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Everyday of Freedom is an Act of Faith for my writings ============> http://robertoscaruffi.blogspot.com for something on religions ===> http://scaruffi1.blogspot.com
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Forex Market Updates & Commentary
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- German government spokesman says France/Germany determined with European partners
- EURUSD moves closer to October midpoint at 1.3695
- GBPUSD moves toward intraday resistance levels
- Moody’s expects US economy to grow modestly in 2012
- Bank of Canada Carney says there is considerable stimulus in Canada
- Weaker ISM tests market. Weak headline but….
- US Construction Spending and ISM Data All Lower
- EURUSD back up to 1.3650-55 area. Bulls and bears more balanced now it seems
- Early elections and referendum are to be discussed by the Greek cabinet
- Stocks open down 200-250 in first few minutes of trading
- Forex Traders Course: Today at 4:00PM Greg Michalowski and Shawn Powell
- EU Van Rompuy says fully trust Greece will honour commitments
- EURUSD continues slide lower. 1.3603 is the next channel target
- Six Greek party members call for Papendreou to resign
- NY Morning Forex Commentary for Nov 1st 2011
Últimas do Núcleo de Notícias: “Contra a privatização do Hospital Esaú Matos” plus 11 more
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- Contra a privatização do Hospital Esaú Matos
- IV Congresso de Contabilidade do Sudoeste da Bahia
- O mambembe
- IFBA realiza O ABRAÇO
- Aeroportos terão investimentos de R$ 7,5 bihões até 2014
- Vitória da Conquista faz 3 a 2 no Bahia e está na final da Copa Governador
- Incêndio de grande proporção atinge empresa de Vitória da Conquista (BA)
- Câmara de Turismo da Bahia já nasce como a maior do Brasil
- Levantamento entre cidades médias: Feira e Conquista passam vergonha
- Corpo de recém-nascido é encontrado em banheiro de bar em Vitória da Conquista
- Inscrições para vestibular da Uesb encerram nesta sexta-feira
- Itabuna tem prefeito policial e pior índice de homicídios
| Industry News |
| Aerodyne receives US Army UAS Contract Aerodyne has received a contract to provide technical and engineering support for the US Army Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Project... Spanish Army to receive Elbit Mortars The Spanish Army has placed orders with Elbit Systems to equip its forces with Cardom autonomous recoil 81mm... US to provide Super Cobra Helicopters to Turkey The US Defense Security Cooperation Agency has notified Congress of a potential sale of three AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopters to... South Korea conducts large-scale military exercise The South Korean Northwest Islands Defence Command had staged a large-scale military exercise off the west coast, near the tense maritime border in the Yellow... |
| Corporate News |
| Pelican Opens Sales Office in South Korea Pelican Products, the global leader in design and manufacture of both high-performance protective case solutions and advanced portable LED lighting systems, has opened a sales office in... Parvus Gigabit Ethernet Switch Subsystem Certified for DO-160 Airworthiness to 50,000 ft Altitude Eurotech subsidiary Parvus Corporation announced that the DuraNET 1268 gigabit Ethernet switch subsystem have completed high altitude and low temperature testing in accordance with (IAW) RTCA... Pelican Goes To Work With the 1460TOOL Mobile Tool Chest To offer a legendarily tough, portable tool protection solution, Pelican Products has introduced the 1460TOOL - Mobile Tool... Kärcher Futuretech Moves into 4,000m² Building in Schwaikheim and Inaugurates new Head Offices After only twelve months of construction, in mid-October Kärcher Futuretech GmbH officially opened its new head offices, with a surface of 4,000m², in the Schwaikheim industrial... |
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| November 1, 2011 Tomgram: Lawrence Weschler, The Great American Shakedown
In the U.S., corruption is seldom “corruption.” Take as an example our president, who has been utterly clear: he will not take money for his electoral campaign from lobbyists. Only problem: according tothe New York Times, 15 of his top “bundlers,” who give their own money and solicit that of others -- none registered as federal lobbyists -- are “involved in lobbying for Washington consulting shops or private companies,” and they are raising millions for him. They also have access to the White House on policy matters. According to a June report from the Center for Public Integrity, “President Obama granted plum jobs and appointments to almost 200 people who raised large sums for his [2008] presidential campaign, and his top fundraisers have won millions of dollars in federal contracts.”
The president’s spokespeople insist, of course, that he’s kept to his promise, as defined by the labyrinthine lobbying legislation written by a Congress filled with future lobbyists. And keep in mind that Obama looks like Little Mary Sunshine compared to the field of Republican presidential candidates who seem determined to campaign cheek to jowl with as many lobbyists as they can corral. More than 100 federal lobbyists have already contributed to Mitt Romney’s campaign, while Rick Perry has evidently risen to candidate status on the shoulders of Mike Toomey, a former gubernatorial chief of staff, friend, and money-raising lobbyist whose clients “have won $2 billion in [Texas] state government contracts since 2008.” And that’s just the tip of the top of the iceberg. None of this is “corruption,” of course, just a pay-to-play way of life, which extends to the military-industrial complex and a Pentagon that has spent a mere $1 trillion in the last decade purchasing new weapons to “modernize” its arsenal. In the meantime, every top civilian official, general, or admiral there knows that some weapons company awaits him with (so to speak) open arms, whenever he decides to spin through the revolving door into "retirement" and the private sector. The results are stunning. Arms giant Lockheed Martin paid out $12.7 million in lobbying fees in 2010. Its CEO took home $21.89 million that year. And the company just reported third-quarter net earnings of $700 million, beating the expectations of analysts, and predicts more of the same for 2012. Advantage Lockheed. Similarly, the government's top economic advisors regularly come from (and/or end up in/return to) the arms of banks and giant financial outfits, the very firms which pour money into political campaigns. It’s but another version of the same cozy, well-organized world in which, for example, Robert Rubin spun from Goldman Sachs into the government as Bill Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury in the 1990s, then out again to Citigroup, which he then helped run into the ground until it was bailed out on such generous terms in November 2008. In those years, he made an estimated $126 million. Advantage Rubin. Just remember though, it’s not corruption. It’s just the way our world works. Get used to it. As it happens, the Occupy Wall Street movement hasn’t been willing to adjust to that reality, and as a result, corruption is suddenly on American minds, as it has been, for a while, on Lawrence Weschler’s. He happens to be one of our most skilled essayists, with a dazzling writing career behind him. His latest book, Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative(Counterpoint), just published, covers a typically unsettling array of topics ranging from why digital animators can’t create a credible human face to how a film editor comes to grips with his war films in the context of war. Here’s Weschler’s version of an American corruption story. (To catch Timothy MacBain’s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Weschler discusses his new book click here, or download it to your iPod here.) Tom The Art of the Shakedown, from the Nile to the Potomac |  | Visit our sister sites:   Recent Posts 2 days ago... Tomgram: Engelhardt, Wall Street by the Book 5 days ago... Tomgram: Chip Ward, Occupy Earth 1 week ago... Tomgram: Glenn Greenwald, How the Rich Subverted the Legal System 1 week ago... Tomgram: Barbara Ehrenreich, Homeless in America Recent Highlights 1 month ago... Tomgram: Peter Van Buren, WikiLeaked at the State Department 1 month ago... Tomgram: Engelhardt, Dearest President and Professor Barack Obama |
Americans: Awash In Spin
Americans: Awash In Spin
By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
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URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.
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Global Research, October 28, 2011
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I have come to the conclusion that Big Brother’s subjects in George Orwell’s 1984 are better informed than Americans.
Americans have no idea why they have been at war in the Middle East, Asia and Africa for a decade. They don’t realize that their liberties have been supplanted by a Gestapo Police State. Few understand that hard economic times are here to stay.
On October 27, 2011, the US government announced some routine economic statistics, and the president of the European Council announced a new approach to the Greek sovereign debt crisis. The result of these funny numbers and mere words sent the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to its largest monthly rally since 1974, erasing its 2011 yearly loss. The euro rose, putting the European currency again 40% above its initial parity with the US dollar when the euro was introduced.
On National Public Radio a half-wit analyst declared, emphatically, that the latest US government statistics proved that the recovery was in place and that there was no danger whatsoever of a double-dip recession. And half-brain economists predicted a better tomorrow.
Europe is happy because the European private banks, the creditors of the European governments, have agreed to eat 50% of Greece’s sovereign debt and to be recapitalized by public money handed to them by the European Financial Stability Facility rescue fund. The President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, thinks that Greece’s debt is the only sovereign debt to be written down and that the debt of Italy, Spain, and Portugal will somehow be bailed out through other means, including a Chinese contribution to the EFSF rescue fund. Obviously, if all EU sovereign debt has to be cut by 50% as well, the rescue fund would not be up to the job.
For our corrupt financial markets, any news that can be spun as good news can send stocks up. But what are the facts?
For facts one has to turn to serious people, not to the presstitute media. Among those who give us real facts is John Williams of shadowstats.com. In his October 27 report, Williams exposes the happy second quarter 2011 economic growth figure of 2.5% as nonsense. Every other economic indicator contradicts the spin.
For example, personal consumption is reported to have increased 1.7%, but this surge in consumption took place despite a 1.7% collapse in consumer disposable income! In other words, if there was an increase in personal consumption, it come from drawing down savings or from incurring higher consumer debt.
A country’s consumers cannot forever draw down savings or go deeper into debt. For an economy to recover, there must be growth in consumer income. That growth is nowhere to be seen in the US. A large percentage of the goods and services sold to Americans by American corporations are now produced abroad by foreign labor. Thus, Americans no longer received incomes from the production of the goods and services that they consume. The American consumer market is on its way out.
The Dow Jones rose 339.51 points on the phony good news, but consumer sentiment is in the basement. John Williams reports that “consumer confidence hit the lowest levels ever recorded in 2008 and 2009” and that consumer confidence has now “fallen back to that 2008 level.” But the stock market boomed. Somehow a population 23% unemployed with debt up to its eyeballs is going to spark an economic recovery.
Recovery can only happen in the delusional world created for us by the concentrated media. No longer permitted to utter one world of truth, the presstitutes proclaim non-existent recoveries and weapons of mass destruction and demonize Washington’s chosen opponents.
The sovereign debt crisis in Europe has distracted Americans from the much worst crisis in their country. After two decades of exporting US manufacturing and middle class jobs, and after a decade of consumer debt growth that has resulted in millions of foreclosed homeowners and massive credit card and student loan debt that cannot be paid, consumers have no income growth or borrowing capacity with which to fuel an economy based on consumer demand.
European banks, already ruined by purchases of Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s AAA ratings of junk derivatives, now find themselves threatened by sovereign debt. Greece’s debt crisis, caused with Goldman Sachs’ help in hiding the true debt of the country as was done for Enron, has brought to light that Portugal, Ireland, Italy, and Spain, in addition to Greece, have more debt than the governments can service.
In the EU, unlike the US and UK which have their own central banks that can create new money to bail out the over-indebted governments, the EU central bank is prohibited by treaty from printing money in order to purchase bonds from member states that cannot be redeemed.
Regardless of the treaty prohibition, the EU central bank has been lending Greece the money to pay its bond holders. The imposed austerity that is part of the deal created political instability in Greece.
Now that European Council President Herman Van Rompuy has announced a 50% write-off by private banks of Greek sovereign debt, can the same treatment be denied Portugal, Italy, and Spain?
The European Central Bank is following the lead of the Federal Reserve and creating new money to bail out debt. The cost will be paid in inflation and flight from the euro and the dollar. As an indication of the future, despite the positive spin on the news and the rise in US stocks, on October 27 the Japanese yen rose to a new high against the US dollar.
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