The Independent

WOW! My previous futures broker (PFGBest)... thank God I am no longer with them... and those that think "Obamacare", run by our government, is going to turn out swell this is what you can expect... AS USUAL OUR REGULATORS ARE ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL! WHEN ARE AMERICANS GOING TO WAKE AND DEMAND CHANGE! OH, THAT'S RIGHT, YOU DID IN THE LAST PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION! THE CORRUPTION AND ROT RUN TO THE CORE NOW... LEHMAN BROS BERNIE MADOFF MF GLOBAL (Corzine) GOLDMAN SACHS (Lloyd Blankfien) JP MORGAN/CHASE (Jamie Dimon) PFGBest (Russell Wasendorf Sr.) WHERE IS THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ~ OH, THATS RIGHT ~ THEY TOO ARE ABOVE THE LAW NOW! SAD TO SAY... I SMELL A SYSTEMIC FAILURE AND THEN REVOLUTION IN OUR FUTURE... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304022004577518680956762826.html

THE BLUEPRINT by WAYNE ALLYN ROOT , classmate Barach Obama is no fool. He is not incompetent. To the contrary, he is brilliant. He knows exactly what he's doing. He is purposely overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure, economic crisis and social chaos -- thereby destroying capitalism and our country from within. Barack Obama is my college classmate (Columbia University, class of '83). As Glenn Beck correctly predicted from day one, Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven, two professors at Columbia University. They outlined a plan to socialize America by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands. Add up the clues below. Taken individually they're alarming. Taken as a whole, it is a brilliant, Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a socialist/Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival ... and can be counted on to always vote for bigger gove...

By Adam B. Summers and Jon Coupal  California’s $19 billion budget deficit seems to worsen by the day, but an even larger financial crisis is brewing in the state’s pension system. Over the last two decades, state lawmakers have bestowed massive pension and benefit increases upon government workers. Unfortunately, taxpayers are now getting the bills for these handouts. Recent studies estimate California has $500 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, not to mention over $50 billion in unfunded retiree health care liabilities. It’s important for the state to recognize how it got into this fiscal disaster—and how to get out of it.   California’s public pension and retiree health and dental care expenditures have quintupled since fiscal year 1998-99, going from about $1 billion to $5 billion this year. And retirement spending is expected to triple again—to $15 billion—within the next decade.  Part of the problem is the growth of state governmen...

This Could be the US within Years Let’s see… Greece is having trouble with unfunded liabilities, runaway debt and constituents that demand they live off the public largess while much of the world recognizes that the current situation as unsustainable. I don’t see how the US is much different. While there are rosy projections that we’ll eventually be decreasing our deficit over the next few years if all goes well, what’s clear even in the most optimistic government models is that in 2030 and beyond we have a runaway situation. We’re seeing states and municipalities struggling to control debt and most of it stems from the overly generous pension and healthcare obligations they’ve made to generations of public-sector workers that is unsustainable. While the private sector has cut jobs, real wages and forced increased employee contributions to benefits for a decade, public workers have pretty much maintained the status quo as if they live in a vacuum. I can’t blame the worke...

by Money Morning Americans could be in for a rude awakening in coming months when they discover the true scope of the massive national debt racked up by the U.S. government. In fact, the $1.6 trillion deficit expected for 2010, which is above 10% of gross domestic product (GDP), is only the beginning. Since the current economic crisis began in late 2007, the U.S. Federal Reserve has tripled the size of its balance sheet, creating enormous amounts of new money by lending to hundreds of ailing banks and buying up more than $1 trillion of questionable asset-backed securities. But that’s only a small part of the story. Since the beginning of the crisis, the Fed has lent, spent, or guaranteed $11.6 trillion, including underwriting the entire system of mortgage finance in the United States, a system that currently shows a nearly $1 trillion loss. And none of these figures include any of U.S. President Barack Obama’s stimulus packages, which means the actual deficit next y...

By ROBERT PEAR Published: December 28, 2009 WASHINGTON — At the heart of the fight over health care legislation is a paradox that befuddles lawmakers of both parties... Expanding Health Coverage and Shoring Up Medicare - Is It Double-Counting? - NYTimes.com  

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c Clusterf#@k to the Poor House - Flight Delay www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 02:49 PM PST From Eric Dash at the NY Times: U.S. Said to Reconsider Quick Sale of Citigroup Stake Two days after Citigroup moved to untangle itself from Washington, the Treasury reversed course Wednesday and backed away from plans to immediately sell a portion of its stake in the banking giant ... The decision came after Citigroup badly misread the financial markets on Wednesday and struggled to sell new shares to pay back its bailout funds. Oops.

“Has there been one financial leader to say this is really excessive? Wake up, gentlemen. Your response, I can only say, has been inadequate.” Paul Volcker, former Fed Chairman, Dec 8, 2009From The Times: ‘Wake up, gentlemen’, world’s top bankers warned by former Fed chairman Volcker “I wish someone would give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic growth — one shred of evidence,” said Mr Volcker ... He said that financial services in the United States had increased its share of value added from 2 per cent to 6.5 per cent, but he asked: “Is that a reflection of your financial innovation, or just a reflection of what you’re paid?” And from the Telegraph: Ex-Fed chief Paul Volcker's 'telling' words on derivatives industry    "You can innovate as much as you like, but do it within a structure that doesn't put the whole economy at risk." ... Mr Volcker argued that banks did have a vital role to play as holders of ...

Here is what we (us, our kids, grandkids, great-grandkids) owe... Only taxes can pay for these or a default by the US congress. When you're in a hole, stop digging. Congress has to go - they are the diggers! Throw all the incumbent bums out!   U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time

1. Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart every hour of every day. 2. This results in $20,928 profit every minute! 3. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick's Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year. 4. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target + Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined. 5. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people and is the largest private employer.  And most speak English 6. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the World. 7. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger & Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only 15 years. 8. During this same period, 31 Supermarket chains sought bankruptcy (including Winn-Dixie).. 9. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.. 10. Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are Super Centers; this is 1,000 more than it had 5 years ago. 11. This year 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur at a Wal-Mart store. (Earth's population i...

On October 22nd 2009, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee , says that the U.S. economy faces a future as a “banana republic” if current federal fiscal policies continue. " Congress works for the next election, not for the next generation." In April 2009, Missouri Republican US Senator Kit Bond likened Barack Obama 's administration to a banana republic if they proceed to hold public trials on the issue of torture, giving the term banana republic a bimodal definition in the context of the ongoing US torture investigations. [23] In May 2009, Paul Krugman, columnist for the New York Times , referred to the state government of California as a banana republic. He was commenting on the state's tax system, in which taxes cannot be raised even in an emergency without a two-thirds majority. The state constitution requires that the budget be balanced, denying it the ability to borrow, while gerrymandering has turned many dist...

by CalculatedRisk on 11/26/2009 05:55:00 PM From Jon Lansner at the O.C. Register: How banks may lose $430 billion more Banks are projected to lose $430 billion on commercial real estate loans in the next two to three years [said] Stan Mullin, an associate with California Real Estate Receiverships in Newport Beach ... Highlight’s of Mullin’s talk: •$1.4 trillion in commercial loans are coming due in the next five years. •That’s equal to the same amount that came due in the last 15 years. •Lenders could take massive losses on their real estate portfolios from 2010-2013. This is similar to the recent presentation by Dr. Randall Zisler, CEO of Zisler Capital Partners: A crisis of unprecedented proportions is approaching. Of the $3 trillion of outstanding mortgage debt, $1.4 trillion is scheduled to mature in four years. We estimate another $500 billion to $750 billion of unscheduled maturities (i.e., defaults). And from the WSJ in October: Comme...

The MBA reports a record 14.4 percent of mortgage loans were either one payment delinquent or in the foreclosure process in Q3 2009. This is an increase from 13.2% in Q2 2009.

The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that Housing Starts dropped a whopping 10.6 percent in the one month period October 2009 versus September 2009, and fell 30.7 percennt below an already awful number last October 2008. This is in spite of the $8,000 first time home buyers credit the Central Planners decided was a key stimulus tactic. New Building Permits fell 24.3 percent from last year's lousy October number. Mortgage Applications fell 2.5 percent last week. Clearly the Central Planners' stimulus plan is not working. The reason is simple, they have targeted a small minority to get the trillions of dollars of government spending, and have failed miserably in conducting a strategy that would get cash into the hands of all American Households. If you have a clunker and are willing to buy a tiny car with a certain gas mileage performance, if you are buying a new home for the first time, or if you are one of the largest financial companies on earth, you get the money, and...

Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve Bank of New York “severely limited” its ability to save taxpayer money on American International Group Inc.’s rescue by refusing to compel banks to take concessions, said a Treasury Department watchdog. The Fed didn’t use its “considerable leverage” as regulator of several of AIG’s counterparties to force them to accept so-called haircuts on credit-default swaps, Neil Barofsky, special inspector for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, said today in a report. The regulator gave up efforts to negotiate discounts from the banks after two days and opted to pay them in full for $62.1 billion in swaps, Barofsky said. “These policy decisions came with a cost -- they led directly to a negotiating strategy with the counterparties that even then-New York Fed President Geithner acknowledged had little likelihood of success,” Barofsky said. Timothy Geithner, now Treasury secretary, was among officials who took over negotiations with the banks from AIG in N...