War On You: Breaking Alternative News » Economic Crisis

Currency Wars – Iran Banned From Trading Gold and Silver

WarOnYou — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:01:53 +0000

Currency Wars – Iran Banned From Trading Gold and Silver

January 24, 2012

Print Version

Source: GoldCore

Gold’s London AM fix this morning was USD 1,675.00, GBP 1,076.55, and EUR 1,294.94 per ounce.

Friday’s AM fix was USD 1,646.00, GBP 1,064.68, and EUR 1,274.29 per ounce.

Cross Currency Table – Bloomberg

Gold has risen in all currencies today and bullion up nearly 1 % to $1,675/oz. Gold rose 1.7% last week has risen more than 6% so far this year.

Gold jumped to its highest in more than a month as result of the uncertainty over of the Greek debt outcome and the growing geopolitical tensions with Iran and the US and Nato countries.

The Iranian geopolitical tension is supporting gold as Britain, America and France have delivered a clear message to Iran, sending six warships led by a 100,000 ton aircraft carrier through the highly sensitive Strait of Hormuz.

Reuters report that the EU has agreed to freeze the assets of the Iranian central bank and ban all trade in gold and other precious metals with the Iranian Central Bank and other public bodies in Iran.

According to IMF data, at the last official count (in 1996), Iran had reserves of just over 168 tonnes of gold. The FT reported in March 2011 that Iran has bought large amounts of bullion on the international market to diversify away from the dollar, citing a senior Bank of England official.

Currency wars continue and are deepening.

Many Asian markets are closed for the Lunar New Year holiday which has led to lower volumes.

Of note was there was an unusual burst of gold futures buying on the TOCOM in Japan, which has helped the cash market to breach resistance at $1,666 an ounce.

Investors are also waiting for euro zone finance ministers to decide the terms of a Greek debt restructuring later today. This would be the second bailout package for Greece.

The risk of contagion in Eurozone debt and wider markets is leading to continued safe haven demand for gold.

Reuters Global Gold Forum

Silver surged 8% last week and is up nearly 20% so far in 2012 – thereby outperforming the other precious metals and nearly all assets.

Silver cut through resistance at $31 like knife through butter on Friday. Next resistance is $33 then and $35 and then the big $50.

Increasing speculation that the Fed will soon embark on another round of quantitative easing or QE3 is also supporting the precious metals and confirmation of QE3 could see gold reach $1,700/oz in short order.

Obama to Use Pension Funds of Ordinary Americans to Pay for Bank Mortgage “Settlement”

WarOnYou — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:59:18 +0000

Obama to Use Pension Funds of Ordinary Americans to Pay for Bank Mortgage “Settlement”

January 24, 2012

Print Version

Source: Naked Capitalism

Obama’s latest housing market chicanery should come as no surprise. As we discuss below, he will use the State of the Union address to announce a mortgage “settlement” by Federal regulators, and at least some state attorneys general. It’s yet another gambit designed to generate a campaign talking point while making the underlying problem worse.

The president seems to labor under the misapprehension that crimes by members of the elite must be swept under the rug because prosecuting them would destablize the system. What he misses is that we are well past the point where coverups will work, and they may even blow up before the November elections. If nothing else, his settlement pact has a non-trivial Constitutional problem which the Republicans, if they are smart, will use to undermine the deal and discredit the Administration.

To add insult to injury, Obama is apparently going to present his belated Christmas present to the banking industry as a boon to ordinary citizens. He refused to appoint a real middle class advocate, Elizabeth Warren, to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but he’s not above stealing her talking points.

We and other commentators have discussed how the mortgage settlement negotiations nominally led by Iowa attorney general Tom Miller had descended into farce. Almost nothing the Miller camp said was believable. They were presented as “attorney general” discussions when the Administration was pulling the strings. They’ve described a deal as weeks away for over a year. They kept claiming that they had undertaken investigations when not a single subpoena was issued by the AGs still involved in the negotiations. They’ve argued from the get go that a pact will be good for homeowners when the deal reached by under-resourced Nevada attorney general Catherine Cortez Masto with a single servicer, Saxon, resulted in a payout that is 10 to 20 times what the Administration is calling a victory. And that assumes that the banks will live up to their side of the deal when past settlements of servicing abuses have shown that they don’t.

The administration has finally woken up to the fact that the housing mess is almost certain to get worse before it gets better, and Obama must therefore be armed with better propaganda. The Miller-led talks have become a bit of an embarrassment and needed to be put out of their misery. So Team Obama and Federal banking regulators have agreed on terms and as we discussed last Friday, are upping the pressure on state attorneys general to fall into line. As reported by Shahien Nasiripour of the Financial Times:

Banks and government negotiators have cleared a big hurdle in efforts to resolve allegations of widespread mortgage-related misdeeds, agreeing on terms for a settlement that are being circulated to the 50 US states for approval, state officials and a bank representative say.

The proposed pact would potentially reduce mortgage balances and monthly payments by more than $25bn for distressed US homeowners…

State prosecutors have already received a set of documents detailing new mortgage servicing standards that the banks and the government negotiators have agreed to. The states were also being sent documents detailing other main components of the deal, such as the liability release for the banks, the so-called “menu” of options describing the various forms of aid to be given to borrowers, as well as the precise language of the so-called “most favoured nation” clause, which spells out how participating states in the deal would be eligible to receive more advantageous terms should a holdout state strike a more favourable deal on its own with the five targeted banks.

The story did not outline terms, but previous leaks have indicated that the bulk of the supposed settlement would come not in actual monies paid by the banks (the cash portion has been rumored at under $5 billion) but in credits given for mortgage modifications for principal modifications. There are numerous reasons why that stinks. The biggest is that servicers will be able to count modifying first mortgages that were securitized toward the total. Since one of the cardinal rules of finance is to use other people’s money rather than your own, this provision virtually guarantees that investor-owned mortgages will be the ones to be restructured. Why is this a bad idea? The banks are NOT required to write down the second mortgages that they have on their books. This reverses the contractual hierarchy that junior lienholders take losses before senior lenders. So this deal amounts to a transfer from pension funds and other fixed income investors to the banks, at the Administration’s instigation.

Another reason the modification provision is poorly structured is that the banks are given a dollar target to hit. That means they will focus on modifying the biggest mortgages. So help will go to a comparatively small number of grossly overhoused borrowers, no doubt reinforcing the “profligate borrower” meme.

But those criticisms assume two other things: that the program is actually implemented. The experience with past consent decrees in the mortgage space is that the servicers get a legal get out of jail free card, a release, and do not hold up their end of the deal. Similarly, we’ve seen bank executives swear in front of Congress in late 2010 that they had stopped robosigning, which turned out to be a brazen lie. So here, odds favor that servicers will pretty much do nothing except perhaps be given credit for mortgage modifications they would have made anyhow.

There are two clever features of the deal, but neither look intended to benefit ordinary citizens. One is that the deal throws some funding at chronically cash stressed mortgage counselors. They are thus certain to voice approval of the pact. The other is (per the FT story) the deal’s “most favored nations clause” is designed to reduce the bargaining leverage of any AGs that go their own way. It means that any servicer will have the incentive to fight hard against giving any state a better deal because it will automagically trigger improved terms across the states that signed on to the Federal deal. But this may have interesting perverse effects, since banks that refuse to settle with breakaway AGs will ultimately have damages awarded by a court. That means longer and most costly fights by the states, but in most cases, ultimately bigger awards (frankly, the fact set is so bad that all the state AGs need to do is focus on fairly conservative legal theories to have good odds of scoring big wins).

Dave Dayen seemed to think that the AG rebellion was likely to stay firm, given how few of the Democrats were going to Chicago on Monday for an arm-twisting meeting with HUD head Shaun Donovan and an unnamed emissary from the Department of Justice. I would not be so certain. With states so budget starved, I don’t see how anyone can justify sending a live body to Chicago when a phone briefing would work just as well. More important, the most favored nation clause is nasty, and may nudge some fence-sitters over the line.

And I have also been told that Donovan was on the Hill late last week pressuring Congressmen to support the deal. Since this is a regulatory measure that does not require Congressional approval, this move is meant to deprive dissenting state AGs from any support in local media from sympathetic Congressmen. For instance, 31 California representatives wrote the Justice Department, the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency calling on them to “investigate possible violations of law or regulations by financial institutions in their handling of delinquent mortgages, mortgage modifications and foreclosures.” Clearly they could be expected to support California attorney general Kamala Harris’ withdrawal of the deal. Donovon is trying to get them and like minded solons speaking from the Obama script.

But the Administration’s scheme may not be playing out according to script. Senator Sherrod Brown sent a letter last week to associate attorney general Thomas Perelli, Donovan, the CFPB’s Richard Cordray and Tom Miller criticizing the settlement pact. It could have been written by Naked Capitalism readers. Key section:

Now while Republicans may relish the specter of Democrats infighting, the fact is no one is going to want to be seen to be undermining the leader of the party in an election year. So that will put a damper on how aggressive the opponents will be. And media outlets have been amplifying Obama’s efforts to take credit for gravity. For instance, the Administration is touting the fall in foreclosures as an indicator of success when their policies have ranged from do nothing to disasters like HAMP. The fall in foreclosures is actually a sign of failure, as banks are attenuating the process more and more, in some cases due to their inability to come up with necessary documentation, in others out of a desire to wring even more fees out of investors (when a borrower can’t pay, the bank’s fees come first out of the eventual sale of the house).

Either a Gingrich nomination or Romney getting too dented during Republican primary fights increase the odds of what heretofore seemed impossible: an Obama win in November. So if the Republicans were smart, they’d take advantage of a serious weakness in this deal: that it violates the 5th Amendment takings clause. I am told by Bill Frey of Greenwich Financial that a servicer safe harbor provision in HAMP, which was supposed to shield servicers from investor lawsuits over mortgage modifications, was passed by both the House and Senate but was removed in reconciliation because that provision would have run afoul of the 5th Amendment. This settlement is intended to have servicers engage in even more aggressive mortgage modifications and would thus seem to have precisely the same Constitutional problem.

As I urged last week, please call your state attorney general and tell them you think taking from your pension to enrich banks for abusing homeowners is a lousy idea and they should therefore refuse to sign on to the settlement. You can find their phone numbers here. Please call today if you haven’t already. Thanks!

Personal incomes fall more during ‘recovery’ than during the recession

WarOnYou — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 05:52:57 +0000

Personal incomes fall more during ‘recovery’ than during the recession

January 4, 2012

Print Version

Source: The BLAZE

America’s longest economic recession since WWII, ended in June of 2009. The recession’s end means that our economy has allegedly been in recovery mode since July of 2009, more than two and a half years.

If we are in recovery, why have American’s incomes dropped more during the recovery than they did in the recession? The facts are clear.

Personal incomes fell during the recession by 3.2%.

During the recovery (since July 2009), personal incomes have fallen an additional 6.7%.

Those numbers were posted in a report by Sentier Research using numbers provided by the U.S. Census. (The RED line is the Household Income Index)

The Obama administration has been touting the “recovery” of the American economy and yet this recent data seems to demonstrate that the average household is still waiting for some of the benefits seen in the stock market.

Jeff Anderson of The Weekly Standard drilled deeper into the Sentier report and found even more information that might be cause for concern in the White House.

The income drop was steeper for those under 25 years of age (their incomes were down 9.5 percent), for those between 25 and 34 years of age (down 9.8 percent), for black Americans (down 9.4 percent), for families with three or more children (down 9.5 percent), and for families headed by part-time workers (down 11.5 percent).

Young people and African Americans were two of the strongest voting blocks for Barack Obama in the 2008 election. Seeing that both of those groups are being hit harder than the rest of the population represents an opportunity for the GOP and a challenge for Obama.

Eight Strategic Factors to Consider in 2012

WarOnYou — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 05:15:50 +0000

Eight Strategic Factors to Consider in 2012

Written by Strategic Studies

Wednesday, 04 January 2012 03:23

Message :
Investors: Get a free copy of our latest investment report: The Biggest Upside Stock in the Bakken Oil Formation.This junior company already has great operational success on its huge Bakken land position… and could very well be the next “Bakken Buyout.”CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL 12-PAGE REPORT.

Rarely in the past six decades has global context counted for as much in strategic forecasting — trend analysis — as it does at the dawn of 2012. Reliance on stove-piped analysis of “strategic sectors” — such as economic and financial issues, security issues, politics, geopolitics, resources and energy, sociology and religion, and so on — will produce skewed and unreliable estimates, and will tend to favor linear extrapolations of recent experience. A study of broad contextual factors, including an expanded view of history, will show how cycles and confluences of trends potentially play a greater disruptive role than at any time since the end of World War II.

We have, in recent writings, stressed the longer-term trends and outlook, but it is important to see how the strategic environment is likely to play out during 2012. Equally, it is important that these trends (and others) are seen collectively, and not separately.

1. Global Economic and Financial Trends: Economic fragility is everywhere, even in fairly robust and growing economies. Some of the new engines of economic and financial growth — Brazil, India, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) — face significant hurdles in 2012. Indeed, it is likely that we may see economic growth couple with instability, and with an inability of even substantial growth to meet social (and therefore political) expectations. Absent major surprises, watch for India to fall still further behind the PRC in terms of economic, and therefore strategic, competitiveness. But the delicacy of the global situation, as well as the PRC’s leadership transition in 2012, means that the PRC is unlikely, during this year, to see its yuan (renminbi) transform into a major global currency. Three of the major global economic lynchpins — the United States of America, the European Union, and Japan — remain in economic and financial difficulties, and this will constrain their strategic capabilities significantly. The rising debt-to-GDP ratio in both the US and the EU will hollow economic recovery efforts. This situation also means that the US dollar and the euro will retain their status as global trading currencies only by default, and will help reinforce a continuation of a fundamentally inflationary situation in the global marketplace. National statistics, which are biased politically, will continue to obscure real, underlying inflation, and this will continue to be pervasive and exported from the US and eurozone.

2. Global Energy Supply and Demand: 2012 will see the start of a transformation in fossil fuel supply and demand patterns, driven to an increasing extent by technological capabilities (such as the increasing possibility of delivering fuels derived from shale deposits in Europe, North America, and elsewhere). Changing strategic power reach (such as the decline in US influence in the Middle East, Central Asia, and, increasingly, Africa; and the rise in the PRC’s and India’s acquisitiveness) will also change control and logistical patterns for oil and gas distribution. The US has the ability to move much of its fossil fuel dependence away from the Middle East and Africa through transforming political approaches to the exploitation of domestic oil and gas fields and through cooperation with Canada in the exploitation of Alberta’s shale deposits, but is unlikely to make headway in this arena in the short term, due to political inertia. Based on present evidence, the US energy dependence pattern will remain slow to change in 2012, and significant change is only likely to occur with a change in US political leadership, which could occur at the beginning of 2013. As a result, the US will continue to face high costs, and high security vulnerability, because of its ongoing dependence on the maritime delivery of its oil and gas imports. This dependence comes at a time of declining US ability to project power to protect or — through strategic influence — ensure security of supply from, say, the Gulf of Guinea or the Middle East. Declining US strategic reach has already ensured the loss of control over, for example, Central Asian/Caspian oil and gas supplies.

Part of the changing fossil fuel logistical framework which will affect the strategic balance — apart from the exploitation of shale deposits in Europe, North America, and elsewhere — will be the clarity which will begin to emerge during 2012 in the future importance of oil and gas fields being developed in the Eastern Mediterranean. This will be a major driver in determining the economic creditworthiness (and therefore eurozone reliability) of the South-Eastern European countries such as Cyprus and Greece and, potentially, Italy. This will be a significant factor in the strategic behavior of Turkey, which is now seen as being outside the European Union bloc, and which is struggling to retain a major role in the energy marketplace. It lacks control over viable energy fields, and its influence over Central Asian/Caspian energy transportation to European markets (or even to the Mediterranean transshipment market) is, in relative terms, declining. Turkish economic fragility is, as a result, beginning to show, and this has generated an “equal and opposite” rise in Turkish strategic adventurism, designed to ensure a re-growth of neo-Ottoman influence over the Levant (particularly Syria and parts of the Palestinian Authority) and even Egypt. This adventurism seems likely to come to a head in 2012, even though the current Turkish Islamist political leadership is unsure how to effectively realize its adventurism given its concern over the reliability and loyalty of the Turkish Armed Forces to support an approach which goes so strongly against the secularist Kemalism of the Armed Forces.

The growing uncertainty of hydrocarbon supplies from the Persian Gulf, North Africa, and the Gulf of Guinea has sent the EU into an even greater reliance on Russia-origin and Russia-dominated for its energy supplies. What started as an economic driven default option will keep evolving in 2012 into a grand-strategic transformation. Brussels’ ambivalence about continued reliance on the NATO-based Euro-Atlanticism versus shift to the Mackinderian “Common Eurasian Home” doctrine advocated by Berlin and Moscow will be decided in favor of the latter, primarily on energy supply grounds and irrespective of the brewing political instability in Russia. Cognizant, the Kremlin will increasingly trade artificial lowering of energy price for Europe’s political-strategic pliability. This realignment will have major impact on the EU’s policy in key issues outside the immediate bilateral relations such as interventionism in third-party conflicts on the European periphery.

The strategic impact during 2012 of new energy-related technologies, apart from shale cracking, which will be worth watching are those related to energy transmission and storage. On the one hand, fixed, terrestrial electricity grids will become more efficient through interactive energy management computing, but at the same time they will become strategically more vulnerable, as noted repeatedly by this writer. On the other hand, 2012 will see a growth in the development to strategic scale (a significant change) of viable storage devices — batteries — which can act as stand-alone support for increasingly efficient local communications and computing networks, and be sustained by the newly-strategic-scale solar power technologies. It is the growth of these self-sustaining local networks which will serve as the guarantor of stability in the event of widespread interference with conventional terrestrial grids by natural disasters or human-sponsored disruptions.

3. Strategic Recovery by the US. The US will not, in 2012, show signs of any recovery of its global strategic credibility or real strength. Its manufacturing and science and technology sectors will continue to suffer from low (even declining) productivity and difficulty (for political reasons, primarily) in capital formation. A significant US recovery is not feasible in the timeframe given the present political and economic policies and impasse evident. US allies will, as they did in 2011, increasingly look to their own needs while attempting to sustain their alliance relationship with the US to the extent feasible. Those outside the US alliance network, or peripheral to it, will increasingly disregard US political/diplomatic pressures, and will seek to accommodate the PRC or regional actors. The continued economic malaise of the US during 2012, even if disguised by modest nominal GDP growth, will make economic (and therefore strategic) recovery more difficult and ensure that it will take longer.

In any event, the fact that the US national debt exceeds the GDP hollows the dollar and thus makes meaningful recovery impossible. The attractiveness of a low dollar value in comparison to other currencies in making US manufacturing investment more feasible than in recent years is offset by declining US workforce productivity and political constraints which penalize investment in manufacturing, or even in achieving appealing conditions for capital formation. Banks are as afraid of such investment as are manufacturing investors themselves.

4. EU/Eurozone Prospects. The unwillingness of eurozone leaders Germany and France to decouple economic and financial issues within the currency zone will continue to extract a growing cost on the Continental European economies. This, potentially coupled with a plateauing of demand from the PRC and India (among others) for German manufactured goods, could bring the eurozone to a period of stagnation. The option of a break-up of the eurozone, and the reversion to national currencies by some euro states (such as Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Portugal [the PIIGS states], etc.) may be dampened by the fact that such a move may not address the underlying fiscal structures. But tempers are fraying within the EU, and moves toward the creation of Europe as a nation-state have slowed commensurately. Indeed, the desire for EU unity seems mainly driven by German and French fears of a return to 19th and 20th century nationalism and its potential to generate military competitiveness on the Continent. Claims that this fear is no longer a factor in German and French desires to sustain the eurozone miss the visceral underpinning of Franco-German policy in this regard. In the meantime, EU strategic projection has also come, in relative terms, to a standstill, and those EU and other European states active in the Coalition war in Afghanistan are anxious to withdraw from that engagement and to reduce military costs as rapidly as possible. All that this will do will be to further reduce the EU’s diplomatic influence on Turkey, the Middle East, Africa, and on global issues.

5. Iran-US-Israeli Military Engagement. 2011 drew to a close with Iran, the US, and Israel posturing themselves confrontationally over the question of Iran’s pursuit of an indigenous nuclear weapons production capability. All parties to the disagreement have postured themselves badly, through diplomatic bluster, and find the search for face-saving difficult. Equally, there is a distinct lack of understanding of each of the players by each other. The reality, however, is that military solutions to the crisis are not feasible given the lack of sufficient military and economic resources available to any of the parties, including the US. By withdrawing unconditionally from Iraq and turning against Bahrain at the height of the Iran-sponsored turmoil, the US effectively demonstrated to friends and foes alike that, rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, that Washington was no longer committed to the Greater Middle East as a zone of vital interests.

This may mean that any “military confrontation” between any of the players would — ideally for all parties — be limited to a short, sharp jab or series of jabs, without getting into major strikes against significant land targets. Symbolism in engagement would be the order of the day, allowing honor to be satisfied on all sides. Indeed, a US naval confrontation with an Iranian naval element in or near the Straits of Hormuz might even obviate any need for an Iranian-Israeli spat. Iran has been careful to ensure that any provocation of Israel in direct terms up to this point has been via HizbAllah elements in Lebanon, and even this option is less secure for Iran in the opening months of 2012 given the instability of Iran’s major conduit to HizbAllah, Syria.

Any engagement of forces between any of these players is high-risk, however, given the prospect of a misstep, or over-reach, by a politician for whatever reason.

The matter is further dampened by the knowledge in US policy circles — tangentially confirmed by the US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) at the beginning of 2011 — that Iran already had a number of nuclear weapons acquired since about 1991 from a number of international sources. Given that the US and Israel have “pledged” never to allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, any open acknowledgement of the reality of Iranian nuclear weapons possession either invites the US or Israeli governments to take decisive military action against Iran, or look foolish. The answer has been — as it was with the US denial of North Korean nuclear weapons possession for so many years — to pretend the evidence does not exist, but to act cautiously nonetheless.

6. The Arab “Spring Break”. Concerns over the positive or negative prospects for “democracy” in the Middle East as a result of the rash of examples of popular unrest (Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria) should be seen in the light of the removal of a firm superpower authority figure in the region following the collapse of the Cold War and subsequent decline of the US. They should also be seen in light of the reality of the maturing and stagnation of some of the political systems which did not have the flexibility and legitimacy of traditional systems. The very peaceful and stable transformation of Morocco in 2011 — with a new Constitution and subsequent parliamentary elections — showed the value of a respected, historical leadership and governance process which was inherently rooted in local values. But how the governance systems evolve in Egypt and Syria, in particular, and also elsewhere in the region, is of strategic importance, but the process is natural and inevitable, and the US and Europe have demonstrated in the past few years that they are unwilling and incapable to influence events.

The PRC and Russia lack the capability to enforce any outcomes in the region, and Iran has an influence by virtue of being such an overwhelming presence in the Persian Gulf. Indeed, what happens in Syria is also of profound concern for Iran and its rise or fall as a major regional power. This, and some of the other disputes, highlights the competition which runs parallel to the cooperation between Iran and Turkey.

Not unrelated to this is the tenuous nature of the attempt by the Turkish political leadership’s bid to rebuild the neo-Ottoman status of Turkey in the Levant and Eastern Mediterranean, the Greater Black Sea Basin and Balkans, and Eastward into the Caspian Basin and Central Asia. Turkey has also strongly promoted itself as a patron of the Arab states, on the Arabian Peninsula, as well as of Egypt. But memories of the Ottoman domination of the region are not merely reposited in Turkish minds; they are also, with negative connotations, embedded in the minds of their former subject peoples. So Turkey’s bid for major regional power status seems likely to come to a head in 2012, possibly through forced attempts to change the leadership of Syria on Turkey’s terms, or through confrontations with Israel and Cyprus (and possibly Greece) over Eastern Mediterranean energy deposits and maritime boundary claims.

The beginning of 2012 finds Iran desperately fighting the formation of a Sunni Turkish-Saudi Arabian bloc which, if successful, would reverse and contain the historic ascent of Shi’ite Iran and its consolidation of hold over Iraq, Lebanon and parts of Syria; that is, consolidating a Shi’ite land-bridge to the shores of the Mediterranean. In recent months, as the tectonic shifts in the Greater Middle East were becoming more pronounced, Tehran has repeatedly used the specter of US-Iranian rapprochement and Iranian tacit facilitation of the safe withdrawal of US troops from neighboring Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and Afghanistan as inducement for the US to not side with the Sunni bloc led by Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Because of these higher priorities, Tehran elected to lick its wounds and refrained from escalating the Shi’ite insurrection in Bahrain even though Tehran definitely has the capacity to do so at will.

In 2012, Tehran will remain confounded by the contradictory US policy toward Iran and the Middle East. On the one hand, the Obama White House continues to project great interest in rapprochement with Tehran over Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf, as well as willingness to compromise over Iranian influence in post-Mubarak Egypt and post-Qadhafi Libya. The Obama White House is also the primary supporter of tiny Qatar’s ascent as a regional interventionist Islamist power which seeks to enshrine regional stability by assisting the formation of jihadist types of government with which Iran can co-exist, first in Libya and now in Syria. On the other hand, the Obama White House remains committed to the political ascent of the Muslim Brothers (Ikhwan al-Muslimin) and the Turkish Islamists who are anti-Shi’ite. Moreover, the US supports the Syrian opposition and urges Turkey to topple the Assad Government in the name of demography-based-democracy: that is, the ascent of a Sunni-Islamist government in Damascus.
Hence, while it seems to be too late to reverse the US encouragement of, and commitment to, the Turkish-Saudi Sunni bloc, the zealous unleashing of an all-out “anti-Iranian” campaign in this context is filled with great danger. Any military attack on Iran would result in a region-wide conflagration which would include Israel. This would play into the Mahdivists’ hands. Irrespective of the extent of the Arab military defeat, the real winners would be the Islamists-jihadists who would rise to power in the name of redeeming Arab-Islamic honor from the failed and now defeated Arab nationalism and statehood. The US penchant to encourage and exploit the ascent of Sunni-Islamist blocs in the Middle East (Turkey-Saudi Arabia-Egypt) and South Asia (Pakistan-Afghanistan) in order to stifle Iran might pressure Tehran but would also result in the radicalization of Central Asia and the soft underbelly of Russia to the detriment of vital Western interests such as what remains of its access to the region’s energy resources.

7. A Return to Chaos in Nigeria. What happens in Nigeria affects the global energy market, and the strategic stability of the EU and the US, and other states. By the beginning of 2012, Nigeria was falling rapidly toward civil war, or at least uncontrollable insurgency, and there seems little which Nigeria’s major trading partners can do to prevent the slide. Indeed, for the first time since the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-70, Nigeria is facing the prospect of a polarizing north-south schism. The experience of the Civil War is imprinted on the minds of older Nigerians, and so, too, is the basic framework to avoid a repetition of that war. But Pres. Goodluck Jonathan — who came to office from the “South-South”, the oil-producing Niger Delta region, with the promise of an ability to heal north-south divisions — has exacerbated the security situation in Nigeria by promoting a political culture bedeviled by two principles: corruption and indecisiveness. Increasingly, there has been talk of the military removing Pres. Jonathan as a means to prevent a new civil war, but the former Army Chief of Staff and former National Security Advisor, Lt.-Gen. (rtd.) Aliyu Mohammed, has been a voice calling for constraint and legal solutions.

As the situation now stands in Nigeria, no Western power has the capacity to intervene militarily to stave off a further security decline in the country, but the US and other allies have been attempting to help train Nigerian security forces to do the job. This, in fact, is unlikely to work, but Nigerian security and military agencies could do the job under the right leadership, and — as US and European officials know — this is Gen. Mohammed. But Gen. Mohammed, a strict democrat, will not countenance an unconstitutional military intervention in government. Hence the only solution in Nigeria would be for Pres. Jonathan to be forced into making the decision he has constantly promised to make: to put Lt.-Gen. Mohammed into a super ministerial portfolio with authority to address the crisis.

Here we see the fate of the stability of the Gulf of Guinea — emerging as perhaps the most important fossil fuel export zone in the world after Russia and the Middle East — hinging on the inability of a single man, Goodluck Jonathan, to make a decision: a corrupt and inept politician in fear of an honest and capable figure.

8. Stability on the Korean Peninsula. All indicators point to the probability that the new leadership of the Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korea (DPRK), under Kim Jong-Un, will pursue a cautious (albeit with strong propaganda) policy toward adventurism on the Korean Peninsula for much or all of 2012. The new DPRK Administration can be expected to make some significant image-building initiatives, such as missile launches, and possibly even a further demonstration of a nuclear weapon, to demonstrate deterrence to the US and the Republic of Korea (RoK) and to demonstrate that Kim Jong-Un and his military team are firmly in control. However, the major cause for concern would be if the political transition and economic factors triggered popular unrest in the country. But this is not anticipated.

There are many major issues which run beneath the surface, or in parallel, with these short-term trend issues. For example, PRC Pres. Hu Jintao will step down from the Presidency in 2012, and this will trigger a new era in Chinese politics. This transfer of power, like the US Presidential and Congressional elections later in 2012, will be of enormous long-term significance, but these changes are part of the evolving continuum. The watershed changes — such as transforming energy patterns, or the changes in the way most wars are likely to be fought over the coming decades — are, however, the ones which should figure strongly when analyzing global risks and opportunities.

It is worth bearing in mind that 2012 is not expected to be a year of “big wars”, largely because most societies in the world are at a point where they lack the basic resources to sustain such activities on an inter-state scale. This will not prevent “short, sharp wars”, or clashes between sovereign powers, and the danger always exists that these can escalate, regardless of the preparedness levels or economies of the parties. The potential for clashes between Turkey and Israel or Cyprus, or the potential for a clash between Iranian and US forces fall into this category. But, conversely, a greater likelihood exists that the depressed, or even desperate, economic and social conditions of some states will exacerbate domestic unrest to the point of civil war. Nigeria falls into this category, but so do many other states. Indeed, the domestic situation in Pakistan is itself delicate, but also (as with Nigeria) potentially ripe for stabilizing actions by the domestic players.

The strategic consequences of an implosion in such states as Nigeria or Pakistan are profound, and, as noted earlier in this report, the “major powers”, such as they are at the moment, cannot think of intervening in their conventional heavy fashion if they hope to stabilize the situations.

This is a year which will call for greater skills than those required in the Cold War era, or even the post-Cold War age of wealth. It is a year of Great Power Impotence.

Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, and Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs.

Bank Of America Dumps $75 Trillion In Derivatives On U.S. Taxpayers With Federal Approval

WarOnYou — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 08:01:11 +0000

Bank Of America Dumps $75 Trillion In Derivatives On U.S. Taxpayers With Federal Approval

December 23, 2011

Print Version

Source: Seeking Alpha

Bloomberg reports that Bank of America (BAC) has shifted about $22 trillion worth of derivative obligations from Merrill Lynch and the BAC holding company to the FDIC insured retail deposit division. Along with this information came the revelation that the FDIC insured unit was already stuffed with $53 trillion worth of these potentially toxic obligations, making a total of $75 trillion.

Derivatives are highly volatile financial instruments that are occasionally used to hedge risk, but mostly used for speculation. They are bets upon the value of stocks, bonds, mortgages, other loans, currencies, commodities, volatility of financial indexes, and even weather changes. Many big banks, including Bank of America, issue derivatives because, if they are not triggered, they are highly profitable to the issuer, and result in big bonus payments to the executives who administer them. If they are triggered, of course, the obligations fall upon the corporate entity, not the executives involved. Ultimately, by allowing existing gambling bets to remain in insured retail banks, and endorsing the shift of additional bets into the insured retail division, the obligation falls upon the U.S. taxpayers and dollar-denominated savers.

Even if we net out the notional value of the derivatives involved, down to the net potential obligation, the amount is so large that the United States could not hope to pay it off without a major dollar devaluation, if a major contingency actually occurred and a large part of the derivatives were triggered. But, if such an event ever occurs, Bank of America’s derivatives counter-parties will, as usual, be made whole, while the American people suffer. This all has the blessing of the Federal Reserve, which approved the transfer of derivatives from Merrill Lynch to the insured retail unit of BAC before it was done.

Read More…

Was Blagojevich Arrested On Corruption Charges After Going Up Against Bank of America?

WarOnYou — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 03:09:07 +0000

Was Blagojevich Arrested On Corruption Charges After Going Up Against Bank of America?

Posted by Camron Wiltshire on December 9, 2011

Site’ editor’s note: Former Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years this week after being convicted of a wide range of corruption charges, including the allegation that he tried to sell the Senate seat vacated by President Obama.

You won’t see the talking head presttitutes discussing the fact that former Governor Rob Blagojevich was arrested exactly one day after he announced he was “…asking all Illinois government agencies to suspend business with Bank of America” …

Here’s Rod Blagojevich uncensored on We Are Change Chicago:

Class of Homebuyers Claims BofA Found a New Dirty Trick

WarOnYou — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 07:12:08 +0000

Class of Homebuyers Claims BofA Found a New Dirty Trick

December 7th, 2011

This one will take your breath away.

Via: Courthouse New Service:

Bank of America found a new way to illegally extract money from customers, according to a federal class action: deduct taxes and insurance from mortgage payments, even though the homebuyers make those payments themselves, then call the mortgage in default for the unauthorized deductions, and charge late fees and penalties.

Lead plaintiffs Rick and Susan Dolfo say that’s what Bank of America did to them.

“This is yet another tale of Bank of America cheating its customers,” the complaint states. “In 2005, plaintiffs obtained a residential mortgage loan. Bank of America subsequently bought the servicing rights to the loan. From the time the loan was issued, plaintiffs complied with their obligations under the loan agreement. They made their monthly payments, maintained the required homeowner’s insurance coverage and timely paid their property taxes. Nonetheless, in December 2009, plaintiffs noticed on their monthly mortgage statement that Bank of America paid their property taxes and homeowner’s insurance without the plaintiffs’ knowledge or consent, and even though plaintiffs also paid them. To fund the impound account, and without informing the plaintiffs, Bank of America took money from plaintiffs’ monthly mortgage payment, not leaving enough to cover plaintiffs’ monthly mortgage payment, throwing plaintiffs into default. Once in default, Bank of America, as the loan servicer, was ale to charge additional fees and penalties. Bank of America also falsely reported to credit agencies that plaintiffs were in default on their mortgage.”

Wall Street’s “Secret Government”

WarOnYou — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 07:47:08 +0000

Wall Street’s “Secret Government”

December 2nd, 2011

Via: Alternet:

We now have concrete evidence that Wall Street and Washington are running a secret government far removed from the democratic process. Through a freedom of information request by Bloomberg News, the public now has access to over 29,000 pages of Fed documents and 21,000 additional Fed transactions that were deliberately hidden, and for good reason. (See here and here.)

These documents show how top government officials willfully concealed from Congress and the public the true extent of the 2008-’09 bailouts that enriched the few and enhanced the interests of giant Wall Streets firms.

Furious at Latest U.S. Attack, Pakistan Shuts Down Resupply Routes to Afghanistan “Permanently”

WarOnYou — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 00:51:53 +0000

Furious at Latest U.S. Attack, Pakistan Shuts Down Resupply Routes to Afghanistan “Permanently”

Written by John Daly

Thursday, 01 December 2011 02:52

NATO recently literally shot itself in the foot, imperiling the resupply of International Assistance Forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan by shooting up two Pakistani border posts in a “hot pursuit’ raid.

Given that roughly 100 fuel tanker trucks along with 200 other trucks loaded with NATO supplies cross into Afghanistan each day from Pakistan, Pakistan’s closure of the border has ominous long-term consequences for the logistical resupply of ISAF forces, even as Pentagon officials downplay the issue and scramble for alternative resupply routes.

Pakistan, long angry about ISAF/NATO cross border raids, has apparently reached the end of its tether. Following the 26 November NATO aerial assault on two border posts in Mohmand Agency in Pakistan’s turbulent NorthWest Frontier Province, Islamabad promptly sealed its border with Afghanistan to NATO supplies after the allied strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

The U.S. military insists a joint patrol with Afghan forces was fired upon first and only responded with return fire and calling in airstrikes on the posts, which a commander mistakenly identified as Taliban training camps, after reportedly checking that there were no Pakistani military forces nearby. Pakistan Major General Ishfaq Nadeem, director general of military operations, rebutted Washington’s assertions one by one, commenting, “The positions of the posts were already conveyed to the ISAF through map references and it was impossible that they did not know these to be our posts.”

So, what does this mean for logistical support of ISAF forces? According to Nesar Ahmad Nasery, the deputy head of Torkham Customs, around 1,000 trucks cross into Afghanistan on a daily basis, nearly 300 of which are NATO contractors carrying NATO supplies in sealed containers. Khyber Transport Association chief Shakir Afridi said that each oil tanker has a capacity of 13,000-15,000 gallons. In October 2010 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen said that fossil fuels are the number one import to Afghanistan.

Noting the obvious, as Afghanistan has no indigenous hydrocarbon supplies, every drop must be brought in, with transit greatly increasing the eventual cost. For 2001-2008, almost all U.S. and NATO supplies were trucked overland to Afghanistan through parts of Pakistan effectively controlled by the Taliban.

Ground supplies are shipped into Pakistan’s Arabian Sea Karachi port and offloaded onto trucks before being sent to one of five crossing points on the Afghan border, the most important being Torkham at the Khyber Pass and Baluchistan’s Chaman. The recent attack has put all these routes at risk, perhaps permanently. Pakistan, being the shortest and most economical route, has been used for nearly a decade to transit almost 75 percent of the ammunition, vehicles, foodstuff and around 50 percent of fuel for coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan.

On 27 November Interior Minister Rehman Malik, addressing journalists at the Ministry of the Interior’s National Crisis Management Cell, after strongly condemning the NATO attack on Pakistani forces, stated that the resupply routes for NATO via Pakistan have been stopped “permanently,” adding that the decisions of the Defense Cabinet Committee (DCC) on the NATO forces attack inside Pakistan would be implemented in letter and spirit, stressing that “The decisions of the DCC are final and would be implemented.”

The major issue at stake here for ISAF and U.S. forces is fuel, all of which must be brought in from abroad at high cost. In October 2009 Pentagon officials testified before the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee that the “Fully Burdened Cost of Fuel” (FBCF) translates to about $400 per gallon by the time it arrives at a remote Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Afghanistan. Last year, the FBCF reached $800 in some FOBs following supply route bombings in Pakistan, while others have claimed the FBCF may be as high as $1,000 per gallon in some remote locations. For many remote locations, fuel supplies can only be provided by air – one of the most expensive ways being in helicopter fuel bladders.

The majority of U.S. tonnage transported into Afghanistan is fuel – 70 percent, according to Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Alan Haggerty. The Marines’ calculate that 39 percent of their tonnage is fuel, and 90 percent is either fuel or water.

According to ISAF spokesman Colonel Wayne Shanks, there are currently nearly 400 U.S. and coalition bases in Afghanistan, ranging from the massive Bagram airbase outside Kabul down to camps, forward operating bases and combat outposts.

The Pakistani supply lines have come under increasing attack by militants. Baluchistan Home Secretary Akbar Hussain Durani noted that last year, 136 NATO tankers were destroyed in 56 attacks in the province, with 34 people killed and 23 wounded in the assaults.

But NATO and the Pentagon have a backup plan – since 2009 they have been shifting their logistics to the Northern Distribution Network (NDN), a railway link running from Latvia’s Riga Baltic port through Russia and Kazakhstan terminating in Uzbekistan’s Termez on the Afghan border.

The NDN is a joint initiative of multiple Department of Defense agencies, including the US Transportation Command, CENTCOM, the US European Command, the Defense Logistics Agency and the Department of State. The NDN’s first shipment was sent on 20 February 2009 from Riga 3,212 miles to Termez, with U.S. commanders stating that 100 containers daily would be transported via the NDN. The supply trains have been given preferential right-of-way to speed the trip to about nine days. According to Pentagon officials, its goal is eventually to be able to bring 75 percent of its equipment into Afghanistan from the north.

But the true number of forces to be resupplied is far higher. Last year the Pentagon’s Central Command put the number of contractors for the U.S. military at 107,000.

According to ISAF spokesman Lieutenant Gregory Keeley in Kabul, the NDN now accounts for 52 percent of coalition cargo transport and 40 percent for the U.S., which also receives around 30 percent of its supplies by air.

Cost?

According to the FMN Logistics, the Washington DC-based logistics company that oversees the NDN and provides “full supply-chain management to ensure the smooth transit of(European Union) government cargo from various Ports of Entry including Riga, Latvia;
Poti, Georgia; Mersin, Turkey and Bandar Abbas, Iran, through to multiple NATO/ ISAF camps in North and South Afghanistan,” in January Russian Railways increased rail tariffs for freight by 10 percent and is suggesting an additional increase of 11.7 percent in 2011 to cover “operating costs.” Further east, Uzbekistan increased rail tariffs twice last year.

Bringing supplies overland on the NDN costs two or three times as much as shipping them by sea and moving them up through Pakistan.

And the NDN is not without problems of its own. On 16 November Uzbek media reported an explosion on an NDN railway line on a railway bridge on the Galaba-Amuzang section of track on Uzbekistan’s border with Afghanistan.

Besides the NDN, the Pentagon also uses a supply route through Georgia’s Black Sea Poti port via Azerbaijan’s capital Baku, where goods are transshipped across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan, where the goods are carried by truck into Uzbekistan to Afghanistan. While shorter than the NDN, it is also more expensive because of the constant on-and-off loading from trucks to ferries and back onto trucks. A third supply route, a spur of the NDN, bypasses Uzbekistan from Kazakhstan via Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, but poor road conditions in Tajikistan limit its usefulness.

So, given Pakistan’s shutdown, can the NDN absorb the increased railway traffic?

Probably, but it won’t be cheap, and will take some time to implement.

NATO’s investigation of the Mohmand attack, led by a one-star general, will release its findings on 23 December. What does Pakistan want to resolve the issue? A formal apology and resolute action taken against those responsible for the deadly cross border air strike.

The U.S. military’s Transportation Command deputy commander Vice Adm. Mark Harnitchek said of resupplying Afghanistan, “This is the logistics challenge of our generation.”

If the Pentagon does not issue an apology, then the U.S. military had better expect “the logistics challenge of our generation” to continue.

Or get out and push and push the HUMVEES and helicopters.

By. John C.K. Daly of Oilprice.com

Occupy Movement: Next Step Convergence

WarOnYou — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 00:45:58 +0000

Occupy Movement: Next Step Convergence

The US Occupy movement is at a critical point. To succeed it must develop a message of specific solutions to fix our broken system. People are seeing the next step as advocacy for constitutional amendments proposed through an Article V convention.
by Joel S. Hirschhorn
(libertarian)

Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com.]
Monday, November 28, 2011

There is a growing convergence of thinking about where the US Occupy movement should go as a next step to turning its values, concerns and commitments into changing what most Americans see as broken government under control of corporate interests. When it comes to political and social movements, history shows us that they usually fail not because they disappear, but rather because they become marginalized, unimportant despite a core group of committed people and groups.

They lose popular appeal and support or never expand beyond a small early group of supporters. The nation and many supporters move on. Other movements grab the interest of the most informed, dissident-type people seeking truth, justice or change. A good example of such a failed contemporary movement is the 911 truth effort. The groups, websites and true believers keep on pushing their objectives a decade after the historic event. But the goal of revealing what really happened that the official government story does not divulge is like a moldy piece of forgotten food in the refrigerator.

Movement death by inattention happens despite good resources, charismatic leaders and even great organization and communication skills. Critical mass of public support simply never materializes, in large measure because diverse segments of the population never buy into the central arguments of the movement. The Internet is littered with websites of activist groups that persist despite clear evidence of decay and wide disinterest. True believers have a mission in life tied to their egos that prevent them from admitting defeat. They do not move on.

The biggest mistake that passionate advocates for a cause make is overestimating their ability to reach critical mass and underestimating the competition of other movements with greater appeal which rob them of both attention and supporters.

Make no mistake; I totally and enthusiastically support the Occupy movement because it offers the prospect of producing reforms to fix our broken government and attracting very wide public support for a nonviolent Second American Revolution. What worries me, however, is that many of its participants seem over confident, as if they cannot fail. On the other hand, I have become impressed by a convergence of thinking about what the next big step for the Occupy movement can and should be. I will briefly identify examples of this convergent thinking.

Canadian author Erich Koch has written a compelling article: An Objective for the U.S. Occupy Movement: A Constitutional Convention. He buys into the view that the Occupy movement could embrace the thinking of Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig who has presented the case for amendments to fix Congress. Like others Koch is correct in saying that “No one in the movement would disagree with its main point: the fundamental problem is the corruption of Congress.” Unlike others, Koch recognizes the path for obtaining reform constitutional amendments is using the provision in Article V for a convention of state delegates, having the same power as Congress in proposing amendments that still must be ratified by three-quarters of the states. It has never been used despite many hundreds of state requests for a convention because, clearly, Congress and most status quo forces fear such a convention.

Koch cited a great article by Alesh Houdek: Has a Harvard Professor Mapped Out the Next Step for Occupy Wall Street? Most is a review of Lessig’s book. Correctly noted about using the convention option is “it bypasses the usual means of reform (Congress, presidential elections, etc.) which the lobbyists and other interested parties have learned so well to manipulate. And lastly, such a convention would be free to propose solutions that would otherwise be subject to be stricken as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.” This is critical to understand. Houdek concludes: “Properly presented, the strategies and aims of Lessig’s book could make it the handbook the protesters have been looking for — and provide a pathway for them to ride out the winter ahead.”

Dan Froomkin also has presented the same case in: Lawrence Lessig’s New Book On Political Corruption Offers Protesters A Possible Manifesto. He quoted what Lessig himself had said in an article about the Occupy movement and the concern that I share, namely that the Occupy movement “will become too diffuse and not focused” on the root issue of corruption of government. And that the movement will only grow “if a wide range of people can be part of it.” This requires coalescing around an issue “as fundamental as the corruption of the system.” Only a constitutional amendment can fix the corrupting impact of money in politics. This is also the focus of Dylan Ratigan’s fine effort, except that the use of the convention path has not been emphasized.

A specific call for an Article V convention was made by the pro-Occupy US Day of Rage group: “We are organizing a coordinated national campaign at local and state levels, including where necessary the occupation of state capitols, in order to demand an article V constitutional convention be called to restore representative democracy to our nation.” A set of specific reforms to be fix the corruption-money problem are presented.

The 99 Percent Declaration group has also presented an important statement centered on the call for a National General Assembly, where delegates would formulate a petition of a list of grievances that would be delivered to the main parts of the federal government on behalf of 99 percent of Americans. A suggested list of grievances includes the need for constitutional amendments to achieve solutions, but only for a few of the issues. Not explicitly acknowledged, however, is that constitutional amendments, not ordinary laws, would be necessary for other solutions, such as term limits for Congress and abandoning the Electoral College. Moreover, there is no specific recognition that serious amendment reforms will not be proposed by Congress, and that an Article V convention is needed. Inattention to method was also the shortcoming of a similar list of solutions by Ralph Lopez.

Author Scott Turow has presented: How Occupy Wall Street Can Restore Clout of the 99%. His recommendation to the Occupy movement is “work across the nation for a constitutional amendment requiring Congress to regulate the expenditure of private money on elections. … The best antidote to this imbalance of income and influence would be to greatly reduce the role of private funding in our elections. …As for the Occupy Wall Street movement, it has been criticized by some for not having a realistic agenda, even though polling shows that millions of Americans, including me, are sympathetic to the basic message of the protests.” His prescription: “rally around a single goal and reinvigorate their movement.” Fine, but missing from his analysis is the recognition that Congress will never propose reform amendments, only an Article V convention will do the job.

This sampling of recent writings clearly shows convergent thinking that the Occupy movement can and should focus on key reform constitutional amendments and, second, that some better informed critical thinkers recognize, this requires advocacy for using the Article V convention option that Congress has refused to honor.

As to Occupy movement success, I want again to emphasize that there is always competition for the attention and support of concerned Americans who recognize how broken our system is. In particular, the well financed Americans Elect effort is impressive. Because it is offering an alternative path to nominating a presidential candidate in 2012, over 2 million Americans have already signed up to be delegates for a web convention, with millions more very likely as the mainstream media keeps giving this effort attention. Disgust with the two-party plutocracy is surely shared by Occupy participants and supporters. But for movement success based on enticing many millions of Americans, the Occupy movement cannot ignore competition such as Americans Elect. This means that the Occupy movement must explicitly start making the case to the broad public why their effort can achieve more of what is needed. This is easily done.

Here are some key concepts that the Occupy movement could use. No matter who is nominated by Americans Elect, the odds are that either the better financed Democrat or Republican candidate will win the presidency. This may just require spending even more millions of dollars on campaigns. And whoever is nominated by the group will likely be strongly linked to one of the two major parties, rather than some courageous reformer and enemy of the status quo. Moreover, this group does not offer a realistic path to getting the key reforms of the system that most of us see critically needed, such as constitutional amendments, already recognized by many Occupy supporters.

A sign of trouble for the Occupy movement is a recent national poll that found: “In the latest survey, 33 percent voiced support for Occupy Wall Street, down from 35 percent in a previous poll, while opposition to the movement climbed from 36 percent to 45 percent. Twenty-two percent were unsure.” These results are worse than earlier polls. From the left, Chris Bowers commented: “the decline in Occupy Wall Street’s image is probably more connected to the increasingly negative coverage of the clashes between protesters and police than it is to declining support for movement’s message.” Now is the time to move the message from what is wrong to solutions, using an Occupy Congress approach. Otherwise, this view from the conservative right might prevail: “OWS will linger … but I’d argue we’ve seen the movement’s high tide. It will now recede into a mere annoying shadow of itself as support is withdrawn by political figures and organizations.”

True, Occupy movement success is not inevitable. The movement must better define what success means and how it can be achieved if it is to attract and keep the support of many millions of Americans. It needs specificity for its solutions that ordinary Americans can relate to. Never underestimate the power and commitment of status quo forces to maintain control over the political, government and economic system that has so harmed most Americans. The fight against the Occupy movement mostly seen as local police violence against peaceful demonstrators and protesters as well disinformation from some news outlets and pundits are nothing compared to what could be mounted if the movement is viewed as more threatening to the status quo delusional democracy with its delusional prosperity.

Hugo Chavez Brings First Shipment of Gold to Venezuela From Foreign Vaults as Global Economy Slides

WarOnYou — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 07:55:45 +0000

Hugo Chavez Brings First Shipment of Gold to Venezuela From Foreign Vaults as Global Economy Slides

November 26, 2011

Print Version

By Madison Ruppert – Editor of End the Lie

In August Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez announced that he would be repatriating the foreign-held gold reserves in American and European banks and they received the first shipment of gold from European countries on Friday.

The Venezuelan central bank reports that about $300 million in gold was brought in to Caracas by plane and they plan to bring 160 tons held abroad back to Venezuela.

The president of the central bank, Nelson Merentes said that the first shipment came from “various European countries” by way of France and called the arrival of the gold bullion a “historic” moment for his country, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Hugo Chavez said, “Now [the gold] will go to a place from which it should have never left: the central bank vaults [in Caracas]; not those in London or in Europe, but our own land.”

This is likely quite a good move as Western banks are becoming increasingly exposed to massive amounts of derivatives and sovereign debt crises that are wracking several economies.

These crises very well might be engineered by central banks and their “too big to fail” cronies just as the crash in 2008 was, and Chavez might preempting a possible gold run by demanding physical delivery of his gold now before there is no gold to deliver.

While Merentes would not give the specific number of tons of gold brought shipped to Venezuela on Friday, he said that the shipment was worth roughly $300 million.

This comes as U.S. stocks see the worst Thanksgiving drop since 1932 and all indicators show the European sovereign debt crisis continuing to worsen.

Chavez’s repatriation of gold reserves is part of his initiative to nationalize the Venezuelan gold sector, something which the Wall Street Journal says “puzzled economists.”

The Wall Street Journal published speculation that it could have to do with internal arbitration cases involving nationalizations and Venezuela seeking to prevent having their assets seized abroad.

They claim that it reduces transparency and would “raise more questions over the central bank’s declining reserves.”

How exactly they know the status of the reserves is not said, and Venezuelan figures posit a much more logical explanation for the move.

Venezuelan officials said that they were seeking to minimize exposure to the overly indebted Western economies of the United States and Europe, while leveraging the high price of gold that only seems to be rising.

They also said that they were seeking to invest in developing allies like Russia and China which have also been investing in the Venezuelan economy and continue to grow at rates not seen in the West.

There has also been a steady attack on Chavez coming from the United States and the West in general so his choice to demand his gold now prevents Western nations from seizing his assets held abroad as they did to Gaddafi.

The Wall Street Journal does seem to be able to pin down a number of how much gold Venezuela actually has.

First they say that before Friday, Venezuela held nearly $11 billion worth of gold, or 211 tons, out of 365 tons of reserves stored in banks in the United States, Canada and Europe.

According to the World Gold Council, Venezuela holds the 15^th-largest gold reserves and Chavez said, “It’s the economic reserve for our kids. It’s growing, and it’s going to keep growing, both gold and economic reserves.”

Unfortunately you’ll never hear Bernanke or one of the countless criminal Western banksters saying such things, all they care about is robbing us blind and making sure we are enslaved by debt for generations to come.

That is not to say that Chavez is a saint, but the fact that a leader would even talk about working for the well being of his people is something wholly foreign to someone like myself in the United States.

“Venezuela is going to become an economic power, not for the bourgeois or capitalism, but for the Venezuelan people,” Chavez added.

Later, they say that the Central Bank of Venezuela holds 154 tons of gold bullion domestically, a number considerably different from the 211 tons cited earlier in the article.

Regardless, the Venezuelans seem to see the writing on the wall, with American stocks seeing the worst loss during the Thanksgiving week since 1932, Belgium getting its credit rating slashed and reports saying Greece is telling bondholders they will have to accept larger losses.

This fueled the pervasive concern that the European debt crisis is worsening and treasuries fell in response.

The S&P 500 continued to slump for the seventh straight day in a row, marking a weekly drop of 4.7% and a daily loss of 0.3%.

The euro declined as well, losing 0.9% along with the S&P GSCI commodity index dropping 0.3% with Bloomberg reporting, “The Markit iTraxx SovX Western Europe Index of credit- default swaps on 15 governments lingered near a record, up 6 basis points at 386.”

The signs are not looking good and Chavez demanding physical delivery of his gold just reflects the global awareness that something is seriously wrong with the world economy and it is not getting better any time soon.

The Return Of Debtors Prisons: Collection Agencies Now Want Deadbeats Arrested

WarOnYou — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 19:45:02 +0000

The Return Of Debtors Prisons: Collection Agencies Now Want Deadbeats Arrested

November 25, 2011

Print Version

Source: Daily Ticker

More than one-third of US states allow debtors to be arrested and jailed, says Jessica Silver-Greenberg in the Wall Street Journal.

Judges typically grant arrest warrants when the debtors have failed to show up for court dates or failed to make court-ordered payments.

Of course, the reason debtors have failed to make court-ordered payments is often the same reason they didn’t pay their debts in the first place: They don’t have any money.

Read More…

Sen. Feinstein Loaded up on Biotech Stock Just Before Company Received $24 Million Gov’t Grant

WarOnYou — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 07:19:15 +0000

Sen. Feinstein Loaded up on Biotech Stock Just Before Company Received $24 Million Gov’t Grant

November 15, 2011

Print Version

Source: Big Gov

With a new congressional insider trading scandal unfolding in Washington, another name has been added to the hit parade: U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).

In the new blockbuster tell-all Throw Them All Out, investigative reporter and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer reveals that on November 18, 2009, Sen. Feinstein and her husband invested $1 million into Amyris Biotechnologies, a “green” company focused on plant-based renewable fuels and chemicals. The Feinsteins’ million-dollar investment was their only stock transaction for the entire year.

…

The company went public the following year with an IPO that raked in $85 million. Currently, it’s unclear exactly how much money Senator Feinstein and her husband made off their investment, “but it’s safe to assume that they did well,” concludes Schweizer.

System D: The Shadow Superpower

WarOnYou — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 06:39:19 +0000

System D: The Shadow Superpower

November 3rd, 2011

Via: Foreign Policy:

Forget China: the $10 trillion global black market is the world’s fastest growing economy — and its future.

…

You probably have never heard of System D. Neither had I until I started visiting street markets and unlicensed bazaars around the globe.

System D is a slang phrase pirated from French-speaking Africa and the Caribbean. The French have a word that they often use to describe particularly effective and motivated people. They call them débrouillards. To say a man is a débrouillard is to tell people how resourceful and ingenious he is. The former French colonies have sculpted this word to their own social and economic reality. They say that inventive, self-starting, entrepreneurial merchants who are doing business on their own, without registering or being regulated by the bureaucracy and, for the most part, without paying taxes, are part of “l’economie de la débrouillardise.” Or, sweetened for street use, “Systeme D.” This essentially translates as the ingenuity economy, the economy of improvisation and self-reliance, the do-it-yourself, or DIY, economy. A number of well-known chefs have also appropriated the term to describe the skill and sheer joy necessary to improvise a gourmet meal using only the mismatched ingredients that happen to be at hand in a kitchen.

I like the phrase. It has a carefree lilt and some friendly resonances. At the same time, it asserts an important truth: What happens in all the unregistered markets and roadside kiosks of the world is not simply haphazard. It is a product of intelligence, resilience, self-organization, and group solidarity, and it follows a number of well-worn though unwritten rules. It is, in that sense, a system.

It used to be that System D was small — a handful of market women selling a handful of shriveled carrots to earn a handful of pennies. It was the economy of desperation. But as trade has expanded and globalized, System D has scaled up too. Today, System D is the economy of aspiration. It is where the jobs are. In 2009, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a think tank sponsored by the governments of 30 of the most powerful capitalist countries and dedicated to promoting free-market institutions, concluded that half the workers of the world — close to 1.8 billion people — were working in System D: off the books, in jobs that were neither registered nor regulated, getting paid in cash, and, most often, avoiding income taxes.

Kids selling lemonade from the sidewalk in front of their houses are part of System D. So are many of the vendors at stoop sales, flea markets, and swap meets. So are the workers who look for employment in the parking lots of Home Depot and Lowe’s throughout the United States. And it’s not only cash-in-hand labor. As with David Obi’s deal to bring generators from China to Nigeria, System D is multinational, moving all sorts of products — machinery, mobile phones, computers, and more — around the globe and creating international industries that help billions of people find jobs and services.

How the Eurocrisis laid bare world’s new economic order

WarOnYou — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 01:45:44 +0000

How the Eurocrisis laid bare world’s new economic order

October 30, 2011

Print Version

Source: Guardian

The French Riviera in November conjures up images of ageing playboys eking out the last rays of autumn sunshine on the Croisette over a pastis. So it may be fitting that Nicolas Sarkozy has chosen Cannes as the venue for this week’s G20 summit, where the fading power of Europe‘s old world economies will be thrown into sharp relief by the nouveau riche arrivistes from China, India and Brazil.

Sarkozy’s humiliating call to Beijing last week, asking if the Chinese would care to invest in the European financial stability facility, the huge euro bailout fund, was portrayed within China as grovelling. Guido Mantegna, Brazil’s finance minister, rapidly issued a statement saying his country had no intention of taking part.

Silvio Berlusconi was also forced to bear his share of the humiliation, writing a letter to his eurozone neighbours promising to buck up his economic act, in return for a share of the aid package.

For Europeans, last week’s events were a stark reminder that through a combination of their own economic mismanagement and the irresistible rise of a new generation of financial powers, the old continent’s pre-eminence is a thing of the past.

Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at the consultancy Capital Economics, says: “Clearly, the fact that Europe needs this money is a further demonstration of how its economic health has deteriorated, at least in the short term.”

Charles Dumas, of Lombard Street Research, says: “The optimistic view for growth in Europe is 0%; the pessimistic scenario is depression.”

That message will be rammed home to Angela Merkel and her colleagues as the Europeans rub shoulders with India, China and the other G20 nations in the south of France.

Before the world financial crisis, these setpiece and usually self-congratulatory summits were still held among the G8 countries – the traditional lineup of the US, Germany, Japan, France, Britain, Canada and Italy, plus Russia, added to the list in 1997 to cement the fact that the post-communist empire had come in from the cold. But even before mis-sold mortgages and reckless bankers triggered arguably the worst global financial crisis in living memory, it had become clear that this group was no longer a fair representation of the world economy.

Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill coined the phrase “Brics” in 2001, to describe Brazil, Russia, India and China, a disparate group of nations that he predicted would soon wield greater power on the world economic stage.

In the ensuing decade, more economies have joined the list of promising upstarts, including African states such as Nigeria and Egypt, and Asian big beasts such as Indonesia. The credit crunch, which could weigh on economic growth in Europe and the US for several years, will only accelerate the great catch-up.

In a major report earlier this year, The World in 2050, economists at PricewaterhouseCoopers predicted that, judged by purchasing power parity – which allows for the fact that a dollar goes much further in Shanghai than in New York – China was already the world’s second-largest economy. By 2050, it reckons that the US will have slipped to number three, with India, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia all in the top 10.

Economists call this “convergence”. Technological advances may arise first in Silicon Valley or the German Mittelstand, but in a globalised economy, they can rapidly be appropriated by firms and families thousands of miles away, helping to drive up economic growth. Nothing about convergence is automatic: politics matters too. China’s rise from closed communist state to workshop of the 21st-century world accelerated after it joined the World Trade Organisation in December 2001.

With easier access to the west’s consumer markets, China ruthlessly pursued an export-led growth model, racking up vast trade surpluses with the US and Europe, and spending much of the money on buying dollars, and other foreign currency denominated assets, to keep the yuan cheap, and its goods competitive. The 10% a year growth rates it has posted are a result of deliberate policy as well as its sheer size.

Many China-watchers are concerned that the country could be destined for an economic “hard landing” over the next 12 months, as rapid increases in property prices swing into reverse. But Gerard Lyons, chief economist of Standard Chartered, who travels to China frequently, insists any downturn will only be a temporary setback. He believes the world economy is in the middle of its third powerful “super-cycle”. The first was at the end of the 19th century, when Britain emerged as a mighty economic power; the second in the postwar years, when Japan rose to prominence, worrying the new hegemonic power, the US; and the third today, as China, India and several other developing economies take their place as major powers .

Lest the exhausted Europeans gathering in Cannes feel too overshadowed, though, there are two caveats to the triumph of the east. in this global game of economic top trumpsThe first is that while the massive populations of China, India and Indonesia will help to catapult them into the big league over the coming years, it will be much longer before living standards catch up. The average income in China is just 15% of the US level today, and even by 2050 it is still expected to be more than 50% lower than America’s.

Headline numbers don’t capture inequality either: comparatively rich countries measured by GDP alone can still contain pitifully poor populations, if a kleptocratic elite is appropriating the spoils, or an ineffectual bureaucracy fails to create the social safety nets the public need.

Finally, the world’s leaders should console themselves with the fact that if they get things right, we should all be winners. Richard Snook, of PwC, says: “It’s fair to say that over the next five or six years things are going to be pretty difficult. But over the next 40 years, we are expecting the standard of living to improve a lot.”

But he insists the convergence of China and the rest should be good news, because it creates large and growing markets which the old powers should be able to take advantage of. “This is not a ‘decline of the west’ story: we’re still expecting the European and the US economies to expand by two and a half or three times by 2050,” he says.

Lyons agrees. “I don’t think the west should be pessimistic,” he says. “We need to be realistic about the near-term: the debt and the need to deleverage point to a difficult couple of years. But the west still has the ability to do well.”

War On You: Breaking Alternative News » Economic Crisis

Currency Wars – Iran Banned From Trading Gold and Silver

Currency Wars – Iran Banned From Trading Gold and Silver

Related Posts:

Obama to Use Pension Funds of Ordinary Americans to Pay for Bank Mortgage “Settlement”

Obama to Use Pension Funds of Ordinary Americans to Pay for Bank Mortgage “Settlement”

Related Posts:

Personal incomes fall more during ‘recovery’ than during the recession

Personal incomes fall more during ‘recovery’ than during the recession

Related Posts:

Eight Strategic Factors to Consider in 2012

Eight Strategic Factors to Consider in 2012

Related Posts:

Bank Of America Dumps $75 Trillion In Derivatives On U.S. Taxpayers With Federal Approval

Bank Of America Dumps $75 Trillion In Derivatives On U.S. Taxpayers With Federal Approval

Related Posts:

Was Blagojevich Arrested On Corruption Charges After Going Up Against Bank of America?

Was Blagojevich Arrested On Corruption Charges After Going Up Against Bank of America?

Related Posts:

Class of Homebuyers Claims BofA Found a New Dirty Trick

Class of Homebuyers Claims BofA Found a New Dirty Trick

Related Posts:

Wall Street’s “Secret Government”

Wall Street’s “Secret Government”

Related Posts:

Furious at Latest U.S. Attack, Pakistan Shuts Down Resupply Routes to Afghanistan “Permanently”

Furious at Latest U.S. Attack, Pakistan Shuts Down Resupply Routes to Afghanistan “Permanently”

Related Posts:

Occupy Movement: Next Step Convergence

Occupy Movement: Next Step Convergence

Related Posts:

Hugo Chavez Brings First Shipment of Gold to Venezuela From Foreign Vaults as Global Economy Slides

Hugo Chavez Brings First Shipment of Gold to Venezuela From Foreign Vaults as Global Economy Slides

Related Posts:

The Return Of Debtors Prisons: Collection Agencies Now Want Deadbeats Arrested

The Return Of Debtors Prisons: Collection Agencies Now Want Deadbeats Arrested

Related Posts:

Sen. Feinstein Loaded up on Biotech Stock Just Before Company Received $24 Million Gov’t Grant

Sen. Feinstein Loaded up on Biotech Stock Just Before Company Received $24 Million Gov’t Grant

Related Posts:

System D: The Shadow Superpower

System D: The Shadow Superpower

Related Posts:

How the Eurocrisis laid bare world’s new economic order

How the Eurocrisis laid bare world’s new economic order

Related Posts: