Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

The third British Empire
Aljazeera | Author | 03/28/12

London is considered the "capital of capitalism" allowing foreign billionaires to stash tax free income offshore.

Historians tell us that there were two quite distinct British empires - the first an Atlantic empire built on North American colonies and Caribbean possessions and the second an Asian empire, built on control of India and coercive trade with China. These two empires were deeply criminal projects, in the specific sense that they relied heavily on profits from slavery and the sale of narcotics. Empire on the British model was a moneymaking venture, where moral considerations took second place to the lure of super profits. ... Read more

US-Pakistan: Who needs whom more?
Aljazeera | Americas | 03/30/12

Standing side by side this week, the US president and Pakistan's prime minister vowed to work together while conceding that their relationship has experienced deep strains. On Wednesday, US and Pakistani military leaders also held talks in an attempt to mend ties between the allies. The relationship hit a new low in November after US troops, based along the Afghan border, killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. A US investigation found both sides were to blame for the deadly exchange of fire. Read more

America's Dangerous Game - drone strikes in Yemen
Aljazeera | People and Power | 03/08/12

This film examines the covert war in Yemen and asks if the US is creating more enemies than it can capture or kill. Read more

Neoliberal Egypt: The hijacked revolution
Aljazeera | Dr Jason Hickel | 03/29/12

The country's new leaders seem to be planning the same old economic policies which led to increased poverty.

London, United Kingdom - The ouster of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 set off a spate of political reforms in Egypt culminating in the recent parliamentary elections and the ascent of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party. Yet the meaning of the 2011 "revolution" remains far from decided.

When Egyptians rose up last year, it was not only against tyranny and political repression, but also against the neoliberal economic order - designed by the United States - that has generated hunger, poverty and inequality in Egypt since the 1980s. For most people, these latter concerns were at least as pressing as the former, though they have been completely obscured in the prevailing media discourse. Now the tragedy is that, when it comes to economic policy, Egypt’s new rulers seem set to reproduce more of the same. Read more

The Koch Brothers
Ajazeera | People and Power | 03/29/12

People & Power asks why the billionaire siblings are spending a fortune in support of a conservative political agenda. Read more

Gulf fisheries in decline after oil disaster
Aljazeera | Dahr Jamail | 03/05/12

Nearly two years after BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, fishermen and scientists say things are getting worse. Read more

In Pictures: Gulf seafood industry struggles in wake of BP spill
Aljazeera | Erika Blumenfeld | 03/28/12

Fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico are in the initial phase of collapse, according to scientists. Read more

Is capitalism bankrupt?
Aljazeera | Author | 02/25/12

With a worldwide financial crisis and an outraged 99 per cent, we ask if the free market is free enough. Read more
Is capitalism bankrupt? (video) (02/25/12) [25:24]

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Friday March 30 [11:40]

PBS NewsHour Thursday, March 29, 2012

Aljazeera | People & Power - The Koch Brothers (03/29/12) [25:06]

TYT | Trillion-Dollar Jet Wasting Your Tax $ (03/25/12) [2:47]

Aljazeera | Slavery: A 21st Century Evil - Your purchase is your advocacy
Aljazeera | Dr David Batstone | 10/10/11

It is not easy mobilising an army of citizens that will put an end to modern slavery. The mass of people find it hard to believe that slavery still exists in the 21st century. The fact that tens of millions of individuals around the globe daily live in real forms of bondage contradicts our sense of modern history and moral progress. Such ignorance nurtures passivity. Read more

Talks over oil release push down crude
Finanial Times | Javier Blas | 03/28/12

Efforts by some of the world's biggest oil buyers to co-ordinate the possible release of emergency reserves and an intervention by Saudi Arabia sent crude prices tumbling on Wednesday, raising the prospect of relief for Europe's flagging economies and American motorists facing pump prices of almost $4 a gallon. Read more

Oh, Canada's Become a Home for Record Fracking
ProPublica | Nicholas Kusnetz | 12/28/11

Early last year, deep in the forests of northern British Columbia, workers for Apache Corp. performed what the company proclaimed was the biggest hydraulic fracturing operation ever. The project used 259 million gallons of water and 50,000 tons of sand to frack 16 gas wells side by side. It was "nearly four times larger than any project of its nature in North America," Apache boasted.

The record didn't stand for long. By the end of the year, Apache and its partner, Encana, topped it by half at a neighboring site. As furious debate over fracking continues in the United States, it is instructive to look at how a similar gas boom is unfolding for our neighbor to the north. Read more

PAC Track - What and Where are the Super PACs Spending?
ProPublica | Al Shaw and Kim Barker | 03/29/12

Two federal court rulings in 2010 paved the way for the ascent of "super PACs," political action committees that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on political races, as long as they don't coordinate with a specific candidate. And so far, they're spending heavily on the Republican race. This app, part of our long-term investigation into "dark money," keeps track of where super PACs are spending and raising their cash to influence the presidential race. Read more

Mitt Romney Tells 'Humorous' Story About Father Closing A Michigan Factory
Huffington Post | Amanda Terkel | 03/28/12

Mitt Romney is known for his sometimes awkward sense of humor, and some of his biggest campaign missteps have come when he has made statements that seemed out of touch with Americans' economic struggles. Read more

At MF Global Hearing, Executives Offer Lawmakers Few Answers on Millions That Disappeared
Huffington Post | D.M. Levine | 03/28/12

MF Global filed for bankruptcy protection Oct. 31. Former CEO Jon Corzine, a former New Jersey governor and U.S. senator from the state, stepped down in November. About $1.6 billion in customer money hasn't been recovered. Read more

Gangster Banks Keep Winning Public Business. Why?
RollingStone | Author | 03/23/12

This story dovetails with the larger story I have out in the magazine now about Bank of America, another Too-Big-To-Fail behemoth that placed a very close second in the area of municipal bond business, according to the Bloomberg survey. Chase managed $35.7 billion in long-term bond sales, while BOA/Merrill Lynch came in at about $200 million less. Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Thursday March 29 [11:17]

Redwood Summer: Where the 90s Begin (06/19/11) [22:32]

Ponying Up: How Much Have Big Banks Been Docked for the Financial Crisis?
ProPublica | Cora Currier | 03/06/12

Ponying Up: How Much Have Big Banks Been Docked for the Financial Crisis? Read more

Federal Government & Attorneys General reach landmark settlement with major banks
url: http://nationalmortgagesettlement.com/

After many months of negotiation, 49 state attorneys general and the federal government have reached agreement on a historic joint state-federal settlement with the country's five largest loan servicers: Read more

Kofi Annan's six-point plan for Syria
Aljazeera | Author | 03/27/12

UN-Arab League envoy's plan calls for military pullback, establishment of temporary ceasefires and political dialogue. Read more

Netanyahu Sees Strike on Iran's Nukes as Worth the Risk
Bloomberg | Jeffrey Goldberg | 03/26/12

... There are a few reasons why this episode is now so important. Last week, I wrote about some of the assumptions Israel's leaders are making about the potential fallout from a strike on Iran's nuclear sites. I visited Tel Aviv and Jerusalem this month, and I was struck, in my conversations with Israeli officials and ex-officials, by the number of best-case scenarios they offered up. They seemed dangerously overconfident that they could manage the aftermath of a strike, and this has led them to contemplate what seems to me -- at this moment at least -- a precipitous and premature attack. ... Read more

Why the Pentagon's New Fighter Jet Will Now Cost More Than $1 Trillion
ProPublica | Cora Currier | 03/23/12

... The JSF program is a massively expensive undertaking. It has cost the government $400 billion to date, and is estimated to run more than $1 trillion to develop, buy and support nearly 2,500 aircraft through 2050. ... Read more

The myth of freedom in the land of the free
Aljazeera | John Stoehr | 03/22/12

The US touts itself as the land of free, but it has laws which are designed to crush criticisms of the state. Read more

Selling war from 1917 to 2012
Aljazeera |John Stoehr | 03/26/12

The US has become more accepting of capitalism in the past century, even as economic security has declined. Read more

Painkiller Opana, new scourge of rural America
Reuters | Mary Wisniewski | 03/27/12

Back in high school in Houston, Texas, C.J. Coomer got good grades and played football. He was dark-haired and handsome, popular with his friends and doted on by his family. But when his mother got divorced and moved to be near family in rural Scott County, Indiana, Coomer began running with a crowd there that abused prescription painkillers to get high. His weight dropped from 210 pounds to just 140 pounds (64 kg), he couldn't work, and was constantly borrowing money. Read more

MF Global executive details scramble for funds
Reuters | Sarah N. Lynch | 03/27/12

MF Global's (MFGLQ.PK) North America chief financial officer plans to tell lawmakers on Wednesday that she desperately sought to transfer funds to cover the customer account shortfall in the final hours before the firm's collapse, but that some banks would not execute them. Read more

White House Offers To Curtail Drone Program In Pakistan, Officials Say
Huffington Post | KIMBERLY DOZIER | 03/26/12

WASHINGTON -- In a bid to save the CIA's drone campaign against al-Qaida in Pakistan, US officials offered key concessions to Pakistan's spy chief that included advance notice and limits on the types of targets. But the offers were flatly rejected, leaving US-Pakistani relations strained as President Barack Obama prepares to meet Tuesday with Pakistan's prime minister. Read more

The west has lost in Afghanistan
Financial Times | Gideon Rachman | 03/26/12

Five years ago the Americans were refusing to speak to the Taliban. Now the Taliban are refusing to speak to the Americans. That is a measure of how the balance of power has shifted in Afghanistan. The western intervention there has failed. As Nato prepares to withdraw from the country in 2014, it is only the scale of the defeat that remains to be determined. Read more

Transgender Miss Universe Canada Finalist Jenna Talackova Disqualified From Competition
Huffington Post | Lauren Strapagiel | 03/26/12
Read more

'Koch Brothers Exposed:' New Film Examines How Billionaire Brothers Shaped The Political Narrative
Huffington Post | Lucia Graves | 03/26/12

... Keystone XL - Koch Industries and its employees are the single largest oil and gas donors to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Along with ample evidence linking the Kochs' business to the Canadian tar sands, they refuse to testify in Congress about their financial interest in the controversial Keystone XL. At the same time, the Kochs' allies in Congress are doing their best to stonewall and remove oversight. ... Read more

Paul Ryan Budget Likely To Go Back On Shelf After House Passage
Huffington Post | ANDREW TAYLOR | 03/27/12

WASHINGTON -- The most powerful prescriptions of a tough House GOP budget plan, like a dramatic restructuring of Medicare and big cuts to domestic programs such as Medicaid, food stamps and transportation appear destined to go back on the shelf almost as soon as the measure is passed this week. Read more

It's Official - The Fed Is Now Buying European Government Bonds
Zero Hedge | Author | 03/27/2012

As if the 'risk-less' dollar-swaps the Fed has extended to any and every major central bank were not enough, William Dudley just unashamedly admitted that the Fed now holds 'a very small amount of European Sovereign Debt'. Explaining this position Read more

Afghanistan: The Wheels Are Coming Off
This Can't be Happening | John Grant | 03/15/12

... While the leadership of America is mud-wrestling with itself in the election "silly season," the nation is watching the wheels come off its military occupation of Afghanistan. It feels like that special effects TV ad for a new SUV in which, as the SUV speeds forward, thousands of its parts magically come flinging loose until we see nothing but the truck chassis speeding ahead. ... Read more

Jim Jordan Suggests Elections Drive Solyndra Investigation
Huffington Post | Lucia Graves | 03/22/12

In an interview following yet another hearing in which Energy Secretary Steven Chu testified about the Department's loan guarantee program, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) appeared to admit that Republicans' ongoing probes of the program -- from which the bankrupt California-based solar company Solyndra and others benefited -- are largely a play to win votes in November. Read more

What Is President Obama So Afraid Of?
Zero Hedge | Author | 03/22/12

Quietly, and with little fanfare, President Obama signed a "National Defense Resources Preparedness" Executive Order on Friday. As the name suggests, the order intends to shore up the country's national defense resources in advance of a national emergency. To be fair, this is not the first time that such an order has been written. President Obama's order, however, takes things much, much further.  This is all playing out with nearly perfect historical precision. Time and time again throughout history as once great empires accelerated their declines, governments have taken steps to protect their interests against the people. In the past, they have imposed curfews, disarmed the population, curtailed civil liberties, and declared national emergencies, usually against some great faceless enemy from abroad who threatens their way of life. As it turns out, though, our great faceless enemy is not some mythical boogeyman living in a cave, nor some angry brown person who hates us for our freedoms... but the very people within the system who've taken an oath to 'support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.' Have you hit your breaking point yet? Read more

Harold Simmons On Obama: 'That Socialist'
Huffington Post | Sam Stein | 03/22/12

The reclusive, super-wealthy Republican donor Harold Simmons sat down for an interview with the Wall Street Journal in which he explained why he decided to donate $18 million to conservative super PACs. To put it bluntly: he despises and fears President Barack Obama.

"Any of these Republicans would make a better president than that socialist, Obama," Simmons told the Journal (subscription required), in what is the piece's most provocative quote. "Obama is the most dangerous American alive... because he would eliminate free enterprise in this country." Read more
Wall Street Journal Article

Stocks slip on China and Europe worries
FT | Vivianne Rodrigues | 03/22/12

Initial indecision has been dispelled as assets classes conform to the typical "risk off" theme. The FTSE All-World index is down 0.7 per cent, supported somewhat by Asia adding 0.3 per cent earlier in the day. Read more

Jim Yong Kim For World Bank Head: Obama Nominates Dartmouth College President
Huffington Post | JULIE PACE | 03/23/12

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama on Friday nominated Dartmouth College president and global health expert Jim Yong Kim to lead the World Bank, an unconventional pick that could help to quell criticism in the developing world of the U.S. stranglehold on the international organization's top post. Obama said Kim, a Korean-born physician and pioneer in the treatment of HIV, AIDS and tuberculosis, has the breadth of experience on development issues needed to carry out the financial institution's anti-poverty mission. "It's time for a development professional to lead the world's largest development agency," Obama said Friday morning during a Rose Garden ceremony. Read more

The Dumbest 'Bipartisan' Move Since Repealing Glass-Steagall
Huffington Post | Richard Eskow | 03/22/12

... This time it's the deceptively named "JOBS Act," introduced by the far-right Republicans in Congress and passed overwhelmingly by members of both parties. The President indicated his eagerness to sign the bill early on. Once again basic protections for investors, including individuals and families, are being recklessly overturned in a deregulating frenzy. ... Read more

11 Reasons Why America Would Be A Better Place Without Goldman Sachs
The Economic Collapse | Author | 03/02/12

Would America be a better place without Goldman Sachs? Of course it would. The "vampire squid" of Wall Street does not care about the future of America. Sadly, Goldman Sachs apparently does not even care much about their own clients. What Goldman Sachs is all about is making as much money as humanly possible. In the end, there is nothing wrong with making money, but there are constructive ways to make money and there are destructive ways to make money. Unfortunately, Goldman Sachs seems to find the destructive path almost irresistible. Read more

Morgan Stanley Ship Hauls Frozen Gas 14,500 Miles to Tokyo
Bloomberg | Isaac Arnsdorf | 03/23/12

Japanese LNG imports rose 22.5 percent from a year earlier to 7.67 million tons in February, the finance ministry said yesterday. The world's largest buyer of the fuel imported a record 8.44 million tons in January, trade ministry data show. The country's nuclear plants were operating at 6.1 percent of capacity last month ... Read more

Securities Fraud Settlements Plunge To Lowest Level In Ten Years
Huffington Post | Jonathan Stempel | 03/14/12

... The number and size of securities fraud settlements that won final U.S. court approval fell in 2011 to the lowest in a decade, amid a drop in cases linked to accounting problems and U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission enforcement activity. According to a study being released on Wednesday by Stanford Law School and Cornerstone Research, courts in 2011 approved 65 such settlements totaling a mere $1.36 billion, down from 86 settlements totaling $3.21 billion a year earlier. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Friday, March 23 [11:16]

Hard Landing - Caption This Apache Helicopter Crash... In The Middle Of Afghanistan
Zero Hedge | Author | 03/21/12
Read more

Bloomberg | Euro Crisis EKG: Danger Signs Return to Europe (03/23/12) [1:51]

Iraq Bombings: Al Qaeda Claims Responsibility For Attacks
Huffington Post | QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA | 03/21/12

BAGHDAD -- Al-Qaida's front group in Iraq claimed responsibility Wednesday for a wave of attacks that killed 46 people across the country this week and said the violence exposes how weak government security is ahead of the upcoming Arab League summit in Baghdad. Read more

Emirates Says 'Whole Load of Airlines' Will Fail in Fuel Squeeze
Bloomberg | Tamara Walid | 03/21/12

Emirates, the biggest airline by international traffic, said more carriers will go bust this year as fuel costs and sluggish economies undermine profitability. "We can reel off a whole load of airlines that are teetering on the brink or are really gone," Tim Clark, the Dubai-based carrier's president, said in an interview. "Roll this forward to Christmas, another eight or nine months, and we're going to see this industry in serious trouble."

Airline profits will plunge 62 percent in 2012 to $3 billion, equal to a 0.5 percent margin on sales, as oil prices rise ...

A380 'Mess'
Earnings at Emirates are also being hurt by the continued grounding of Airbus SAS A380 superjumbos, of which it's the No. 1 operator, after the discovery of wing cracks. Six of the jets, which generate $50,000 an hour 15 hours a day, are out of action for repairs, idling 830 cabin crew and 160 pilots, and the carrier is having to compensate people set on an A380 trip. ... Read more

Who Pays the Bill for Wall Street's Mess?
Huffington Post | Robert L. Borosage | 03/21/12

Paul Ryan's Republican budget is revealing, but not flattering. Even by Washington standards, this is a remarkably dishonest document. It claims to be serious, but offers targets that are simply preposterous. It calls for leveling with the American people, but cravenly ducks laying out who will pay for top end tax cuts. Ryan would invest in policing the world and protecting the tax havens of multinationals and turn the Dream into a fantasy. The Ryan budget stands with the 1%. The Congressional Progressive Caucus with the rest of us. You get to choose. Read more

Small Business Tax Cut Would Help Stars, Hedge Funds
Huffington Post | Michael McAuliff | 03/21/12

WASHINGTON -- House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Wednesday unveiled a $46 billion economic stimulus bill that would cut taxes for small businesses -- and offer a windfall for wealthy celebrities and hedge funds. The Small Business Tax Cut Act would grant a one-year 20 percent cut on taxes paid by small businesses, defined by the federal government as companies that employ fewer than 500 people.

NSA Chief Denies Domestic Spying But Whistleblowers Say Otherwise
Wired | James Bamford | 03/21/12

In a rare break from the NSA's tradition of listening but not speaking, NSA chief General Keith Alexander was grilled Tuesday on the topic of eavesdropping on Americans in front of a House subcommittee. Read more

Allen Stanford, Convicted Ponzi Schemer, Seeks New Trial, Blames Twitter
Huffington Post | Jonathan Stempel - Reuters | 30/21/12

Allen Stanford, the financier convicted of running an estimated $7 billion Ponzi scheme, has asked for a new trial, citing the media's use of Twitter in the courtroom and a lack of time to prepare his defense. ...
Stanford cycled through more than a dozen lawyers since his June 2009 arrest and was declared indigent by the court, allowing his defense to be funded with public money. ... Read more

Mitt Romney: George W. Bush And Henry Paulson Saved Country From Depression
Huffington Post | Max J. Rosenthal | 03/21/12
Read more

Comment: Now -- I know Mitt Romney is either clueless or a crook.  Almost every serious article I have read said: 1) the client's money should have been protected, 2) the bank managers should have been fired and brought up on charges, and 3) the banks should have been put through a controlled bankruptcy.  The United States and the World economies would be much better off for it.  Where as now, everyone is just holding their breath for the unraveling to start.

BEN BRAINANKE: He Says These Aren't The Zombie Banks You're Looking For
Huffington Post | Mark Gongloff | 03/21/12

When it comes to making the markets feel confident in banks, Ben Bernanke is a Jedi master. On Wednesday the Fed chairman, who shares facial-hair characteristics with Obi-Wan Kenobi, told Congress that U.S. banks were not the zombie banks we were looking for.
To use another metaphor, America's banking sector is no longer a rickety haunted house of hidden financial disasters waiting to scare us all to death, as it was before the financial crisis, Bernanke told a congressional panel investigating Europe's debt crisis. Read more

Salon Corporate Challenge: Goldman Sachs
Saon | ANDREW LEONARD | 12/15/11 (older)

All of Wall Street's big banks are equally guilty of bad citizenship. But some are more equal than others.

Investment banks were the driving force behind the structured finance products that provided a steady stream of funding for lenders originating high risk, poor quality loans and that magnified risk throughout the U.S. financial system. The investment banks that engineered, sold, traded, and profited from mortgage related structured finance products were a major cause of the financial crisis. Read more

The Great Renewable Energy Race
Bloomberg | On-going | 03/18/12

Interactive graph (move the round ball at the top). Read more

The Deadly Scramble for the World's Last Resources - Book Review
Magazine | JULIAN BROOKES | 03/19/12

Well, here's the rub: These critical resources are running out. Virtually all of them. The world is hurtling towards what author Michael Klare calls "a crisis of resource depletion." In a new book, Klare drops the stunning news that the earth's easily accessible supplies of oil, coal, gas, metals, minerals, rare earths and even water and food are disappearing fast, plunging governments and corporations into a balls-to-the-wall "race for what's left." Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Thursday, March 22 [10:07]

Reporter Matt Taibbi Says Fraud and Bailouts Are the Secrets to Bank of America's Success (03/22/12) [19:22]

Bill McKibben: Winter Heat Wave Shows Need for Obama to Reject, Not Fast-Track, Keystone XL (03/22/12) [6:55]

In 2008 the world experienced one of the greatest financial turmoils in modern history. Markets around the world started crashing, stock prices plummeted, and major financial institutions, once thought to be invincible, started showing signs of collapse. Governments responded quickly, issuing massive bailouts and stimulus packages in an effort to keep the world economy afloat.
While we're told that these drastic measures prevented a total collapse of our system, a growing sense of unease has spread throughout the population. In the world of finance, indeed in all facets of modern life, cracks have started to appear. What lies ahead as a result of these bold 'money printing' measures? Was the financial crisis solved, or were the problems merely 'kicked down the road?'

The Ascendence Of Sociopaths In US Governance
Zero Hedge | Doug Casey | 03/21/2012

How did we get here? An argument can be made that miscalculation, accident, inattention and the like are why things go bad. Those elements do have a role, but it is minor. Potential catastrophe across the board can't be the result of happenstance. When things go wrong on a grand scale, it's not just bad luck or inadvertence. It's because of serious character flaws in one or many -- or even all -- of the players. So is there a root cause of all the problems I've cited? If we can find it, it may tell us how we personally can best respond to the problems. In this article, I'm going to argue that the US government, in particular, is being overrun by the wrong kind of person. It's a trend that's been in motion for many years but has now reached a point of no return. In other words, a type of moral rot has become so prevalent that it's institutional in nature. There is not going to be, therefore, any serious change in the direction in which the US is headed until a genuine crisis topples the existing order. Until then, the trend will accelerate. The reason is that a certain class of people -- sociopaths -- are now fully in control of major American institutions. Their beliefs and attitudes are insinuated throughout the economic, political, intellectual and psychological/spiritual fabric of the US. Read more

FRONTLINE: Inside Japan's Nuclear Meltdown on PBS (02/28/12) [54:40]

60 Minutes | SpaceX video (03/17/12) [14:59]

60 Minutes | The Spymaster: Meir Dagan on Iran's threat. In a rare interview, ex-chief of Mossad Meir Dagan speaks out against a preemptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities anytime soon. He says the Iranian regime is rational in its own way. (03/11/12) [57:00]

60 Minutes | Stuxnet: Computer worm opens new era of warfare (03/04/12) [14:55]

60 Minutes | The Majority Leader: Rep. Eric Cantor (01/01/12) [13:03]

60 Minutes | President Obama interview (12/10/11) [56:53]

60 Minutes | Jake: Hanging out with a teenage Einstein (01/15/12) [3:53]

The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
Wired | James Bamford | 03/15/12

... In the process -- and for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals of the Nixon administration -- the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. ... Read more

Oil Prices Spike Exacerbated By Wall Street Speculation, Federal Reserve Study Finds
Huffington Post | Zach Carter | 03/20/12

WASHINGTON -- Two economists at the St. Louis Federal Reserve have published findings that indicate that Wall Street speculation is responsible for 15 percent of the increase in oil prices over the past decade, a finding with significant implications for the recent sharp rise in gas prices.

While politicians have little ability to alter the price swings of commodities like oil, regulators have both the authority and policy tools to do so. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is responsible for overseeing the financial market for oil. The 2010 Wall Street reform bill gave the CFTC new power to limit excessive speculation, but the rule will not go into effect until later this year. Read more

Michigan's Corruptibility Rated An 'F' In New Report -- And It Isn't Just A Detroit Problem
Huffington Post | Matt Sledge | 03/19/12

From the cases of Kwame Kilpatrick to those of Monica Conyers and Robert Ficano, metro Detroit has not wanted for blockbuster political scandals over the past few years. But now a new ranking from the Center for Public Integrity claims that Michigan as a whole is one of the worst states when it comes to "corruptibility." Read more

New Hampshire Republican Proposes Amendment Banning Left-Handed People From Marrying
Huffington Post | Author | 03/21/12

Watch Bernanke And Geithner Testify Together On The European Financial Crisis - Is There A Plan B?
Zero Hedge | Author | 03.21.12

What is more amusing than the pathological liars that are Tim Geithner or Ben Bernanke testifying to congress? Both of them testifying at the same time. Such as now. From C-Span: "Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke go before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Wednesday to discuss lessons learned from Europe's sovereign debt crisis. In a hearing titled, "Europe's Sovereign Debt Crisis: Causes, Consequences for the United States and Lessons Learned," both financial chiefs will share their personal experiences. Read more

Record 1.2 Million People Fall Out Of Labor Force In One Month, Labor Force Participation Rate Tumbles To Fresh 30 Year Low
ZeroHege | Author | 02/03/12

A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55%. Looks like the good folks at the BLS heard us: it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million. Read more

The Sesame Street Jobs 'Recovery'
ZeroHedge | Author | 03/21/2012

After deconstructing the labor report for signs of false positives, Michael Cembalest of JPMorgan, sees muddle-through data in the US as sustaining a below trend growth rate - noting his belief that the US economy would not withstand a withdrawal of stimulus (read promise of liqudity to come) right now. While not as ebulient as many on the street, the JPM CIO sees a US job market that is gradually getting better - as is spending. However, what keeps him up at night is the budget deficit... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Wednesday, March 21 [11:53]

James Bamford: Inside the NSA's Largest and Most Expansive Secret Domestic Spy Center Part 1 (03/21/12) [12:07]

NOVA | The Spy Factory () [52:48]

1. Named Jaguar for its speed, it clocked in at 1.75 petaflops, officially becoming the world's fastest computer in 2009.
2. But alas, by late 2011 the Jaguar (now with a peak speed of 2.33 petaflops) ranked third behind Japan's "K Computer," with an impressive 10.51 petaflops, and the Chinese Tianhe-1A system, with 2.57 petaflops.
3. Its next goal is to reach exaflop speed, one quintillion (10¹⁸) operations a second, and eventually zettaflop (10²¹) and yottaflop.

1. Total of all human knowledge created from the dawn of man to 2003 totaled 5 exabytes.
2. Global Internet traffic will quadruple from 2010 to 2015, reaching 966 exabytes per year.
3. A million exabytes equal a yottabyte.
4. Should the agency ever fill the Utah center with a yottabyte of information, it would be equal to about 500 quintillion (500,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text.

1. Initially Electricity will come from the center's own substation built by Rocky Mountain Power to satisfy the 65-megawatt power demand. Such a mammoth amount of energy comes with a mammoth price tag -- about $40 million a year, according to one estimate.

When the computer gets to yottaflop size...

2. It will have an extraordinary appetite for electricity, eventually using about 200 megawatts, enough to power 200,000 homes. The computer will also produce a gargantuan amount of heat, requiring 60,000 tons of cooling equipment, the same amount that was needed to serve both of the World Trade Center towers.

Crazy People on Wall Street
Zero Hedge | Tyler Durden | 11/26/11

$707,568,901,000,000: How (And Why) Banks Increased Total Outstanding Derivatives By A Record $107 Trillion In 6 Months
Read more...

TRNN | Lawrence Wilkerson: Conflict in Syria is a Civil War (03/17/12) [9:33]

Another Hidden Bailout: Helping Wall Street Collect Your Rent
Rolling Stone | Matt Taibbi | 03/17/12

Here's yet another form of hidden bailout the federal government doles out to our big banks, without the public having much of a clue. This is from the WSJ this morning:
Some of the biggest names on Wall Street are lining up to become landlords to cash-strapped Americans by bidding on pools of foreclosed properties being sold by Fannie Mae... Read more

The Big Fracking Bubble: The Scam Behind the Gas Boom
Rolling Stone | JEFF GOODELL | 03/01/12

... According to Arthur Berman, a respected energy consultant in Texas who has spent years studying the industry, Chesapeake and its lesser competitors resemble a Ponzi scheme, overhyping the promise of shale gas in an effort to recoup their huge investments in leases and drilling. When the wells don't pay off, the firms wind up scrambling to mask their financial troubles with convoluted off-book accounting methods. "This is an industry that is caught in the grip of magical thinking," Berman says. "In fact, when you look at the level of debt some of these companies are carrying, and the questionable value of their gas reserves, there is a lot in common with the subprime mortgage market just before it melted down." ... Read more

Monsanto Pays 93 Million to Victims In Settlement
Natural Society | Cassandra Anderson | 02/27/12

Monsanto tentatively agreed to a $93 million settlement with some residents of Nitro, West Virginia. Nitro is a small town that got its name from manufacturing explosives during WWI. It was also the site of a Monsanto chemical plant that manufactured 2,4,5-T herbicide that was half of the Agent Orange recipe. Herbicide 2,4,5-T was contaminated with the caustic by-product dioxin. This settlement may open the floodgates to successfully suing Monsanto for its poison. Read more

Iran threatens Hormuz and world oil supply after trade links cutoff
DEBKAfile | Author | 03/18/12

Former Intelligence Minister Ali Falahian, Iran's senior spokesman on sanctions, said Sunday, March 18, that if the US and Europe think they can ignore international law to promote their interests, they should know that Iran will respond in kind everywhere it can. "I suggest that the West take seriously our threat to close the Strait of Hormuz," he said in Tehran's first response to the SWIFT decision to sever ties with Iranian banks to enforce European sanctions on its nuclear program. Read more

2011 - The Year Of The Earthquake: A Visual And Auditory Guide
Zero Hedge | Author | 03/18/12
Read more

Mitt Romney Doesn't Have Enough Information To 'Take A Stand' On Afghanistan
Huffington Post | Ryan Grim | 03/18/2012

WASHINGTON -- More than a decade into the war in Afghanistan, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney does not have enough information to "take a stand" on whether troops should remain or continue to withdraw on the timetable set by President Obama. Read more

Big Romney is watching you
Salon | GARY KAMIYA | 03/16/12

Romney's private equity firm is helping China create an all-seeing surveillance system -- the free market at work. Read more

The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
Wired | James Bamford | 03/15/12

... In the process -- and for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals of the Nixon administration -- the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. ... Read more

Want to Lower Gas Prices to $3.00, Now? Tax the Oil Speculators, Now
Huffington Post | Paul Abrams | 03/19/12

A month ago, I reminded everyone that ExxonMobil's CEO, Rex Tillerson, told Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing that the oil would be about $60-70/barrel if the speculators in oil futures were not driving up the price. (See the linked article for the testimony, and the link to the hearing itself).

A few days ago, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich picked up the same theme, pointing out that the oil speculators had gone to court to get a stay against regulating their activities.

That is, Wall Street is playing hardball, driving more and more of your money into their pockets.

Every time a Honda Civic owner fills his tank, he hands $7.30 to Wall Street. A Ford Explorer driver is even more "generous" -- she provides them with a cool $10.41. Read more

Greg Smith vs Goldman Sachs
Zero Hedge | MacroAndCheese's blog | 03/17/12

When I read Greg Smith's op ed in the New York Times my very strong impression was, "Nothing new here, so what, not worth reading." That's certainly true as far as I was concerned, but when a friend not in finance told me the contents of the editorial was a surprise, I thought I had better weigh in. I even feel somewhat duty-bound to do so, because I spent many years on the "sell side," that is, at firms like Goldman Sachs. Read more

A Wall Street Insider's Response To Greg Smith
Zero Hedge | ZH reader Sleestak | 03/18/2012

... I'll say it again: Greg Smith has nerve. He took great risk putting his name to that letter. He will be getting calls, emails and all else, straight to his person. He might well face litigation, this from a foe few dare challenge. And the men at the at the top, CEO Lloyd Blankfein and COO Gary Cohn, are powerful indeed, and Greg Smith has just publicly done them far more damage as individuals than any testimony in front of Congress did. ... Read more

Goldman Sachs's long history of duping its clients
Washington Post | William D. Cohan | 03/16/12

Smith, now the most famous former Goldman Sachs derivatives salesman on the planet, went off on his former employer in the opinion pages of the New York Times this past week -- much to the amazement of nearly everyone -- because he claimed that during his 12years at the firm, the ethics and morals of his co-workers deteriorated so dramatically that he just couldn't take it anymore. Read more

Goldman's never had "moral fiber"
Salon | Robert Reich | 03/15/12

... The problem isn't excessive greed. If you took the greed out of Wall Street all you'd have left is pavement. The problem is endemic abuse of power and trust. When bubbles are forming, all but the most sophisticated investors can be easily duped into thinking they'll get rich by putting their money into the hands of brand-named investment bankers. ... Read more

What Do Customers Really Think About Goldman Sachs?
Huffington Post | Janet Tavakoli | 03/19/12

I tried to find a representative article, but couldn't. Need to read the article. Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Monday, March 19 [13:16]

DN | Occupy Wall Street Strategy Discussion: Stephen Lerner, Frances Fox Piven, Ryan Devereaux (03/19/12) [15:41]

DN | Police Arrest 73 in Occupy Wall Street Crackdown As Protesters Mark Six Months of Uprising (03/19/12) [12:17]

2011 earthquakes WORLDWIDE plotted and animated (2/10/12) [9:03]

Mitt Romney Doesn't Have Enough Information To 'Take A Stand' On Afghanistan

1. Named Jaguar for its speed, it clocked in at 1.75 petaflops, officially becoming the world's fastest computer in 2009.
2. But alas, by late 2011 the Jaguar (now with a peak speed of 2.33 petaflops) ranked third behind Japan's "K Computer," with an impressive 10.51 petaflops, and the Chinese Tianhe-1A system, with 2.57 petaflops.
3. Its next goal is to reach exaflop speed, one quintillion (10¹⁸) operations a second, and eventually zettaflop (10²¹) and yottaflop.

1. Total of all human knowledge created from the dawn of man to 2003 totaled 5 exabytes.
2. Global Internet traffic will quadruple from 2010 to 2015, reaching 966 exabytes per year.
3. A million exabytes equal a yottabyte.
4. Should the agency ever fill the Utah center with a yottabyte of information, it would be equal to about 500 quintillion (500,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text.

1. Initially Electricity will come from the center's own substation built by Rocky Mountain Power to satisfy the 65-megawatt power demand. Such a mammoth amount of energy comes with a mammoth price tag -- about $40 million a year, according to one estimate.

When the computer gets to yottaflop size...

2. It will have an extraordinary appetite for electricity, eventually using about 200 megawatts, enough to power 200,000 homes. The computer will also produce a gargantuan amount of heat, requiring 60,000 tons of cooling equipment, the same amount that was needed to serve both of the World Trade Center towers.

Crazy People on Wall Street
Zero Hedge | Tyler Durden | 11/26/11

$707,568,901,000,000: How (And Why) Banks Increased Total Outstanding Derivatives By A Record $107 Trillion In 6 Months
Read more...

With The Enterprise Just 4 Days Away From Arrival, A SWIFT Cut Off Of Iran
Zero Hedge | Author | 03/15/12

Update: as we hit print, we see headlines that the UK will cooperate with the US on bilateral agreement to release oil stocks. Crude down big on the news, which is merely an advance move ahead of almost inevitable war with Iran, simply to make the spike more palatable.

The push to get Iran to do something terminally irrational (now that USS Enterprise in its final tour of duty is almost on location just off the side of CVN-70 Lincoln and CVN-72 Vinson in the Arabian Sea, where the US will shortly have not one, not two, but three aircraft carriers) is now in its final stretch. Read more

Pakistan's Zardari Seeks to Restore U.S. Ties Amid Challenges
Bloomberg | Haris Anwar | 03/17/12

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said his nation is seeking to restore ties with the U.S. as lawmakers prepare to seek consensus on the countries' future relationship after a challenging year. Read more

Banking The Least Trusted Industry In America: Report
Huffington Post | D.M. Levine | date

Finance is one of the least-trusted professions in the United States, just behind of banking and ahead of media, according to a to a new report from public relations firm Edelman. According to the survey, 46 percent of the American general public has trust in financial services, slightly higher than the global average of 45 percent. Read more

Goldman Heir On Greg Smith Op-Ed: 'Spot On'
Huffington Post | Author | 03/16/12

Henry Goldman III, the great-grandson of Goldman Sachs' founder Marcus Goldman, told Business Insider that he thinks Greg Smith's op-ed in The New York Times criticizing the investment bank's "toxic" environment was "spot on." Read more

Gullible Muppets and Goldman Sachs: What Does It Say to the 99%
Huffington Post | Phillip Jennings | 03/16/12

Banker Greg Smith quit Goldman Sachs in spectacular style, making a splash in the press as big as the fortune he and his colleagues made off the backs of clients worth trillions of dollars. Unfortunately, unlike Mr Smith the 99% are simply not in a position to walk away from the mess the bankers created and are suffering the consequences of record unemployment and a broken society. Neither have the 99% been collecting a hefty six-figure salary as Smith has for the past 12 years before his epiphany. Read more

Humanity Is Rising
Zero Hedge | Author | 03/15/12

Why Conservatives Are Still Crazy After All These Years
RollingStone | RICK PERLSTEIN | 03/16/12

It suddenly feels like conservatism has gotten crazier than ever. Read more

Sanctioned Iran Banks Being Cut Off From Global Network
Bloomberg | Indira A.R. Lakshmanan | 03/15/12

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, known as Swift, the dominant messaging service for international financial transactions, said yesterday it will halt service for some two dozen Iranian banks that have been sanctioned by the European Union, including Iran's central bank Read more

Weiss: Zionism has created 'rivers of blood'
Aljazeera | Rabbi Yisrael | 03/10/12

When Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, visited Washington last week on the eve of the Purim holiday, he gave Barack Obama, the US president, what he considered a symbolic gift - a copy of the old testament book of Esther. Netanyahu called it "background reading on Iran", since its story concerns relations with Jews in the Persian empire some 2,500 years ago. It is considered by scholars to be mostly fiction, but for Netanyahu Esther represented justification for his stance against modern Iran. Read more

Green: Death of the Forests
Aljazeera | Patrick Rouxel | 03/15/12

This extraordinary visual essay, told with no human commentary at all, explores the impact of deforestation and the exploitation of natural resources in Indonesia from the point of view of a dying orangutan called Green. Stunning images of the natural world and its biodiversity are counter-pointed with scenes of their destruction and the resulting cruelty to animals. The film takes viewers on an emotional journey, following Green's final days and revealing the devastating impact of logging, land-clearing and palm oil plantations. Read more

Goldman's Greg Smith Not First To Highlight Wall Street's Shortcomings
Huffington Post | Author | 03/14/12

Greg Smith, a former Goldman Sachs employee, turned into an Internet household name Wednesday after he penned his letter of resignation from the bank in the form of an op-ed in The New York Times. While the letter generated outcry from all corners, Smith is echoing sentiments that have been expressed before by others. Read more

Goldman Roiled by Op-Ed Loses $2.2B for Shareholders
Bloomberg | Christine Harper | 03/15/12

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) saw $2.15 billion of its market value wiped out after an employee assailed Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein's management and the firm's treatment of clients, sparking debate across Wall Street. Read more

Stress Tests Pass Fed's Flim-Flam Standard: Jonathan Weil
Bloomberg | Jonathan Weil | 03/15/12

The most important thing to understand about the Federal Reserve's latest stress tests is what they were not intended to do. Their purpose wasn't to test whether the nation's biggest banks could survive a financial blowup like that of 2008 without government assistance.

... That's why the results of the Fed's "comprehensive capital analysis" are more about public relations and manufacturing confidence than they are about disseminating reliable information on banks' health. ... Read more

Watch Bernanke's 'Little' Inflation Capsize U.S.
Bloomberg | Amity Shlaes | 03/14/12

A little is all right. That's the message Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has been giving out recently when asked about the evidence of inflation in the U.S. recovery. Sometimes Bernanke doesn't even go that far. He simply says he doesn't see inflation. The Fed chairman recently described the prospects for price increases across the board as "subdued." Read more

Four Whistleblowers Who Sounded the Alarm on Banks' Mortgage Shenanigans
ProPublica | Cora Currier | 03/15/12

Buried in the sweeping mortgage settlement with banks, for which final documents were filed this week, are five whistleblower cases that shed light on the litany of foreclosure abuses by the banks.

According to one suit, Bank of America allegedly passed bad loans on to the Federal Housing Administration. According to another, the bank allegedly denied qualified homeowners access to HAMP, the government's loan modification program.

The suits were all settled as part of the overall $25 billion mortgage deal. They were filed under the False Claims Act, which provides incentives for whistleblowers to come forward in cases in which someone has defrauded the government. Whistleblowers can net up to 25 percent of the total settlement from False Claims suits, and in some of these cases, the reward is in the millions. Read more

Top ten media failures in the Iran war debate
Foreign Policy | Stephen M. Walt | 03/11/12

... What about the human beings? One of the more bizarre failures of reporting on the war debate has been the dearth of discussion of what an attack might mean for Iranian civilians. If you take out some of Iran's nuclear facilities from the air, for example, there's a very real risk of spreading radioactive material or other poisonous chemicals in populated areas, thereby threatening the lives of lots of civilians ... Read more

From Seeds of Suicide to Seeds of Hope: Why Are Indian Farmers Committing Suicide and How Can We Stop This Tragedy?
Huffington Post | ShivaPhysicist | 04/28/2009

200,000 farmers have ended their lives since 1997. Farmers' suicides are the most tragic and dramatic symptom of the crisis of survival faced by Indian peasants. Read more

Alone: India's Farmer Widows (Slideshow)
Mother Jones | Noella May Hebert | date

India's ongoing water crisis has driven 200,000 farmers to suicide. As water dwindles, that number grows, and farmer widows are left to pick up the pieces. Read more

Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 03/14/12

At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we'll all be paying for until the end of time. Did you hear about the plot to rig global interest rates? The $137 million fine for bilking needy schools and cities? The ingenious plan to suck multiple fees out of the unemployment checks of jobless workers? Take your eyes off them for 10 seconds and guaranteed, they'll be into some shit again: This bank is like the world's worst-behaved teenager, taking your car and running over kittens and fire hydrants on the way to Vegas for the weekend, maxing out your credit cards in the three days you spend at your aunt's funeral. ... Read more

On Goldman Executive Greg Smith's Brave Departure
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 03/14/12

Wall Street is buzzing this morning about a resignation -- a historic one. Greg Smith, the executive director and head of Goldman Sachs's United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, not only decided to quit Goldman, he decided to do it in the New York Times, eloquently deconstructing the firm's moral slide in a lengthy op-ed piece. Read more

Twitter Feed Is Fed's Latest Effort to Reach Out to Public
Bloomberg | Joshua Zumbrun | 03/14/12

The Federal Reserve said it will post messages about its press releases, speeches, testimony and reports to Congress -- even its weekly balance sheet. It will also post "educational frequently asked questions," according to a statement released today in Washington. Read more

Japan Earthquake 2012: Tokyo Region Hit By Strong Quake
Huffington Post | MARI YAMAGUCHI | 03/14/12

... A magnitude-6.8 earthquake first struck the southern coast of Hokkaido island in the evening, causing a small tsunami. Tsunami advisories were issued along the northern Pacific coast, prompting some communities to advise residents to evacuate coastal homes. ... Read more

Side-by-Side Look at Destruction and Renewal in Japan
New York Times | Author | 03/08/12

Global Warming: Flood Risk Rising For Coastal Residents, Reports Say
Reuters | Deborah Zabarenko | 03/14/12

WASHINGTON, March 14 (Reuters) - For the nearly 5 million people who live along the U.S. coasts from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico and the West Coast, rising seas fueled by global warming have doubled the risk of so-called once-a-century floods, according to a trio of environmental reports released on Wednesday. These new reports - one from the non-profit group Climate Central and two others published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research Letters - offer a detailed picture of where the most severe risks are along coastlines of the contiguous 48 states. Read more

Stress Tests: Citigroup, Three Other Major Banks Fail
Huffington Post | Mark Gongloff | 03/13/12

... For now, the Fed says banks have significantly bigger cash cushions than they did heading into the crisis. Still, the Fed said the financial plans of Citigroup, Ally Financial, SunTrust and MetLife left those banks without enough of a cash cushion to survive a severe economic downturn. ... Read more

Is MF Global Getting a Free Pass?
New York Times | JOE NOCERA | 03/12/12

It's sure starting to look as if Jon Corzine is going to get away with it. By now, it has been well established that Corzine's former firm, MF Global, committed the sin of sins for a broker-dealer. In late October, during the final, desperate days before it entered bankruptcy proceedings, its executives took money from segregated customer accounts -- money that belonged not to MF Global but to the farmers and commodities traders that were its clients -- and used it to prop up its rapidly collapsing business. Read more

Guy Who Rented All 94 Rooms of Aspen Hotel for Party Scores Awesome New Goldman Job
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 03/12/12

Remember the story about the Wall Street guy who rented out all 94 rooms of an Aspen hotel for three days for his daughter's Bat Mitzvah? ... Verschleiser also made a bundle burning Bear's bond insurers, whom he bet against after inducing them to insure his crappy mortgage bonds, nicknamed "Sack of Shit" bonds by one of the funny dudes in his department. Verschleiser reportedly bragged that he made $55 million shorting his own bond insurers in the space of three weeks. ... Read more

J.P. Morgan Chase's Ugly Family Secrets Revealed
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 03/13/12

In a story that should be getting lots of attention, American Banker has released an excellent and disturbing expose of J.P. Morgan Chase's credit card services division, relying on multiple current and former Chase employees. One of them, Linda Almonte, is a whistleblower whom I've known since last September; I'm working on a recount of her story for my next book. Read more

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs
New York Times | GREG SMITH | 03/14/12
See below
Read more

Ex-Goldman Exec Comes Clean On How A "Toxic And Destructive" Goldman "Rips Its Clients Off"
Zero Hedge | Author | 03/14/12

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs. Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm -- first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London -- I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it. Read more

Goldman Responds To Greg Smith, Darth Vader Is Leaving The Empire, And More...
Zero Hedge | Author | 03/14/12

Because every former employee confession has an equal and opposite reaction from "toxic and destructive" firms. And what a better way to test the PR disaster damage control skills of the firm's new global head of corporate communications: former Treasury aide and Geithner lackey Jake Siewert. In other news, Goldman is now promptly adding perpetual non-disparagement clauses to all employee contracts. Retroactively, if possible. Read more

Goldman Sachs Executive Director Corroborates Reggie Middleton's Stance: Business Model Designed To Walk Over Clients
Zero Hedge | Reggie Middleton | 03/14/12
Video
Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Wednesday, March 14 [8:19]

Thom Hartmann: Secrets the Rich don't Want You to Know (04/15/11) [10:25]

TYT | Top 1% Captured 93% Of Income Gains In 2010 (03/05/12) [4:03]

The Widening Wealth Divide, and Why We Need a Surtax on the Super Wealthy
Huffington Post | Robert Reich | 03/13/12/span>

Let Santorum and Romney duke it out for who will cut taxes on the wealthy the most and shred the public services everyone else depends on. The rest of us ought to be having a serious discussion about a wealth tax. Because if you really want to know what's happening to the American economy you need to look at household wealth -- not just incomes. Read more

How corporations have redefined our freedom... (03/12/12) [7:53]

Thom Hartmann | Mark Pocan D-WI Rep talks about how ALEC is writing laws for our legislatures. (03/13/12) [8:41]

Reggie Middleton's Stance: Business Model Designed To Walk Over Clients (03/14/12) [1:08]

RT | 'EU pushing Greece towards revolution' (03/13/12) [5:20]

RT | Bigger Brother: Total surveillance comes to UK (03/09/12) [3:19]

Max Keiser | Banks that Bite: 'This is not a boat accident' (03/07/12) [2:05]

And They Think It's All Over ...
Zero Hedge | Author | 03/12/12

So Greece has been saved -- is that right? Well according to ISDA (the International Swaps and Derivatives Association) a "Restructuring Credit Event has occurred with respect to the Hellenic Republic" which in the vernacular means the Greeks are bust; tell us something we don't know! The importance of this statement is that credit default swaps (CDS) on Greek debt are now triggered and holders will have their losses made good. There were any number of scurrilous rumours that ISDA would not declare a credit event to preclude their illustrious members from paying out, but when the net downside of $3 billion needs to be shared out amongst the likes of Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, UBS, BNP Paribas and Societe Generale ... Read more

Euro Weakness Wanes as Draghi Prompts Traders to Tame Views
Bloomberg | Liz Capo McCormick, | 03/12/12

The world's biggest banks are less pessimistic about the euro as the European Central Bank provides unlimited cash to the region's financial system, Germany may avoid recession and Greece looks to complete the biggest sovereign debt restructuring in history. Strategists at Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley raised their estimates for the euro this month, as the median estimates of more than 50 strategists surveyed by Bloomberg increased for the second and third quarters. Read more

Japan earthquake and tsunami anniversary: 30 powerful images of the disaster
The Telegraph | Author | 03/11/12

Gaza violence: 'we don't want to escalate but maybe we have no choice'
TheGuardian | Harriet Sherwood | 03/12/12/span>

Rockets from militants are slamming into Israeli cities, Israeli air strikes are killing Palestinian children, and no end is in sight... Read more

The 2012 Money Race: Compare the Candidates
New York Times | Author | 2012

The presidential candidates have raised more than $330 million for their campaigns to date, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. Mitt Romney leads among Republicans, but President Obama easily topped the field. Read more

Republican Presidential Candidates
New York Times | Author | 2012

All the Republican Candidates listed in one place... Read more

Barack Obama's warm welcome for David Cameron signals revival of 'special relationship'
The Telegraph | Robert Winnett | 02/12/12

The president and Prime Minister will say that the "essential relationship" is a "partnership of the heart", as Mr Cameron flies to America for a three-day visit. Official talks are likely to focus on the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, with a handover to Afghan troops now expected as soon as mid-2013. Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Tuesday, March 13 [12:54]

TRNN | As Greece Unravels, Banks and Markets Pleased with Austerity and Debt Deal (03/12/12) [10:22]

TYT | Republican Jobs Plan - Help Hedge Funds (03/09/12) [4:45]

TYT | Jeb Bush For President? (02/28/12) [5:11]

Super Computer that can do 10,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second
Japanese Times | Author | 03/12/12

The K (kei) Computer is made up of 864 fridge-like units called "racks, which contain 24 system boards. While normal PCs are mounted with just one CPU, K has a total of 82,944 custom-made CPUs. The K Computer can do 10 quadrillion, or 10,000 trillion calculations a second. What do you know we can count up all the derivatives in the world in less than a second! Read more

Japan's Nuclear Energy Industry Nears Shutdown, at Least for Now
New York Times | MARTIN FACKLER | 03/08/12

The Ohi nuclear plant was not damaged by the earthquake or tsunami but sits idled because of a standoff caused by a legal quirk: Japanese law requires reactors to be shut down every 13 months for routine checkups and the plant's operator has been unable to restart them because of opposition from local residents. ... Read more
Before and After Cleanup Pictures

Goldman Secret Greece Loan Shows Two Sinners as Client Unravels
Bloomberg | Nicholas Dunbar | 03/05/12

Greece's secret loan from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) was a costly mistake from the start. On the day the 2001 deal was struck, the government owed the bank about 600 million euros ($793 million) more than the 2.8 billion euros it borrowed, said Spyros Papanicolaou, who took over the country's debt-management agency in 2005. By then, the price of the transaction, a derivative that disguised the loan and that Goldman Sachs persuaded Greece not to test with competitors, had almost doubled to 5.1 billion euros, he said. Read more

What Obama and Israel Are Really Up to With Iran, and Each Other
Huffington Post | Marc Ambinder | 03/10/12

But behind the scenes, the truth is different. According to a number of senior American intelligence and Mideast policy officials, speaking on background, the U.S.'s significantly ramped-up American covert sabotage and non-proliferation campaign has convinced the Israelis that the U.S. is more sensitive about Israel's "red lines" -- the no-way-back developments that the Jewish state can't tolerate and would pre-emptively strike to prevent. This, in turn, fortifies Israel's caution. Despite the hue and cry of Republican candidates, the two sides are actually moving closer together. (That doesn't mean that either country is preparing for action, and the U.S. remains committed to a policy of direct military action only as a last resort.) ... Read more

Our "Let's Pretend" Economy: Let's Pretend Financialization Hasn't Killed the Economy
Zero Hedge | Author | 03/08/12

... Financialization is like the bubonic plague--it constantly needs new victims as it kills off its existing hosts. Housing? Dead, killed by financialization, aided, abetted and powered by the Federal Reserve. Now the Fed wants to "save" what it already killed via financialization--housing--by buying $1 trillion in plague-infested mortgages and brute-force efforts to keep interest rates below inflation, i.e. negative rates. ... Read more

Banker-Novelist Alex Preston Attacks Ruthless Traders, Sides With Protests
Bloomberg | Author | 03/06/12

"I sleep a lot better now," he says. "There were things about it that were incredibly attractive besides the money, but at my core I was pretty miserable because I didn't get to see enough of my kids. I was always reading a book inside an annual report." Novelist Alex Preston was also going home and writing each night. His first novel, "This Bleeding City," was published while he was global head of trading in the Carlyle Group LP's (CG) leveraged finance division. Read more

The Most Dangerous Man In America -- Ed DeMarco's
Huffington Post | Peter S. Goodman | 03/20/12

DeMarco steadfastly refuses to allow Fannie and Freddie to help distressed homeowners by writing off principal balances on their mortgages. This has ensured that tens of millions of borrowers remain "underwater," meaning they owe the banks more than their homes are worth -- a status that has an alarming tendency to portend foreclosure. His refusal is based on logic that is both elegantly simple and tragically flawed: He is responsible for cleaning up the books at Fannie and Freddie, so he is against spending money. Read more

The Story Behind US Gas Price Pain
Zero Hedge | Author |03/08/12

Gasoline consumption in the United States has been dropping for years. In the last decade, vehicle fuel efficiency has improved by 20%, and the combination of that shift and a weak economy of late has pushed gasoline demand to its lowest level in a decade. At the same time, US oil production is at its highest level in a decade. Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Monday, March 12 [10:35]

Nuclear Engineer Arne Gundersen: Fukushima Meltdown May Result in 1 Million Cases of Cancer (03/12/12) [9:02]

Thom Hartmann | Economist Richard Wolff on Austerity in Greece (03/08/12)[12:32]

9/11 FEMA videographer at Ground Zero goes public
Voltairenet.org | Kurt Sonnenfeld | 06/22/09

As official videographer for the U.S. government, Kurt Sonnenfeld was detailed to Ground Zero on September 11, 2001, where he spent an entire month filming: "What I saw at certain moments and in certain places ... is very disturbing!" He never handed his 29 tapes over to the authorities and has been persecuted ever since. Kurt Sonnenfeld lives in exile in Argentina. ... Read more

A War Crime Or an Act of War?
New York Times | Stephen C. Pelletiere | 01/32/03

It was no surprise that President Bush, lacking smoking-gun evidence of Iraq's weapons programs, used his State of the Union address to re-emphasize the moral case for an invasion: ''The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages, leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind or disfigured.'' Read more

BBC | Greg Palast: We're Not Running Out of Oil, Just Cheap Oil (02/08/11) [13:39]

John Carpenter's "They Live" (1988) [1:34:00]

Private Investors Said to Agree to Swap About 85% of Greek Debt
Bloomberg | Christos Ziotis | 03/08/12

Private investors agreed to swap about 85 percent of their Greek government bonds for new securities in the biggest sovereign debt restructuring in history, according to a banker briefed on the results. Preliminary indications showed that as much as 155 billion euros ($205 billion) of the 177 billion euros of Greek-law bonds were offered, said the banker, who declined to be identified. Twelve billion euros of debt not under Greek law was also tendered, as was 7 billion euros of bonds from state-owned companies guaranteed by the government, the banker said. Read more

Switzerland Wants Its Gold Back From The New York Fed
Zero Hedge | Author | 03/07/12

Earlier today, we reported that Germans are increasingly concerned that their gold, at over 3,400 tons a majority of which is likely stored in the vault 80 feet below street level of 33 Liberty (recently purchased by the Fed with freshly printed money at far higher than prevailing commercial real estate rates for the Downtown NY area), may be in jeopardy,and will likely soon formally inquire just how much of said gold is really held by the Fed. As it turns out, Germany is not alone ... Read more

177 RESIGNATIONS FROM WORLD BANKS, INVESTMENT HOUSES, MONEY FUNDS
American Kabuki | last updated 03/09/12

Updated 3/8/12 Special thanks to Gabriel at http://www.facebook.com/MassResignations for the heads up on a number of new banking resignations that I missed . Gabriel will be tracking Insurance, Government and Healthcare Resignations. Read more

Japan's Nuclear Energy Industry Nears Shutdown, at Least for Now
New York Times | MARTIN FACKLER | 03/08/12

The Ohi nuclear plant was not damaged by the earthquake or tsunami but sits idled because of a standoff caused by a legal quirk: Japanese law requires reactors to be shut down every 13 months for routine checkups and the plant's operator has been unable to restart them because of opposition from local residents. ... Read more

The Way Greeks Live Now
New York Times Magazine | RUSSELL SHORTO | 03/13/12

Petros Vafiadis, with his wife, Ekaterina, and their son Traianos, is an unemployed construction supervisor who says "things will only get worse." The couple put their sons through college and now have no savings. Read more

Citigroup Gives Vikram Pandit $14.9 Million 2011 Pay Package
Bloomberg | Donal Griffin | 03/09/12

Citigroup Inc. (C), the third-biggest U.S. bank, said it gave Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit $14.9 million in total compensation for 2011, including his first bonus since the lender almost collapsed in 2008. The package included $1.67 million of salary and a $5.33 million cash bonus, the New York-based lender said yesterday in a regulatory filing. Read more

Ohio Fracking Earthquakes: Officials Say Tremors Were 'Almost Certainly' Caused By Wastewater Injection
Huffington Post | JULIE CARR SMYTH | 03/09/12

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A dozen earthquakes in northeastern Ohio were almost certainly induced by injection of gas-drilling wastewater into the earth, Ohio oil and gas regulators said Friday as they announced a series of tough new regulations for drillers Read more

Interview with Josh Fox who directed the documentary "Gasland".

Fracking Hell

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Friday, March 9th [10:58]

Author Eyal Press on the Whistleblowers Who Risk All to "Heed the Voice of Conscience" (03/09/12) [19:49]

Russians Prepare 5000 Shelters for Return of 2nd Sun Brown Dwarf (05/23/11) [2:41]

Five Banks Account For 96% Of The $250 Trillion In Outstanding US Derivative Exposure; Is Morgan Stanley Sitting On An FX Derivative Time Bomb?
Zero Hedge | Author | 09/24/11

The latest quarterly report from the Office Of the Currency Comptroller is out and as usual it presents in a crisp, clear and very much glaring format the fact that the top 4 banks in the US now account for a massively disproportionate amount of the derivative risk in the financial system. Specifically, of the $250 trillion in gross notional amount of derivative contracts outstanding (consisting of Interest Rate, FX, Equity Contracts, Commodity and CDS) among the Top 25 commercial banks (a number that swells to $333 trillion when looking at the Top 25 Bank Holding Companies), a mere 5 banks (and really 4) account for 95.9% of all derivative exposure (HSBC replaced Wells as the Top 5th bank, which at $3.9 trillion in derivative exposure is a distant place from #4 Goldman with $47.7 trillion). The top 4 banks: JPM with $78.1 trillion in exposure, Citi with $56 trillion, Bank of America with $53 trillion and Goldman with $48 trillion, account for 94.4% of total exposure. As historically has been the case, the bulk of consolidated exposure is in Interest Rate swaps ($204.6 trillion), followed by FX ($26.5TR), CDS ($15.2 trillion), and Equity and Commodity with $1.6 and $1.4 trillion, respectively. Read more

MSNBC News | Solar Storms

Dennis Kucinich: Conscience of the Congress
Huffington Post | Robert Scheer | 03/08/12

... I spoke with him by phone about his gerrymandered eviction from the U.S. House of Representatives. Although he had just lost the position he has held for eight terms, by the end of our conversation he was optimistic and promised to continue the fight: "I am not about to abandon what I stand for." ... Read more

Campaign for Primary Accountability Super PAC Targets Incumbents
Huffington Post | Matt Sledge | 03/07/12

... "We are not issue-driven," said Curtis Ellis, spokesman for the group. "We're the only Super PAC that is using the new tools of campaign finance to help people on the outside, the challengers." He said Wenstrup's success was a testament to the PAC's vision of "holding incumbents accountable."

Only in existence since September, the Campaign for Primary Accountability is already making a name for itself by taking on members of both major parties from Texas, where incumbent Democrat Rep. Silvestre Reyes claimed its a vehicle for "special interest money and family wealth," to Alabama, where Republican Rep. Spencer Bachus dismissed it as a "handful of rich people." ... Read more

The Misinformation Machine
Huffington Post | Timothy Karr | 03/08/12

... The three political action committees buying the most television time this election season have spent more than 98 percent of their money on ads that discredit one or another candidate, according to Kantar Media. These attacks by their very nature are misleading. FactCheck.org, which tracks accuracy in political messaging, found that the "avalanche of negativity" in recent political ads also contained a fair share of distortions and lies. ... Read more

U.S. Hate And Extremist Groups Hit Record Levels, New Report Says
Huffington Post | Brian Levin | 03/08/12

... In 2011 there were 1,018 "hate groups" nationally, representing a slight increase from the previous record, one year earlier in 2010, when there were 1,002 hate groups tallied.

Perhaps more disturbing than the small, yet sustained rise in hate groups, is the parabolic growth over the last few years in the number of anti-government "Patriot" and militia groups reported by the SPLC. These groups, which are categorized separately from hate groups, grew 55% to 1,274 in 2011, up from 824 in 2010. In 2008 such groups totaled only 149, while in 2009 the total increased to 512. Michigan had the largest number of "Patriot" groups with 79, followed by Texas with 76, California with 59 and Washington State, with 50. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Thursday, March 8 [9:57]

Dennis Kucinich, Progressive Mainstay in Congress, Loses Primary in Re-Drawn Ohio District (03/07/12) [4:45]

Invisible Children founders posing with guns: an interview with the photographer
Washington Post | Elizabeth Flock | 03/08/12

Stop Kony 2012, an online campaign to raise awareness about Ugandan guerrilla leader Joseph Kony, went viral Wednesday, thanks to a 30-minute video about Kony's group the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which has abducted and forced around 66,000 children to fight in his army over the past two decades. Read more

Who is KONY 2012 (03/05/12) [29:59]

Max Keiser | Max talks to Dr. Michael Hudson about Modern Monetary Theory at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and about the Chicago Boys gutting the economic competition. 903/08/12) [14:00]

TYT | Destroyed Afghanistan Village (01/21/11) [9:05]

U.S. Sells $6 Billion of AIG Shares at $29 Each
Bloomberg | Noah Buhayar | 03/08/12
Read more

Israel-Iran Tension Mounts: Live Updates On The Drumbeat Of War
Huffington Post | Author | 03/05/12

The prospect of a high-profile military conflict looms again in the Middle East. National security analysts believe Israel's government is giving serious consideration to an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities in the coming months, an action that would trigger a cascade of unpredictable military, political and economic reactions in the region and around the world.

This blog aims to provide comprehensive, highly readable coverage of this story in realtime, and that won't be possible without your help: please tweet me, subscribe to my updates on Facebook or RSS, or comment below to join the conversation or pass along tips or observations. Read more

Gauging Arab public opinion
Aljazeera | Marwan Bishara | 03/07/12

The first of its kind - a poll conducted in 12 Arab countries, representing 84 per cent of the population of the Arab world, in an attempt to gauge the region's political mood - has arrived at some interesting results. Organised by the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), face-to-face interviews by Arab surveyors with 16,731 individuals in the first half of 2011 revealed majority support for the goals of the Arab revolutions and notably, for a democratic system of government. The countries surveyed included Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania, with the help of local institutions and research centres.

While people seem generally split on the question of separation of state and religion, a majority supports the non-interference of religious authorities in politics. And by a 15-1 ratio, Israel and the US are seen as more threatening than Iran. However, this ratio is lower among those living in proximity to Iran. Read more

World Powers Agree to Resume Nuclear Talks With Iran
New York Times | Nicholas Kulish | 03/06/12

BERLIN -- For the first time in more than a year the global powers dealing with Iran's disputed nuclear program said Tuesday that they would resume face-to-face negotiations. "I have offered to resume talks with Iran on the nuclear issue," said Catherine Ashton, the European Union's foreign affairs chief, who represents the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany in dealings with Iran. "We hope that Iran will now enter into a sustained process of constructive dialogue which will deliver real progress." Read more

Fed Shrugged Off Warnings, Let Banks Pay Shareholders Billions
ProPublica | Jesse Eisinger | 03/02/12

In early November 2010, as the Federal Reserve began to weigh whether the nation's biggest financial firms were healthy enough to return money to their shareholders, a top regulator bluntly warned: Don't let them. "We remain concerned over their ability to withstand stress in an uncertain economic environment," wrote Sheila Bair, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., in a previously unreported letter obtained by ProPublica. Read more

Financier Stanford Convicted In $7 Billion Fraud
NPR | AP | 03/06/12

Texas tycoon R. Allen Stanford, whose financial empire once spanned the Americas, was convicted Tuesday on all but one of the 14 counts he faced for allegedly bilking investors out of more than $7 billion in massive Ponzi scheme he operated for 20 years. Read more

Stock Market Suffers Worst Selloff Of Year, Losing Battle Against Reality
Huffington Post | Mark Gongloff | 03/06/12

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 203.66 points, or 1.6 percent, to 12759.16, its worst percentage loss since December 8 and its worst point loss since November 23. The more relevant S&P 500-stock index fell 1.5 percent to 1343.36, also its worst selloff of the year. And the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index fell 1.4 percent to 2910.32.

Bank stocks were among the day's biggest losers. Morgan Stanley, which frequently last year was the market's whipping boy for euro-zone worries, took on that role again, falling 5 percent. Bank of America was down 3 percent. Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Wednesday, March 7 [14:29]

LulzSec Cyber-Activists Arrested With Aid of Hacking Group's Former Leader. Is Assange Next? (03/07/12) [7:42]

TYT | Top 1% Captured 93% Of Income Gains In 2010 (03/05/12) [4:03]

TYT | HR 347 - Trespass Bill Threatens First Amendment (03/05/12) [6:09]

Did The Fed Help Banks While Ignoring The Risks?
NPR, Fresh Air | Jesse Eisinger | 03/06/12

Since the financial crisis of 2008, the Federal Reserve has shrugged off warnings and let the largest U.S. financial firms pay tens of billions of dollars in dividends to shareholders, instead of putting aside money as capital in case a new financial crisis hits. Investigative reporter Jesse Eisinger details how the Fed made a critical oversight in the wake of the financial crisis -- despite objections from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. His report was published jointly by ProPublica and The Atlantic online. Read more

Pink Slime For School Lunch: Government Buying 7 Million Pounds Of Ammonia-Treated Meat For Meals
Huffington Post | The Daily | 03/05/12

Pink slime -- that ammonia-treated meat in a bright Pepto-bismol shade -- may have been rejected by fast food joints like McDonald's, Taco Bell and Burger King, but is being brought in by the tons for the nation's school lunch program.

AIPAC beats the drums of war
Washington Post | Dana Milbank| 03/05/12

... Something new, and ominous, is in the air at this week's annual AIPAC gathering. As always, there are the ritual affirmations of solidarity with the Jewish state, and, as always, there are the usual shows of lobbying might ("largest gala ever!"). But this time there is also an intimation, from speaker after speaker, that war is coming -- and probably soon. ... Read more

Israeli Leaders Praise Obama's AIPAC Speech
ABC News | DANIELLA CHESLOW | 03/05/12

Israeli officials on Monday welcomed President Barack Obama's declaration that he stands by the Jewish state against a nuclear Iran -- but as a result, Israel may have an ever tougher time launching a strike on Iran in defiance of U.S. requests to hold off. Read more

AIPAC, Israel, and the Hypocritical Claim of Backing a Two-State Solution
Daily Beast | Peter Beinart | 03/05/12
Read more

New WikiLeaks stash: a frightening view of government intelligence
Chicago Tribune | Rachel Marsden | 02/28/12

As promised in December, WikiLeaks has begun to release a stash of documents related to the modus operandi of the "private intelligence" sector, using Texas-based Stratfor as a case study. Claiming to have hacked Stratfor's system to obtain millions of private emails, WikiLeaks has just released the first batch -- and what it suggests about the American intelligence community makes me feel as secure as day-old pizza in a frat house. Read more

Insight: Wall Street, Fed face off over physical commodities
Chicago Tribune | David Sheppard | 03/02/12

While the battle over proprietary trading and new derivatives regulations has taken place largely in public view since the 2008 financial crisis, the fight by JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to retain or expand their prized physical commodity operations - most acquired in only the past six years - has remained hidden. Read more

Obama, Iran and preventive war
Salon | GLENN GREENWALD | 03/05/12

President Obama yesterday joined virtually every U.S. political leader in both parties in making the obligatory, annual pilgrimage and oath-taking to AIPAC: a bizarre ritual if you think about it. During his speech, he repeatedly emphasized that he "has Israel's back," rightfully noting that his actions in office prove this ("At every crucial juncture -- at every fork in the road -- we have been there for Israel. Every single time"). One of his goals was commendable -- to persuade the Israelis not to attack Iran right now -- but in order to accomplish that, he definitively vowed, as McClatchy put it, that "he'd call for military action to prevent Iran from securing a nuclear weapon." In other words, he categorically committed the U.S. to an offensive military attack on Iran in order to prevent that country from acquiring a nuclear weapon; as AP put it: "President Barack Obama said Sunday the United States will not hesitate to attack Iran with military force to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon." Read more

Obama at AIPAC: Iran Diplomacy Still on Table
The Jewish Daily Forward | Haaretz | 03/04/12

Obama spoke shortly after President Shimon Peres told the same conference that "there is no space" between the U.S. and Israel on Iran policy. Lukewarm Reception for President Despite Some Tough Talk. Read more

Geir Haarde, Iceland's Ex-PM, The First World Leader To Face Criminal Charges Over Financial Crisis
Huffington Post | ANNA ANDERSEN | 03/05/12

REYKJAVIK, Iceland -- Iceland's former prime minister has rejected charges he failed to adequately protect his country's economy from financial shocks in the first criminal trial of a world leader over the 2008 financial crisis. Read more

State budget cuts hit small-town Ohio
Los Angeles Times | Alana Semuels | 03/04/12

Residents in Uniopolis wanted a balanced budget, and voted in Republican Gov. John Kasich to get the job done. But now the village is facing disincorporation because it can't stay afloat. Read more

Gulf Oil Spill Settlement: Seven And A Half Things To Know
Huffinton Post | Mark Gongloff | 03/05/12

Thing One: BP's Big Day: So today is a great day for BP. The mammoth British oil company's stock is up 3 percent this morning, its biggest one-day gain in a month, after this weekend's $7.8 billion settlement deal with private plaintiffs who said their lives and businesses were ruined by BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill a couple of years back. The deal was smaller than the $14 billion many had expected, Bloomberg writes, and the oil company already had $20 billion set aside to cover damages. It still may be on the hook for nearly $18 billion in government fines, but, hey, BP makes $25 billion per year in profit. Read more

Slim Tops Gates in Debut of Daily Billionaire Ranking
Bloomberg | Matthew G. Miller | 03/04/12

Carlos Slim, the telecommunications tycoon who controls Mexico's America Movil SAB (AMXL), is the richest person on Earth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world's 20 wealthiest individuals. The 72-year-old's net worth fell $478.4 million in a day to $68.5 billion as of the close of markets on March 2, as U.S. moguls Bill Gates and Warren Buffett placed second and third on the list compiled by Bloomberg News. Brazil's Eike Batista, who ranks 10th, still covets the top spot after vowing a year ago that he'd become the world's wealthiest man by 2015. Read more

Bloomberg Billionaires Index Clear-Cut, Miller Says

In Small Claims Court, Consumers Win Against Huge Companies
Huffington Post | PETER SVENSSON | 03/04/12

NEW YORK (AP) -- If you feel cheated by a big company and complaining gets you nowhere, what can you do? A handful of recent cases suggest that consumers can, if they're motivated enough, win against big companies in small claims courts. These "David versus Goliath" battles were won against the likes of AT&T, Honda and others, without resorting to lawyers. The plaintiffs paid minor filing fees, gathered their own research and presented arguments in quick hearings that resemble the average "Judge Judy" episode. Read more

Limbaugh Advertisers: We Still Won't Sponsor Rush Anymore
Huffington Post | Author | 03/05/12

As the controversy grew over Rush Limbaugh's latest incendiary comments -- he called law student and birth control advocate Sandra Fluke a "slut" on Wednesday -- his show's advertisers began to flee in droves. The Associated Press reported on Sunday that seven companies have backed away from the show. Read more

Spying on the Koch Brothers
Mother Jones | Michael Mechanic | 12/11

Inside the discreet retreat where the elite meet to plot Barack Obama's defeat. Read more

An attack on Iran would be an act of criminal stupidity
The Guardian | Seumas Milne | 02/21/12

After a decade of calamitous western wars in the wider Middle East, the signs are becoming ever more ominous that we're heading for another. And, hard as it is to credit, the same discredited arguments used to justify the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan -- from weapons of mass destruction to sponsorship of terrorism and fundamentalist fanatics -- are now being used to make the case for an attack on Iran. Read more

The US must stop the strategic blunder of an attack on Iran
The Guardian | Michael Boyle | 02/27/12

The actual evidence behind the Iranian threat is murkier than many realize: Friday's IAEA report suggested that there are many outstanding questions about Iran's uranium enrichment program, but US intelligence agencies remain unconvinced that Iran has an active program to convert that material into a bomb. But much like Iraq, the debate over the actual facts has been sidelined by one over the wisdom of striking first before the threat manifests itself. Read more

5 Minutes To Self-Immolation Of The Israeli Empire
Video Rebel's Blog | Author | 12/31/11

... Wesley Clark was given a list of 7 Muslim nations 10 days after 911 that America was to invade. That 2001 hit list originated in Israel in 1982. The last nation on that list is Iran. ... Read more

Fearful of a nuclear Iran? The real WMD nightmare is Syria
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist | CHARLES P. BLAIR | 03/01/12

... But the Libyan chemical stockpile consisted of several tons of aging mustard gas leaking from a half-dozen canisters that would have been impossible to utilize as weapons. Syria likely has one of the largest and most sophisticated chemical weapon programs in the world. Moreover, Syria may also possess an offensive biological weapons capability that Libya did not. ... Read more

Status of World Nuclear Forces
Federation of American Scientist | Author | 2011

More than a decade and a half after the Cold War ended, the world's combined stockpile of nuclear warheads remain at a very high level: more than 20,500. Of these, some 4,800 warheads are considered operational, of which nearly 2,000 U.S. and Russian warheads are on high alert, ready for use on short notice. Read more

Why Is This Cargo Container Emitting So Much Radiation?
Wired Magazine | Andrew Curry | 10/21/11

... Regardless, the mystery of container 307703 is no longer Genoa's concern. The sliver of cobalt that sat on the dock for more than a year is now hundreds of miles away, the container that housed it now scrap metal itself. And more than 1,000 new cargo containers will come in tomorrow. ... Read more

Geithner Pens Another Ridiculous Op-Ed
Zero Hedge | Author | 03/02/12

This Op-Ed by Tim Geithner makes him sound like an innocent by-stander at an arson fire and not the person holding the torch. Read more

White House, US Courts & EPA Shaft Veterans to Protect Monsanto

American veterans and the entire country of Viet Nam affected by Agent Orange have been shafted beyond imagination due to corruption within the US government and US courts. US courts have protected Monsanto and Dow Chemical from liability and criminal prosecution. The US government has shielded Monsanto and Dow from the massive cost of medical treatment for victims and environmental remediation cleanup costs that would drive these corporations into bankruptcy. Read more

New Research: GMO Food Far Worse Than We Think
Green Med Info | Sayer Ji | 02/19/12

Disturbing new research published in the Journal of Applied Toxicology indicates that genetically modified (GM) crops with "stacked traits" --that is, with multiple traits such as glyphosate-herbicide resistance and Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) insecticidal toxins engineered together into the same plant, are likely far more dangerous to human health than previously believed, due to their synergistic toxicity. Read more

Millions of Pounds of Toxic Poison to Flood US Farmland
Natural Society | Cassandra Anderson | 02/21/12

The EPA announced that it has completed the first part of its study on dioxin, after more than 25 years of stonewalling. Dioxin is the most caustic man-made chemical known. Dioxin is a general term for hundreds of chemicals that are produced in industrial processes that use chlorine and burning. Disturbingly, it has a half-life of 100+ years when it is leached into soil or embedded in water systems. Dioxin was the most harmful component in Agent Orange (the recipe for Agent Orange is 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T herbicides). Read more

Fukushima: Chaos reigns
Nearly a year after Japan's worst nuclear accident, towns remain deserted and the reactor cleanup has just begun
Salon | JUSTIN MCCURRY | 03/02/12

Elsewhere along the vast stretch of coast hit by the March 11 tsunami there are palpable signs of progress. Almost all of the 23 million tons of rubble has been removed, although rebuilding has yet to start. But at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the cleanup looks like it has barely begun. Instead, the real work is being done, unseen, deep inside the crippled reactors, where melted fuel remains cool, but whose precise state and location remains a mystery. Read more

20% of Military Fatalities in Afghanistan are "Insider" Shootings
MotherJones | Kevin Drum | 03/02/12
Read more

Paul Krugman: GOP Fiscal Proposals Are Sound 'If You Believe In Magic'
New Your Times | PAUL KRUGMAN | 03/01/12

Mitt Romney is very concerned about budget deficits. Or at least that's what he says; he likes to warn that President Obama's deficits are leading us toward a "Greece-style collapse." So why is Mr. Romney offering a budget proposal that would lead to much larger debt and deficits than the corresponding proposal from the Obama administration? Read more

Fed Shrugged Off Warnings, Let Banks Pay Shareholders Billions
ProPublica | Jesse Eisinger | 03/02/12

... That $33 billion is money that the banks don't have to cushion themselves -- and the broader financial system -- should the euro crisis cause a new recession, tensions with Iran flare into war and disrupt the oil supply, or another crisis emerge. That $33 billion is money that the banks don't have to cushion themselves -- and the broader financial system -- should the euro crisis cause a new recession, tensions with Iran flare into war and disrupt the oil supply, or another crisis emerge. ... Read more

Bank Fees Quietly Coming Back Even After Backlash
Huffington Post | PALLAVI GOGOI | 03/01/12

NEW YORK -- Big banks, facing declining revenues and a regulatory climate that leaves them fewer creative ways to make money, are quietly introducing or experimenting with fees that are sure to outrage customers. Bank of America was shouted down by angry customers last fall when it tried to impose a $5 monthly fee for using a debit card. JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo backed off plans to impose their own fees. Read more

JPMorgan Chase, Despite Record Annual Profits, Doesn't Award CEO Bigger Bonus
Huffington Post | Author | 01/21/12
Read more

Bank of America In Trouble?
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 03/02/12

.... It's a very bad sign that a bank is in a desperate cash crunch when it tries repeatedly to gouge its customers. David Trainer, an analyst for Market Watch, a WSJ publication, wrote that the new fees are a sign of series trouble at BAC. ... Read more

Inefficient Wall Street Wastes $280 Billion A Year: Study
Huffington Post | Alexander Eichler | 03/02/12

Wall Street seems to have learned a neat trick: how to make more money while producing less. Between 1980 and 2010, the U.S. financial industry nearly doubled in size, relative to the overall economy. Yet in terms of what the financial industry actually produces -- liquidity, assets, anything of measurable benefit to society -- the sector appears to be doing less these days than it used to. Read more

Remember, the Koch Brothers are writing our laws for our representatives through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Koch Brothers File Lawsuit Over The Ownership Of the Cato Institute
Huffington Post | Author | 03/01/12

TOPEKA, Kan. -- Billionaire brothers and political donors Charles and David Koch (kohk) have filed a lawsuit in Kansas over the ownership of a prominent, Washington-based conservative think tank.

The Kochs, known for supporting conservative causes, are shareholders in the Cato Institute. Until October, the other two shareholders were its president and a former chairman. The brothers dispute whether the former chairman's widow now controls his 25 percent voting interest. Read more

One Out Of Every Ten Wall Street Employees Is A Psychopath, Say Researchers
Huffington Post | Alexander Eichler | 02/28/12
Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Friday, March 2, 2012 [12:26]

TYT calls out Wall Street employees whining about the 14 percent drop in their cash bonus pool. (02/29/12) [3:23]

Dylan Ratigan | William K. Black, fire Holder, fire Geithner, fire Bernanke, fire the "too-big-to-fail" banks (02/25/10) [12:49]

Dylan Ratigan | Foreclosure fraud $45 trillion dollars (02/26/10) [14:10]

Corporate tax rate was 12.1 percent in 2011 -- a 40-year low (02/28/12) [3:59]

A Secretive Banking Elite Rules Trading in Derivatives
New York Times | Louise Story | 12/11/10

On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in Midtown Manhattan. The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable -- and controversial -- fields in finance. They also share a common secret: The details of their meetings, even their identities, have been strictly confidential.

Drawn from giants like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the bankers form a powerful committee that helps oversee trading in derivatives, instruments which, like insurance, are used to hedge risk. Read more

Secret Banking Cabal Emerges From AIG Shadows: David Reilly
Bloomberg | David Reilly | 01/28/10

The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are a given among conspiracy theorists who stockpile ammo, bottled water and peanut butter. After this week's congressional hearing into the bailout of American International Group Inc., you have to wonder if those folks are crazy after all.

Wednesday's hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials.

We're talking about the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose role as the most influential part of the federal-reserve system -- apart from the matter of AIG's bailout -- deserves further congressional scrutiny. Read more

HOLY BAILOUT - Federal Reserve Now Backstopping $75 Trillion Of Bank Of America's Derivatives Trades
Daily Bail | William K. Black | 2011
Read more

William Black: Not With A Bang, But A Whimper: Bank Of America's Derivatives Death Rattle
Daily Bail | William K. Black | 2011
Read more

BofA puts taxpayers on the hook for Merrill's derivatives
Reuters | Felix Salmon | 10/20/11
Read more

BofA Said to Split Regulators Over Moving Merrill Derivatives to Bank Unit
Bloomberg | Bob Ivry | 10/18/11
Read more

The Fed Under Fire: The Federal Reserve Is The Black Hole In American Democracy [7:59]

Greek Economy Suffers Record Collapse In February
Zero Hedge | Author | 03/01/12

There are those who recall that not ten days ago, according to the IMF's Greek (un)sustainability analysis, worst case scenario no less, Greek GDP would somehow miraculously post just a 1% drop in 2013. Unfortunately this won't happen. According to the overnight PMI update out of Europe (where was saw the jobless rate at the highest since 1997), the Greek economy just imploded at a record pace. Read more

Senators Offer License To Strike Iran Nuclear Program
HP | Michael McAuliff | 02/29/12

WASHINGTON -- If President Barack Obama feels the need to launch a military strike against Iran's nuclear program, Congress will back him, a group of senators declared Wednesday. Read more

Only 54% Of Young Adults In America Have A Job
Zero Hedge | Author | 02/29/12

A month ago, Zero Hedge readers were stunned to learn that unemployment among Europe's young adults has exploded as a result of the European financial crisis, and peaking anywhere between 46% in the case of Greece all they way to 51% for Spain. Which makes us wonder what the reaction will be to the discovery that when it comes to young adults (18-24) in the US, the employment rate is just barely above half, or 54%, which just happens to be the lowest in 64 years, and 7% worse than when Obama took office promising a whole lot of change 3 years ago. Read more

Arizona Anti-Union Bills Fueled By Americans For Prosperity, Koch Brothers Support
Huffington Post | Leigh Owens | 03/01/12

In Arizona, Republican efforts to dismantle public unions took another step forward this week. On Tuesday, the state Senate passed a bill banning the practice of "release time," by which government employees are paid to do union work. The bill would affect a wide array of union workers, including firefighters, police officers, and construction workers, who may be called on by the government for assistance in the case of an emergency. Read more

Occupy Wall Street Protests ALEC In What Activists Call Largest Coordinated Occupy Event This Year
HP | Saki Knafo | 02/29/12

... In Washington, D.C., police arrested between eight and 12 people outside the headquarters of agriculture company Monsanto, according to protesters. In California, protestors blocked the entrance to three Walmart distribution centers. In New York, about 100 people demonstrated outside of Pfizer and gathered in Bryant Park for a talk by journalist Matt Taibbi. There were smaller demonstrations in cities from Albany, N.Y., to Tulsa, Okla. ... Read more

Goodbye, First Amendment: 'Trespass Bill' will make protest illegal
RT | Author | 02/29/12

... The US House of Representatives voted 388-to-3 in favor of H.R. 347 late Monday, a bill which is being dubbed the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011. In the bill, Congress officially makes it illegal to trespass on the grounds of the White House, which, on the surface, seems not just harmless and necessary, but somewhat shocking that such a rule isn't already on the books. The wording in the bill, however, extends to allow the government to go after much more than tourists that transverse the wrought iron White House fence. Under the act, the government is also given the power to bring charges against Americans engaged in political protest anywhere in the country. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Thursday, March 1, 2012 [11:36]

DN | David Cay Johnston: "Romney's Tax Plan is George W. Bush on Steroids" (03/01/12) [11:58]

DN | Occupy Education: Teachers, Students Fight School Closings, Privatization, Layoffs, Rankings (03/01/12) [25:03]

JPMorgan Chase Now Prefers Customers With $100,000 Or More
Huffington Post | Alexander Eichler | 02/29/12

If you've got less than a hundred grand in the bank, JPMorgan Chase is just not that into you. At a presentation to investors this week, JPMorgan executives said they saw only a "limited opportunity to deepen relationships" with those customers who have less than $100,000 in their names, according to a recent report from Bloomberg. Read more

Bankers Shouldn't Worry About Drum Circles - But Some of 'Em Should Worry About Subpoenas
Huffington Post | Richard Eskow | 02/29/12

Consider JPMorgan Chase, the institution run by Mr. Dimon. To call his bank "scandal-plagued" would be putting it mildly. Chase has settled six fraud cases with the SEC over the last thirteen years and is implicated in several ongoing investigations, including the two most notorious fraud cases of our time. At any other moment in history the headlines would be screaming with various combinations of the words "JPMorgan Chase," "fraud," "probe," "drop," mistakes," "disaster," "incompetence" and "scandal." But these aren't normal times. The public has come to expect that bankers will commit fraud, and that the government will ignore it. They've come to expect that banks will make bad loans, and that the governments of the world will rescue them by making life more difficult for ordinary people. Read more

Larry Summers For World Bank: So Much Wrong, So Little Time
Huffington Post | Mark Gongloff | 02/29/12

... There are lots of reasons to hope President Obama does not pick Summers for the job, but let's start with the latest, one that hasn't gotten a lot of widespread attention yet: The revelation from Noam Scheiber of The New Republic, in his new book about Obama's economic team called The Escape Artists, that in December 2008, Summers blocked from President Obama's view a suggestion by former economic adviser Christina Romer that his first economic stimulus package should ideally be $1.8 trillion. ... Read more