Willem Buiter warns of massive dollar collapse
January 5th, 2010Americans must prepare themselves for a massive collapse in the dollar as investors around the world dump their US assets, a former Bank of England policymaker has warned.By Edmund Conway
TelegraphUK
‘Parasite economy’ lies behind Greek financial tragedy
January 5th, 2010Bronwen Maddox
TimesOnlineUK
January 6, 2010
Today in Athens, European Commission officials are set to start poring over a new draft three-year “stability and growth” plan for Greece. They’ve rejected the old version as failing to address the country’s financial crisis, and want a new one in a fortnight so that they can give their reaction before the Ecofin meeting of finance ministers on February 16.
Britain must produce more food, government to warn
January 5th, 2010Britain must produce more food to avoid going hungry in the future, the Government will warn this week.
By Ben Leach, Rebecca Lefort and Robert Mendick
TelegraphUK
Think the U.S. real estate bubble was bad? China’s could be worse
January 5th, 2010Mania on the Mainland
By Dexter Roberts
BusinessWeek.com
Beijing – Li Nan has real estate fever. A 27-year-old steel trader at China Minmetals, a state-owned commodities company, Li lives with his parents in a cramped 700-sq.-ft. apartment in west Beijing. Li originally planned to buy his own place when he got married, but after watching Beijing real estate prices soar, he has been spending all his free time searching for an apartment. If he finds the right place—preferably a two-bedroom in the historic Dongcheng quarter, near the city center—he hopes to buy immediately. Act now, he figures, or live with Mom and Dad forever. In the last 12 months such apartments have doubled or tripled in price, to about $400 per square foot. “This year they’ll be even higher,” says Li.
Silicon Valley ‘Bloodbath’ Leaves Buildings Empty
January 5th, 2010By Dan Levy
Bloomberg.com
Jan. 5 (Bloomberg) — Silicon Valley is beset by the biggest office property glut since the dot-com bust, leaving the U.S. technology hub with empty high-rises and office parks that make it impossible for landlords to sustain average rents.
IRS to be Deployed to Force Americans to Buy Health Insurance
January 5th, 2010Health bills could expand IRS role
By Phil Galewitz and Christopher Weaver
USAToday.com
Internal Revenue Service agents already try to catch tax cheats and moonshiners. Under the proposed health care legislation, they would get another assignment: checking to see whether Americans have health insurance.
2010 Financial Markets and Economic Tipping Point Forecast
January 5th, 2010By: James Quinn
Market Oracle
Jan 05, 2010
For the last week or two “experts” and pundits have been making their forecasts for 2010. I always take these forecasts with a grain of salt. The people making the forecasts generally have some skin in the game and will tailor their forecast to benefit their particular agenda or investment portfolio. I pride myself on dishing out punishment to both political parties and most investment shills. I will take on the thankless task of predicting the future. Below are my prognostications in the areas of the economy, domestic politics, global geopolitics, and the investment markets.
The Gates of Hell Have Opened
January 5th, 2010by Bob Clark
FinancialSense.com
January 5, 2010
The abyss is widening, many have already fallen in. The Fat Boys at Goldman say they are doing God’s work, do they really believe that. Maybe they know dark secrets we are not privy to. What does God’s work entail? Stopping fear and panic? Holding up asset prices and presenting the illusion of a stable, recovering economy? If they fail, then hell will follow.
The Grand Placebo: Airport security and The Terrorist Genie
January 5th, 2010by Binoy Kampmark
Global Research
January 5, 2010
The authorities in Britain and the United States are scrambling. They hope to find answers as to how the 23-year-old engineering student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab managed to elude and almost detonate himself on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. Even his family in Nigeria had contacted US security officials, voicing ‘concerns’ about their son’s radicalization. Their son’s sojourn to the Yemen, a key al-Qaida ground, was mentioned.
Ron Paul “This Is Not What America Is All About!”
January 5th, 2010Dr. Paul appeared on Larry King Live last night to discuss terrorism, the TSA, and related issues
Military-Industrial Complex Set To Make A Killing From Body Scanners
January 5th, 2010Huge defense contractor lands indefinite contract to supply naked imaging machines
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, Jan 5, 2010
If we are all under suspicion, then we are all threatened
January 5th, 2010Dominic Lawson
IndependentUK
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Even were I to live within walking distance of the Queen’s Sandringham estate, it would never occur to me to spend any part of Christmas Day standing outside its church to take photographs of attendant members of the Royal Family. Yet, odd as such behaviour might seem – it’s not as if the media don’t produce film and pictures from the same event, saving everyone else the trouble – it is about as harmless as anything can be.
Confusion reigns as US security is stepped up
January 5th, 2010Black-listed nations accuse US of knee-jerk racism over imposition of tighter measures to combat terrorism
By Guy Adams
IndependentUK
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
New scanners break child porn laws
January 5th, 2010MailandGuardianOnline
Jan 05 2010
The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned.
Global Bear Rally Will Deflate as Japan Leads World in Sovereign Bond Crisis
January 5th, 2010Milton Keynes will be vindicated. Lord Keynes will lose some of his new-found gloss. The Krugman doctrine that we should all spend our way back to health by pushing deficits to the brink of a debt spiral – or beyond the brink – will be seen as dangerous.
Nouriel Roubini’s Worst Call Ever
January 5th, 2010Rogers and Roubini present the clash of the gurus.
By Christopher Barker
MSNBC.com
Talk about laying your reputation on the line!
It takes serious guts to call a top in a nine-year bull market for gold, and a flair for controversy to do so while suggesting that those who think otherwise “delude themselves.” That is precisely what upstart uber-economist Nouriel Roubini has done, but I predict he will find himself gobbling down a guru-sized slice of humble pie as subsequent chapters of gold’s epic revaluation unfold.
Keynesianism Delivers a Decade of Zero
January 5th, 2010by Ron Paul
LewRockwell.com
This past week we celebrated the end of what most people agree was a decade best forgotten. New York Times columnist and leading Keynesian economist Paul Krugman called it the Big Zero in a recent column. He wrote that “there was a whole lot of nothing going on in measures of economic progress or success” which is true. However, Krugman continues to misleadingly blame the free market and supposed lack of regulation for the economic chaos.
SEN. SCHUMER’S “COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM” BILL WORSE THAN 9/11?
January 5th, 2010By Michael Cutler
January 5, 2010
NewsWithViews.com
A news article “Chicago immigration agency a front for terror plot…” in the Chicago Tribune addresses one of the major issues I have been hammering ever since I went public in the days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001- vulnerabilities in the process by which applications for visas and immigration benefits are adjudicated, encouraging massive levels of fraud and consequently a huge threat to national security. In this case the focus is on an individual by the name of Tahawwur Hussain Rana, the owner of First World Immigration Services that, according to federal prosecutors was involved in procuring visas for citizens of Pakistan by lying on their applications for visas. Fraud can be thought of as a lie placed on an application concerning a material fact that, had the truth been known, would have prevented the applicant from receiving the benefit he (she) applied for.
IT’S TIME TO DECIDE
January 5th, 2010By Timothy N. Baldwin, JD.
January 5, 2010
NewsWithViews.com
If the current version of the US Constitution, as construed and applied by the federal government (in every branch) over the past 220 years, were reduced to writing in the form of a new constitution (the original language and meaning of the US Constitution notwithstanding), would the people of the states, as they existed in 1787, ratify the constitution? I think you would have to be utterly void of understanding of the principles of a constitutional federative republic and void of the history of our country and forefathers to state that such a constitution would be ratified today.
NAMBLA-GATE: THE STRANGE CASE OF KEVIN JENNINGS
January 5th, 2010PART 1
By Cliff Kincaid
January 5, 2010
NewsWithViews.com
Harry Hay, who “inspired” Obama-appointed Education Department official Kevin Jennings to lead a life of homosexual activism, was not only a supporter of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) but a prominent member of the Communist Party USA and “Radical Faerie” who believed in the power of the occult.
