Behind the Curtain

Well its been a big week so far....but not much of a blipit in the Main Stream News about it all...

* Ratification of the Lisbon Treaty on November 3rd that took effect December 1st 2009

If France suddenly ceased to exist as an independent state, would that qualify as big news-- a story that belonged on the top of the headlines?

Well in a sense that's what happened this week. With the final ratification of the Lisbon Treaty on November 3, France-- along with the other 26 nations of the European Union-- became a small partner in a very large new enterprise. When the treaty takes effect on December 1, Europe will have a single president with sweeping new powers. The individual member-states will retain their own parliaments and their own executives, but they will have a new boss.

How did it happen that so many European governments lost their autonomy without a fight? It happened, argues Paul Belien, because the leaders of those European government wanted it to happen. Belien-- who writes from Brussels, but is definitely not a fan of the new power center there-- sees the newly powerful European Union as a means by which the international elite controls the ordinary populace:

The EU is basically a cartel, consisting of the 27 governments of the member states, who have concluded that it is easier to pass laws in the secret EU meetings with their colleagues than through their own national parliaments in the glare of public criticism.

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otn.cfm?id=537

More -

http://www.finaltrump.com/2009/12/good-bye-great-britain/


http://logisticsmonster.com/2009/12/01/daniel-hannan-lisbon-treaty-the-loss-of-the-uks-sovereignty-to-the-eu/comment-page-1/

That which multiple thousands of British stock sacrificed their lives to protect, the freedom and sovereignty of the United Kingdom, has been taken by stealth, subterfuge and outright deceit from the British peoples. Dec. 1, 2009, will be recorded as the day that the Queen of England officially became a vassal of the seventh resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire.

Although an Antipodean by birth, my own heritage is British to the core. Two generations of my forebears fought on foreign soil as members of the imperial forces of the British Empire for freedom from tyranny during the first half of the 20th century. The Scottish clan from which my patriarchal forebears hail have a military history that bespeaks resistance to tyranny from Waterloo to the Alamo. It thus goes powerfully against the grain to witness the day that tyranny is imposed by subterfuge on the mother nation that spawned the drive to institutionalize freedom in the constitutions of all true Western democracies: mother England, seat of the Crown of the United Kingdom.

http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=6783.5296.0.0

The Treaty of Lisbon (initially known as the Reform Treaty) is a treaty that was signed by the European Union (EU) member states on 13 December 2007, and entered into force on 1 December 2009. It amends the Treaty on European Union (TEU, Maastricht; 1992) and the Treaty establishing the European Community (TEC, Rome; 1957). In this process, the TEC was renamed to Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).

Prominent changes included more qualified majority voting in the Council of Ministers, increased involvement of the European Parliament in the legislative process through extended codecision with the Council of Ministers, the elimination of the pillar system and the creation of a long-term President of the European Council and a High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy to present a united position on EU policies. The Treaty also made the Union's human rights charter, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, legally binding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Lisbon

The Lisbon Treaty gives the European Parliament new lawmaking powers: it now decides on the vast majority of EU legislation. Over 40 new fields come under the procedure for co-decision by Parliament and the Council of Ministers, including agriculture, energy policy, immigration and EU funds. Parliament has the last say on the EU budget. With more power comes more responsibility. Parliament, as the only directly-elected EU institution, will have new means to keep the EU accountable to its citizens.

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/parliament/public/staticDisplay.do?language=EN&refreshCache=yes&pageRank=1&id=66

I'll repeat that with the key in bold...

The Lisbon Treaty gives the European Parliament more power to shape Europe than ever before.

Parliament gains a bigger role in setting budgets, as the old distinction between "compulsory" and "non-compulsory" expenditure is abolished. Parliament will decide on the entire EU budget together with the Council.

"Give me the right to issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who governs the country.” - Meyer Amschal Rothschild, International banker

"Those that create and issue the money and credit, direct the policies of government and hold in their hands the destiny of the people." - Richard McKenna, former president of the Midlands Bank of England

The treaty, which will come into force within a few weeks, will create the first president of Europe, as well as a European foreign minister, and will end Britain’s right to veto new EU rules in more than 40 policy areas.

The treaty's supporters say it will allow the EU to operate more efficiently and give it greater influence in world affairs. But critics say it will cede too much more of Britain's sovereignty to Brussels.

Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic, yesterday signed the Lisbon Treaty, ending eight years of resistance to its attempt to give more power to the EU.

The Czechs are the last of the 27 EU states to sign the treaty, and their move forced the Conservatives to abandon their pledge to hold a British referendum on Lisbon.

William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, said it was “a bad day for British democracy”.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/6496336/Lisbon-Treaty-more-of-Britains-powers-surrendered-to-Brussels.html

Official Text of the Treaty -
http://bookshop.europa.eu/eubookshop/download.action?fileName=FXAC07306ENC_002.pdf&eubphfUid=534817&catalogNbr=FX-AC-07-306-EN-C

* Japan on the verge of fiscal collapse

Japan is about to go bankrupt. It is on the cusp of a fiscal crisis that will change perceptions of Asia dramatically. The IMF says gross public debt will reach 218pc of GDP this year. This is compounding very fast. It will be 246pc in 2014.

The Hatoyama government is spending as if there is no tomorrow. It plans to issue ¥50 trillion or $550bn in fresh bonds. I have no idea when this will spiral out of control. It could take another two or three years. It could start next week. Yes, I know that Japan has been borrowing merrily at ever lower rates for 20 years without the sky falling. The 10-year yield is 1.3pc. What happens when it rises to global levels of 3pc to 4pc? People made the same sort of arguments about the global boom before it suddenly tipped over.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100001459/dollar-hegemony-for-another-century/

I have repeatedly warned that there's an "end game" coming if we do not cut out the monetization games.

I have repeatedly warned that the "end of the world" scenario comes about if The Government cannot finance its operating requirements (e.g. interest cost exceeds income), as that event will result in an instantaneous "death spiral" of credit downgrades and ramping CDS spreads, which in turn drive up interest rates further, etc.

I have repeatedly warned that if we do not get our own house in order others will force it upon us, as we have given them the weapons to do so by selling trillions of dollars worth of Treasuries to overseas sovereigns and institutions over which we can exert no control (except by threatening to use our 6,000 nuclear weapons.)

This morning there's a nasty rumor on the wire - that Japan may be intending to sell US Treasuries.

Their purported reason for this, of course, would be to weaken the Yen. Selling Treasuries would have this effect since it would strengthen the dollar, and in a fiat monetary system all values are relative.

Here's the problem: The first seller wins in these circumstances, since price is essentially "coupon x duration."

If Japan starts selling in size rates on the long end will go materially higher. This will whack the daylights out of the cash price for these bonds. Who else has a lot of these things? China.

Stampede risk here? Yep.

Danger to our government's ability to finance its profligate spending?

Uh huh.

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1693-Here-It-Comes...-Sovereign-Treasury-Sales.html

We do not mean to pick on the United States alone. The proclivity to overspend has spread to most governments throughout the developed world. According to recent estimates, the countries that make up the G20 will face a combined budget deficit of 10.2% of GDP in 2009, the biggest since World War II. The US leads this ‘rogues gallery’ of government spending on a percentage of GDP basis at 13.5%, followed closely by Britain and Japan at 11.6% and 10.3%, respectively. If governments choose to continue down this path, it must be questioned where all their funding will come from, not to mention the impact it will have on their respective currencies.

http://www.sprott.com/Docs/MarketsataGlance/MAAG_10_2009.pdf

* Dubai had a financial meltdown (the place where they make palm tree islands in the ocean and big under utilized airports & buildings)

The $59 billion debt mountain belongs to Dubai World whose assets range from the Jebel Ali Free Zone to the quoted ports operator DP World and Nakheel, the developer of three palm-shaped islands. Two palm islands lie abandoned as well as a map of the world formed from smaller reclaimed islands.

At the same time as the debt repayment suspension, the government appointed Deloitte’s Aidan Birkett as Chief Restructuring Officer to ‘oversee the restructuring process and ensure the continuity of Dubai World’s operations’. His report will be eagerly awaited by creditors who are very unhappy about the debt suspension.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/175438-59-billion-dubai-debt-default-could-have-much-wider-implications

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/dubai-default-world-markets/

Then what's this that the market is totally ignoring today?

Creditors of Dubai World are expected to reject a standstill agreement proposed by the company, threatening to drag out negotiations over $26bn (£15bn) worth of the conglomerate's debt.

Advisers involved in the talks tonight said that the process could take months as more than 100 accountants, lawyers, bankers and other professionals descended on Dubai from London. "There won't be a standstill agreement," one said.

Eh, that could get fun. Refusal to stand-still means there's an immediate default, which means the CDS go boom.

Me thinks the weekend could be verrrry interesting, especially given the "hype and hope" trading we've got in the US markets today on the employment situation report.

Question for the Peanut Gallery: Who holds the risk on those CDS, and how much?

http://market-ticker.org/archives/1697-Heh,-I-Thought-Dubai-Was-a-Non-Event.html


* North Korea effectively revalued its currency on Monday (trade 100 old for 1 new - so you would be reduced from $100 million to $1 million overnight)

TOKYO -- Chaos reportedly erupted in North Korea on Tuesday after the government of Kim Jong Il revalued the country's currency, sharply restricting the amount of old bills that could be traded for new and wiping out personal savings.

...

The revaluation replaces 1,000 won notes with 10 won notes, but strictly limits the amount of old currency that can be exchanged, news reports said.

100:1.

You had $100,000, you now have $1,000.

You had $100,000,000 (one hundred million), you now have one million.

Oh, and if you tried to cheat by taking it out of the system, only $40 of it is exchangeable - the rest is worth nothing.

Yes, this is North Korea, and Kim Jung-Il isn't exactly a nice guy.

Now let's ask the question nobody wants to ask:

Is America proceeding inexorably down a path where "the wise guys" - that would be Bernanke, Obama, Geithner - have such a plan "in their back pocket" if the dollar should happen to decline precipitously? If the market refuses to buy bonds and they can't finance spending $1.5 trillion more than they take in via taxes?

http://market-ticker.org/archives/1685-North-Korea-and-Currency-Devaluations.html

* The world is racing to devalue currency in lockstep with US and patch up the holes in the debt wagon - which is falling apart piece by piece.

Meanwhile the debt costs are slowly constricting the life out of the world economy. Time to pay the piper!

Meanwhile, in Asia, the State Bank of Vietnam officially devalued its currency over night. Asia watchers may recall that it also did so in May 2008, just a few months before the rest of the world went "kaboom."

http://seekingalpha.com/article/175263-are-markets-on-the-verge-of-a-breakout-or-meltdown

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- The British government aid to banks totalled 850 billion pounds ($1.4 trillion), according to a report by the country's National Audit Office released Friday.

The report tabulated both the cost of buying up shares in lenders Royal Bank of Scotland /quotes/comstock/13*!rbs/quotes/nls/rbs (RBS 11.42, -0.01, -0.09%) and Lloyds Banking Group /quotes/comstock/13i!lyg/quotes/nls/lyg (LYG 5.22, +0.02, +0.39%) as well as providing 250 billion pounds of guarantees, 280 pounds of insurance on toxic assets, 200 billion pounds of Bank of England loss indemnification and 40 billion pounds of loans. See related London Markets.

The Treasury's net cash outlay for purchases of shares in banks and lending to the banking sector, including Northern Rock which was nationalized in September 2007, will amount to about 117 billion pounds.

How much the taxpayer will lose from the assistance remains in doubt, it said, though the Treasury estimated last April that the loss will range between 20 billion and 50 billion pounds.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/uk-government-bank-rescue-cost-14-trillion-2009-12-04?tool=1&dist=bigcharts&symb=GS&sid=147544

The collapse in global demand brought on by the biggest economic downturn in decades will drive exports down by roughly 9% in volume terms1 in 2009, the biggest such contraction since the Second World War, WTO economists forecast today. The contraction in developed countries will be particularly severe with exports falling by 10% this year. In developing countries, which are far more dependent on trade for growth, exports will shrink by some 2%-3% in 2009, WTO economists say.

Economic contraction in most of the industrial world and steep export declines already posted in the early months of this year by most major economies — particularly those in Asia — makes for an unusually bleak 2009 trade assessment, said the WTO in its annual assessment of global trade.

http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/pres09_e/pr554_e.htm

Chart from June here -
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/files/2009/06/worldtrade.jpg

November -

According to the October 2009 edition of the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook, international trade as measured by total exports of goods and services will decline 11.9 percent this year. Advanced economies’ exports will fall 13.6 percent, while emerging and developing economies face a more modest 7.2 percent slump (Chart 1). Declines of these magnitudes are unprecedented. During the recession of 2001, for example, global trade increased 0.3 percent, largely due to continued export growth in the emerging market economies.

One measure, based on work by the economic historians Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O’Rourke, suggests that declines in international trade have exceeded the losses during the 1930s. Indexing to the peaks in global industrial production in both episodes, global trade fell 32 percent during the first year of the Great Recession, compared with 15 percent during the first year of the Great Depression (Chart 2). Of course, trade continued to ebb for years in the 1930s, an unlikely prospect this time around given the recent improvements in the world economy.

The Baltic Dry Index tells us what is going on with dry bulk commodities, such as coal, iron ore and grain. After peaking at 11,793 on May 20, 2008, the index collapsed to 663 on Dec. 5, then posted gradual improvements over the course of this year. The Harpex index, produced on a weekly basis by the shipbroking firm Harper Petersen, measures the cost of shipping containers. It dropped 76 percent between February 2008 and June 2009.

Of course, the U.S. hasn’t been immune to these developments (Chart 3). U.S. import volume peaked in the third quarter of 2007, when the financial crisis began. Export volume continued to rise until the second quarter of 2008, when the crisis went global.

http://www.dallasfed.org/research/eclett/2009/el0908.html

(Several great charts at link above)

More here -

http://www.efic.gov.au/country/speeches-papers/2009speechesandpapers/Documents/20091116_Speeches%20and%20papers_Economic%20update.pdf

Complete inactivity from the Indian government to help arrest spiraling prices has seen food price inflation at the wholesale level rise 17.47 per cent for the third week of November, up from the previous week's yearly rise of 15.58 per cent.

This followed a surge in the price of basics such as potatoes and onions, which were up 94.17 per cent and 30.89 per cent respectively year-on-year. Pulses were up 37.83 per cent, reports the Hindu Business Line.

The constant stream of rhetoric from the government, insisting that "there's plenty of food to go round, don't panic" must be starting to wear quite thin by now.

And where the hell is that key to the key to that bloody wheat shed??

http://nogger-noggersblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/indian-food-price-inflation-running-at.html

NEW DELHI, Dec 2 — India is bracing itself for nationwide protests against spiralling prices, which analysts say could potentially lead to instability if left unchecked.

Various political parties and trade unions have called for countrywide agitation against the government’s failure to check the price rise.

Two days ago, street protests organised by an opposition party turned violent in the eastern metropolis Kolkata, with the protesters torching two state-owned buses, smashing windows of private cars and stoning office buildings.

Kolkata is the capital of West Bengal and ruled by the communists, who themselves have organised protests against the price increase in various states.

The mounting protests come at a time when the annual food inflation, based on the official wholesale price index, jumped to 15.58 last month.

Indian families complain that the soaring prices of vegetables and other essentials are playing havoc with their household budget.

“My monthly expenditure on provisions, excluding vegetables, has shot up from about 3,000 rupees (RM220) to more than 7,000 rupees,” said Meenakshi Mani, a school teacher in suburban Noida.

Said Aradhana Gupta, a housewife in Rajouri Garden neighbourhood, “Just a few weeks ago, I bought two kilos of potatoes for 35 rupees. Now I have to give the same price for just one kilo.”

One of the drivers behind the rising prices is the uncertain weather: A weak monsoon — the weakest since 1972 — followed by flooding has hit output, squeezing supply and thus driving up prices.

D.K. Joshi, director and principal economist of Crisil credit rating agency, said the depreciation of the Indian rupee also pushed up prices in an import-dependent country like India.

According to N. R. Bhanumurthy, economist at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, a lower yield for summer crops and the rise in global prices helped push up inflation.

“Demand-side pressures might start showing up from December,” he was quoted as saying in Business Standard newspaper.

“Going forward, we expect monthly inflation at 7.8 per cent by the end of March 2010,” he said.

Observers say that such huge price increases in a country, where the average worker earns less than S$3 (RM7.34) a day, could lead to serious political turmoil and instability.

According to figures released by the Commerce ministry, potato prices have more than doubled and onions have become dearer by 27 per cent in the last 11 months. Both potatoes and onions are staple vegetables in Indian households.

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/world/45223-anger-mounts-over-price-hikes-in-india

* US Carry Trade (borrowing cheap US dollars and investing elsewhere) is out of control and on the verge of collapse

Today, however, the U.S. dollar is both cheap, easy to borrow, and “counted on” to fall in value. It’s replaced the yen as a preferred funding source to buy the reasonably stable Australian dollar and/or New Zealand dollar. Not only do you get the income difference, but you’re getting the appreciation of the Aussie dollar versus the U.S. dollar. It’s a double win! (At least that’s the perception!)

And therein lies the danger. Some investors around the world may ratchet up the risk by using leverage to make this investment.

Granted, the prospects for the Aussie dollar look good, as interest rates in Australia are likely to rise in the near future. And the prospects for the U.S. dollar look bad, as U.S. interest rates won’t be rising in the foreseeable future.

Nevertheless, if the U.S. dollar were to suddenly come back into favor, due to any reason (e.g., risk aversion, government intervention, policy change, etc.), investors could rapidly sell off the stocks, currencies and other assets they’ve been buying with borrowed greenbacks.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/162150-etf-winners-of-the-u-s-dollar-carry-trade

The carry trade of borrowing in US dollars and investing in emerging markets for high returns is a liquidity bubble and an accident just waiting to happen. Perhaps the situation in Dubai should be regarded as a wake-up call.

Investor perception of stock market risk has just hit a five-year low in the United States. Any contrarian investor would have to conclude that such monstrous complacency could only come before a market crash, as indeed it did last autumn.

Shocks in emerging markets like Dubai are the flutter of butterfly wings that produce a hurricane elsewhere, and $59 billion is a bit more than a butterfly.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/175438-59-billion-dubai-debt-default-could-have-much-wider-implications

The unwinding of carry trades is a precursor to the emergence of widespread sovereign debt defaults that we forewarned of in our October 2009 InPerspective, the New Normal & Asset Class Cycles, Part I.

Our view is that the speed at which the dollar carry-trade has grown has overvalued risky assets by 20% to 50% since June 2009. Prior to June, assets were re-priced for a world that would avoid the Great Depression Part II. The Dubai Crisis will now cause investors to question the run-up in prices since June 2009, and will fundamentally support a topping process begun in October 2009.

It is our view that carry trades are a zero–sum game. They can work for decades as long was the world is building private debts and nations avoid default. They lose money when the world deleverages.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/162150-etf-winners-of-the-u-s-dollar-carry-trade

The carry trade is further enhanced by naked shorts. For greater explanation of naked shorts and market dynamics see Matt Taibbi's excellent article (highly recommended reading) in Rolling Stone -

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30481512/wall_streets_naked_swindle

Video discussion by Matt -

http://taibbi.rssoundingboard.com/matt-taibbi-on-obamas-economy

"We didn't truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market," says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency -- the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] -- who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country's key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. "They were totally opposed to it," Born says. "That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?"

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/#morelink

* State unemployment funds running out - 25 states borrowing from Federal government (California just crossed $5 billion - 12% of last year's budget) and 8 more states that will go negative in the next 6 months. Last week was record $285 million increase.

As of Nov 3rd -

http://www.propublica.org/special/is-your-states-unemployment-system-in-danger-603

Current -

http://ows.doleta.gov/unemploy/budget.asp#tfloans

* Government debt obligations out of control

The Persian Gulf emirate Dubai is seeking to defer debt payment on nearly $90 billion in liabilities from their state-run companies. Like many other over-leveraged enterprises and some countries across the globe, the government of Dubai made massive bets on real estate that have since gone sour. But no matter where in the world such a case occurs, the ramifications of taking on too much debt are always the same. Unless the party in question can be bailed out, the deleveraging process usually leads to default and insolvency. It makes no difference whether it is a business or a country, the entity in question must always be able to service its debt either through revenue or taxation. If the enterprise or state becomes too extended, they become perilously dependent on a perpetually growing economy and on interest rates that remain perpetually low.

It is not just Latvia, Ukraine and Dubai that need to be concerned. Even great countries like Japan and the United States need to take heed. The examples produced over the last few weeks and months should send a stark warning to the U.S. that we cannot continue to operate with this level of monetary and fiscal profligacy and expect to always have a favorable outcome from our Treasury auctions. I know it is common knowledge that there will always be a healthy appetite for US debt. And that the world will always have an inexhaustible appetite to hold our currency. But remember it was also common knowledge that the value of real estate could never fall on a national basis.

The facts are that we have never been more overleveraged as a country. Our record National debt now stands at over $12 trillion, while total non-financial debt as of Q2 is a record $34.3 trillion. Household debt as a percentage of GDP now stands at 96.5% and that same debt expressed as a percentage of disposable income is at 129%--both just under their high water marks. And perhaps most surprising, given our record low and artificially produced interest rates, is that our Financial Obligation Ratio, (which measures debt service payments as a percentage of disposable income) is less than one percentage point off its all time high and now stands at 16.65%. And of course the icing on the cake is our projected debt over the next 75 years is over $106 trillion.

Our annual budget deficit of $1.4 trillion in 2009 shattered all previous records and the projections are that another trillion dollars per annum will be added over the next 10 years. The amount of debt that needs to be rolled over each year is increasing because of government's decision to finance our debt at the short end of the yield curve. The result of which means each year the U.S. Treasury must sell trillions of dollars in debt into the market -- not just the difference between revenue and expenditures.

http://www.safehaven.com/article-15192.htm

Unprecedented economic collapse? €0.69...

Unsustainable budget deficits? 1 ounce of gold...

Immaculately inexperienced administration? One Larry Summers bowel movement...

For everything else there is Tim Geithner.

And Tim is on fire - here is the sliced bread, er, Treasury auction line up for next week:

* $30 Billion 13-Week Bills December 7
* $31 Billion 26-Week Bills December 7
* $40 Billion 3-Year Bonds December 8
* $21 Billion 10-Year Bonds December 9
* $13 Billion 30-Year Bonds December 10

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/135-billion-pieces-zero-yielding-paper-deck?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29

Zero Hedge recently highlighted the developing risk in the government's outstanding Treasury portfolio, where nearly 40% of all issues mature within the year. As such the roll risk for the US government is massive, and even the smallest unexpected macro blip would make the rolling/refinancing of roughly $5 trillion in debt very problematic. Yet the US government is not alone in this quandary of how to keep T-Bill interest rates at record lows: an earlier report by Moody's demonstrates that the banking system is in far, far worse shape: "we note that average maturities of new debt issuances rated by Moody’s – which we use as an indicator of general trends -- fell from 7.2 years to 4.7 years globally over the last five years. This is the shortest average maturity for new debt at any given point during the 30 years of bank funding history covered by our analysis. As a related matter, we estimate that banks that we rate will face maturing debt of about $10 trillion between now and the end of 2015, $7 trillion of which will occur by the end of 2012."

Let's do the math: the US Gov't needs to roll about $6 trillion (and increasing) every year, Commercial Real Estate has a $3 trillion refi cliff around 2014 and the banking system has a $7 trillion roll maturity by 2012. In other words at or about 2012, or at the time Barack Obama is sure to be enjoying record approval ratings (high or low, your choice) courtesy of 30% unemployment, the American economy will be straddled with not just the ongoing burden of issuing about $2 trillion in debt each year to finance what can only be characterized as a budget concocted by the most hard-core, raving lunatics in the Federal Insane Asylum Reserve, but will have to deal with roughly $15 trillion of rolling maturities.

* One hears such sounds, and what can one say but... "Salieri"
* One fathoms such idiocy, and what can one say but..."Bernanke"

Full Moody's report for those who would rather see that the US economy is going to 10th circle of hell promptly, instead of buying Amazon stock at 1E10^18243 P/E, attached below.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/us-lunatic-asylum-ie-economy-facing-approximately-15-trillion-roll-risk-2012

Charts and data here -

http://www.federalbudget.com/

The Decline: Geography of a Recession

http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html


* FDIC Fund went negative $8.4 billion before yesterday's bankruptcy of Amtrust Financial Corp

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is another major problem for the US. The FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund, which had $10.4 billion at the end of June, has spent so much covering bank failures over the last three months that it is now completely out of money. This means there is no capital set aside to insure the $4.8 trillion of deposits and $320 billion worth of FDIC-guaranteed debt that US banks and other financial companies have issued. The real shocker that we discovered some time ago is that the FDIC ‘funds’ were never even held in a segregated bank account – the fees collected from the banks are accounted for as a part of the government’s general revenues that go towards military spending, bailouts, interest costs and other government programs. The FDIC ‘fund’ merely consisted of IOU’s from the general revenues accounts. And now that the Deposit Insurance

Fund balance as of September 30, 2009 is negative the FDIC wants the institutions to prepay their assessments for all of 2010, 2011 and 2012.13 In effect, the FDICFDIC wants to borrow money from the banks it provides insurance for. Does this not strike you as surreal? Why would anyone have any confidence in anything the guarantees?

http://www.sprott.com/Docs/MarketsataGlance/MAAG_10_2009.pdf

Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- AmTrust Financial Corp., owner of the Cleveland-based AmTrust Bank that expanded rapidly into Florida and Arizona, filed for bankruptcy, blaming investments in home loans that lost value in the recession.

The 120-year-old bank, once known as Ohio Savings Bank, wasn’t included in the filing. The company listed $169.5 million in debt and more than $100 million in assets in a Chapter 11 petition filed yesterday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Cleveland.

“In the past two years, the debtors have diligently attempted to survive the downturn in the economy,” AmTrust Chief Executive Officer Peter Goldberg said in court papers. “Deterioration in mortgage quality and availability slowed the pace of transactions and devalued homes.”

The bankrupt units include AmTrust Real Estate Investment, AmTrust Insurance Agency and AmTrust Properties. The company, with bankrupt and non bankruptcy units, had assets and debt of more than $11 billion each and about 1,700 employees, it said.

AmTrust yesterday sued about a dozen noteholders including Allstate Life Insurance Co. and Midland National Life Insurance Co., seeking the return of $11.8 million in payments made in the 90 days before the bankruptcy filing.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a3vPOaTMacTo

Pretty chart -

http://www.annaly.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/all-fdic-inst.jpg

More from Annaly -

A Wall Street economist was in our office the other day to update us on his forecast. He said he had been on the road a lot lately talking to a wide range of institutional investors, and that “nine-and-a-half out of ten are bearish.” As anyone who reads our blog can tell, we count ourselves in that group.

Rather than take comfort in the fact that we are not alone in our view, the contrarian in us is restless. If the vast majority of professionals are expecting continued weakness, we have to consider the probability of the opposite outcome. After all, the market will always find a way to inflict maximum pain on the maximum number of investors. So we check our assumptions and challenge our conclusions.

This exercise brought to mind economist Herbert Stein’s maxim, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” Usually we apply this rule to asset bubbles, like tech stocks in 1998-99 or home prices in 2004-07, as a way to justify our belief that periods of great overvaluation tend to be followed by periods of mean-reversion. So when we see the record drops in housing starts, home prices and business inventories, or the huge jumps in productivity and the savings rate, we have to remember that reversion to the mean works both ways.

All of the dislocation and contraction that is going on in the economy is painful, and it will last for a while, but it is a prerequisite to the turn in the cycle. While there is clear evidence that progress is being made in correcting the pre-2008 above-the-mean conditions, we are not convinced that the current below-the-mean correction has begun. We are sticking with our view of the world for now-credit performance in residential and commercial mortgages, overleveraged household balance sheets, oversupply in the housing market and structural deficits in municipal and federal finances are still in the process of correcting the bubble’s excess. The turn will come at some point, and we have to be mindful of that fact.

On a related note, how to read today’s jobs numbers? The headline numbers were surprising to the upside, NFP down just 11 thousand, UER falling to 10%. We refer to our blog post of November 13, 2009, in which we suggest that perhaps a more granular view of the employment picture is in order. For that, we cite the following data in today’s report: The average duration of unemployment jumped from 26.9 weeks to 28.5 weeks from October to November. The graph below shows more new highs being set in the persistence of joblessness. It is the percentage of people unemployed who have been out of work for more than 15 weeks and for more than 27 weeks. Perhaps the takeaway from the non-farm payrolls report is that there are fewer people to fire (which is good), but that people who were unemployed in October were still unemployed in November (which is not good).

http://www.annaly.com/blog/

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The government-run fund that safeguards U.S. bank deposits tumbled to a negative balance of $8.2 billion in the third quarter, as the number of problem banks surged by a third to 552.

It was the first shortfall since 1992 when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp was dealing with the failure of hundreds of small savings institutions known as thrifts.

The depleted insurance fund and the sharp rise in troubled institutions underscored the current fragility of the U.S. banking system and the continued weight of bad commercial and residential real estate loans on their balance sheets.

Although the FDIC still has $23.3 billion of cash resources to handle bank failures, its insurance fund balance veered into the red due to an additional $21.7 billion the agency set aside in the third quarter for future bank failures.

The number of banks on the FDIC's "problem list" was the most since 1993.

The FDIC will soon get an infusion of $45 billion through a plan to have the banking industry prepay three years of assessments.

Noncurrent commercial real estate loans, which rose 19.2 percent during the quarter, increasingly are becoming a driver of the banking industry's woes.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5AN36P20091124
bold mine

6 banks down today (12-4-09)

Banks are hurting and the FDIC pulls 3 future years of fees down at once....nice!

AmTrust Bank, Cleveland, OH - $2.0 billion

The Tattnall Bank, Reidsville, GA - $13.9 million

First Security National Bank, Norcross, GA - $30.1 million

The Buckhead Community Bank, Atlanta, GA - $241.4 million

Jury out on the hit to the FDIC for the last two....

* California is in a death spiral

The economy of California is the largest state economy in the United States. As of 2008, the gross state product (GSP) is about $1.846 trillion, the largest in the United States. California is responsible for 13 percent of the United States gross domestic product (GDP).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California

Let us look at 10 charts as to why the California economy and real estate market will see no recovery in 2010.

http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/finance-budget-economy-2010-10-charts-showing-why-there-will-be-no-economic-or-housing-recovery-for-california-in-2010-unemployment-at-12/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DrHousingBubble-HowILearnedToLoveSocal+%28Dr.+Housing+Bubble+-+How+I+learned+to+Love+SoCal


OK let's dive into a little analysis....here is California's latest budget summary -

http://www.sco.ca.gov/Press-Releases/2009/11-09summary.pdf

On page 3 you can see actual tax revenue collections for the fiscal year through the end of October. Retail Sales and Use Tax collections total $7.439 billion which works out to an average daily collection of $60.075 million. Sales tax is 30.4% of California's revenue. Now look at the debt currently being incurred for funding current unemployment claims as noted above. From Nov 3rd to Dec 2nd California borrowed almost $363 million. That works out to an average of $12.962 million per day....or about 21.3% of California's daily sales tax revenue.

****Remember this is debt incurred over and above the unemployment insurance revenue currently being collected from businesses in California.

More on Cali tax statistics -

http://www.dof.ca.gov/finance_bulletins/2009/november/

http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/topic/15.html

Before the economy went bust, California voters authorized multibillion-dollar charges on the state's infrastructure credit card.

They approved generational investments in roads, schools and levees, as well as hospitals and stem-cell research. At the time, fiscal experts projected that California at most would have to spend roughly 6 percent of its annual budget on payments.

But after an economic collapse, estimates now show that debt service could consume as much as 10 percent of the annual general fund budget by 2014-15 — an "unprecedented" ratio, according to the Legislative Analyst's Office.

The latest debt warning comes weeks after lawmakers and Schwarzenegger placed a new $11.1 billion water bond on next November's ballot. Backers of the measure say the state desperately needs a water system overhaul.

Until this year, the state had not spent more than 5.7 percent of its general fund on debt, according to Department of Finance records dating back to 1976. The ratio now stands at 6.7 percent.

Treasurer Bill Lockyer warned in a report last month that a 10 percent debt ratio "would require cutting even deeper into crucial services already reeling from billions of dollars in reductions." Fiscal conservatives warn that it also increases pressure on lawmakers to raise taxes.

"It's a zero-sum game," added Lockyer spokesman Tom Dresslar. "Every additional dollar you spend on debt service is a dollar you cannot spend to educate your kids, provide health care, protect the environment or fight fires."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/economy/story/79387.html

California's current debt service is 6.7% and rising. Meanwhile revenue's are falling and other obligations like debt for unemployment aren't included as payments won't begin until the end of 2011.

California's unemployment insurance fund is expected to end the year $7.4 billion in the hole. To keep benefits flowing, the state already has borrowed $4.7 billion from the federal government, which it must repay.

Interest payments have been waived until 2011 as part of the federal stimulus package. However, interest is accruing at a 5 percent annual rate and will have to be paid in 2011, when it could be nearing $750 million. The money would have to be drawn from the state's general fund, which is facing a $20.7 billion deficit.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/opinion/ci_13879387

Let's be realistic. The economy isn't going to bounce back in 2010...best case scenario is we flat line. The state will be $7.4 billion in the hole just in unemployment insurance borrowing....not even diving into the multitude of other debt serving. In the best case scenario 2010 will add at least an additional $5 billion in unemployment debt (that's very conservative as the state is currently adding over a billion per month). Now add in another billion or two for interest costs (currently being accrued) and you are looking at $14-$15 billion cash out JUST FOR UNEMPLOYMENT in 2011. That's more than 10% of the current projected 2010/2011 budget.

One of the stunning points found was that 93 percent of option ARM borrowers decided to go with the negative amortization option otherwise known as the “minimum payment” option. This is something we have established from many fronts and data sets. The bottom line is the vast majority went with negative amortization and this grew the actual balance owed. Yet one of the new findings in the report was that 78 percent of all outstanding option ARMs have yet to hit major recast points. Given that 58 percent of option ARMs are here in California, this is a one state wrecking ball:

In total, some 350,000 option ARMs are still active nationwide. Over 200,000 of these loans are here in California. The most risky option as we have established with option ARMs is the negative amortization payment:

Now why was this payment such a poor choice? Well as the California housing market fell by 50 percent from its peak, the actual balance on many option ARMs was going up. So not only is the home underwater from the initial starting point, the loan taken out on the home has increased on 90+ percent of these borrowers. This is like negative equity squared. So deep are these loans in negative equity territory that not even HAMP can save them. Oh, and speaking of HAMP, it is turning out to be a colossal failure as expected:

“(NY Times) Capitol Hill aides in regular contact with senior Treasury officials say a consensus has emerged inside the department that the program has proved inadequate, necessitating a new approach. But discussions have yet to reach the point of mapping out new options, the aides say.

The option ARM had such an allure for the gold rush California home speculator because it sidestepped that tiny little caveat of income. It allowed maximum leverage without the valid income support. 80 percent of option ARMs went stated income. In other words, people made crap up like saying they made $200,000 when they were pulling $75,000 to qualify for that $600,000 home:

“(CNN) There is another little problem that many option-ARM borrowers seeking refinancing would face: “Upwards of 80% of were stated-income loans,” said Westerback.

These are the so-called “liar loans” in which lenders did not verify that borrowers earned as much money as they said they did. Lenders may not be able to modify mortgages because many of the borrowers’ income could not stand up to the scrutiny. Borrowers may also not want to go through underwriting again because they could be held legally liable for deliberate inaccuracies on their original applications.

Add to those conditions the still fragile economy and high unemployment rates, and you have a recipe for disaster.”

If you look at the Inland Empire and the Phoenix metro area, they virtually reflect one another. In fact, both areas have negative equity rates of 54% of all mortgage holders. This is incredible. Half of all borrowers are underwater in these big regions. But look at the largest block of mortgages in California clustered in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area. 1.5 million mortgages and 400,000+ are underwater. You think this is going to bode well for home prices as option ARMs hit their recast dates in stride from 2010 to 2012?

http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/option-arms-come-back-into-center-stage-350000-active-option-arms-with-over-200000-in-california-73-percent-of-option-arms-have-yet-to-hit-recast-dates/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DrHousingBubble-HowILearnedToLoveSocal+(Dr.+Housing+Bubble+-+How+I+learned+to+Love+SoCal)
See link above for the charts.

GAME OVER! Time to pay the piper!

CA current budget highlights -

http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/Enacted/BudgetSummary/FullBudgetSummary.pdf

More on Cali's downward spiral here -

http://yophat.blogspot.com/2009/01/californification.html

* H1N1 or swine or whatever government/military concocted potion is racing around the world

446 Dead in Ukraine - D225G and Deaths Spread
Recombinomics Commentary 02:20
December 2, 2009
1,937,292 Influenza/ARI

116,982 Hospitalized

446 Dead

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/12030901/Ukraine_446.html

Interactive map of outbreak in Ukraine -
http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com/flu/gmap0910300830.html?lat=50.064191736659104&lon=31.640625&zoom=6

Interactive map of the World -
http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com/

VANCOUVER, B.C. – B.C.’s major hospitals are overflowing with Swine Flu patients and a number are operating at or over capacity, Vancouverite has learnt.

42 patients in B.C. are on ventilators and intensive care units are under severe pressure at a number of key hospitals.

Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, Richmond Hospital, Kelowna General Hospital and Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops are operating at capacity, health ministry spokeswoman Michelle Stewart confirmed Sunday morning.

“Pressure points at Royal Columbian Hospital and Richmond Hospital, both of which are operating overcapacity,” said Steward.

“Interior Health indicates overall improvement in ICU capacity, however Kelowna General Hospital and Royal Inland are at capacity,” she said.

“Emergency Departments remain busy across the province; Northern Health (Prince George) experiencing a significant increase in ED volumes since Nov. 10th. A surge area has been opened to address additional volume,” added Stewart.

Across Canada, hundreds of people have been admitted to hospital suffering from severe Swine Flu complications. The government of Canada reported over 1,300 admissions between Nov. 1 and Nov. 7.

Hundreds more have been admitted since then.

http://ukraineplague.blogspot.com/2009/12/bc-hospitals-over-capacity-with-swine.html

"An unusual number of severe allergies to the vaccine have been detected in Canada," World Health Organisation spokesman Thomas Abraham told AFP.

"The Canadian authorities are conducting the appropriate investigations on the vaccines" and "recalled a batch of vaccine from GSK."

"We need to understand what happened in Canada," he added.

GlaxoSmithKline spokeswoman Gwenan White told AFP that the affected doses of its Aprepanrix vaccine had caused reactions to the heart and lungs.

White added that some 172,000 doses are involved, although she declined to reveal how many of those had already been used.

http://www.physorg.com/news178269887.html

Late last week, KCCI in Des Moines aired an interview with Dr. Gregory Schmunk, medical examiner for Polk County. Schmunk accurately stated that there are additional deaths in Iowa from H1N1 that were undiagnosed. During the report, Schmunk described the lungs he was seeing during autopsy as “very heavy, wet” and “with a lot of blood in them.”

The report — especially the description of the lungs — has been circulating on the Internet since it aired and has fueled speculation that perhaps the H1N1 virus in Iowa had mutated. Earlier this year, according to analysis of genetic testing done by the World Health Organization, the virus in the Ukraine had mutated to a strain similar to that of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. In particular, the mutation, casually referred to as D225G, causes bleeding in the lungs and has been described as a decimating lung infection.

Carver-Kimm said state examiners do not believe that any mutation has occurred in the H1N1 virus in Iowa.

http://iowaindependent.com/22678/h1n1-deaths-may-be-underreported-but-not-because-of-mutation

Troubling Reports Out Of Iowa And North Carolina Raise Fears That Deadly H1N1 Swine Flu Mutations Have Already Reached The United States

New reports from Iowa and North Carolina are raising concerns that the deadly H1N1 swine flu mutations that have been confirmed by the WHO in Ukraine, Norway and elsewhere have already reached the United States. In Iowa, a report that doctors are seeing "very heavy, wet hemorrhagic lungs, lungs with a lot of blood in them" in H1N1 patients is creating concerns among health experts that the deadly Ukraine H1N1 has already spread there. In addition, a report of Tamiflu-resistant H1N1 swine flu in North Carolina is raising questions about the ability of medical authorities to combat H1N1 if thousands of people do start dying. If deadly H1N1 swine flu mutations have already reached the United States, what does that mean? Doctors in Ukraine have been reporting that victims of H1N1 there are experiencing violent hemorrhaging in their lungs. As the patients near death, their lungs reportedly become as "black as charcoal" and literally begin to disintegrate. Will this start happening soon inside the U.S.?

The news report causing the most concern today is the one about H1N1 patients in Iowa. Commenting on a dramatic spike in H1N1 deaths in Iowa, Dr. Gregory Schmunk told KCCI news that what doctors there are seeing "is very heavy, wet hemorrhagic lungs, lungs with a lot of blood in them."

Hemorrhagic lungs that are filled with blood?

That sounds precisely like what is taking place in Ukraine.

Last week, the WHO confirmed that an H1N1 mutation had been discovered in Ukraine. This H1N1 mutation involved a receptor binding domain change, and it is apparently causing the H1N1 virus to become much more virulent.

Just like the new report in Iowa, many victims of H1N1 in Ukraine have been experiencing violent hemorrhaging in the lungs. Temperatures inside the lungs of patients in Ukraine have been reported to be as high as 135 degrees Fahrenheit. As the patient near death, the lungs turn to mush and literally become as black as charcoal.

In fact, one doctor in Western Ukraine was quoted as saying the following about what is happening to the lungs of these patients.....

"We have carried out post mortems on two victims and found their lungs are as black as charcoal. They look like they have been burned. It’s terrifying."

If that wasn't bad enough, the WHO has now confirmed that the same H1N1 mutation has shown up in Norway.

Norway's Institute of Public Health has released a statement in which they announced that this mutation "could possibly...cause more severe disease" because it apparently infects tissue deeper in the airway than usual.

Not only that, but today Hong Kong's Department of Health has confirmed that it has found the same mutation in a H1N1 flu virus sample as the one detected in Norway recently.

Hong Kong is on the other side of the world from Ukraine and Norway.

What in the world is going on?

Nobody knows for sure, but the truth is that the increasing similarities between the current H1N1 outbreak and the 1918 "Spanish flu" outbreak are becoming too striking to ignore.

Firstly, both the current outbreak and the 1918 Spanish flu are from the H1N1 family.

Secondly, both the current outbreak and the 1918 Spanish flu have the same mutation that is currently being reported in Ukraine, Norway and Hong Kong.

Thirdly, the hemorrhagic deaths that victims are experiencing in Ukraine closely mirror the kind of deaths experienced by victims of the 1918 Spanish flu. Just consider the following description of 1918 Spanish flu deaths from Wikipedia.....

"One of the most striking of the complications was hemorrhage from mucous membranes, especially from the nose, stomach, and intestine. Bleeding from the ears and petechial hemorrhages in the skin also occurred." The majority of deaths were from bacterial pneumonia, a secondary infection caused by influenza, but the virus also killed people directly, causing massive hemorrhages and edema in the lung."

You would think this stunning information would be so important that the mainstream media would be all over it, but sadly that is not the case. Instead they seem intent on covering the opening of the "New Moon" movie and whatever Barack Obama had for breakfast this morning.

But not only is the mutation discussed above a tremendous concern, but now there are confirmed reports that Tamiflu-resistant H1N1 is spreading.

Recently a Tamiflu-resistant strain of the H1N1 swine flu was reported to have been discovered in Wales, and now a Tamiflu-resistant cluster of the H1N1 swine flu has been reported in North Carolina.

However, medical authorities don't seem overly concerned. Dr. Alicia Frye, epidemiologist in the CDC's flu division, said in a prepared statement that "at this time we don't have any information that should raise concerns for the general population."

If the best drugs medical authorities have will soon not work against H1N1, perhaps the public should be concerned.

Meanwhile the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention has announced that swine flu deaths in Europe are doubling every two weeks.

Swine flu deaths in Europe are doubling every two weeks?

Perhaps the mainstream media should start paying attention to this.

All of this is happening at a time when environmental extremists are pushing the "overpopulation" myth harder than ever. In fact, the United Nations Population Fund has just released its annual State of the World Population Report in which it openly calls for reducing world population growth as a way to combat climate change. The reality is that if a deadly H1N1 mutation did kill tens of millions, many very sick environmental extremists would actually applaud. Increasingly, many in the environmental community are viewing humanity itself as a "disease" that needs to be eradicated for the good of the earth.

Talk about a dangerous belief system.

If you have any additional intel on the spread of H1N1 mutations around the world please let us know. As always, we invite your questions and comments.....

http://thebirdflupandemic.com/archives/troubling-reports-out-of-iowa-and-north-carolina-raise-fears-that-deadly-h1n1-swine-flu-mutations-have-already-reached-the-united-states

We have lived through a most interesting experience. From the very end of October until about a week ago, a large Central European nation, the Ukraine, was experiencing what could only be called a man-made biological warfare event in the western part of the Ukraine. At its height, 200,000 people were becoming ill a day! Final official figures indicate that over 1 1/2 million people became sick in a short time, and about 150,000 were hospitalized (over half of which are still in the hospital), but less than 400 died.

As I said at the time, there were really two stories. The first story was the outbreak of what was/is called "Ukrainian Plague". The second story was the fact that the mainstream news media totally ignored the story for the first couple of weeks; with British newspapers (and some American media) finally covering the story only in the last week or so.

We are still not really sure what was/is the cause of the illness. Some people are insisting that this was a 'recombined' or a mutated version of A/H1N1 Swine Flu with a key but small change (D225G receptor site) being responsible for the massive spike in cases and the rather horrific nature of some of the cases. In some fatal cases, the lungs turned to mush, were full of blood and coal black in color, and recorded an internal temperature of 130F to 135F. Many doctors called this Pneumonic Plague, others said it was some type of hemorrhagic fever, others called it hemorrhagic influenza, yet others said it was a type of hemorrhagic pneumonia. These were descriptions based on what the doctors were seeing in the very ill patients.

The World Health Organization (WHO) refused to release genetic sequences for almost two weeks and when it did, said that the disease was simply A/H1N1. WHO did not explain how the Swine Flu, which had been showing itself to be much less dangerous than normal seasonal flu, was suddenly causing such a massive spike in cases or how the mild disease could cause the hemorrhagic effect in lung tissue without a major mutation.

There are a couple of major aspects to the story that are 'most interesting'. In mid-August a dual national Israeli-American citizen, a Joseph Moshe who is an expert on biological warfare and reported to be a Mossad agent, called in to Dr. True Ott's national radio talk show and claimed that Baxter International was getting ready to release a 'Plague' from their Ukrainian facility. I am not sure, but this call might have taken place just after the show was over. In any case, he was arrested on his way to meet with an Assistant US Attorney to report his claims. The arrest was carried on television and it was reported that he was flown out of the US to Israel. Now it appears that he was charged with a minor offense and may be in a California state mental hospital.

The other 'most interesting' aspect to this story is the eyewitness accounts by hundreds, if not thousands, in the western Ukraine who saw light aircraft during the day of October 29 spraying something over Ukrainian cities. The government denied doing this and said that no one had permission to spray the cities. Within hours of this spraying, people began to get very ill. In fact the beginning of the spike of the illnesses from "Ukrainian Plague' is connected to the time of the spraying of the western Ukrainian cities with some unknown material.

If this is a 'recombination' or 'mutation' of Swine Flu, WHY HAS THE GROWTH IN THE NUMBER OF CASES DECLINED SO DRAMATICALLY? It is said that the changed virus (A/H1N1) has spread to Norway, and perhaps Poland and the eastern part of the Ukraine. If so, and the D225G change is the reason for the massive spike in sicknesses in the western Ukraine and the hemorrhagic lungs in the worst cases, why are we not seeing such large numbers of very sick people in Norway, Poland, eastern Ukraine, etc.?

Something rotten is going on here! But the true reason for what happened, and the people responsible are not publicly known at this time. Nor is any clear indication known as to what is apt to happen in the future with regards to "Ukrainian Plague".

UPDATE:

A few hours after writing the above, a reader sent me this story: Polk County Coroner - H1N1 Deaths Understated ~ link ~ "In the autopsy, what we're seeing is very heavy, wet hemorrhagic lungs, lungs with a lot of blood in them," said Dr. Gregory Schmunk. He said the official count of seven H1N1 deaths is inaccurate, but patient rights laws prohibit him from giving specific numbers.

Autopsies - Wet Hemorrhagic lungs with a lot of blood in them - You think that is Ukraine? NO - It is Iowa in U.S.! ~ link ~ "I live just NW of Des Moines about 45 miles. There have been low flowing helicopters over my town for the past week. I got woke up about 3 am this morning by a low flying plane, I wasn't able to see what it was when I looked out." (Comment from a reader in this article.)

Further UPDATE:

Did we see a biotoxin 'lay-down' in the Ukraine [that killed and seriously injured almost 200,000] coupled with a Swine Flu A/H1N1 spraying [that caused a massive spike in Swine Flu illnesses that were not too bad in intensity/level of sickness, but amounted to about a million and a half people infected in a few days]?

Is this false flag pandemic being used to lock-down the population for a war on Iran? Iran being a known Advanced BioWar "superpower". Is this supposed to keep the West from being a target for an Iranian Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) Strategic Counter-Force attack based on bioterrorism, once Israel and/or the USA strikes at Iran? Of course, "they" are apt to use this to 'chip us'. Perhaps even planting a micro chip in us in the "vaccine" shot itself as some have recently suggested ~ link. IS THE VACCINE THE CHIPPING ....the actual surgical outpatient emplacement of a RFID micro chip in the so called "vaccine" ....is this not the actual Biblical MARK OF THE BEAST? Or is something else going on here?

http://europebusines.blogspot.com/2009/11/so-what-really-happened-in-ukraine_23.html

Based on autopsies, we have come to the conclusion: it’s not pneumonia, but cardiopulmonary insufficiency and cardiogenic shock … The virus enters directly into the lungs, there is bleeding … Antibiotics should not be used …

Why do we have such a high mortality rate in the country? Because people are going to pharmacies to get medicine instead of going to their doctors to be treated … No it is not pneumonic plague. It’s all nonsense … antibiotics do not help … Those with strong immune systems will survive. People with weak immune systems will succumb to the illness … Face Masks provide 30% extra protection. Wearing glasses gives an additional 10% protection, that is 40%, because the virus penetrates the mucose membranes.

The Head of the Chernivtsi regional forensic bureau, Professor Victor Bachinsky PhD, makes a strong statement: all the victims of the virus in Bukovina (22 persons aged 20 to 40 years) died not from bilateral (double) pneumonia, as previously thought, but as a result of viral distress syndrome, i.e. the total destruction of the lungs. We caught up with Professor Bachinsky, to find out how he came to this conclusion, and how people can protect themselves from this disease.

Professor, you said earlier that the virus, from which many people have died – is a mixture of types of parainfluenza and influenza A/H1N1. How do you cure this disease?

The question of how to treat this virus is not up to me. I am a pathologist. I just found out what it is and made an exact diagnosis. It is important to provide the correct treatment based on diagnosis.

There are strict protocols and standards of treatment in medicine. If a doctor treats a patient who dies, their relatives can make a complaint that they were not treated properly (misdiagnosed).The Ministry of Health has set the protocols and standards of treatment for each diagnosis. If diagnosed correctly, the treatment should be correct …

In the Chernivtsi region 18 people have died. We studied all the history and evidence from this disease, preclinical, clinical, resuscitation. When we perform an autopsy organs and tissues have histological studies (cell analysis) and we concluded that it was not pneumonia, and has no relation to pneumonia whatsoever.
These results are the foundation to ensure that doctors who treat this disease all over Ukraine, change their tactics and standards of care.

Can this new virus be cured?

It depends on the immune system. If a person’s immune system is strong, they will overcome it. There are people who carry this strain of H1N1 and remain on their feet and don’t even realise they are sick.

Antibiotics definitely should not be taken. Antibiotics are the reason we have such a high mortality and infection rate in this country, because people go to the pharmacy, describe their symptoms to the pharmacist and ask for drugs. They buy antibiotics, take them, this lowers their immune system and as a result they become sick. If prescriptions were required to buy these medications, like in other countries, this would not have happened. It is the ability to buy antibiotics over the counter without a prescription which has done so much harm to the State.

During autopsies, what did the lungs look like? Were they really black, which gave rise to so much talk of pulmonary plague?

No, they are not black … This is not pneumonic plague. It’s all nonsense. Pneumonic plague has a very different morphology. We have, for example, 60 thousand people who became sick and 23 have died. With pulmonary plague, we would now have a mortality rate of 59 thousand …

This is a viral attack that destroys the lungs.

It turns out that not only in Bukovina, but also throughout the Ukraine people did not die from pneumonia, but from this toxic strain?

Yes, It’s not pneumonia! This destruction of the lungs. This strain is very toxic, and if the immune system is weak, there is bleeding in the lungs. In the lungs there is a tiny structure – acinus, which looks like a bunch of grapes. When you breathe, oxygen enters this tiny “bunch of grapes” ( pulmonary alveoli ). On the surface of the acinus are the capillaries, where red blood cells saturate with oxygen and give blood, which supplies all tissues and organs in the body.

And once the virus enters the lungs – hemorrhaging begins immediately in the acinus. A continuous hemorrhage … It takes several hours. In the blood fibrin is formed, and from it – giolinovaya membrane, resembling a plastic bag. It envelops the acinus, and the person breathes in oxygen, but it is not transferred to the tissues. And people just gasp. There is a cardio-pulmonary insufficiency and cardiogenic shock. People die of cardiogenic shock. And there is no pneumonia. Pneumonia – an inflammation, which is treated with antibiotics. Antibiotics cannot help at any stage. There should be absolutely different treatment.

And how about “Tamiflu” – does it help?

This is not an antibiotic, it is an antiviral drug, which should be applied on the second or third day of the disease. But you can not use Tamiflu as a preventitive, because it is toxic.

What are the best measures to resist the disease? Is it advisable to use a mask, garlic, vitamin C?

The primary method of prevention is a face mask. This give 30% extra protection. If you wear glasses – it is 40%, because the virus enters through the mucous membranes.

It is necessary to improve the human immune system. Not only now, but in general. Garlic, onions, wild rose, viburnum (guelder rose), raspberries, citrus fruit, honey, and other fruits and vegetables – whatever you want. Those with a strong immune system will survive. Those with weaker immune systems will succumb to the disease.

We have a lot of people in Ukraine who like shopping at the open markets. If we can avoid open markets, the less people will be in contact with each other and more lives will be saved.

You have contacted the Health Ministry and advised them to review the standards for treatment of patients. What did they say?

We sent them all our data, the necessary protocols and standards of treatment, our diagnosis. But it is clear that decisions cannot be instantaneous.

And why until now has nobody else known about this disease? What were the leading specialists in the Ministry of Health doing all this time?

Perhaps this is due to the fact that there are scientists who are working on a purely theoretical basis. And there are scientists who have seen the autopsy results. I practice as head of the regional forensic bureau and as a professor. The fact that we have established this diagnosis – it is not just to my credit, and this is not my personal opinion. This is the opinion of specialists, morphologists and doctors in Bukovina. There are five professors in our group – I just head the group.

Professor Victor Bachinsky, PhD., is a coroner in the Chernivtsi region of Ukraine. He provides evidence which indicates that parainfluenza mixed with the H1N1 virus, not pneumonic plague, has caused so much illness in Ukraine. Yet more strains of influenza which have combined, a strong indication that we are dealing with a laboratory developed bio-weapon.

http://www.oilforimmigration.org/facts/?p=4523

See more at my blog post on Ukraine -

http://yophat.blogspot.com/2009/11/ukraine-epidemic.html

The Library -
http://labvirus.wordpress.com/media-library/

Did I miss anything? Oh yeah...appears to be plenty of stockpiling for a tangle...

DUBAI, UAE — China, France and Russia are increas­ingly aggres­sive in court­ing cus­tomers for their mil­i­tary prod­ucts, but it is the U.S. that is rak­ing in the big dol­lars — and increas­ingly so.

What’s more, the U.S.’s improv­ing rela­tion­ship with India could sig­nal that record high lev­els of mil­i­tary exports are not just an aber­ra­tion but are sus­tain­able. This prospect would bring relief to U.S. defense com­pa­nies, which face the pos­si­bil­ity of shrink­ing mod­ern­iza­tion projects when Washington starts focus­ing on cut­ting its mas­sive bud­get deficit.

A decade ago, the U.S. booked about $10 bil­lion in for­eign mil­i­tary sales (FMS). When those con­tracts reached $28 bil­lion in fis­cal 2008, many in the Pentagon thought it was an aber­ra­tion, espe­cially given the $10 bil­lion jump from the year before. But there has been no sign of a letup. Vice Adm. Jeffrey A. Wieringa, direc­tor of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, says the value of FMS com­mit­ments signed dur­ing the last fis­cal year reached $38.1 bil­lion, and this year’s total could top $50 bil­lion based on esti­mates of deals in the nego­ti­at­ing pipeline.

http://defensetech.org/2009/12/04/us-defense-exports-still-dominate-market/

One last item of interest...

* CLIMATEGATE - Global Green Fraud

It's now official. Much of the hype about global warming is nothing but a complete scam.

Thanks to hackers (or an insider) who broke into The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and downloaded 156 megaybytes of data including extremely damaging emails, we now know that data supporting the global warming thesis was completely fabricated.

Inquiring minds are reading Hacked: Hadley CRU FOI2009 Files on The Reference Frame by Luboš Motl, a physicist from the Czech Republic.

The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), usually working together with the Hadley center (recall HadCRUT3 global temperatures), has been hacked.

So far, the most interesting file I found in the "documents" directory is pdj_grant_since1990.xls (Google preview, click) which shows that since 1990, Phil Jones has collected staggering 13.7 million British pounds ($22.6 million) in grants.

Phil Jones, the main criminal according to this correspondence, has personally confirmed that the website was hacked and that the documents are authentic. See Briefing Room.

He says that he "can't remember" what he meant by "hiding the decline." Well, let me teach him some English. First, dictionaries say that hide means

1. to conceal from sight; prevent from being seen or discovered: Where did she hide her jewels?
2. to obstruct the view of; cover up: The sun was hidden by the clouds.
3. to conceal from knowledge or exposure; keep secret: to hide one's feelings.
4. to conceal oneself; lie concealed: He hid in the closet.
5. British. a place of concealment for hunting or observing wildlife; hunting blind.
6. hide out, to go into or remain in hiding: After breaking out of jail, he hid out in a deserted farmhouse.

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/11/hackers-prove-global-warming-is-scam.html

Here’s what the Times has had to say on the subject:

E-mails allegedly written by some of the world’s leading climate scientists have been stolen by hackers and published on websites run by climate change sceptics.

The sceptics claim that the e-mails are evidence that scientists manipulated data in order to strengthen their argument that human activities were causing global warming.

(Yep – definitely an improvement on their earlier, non-existent coverage; but not exactly pointing up the scandalousness of this scandal).

And the Independent:

(Yep. Nada).

And here’s how The New York Times (aka Pravda) reported it:

Hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.

(Yep. That’s right. It has only apparently caused a stir among ’skeptics’. Everyone else can rest easy. Nothing to see here.)

And here’s how the Guardian has reported it:

Hundreds of private emails and documents allegedly exchanged between some of the world’s leading climate scientists during the past 13 years have been stolen by hackers and leaked online, it emerged today.

The computer files were apparently accessed earlier this week from servers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, a world-renowned centre focused on the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change.

(Oh. I get it. It’s just a routine data-theft story, not a scandal. And a chance to remind us of the CRU’s integrity and respectability. And – see below – to get in a snarky, ‘let’s have a dig at the deniers’ quote from Greenpeace).

A spokesman for Greenpeace said: “If you looked through any organisation’s emails from the last 10 years you’d find something that would raise a few eyebrows. Contrary to what the sceptics claim, the Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences, Nasa and the world’s leading atmospheric scientists are not the agents of a clandestine global movement against the truth. This stuff might drive some web traffic, but so does David Icke.”

Here’s the Washington Post:

Hackers broke into the electronic files of one of the world’s foremost climate research centers this week and posted an array of e-mails in which prominent scientists engaged in a blunt discussion of global warming research and disparaged climate-change skeptics.

The skeptics have seized upon e-mails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Britain as evidence that scientific data have been rigged to make it appear as if humans are causing global warming. The researchers, however, say the e-mails have been taken out of context and merely reflect an honest exchange of ideas.

(Ah, so what the story is really about is ’skeptics’ causing trouble. Note how as high as the second par the researchers are allowed by the reporter to get in their insta-rebuttal, lest we get the impression that the scandal in any way reflects badly on them).

Here is the BBC:

E-mails reportedly from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), including personal exchanges, appeared on the internet on Thursday.

A university spokesman confirmed the email system had been hacked and that information was taken and published without permission.

An investigation was underway and the police had been informed, he added.

(Ah yes, another routine data-theft story so dully reported – “the police had been informed, he added” – that you can’t even be bothered to reach the end to find out what information was stolen).

Meanwhile, the Climategate scandal (and I do apologise for calling it that, but that’s how the internet works: you need obvious, instantly memorable, event-specific search terms) continues to set the Blogosphere ablaze.

For links to all the latest updates on this, I recommend Marc Morano’s invaluable Climate Depot site.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017451/climategate-how-the-msm-reported-the-greatest-scandal-in-modern-science/

Climate Depot -

http://www.climatedepot.com/

Site with links where you download it all yourself -

http://www.prisonplanet.com/climatic-research-unit-hacked-e-mails-data.html

Among the thousands of emails and documents hacked or leaked from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University last week are several references to an agenda to shut down scientific debate on global warming by stifling counter-evidence from other scientists.

Dating back to 1996, the emails show that both U.S. and U.K. based scientists referred to any research offering alternate viewpoints as “disinformation”,“misinformation” or “crap” that needs to be kept out of the public domain.

The emails include deliberations amongst the scientists regarding efforts to make sure that reports from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change include their own research and exclude that of dissenting scientists.

In one of the emails, Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University We “will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

This is a startling quote, given that Jones and Mann as climate scientists have the authority to review papers and determine whether they are eligible to be published by scientific journals.

Mann even discussed how to destroy a journal that had published papers with contrary views, telling his colleagues that he believed it had been “hijacked by a few skeptics on the editorial board” who had “staged a coup”.

“Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.” Mann wrote.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/climategate-peer-review-system-was-hijacked-by-warming-alarmists.html

A week after my colleague James Delingpole , on his Telegraph blog, coined the term "Climategate" to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.

The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Professor Philip Jones, the CRU's director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC's key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.

Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.

Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.

Since 2003, however, when the statistical methods used to create the "hockey stick" were first exposed as fundamentally flawed by an expert Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre , an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann's supporters, calling themselves "the Hockey Team", and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case.

The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC's scientific elite, including not just the "Hockey Team", such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC's 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore's ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself.

There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre's blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt's blog Watts Up With That ), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.

They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based.

This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones's refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got "lost". Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6679082/Climate-change-this-is-the-worst-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation.html

In my previous post on Climategate I blithely said that nothing in the climate science email dump surprised me much. Having waded more deeply over the weekend I take that back.

The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering. And, as Christopher Booker argues, this scandal is not at the margins of the politicised IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] process. It is not tangential to the policy prescriptions emanating from what David Henderson called the environmental policy milieu [subscription required]. It goes to the core of that process.

One theme, in addition to those already mentioned about the suppression of dissent, the suppression of data and methods, and the suppression of the unvarnished truth, comes through especially strongly: plain statistical incompetence. This is something that Henderson's study raised, and it was also emphasised in the Wegman report on the Hockey Stick, and in other independent studies of the Hockey Stick controversy. Of course it is also an ongoing issue in Steve McIntyre's campaign to get hold of data and methods. Nonetheless I had given it insufficient weight. Climate scientists lean very heavily on statistical methods, but they are not necessarily statisticians. Some of the correspondents in these emails appear to be out of their depth. This would explain their anxiety about having statisticians, rather than their climate-science buddies, crawl over their work.

I'm also surprised by the IPCC's response. Amid the self-justification, I had hoped for a word of apology, or even of censure. (George Monbiot called for Phil Jones to resign, for crying out loud.) At any rate I had expected no more than ordinary evasion. The declaration from Rajendra Pachauri that the emails confirm all is as it should be is stunning. Science at its best. Science as it should be. Good lord. This is pure George Orwell. And these guys call the other side "deniers".

http://clivecrook.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/11/more_on_climategate.php

Now ask yourself why? I like to follow the money....these guys did this for a financial gain. Who paid them and why?

Washington, D.C. – Senator Jay Rockefeller applauded the new carbon capture pilot plant in South Charleston, which was formally dedicated today and is the result of a partnership between Dow Chemical and Alstom Power.

“The path forward for West Virginia coal hinges on new coal technologies, including carbon capture and storage. It is essential to meeting global challenges and securing the long-term future of coal. This pilot plant in South Charleston for testing carbon capture is a promising step in that direction, and I applaud Dow and Alstom for their work,” Rockefeller said. “Our state has a leading role to play in developing and deploying both of these technologies, and making coal a cleaner energy source for years to come.”

Rockefeller is a longtime champion of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. Earlier this year, he helped secure $3.4 billion for the Fossil Energy Research and Development programs, including CCS research, in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

http://rockefeller.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=317677&

It’s unthinkable. Big Government has spent $79 billion on the climate industry,
3000 times more than Big-oil. Leading climate scientists won’t debate in public
and won’t provide their data. What do they hide? When faced with legal requests
they say they’ve “lost” the original global temperature records. Thousands of
scientists are rising in protest against the scare campaign. Meanwhile $126 billion
turned over in carbon markets in 2008 and bankers get set to make billions.

http://joannenova.com.au/globalwarming/skeptics-handbook-ii/the_skeptics_handbook_II-sml.pdf

Former Vice President Al Gore has built a Green money-making machine capable of eventually generating billions of dollars for investors, including himself, but he set it up so that the average Joe can't afford to play on Gore's terms. And the US portion is headed up by a former Gore staffer and fund raiser who previously ran afoul of both the FEC and the DOJ, before Janet Reno jumped in and shut down an investigation during the Clinton years.

As Bill Hobbs first pointed out, Gore supposedly pays for his extra-large carbon footprint through Generation Investment Management (GIM) - and if you're looking to go green, and have your wallet go along with Gore, think again - average people are too insignificant to play - verifiable from this pdf.

Generation is based in London, with its U.S. offices in Washington, DC. The firm will manage the assets of institutional investors such as pension funds, foundations and endowments, as well as those of select high net worth individuals.* Generation expects to make extensive use of long-term performance based fees. Generation will begin its investment management business in early 2005.

* like Al Gore

Gore's company, GIM was specifically established to take financial advantage of new technologies and solutions related to combating Global Warming. The Global Warming crowd has told us that just recently new science emerged confirming the alleged fact that Global Warming is man made. So, ask yourself, why is it that Gore set up his Green money machine three years ago back in 2004? Is it possible Gore knew what the science would say before it was out? And even if not, can an individual who stands to make millions from Global Warming really be trusted as an honest broker on that topic? Talk about giving the fox the keys to the hen penthouse.

Even if Global Warming did exist, in principle, what's the difference between war profiteering and this? One could justifiably argue that Gore is taking advantage of, in his opinion, a catastrophic situation to clean up - and I don't mean the environment.

Here's a list indicating what it takes to make money along with Al. Funds associated with these companies have placed millions of dollars under Al Gore's control. And, as you'll see below, Gore's selection for the US President of GIM might raise a few eyebrows as well.

AFLAC INC - AQUANTIVE INC - AUTODESK INC - BECTON DICKINSON & CO BLACKBAUD INC - GENERAL ELECTRIC CO - GREENHILL & CO INC - JOHNSON CTLS INC - LABORATORY CORP AMER HLDGS - METABOLIX INC - NORTHERN TR CORP - NUVEEN INVTS INC -STAPLES INC - SYSCO CORP - TECHNE CORP - UBS AG - VCA ANTECH INC - WATERS CORP - WHOLE FOODS MKT INC

According to their own documents, GIM intends to invest in, or buy companies poised to cash in on Global Warming concerns. If we borrow John Edward's so-called two Americas concept for a second, this all means higher prices and taxes with more regulation and an altered standard of living for people like you and me, while Al Gore sits ensconced in his other America reaping profits from each new government mandate for us, business and even government itself. It's win win, alright, but mostly for Al.

To add insult to injury, Gore chose Peter S. Knight, an old friend and colleague some are sure to recall, as the US President of GIM.

Peter S. Knight, formerly Managing Director Met West Financial, lawyer, Chief of Staff for Senator Al Gore (D-TN) from 1977-1989, and Campaign Manager for President Clinton's successful re-election in 1996, is President of Generation U.S.

This would be him: Reno Rejects Inquiry Into a Clinton Aide

Atty Gen Janet Reno decides against any further investigation of Peter Knight, Pres Clinton's 1996 campaign manager in connection with office building development in nation's capital; such an investigation could have led to naming independent counsel to look further into activities of Knight, who is also former top assistant to Vice Pres Al Gore.

Yes, thanks to Janet Reno, no one ever found out how $20,000 in stock turned up in an account for Knight's then 13 year old child.

Dispute over Democratic Party campaign-financing shifts to Zachary Knight, 13-year-old son of Peter S Knight, Clinton-Gore campaign chairman in 1996, who was given $20,000 in stock by William Haney 3d, chairman of Molten Metal Technology Inc; Republicans believe gift, which came after father was named chairman of campaign, was really payment to Knight, who had worked as $7,000-per-month lobbyist for company; Knight denies involvement in any impropriety; photo

If Gore's motivation in pushing Global Warming is so altruistic, was it really necessarily for the already wealthy Gore to establish a multi-million dollar corporation in England to cash in? And given the history of Gore and Knight, are these people we should trust to drive a re-vamping of the world economy at the same time they're lining their pockets because of our much smaller carbon footprints?

http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2007/03/al_gores_inconv.html

There's an elephant in global warming's living room that few in the mainstream media want to talk about: the creators of the carbon credit scheme are the ones cashing in on it.

The two cherub like choirboys singing loudest in the Holier Than Thou Global Warming Cathedral are Maurice Strong and Al Gore.

This duo has done more than anyone else to advance the alarmism of man-made global warming.

With little media monitoring, both Strong and Gore are cashing in on the lucrative cottage industry known as man-made global warming.

Strong is on the board of directors of the Chicago Climate Exchange, Wikipedia-described as "the world's first and North America's only legally binding greenhouse gas emission registry reduction system for emission sources and offset projects in North America and Brazil."

Gore buys his carbon off-sets from himself--the Generation Investment Management LLP, "an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 with offices in London and Washington, D.C." of which he is both chairman and founding partner.

To hear the saving-the-earth singsong of this dynamic duo, even the feather light petals of cherry blossoms in Washington leave a bigger carbon footprint.

It's a strange global warming partnership that Strong and Gore have, but it's one that's working.

Strong is the silent partner, a man whose name often draws a blank in the Washington cocktail circuit. Even though a former Secretary General of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the much hyped Rio Earth Summit) and Under-Secretary General of the United Nations in the days of a beleaguered Kofi Annan, the Canadian born Strong is little known in the Unites States. That's because he spends most of his time in China where he works to make the communist country the world's next superpower. The nondescript Strong, nonetheless is big cheese in the world of climate change, and is one of the main architects of the coming-your-way-soon Kyoto Protocol.

Gore is the glitzy, media approved front man in the partnership, the flashing neon lights on the global stage warning the masses of the end of Earth, as we know it, and Hollywood's poster boy for greening the silver screen.

The skeptics of man-made global warming believe that Gore and Strong have made climate change "the new religion". Climate change is not the first religion both parties have tried to make stick. Along with former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Strong, currently president of the Earth Council, has been boasting of replacing the Ten Commandments with the Earth Charter, a golden rule guide for how the masses should treat the environment.

Gore, who has given sermons at the United Nations sponsored Cathedral of St. John the Divine Church in New York City, is a promoter of the religion known as Gaia.

The two environmental gurus also share a belief in radical Malthusian population reduction. According to them, too many people, particularly in the U.S. are polluting the planet, emitting excessive Freon through their refrigerators and jacking up the air conditioning.

But the conduct of Al Gore and Maurice Strong in the capitalist world is one for the books. It's a side of them that may have remained unknown had it not been for the investigative talent of the Executive Intelligence Review (EIR).

The tawdry tale of the top two global warming gurus in the business world goes all the way back to Earth Day, April 17, 1995 when the future author of An Inconvenient Truth traveled to Fall River, Massachusetts, to deliver a green sermon at the headquarters of Molten Metal Technology Inc. (MMTI). MMTI was a firm that proclaimed to have invented a process for recycling metals from waste.Gore praised the Molten Metal firm as a pioneer in the kind of innovative technology that can save the environment, and make money for investors at the same time.

"Gore left a few facts out of his speech that day. First, the firm was run by Strong and a group of Gore intimates, including Peter Knight, the firm's registered lobbyist, and Gore's former top Senate aide," wrote EIR.

"Second, the company had received more than $25 million in U.S. Department of energy (DOE) research and development grants, but had failed to prove that the technology worked on a commercial scale. The company would go on to receive another $8 million in federal taxpayers' cash, at that point, its only source of revenue.

"With Al Gore's Earth Day as a Wall Street calling card, Molten Metal's stock value soared to $35 a share, a range it maintained through October 1996. But along the way, DOE scientists had balked at further funding. When, in March 1996, corporate officers concluded that the federal cash cow was about to run dry, they took action: Between that date and October 1996, seven corporate officers--including Maurice Strong--sold off $15.3 million in personal shares in the company, at top market value. On Oct. 20, 1996--a Sunday--the company issued a press release, announcing for the first time, that DOE funding would be vastly scaled back, and reported the bad news on a conference call with stockbrokers.

"On Monday, the stock plunged by 49%, soon landing at $5 a share.By early 1997, furious stockholders had filed a class action suit against the company and its directors. Ironically, one of the class action lawyers had tangled with Maurice Strong in another insider trading case, involving a Swiss company called AZL Resources, chaired by Strong, who was also a lead shareholder. The AZL case closely mirrored Molten Metal, and in the end, Strong and the other AZL partners agreed to pay $5 million to dodge a jury verdict, when eyewitness evidence surfaced of Strong's role in scamming the value of the company stock up into the stratosphere, before selling it off.

In 1997, Strong went on to accept from Tongsun Park, the Korean man found guilty of illegally acting as an Iraqi agent, $1 million from Saddam Hussein, which was invested in Cordex Petroleum Inc., a company he owned with his son, Fred.

In that year, Gore, still U.S. vice president, was making news for "taking the initiative in creating the Internet."

The leaders of the man-made global warming movement, you might say, get around.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/cover031307.htm

Here's a scientific fact for you to ponder; The Sun has been in a low output state for more than two years with very few sunspots indicating low sun activity. How many of you have heard about that little tidbit on the evening news? None, because it's an inconvenient truth. The Sun is the main driver of the Earth's climate. Put two and two together and you have a good explanation why the planet has been cooling in recent years. I enjoyed watching the snow in Houston today, earliest in recorded history there. Enjoy the coming winter sheeple, you deserve it.

http://www.zerohedge.com/content/which-destroys-more-capital?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+(zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero)

See more at my blog post -
http://yophat.blogspot.com/2009/11/climategate-global-warming-scam.html

15 Signs American Society Is Coming Apart at the Seams

The economic elite have launched an attack on the U.S. public and society is unraveling at an increased rate. You may have missed it in the mainstream news media, but statistical societal indicators are reading red across the board. Let’s look at the top 15 statistics that prove we are under attack.

1) The inequality of wealth in the United States is soaring to an unprecedented level. The U.S. already had the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world prior to the financial crisis. Since the crisis, which has hit the middle class and poor much harder than the top 1 percent, the gap between the top 1 percent and the remaining 99 percent of the U.S. population has grown to a record high.

2) As the stock market went over the 10,000 mark and just surged to a 13-month high, the three big banks that took taxpayer money and benefited the most from the government bailout have just set a new global economic record by issuing $30 billion in annual bonuses this year, “up 60 percent from last year.” Bloomberg reported: “Goldman Sachs, the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, had a record profit in the first nine months of this year and set aside $16.7 billion for compensation expenses.” Goldman Sachs is on pace for the best year in the firm’s history, and it is also benefiting by only paying 1 percent in taxes.

3) The profits of the economic elite are “now underwritten by taxpayers with $23.7 trillion worth of national wealth.”

As the looting is occurring at the top, the U.S. middle class is just beginning to collapse.

4) Workers between the ages of 55 to 60, who have worked for 20 to 29 years, have lost an average of 25 percent off their 401k. During the same time period, the wealth of the 400 richest Americans went up by $30 billion, bringing their total combined wealth to $1.57 trillion.

5) Home foreclosure filings “hit a record high in the third quarter (of 2009)… They were the worst three months of all time… 937,840 homes received a foreclosure letter” in this three-month period; “3.4 million homes are expected to enter foreclosure by year’s end, with some experts estimating that next year will be even worse.”

President Obama has enacted a $75 billion taxpayer funded program that has been a spectacular failure in stemming the foreclosure crisis and has proven to be another massive waste of billions of taxpayer dollars.

6) 25 million people are unemployed or underemployed.

This means we have 25 million people who urgently need to increase their income, and they’re quickly running out of options. The unemployment rate is expected to rise further and remain high for several years. “The president’s chief economic adviser warned that the nation’s unemployment rate could stay ‘unacceptably high’ for years to come.”

The New York Times reports: “Americans now confront a job market that is bleaker than ever in the current recession, and employment prospects are still getting worse. Job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking….” As this ratio continues to grow, it will lead to a further reduction in wages — average worker wages have seen a sharp decline over the past year.

Economist Nouriel Roubini, a man who accurately predicted our current crisis, just reported on unemployment stating: “Think the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening…. So we can expect that job losses will continue until the end of 2010 at the earliest. In other words, if you are unemployed and looking for work and just waiting for the economy to turn the corner, you had better hunker down. All the economic numbers suggest this will take a while. The jobs just are not coming back.”

7) As the few elite banks thrive, there have been 123 U.S. bank failures thus far this year. Recently, three banks that the government declared “healthy” and gave taxpayer money, have folded. The Wall Street Journal reports: “U.S. regulators have seized or threatened at least 27 banks that got capital infusions from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, including some lenders government officials knew were troubled when they awarded the money. The troubles put taxpayers at risk of losing as much as $5.1 billion invested in the banks since TARP was launched in October 2008.”

8) As bankruptcies surge across the board, 10 U.S. states are on the verge of bankruptcy, with several ready to declare a financial state of emergency. California, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin are all “barreling toward economic disaster, raising the likelihood of higher taxes, more government layoffs and deep cuts in services.”

9) This is occurring at a time when the “federal budget deficit for the fiscal year that just ended was $1.4 trillion, nearly a trillion dollars greater than the year before.” In total, “U.S. public debt topped $12 trillion for the first time in history… The public debt topped $10 trillion in September 2008. The debt is quickly approaching the statutory limit of $12.104 trillion, meaning Congress would have to raise the ceiling to prevent a shutdown of government operations.”

Economist Dean Baker explains the risk of running such a large deficit: “The debt limit must be increased at regular intervals in order to allow the government to function normally because the government is currently operating at a deficit. If the debt limit is not passed, then at some point the government will not be able to pay workers and contractors. It won’t be able to send out Social Security checks or make payments for Medicaid and unemployment insurance to state governments. And, it will not be able to make interest payments on government bonds, effectively defaulting on the national debt.”

Needless to say, all of this will make life drastically more difficult for American citizens. As the middle class continues on the path of economic decline, the number of citizens living in poverty has already hit an all-time high.

10) Although the government’s official figure tries to low-ball the number, 47.4 million U.S. citizens live in poverty, and the U.S. poverty rate is the highest in the industrialized world.

Predictably, homelessness is rising at an increased rate as well. “The U.S. government does not tally the numbers but interested organizations say that more than 3 million people were homeless at some point over the past year…. The fastest growing segment of the homeless population is families with children.”

Children have been hit especially hard by the economic crisis:

11) * 50 percent of U.S. children, one out of every two children, will need to use food stamps to eat.

One out of every two children in the United States of America will need to use a food stamp… to EAT!

If you didn’t think starvation was a serious threat in the U.S., just read this new Washington Post report: “The nation’s economic crisis has catapulted the number of Americans who lack enough food to the highest level since the government has been keeping track, according to a new federal report, which shows that nearly 50 million people — including almost one child in four — struggled last year to get enough to eat… Several independent advocates and policy experts on hunger said that they had been bracing for the latest report to show deepening shortages, but that they were nevertheless astonished by how much the problem has worsened. ‘This is unthinkable. It’s like we are living in a Third World country,’ said Vicki Escarra, president of Feeding America.”

The United States Department of Agriculture released these findings in a study that was completed in December 2008, which means these numbers don’t take into account the millions more unemployed throughout 2009. The numbers of people living in poverty and struggling to eat has seen a significant increase since then.

This a national tragedy. But it gets much worse.

12) In 2008, according to the Census Bureau, the number of U.S. citizens without health care grew to a record 46.3 million. “The new figures, however, understate the severity of the economic downturn because a large portion of the nation’s job losses and unemployment rate increases occurred after the Census survey data was collected in March as part of the annual Current Population Survey.”

13) Lack of health insurance has caused 45,000 preventable U.S. citizen deaths in the past year. The American Journal of Medicine recently released a study that stated, “Nearly two out of three bankruptcies stem from medical bills, and even people with health insurance face financial disaster if they experience a serious illness.”

A Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study reported that 17,000 children have died due to lack of health care. You can also add in a recent report that revealed that 2,266 U.S. veterans have died in 2008 due to lack of insurance.

The 50 million now uninsured and the 45,000 preventable deaths per year statistics are expected to drastically rise over the next few years. As the Senate continues to strip meaningful amendments from a health care bill that wouldn’t even take effect until 2013, it has become clear that, despite the media hype, the health care bill is going to fall far short of meaningful reform and continue to rig the game in favor of large insurance company profits at the expense of the U.S. population. With the highest cost healthcare in the world, current trends will continue and much needed change is not on the horizon.

Never before has the United States had so many citizens with so little means, little to no income and heavy debt. Debt and costs of living have now shackled U.S. citizens just as they have shackled people throughout the world. The economic hit men have now hit the United States as well and millions of American citizens are now effectively sentenced to a slow death.

Economic Imperial blowback has hit the mainland.

And the clock is ticking louder by the day…

And here’s two more facts for you:

14) The gun and ammunition manufacturing industry in the United States has over 200 companies producing billions of dollars in annual revenues. This huge manufacturing base cannot fulfill demand quickly enough. The demand for guns and ammunition has hit a record high and the gun industry cannot produce enough bullets to keep up with orders.

Americans are arming themselves to the teeth!

15) In the past year, 100 new armed militia groups have been formed, as militia members have doubled in numbers. Federal authorities are gravely concerned about the “uptick in militia activities.” One federal authority recently said, “All it’s lacking is a spark. I think it’s only a matter of time before you see threats and violence.”

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/144109/15_signs_american_society_is_coming_apart_at_the_seams?page=entire

Full report -
http://ampedstatus.com/us-critical-unraveling2.pdf