Year: 2009

Republicans now supporting nationalization of banks

It looks like the party of Freedom is selling the American people up the river:

Nationalization, long regarded in Washington as a folly of Europeans, is gaining rapid ground among US opinion-formers. Stranger still, many of those talking about federal ownership of banks are Republicans.

Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator for North Carolina, said that many of his selloutcolleagues, including John McCain, the defeated presidential candidate, agreed with his view that nationalisation of some banks should be “on the table”.

Mr Graham said that people across the US accepted his argument that it was untenable to keep throwing good money after bad into institutions such as Citigroup and Bank of America, which now have a lower net value than the amount of public funds they have received.

“You should not get caught up on a word [nationalisation],” he told the Financial Times in an interview. “I would argue that we cannot be ideologically a little bit pregnant. It doesn’t matter what you call it, but we can’t keep on funding these zombie banks [without gaining public control]. That’s what the Japanese did.”

Barack Obama, the president, who has tried to avoid panicking lawmakers and markets by entertaining the idea, has recently moved more towards what he calls the “Swedish model” – an approach backed strongly by Mr Graham.

via FT.com – Bank nationalisation gains ground with Republicans.

Nationalization is nothing more than Communism. We are being sold up the river. Remember this come 2010.

(H/T Drudge)

Obama signs the Generational Theft Act and Promises Another, Markets Tank…

I figured this was coming:

The Story:

President Obama has not ruled out a second stimulus package, his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said on Tuesday, just before Mr. Obama signed his $787 billion recovery package into law with a statement that it would “set our economy on a firmer foundation.”

The president said he would not pretend “that today marks the end of our economic problems.”

“Nor does it constitute all of what we have to do to turn our economy around,” Mr. Obama said at the signing ceremony in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. “But today does mark the beginning of the end, the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the way of playoffs.”

Mr. Gibbs, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on the way to Denver, said, “I think the president is going to do what’s necessary to grow this economy.” While “there are no particular plans at this point for a second stimulus package,” he added, “I wouldn’t foreclose it.”

Mr. Obama began the first leg of a two-day trip, using the museum ceremony to spotlight the bill’s clean-energy provisions. The president will also visit Phoenix, where he will unveil his new housing plan on Wednesday.

After a bruising legislative battle on the stimulus bill, which drew only three supporting votes from Republicans in the Senate and none in the House, the White House is trying to recapture the debate over the economy. Mr. Obama’s message is that the bill will create or save 3.5 million jobs over the next two years.

While the bill has been criticized by conservatives as bloated with pork-barrel spending, it has also been criticized by the left as too tepid and not bold enough to jumpstart the economy. Mr. Gibbs’s remarks on the plane seemed to echo that concern.

In describing the package, the press secretary called it “a strong start towards economic viability” and “the beginning of getting our economy back on track.”

via Signing Stimulus Bill, Obama Does Not Rule Out Another – NYTimes.com.

I figured Obama would do this, sign one porkus bill into law and say, “This is not the end, but just the beginning of the pork!”

Meanwhile, the markets basically tanked, even more so than last week: (Via the New York Times)

From Hong Kong to eastern Europe to Wall Street, financial gloom was everywhere on Tuesday.

Stock markets around the world staggered lower. In New York, the Dow fell more than 3 percent, coming within sight of its worst levels since the credit crisis erupted. Financial shares were battered. And rattled investors clamored to buy rainy-day investments like gold and Treasury debt.

It was a global wave of selling spurred by rising worries about how banks, automakers — entire countries — would fare in a deepening global downturn.

“Nobody believes it’s going get better yet,” said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at Standard & Poor’s. “Do you see that light at the end of the tunnel? Any kind of light? Right now, it’s not there yet.”

At the close, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 297.81 points or 3.7 percent to 7,552.29 points as losses in General Motors, Bank of America and American Express dragged the blue chips lower. The only Dow stock in positive territory was Wal-Mart, which rose after reporting better-than-expected profits.

“If we get substantially below 800 then look out below,” said Marc Groz, chief investment officer at Topos, a risk-advisory firm in Greenwich, Conn.

The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index slid 3.7 percent to drop below 800, which analysts said was an important trading threshold.

Investors know what this is, it is basically nationalization of our Economy, our banks, everything. They are just not going to invest money in a Government owned banking system. I believe this drop is just the beginning. Wait till it totally collapses and the world is thrust into chaos. It will be an interesting time, indeed.

Uh-Oh – Senior US soldiers investigated over missing Iraq reconstruction billions

This cannot be good:

In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme.

“I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and not by people from the slums of Baghdad,” said one US businessman active in Iraq since 2003.

In one case, auditors working for SIGIR discovered that $57.8m was sent in “pallet upon pallet of hundred-dollar bills” to the US comptroller for south-central Iraq, Robert J Stein Jr, who had himself photographed standing with the mound of money. He is among the few US officials who were in Iraq to be convicted of fraud and money-laundering.

Despite the vast sums expended on rebuilding by the US since 2003, there have been no cranes visible on the Baghdad skyline except those at work building a new US embassy and others rusting beside a half-built giant mosque that Saddam was constructing when he was overthrown. One of the few visible signs of government work on Baghdad’s infrastructure is a tireless attention to planting palm trees and flowers in the centre strip between main roads. Those are then dug up and replanted a few months later.

Iraqi leaders are convinced that the theft or waste of huge sums of US and Iraqi government money could have happened only if senior US officials were themselves involved in the corruption. In 2004-05, the entire Iraq military procurement budget of $1.3bn was siphoned off from the Iraqi Defence Ministry in return for 28-year-old Soviet helicopters too obsolete to fly and armoured cars easily penetrated by rifle bullets. Iraqi officials were blamed for the theft, but US military officials were largely in control of the Defence Ministry at the time and must have been either highly negligent or participants in the fraud.

American federal investigators are now starting an inquiry into the actions of senior US officers involved in the programme to rebuild Iraq, according to The New York Times, which cites interviews with senior government officials and court documents. Court records reveal that, in January, investigators subpoenaed the bank records of Colonel Anthony B Bell, now retired from the US Army, but who was previously responsible for contracting for the reconstruction effort in 2003 and 2004. Two federal officials are cited by the paper as saying that investigators are also looking at the activities of Lieutenant-Colonel Ronald W Hirtle of the US Air Force, who was senior contracting officer in Baghdad in 2004. It is not clear what specific evidence exists against the two men, who have both said they have nothing to hide.

via The Independent: A ‘fraud’ bigger than Madoff.

Indeed I have suspected that there was major thievery going on during the war in Iraq. This story shines a light on this. Hopefully this new Administration will bring those to justice, who were responsible for these horrific actions. However, I will not hold my breath.

(H/T Freedom’s Phoenix)

Some Funnies…

Stock Advice

From Patriot Post:

Many people are looking for financial advice during these hard economic times. Normally, however, we avoid offering advice regarding buying or selling stocks. But as President Obama prepares to sign the stimulus bill today, the market fell 250 points by noon, and we thought it best to warn investors concerning a few specific companies. Please review any holdings you might have in the following stocks:

  • American Can
  • Interstate Water
  • National Gas Company
  • Northern Tissue Company

Due to uncertain market conditions, we advise you to sit tight on your Can, hold your Water, and let go of your Gas. You may be interested to know that Northern Tissue touched a new bottom today, and millions were wiped clean.

It’s a tough market out there!

If the Bill Fits:

and a Cartoon:

image

Rolling on the floor

Stupid: H-S Precision hires former FBI sniper who shot and killed Randy Weaver's Wife and Son in Standoff

This is absolutely sick and disgusting…. 😡

An American gun manufacturer has hired a professional killer to tout the merits of its weapons. What better spokesman could a company have than one who has shot and killed a young mother with her baby in her arms?

The South Dakota company’s Internet website has proudly published a letter attesting the greatness of its new sniper weapon.

“Pound-for-pound, component-for-component, dollar- for-dollar, you will not find a better rifle,” says the new spokesman for H-S Precision in Rapid City. His name is Lon Horiuchi, a government assassin who retired from the FBI in 2006. AFP called to ask him if this was also the weapon he used to blow away the face of Vicki Weaver at the remote area of Ruby Ridge in Idaho in 1992, but he did not return the calls.

On Aug. 21, 1992, U.S. marshals perpetrated a sneak attack on the mountain cabin of the Randy Weaver family in northern Idaho. When the family dog, Striker, a docile and loving golden retriever, began to bark at the agents, they shot him dead “because he was giving away our position,” one said later. Sammy Weaver, 14, saw the incident and screamed, and the agents nearly blew his arm off (the impact of which spun him around), and then zippered him through the back with a three-round blast from automatic weapons. The boy was dead before he hit the ground. His father, Randy, later told this writer that when he got to him, “his chest was blown out and his heart was like raw hamburger.”

The marshal directing the raid, Bill Degan, was also killed, maybe by his own men.

During the afternoon and night, all sorts of deceptive information was being transmitted from the scene to the FBI headquarters in Washington. The marshals, desperate after being caught in the act of breaking the law, had made up all kinds of cover-up stories—the most outrageous being that the Weaver family had them pinned down for eight hours in an all-day shootout in which Randy’s 16- and 10-year-old daughters had been holding them off with high-powered weapon fire from the windows of the cabin.

via americanfreepress.net – Gun Company Hires Mother’s Assassin. (Yes, I know what kid of books they sell, but that doesn’t take away from this story at all.)

No matter one’s opinions of what happen during the Ruby Ridge stand off or of Randy Weaver, this has to be one of the worst P.R. Disasters in modern history. Hiring a man as a spokesman for a company, who basically murdered a child and a man’s wife. Someone somewhere made a huge bad marketing decision.

Please, keep in mind, that I do know the full history behind the “American Free Press”, and sometimes the Anti-Government and Anti-Zionist tone of much of their news, but this does shine through that, very much so. I think someone needs to rethink a marketing strategy, and fast!

(H/T Freedom’s Phoenix)



Stanford Financial Group busted in fraud charges

Well, this is quite interesting:

Stopping what it called a “massive ongoing fraud,” the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday accused Robert Allen Stanford, the chief of the Stanford Financial Group, of fraud in the sale of about $8 billion of high-yielding certificates of deposit held in the firm’s bank in Antigua. Also named in the suit were two other executives and some affiliates of the financial group.

In the complaint, filed in Federal District Court in Dallas, the S.E.C. accused Mr. Stanford and two associates — James M. Davis, a director and chief financial officer of Stanford Group and the Antigua-based bank affiliate, and Laura Pendergest-Holt, the chief investment officer of both organizations — with misrepresenting the safety and liquidity of the uninsured CDs.

The CDs were sold by Stanford International Bank through the firm’s registered broker-dealer and investment adviser, which are in Houston. Both the bank, which claims $8.5 billion in assets and 30,000 clients in 131 countries, and the brokerage unit, which operates about 30 offices in the United States, were named in the S.E.C. suit. Stanford Financial asserts that it advises about $50 billion in assets.

Shortly after 10 a.m. Central time, about 40 police officers and other law enforcement officials simultaneously entered Stanford Group’s two office buildings in Houston. Many of the law enforcement personnel carried large black briefcases. Stanford group’s headquarters are in two offices in Houston, one within a tower of the Houston Galleria shopping mall, and the other across the street.

A spokesman for Stanford Group declined to comment.

via Texas Financial Firm Accused of Fraud – NYTimes.com.

It is amazing how a major meltdown in the markets will expose the frauds.

Vox Day Snarks:

What, there was something fishy about high-yield Antiguan CDs? Really? What will shock us next, the discovery that the import/export firm with the branch office in Medellin is selling coke?

Heh.

While I think it is alright to have a sense of humor about it. One must realize that there most likely some people “taking a bath” right about now. So, I shall keep the giggles to a minimum. Who I feel mot sorry for, are the peole who trusted these companies to invest thier money properly, and have gotten horribly screwed over. Those are the one’s I feel for.

Allan Keyes still whoring for attention

Allan Keyes still does not get it, after all these years. After he was basically chased out of the Republican Party because of his outlandish behavior, he is still trying to garner some sort of spotlight.


Alan Keyes, a 2008 presidential candidate who now is a plaintiff in one of the many lawsuits seeking to verify whether Barack Obama qualifies under the U.S. Constitution’s requirements to occupy the Oval Office, says the tactics adopted by lawyers for the president confirm there is an issue for the courts to investigate.

Keyes, who was the candidate of the American Independent Party, cited a recent exchange with lawyers representing Obama in which they warned they might seek monetary penalties against those raising the question of Obama’s eligibility under the Constitution’s requirement that the president be a “natural born” citizen.

“It confirms the common sense suspicion that he won’t act forthrightly in this matter because he has something to hide,” Keyes wrote on his blog after WND reported the warning about “sanctions” was raised by Obama’s defense lawyers.

The onetime U.S. ambassador explained on his posting that those raising questions over Obama’s eligibility so far have simply been ignored by courts.

“In effect, the courts are refusing to admit plaintiffs on this matter into the courtroom, thereby denying them justice,” he wrote. “Madison wrote, ‘Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It will be pursued either until it be obtained or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.'”

via Keyes: President ‘has something to hide’ on eligibility.

From what sources tell me, the only reason Alan Keyes was ever offered a position in Reagan’s Cabinet is because Ronald Reagan felt sorry for the man. Also because Reagan wanted to make points with the Black Republicans at the time. Ever since then, Keyes has tried to garner the spotlight and has tried to make himself a so-called rightful heir to Reagan’s legacy; All the while being laughed at, by the rest of the Republican Party. One would think that this uppity fool would get the message that nobody, and I mean nobody wants this religious zealot in politics, but still he keeps on trying to get the spotlight. It is truly one of the tragic legacies of the Reagon era.

Trump Folds

Here’s more fallout from the economy bubble…:

He is known as a successful entrepreneur to the millions who watch him on the US version of The Apprentice but Donald Trump on Tuesday suffered the indignity of watching a company that bears his name file for bankruptcy protection.

Trump Entertainment Resorts, of which Mr Trump owns 28 per cent, filed for Chapter 11 protection at a court in New Jersey on Tuesday after bondholders who control the debt-laden casino operator rejected Mr Trump’s attempt to take the company private.

The filing came as the group missed its last deadline on a $53m interest payment. It is not the first time the group has filed for Chapter 11: four years ago, an earlier incarnation of Trump Entertainment also sought bankruptcy protection from its creditors.

The filing reveals that the company has assets of $2bn and total debts of $1.7bn. Its biggest creditor is US Bank, which is acting as agent for the bondholders in the group. The group of bondholders could not be reached for comment but they are owed $1.3bn, according to the filing.

Other creditors include Bally Gaming, a Las Vegas-based group, and Bovis Lend Lease, the property developer, which is owed $7.5m.

Like other casino operators, Trump Entertainment, which owns three resort properties in Atlantic City, has been hit by the economic downturn and a severe slump in visitor attendance and gaming revenues.

via FT.com – Trump Entertainment files for Chapter 11.

But of course “The Donald” did not feel like take responsibility for his failure. He did what most rich executives do and what some politicians do; He blamed someone else:

In a stinging statement released last week following his resignation from the board, Mr Trump laid the blame for the group’s demise squarely on the bondholders. He accused their representatives of making “a series of bad decisions” and said they had “encouraged wasteful spending, which has led to severe problems with the company”.

Mr Trump pointed to the contrast between Trump Entertainment and The Trump Organisation, which he controls. “While The Trump Organisation grows and flourishes, Trump Entertainment …has languished. The Trump Organisation’s portfolio of residential, commercial, hotel, and golf properties has expanded all over the world, while Trump Entertainment has yet to diversify outside of Atlantic City.”

Mr Trump could not be reached for comment but his statement of last week suggests he opposed the bankruptcy route. “Now I will study and watch as the horrible and outrageous fees being paid to lawyers and consultants will suck the blood from the company,” he said.

“This internal turmoil will be compounded by dramatically deteriorating revenues across the board for casino companies in Atlantic City as the market tanks and competition from local markets grows.”

Ah yes, put the blame on someone else for the failure of a company that bears your name. Instead of being a man and admitting the failure. Trump could have went down there an fired all the idiots, took over ownership of the company and steered it to prosperity, but instead, he continued to lease his name to a failing enterprise and now that it’s bombed, he’s casting blame elsewhere. Typical of people of his ilk.

(H/T The Daily Beast)

Quote of the Day

Since 1982, the United States has run $5.7 trillion in trade deficits in manufactured goods, and $2.1 trillion in trade deficits in auto parts, trucks and automobiles. In the Bush years alone, the United States ran more than $1 trillion in trade deficits in auto parts, trucks and cars.

These statistics, these realities — factories closing in the United States, manufacturing jobs being outsourced in the millions to China and Asia, enormous, endless trade deficits in goods — testify to a painful truth: America is a receding and declining world power.

And in dealing with this systemic crisis, Obama’s stimulus package is as irrelevant as were the Bush tax cuts.

How do we correct those “trade-related imbalances” of which Volcker spoke? We must export more and import less, save more and spend less, produce more and consume less. We need to emulate the ants and behave less like the grasshoppers of summer.

But how do you tell that to two generations of Americans who have been raised in an era of entitlement?

America needs an Industrial Policy.

But how do you tell that to Americans indoctrinated in the hoary myth that Reed Smoot and Willis Hawley caused the Great Depression and anything that sounds like America First risks a rerun of the 1930s?