30. September 2008 by admin.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: FOX NEWS

Excerpt: But in the days following the hijacking, a number of them fell ill and died, suffering skin burns and hair loss, according to reports. The pirates were sickened because of their contact with the seized cargo, according to Hassan Osman, the Somali minister of Minerals and Oil, who met with the pirates to facilitate negotiations.

Posted in Politics, Global, Security | 1 Comment »

29. September 2008 by admin.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: BBC

Excerpt: Militants in Pakistan pose a threat to the country’s existence, according to the American General, David Petraeus.

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29. September 2008 by admin.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: AP

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26. September 2008 by admin.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: TELEGRAPH UK

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26. September 2008 by admin.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: TELEGRAPH UK

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24. September 2008 by admin.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: CANADA FREE PRESS

Excerpt:

In his classic 1932 book, Toward Soviet America, Communist Party boss William Z. Foster wrote about how “The United Soviet States of America” will come about. As a result of various capitalist crises, the national government would assume more and more control over the economy. “In finance,” he wrote, “it will mean the nationalization of the banking system and its concentration around a central State bank…”

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24. September 2008 by admin.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

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24. September 2008 by admin.

from an email I received from someone who wishes to remain anonymous:

Invest with Deflation, Not Inflation, in Mind, Writes GaveKal • (GaveKal) According to GaveKal, fears of accelerating inflation are unfounded and investors should avoid the “inflationary trades” and instead buy “volume monetizers.” People are forgetting that when banks fail, the velocity of money collapses, which is a deflationary force. So, despite the money-printing ways of central banks the world over, inflation should not resurface since the additional liquidity simply counteracts the decline in velocity. Case in point, Japan since 1990 has more than tripled its government debt as a percent of GDP, yet there was no surge in inflation. Additionally, there are signs all over of deflation, not inflation: realestate prices continue to fall (even in China), wage costs are rolling over, shipping costs have rolled over, and inventories in China remain very high. Therefore, investors should not chase “inflationary trades” like gold and oil. Instead, investors should buy “volume monetizers,” companies that expand their bottom lines by increasing volumes rather than prices. These companies should benefit from a deflationary, strong dollar environment.

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22. September 2008 by bp.

The dust hasn’t settled yet, in fact the dust cloud is still rising, but a couple of fingers are already being pointed.

Bloomberg News

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21. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article: MSNBC

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21. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article: World Net Daily

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21. September 2008 by admin.

From Bloomberg:

Treasuries Prove Irresistible as Deflation Bet Trumps Paulson
2008-09-21 15:00:02.0 GMT

By Daniel Kruger and Sandra Hernandez
Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) — As details of Treasury Secretary
Henry Paulson’s plan to revive the U.S. financial system by
pumping as much as $700 billion into the markets emerged Sept.
19, bond investor Michael Cheah was reminded of Japan.
When that country’s real estate bubble burst, leaving a
trail of bad real estate loans, officials flooded the economy
with cash only to see banks hoard the money instead of lending
it out. The result has been a series of recessions and
persistent deflation for more than a decade.
“Although the government tried to debase the yen by
printing a lot of government bonds, the economy went into a
standstill,” said Cheah, an official at the Monetary Authority
of Singapore from 1991 to 1999 who manages $2 billion at AIG
SunAmerica Asset Management in Jersey City, New Jersey. “The
banks used the money to buy safety. I see a repeat happening
here. The banks will use it to buy Treasuries.”
While U.S. bonds tumbled on the plan to buy soured
mortgage-related assets from financial institutions in the most
far-reaching federal intrusion into markets since the Great
Depression, they still ended the week little changed.
To investors such as Cheah, that’s a clear sign the economy
is facing many of the same risks that have afflicted Japan. The
yield on the benchmark 30-year Treasury bond, which stands to
benefit the most of any government maturity from a drop in
inflation expectations, fell to 3.89 percent last week, the
lowest level since the U.S. reintroduced the security in 1977.

`Same as Japan’

Only Japan offers inflation-linked bonds that pay lower
rates than similar securities issued by the Treasury.
For maturities up to four years, the difference in yields
between Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities and nominal
bonds is 1 percentage point or less. The so-called breakeven
rate represents the pace of inflation investors expect over the
life of the securities.
“The current U.S. situation is the same as Japan’s case,”
said Hiromasa Nakamura, senior fund investor at Tokyo-based
Mizuho Asset Management Co., which oversees $36.5 billion as
part of Japan’s second-largest bank. “The economic slowdown and
credit crunch are creating a downward spiral.”
Nakamura, who correctly forecast the rally in Treasuries
last year, said two-year note yields will fall to 1.1 percent by
year-end, while the 10-year will decline to 3 percent. The 2.375
percent note due August 2010 ended last week at 100 11/32 to
yield 2.20 percent, while the 4 percent security maturing in
August 2018 finished at 101 10/32 to yield 3.84 percent.

Rate Expectations

Just last month, traders, concerned that rising food and
energy costs were trickling into the broader economy, saw a 65
percent probability the Federal Reserve would raise borrowing
costs by the end of 2008 to contain consumer prices. Now,
there’s a 100 percent chance its 2 percent target rate will
either stay the same or be cut, futures on the Chicago Board of
Trade show.
The Labor Department in Washington said last week that
consumer prices fell 0.1 percent in August, the first decline in
almost two years, as fuel costs dropped from record levels. The
yield on the 10-year Treasury is 1.55 percentage points below
the consumer price index, the most since 1980 and a sign that
traders expect inflation to slow. The yield typically averages
about 3.4 percentage points more than inflation.
Traders think “they’re looking at Japan,” said Dominic
Konstam, head of interest-rate strategy at Credit Suisse
Securities USA LLC in New York, one of 19 primary dealers that
trade with the Fed. “Long-term rates can drop another 100, 200
basis points if things continue to deteriorate.”

Far to Go

The U.S. has far to go before matching what Japan has gone
through. Since 1995, inflation in the world’s second-biggest
economy after the U.S. has averaged zero percent, while growth
has averaged 1.4 percent. The Bank of Japan maintained what it
called a “zero interest-rate policy” from 2001 through 2006 to
try to stimulate the economy.
The yield on Japanese inflation-linked debt maturing in 10
years averaged 0.59 percentage point since being introduced in
April 2004 and is currently negative 0.21 percent. The
comparable U.S. yield is 1.92 percent.
Rather than a decline in consumer prices, a more likely
scenario is a slowdown in inflation, said Stewart Taylor, a
senior investment-grade debt trader at Boston-based Eaton Vance
Management, which oversees about $6 billion of taxable bonds.
“Do we move into a full-blown deflation as opposed to
disinflation? I doubt it,” he said.

Seeking a Haven

Instead of a referendum on inflation, much of the rally in
bonds may be tied to investors seeking a haven from financial
market turmoil that led to the government’s takeover of
Washington-based Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac in McLean, Virginia,
and American International Group Inc. of New York and the
bankruptcy of New York-based Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
Some of that flight to safety was reversed Sept. 19 after
Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke announced a plan to buy
troubled assets from financial institutions. The U.S. may have
to borrow an extra $700 billion to $1 trillion to fund the
rescue of the financial system, flooding bond investors with
more supply, according to Barclays Capital Inc. interest-rate
strategist Michael Pond in New York.
Bond bulls point to a still weakening housing market for
why they expect inflation to slow and yields to remain low.
Home prices have plunged 19 percent on average from their
peak in July 2006, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index of 20
cities. Economists at New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
said this month they expect prices to drop another 10 percent.

Cutting Back

Though consumer prices in the U.S. rose 5.4 percent in
August from a year earlier, the Goldman economists noted it took
almost four years “from the bursting of the financial bubble in
1990 until prices first fell on a year-over-year basis” in
Japan.
The housing weakness is causing consumers to cut back on
spending. The Labor Department in Washington said last week that
new-vehicle prices dropped 0.6 percent in August, the most since
November 2006, and hotel fares tumbled 1.1 percent.
“There are deflationary events out there and debt default
is one of the primary drivers,” said Jeffrey Gundlach, chief
investment officer at Los Angeles-based TCW Group Inc., which
oversees $90 billion in fixed-income. “It’s what they call a
debt deflation cycle, and there’s definitely one underway.”
The percentage of Treasuries in a diversified bond fund
Gundlach manages is the highest it’s ever been, he said.
The world’s biggest banks have taken more than $500 billion
in writedowns and losses on securities tied to subprime
mortgages since the start of 2007, according to data compiled by
Bloomberg. Almost a year ago, Goldman economists said just $400
billion of losses would cut banks’ lending by $2 trillion.
“There’s a huge amount of deflationary pressure when you
get this kind of capital destruction,” said Brian Edmonds, head
of interest rates at Cantor Fitzgerald LP in New York, another
primary dealer.

For Related News:
U.S. recession threat: STNI USRECESSION <GO>.
Most-read news on U.S. bonds: MNI USB BN <GO>.
Feature stories on U.S. bonds: TNI TRE GREET <GO>.

–With reporting by Wes Goodman in Singapore and Dakin Campbell
in New York. Editors: Dave Liedtka, Robert Burgess.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Daniel Kruger in New York at +1-212-617-2986 or
dkruger1@bloomberg.net;
Sandra Hernandez in New York at +1-212-617-3628 or
shernandez4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Dave Liedtka at +1-212-617-8988 or
dliedtka@bloomberg.net

Posted in Stock Market, Politics, Global, US$, The Fed, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

17. September 2008 by admin.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: SKY NEWS

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16. September 2008 by admin.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: BLOOMBERG

More government ownership

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15. September 2008 by admin.

Deltatide

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15. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article: Gaurdian UK

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14. September 2008 by admin.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: WALL ST JOURNAL

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14. September 2008 by admin.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: BLOOMBERG

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11. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article: MSNBC

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11. September 2008 by admin.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: USA TODAY

Posted in Health/Environment, Global | No Comments »

10. September 2008 by admin.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: IHT

They can criticize all they want, meantime we can get the bad guys like what happened here.

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10. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article: NY Times

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10. September 2008 by admin.

USGS

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10. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article: World Net Daily

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9. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article: IHT

Hope they read the 2nd post down

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9. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article: MSNBC

Tiny critter can suspend all biological activity in extreme environments

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9. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article: Jpost

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9. September 2008 by ddibiase.

Original Article: SafeHaven

By Ron Paul

Posted in Global, Stock Market, Politics, Amero & North American Union, US$, Security, The Fed, Uncategorized | No Comments »

9. September 2008 by ddibiase.

Original Article: SafeHaven

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9. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article: CNBC

The nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shows that the U.S. is “more communist than China right now” but its brand of socialism is meant only for the rich, investor Jim Rogers, CEO of Rogers Holdings, told CNBC Europe on Monday.

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9. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article: World Net Daily 

“Urges international community ‘to lift the cover on this totalitarian regime’
A former vice president of Syria has called on the U.S. and Europe to pursue non-violent regime change in Syria.”

Posted in Politics, Global, Security | 1 Comment »

9. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article: Washington Times

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8. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article: Econ Times

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8. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article: Morningstar

Excerpt: “President Bush planned to describe Pakistan Tuesday as a major war on terrorism battleground, similar to Afghanistan or Iraq, and to urge Islamabad to shoulder its “responsibility” to fight extremists.”

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8. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article:

Posted in Politics, Global, Security, Uncategorized | No Comments »

7. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article: TimesOnlineUK

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7. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article: Yonhap News

Posted in Health/Environment, Global | No Comments »

7. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article: Debka

Posted in Politics, Stock Market, Global, Security, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

7. September 2008 by admin.

Original Article: Bloomberg

The fed keeps growing…..more (governmental) control………..These two companies should go bankrupt like any other company. The equity should go to zero and the bond holders should get new equity. Where was the government to bail out the poor internet stocks? A purchaser of equity takes on risk, plain and simple.

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