Exclusive: The Fed's $600 Billion Stealth Bailout Of Foreign Banks Continues At The Expense Of The Domestic Economy, Or Explaining Where All The QE2 Money Went. Courtesy of the recently declassified Fed discount window documents, we now know that the biggest beneficiaries of the Fed's generosity during the peak of the credit crisis were foreign banks, among which Belgium's Dexia was the most troubled, and thus most lent to, bank.
Having been thus exposed, many speculated that going forward the US central bank would primarily focus its "rescue" efforts on US banks, not US-based (or local branches) of foreign (read European) banks: after all that's what the ECB is for, while the Fed's role is to stimulate US employment and to keep US inflation modest. And furthermore, should the ECB need to bail out its banks, it could simply do what the Fed does, and monetize debt, thus boosting its assets, while concurrently expanding its excess reserves thus generating fungible capital which would go to European banks. Wrong. RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms
The National Security Agency Releases Over 50,000 Pages of Declassified Documents. In Yemen, celebrations and confusion after Saleh leaves. A myriad of colors lit up the sky in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, last night.
Skip to next paragraph Subscribe Today to the Monitor Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS ofThe Christian Science MonitorWeekly Digital Edition Celebratory fireworks were launched from Change Square as news broke of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s departure to Saudi Arabia for what the Yemeni government called “medical treatment” resulting from minor injuries it says he sustained during an attack on his presidential compound Friday. Government officials insist Mr. The celebrations – most intense among the thousands of protesters who've been living for months in tents just outside Sanaa University and in other camps around the country – were interrupted at around 9 p.m., however, by the familiar sound of shelling.heard as artillery pounded the al-Habasa district of Sanaa where loyalist military forces and anti-government tribesmen have been battling for almost two straight weeks.
Peru's presidential election: Second time’s the charm. Barack Obama and the Republicans: A beatable president. Seven Problems a Recovery Won't Fix - Umair Haque. The Big Grinning Kahunas that run the world don’t agree on much these days, except one thing: the urgent, vital need for “recovery.”
On both sides of an increasingly fractious political divide, there’s a common belief underlying the debates: what we really need is more stimulus, spending, cutting, slashing, or [insert big idea here], and the economy will “recover” — hey, presto!! — and pop roaring back into life. Hence, like many, you’re probably waiting for this so-called mysteriously reluctant non-recovering “recovery” — the one that always seems just around the corner, but when the corner’s turned, has automagically disappeared yet again. (Want fries with that latest global “soft patch”?) Recovery means “a return to a normal state of strength.” Stagnation. Disemployment. Insecurity. Itâs Time to Bury the âTAXES BAD!!!â Lie Forever. Lately, some of my left brethren have been shopping the President’s assertion that taxes right now are lower than they were under Saint Ronnie.
While this assertion is true, it’s nothing to be proud of. We still don’t seem to get the lessons the last 100 years have offered us about slashing tax rates for the super rich. And the lessons remain the same, old economy or new one. (1.) Essential Government services are gutted. (2. . ) (3.) Since the President included a bunch of stupid tax cuts in a supposed “stimulus” package, it’s less than no wonder that what is about to happen, will happen.
Why Are the French So Determined To Run The IMF – And What Will It Cost You? By Simon Johnson Just a few years ago, eurozone countries were at the forefront of those saying that the International Monetary Fund had lost its relevance and should be downsized. The organization was regarded by the French authorities as so marginal that President Nicolas Sarkozy was happy to put forward the name of a potential rival, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, to become managing director in fall 2007. Today the French government is working overtime to make sure that a Sarkozy loyalist and the leader of his economic team – Finance Minister Christine Lagarde – becomes the next managing director. Why do they and other eurozone countries now care so much about who runs the IMF? The death of Ilyas Kashmiri: Droning on. Don’t Need to Speculate Any More. It should be of little surprise that the banks lied to us back when oil prices spiked in the summer of 2008, hitting $147 a barrel.
The banks, the Bush administration, the media, etc. blamed it on their old friends supply and demand — mainly demand from China and from Americans who wanted to drive ever bigger and more gas hungry SUVs. Griper Blade: The Bush Tax Cuts Failed. Period. It's a chart that's been making the rounds for a while now.
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities graphed out the main drivers of current and projected deficits and came up with the following: TARP, bailouts, the stimulus? Ain't crap. The Return of the "Nobody Could Have Predicted" President. Even in its last throes, the Bush White House insisted the disasters which unfolded on its watch were unforeseeable.
Just days before leaving office, Vice President Dick Cheney tried to deflect blame for the calamity on Wall Street and the deepening recession by declaring, "nobody anywhere was smart enough to figure that out" and "I don't know that anybody did. " WI-07: GOP Rep. Sean Duffy 'struggles' on only $174,000 per year. History and Analysis -Crude Oil Prices. OPEC has seldom been effective at controlling prices.
Often described as a cartel, OPEC does not fully satisfy the definition. One of the primary requirements of a cartel is a mechanism to enforce member quotas. An elderly Texas oil man posed a rhetorical question: What is the difference between OPEC and the Texas Railroad Commission? His answer: OPEC doesn't have any Texas Rangers! The Texas Railroad Commission could control prices because the state could enforce cutbacks on producers. With enough spare capacity to be able to increase production sufficiently to offset the impact of lower prices on its own revenue, Saudi Arabia could enforce discipline by threatening to increase production enough to crash prices. During the 1979-1980 period of rapidly increasing prices, Saudi Arabia's oil minister Ahmed Yamani repeatedly warned other members of OPEC that high prices would lead to a reduction in demand.
Oil production and consumption: Running dry. Oil production fails to keep up with demand CRUDE-OIL prices shot up on June 8th—Brent crude to a one-month high of $118.59 per barrel—after OPEC representatives meeting in Vienna were unable to reach an agreement on production quotas.
Many had expected an increase in quotas as members with spare production capacity, led by Saudi Arabia, pushed to avoid a price spike that may dampen long-term demand. As figures released in BP's "Statistical Review of World Energy" show, global oil production has struggled to keep up with increased demand recently, particularly from Asia. In China alone consumption has risen by over 4m barrels per day in the past decade, accounting for two-fifths of the global rise. In 2010 consumption exceeded production by over 5m barrels per day for the first year ever, as world oil stocks were run down. Thomas Jefferson On The Limits Of Property Rights. Separation of church and state crucial to America.
I want to extend my sincerest regrets to the Schultz family for having their once-in-a-lifetime graduation from high school ruined by the Medina Valley High School administration, by many in the student body, and by opportunists who exploited an appalling situation for their own political advantage.
If school administrators had stood up to protect their rights as much as those of Angela Hildenbrand, the family's “big day” would have been as celebratory as that of the other graduates. Instead, members of the Schultz family suffered the pain of exclusion, censure, ostracism, and vicious verbal attacks. This event has opened a badly needed discussion regarding the Constitution and the First Amendment. I thank the Schultz family for standing up for what it means to be an American. The Founders of our country intentionally created a secular Constitution.
Many Founders were religious themselves. Religious freedom is one of America's greatest legacies. Think Outside the Bars: Real Justice Means Fewer Prisons. America's falling crime rate: Good news is no news. Statements we say are Pants on Fire! Lexington: Magical mystery Palin. American Psychosis.
The United States, locked in the kind of twilight disconnect that grips dying empires, is a country entranced by illusions. It spends its emotional and intellectual energy on the trivial and the absurd. It is captivated by the hollow stagecraft of celebrity culture as the walls crumble. This celebrity culture giddily licenses a dark voyeurism into other people’s humiliation, pain, weakness and betrayal. Day after day, one lurid saga after another, whether it is Michael Jackson, Britney Spears [or Miley Cyrus], enthralls the country … despite bank collapses, wars, mounting poverty or the criminality of its financial class. The virtues that sustain a nation-state and build community, from honesty to self-sacrifice to transparency to sharing, are ridiculed each night on television as rubes stupid enough to cling to this antiquated behavior are voted off reality shows.