporters" to lucrative jobs during his final days in office. The Washington Post wrote on Tuesday that Bush made more than 100 such appointments, tapping associates to non-confirmable, obscure posts such as the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports and the US-Russia Polar Bear Commissions. Former White House senior aides, Fred F. Fielding, Emmet T. Flood, William A. Burck and Daniel M. Price were all assigned to an obscure World Bank agency called the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes...

White House may move to buy mortgages - By John W. Schoen, msnbc, Feb. 12, 2009
The White House is considering a new approach to head off foreclosures in which the government would buy up loans at risk of default and refinance them

WHO IS PULLING GEITNER'S STRINGS? - By Cliff Kincaid, NewsWithViews.com, February 12, 2009
Geithner doesn’t know the details because he hasn’t been given them yet. Those who expected the details of the plan were operating under the false assumption that the Treasury Secretary -- and by extension, the U.S. Government -- is in practical control and charge of the U.S. economy

Fraud 'Directly Related' to Financial Crisis Probed --FBI Agents Could be Reassigned from National Security Due to Booming Caseload -  By JASON RYAN, ABCnews, 11 Feb 2009
The FBI has opened investigations into more than 500 cases of alleged corporate fraud, including 38 that involve major firms and are "directly related" to the national economic crisis, FBI Deputy Director John Pistole told Congress today. The surge in white-collar investigations is putting such a strain on the FBI that Pistole said the bureau is considering reassigning agents from national security, which has been the bureau's priority since the 9/11 attacks.

Will You Help Me With My Next Film? - Michael Moore, February 11 2009
"... if you work for a bank, a brokerage firm or an insurance company — or if you have seen things or heard things that you believe the American people have a right to know — please contact me at bailout@michaelmoore.com." – Michael Moore


In The Know: Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole? (video) - ONN, February 12, 2009

Bankers face 'great deal of anger' - msnbc, 11 Feb 2009
The gaping divide between the nation's political and financial capitals showed starkly Wednesday when lawmakers hammered eight of Wall Street's most influential chief executives about how they have so far spent billions of taxpayer money. Angry Congressmen wanted to know why their constituents cannot get loans for cars, homes and businesses even though the banks received $160 billion so far to help thaw frozen credit

[global default] Regulator Calls for Lenders to Stop Foreclosures - By Renae Merle, Washington Post, February 11th, 2009
The Office of Thrift Supervision today called for the mortgage lenders it regulates to halt foreclosures until the Obama administration unveils a program to help struggling homeowners

Silver and Gold Will Make You More Attractive - by The Mogambo Guru, Daily Reckoning, 02/11/09
“Investment demand for silver leapt a huge 309 tonnes last week, a tonnage we have never seen before in such a short time!” I sighed and began to daydream when I suddenly realized the cosmic universality that demand and supply applied even to pretty girls! We testosterone-besotted males of the species ensure a constant high demand for them, yet with a low supply of the little cuties, the price is high! Hahaha!

Banks to Assure Congress About Use of Public Funds - By Amit R. Paley and Howard Schneider, Washington Post, February 11th, 2009
Wall Street Executives Say They're Looking to Improve Risk Management. "To the captains of the universe sitting here before all of us," California Rep. Maxine Waters (D) began, "all of my political life I have been in disagreement with the banking industry." Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Penn.) drily noted that some of the bankers have said they didn't want to take the bailout money but were forced to by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. "If you got money you didn't want," Kanjorksi told the execs, "Please find a way to return that money to the Treasury before you leave town."

Wall Street 'Swindle' Gets Moore to Ask Bankers to Spill Beans - By Pat Wechsler, Bloomberg, February 11th, 2009
Moore’s project, announced at the Cannes Film Festival last May, is being co-financed by Overture and Paramount Vantage, a unit of Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures Corp., that’s handling distribution outside the North America, according to the Overture spokesman

Congressman Gives Speech in Front of Pelosi’s Office: ‘There Are More Shady Deals Going on Behind Closed Doors’ - Jeff Poor, Business & Media Institute, Feb 12, 2009
President Barack Obama has proclaimed his administration will be more open than the previous administration. However, his counterparts in the House and the Senate aren’t following suit. The Georgia congressman had also called on congressional leaders to televise the House-Senate negotiations. However, as much as the press has helped the Obama administration trumpet a new era of transparency, there has been little call from the television media for these negotiations to be televised publicly...

COMEX Crash To Send Gold To $3,000 - Patrick A. Heller, Numismaster.com, February 11, 2009

"Iran's Economic Conditions: U.S. Policy Issues" - CRS Report, January 15, 2009

Australian stimulus plan blocked - BBC News, 12 February 2009
Mr Rudd insists the stimulus plan is vital for Australia. The Australian Senate has rejected the Labor government's 42bn Australian dollar ($27bn; £19bn) stimulus plan

How Popular Anger Grew, 1929 and 2009 - Middle East Online, 2009-02-11
One might have anticipated an even more robust response today, given the damage done not only to our domestic economy, but to the global one upon which any American economic recovery will rely to a very considerable degree, says Steve Fraser

Gordon Brown is 'drowning in bankers' - By Andrew Gimson, Telegraph, 11 Feb 2009
Towards the end of Prime Minister's questions, Angela Watkinson (C, Upminster) rose and asked about another banker, Glen Moreno, described by her as a former trustee of a bank specialising in tax evasion, who has now been appointed by the Government to look after the 37 billion pounds of taxpayers' money invested in bailed out banks. Mr Brown rose and retorted: "Mr Speaker, he is acting chairman." What a quibble: was this pedantic evasion the best the Prime Minister could offer in Mr Moreno's defence? (EU governments would be gone by September...do you want to bet?)

European bank bail-out could push EU into crisis - By Bruno Waterfield, Telegraph, 11 Feb 2009
A bail-out of the toxic assets held by European banks' could plunge the European Union into crisis, according to a confidential Brussels document

The Western secret government is still planning genocide - Benjamin Fulford, 02/11/2009
They have been using the futures markets to depress the price of foodstuffs while simultaneously jacking up the price of fertilizer. This puts farmers between the rock of low grain prices and the hard place of high fertilizer prices. The result is many developing country farmers are being forced to reduce their harvests.
Whenever the world’s charities start making a fuss about starvation, the Western governments make great promises of aid but never actually disburse the money. Of the $14 billion pledged to help starving people in 2008, only $1 billion was actually spent

The discussions on a new financial system have failed - Benjamin Fulford, 02/10/2009

U.S. SENATE MOVES TOWARD `PECORA' INVESTIGATION - by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Executive Intelligence Review, February 13, 2009
The American Congress and Senate have begun serious investigations into the deeper causes of the financial crisis. Republican Sen. Richard Shelby from Alabama, speaking to the Banking Committee, demanded that "Pecora hearings" be held, for launching a comprehensive investigation into the underlying causes of the crisis. But the financial oligarchy is not asleep either: It is waging an international media campaign to create a hostile environment against all ideas and political personalities that support a new financial system oriented towards the common good

Sir James Crosby resigns from FSA - Graeme Wearden, Simon Bowers and Deborah Summers, guardian.co.uk, 11 February 2009
Sir James Crosby has dramatically quit as deputy chairman of the Financial Services Authority following revelations that he fired a whistleblower who warned of dangerous lending practices at HBOS. Brown defends decision to appoint former HBOS chief. Cameron accuses PM of 'serious error of judgment'

Don’t Pay Your Debt: A Page from the Fed’s Playbook - By The Mogambo Guru, Daily Reckoning, 02/10/09
Sure enough, I was right, as she goes on, “To qualify for aid, the homeowner must be at least 60 days past due on his or her mortgage payments”! This is fabulous! I can do this! I can stop paying! I’m good at it, in fact! And now I can stop paying, but instead of the sheriff coming over here one day after the expiration of the Termination Notice and dragging the pitiful pile of crap that I call “clothing and furniture” to the curb, now the government gives me money! Whee! “Initially, delayed-foreclosure preference was given to mortgagees who lived in their houses. It now has been extended to having an occupant in the house.” Hahaha! Now I can stop paying the mortgage on my rental property, too! It just keeps getting better and better! Hahaha!

[il crimine conviene...] Treasury, Fed unveil $1.5 trillion rescue plan - By Ronald D. Orol, MarketWatch, Feb. 10, 2009
Bad bank program should provide as much as $1 trillion in financing to other bad banks

Bernanke Begins ‘Thorough Review’ of Fed Disclosure - By Craig Torres, Bloomberg, Feb. 10, 2009
Bernanke has invoked emergency authority and more than doubled the size of the Fed’s balance sheet to $1.8 trillion to combat the worst credit crisis in seven decades. His moves have prompted concern that the central bank is encouraging excessive risk-taking, distorting pricing in financial markets and jeopardizing the Fed’s independence. The Fed hasn’t disclosed many of the assets and participants in its programs
Bernanke Begins ‘Thorough Review’ of Fed Disclosure (AUDIO) - Ben S. Bernanke, Cong. Hearings, 2/10/09

[naked banker] Mutant Seeds for Mesopotamia - By Andrew Bosworth, Uruknet.de, October 15, 2008
Most people have never heard of the infamous "100 Orders," but they help explain why the majority of Iraqis remain opposed to foreign occupation. The 100 Orders allow multinational corporations to basically privatize an entire nation, and this degree of foreign and private control has not been witnessed since the days of the British East India Company and its extraterritoriality treaties...

Law Firms' 2011 Scenario and the End of Leverage - Paul Lippe, The American Lawyer, February 11, 2009
You will have noticed that the 2011 scenario locks in a 20 percent drop in firm revenues. So firms will have to find ways to cut at least 40 percent of overhead to maintain profits. In another London meeting, a very able head of knowledge management for a Magic Circle firm quoted the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Sir Ernest Rutherford. "Gentlemen, we have run out of money. It is time to start thinking." Pretty good advice

CORSA AGLI SPORTELLI, TRE ORE ALL' APOCALISSE FINANZIARIA - di Felice Capretta, Arianna Editrice, 10 febbraio 2009
Sportelli chiusi.Bancomat spenti. Home banking inaccessibile. Impossibile ritirare e trasferire denaro. Praticamente la fine del sistema economico. Questo è lo scenario che i risparmiatori inglesi...

Principianti allo sbaraglio...

UNTIL ECONOMISTS ADMIT THAT ALL LOANS BY THE FED WERE CREATED OUT OF THIN AIR... OUR SITUATION WILL GET WORSE - Posted By: RumorMail, 10 February 2009
So, it is time to get real. It is time we restructure the entire system including the banks which always cause the problem. We don't need excessive regulation of things that did not create the problem when the real culprits always escape

Commissioner Chilton seeks criminal authority for CFTC - By Tina Seeley, Bloomberg News, February 10, 2009
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission should have the authority to pursue criminal violations of rules in the markets it oversees, Commissioner Bart Chilton said

Gordon Brown calls for World Bank and IMF reform - By Angela Monaghan, Telegraph, 09 Feb 2009
The Prime Minister said the world required an authoritative early-warning system to spot future problems. "We've never given anybody sufficient teeth that their views are treated seriously, that people have to act when those warnings are given," he said

Students are revolting: The spirit of '68 is reawakening - Emily Dugan, Independent, 8 February 2009
Campus sit-ins began as a response to the Gaza attacks, but unrest is already spilling over to other issues. Beginning with a 24-hour occupation at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) on 13 January, the sit-ins spread across the country. Now occupations have been held at the LSE, Essex, King's College London, Birmingham, Sussex, Warwick, Manchester Metropolitan, Oxford, Leeds, Cambridge, Sheffield Hallam, Bradford, Nottingham, Queen Mary, Manchester, Strathclyde, Newcastle, Kingston, Goldsmiths and Glasgow

Knut Hamsun commemorated on Norwegian coin - Alison Flood, guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 February 2009
Knut Hamsun, the Nobel prize-winning Norwegian author who fell from grace for supporting the Nazi occupation of Norway, is to be put on a commemorative coin by his homeland's central bank

Even elderly are facing eviction - By VANESSA HO, seattlepi.com, February 6, 2009
Complaints on rise of nursing homes forcing out residents

[verso la vendetta popolare] Blacklist of Predator Bankers released on NACA website - February 10, 2009
ACCOUNTABILITY CAMPAIGN: Executives of financial institutions have amassed huge fortunes on the backs of hardworking American families. While living in their many luxurious homes, they have refused to restructure mortgages that would allow families to stay in their homes. We need to make them accountable for their actions. Join the fight. While NACA has agreements with many lenders to make your mortgage affordable, the below executives refused. Click on the lender/servicer to see how they live and how to contact them directly

Ship Of Fools - By Paul Craig Roberts, rense.com, 2-9-9
In the Great Depression good debts were destroyed by monetary contraction. Today bad debts are being preserved by the expansion of money and credit, and the US Treasury is jeopardizing its credit standing and the dollar's reserve currency status with enormous quarterly bond auctions as far as the eye can see. According to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis, the cost to the US taxpayers of sending a single soldier to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq is $775,000 per year! How would you like to be sent to a war, the point of which no one knows, including the commander-in-chief who sent you to kill or be killed? How, fellow taxpayers, do you like paying the enormous cost of sending soldiers on an undefined mission while the economy collapses?

Laid off? Go home, says Czech republic - Reuters, February 9, 2009
The Czech Republic will offer a free plane ticket and €500 ($795) to foreign workers who voluntarily agree to return home after losing their jobs in the economic downturn, the government said on Monday

Old News for Gold Bugs - By The Mogambo Guru, The Daily Reckoning, 02/09/09
It is already beginning, as “Last year investors experienced shortages of the smaller wafers and coins, with premiums running as high as 10-40 percent for gold and 30-100 percent for silver”, which may have been what led Citibank to predict that gold could soar to “$2,000 an ounce sometime in 2009.”

President And Congress Grovel Before The Fed - by Pastor Chuck Baldwin, NewsWithViews.com, February 10, 2009
Ever since the Fed was created in 1913, America has been subjected to recession after recession, not to mention one Great Depression. Some are even predicting that the United States is now actually entering a second Great Depression. Please understand this: the Federal Reserve has manipulated every bit of this financial crisis for the express purpose of enriching the international bankers on the backs (and bankruptcies) of the American taxpayers. The Fed (which is not even a government agency, but rather a private corporation consisting of mostly foreign bankers) dictates America's financial and fiscal policies. And what does our illustrious Congress do? They continue to give billions and even trillions of taxpayer dollars to the very same group of gangsters who created and perpetuate this financial fraud. And, as with Congress, Presidents from both major parties likewise promote and defend this chicanery (e in Europa è esattamente la stessa cosa)


La ridistribuzione della ricchezza - Rodolfo Marusi Guareschi, 16 dicembre 2008
Secondo la Banca dei Regolamenti Internazionali di Basilea (la banca delle banche centrali), alla fine del 2007, il valore nominale delle monete a corso legale emesse dalle banche centrali ed in circolazione nel mondo era equivalente a circa 5.000 miliardi di dollari, il 60% dei quali in dollari, euro, sterline e yen. Di conseguenza, alla stessa data, la massa monetaria circolante avrebbe dovuto essere al massimo equivalente a 250.000 miliardi di dollari, pari a 50 volte la moneta emessa dalle banche centrali. Invece, la massa monetaria in circolazione alla fine del 2007 era equivalente ad oltre tre milioni di miliardi di dollari, vale a dire ben dodici volte superiore al massimo possibile...

Rob Kirby: Crime scene investigation - Gata.org, February 9, 2009
Market analyst and GATA consultant Rob Kirby of Kirby Analytics in Toronto enumerates the market-rigging purposes of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, reviews the failure of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate the Madoff Securities fraud, and wonders when the overwhelming evidence presented by GATA about the rigging of the gold market will be acknowledged by government regulators and the mainstream financial media

'Paper gold market will crash at Comex' -CommodityOnline, February 9, 2009
Interviewed by CommodityOnline, gold fund manager Marc Gugerli remarks that the New York Commodities Exchange's paper gold market is dominated by a few traders connected to the U.S. government and that he expects that market to default soon

THE ROCKEFELLER PLAN, PART 5 - By Dennis L. Cuddy, NewsWithViews.com, February 9, 2009
In David Rockefeller’s Memoirs (2002) he revealed on page 405 that he’s part of a “secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States,… conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will.”

A Tax Revolt Hits The United States In 2009? - John Paul Mitchell, Freedom Arizona, February 9, 2009
Queen Boadicea from East Anglia started a revolution attributed to the corrupt tax collectors in the British Isles. In 60 ADE, the revolt she led killed all Roman soldiers within a 100 mile radius. Her No More Taxes revolutionary resistance movement was able to seize London. It is reported 80,000 Roman soldiers were massacred during her revolt. Those 80,000 soldiers faced an unexpected army of 230,000 armed tax resisters. Maybe it is time for people everywhere to stand up against their governments and revolt


Home Price Bottom Predicted by Year End - The Truth About Mortgage, 09 Feb 09
The report notes that 62 percent of the nation’s 381 metro areas will see double-digit declines by the time the market correction is complete. Declines will exceed 20 percent in about 100 of those areas, with the hardest hit regions of Southeast Florida, California’s Central Valley, and Riverside, CA expected to decline by upwards of 50 percent

Anger as credit card firms slash spending limits without warning - Helen Pridham, Margaret Dibben, The Observer, Sunday 8 February 2009
Whether it's because you're too old, because you've lost your job or simply because you just don't use it enough - your flexible friend may suddenly no longer be quite as obliging as it once was

Bond market calls Fed's bluff as global economy falls apart - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph, 08 Feb 2009
Global bond markets are calling the bluff of the US Federal Reserve

N.Y. Attorney Convicted of Mortgage Fraud - Mark Hamblett, New York Law Journal, February 9, 2009
Alexander M. Kaplan, 34, of Lerner & Kaplan, sat stoically at the defense table while a jury of 10 women and two men pronounced him guilty on all 18 counts in an indictment charging him with conspiracy and bank, mail and wire fraud

[Antitrust Amnesy] DOJ Releases Antitrust Amnesty Agreements - Sue Reisinger, Corporate Counsel, February 9, 2009
Making the deals public won't help reporters or gossipmongers, since all the juicy details have been edited out -- even the name of the company that's a party to the agreement. But it could help other corporations that want to negotiate an amnesy agreement with the Justice Department to avoid prosecution for violating federal antitrust law (monopoly is safe!)

Ousted HBOS directors may have left with bounty of £4.5m - Jill Treanor, guardian.co.uk, 8 February 2009
Former HBOS chief executive Andy Hornby waived his right to almost £1m in annual pay when he was asked to quit, but received hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash payouts from share based incentive schemes. He is now earning £60,000 a month as a consultant to his former bank. The cost of footing the bill for clearing out the HBOS boardroom is likely to be shared by the taxpayer which technically owned more than 70% of the bank

Arrests made in what could be biggest investment scam in Japanese history - Justin McCurry, guardian.co.uk,  5 February 2009

Kazutsugi Nami, chairman of now bankrupt bedding supplier L&G, has been arrested in Tokyo. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Bank of England to issue grimmest warning yet on economy - by Heather Stewart, The Observer, 2009-02-08
On Friday the Bank said it will begin buying companies' debts using £50bn of taxpayers' money, in a new attempt to unblock the flow of credit (why they don't buy directly the companies' products and distribute them to the needing ones ? Visto che i soldi sono quelli dei contribuenti, perché non comprano direttamente i prodotti delle ditte e non li distribuiscono ai contribuenti stessi? Meglio ancora, perché non distribuiscono i soldi direttamente ai contribuenti così ognuno si compra quello di cui ha bisogno?)

Workers rebel in East Europe - by Heather Cottin, Global Research, February 8, 2009
Thousands of demonstrators in Lithuania, Latvia and Bulgaria have attacked government buildings and called on their governments to resign as unemployment soars in Eastern Europe

US hires advisers, Rothschild firm, on auto restructuring - by Jui Chakravorty and David Bailey, Global Research, February 8, 2009
The US government has retained two law firms with extensive bankruptcy experience and the investment bank Rothschild to advise officials on the taxpayer-backed restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler, a person with direct knowledge of the work said

Stiglitz: Turkey should avoid an IMF deal if conditions are not suitable - Global Research, February 8, 2009
Stiglitz was interviewed by the Anatolia news agency yesterday. Noting that existing stand-by models do not sufficiently cover the needs of countries, he said the IMF's classical stand-by models are not very helpful in rescuing countries from the effects of the crisis. He stated that, contrary to what many contend, IMF stand-by deals do not improve the credit rating of a country. The lack of sufficient control and supervision, which were among the primary causes of the global crisis, according to Stiglitz, largely stemmed from the IMF's suggestions in its stand-by agreements that countries loosen their control over their economies. He added that a country's credit rating falls more when it ends a stand-by deal than it rises when a deal is signed with the IMF. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said a few of the IMF's demands, which he avoided making public in order "not to harm mutual respect," were unacceptable. (si chiama: "omertà")

The American ruling class - by Tom Eley, Global Research, February 8, 2009
Obama’s servility before the financial aristocracy was summed up by the reassurances he gave it in announcing his limits on executive pay. “This is America,” Obama said. “We don’t disparage wealth. We don’t begrudge anybody for achieving success.”

Fortis: c'est l'accord renégocié qui sera soumis à l'AG - L'investigateur, 08/02/2009

NEW CONTINENTAL CONGRESS TO MEET IN PHILADELPHIA - By NWV News writer Jim Kouri, NewsWithViews.com, February 8, 2009
Early this year, selected delegates representing the People of each of the fifty states will convene in Philadelphia to debate our constitutional crisis and establish practicable strategies the People can take, en masse, to peacefully reclaim Liberty and restore Constitutional Order.
According to the group, the US faces a grave constitutional crisis including:
• Endless armed Middle East conflicts without congressional Declarations of war
• Economic catastrophe resulting from a privately-owned central bank and a debt-based fiat dollar

LIBERALS PROPOSE FAST-TRACKING TREATIES - By Cliff Kincaid, NewsWithViews.com, February 8, 2009
The liberal Brookings Institution has come up with a controversial way to get costly and unpopular treaties ratified by the U.S. Senate. Their answer is to bypass the constitutional requirement that treaties obtain two-thirds of the vote of the Senate before passage by redefining the treaties as statutes. Then, they would only need a bare majority for passage in both Houses of Congress, which just happen to be controlled by Democrats


Unemployment Figures, Right Between the Eyes - By The Mogambo Guru, The Daily Reckoning, 02/06/09
I added that “you morons!” at the end so that Mr. Bloomberg would see it and say to himself, “Hey! This guy is right; manufacturing employment has been falling for years and years! This means that the people who currently write for me are a bunch of idiots! I’ll offer this Mogambo fellow a nice, cushy job at a huge salary to write for me and then people will see what in the hell is going on!” For an example of the horrors to come, The 5-Minute Forecast notes, “For the first time in their history, the Girl Scouts of the USA this week announced they will be making smaller cookies and putting less in each box…but still charging the same price.”


Potential Dangers of Investing in Exchange Traded Notes (ETN's) - The Market Oracle, Feb 07, 2009
I'm not just picking on Barclays here. All the banks that issue ETNs are having similar problems. Other top ETN issuers include …
    * Deutsche Bank (DB)
    * Morgan Stanley (MS)
    * Goldman Sachs (GS)
    * Swedish Export Credit Corp (FUE)
    * HSBC Bank (HBC)
Would you loan your money to any of these companies?

Financial Markets Analysis: Stocks Bounce, Where Next? - The Market Oracle Newsletter, February 8th , 2009
Outrageous bank bonuses: greedy culpable bankers continue to reward themselves for failure with billions of tax payers monies across the globe. In the UK the Labour governments in-action is going to cost it the next election for allowing this to happen, after-all the banking rules and contracts have already been been broken in the aid of £800 billion of liabilities with more to come, the only contracts still being held up are those that allow bankers to be rewarded for destroying the British financial system

FACTBOX: Where has the U.S. bailout money gone? - Reuters, Feb 7, 2009
$250 billion pledged for purchases of senior preferred shares and warrants in banks and thrifts under the Capital Purchase Program... (Vedete? Non si salvano i "clienti" delle banche, ma gli azionisti, i proprietari!)

- Convegno Programmatico dei Pensionati Cattolici, movimento politico non ideologico finalizzato alla tutela sociale della Terza Età, sabato 7 febbraio 2009 dalle ore 10,00 alle 13,30 e dalle 15,00 alle 18,30 nel Vicariato di Roma, Casa Bonus Pastor, via Aurelia n. 208 (pianificano di adottare i buoni locali di solidarietà)

US: Increasing Number of States Declaring Sovereignty - Kurt Nimmo, Infowars, February 5, 2009
Although Fox News and CNN are not telling you about it, a growing number of states (9) are declaring sovereignty. Washington, New Hampshire, Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, California, and Georgia have all introduced bills and resolutions declaring sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment. Colorado, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Alaska, Kansas, Alabama, Nevada, Maine, and Illinois (12) are considering such measures. As Obama and Congress further extend the dictatorial reach of the federal government — under the control of a small cotorie of globalists and international bankers — we can expect more states to assert their rights under the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment

Now Tony Blair finally has the private jet he's always wanted (even if it is rented) - By Daniel Boffey, Daily Mail, 07th February 2009
Sir Evelyn, 77, who was one of a number of billionaires to dine at Downing Street in Mr Blair’s final days in power, has owned the plane since 2002 through a company called Metropix. In 2000, Sir Evelyn donated GBP 250,000 to the Policy Network, a think-tank presided over by Peter Mandelson which organises many of the conferences – including in Washington, South Africa and Budapest – at which Mr Blair gives speeches

QUEEN CANCELS DUBAI STATE VISIT AFTER THEFT - Christopher Story, 7 February 2009
IMMENSE SUM OF MONEY DIVERTED FROM CITIBANK TO MIDDLE EAST. On Friday 6th February 2009, a colossal sum of money was illegally diverted to the Middle East by someone inside Citibank. The perpetrator was caught but we have been unable to confirm that the funds were retrieved. On 6th February it was suddenly announced unexpectedly that Her Majesty The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh had cancelled an unspecified long-planned State Visit, 'because of clashing engagements', especially the meeting of the Group of 20 in London, scheduled for late March. The Times revealed on 6th February that ‘many expatriates have been abandoning their cars outside Dubai’s international airport and fleeing home rather than risking jail for defaulting on loans. Police have found more than 3,000 cars, mainly Mercedes and large 4x4s, at the airport in recent months’

Obama CIA choice nets $700,000 from rescued banks - Christine Seib in New York, Times Online, February 5, 2009
President Barack Obama's nominee to lead the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was paid more than $700,000 last year by businesses including struggling US banks bailed out by billions of dollars of taxpayers' money. The revelations about Leon Panetta's finances highlight the difficulty the new administration faces in finding experienced advisers that do not violate the President's ban on hiring lobbyists

Putin to the West: Take Your Medicine And don't go socialist - by Justin Raimondo, February 2, 2009
The high-and-mighties of the West had recently undergone a spasm of unrestrained hubris, from which we have only just begun to recover. This manic mood was given expression not only by the Bush Doctrine and its attendant military campaigns, but also by a mad triumphalism that predated 9/11 and really started with the fall of the Soviet empire. The "unipolar" delusion distorted our thinking and gave rise to all sorts of grandiose projects that wound up costing us dearly (A true alternative to soviet-style communism is not anarcho-capitalism for the rich and debt-slavery for the poor -- but rather social credit as developed by Arthur Kitson and C. H. Douglas -- correcting the flaw of a market system with feudal credit and land monopolies leading to all wealth being sequestered by a small networked aristocracy of power motivated by supremacism and advantaged by amorality towards other peoples whom they view as unimportant beasts of economic burden)

Kosovo's Independence and U.S. Policy - Congressional Research Service Report RS21721, February 2, 2009
Kosovo has high levels of government corruption and a serious organized crime problem. Poverty is a significant problem in Kosovo. About 45% of Kosovo's population is poor, according to the World Bank, with an income level of 43 Euro per month or less. About 15% of the population is very poor, and has trouble meeting its basic nutritional needs. Poverty is particularly severe in rural areas. Since the 1999 war, Kosovo has been heavily dependent on international aid and expenditures by international staff in Kosovo

United Nations Procurement Task Force: Report on Cogim SPA and Corimec Italiana SPA (PTF-R008-07) - 28 Jun 2007
Mr. Leopoldo Braghieri admitted making several payments to Mr. Yakovlev totaling approximately US$400,000 or US$500,000. Mr. Braghieri explained that his payments to Moxyco were made from Mr. Braghieri's own personal bank accounts at Gesfid S.A. and BSI S.A., two Switzerland-based financial institutions, since he did not want Cogim to be directly involved in the transactions. However, at the time Mr. Leopoldo Braghieri owned and controlled Cogim. (....)
BALTASAR GARZON INVESTIGA A KARIM YOMA
Según se recoge en el expediente judicial que instruye Garzón, los responsables del área internacional del BCH, "el que fue secretario para Asuntos Especiales, Alfredo Karin Yoma, cuñado del presidente Carlos Menem" y "quien tenía a su cargo la Secretaría Privada del presidente argentino, Miguel Angel Vicco", comenzaron a presionar a la familia Serri para que cediese el control del negocio de las estaciones de servicio al grupo italiano Corimec SpA, propiedad de los hermanos Franco y Giancarlo Castiglioni y Leopoldo Braghieri, "los mismos que regalaron un vehículo Ferrari Testarrosa al presidente Menem". Resulta llamativo que, en aquella época, el jefe de Karim fuera precisamente Domingo Cavallo y que nunca denunciara a esta "associazione". La resistencia de los Serri al embate provoca la "vendetta". El abogado Miguel O'Farrell, siguiendo precisas instrucciones, se desdijo de un dictamen previo que él mismo había firmado días antes, sobre las garantías oficiales argentinas aportadas por los Serri al BCH y la sucursal Milán del banco comenzó a exigirles a los dueños de MAT el reembolso de los créditos otorgados, negándose incluso a pagar las exportaciones de los primeros equipos para la construcción de las estaciones de GNC que ya estaban en Buenos Aires, por valor de 74 millones de marcos alemanes.(...)


Germania: si dimette ministro dell'economia Glos - ANSA, 7 Febbraio 2009
Glos avrebbe fatto appello alla sua eta', 65 anni, e alla necessita' di rinnovamento in seno alla Csu

US govt formally charges KBR in Nigeria bribe case - Reuters, 07 Feb 2009
The U.S. government on Friday formally charged engineering company KBR Inc in a $180 million, decade-long scheme to bribe Nigerian officials to secure $6 billion in contracts. But former KBR parent Halliburton Co said last month it would pay $559 million to end the investigation if the government approved the settlement, which was the largest penalty against a U.S. company for bribery charges under federal law

State can run out of money, but can't file for bankruptcy - By Dan Carden, Daily Herald, 06 Feb 2009
Facing an ever-growing pile of bills, crushing debt and less tax money flowing into the state treasury, Illinois is broke. But could the state climb out of its nearly $9 billion budget hole by declaring bankruptcy? No, say tax and budget experts. Federal law permits individuals, businesses and local governments to file for bankruptcy reorganization and sometimes debt forgiveness. States are not covered by the law (states can resort to monetary sovereignty issuing money and managing credit)

Breaking the United Nations’ Code X - by Robert Singer, LA Progressive, 3 February 2009
Without Congressional oversight, the U.S. will move towards Canada and Mexico where supplements are considered drugs, not foods. Codex if implemented will reverse DSHEA and the U.S. will no longer treat dietary supplements as foods, but as toxins. Let me repeat that, Codex treats foods as toxins!

Lawyer advises those in foreclosure to demand that the bank produce the note. 40% cannot do so (video) - CNN, Feb 2, 2009
It doesn't matter' she signed a contract that is in dispute by the bank, the bank wants the home and must sue to get it. The burden of proof is on the bank and the banks cannot prove the contract. When you get a copy of the foreclosure suit, many lenders now automatically include a count to re-establish the note. It often reads like this: “…the Mortgage note has either been lost or destroyed and the Plaintiff is unable to state the manner in which this occurred.” In other words, they are admitting they don’t have the note that proves they have a right to foreclose. The HOW_TO_DO is here
See also: Rep Marcy Kaptur: Foreclosed owners should squat in their own homes - David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster, RawStory, January 30, 2009

Michigan Sheriff Halts Foreclosure Sales - By KELLY CURRAN, Pyrabang, February 4, 2009
Evans said “I cannot in clear conscious allow any more families to lose their homes through foreclosure sale until I’m satisfied they have been afforded every option they are entitled to under the law to avoid foreclosure.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy accuses Gordon Brown of ruining British economy - By Rosa Prince, Telegraph, 06 Feb 2009
"The reason is simple: because it's in people's heads. If the consumer no longer consumes, he won't change just because we add or subtract one VAT point, it's because he's scared for his future, he's scared for his job and says to himself: 'I must save, because bad times are coming'. Gordon Brown cannot do what I am doing with carmakers [giving them up to 6 billion euros]... in construction and other industries, because they haven't got any left."

UK: 38,000 companies expected to go bust - By Yvette Essen and Helia Ebrahimi, Telegraph, 06 Feb 2009
Fears mounted that 38,000 small businesses could fold this year after government data showed a sharp rise in corporate insolvencies

Barclays set to give big bonuses to bankers who scuttled Woolworths - Helen Power and Miles Costello, The Times, February 7, 2009
Barclays Bank is ready to award bonuses of up to £1.1 million to corporate bankers who pulled the plug on Woolworths and other leading high street names

Wall Street CEOs, investment bankers charged prostitutes on corporate cards, madam says - John Byrne, TheRawStory, February 6, 2009
Investment bankers racked up $100,000s in prostitution charges. Davis told the network she disguised the charges in various ways so they would appear to be legitimate business expenses when accountants sifted through credit card statements. One CEO, she said, ordered her to send him invoices for "roof repair on a warehouse" to disguise the charge for prostitutes from corporate funds

Three U.S. Banks Shut by Regulators as Financial Crisis Deepens - By Margaret Chadbourn and Ari Levy, Bloomberg, Feb. 7, 2009
Three banks, two in California and one in Georgia (County Bank, Alliance Bank, FirstBank Financial Services), were seized by regulators, bringing this year’s tally of closings to nine as a recession and record foreclosures extend the biggest financial crisis in more than 70 years

Peter Schiff: Stimulus Bill Will Lead to "Unmitigated Disaster" - Yahoo!Finance, Feb 06, 2009

Acts Of Insanity Are What Destroyed The Economy - The International Forecaster, February 4 2009
Just more Keynsianism in the works,  health of banks getting worse despite injections, Why not just let them fail and prosecute their officers for fraud? no end to the bailouts, insane acts of economics, Davos a bust, the world will eventually move away from the dollar

Madagascar: 'Crowd peaceful then military opened fire' - Reuters, 07/02/2009

We need our country back - Nigel Farage, guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 February 2009
We'll only have British jobs for British workers when we have a Britain run by Britons. The Laval and Viking cases are simply confirmation of how the unions themselves were sadly hoodwinked by Jacques Delors. He promised them a "social Europe" and they thought that was what they wanted. What's come back to bite them is that the Europe on offer is not what they thought. The absolute free movement of labour is what is on offer and there's no way of changing that without leaving the EU itself

Madagascar, uccisi 40 manifestanti a Antananarivo - RaiNews24, 7 febbraio 2009
Almeno 40 persone, inclusi due giornalisti televisivi di cui uno straniero, sono rimaste uccise e 300 ferite ad Antananarivo, capitale del Madagascar, dopo che la polizia ha aperto il fuoco in due diverse riprese contro la folla che protestava contro il governo di fronte al palazzo presidenziale

ISRAEL TO ELECT SUPER CROOKS - by Barry Chamish, APFN, Feb 6, 2009
Avigdor Liebeman was intimately tied to international money laundering at the defunct Jericho Casino through his intimate ties to owner Martin Schlaff. Those who do actually recall, well remember that Yasir Arafat's cut in the gambling joint was handled by his financier, Muhammad Rachid, the same crook who planted $300m of money stolen from the Palestinian Authority by Arafat in a secret Swiss bank account


La BEI ha ricevuto il Presidente ha ricevuto Giorgio Napolitano - EIB, 04/02/2009
Il Presidente Napolitano ha iniziato il suo intervento rimarcando che questa visita significa "rendere omaggio a una storica Istituzione europea" ed esprimendo poi  "il più vivo compiacimento per il rafforzamento del ruolo della Bei in una situazione di crisi come quella attuale". (una volta, per giustificare la vigliaccheria, si diceva "tengo famiglia", ora si dice "tengo il mutuo da pagare"...Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis)

A Dark Nation in Dark Times - by Sheriff Jim Schwiesow, Ret., NewsWithViews.com, February 7, 2009
The nation is already deeply in hock and has used its taxpayer citizens as collateral for huge international loans. We are living a hand to mouth existence and have reached the limits of our borrowing abilities. We will be forced to crank up the printing machines and runaway inflation will ensue. For each little spurt of optimism there will follow a number of reverses. The economy will collapse and the social upheaval that follows will set into motion a series of prophetic events that will finish off the nation...

Iceland: downfall of 'a foolish little nation' - Neil Tweedie, Telegraph, 06 Feb 2009
The shockwaves from the country's economic implosion are being felt in Britain, but the effects are far worse at home

ECB delays on interest rates despite German industrial slump - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph, 05 Feb 2009
Critics say the ECB is falling far behind the US, Japanese, British and Swiss central banks, which have all slashed rates to near zero. Both the Fed and Bank of Japan have already moved to the next stage of stimulus by purchasing bonds or stocks directly. "This is negligence. Rates should have been slashed to 1pc," said Dierk Hirschel, chief economist for the German union confederation

South Africa's Miners Face Deepening Gloom - By Tom Burgis, Financial Times, February 5, 2009
South Africa is a member of the International Monetary Fund, whose bylaws forbid members from linking their currencies to gold -- the metal on which South Africa was and still could be built, the metal whose price the IMF helps suppress

Parmalat: accordi transattivi con BPER per 12,5 mln di euro - Di Alberto Susic, Yahoo!Finanza, 6 Febbraio 2009
Il gruppo BPER, senza alcun riconoscimento di responsabilità (?), corrisponderà a Parmalat l'importo complessivo di Euro 12,5 milioni...

Salvataggi banche, Tremonti non ha inteso riferirsi a casi specifici - Di BlueTG.it, 6 Febbraio 2009
Dopo la truffa della cessione alle banche private della sovranità monetaria, il "salvataggio" delle banche stesse, indebitando i contribuenti indifesi, finirà per affondare definitivamente quella poca credibilità residua nei governi-droni dei banchieri

Two Federal Suits Highlight Retail Banks' Potential Liability in Ponzi Schemes - Sheri Qualters, The National Law Journal, February 6, 2009
A pair of federal lawsuits against Sovereign Bank and its Spanish parent company, Banco Santander S.A., highlight the legal battles surrounding retail banks' liability in Ponzi schemes, including Bernard Madoff's alleged scam. A new case in Florida against Banco Santander tries to pin liability on the company and its investment management arm, Optimal Investment Services S.A., while in Massachusetts, a lawyer and receiver for defrauded investor-clients is seeking a retrial of a case against Sovereign Bank

Small Firms Targeted by Con With Fishy Fees - Petra Pasternak, The Recorder, February 06, 2009
Houston lawyer Richard Howell Jr., whose firm was scammed out of $182,500 by a client who contacted and hired him through e-mail, has spoken publicly about his situation so he can prevent others from making the same mistakes. Howell, who has practiced law for 23 years, recently told Texas Lawyer , a Recorder affiliate, "I'm a capital 'D' Dumbass."

Legal Sector Lost 1,300 Jobs in January - Nate Raymond, The American Lawyer, February 6, 2009
The job losses in the legal sector were just a fraction of the 598,000 jobs shed throughout the United States last month as the national unemployment rate rose to 7.6 percent. Since the current recession began in December 2007, the legal sector alone has shed 14,500 jobs



JD Wells Says Suspend Income Tax Withholding - Rich Sheridan, Feb 5, 2009

Millionaire Patriot Wants YOU Armed  and Trained! - Ignatius Piazza
Offers Up His Own Money So YOU Get a Free Handgun Plus 5 Days of Training And a 30 State Concealed Weapons Permit for Pennies-on-the-Dollar!


List of Madoff's customers includes rich and famous - Bloomberg News, February 5, 2009

Crack economico e contesto internazionale (Usa e Europa) - di Bruno Steri, su Essere comunisti 10/2009 del 05/02/2009
PER OGNI EURO DATO ALLE BANCHE, UN EURO VADA AI LAVORATORI (ma non basta, perché non si tiene conto degli interessi debitori...Occorre entro settembre una moratoria sui debiti e l'eliminazione delle trattenute in bustapaga)

Crisi economica: prime proteste di massa nell'Est Europa - di Claudio Buttazzo, esserecomunisti.it, 31/01/2009
Le manifestazioni di protesta sono scoppiate nel momento in cui i vari governi liberisti (sia di centrodestra che di centrosinistra) hanno approvato misure anticrisi che, tanto per cambiare, vanno ancora una volta a colpire i salari e le pensioni. Il primo ministro lituano, Andrius Kubilius, ha addirittura varato un decreto che diminuisce del 15% i già miseri stipendi dei lavoratori del settore pubblico, aumentando per giunta anche il prelievo fiscale dalle loro bustepaga

End the Fed - Ron Paul, Feb 5, 2009
Before the US House of Representatives, February 4, 2009, introducing the The Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act, H.R. 833. Madame Speaker, I rise to introduce legislation to restore financial stability to America’s economy by abolishing the Federal Reserve. Since the creation of the Federal Reserve, middle and working-class Americans have been victimized by a boom-and-bust monetary policy...

Congressman Calls for Debt-Free Dollars - BY CHRIS PETHERICK, HeartlandNews, 02.04.09
Kucinich quoted the Constitution as authorizing the government to be the sovereign power to issue money. “Because of this monetary crisis,” he said, “we have an opportunity here. Instead of giving private bankers more power, we need to incorporate the Federal Reserve into the Treasury where all new money could be created as government money, not as interest-bearing debt.”

The World Social Forum: Dear capitalists, admit you got it wrong - BELÉM, The Economist, Feb 5th 2009
Buoyed up by a crisis and with five presidents in attendance, the international left has ideas for fixing the world that a neoliberal might recognise, the idea that money and finance are public goods and should be shared out accordingly, through democracy

Endless Propaganda: The War on Terror is a Hoax - Paul Craig Roberts, 321gold, Feb 5, 2009
Americans and Israelis do not call their bombings of civilians terror. What Americans and Israelis call terror is the response of oppressed people who are stateless because their countries are ruled by puppets loyal to the oppressors. These people, dispossessed of their own countries, have no State Departments, Defense Departments, seats in the United Nations, or voices in the mainstream media. They can submit to foreign hegemony or resist by the limited means available to them

Iceland seethes at bank robbery where 'the banks were the robbers' - Simon Bowers, Guardian, 5 Feb 2009
In a country trapped in the fallout from the collapse of its banks, there is little sympathy for the plight of Baugur founder Jón Asgeir Jóhannesson

[mortgage wizard] ARREST WARRANT ISSUED: Christopher Warren aka Mark Seagrave - ml-implode.com, 2009-02-05
Allegations include bank fraud, mail fraud and conducting "continuing financial crimes." According to intelligence sources, the complaint states, Warren "fled the country on a private jet on February 2, 2009."

Bank of New York Mellon's TARP deal worth $20 million - By Chris Carey, February 5, 2009
The Government Accountability Office has spilled one of the Treasury Department's TARP secrets, revealing the value of the Bank of New York Mellon's contract to serve as master custodian for the financial-industry rescue program. Bank of New York Mellon also sold $3 billion of its preferred stock to the government in October, as part of the Treasury Department's plan to inject capital into banks to shore up their balance sheets and spur lending. Wheee! This banking business stuff is easy!

Inflation Took My Medication - By The Mogambo Guru, The Daily Reckoning, 02/05/09
I am trying to find a way to make this all mean that we have a duty (a patriotic duty!) to rise up as an angry, outraged mob, descend upon Washington, D.C. screaming in outrage and drunken incoherence while brandishing official, and laughably overpriced, Mogambo Mindless Mob (MMM) torches, pitchforks, T-shirts and snazzy hats, ruthlessly intent on burning the damned Federal Reserve to ashes and then – our blood-thirst for vengeance yet un-slaked – turn our terrifying gaze upon Congress itself, which allowed and encouraged the banker trash The Whole Freaking Way (TWFW)

The Bad Bank Assets Proposal: Even Worse Than You Imagined - Naked Capitalism, February 4, 2009
The Obama Administration is as obviously and fully hostage to the interests of the financial services industry as the Bush crowd was

Governments growing nervous at increased social tensions - JAMIE SMYTH, Irish Times, February 3, 2009
Words coined during the dark days of the 1930s such as “bankster”, which is a mix of banker and gangster, are suddenly back in vogue

Arrestato Angelucci, re delle cliniche del Lazio. Venti indagati per una truffa da 170 milioni - AmericaOggi, 05-02-2009
Venti in totale gli indagati per i reati di associazione per delinquere finalizzata alla truffa e al falso. Tra questi nomi eccellenti della sanità laziale: il direttore generale dell'Asl Roma H, Luciano Mingiacchi, il presidente della Aiop Lazio, Paolo Casamatta, il vicedirettore dell'Agenzia di sanità pubblica regionale (ASP), Rodolfo Cotenna e due dirigenti della Regione Lazio


Caso Madoff. "Ignorate le mie indagini". Markopolos punta il dito sulla SEC - AmericaOggi, 05-02-2009
L'investigatore privato che per quasi dieci anni ha cercato di convincere le autorità di controllo statunitensi ad indagare sulla frode di Bernie Madoff, aveva informato delle attività dell'ex presidente del Nasdaq anche Eliot Spitzer, l'ex governatore dello stato di New York


The Five Stages of Collapse - by Dmitry Orlov, Nov 11 2008
Once the process of debt going sour gets started, it is hard to stop, and if deleveraging were to run its course, we would be down over 1300%. To monetize that much debt would require over 1300% inflation. And once that gets started, it becomes very hard to stop. And, that, believe it or not, is actually the good news. Because most of our debt is denominated in our own currency - the US dollar - the US will not have to declare sovereign default, like Russia was forced to do in the 1990s. Instead, we can inflate our way out of national bankruptcy, by printing a lot of dollars. We will repay our national debt, but we will do so in worthless paper money, bankrupting our international creditors in the process

US: SITE LISTING EIGHT STATES ASSERTING SOVEREIGNTY - 5 February 2009
The link leads to a page that lists eight States presently working to assert their sovereignty, with links for each one that read to further reading - Washington, Montana, Arizona, New Hampshire, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma and Hawaii

INCHIESTA/ Le nuove facce della solidarietà a Milano - Il Sussidiario, 4 febbraio 2009
Avanti tutta verso una società piena di accattoni-superstiti del racket del signoraggio

The World Economic forum (WEF): Requiem for an overweight - by Eric Walberg, Global Research, February 4, 2009
The world’s economic elite gathered in a subdued atmosphere at this year’s World Economic Forum to assess the now global economic crisis. New York University professor Niso Abuaf compared it to a funeral, though not for the sake of the dead “ancien regime”, but “for the ones staying behind.”

Crisi: Gb, governo regala serrature e allarmi contro furti - ANSA, 5 febbraio 2009
Si salvi chi può: le politiche dei governanti europei, droni dei banchieri, portano all'aumento esponenziale della criminalità, fino a quando non sarà raggiunto il punto di rottura...

European single market is undermining labour - by Brian Denny, Spectrezine, February 5, 2009
The use of cheap foreign workers as a battering ram against organised labour is not a new concept. In 1934, as European countries followed the United States into the Great Depression, French writer Antoine de St Exupéry described Polish miners expelled from French coalfields once they had fulfilled their usefulness as "half-human shadows, shunted from one end of Europe to the other by economic forces."

IMF Accused in Latvia - Spectrezine, February 5th, 2009
LBAS president Peteris Krigers complained, “The government’s and IMF’s attitude has neglected Latvian society.”
He continued, “Instead of asking the unions and the employers to participate in creating an economic stabilisation plan, and thereby reducing the risk of making incorrect decisions, we are only told about these decisions once they have been made.” Moreover a union report accuses the IMF’s plan of “breaking collective agreements in hundreds of businesses […] which is a violation of the recommendations of the International Labour Organization”

Impregilo-monnezza, affare da 700 milioni (testo + video) - Daniele Martinelli, 4 febbraio 2009
Il processo Impregilo-Bassolino è una chiatta incagliata. A ogni udienza c’è qualche difensore che riesce a far rinviare l’udienza e avvicinare la prescrizione. Gli imputati sono 27 fra cui Cesare Romiti e il governatore della Campania Antonio Bassolino, imputato di abuso d’ufficio. Gli altri capi d’imputazione sono frode in forniture pubbliche e truffa, che riguardano anche Impregilo come soggetto giuridico


Accounting Firms Take New Hits Over Madoff, Other Ponzi Schemes - Pamela A. MacLean, The National Law Journal, February 5, 2009
A Minnesota accounting firm has been hit by lawsuits alleging that it failed to detect problems in two separate Ponzi schemes -- the purported $50 billion investment scam by financier Bernard Madoff and the $3.5 billion alleged "electronics" scheme by Thomas Petters. The suits against McGladrey & Pullen and similar suits stemming from the Madoff scandal against accounting firms KPMG, Ernst & Young and BDO Seidman point up the likely spread of litigation as financial victims attempt to recover massive losses

The postman who wants to deliver the end of capitalism - By John Lichfield in Paris, Independent, 4 February 2009
M. Besancenot says that the party is democratic but wants to overturn "pseudo-democratic" institutions and give people control of their own lives. This means getting rid of the market economy, starting with the nationalisation of the banks into a single "state banking service"

Spain's downward spiral spooks bond investors - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph, 03 Feb 2009
"This is a national emergency. The government is being overwhelmed by events," said Mariano Rajoy, the opposition leader. The mood has changed dramatically in recent weeks as debtors launch hunger strikes and one builder threatened to set himself on fire to protest the credit crunch. Maravillas Rojo, the labour secretary, said four million people may be out of work by end of the year

Madoff Tipster Markopolos Cites SEC’s ‘Ineptitude’ - By Jesse Westbrook, David Scheer and Mark Pittman, Bloomberg, Feb. 4, 2009
Markopolos told Congress today that he contacted the SEC in 2000 after examining Madoff’s investment strategy and determining in four hours that returns exceeding 10 percent weren’t possible. Markopolos, in almost a decade of communication, said only one SEC staff member understood Madoff’s scheme and “the threat it posed to the public.”

FBI uncovers nine million dollar ATM scam - BigNews, 4th February, 2009
Hackers orchestrated a highly coordinated, global attack on ATM cards involving the theft of a staggering nine million dollar from bank customers, and they could strike again

There is chaos and panic in the Japanese government just as there is in many Western countries - Benjamin Fulford, 02/04/2009

Geithner's Secret Plan To Screw You, Explained - Henry Blodget, Clusterstock, Feb 2, 09

Man hands out cash in New York - By Sima Kotecha, 4 February 2009
The minimum anyone can get is $50 (£35). The maximum is $5,000 (£3,513). No matter who you are or what you do Bailout Bill guarantees that you'll get something if you just show up and tell your story

Competing Ideologies: Davos v. Belem - By Stephen Lendman, rense,com, 2-4-9
For the ninth consecutive year, WSF's participants agreed that "Another World Is Possible." This year it's essential, now more than ever

The Whole World Is Rioting as the Economic Crisis Worsens -- Why Aren't We? - By Joshua Holland, AlterNet, February 3, 2009
Americans are rightfully angry about the economic decline, but with a few small exceptions, quietly so. Why? It depends on whom you ask

TARP Lawyers to Banks: Think Twice About Taking Government Cash - Zach Lowe, The American Lawyer, February 4, 2009
With President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner reportedly promising to attach more strings to federal bailout money, Am Law Daily decided to speak to some of the lawyers advising the dozens of financial institutions keen on applying for a chunk of the fresh $350 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program funds Congress released last month. Those lawyers were nearly unanimous in saying that banks of all kinds are becoming more cautious about participating in TARP

Obama Considers Tax on Cabinet: Would Create Budget Surplus, Experts Believe - Borowitz Report, February 3, 2009
"According to projections, if members of the Cabinet actually paid their taxes, we could wind up with a budget surplus in excess of $18.2 billion," said Obama economic adviser Paul Volcker. Mr. Volcker said he strongly favored the plan, but added, "Fortunately for me, I'm not officially in the Cabinet."

Political Elite on Guard Against Global Economic Depression and Gold Safehaven - By: Gary_Dorsch, The Market Oracle, Feb 03, 2009
“If you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers, and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit,” warned Sir Josiah Stamp, former chief of the Bank of England in 1927

Milioni di fondi europei per formare disoccupati - Daniele Martinelli, 2 Febbraio 2009

The Looming Crisis at the Pentagon - by Tom Engelhardt and Chalmers Johnson, LewRockwell.com, February 3, 2009
More than 20 years ago, Chuck Spinney wrote a classic account of the now-routine bureaucratic scams practiced within the Pentagon to ensure that Congress will appropriate funds for dishonestly advertised and promoted weapons systems and then prevent their cancellation when the fraud comes to light. In a paper he entitled "Defense Power Games," of which his superiors deeply disapproved, Spinney outlined two crucial Pentagon gambits meant to lock in such weaponry: "front-loading" and "political engineering."

U.S. Debt Default, Dollar Collapse Altogether Likely - by: James West, Seeking Alpha, February 03, 2009
In discussions on this topic with editors of top tier financial publications, such speculation is dismissed out of hand, and the argument to refute the likelihood of such outcomes is never brought forward

THE CREDIT CRUNCH LAB: Iceland's Warning to the World - By Ralf Hoppe, SpiegelOnline, 02/02/2009
First came the financial crisis, then the uproar: Iceland is the first European country to suffer the full effects of the global financial crisis. Is this a taste of what's in store for the rest of the world?

Waste, fraud in Iraq being repeated in Afghanistan - By RICHARD LARDNER, AP, 02 Feb 2009
Waste and corruption that marred Iraq's reconstruction will be repeated in Afghanistan unless the U.S. transforms the unwieldy bureaucracy managing tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure projects, government watchdogs warned Monday. The U.S. has devoted more than $30 billion to 'rebuilding' Afghanistan. Yet despite the hard lessons learned in Iraq, where the U.S. has spent nearly $51 billion on reconstruction, the effort in Afghanistan is headed down the same path, the watchdogs told a new panel investigating wartime contracts

Planetary Bankruptcy - by Sharon Kayser, The Brussels Journal, 2009-02-03
Our world managers succumb to monetary dementia. As the situation worsens by the day Bernanke skipped Congressional Financial Hearings in favor of a  secretive euro bankers confab. According to Ron Paul, the meetings took place in Basel and were chaired by ECB's Jean-Claude Trichet - not so surprisingly the mainstream outlets remained elusive about them

Let banks fail, says Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Davos, Telegraph, 02 Feb 2009
The Government should allow every distressed bank to go bankrupt and set up a fresh banking system under temporary state control rather than cripple the country by propping up a corrupt edifice, according to Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist. Should the taxpayers have to lower their standard of living for 20 years to pay off mistakes that benefited a small elite?

Enough Bad Banks; We Need Good Ones in a New System - by John Hoefle, Executive Intelligence Review, February 6, 2009
We can not simply close all the insolvent banks, clean them up, and feed them back into a banking system which does not work. We must fix the banking system, itself, first. That means putting not only the banks, but the Federal Reserve System, through bankruptcy. We must put the Federal Reserve down (the same as to be done with the ECB in Europe)

Latin America Breaks Free - By Benjamin Dangl, The Progressive, February 2009
The failure of neoliberalism in South America, and the subsequent rise of the new Latin American left, was clear at President George W. Bush’s arrival at a regional summit for the Organization of American States in Mar de Plata, Argentina, in 2005, where soccer legend Diego Maradona told reporters, “I’m proud as an Argentine to repudiate the presence of this human trash, George Bush.”

People's Resistance and Alternatives to the "Free Market" - Global Research, February 2, 2009
Final declaration of the Beirut International Forum

Davos, il raduno dei coglioni - Giulietto Chiesa, 03/02/09
Vi faccio una domanda. Come giudichereste se, per ricostruire le dighe crollate di New Orleans venissero chiamati gl'ingegneri che le fecero?

Firms' secret tax avoidance schemes cost UK billions - The Guardian,  Monday 2 February 2009
British public left to plug hole in public finances due to companies' secretive tax arrangements

USA: sono già sei le banche fallite a gennaio

Australia: Govt to hand out billions - sbs.com.au, 3 February 2009
The federal government has unveiled a massive $42 billion economic stimulus plan, including handouts of $950 for those earning less than $100,000 per year

Anger, finger-pointing at bankers as Davos ends - BusinessMirror, 02 February 2009
The search for scapegoats and the worst economic prospects since World War II resulted in a gathering marked by fear, anger and bitterness, a far cry from the usual search for consensus. Almost everyone blamed the few bankers who showed up for the near-collapse of the financial system

Greek riot police fire tear gas at farmers - Telegraph, 02 Feb 2009
Greek riot police have fired tear gas at farmers to prevent them from driving their tractors to Athens to stage a demonstration

Iceland's new government formed - Telegraph, 01 Feb 2009
"I was today asked by the president of Iceland to finish forming the government, which has succeeded. That government will be based on new social values," said Social Democrat Johanna Sigurdardottir, a gay who serve as premier

AP: Bailed out banks sought foreign workers for high-paying jobs - 01 Feb 2009
An Associated Press review of visa applications shows banks collecting billions of dollars in federal bailout money asked for permission to bring thousands of foreign workers to the U.S. for high-paying jobs. The dozen banks have received the biggest rescue packages, worth more than $150 billion. They tried to bring in almost 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years to fill openings that paid an average salary of nearly $91,000

Swiss police clash with anti-Davos protesters, arrest 60 - AFP, 01 Feb 2009
Swiss police clashed with demonstrators against the Davos forum on Saturday, firing tear gas in central Geneva after officers were pelted with bottles and fireworks. Sixty people were arrested after hundreds of protestors converged on the centre of Geneva to protest against the World Economic Forum in Davos in defiance of a ban imposed by local authorities, a police spokesman said

- WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM DAVOS-SWITZERLAND - the list of the "OFFICIALS" -  28 January-1 February 2009
Per l'Italia ci saranno Giulio Tremonti, Letizia Moratti, Emma Marcegaglia e Mario Draghi

HANDS OUT FOR THE BAILOUT - By Derry Brownfield, NewsWithViews.com, February 1, 2009
Roger Fredinburg summed up my sentiments when he wrote: “The only bailout in the news should be stories of our politicians and their felonious friends being bailed out of jail and smuggled out of the country. As a matter of fact, I think we might consider banishing them and sending them to live on a cold frozen continent more fitting with their cruel, frigid and selfish hearts. I suggest an outdoor nudist colony in Greenland.”

Sarkozy irritato dai fischi silura prefetto e poliziotto - Massimo Nava, Corriere della Sera, 01 febbraio 2009
In tempi di crisi economica e crescente rabbia sociale, è fisiologico che manifestazioni e scioperi abbiano per bersaglio il governo e siano accompagnate da pesanti contestazioni. In Francia, il bersaglio è Nicolas Sarkozy (è iniziata l'ora della ricerca dei capri espiatori...)

Semaine sociale: suite de la journée du 29, nombre de chômeurs et Guadeloupe - AFP, 01/02/2009
Après le succès de leur mobilisation de jeudi, les syndicats se réunissent lundi pour décider des suites à donner au mouvement, le jour de la publication du nombre de chômeurs en décembre, et alors que le gouvernement tente de débloquer le conflit social en Guadeloupe

Forum Sociale Mondiale. Da Amazzonia a Londra, no global preparano antiG20 - Apcom, 1 feb. 2009
La presenza di cinque capi di stato della sinistra latino-americana (Brasile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay e Venezuela) è stata accolta con favore dai partecipanti: "Hanno scelto Belem e non Davos", si è compiaciuta Mello

Archer and Black to be ousted from Lords - The Sunday Times, February 1, 2009
“Nondom and nonresident peers can hide their income in tropical tax havens: they must pay up or pack up. Meanwhile, peers convicted of fraud or perjury can stroll out of the prison gates after breakfast and into the division lobby after lunch. Tax-dodgers, bung-takers, fraudsters and perjurers must be cleared out of parliament now,” Oakeshott said

As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities -- Voltaire

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Petizioni

Shut Down The Federal Reserve System (sign the petition)

Petition: Transatlantic Seigniorage Dialogue - Petizione: per un dialogo Transatlantico sul Signoraggio

Riassunto del Sistema

"If you go back to the CIA's origins during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services, the whole OSS was really nothing but Wall Street bankers and lawyers."
- Alvin Bernard "Buzzy" Krongard - 

  

"Les vrais mafieux lisent le Financial Time ou le Wall Street Journal"
Voilà ce qu’écrivait Denis Robert dans « une affaire personnelle » sorti en avril 2008... "Certains banquiers sont comme les barons de Cosa nostra. Ils démarrent soldati, montent en grade. Capodecina, consigliere. Pour finir : capo dei capi. Ils agissent, mais ne parlent pas. L’omertà est la règle. La discipline dans les deux cas est militaire. Je ne parle pas des chefs d’agence ou des petits banquiers. Eux ce sont des soldats. Je parle de leurs généraux. Je parle des types à la tête des banques."

". . . as [the usurer] fed on insolvency and controlled legislation, the laws were as ingeniously contrived for creating debt, as for making it profitable when contracted. . . As the capitalists owned the courts and administered justice, they had the means at hand of ruining any plebeian whose property was tempting."
- Brooks Adams -