The latest scathing report by an examiner from the bankrupcy court discloses a common but little known accounting trick called Repo 105 has been revealed to have been a major factor in the downfall of Lehman and may have contributed to the wide spread collapse of the financial system.
Analysts are now looking into whether this practice wes in fact more wide spread in other financial institutions and banks and may even still be in use today.
The practice known as repo 105 basically happened when assets were sold and then rebought after the reporting period had passed leading to a false picture of the companies assets and liabilities. Webmaster's Commentary:
Ray Bradbury authored a stage play called "The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" that told a story of several men, all of whom made their lives better because they were all able to borrow a wonderful looking white suit when they needed it. The community, unaware they were seeing the same suit over and over again, came to regard all the men as respectable, accomplished, and to be admired.
It seems that Wall Street has been playing the same game, shifting assets around as the reporting requirements come and go, looking respectable (or at least solvent) to the entire community, which does not comprehend they are seeing the same assets over and overt again adoring different corporate "persons."
The story on the surface makes for a script for a new Oliver Stone Hollywood thriller. A 39-year old Australian hacker holds the President of the United States and his State Department hostage to a gigantic cyber “leak,” unless the President leaves Julian Assange and his Wikileaks free to release hundreds of thousands of pages of sensitive US Government memos. A closer look at the details, so far carefully leaked by the most ultra-establishment of international media such as the New York Times, reveals a clear agenda. That agenda coincidentally serves to buttress the agenda of US geopolitics around the world from Iran to Russia to North Korea. The Wikileaks is a big and dangerous US intelligence Con Job which will likely be used to police the Internet.
Dagens Industri, Sweden’s most influental financial newspaper, recently reported that Iceland is well on its way to economic recovery following the financial collapse in 2008. According to Dagens Industri, Iceland had a positive GDP increase last quarter for the first time in two years.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Amazing what letting the bankers fail from their own stupidity can do!
The less obvious impact of the tax compromise is its impact on Social Security. As part of the deal, Democrats insisted on a one-year 2% payroll tax cut aimed at giving Americans more money to spend and stimulate the economy.
It isn't free money, of course. The payroll taxes in question will be trimmed from Social Security, costing the program roughly $120 billion. Relative to revenue, that isn't a deal breaker, since the program's annual receipts are around $2.6 trillion. Still, the cut definitely makes a bad situation worse. Webmaster's Commentary:
Five senators sent a letter to United States President Barack Obama on Monday warning the administration not to offer concessions in upcoming talks with Iran over its nuclear program. If Obama takes the advice, experts say, it could sink his engagement efforts with Tehran.
The letter, first reported by Foreign Policy's Josh Rogin, calls for zero enrichment on Iranian soil as a US pre-condition for any negotiated deal to end Iran's standoff with the West over its nuclear programmed. Webmaster's Commentary: It is obvious that those in the Senate who wrote this letter are merely following Israel's agenda on this issue, which, ultimately, would be a US military strike against Iran.
However, I would like to remind those who have obviously chosen to promote the agenda of a foreign power over the interests of the US citizens they allegedly represent of the following, stark realities:
1. Unless this is a blitzkrieg, the US will be unable to sustain a prolonged war, because most US manufacturing has been offshored.
2. It is unwise to believe for a millisecond that China and Russia will sit idly by should such an attack happen. They may well join the fray on the side of Iran, and both countries are definitely nuclear armed.
A fascist state exists where a nation begins to allow the control of its government by corporatism, single party political interests, and law enforcement that reaches beyond the normal necessity of such. There are many other defining characteristics of a fascist condition, but in the United States of America these basic ingredients have come to define a developing system that is leading the American people into a cage of control . . .
The Obama administration is playing a dangerous game of chicken on the Korean peninsula and it could end in war.
The administration has shown no interest in diplomacy, negotiations or meeting US obligations under the terms of the 1994 Agreed Framework. (which is still the main bone of contention) The US will fulfill its end of the bargain or their will be no peace on the peninsula. A deal is a deal.
More US/South Korea maneuvers are planned before the end of December, suggesting that hostilities could break out at any time. The US believes it can control the conflict in a way that serves its own interests, but that might not be the case.
Webmaster's Commentary:
A war between the two Koreas can only lead to one inevitable outcome: war between the US and China.
Why would some elements in the US government be insane enough to believe that this might be a good idea?!?
1. At the G20, the US was unable to convince China to revalue its currency.
2. Russia and China have done away with using dollars in any of their transactions, and;
3. There is absolutely no way the US government can pay China back the billions it owes China.
Next week, we will see China and the US engaged in talks about the Korean peninsula, but I would not bet that much will come from this.
As completely barking-dog mad as it may seem, this Administration is looking for a war (any war, thank you) with which to deflect Americans' fury at the economic misery in which they have been steeped, courtesy of really bad policy decisions this Administration has made.
However, those contemplating such an action had better think hard and long about the following reality: the US no longer has the manufacturing capability to continue a sustained war, because most of the US's manufacturing has been offshored.
US State Department officials are cheering tonight after TSA workers in Jackson, Mississippi subjected the Indian Ambassador to the United States Meera Shankar to an “enhanced pat-down” on the grounds that she was wearing a sari, traditional Indian garb. A cartoon in India's Hindustan Times lampoons the TSA pat-down
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano also defended the frisking of the Indian ambassador, insisting that it was “by the book” and that diplomats have to subject themselves to the same “basic screening” as everyone else.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Oh, really?!? If, according to Janet Napolitano, diplomats "...have to subject themselves to the same 'basic screening' as everyone else", why not members of Congress?!? Why not Tim Geithner?!? Why not Janet Napolitano, who refused to be the first volunteer at the the installation of one of the new full body scanners?!? Oh, I forgot: at this point, in this country's history, some animals are far more equal than others. And a memo to anyone from any country who might have even been considering traveling to this country: just please, don't right now. In terms of governance in the US, the inmates have definitely taken over the asylum, and one of the most telling symptoms of this having happened is the degree to which Homeland Security has run amok.
****Note: This video is not Politically Correct and contains some Vulgarity.**** Man-up and enjoy
THIS MAN IS AN IRISH NATIONAL HERO !!
We at xfm Dublin, Ireland, WANT this man to return home and run the country :-) Even if this man was in a fucking coma, he could do a better job than Fianna Fail and their wanker banker and developer mates. It will be a cold day in Hell, when another Banker / Builder / Property Developer / Speculator or 'Fianna Failure Lizard' wipes the eye of the Irish People. They should stick to shovelling shit ! That is what they are used to, that's what they are good at.
Israel’s hopes to obtain 20 absolutely free of charge F-35 warplanes from the United States as partial payment for their settlement freeze seems to have fallen by the wayside, in no small part because the freeze never came. Webmaster's Commentary:
Israel will now do its best to find another ploy for obtaining these F-35 warplanes.
Of course, those F-35s were not going to be "free" to the American taxpayer.
"Some people like to knock the Lockheed Martin F-22 for costing $140 million a piece, excluding all expenses for development and spares. But not to worry! The next fighter coming along -- Lockheed's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter -- is supposed to be based on affordability, with a flyaway cost at roughly one-third of the F-22's price tag using 2001 dollars." With some simple math, that comes out to about $4,666,666,67 dollars a pop. Multiply this by the 20 planes Israel was supposed to get, and that would have been a "gift" to US taxpayers to the tune of $93,333,333,40!!
"The clerk rings up the total, I give him my Petro-Points card and a valid Visa card. He then says because my purchase is over $100 he has to see my driver's licence."
Male birds that eat mercury-contaminated food show "surprising" homosexual behavior, scientists have found. In a recent experiment in captive white ibises, many of the males exposed to the metal chose other males as mates. These "male-male pairs did everything that a heterosexual pair would do," said study leader Peter Frederick, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
"They built their nest, copulated together, stayed together on a nest for a month, even though there were no eggs—they did the whole nine yards."
Of those killed in US drone strikes against North Waziristan, how many are civilians? It is a question without an answer, but a new report by a Pakistani NGO suggests that the answer is “most of them.” The report revealed that among the 84 people killed in November’s US drone strikes the vast majority were local tribesmen with no apparent militant ties. Even among the apparent militants killed, there were no high profile killings reported.
Webmaster's Commentary: Any Pakistani national reading this in English should be enraged as to how thoroughly expendable Pakistani citizens are to their own government, in the name of its cooperation with the US in the alleged "war on terror." I am, in fact, amazed that the corporate US media has not gone back to the old Vietnam-ear "reporting" of "body counts."
“It was designed to show that if official U.N. delegates could be duped by college students into banning water, that they could essentially fall for anything, including pseudo-scientific studies which claim to show that global warming is man-caused,”
“That’s when Eisman finally got it. Here he’d been making these side bets with Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank on the fate of the BBB tranche without fully understanding why those firms were so eager to make the bets. Now he saw. There weren’t enough Americans with shitty credit taking out loans to satisfy investors’ appetite for the end product. The firms used Eisman’s bet to synthesize more of them. Here, then, was the difference between fantasy finance and fantasy football: When a fantasy player drafts Peyton Manning, he doesn’t create a second Peyton Manning to inflate the league’s stats. But when Eisman bought a credit-default swap, he enabled Deutsche Bank to create another bond identical in every respect but one to the original.
Webmaster's Commentary:
More confirmation of what I have been saying; the dark secret of Wall Street are the fraudulent mortgage-backed securities sold around the world for the last 9 years. Now that banks and mortgage companies are being forced to buy them back, the government has taken away your high paying jobs so the banks can take your homes to re-capitalize their balance sheets. Yes, it is that simple!
Iran is planning to place medium-range missiles on Venezuelan soil, based on western information sources[1], according to an article in the German daily, Die Welt, of November 25, 2010. According to the article, an agreement between the two countries was signed during the last visit o Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Tehran on October19, 2010. The previously undisclosed contract provides for the establishment of a jointly operated military base in Venezuela, and the joint development of ground-to-ground missiles.
Webmaster's Commentary: IF true, one has to wonder if the US government is going to use this as a justification to attack Venezuela, (which has lots of oil) or Iran (which has lots o oil) or both.
Despite public perceptions, Wikileaks does not make the material it receives available directly to the public. It sends the documents to newspapers, which decide what news is fit to print. As of this writing, Dec 2, 2010, four days after the New York Times and other newspapers began publishing scores of articles; Wikileaks has only posted 623 of the 250,000 documents they claim to have released to their website. (2) Neither the New York Times, the Guardian or the other newspapers apparently in possession of these materials have published them either.
A joint U.S.-Japanese military exercise in the Sea of Japan was suspended when two Russian Il-38 May anti-submarine aircraft flew over the area, the NHK channel said on Wednesday citing the Japanese defense ministry.
The biennial Keen Sword drills were suspended amid fears that the Russian aircraft may obtain top-secret data, the channel reported. Webmaster's Commentary: It appears that Russia was sending a not-so-subtle message that it wants to see tensions on the Korean peninsula calmed, rather than exacerbated.
North Korea has been blamed for the sinking of a South Korean warship in March that killed 46 sailors. Last month, Pyongyang announced it had a uranium enrichment program. And, just before Thanksgiving, North Korea launched an artillery barrage on a South Korean island, killing four people, including two civilians.
China has been encouraging the resumption of six-party talks involving North Korea and regional powers. But U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg says Washington sees that as simply a reward for bad behavior. Steinberg will lead an American delegation to China next week to talk with officials there about North Korea. Webmaster's Commentary:
Note that this article never states that it was South Korea who started this,by their live firing exercises over disputed waters, to which North Korea responded with the shelling of this island.
But at least, next week, there will be talks between the US and China, and this may well be a hopeful sign.
Local Popular Committee chairman Azmi Ash-Sheiyukhi said Israeli officials handed the orders to Muhammad Al-Adrah, the head of the village council of Rifaya and Ad-Deirat. The orders call for the demolition and removal of a transformer and power lines that provide electricity to 800 people in the two remote villages near Yatta.
But on Thursday, silver prices declined sharply to touch at $28.76 per ounce. Though analysts have argued that the drop in silver prices has been thanks to market corrections, there are some bullion dealers who suggest that the silver price is being manipulated these days.
Here is what Silver Investing News reported this week on possible silver market manipulation by banks: Webmaster's Commentary:
Both J.P. Morgan and COMEX are massively shorted on silver. They have ample motive to try to manipulate the price of silver downward in order to not be driven into insolvency covering the longs.
In October, Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Safed, delivered a ruling, signed by 17 other rabbis in the city, telling Jewish residents not to sell or rent property to members of the country’s Palestinian Arab minority, who make up a fifth of the population. His followers turned words into deeds by attacking Arab students in the city and threatening to burn down the homes of Jewish landlords renting to the students. Similar edicts have recently been backed by dozens of rabbis in Tel Aviv and nearby Bnei Brak, a suburb of 150,000 mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews. They have threatened to “expose” any Jews who rent to “foreigners” -- in this case, a reference to migrant workers and African refugees who are crowded into neglected neighbourhoods in the centre of the country. Webmaster's Commentary:
Would Americans tolerate this kind of behavior in the US? Then why do we pay for it in Israel?
The TIME magazine article is curious because it seems that right off the bat they were telling us how to interpret Wikileaks in such a way that sounded strangely familiar to George W. Bush back just after 9/11…
“By March, more than one million leaked documents from governments and corporations in Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Bloc will be available online in a bold new collective experiment in whistle-blowing. That is, of course, as long as you don’t accept any of the conspiracy theories brewing that Wikileaks.org could be a front for the CIA or some other intelligence agency.” TIME Jan. 2007 Webmaster's Commentary:
Especially when there are blogs that were blowing whistles a decade earlier (WRH started as a sub-page on my business web site on March 11, 1994). This author is correct; TIME Magazine was promoting Julian Assange and WikiLeaks before they had actually done anything at all!
6 former top EU officials, including ex EU chief Solana and former German President Richard von Weizsacker, urge world powers to confront Jerusalem over its refusal to obey international law.
Along with the video, check out the comments at the original video page. The shills are struggling to prop up the credibility of their very expensive puppet Julian Assange.
One of the two Swedish women who have filed sex complaints against the founder of WikiLeaks has reportedly left Sweden and may no longer be cooperating with the criminal investigation. According to a report at Australian news site Crikey.com, Anna Ardin has moved to the Palestinian territories to volunteer with a Christian group working to reconcile Arabs and Israelis. Webmaster's Commentary:
Sounds like this lady is Mossad or at least a Sayan. Her last assignment was to keep Julian Assange's name in the world press and now that she did that with this bogus rape charge she heads to her new assignment while the case against Assange collapses without her and he gets let out of jail to the thunderous cheers of his adoring worshipers.
Global warming liars, however, insist that CO2 builds up on the atmosphere over a 50 to 250 year period, but this is untrue. "Every year around April, increased CO2 absorption by plants in the Northern Hemisphere starts reducing the CO2 in the atmosphere," notes Ashworth, "and the reduction continues until around mid-to-late August when plants start to go dormant."
"It is clear that nature reacts very fast in its consumption of carbon dioxide." Farmers call this the growing season, followed by the harvest season, followed by snow and cold during which nothing grows. Modern civilization, beginning about 5,000 years ago, is predicated on the ability to provide food to both humans and livestock, all based on these obvious seasonal cycles.
Washington, DC—There were the infamous Gestapo, Stazi and Red Guard. They all sought and maintained civilian armies of snitches to help their rogue governments maintain absolute power. . .
After all, if information is now the enemy, we must carefully police any and every aspect of this dangerous medium -- all for the safety and protection of 'we the people.' Oh, we’ll still have the Internet, just like you can still fly. You’ll just have to be on the 'approved' list, screened, stamped, zapped, mugged and molested if you want to get 'on the net.' No biggie. Thanks Julian -- job well done.
Editor's Note: American taxpayer dollars hard at work -- something to remember around tax time. Tech Dirt
One refrain we keep hearing against Wikileaks is that the cable releases aren't really "whistleblowing," because they're not really revealing anything. However, it seems like each day there's another big revelation of rather horrible things being done (and covered up) by the US government. The latest, pointed out by Boing Boing, involves a report from a cable that US-based private security contractor DynCorp, who was hired by the US to train Afghani police, was apparently supplying drugs and young boys for a sort of sex party . . .
Had you been stupid enough to pull the trigger, all of Britain would be rising against you this very second. All that black nomex cannot conceal that you are on the wrong side of this thing.
I am glad that nobody got hurt, but in looking at the face of Charles and Camille, it is clear that they are not so much afraid as shocked that this could happen to them! No doubt the world's leaders and their security services are equally shocked at how close to open rebellion the people of the world have been pushed. Saner minds might decide that the time has come to stop looting the many for the glorification and pampering of the few. But then, saner minds would never have allowed the abuses to continue this far.
A Brown Water Advisory has been issued for Oahu and Kauai due to heavy showers. The Department of Health's Clean Water Branch says the public should stay out of flood waters and storm water runoff due to possible overflowing of cesspools, pesticides, animal fecal matter, dead animals, chemicals and associated flood debris. The public is also advised to stay out of turbid and brown coastal waters. Webmaster's Commentary:
Like we aren't smart enough to already know this?!?
"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Reuters quoted Gore saying of the U.S. policy that is about to come up for congressional review. "First-generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small.
"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president," the wire service reported Gore saying.
Webmaster's Commentary:
The lesson here is that the push for alcohol fuels was never about efficiency but about money and politics. In hindsight, and with all due respect to the member posting all the pro-alcohol stories, ethanol was never carbon neutral, and because ethanol does not contain the energy of hydrocarbons you have to buy and burn more ethanol to obtain the same amount of actual work. Finally, as many owners of older cars have discovered to their horror, fuel systems are not designed to work with alcohol and the gaskets and other soft parts were destroyed by alcohol. New cars are designed to work with both fuels (so they say) and cost more money for the additional components.
If the Palestinians cannot live freely in Jerusalem, inside Israel or even in all of the West Bank, then what kind of state is being negotiated? Israel’s blatant disregard for international standards and democratic principles coupled with this arrogant and racist mentality that “the land of Israel” [which not long ago was known as Palestine] has always been for the Jews can never coincide with sincere efforts to create peace.
How do you like them apples? Here we have a white man—born to Eastern European parents—calling a Semitic person an anti-Semite. If that’s not double speak, I don’t know what is.
* Prince's Rolls Royce set upon on way to Palladium * Camilla cowers in fear as car is hit with paint bombs * Met chief hails armed officers 'restraint' during attack * Scotland Yard to hold major inquiry into security lapse * Cameron: Rioters must be arrested and punished * Anarchists boast of success and plan more disruption * Student has surgery for blood clot on brain after riot
Met chief Sir Paul Stephenson today mounted an extraordinary defence of armed protection officers after the worst Royal security blunder in a generation.
Today, the United States has become the police of the world. The U.S. military has a total of over 700 military bases in 130 countries around the world. Total military spending by the U.S. government is nearly equal to the combined military spending of the rest of the globe. Meanwhile, the federal government is literally drowning in debt. So if we make some significant cuts to military spending will we fix the national debt problem? Of course not. In fact, it would only put a small dent in it. But at least it would help. The truth is that we cannot afford to be the police of the world and the Pentagon wastes so much money that it is almost incomprehensible.
Academics are calling the Ontario government's condemnation of a university student thesis an attack on scholarly freedom, but those offended by the controversial paper insist they won't let "hate" hide behind the veil of academia.
Jenny Peto's 100-page thesis argues that today's Jews of European descent "enjoy white privilege" and maintain a victim identity by participating in "hegemonic" Holocaust remembrance programs such as the March of the Living, during which young Jewish people visit Poland and Israel. The University of Toronto accepted the defended thesis and awarded a master's degree to the 29-year-old, who is an activist associated with the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid group. She's also Jewish and a descendant of Holocaust survivors.
Oilfield services company Halliburton is in negotiations with the Nigerian government to keep its former CEO, Dick Cheney, out of prison, according to a news report. Sources inside Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission told GlobalPost this week that a settlement keeping the charges against Cheney out of court could cost as much as $500 million.
The much awaited and debated Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony got underway here on Friday in the absence of this year’s winner Liu Xiaobo, imprisoned Chinese activist. Liu won't be able to collect the prestigious $1.4 million award at the Oslo ceremony on Friday — the first time in 74 years that it has not been handed over. A chair, symbolic of his presence, was kept in the hall along with Liu’s picture.
Shocking description of how Palestinians are deprived of their own water in Palestine/Israel. This segment concetrates on the West Bank. Interview with George Rishmawi Advocacy Officer Water Issues, Near East Council of Churches, Dec. 2, 2010 on "The Struggle" TV. Interviewer Stanley Heller
Washington, DC—There were the infamous Gestapo, Stazi and Red Guard. They all sought and maintained civilian armies of snitches to help their rogue governments maintain absolute power. These government thugs wanted any information they could use against the victims they selectively targeted.
Today we have the Department of Homeland Security that is quickly stepping into this role in the United States. They are massively expanding their authority, reach and budget to smash dissent, and any resistance to government repression and violation of our Civil Rights. If you have not noticed, our government has suspended the Fourth Amendment in the name of anti-terrorism. If you haven’t noticed, It’s our own government that has become the terrorist.
n the course of the first year of the Obama administration, it has become clear to many close observers that it is intent on destroying the U.S. economy and, with it, the Republic. It has virtually shut down all exploration for energy resources such as oil and natural gas despite the bonus of thousands of jobs and billions in tax revenue. It has declared war on the mining and use of coal even though coal provides just over half of all the electricity generated nationwide.
Scientists have shown they can change people's moral judgments by disrupting a specific area of the brain with magnetic pulses. They identified a region of the brain just above and behind the right ear which appears to control morality. And by using magnetic pulses to block cell activity they impaired volunteers' notion of right and wrong.
The housing industry is in a financial freefall, stock market-linked pensions of millions of Americans are insolvent or worthless, Social Security is bankrupt, banks are being closed by the FDIC at record yearly numbers, unemployment is at or above ‘The Great Depression’ levels, and basic commodities cost more than most families can afford to pay. The reason for all of this can be explained in two words: Federal Reserve.
All news and commentary taken from, Mike Rivero's whatreallyhappened.com.
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