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POPSGreece downgraded over high debt Europe is falling. What will the order be: 1) Greece, 2) Ireland, 3) Italy, 4) Portugal, 5) UK, 6) Spain? What could Germany and France do then, but follow. What happens then is the $64 trillion question. Hyperinflation? More deflation? Nobody knows, but they will know soon. The knowledge is liable to be depressing for believers in eternal economic growth.
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POPSPirates Set Up An Exchange to Manage Their Investments
"The shares are open to all and everybody can take part, whether personally at sea or on land by providing cash, weapons or useful materials ... we've made piracy a community activity." Haradheere, 400 km (250 miles) northeast of Mogadishu, used to be a small fishing village. Now it is a bustling town where luxury 4x4 cars owned by the pirates and those who bankroll them create honking traffic jams along its pot-holed, dusty streets. Somalia's Western-backed government of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed is pinned down battling hard-line Islamist rebels, and controls little more than a few streets of the capital. The administration has no influence in Haradheere -- where a senior local official said piracy paid for almost everything. "Let the anti-piracy navies continue their search for us. We have no worries because our motto for the job is 'do or die'." Piracy investor Sahra Ibrahim, a 22-year-old divorcee, was lined up with others waiting for her cut of a ransom pay-out
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POPSChina's Blunt Talk for Obama Before heading to China, Obama underscored the urgency of his agenda on Iran by joining Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in warning Tehran that “we are now running out of time.” The trip has already had some hiccups. Wrangling between the administration and Beijing over Obama’s town hall meeting with university students in Shanghai on Monday was intense, with China wanting to screen the audience and its questions, and the U.S. wanting a freer exchange.
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POPSLSE introduces hidden orders; delays Baikal It is interesting (and instructive) to note the total absence of any "transparency" considerations in this article. Now to watch for the reaction of the other "national" exchanges and their "governing" bodies.
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POPSObama, Maurice Strong, Al Gore Key Players Cashing In.... continued the man who was to become President of the United States of America. If we follow the time line on where Obama was during the funding of the Chicago Climate Exchange, he was still a professor at the University of Chicago Law School teaching constitutional law, with his law license becoming inactive a year later in 2002. It may be interesting to note that the Chicago Climate Exchange in spite of its hype, is a veritable rat’s nest of cronyism. The largest shareholder in the Exchange is Goldman Sachs. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley is its honorary chairman, The Joyce Foundation, which funded the Exchange also funded money for John Ayers’ Chicago School Initiatives. John is the brother of William Ayers. What a flap when it was discovered that the senator from Chicago had nursed on Saul Alinsky’s milk, had his political career launched at a coffee party held by domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, and sat for 20 years, uncomplaining in front of the
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POPSFurther refutation of the Obamoid "settlement freeze" formula Michael Oren is Israel's ambassador to the US. He is also an IDF veteran and a historian of some note. His book, Power, Faith, and Fantasy covers the two-hundred-years US history of relations with Arab/Muslim nations. His article here of course is in support of Netanyahu's policy towards the West Bank. That's to be expected since Oren is Netanyayhu's ambassador. But the point is that Oren/Netanyahu have some facts on their side while the Obamoids only have Power, Faith, and Fantasy
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POPSWall Street on Speed
As debates in the blogosphere in the last couple of days have made clear, there are a couple of possibilities of what is at work here. One is that Goldman and others are literally using privileged information to make trades ahead of markets, in which case they are committing a felony. Specifically, the abuse is known as "front-running," or trading ahead of customers, and it is an explicitly illegal form of market manipulation. Front running is epidemic on Wall Street--the whole point of an investment bank trading for its own account is to take advantage of its specialized knowledge of markets--and the SEC or the Justice Department shuts down front-running when it becomes too blatant to ignore. The other possibility is that the Goldmans of the world have found themselves a nice loophole. Tapping into the Stock Exchange's own computers and other sources of trading activity is something that anyone in theory could do, but only a few privileged insiders have the sophistication to exploi
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POPSLOL: Iran’s “Boycott SMS!” “You don’t need 100 percent of consumers on board for a boycott to work effectively,” said the director of a major advertising firm in Tehran, who did not want to reveal his name. “Even a 20 percent drop in consumption is enough to hurt a company.” There are already signs that the boycott may be taking its toll on mobile operators. TCI shares on the Tehran Stock Exchange fell to an all-time low yesterday with a 6 percent drop over a two-week period, according to HAMNA, Iran’s mobile communication news agency. Iran Cell, the country’s largest private operator, has also sustained losses. A senior executive of this company, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Tehran Bureau that Iran Cell was losing “close to $250,000 a day” because of the drop in SMS volume. Text messaging had played a vital role in pre-election campaigning " largely conveying anti-Ahmadinejad jokes and pro-Mousavi slogans " and was used to disseminate information about grassroots effort
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POPSNYSE ends transparency to protect Goldman Sachs Taibbi argues that the move is designed to protect investment banks from bloggers who are exposing the companies’ stock market manipulations Blogs such as Zero Hedge have been using NYSE data to argue that Goldman Sachs now has an almost unfettered ability to control stock prices. Goldman Sachs is singled out because the investment bank’s share of principal NYSE trading has gone from 27 percent at the end of 2008 to fully 50 percent of trades in recent months.
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POPSTime to put "Wealth On Trial" again? The Pecora hearings resulted in 12,000 pages of transcripts that are still a primary source for historians of the Great Crash, and important New Deal legislation that for the first time regulated the high-handed, free-wheeling banking industry and protected the public from its excesses -- including the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (which established the Securities and Exchange Commission -- Pecora was one of its first commissioners) and the Glass-Steagall Banking Act of 1933, which erected a firewall between commercial and investment banking -- a wall torn down during the Clinton administration, leading to much of our trouble today.
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POPSActivists protest bailouts near Wall Street Did not hear of any protest on Fox, CNN, or MSNBC. Also, nothing in NY Times or Wall Street Journal. After first learning of it via IReport on CNN I googled and found this report from Reuters of the protest on Friday NEAR Wall Street. Evidently the protesters were not allowed to protest within hearing distance of the very people they were protesting against. This is the state of our ‘right to protest’ controlled by the powers that be. The IReport covers an apparent second protest that occurred on Saturday Apr 4 ON Wall Street when Wall Street was closed. Guess they wanted to do it so they could have bragging rights that they actually protested on Wall Street. Here’s the IReport clip: http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-239743. Here’s a little more info on Bail Out the People website: http://www.bailoutpeople.org/
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POPSKatie Couric’s Curveballs and Softballs Katie Couric won a journalism award recently, which blew me away until I realized who gave the award. The Norman Lear Center at USC, a left-wing funded org rooted deeply in Hollywood’s liberal psyche. She was ‘awarded’ for her hard-hitting questions to Alaska governor Sarah Palin during last years presidential election campaign. But where was she democratic VP candidate Joe Biden flubbed on his knowledge of US history? Granted this award does not carry the recognition and prestige of a Pulitzer, Chancellor Award or a DuPont Award, but to give such a lack luster, talking head and television faceplate like Katie Couric an ego boost by telling her she’s doing an award winning job of news reporting is simply setting her up for a fall. I mean seriously, Katie Couric won an award for reporting excellence?! The standards for journalism have truly fallen to new depths.
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POPSAyn Rand Comes to Somalia so it's less likely that an unknown con man will pull off a scam. In view of Somalia's history, this ad hoc stock market is not as implausible as it may sound. The government does not yet control much more than the heavily guarded buildings that are its temporary headquarters, but it has begun deploying its own policemen in some parts of the city. The business-men are pooling their company security forces to bolster the government and are trying to lure the warlords' gunmen to its side with cash incentives. In February one of the leading warlords, Mohamed Qanyareh, agreed to support the government in exchange for ministerial posts for himself and his allies. If the business community succeeds in returning Mogadishu to something resembling normalcy, it will have shown that a failed state, or at least its capital city, can get back on its feet without much help from the outside world.
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POPSHomosexual Marriage is Really For the Love of Money It is also these money powers which threaten politicians if they dare to speak against them (calling it "hate") or coerce their support for the gratification of their anti-social agenda which also is economically motivated. "For the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil". And this is no exception. So really they do not do this for any "love" of society which they themselves despise while accusing others of "hate", while they harbor this very thing against others who will not bow to their revolutionary agenda.
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POPSFeinstein Steers $25Billion Federal Dollars To Husband's Company Spokesmen for the FDIC, Mrs. Feinstein and Mr. Blum's firm told The Times that there was no connection between the legislation and the contract signed Nov. 13, and that the couple didn't even know about CBRE's business with FDIC until after it was awarded. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with jurisdiction over FDIC; and the agency is supposed to operate from money it raises from bank-paid insurance payments - not direct federal dollars. About the same time of the contract award, Mr. Blum's private investment firm reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it and related affiliates had purchased more than 10 million new shares in CBRE. The shares were purchased for the going price of $3.77; CBRE's stock closed Monday at $5.14.
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POPSThese Hypocrites Oughta Make You Puke! Corruption,Lobbying, conflict of interest! Here's MORE: Carol Browner, assistant to the president for energy and climate change, disclosed earnings of between $1 million and $5 million from lobbying firm Downey McGrath Group, Inc., where her husband, Thomas Downey, is a principal. She states $450,000 in "member distribution" income, plus retirement and other benefits from The Albright Group, a lobbying firm whose principals include former Secretary of State Madeline Albright.
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POPSChris Wallace Asks McCain If He Wants To Say, "I Told You So"? WTF!
FTA: Wallace: You ever feel like saying ' I told you so?" McCain: Oh, I'm sure that would be pleasant feeling, but the point is we're in such a severe crisis.... "I told you so?" WTF is that? How dare Wallace ask that question? Have you no decency, sir? President Obama barely has had a chance to sit down in the Oval office and grab a cup of coffee and this jerk is basically calling him a failure and touting John McCain's ideology as the correct one even though it was that ideology that got us into this mess. And America solidly rejected John McCain and Sarah Palin to run this country. And it's the same ideology that is being used to obstruct every move Obama makes to try and dig us out. Do these right wing hacks understand that Obama's legislation hasn't had time to work or even fail at this point? There basis of criticism is all the about the stock market. The "STOCK Market!" The gasbags in suits that put us in this position. Do they also not understand that America h
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POPSWikinvest “The reason why I think wikis work is it’s a lot easier for me to undo something you did than for you to do it,” Mr. Conrad said. And if someone lies about a company, they are subject to prosecution for securities fraud. Joseph A. Grundfest, a former member of the Securities and Exchange Commission who teaches at Stanford, sees some benefits to the wiki model. “We need more people to take responsibility for their own investment decisions, and the easier you make it for people to get good information at low cost, the better off the world will be,” he said. However, “People have to understand that whenever you use a wiki, you get what you pay for.” Sounds interesting.
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POPSThe Obama Economy ~ The Dow Keeps Dropping The price of oil and other commodities have fallen by two-thirds since their 2008 summer peak, which has the effect of a major tax cut. The world is awash in liquidity, thanks to monetary ease by the Federal Reserve and other central banks. Monetary policy operates with a lag, but last year's easing will eventually stir economic activity. Housing prices have fallen 27% from their Case-Shiller peak, or some two-thirds of the way back to their historical trend. While still high, credit spreads are far from their peaks during the panic, and corporate borrowers are again able to tap the credit markets. So what has happened in the last two months? The economy has received no great new outside shock. Exchange rates and other prices have been stable, and there are no security crises of note. The reality of a sharp recession has been known and built into stock prices since last year's fourth quarter. President Obama: Equity Analyst http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xySAXuCWnUQ
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POPSIs George Soros a Global Warming Turncoat? Odder still is that this is the same George Soros who, in October 2007, told CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo “I think we have to stop the increased use of coal if we want to bring climate change under control…” This is also the same George Soros who, through his Open Society Institute, may have provided as much as $720,000 in 2006 to help finance Hansen’s global warming activism. And what does Hansen have to say about coal? In a recent op-ed in Britain’s The Observer, Hansen wrote that “The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.” Warning British Prime Minister Gordon Brown that “history and children will judge ,” Hansen called for Brown to bring the use of coal to an end. It seems quite possible that Soros and Hansen no longer see eye-to-eye on climate change.
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