Austerity Fails in Euroland: Time for Some "Deficit Easing"

Friday 24 December 2010

by: Ellen Brown, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

"Doubtful it stood, as two spent swimmers that do cling together, and choke their art." -Shakespeare, "Macbeth"

The Greek bailout was supposed to be an isolated case, a test of the European Union's (EU) ability to quarantine an infected member, preventing it from spreading "debt contagion."

But that was before Ireland failed. Ireland was the poster child for how to conduct a successful austerity program. Unlike the Greeks, who were considered profligate spendthrifts, the Irish did everything their creditors asked. The people sacrificed to pay for the excesses of their banks, but still the effort failed. Ireland was the second domino to fall to an International Monetary Fund (IMF)/EU bailout.

On December 17, Moody's Investors Service rewarded it for voting to accept the "rescue" package with a five-notch credit downgrade, from AA2 to BAA1, with warnings that further downgrades could follow.

Spain is rumored to be the next domino poised to fall. If it falls, it could bring down the EU.

Read the entire article

Surprise, Broke States Must Make Cuts: ‘The Credit Card is Maxed Out. It’s Over. It’s Over.’

Mac Slavo
SHTF Plan
December 24, 2010
Millions of Americans who have been told that our economy is now in a period of recovery may be surprised to learn that most states are so broke that they are left with no other choice but to cut spending on literally everything. Governor Christie of New Jersey is, according to 60 Minutes, the canary in the mine:

We spent too much on everything. We spent money just crazily. The credit card’s maxed out. It’s over. It’s over.

Read the entire article

Munibond Meltdown Coming to a State Near You!

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!!!
Mark Matheny
December 24, 2010

Municipal Bonds are in meltdown mode, and Warren Buffet warned last June that as long as the Government is willing to step in and buy Muni Bonds, they will be considered AAA - otherwise it is uncertain what will become of them. Many States are in financial trouble as we see the U.S., like the Titanic in icy waters with its bowel scraping the proverbial Iceberg of debt.


Peter Schiff  of Euro Pacific Capital Inc. has stated that soon it looks like the Federal Reserve will be buying Muni Bonds as well, increasing the amount of money printing they have already started, which will lead to a further devaluing of the U.S. Dollar, and more National Debt., higher commodity and food prices,etc.

Soon, as the States go into deep deficits without the ability to pay their bills, the Federal government will follow, and the Federal Reserve will then be forced to purchase Muni Bonds to keep the ship afloat.

The life preservers needed right now by Americans, are the ones they provide for themselves - eliminating any debt they have, and the purchasing of gold and silver to save their wealth.

The time to put on the lifejacket is now.

Vice Admiral: Obama was outmaneuvered by Russians on START

U.S. Naval Institute - December 23, 2010
 
President Barack Obama was outmaneuvered by the Russians and should have abandoned the New START negotiations instead of seeking a political victory, says former nuclear plans monitor Vice Admiral Jerry Miller, USN (Ret).
“The Obama administration is continuing a dated policy in which we cannot even unilaterally reduce our own inventory of weapons and delivery systems without being on parity with the Russians,” Miller told the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis, Md. “We could give up plenty of deployed delivery systems and not adversely affect our national security one bit, but New START prohibits such action - so we are now stuck with some outmoded and useless elements in our nuke force.”
After meeting resistance from several Republicans, the U.S. Senate ratified the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia by a vote of 71-26 on Wednesday.
“The Soviets/Russians were done in by Reagan and our missile defense program because they cannot afford to build such a system,” said Miller. “They instead try to counter our program with rhetoric at the bargaining table. And they won by outmaneuvering Obama.  START plays right into their hands.”
Former President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) is often credited with bankrupting the U.S.S.R. because the Soviets were unable to keep pace with the technology being developed by the United States.
 “We have always been superior in quality of our nuclear force, so we did not have to negotiate with a party we do not trust,” said Miller. “If Obama wanted to save some money and improve national defense, he should have gotten out of the nuke negations and acted unilaterally. START is simply a political victory for Obama.”
Miller, who helped prepare the National Strategic Target List and Single Integrated Operational Plan for waging nuclear war and later participated in arms control meetings with the Soviet government, expressed concern that START could leave the United States vulnerable to other emerging threats.
“The treaty prohibits the conversion of an existing ballistic missile system into a missile defense system,” said Miller. “We might want to do that with a Trident or an ICBM sometime in the future, particularly if the Chinese alleged threat materializes.”

Miller’s book “Stockpile: The Story Behind 10,000 Strategic Nuclear Weapons” details the buildup of nuclear arms and the policies to keep the stockpile under control.

 

Contact: media@usni.org

NKorea threatens 'sacred' nuclear war if attacked

FOX News.com

Published December 22, 2010

Associated Press

POCHEON, South Korea –  North and South Korea beat the drums of war Thursday, with each threatening the other with immediate retaliation if attacked.

Seoul has staged days of military drills in a show of force meant to deter North Korea, including live-fire exercises earlier this week on a front-line island shelled by the North last month. Angered by the exercises, North Korea threatened Thursday it would launch a "sacred" nuclear war if Seoul hit it and warned that even the smallest intrusion on its territory would bring a devastating response.

The two sides are still technically at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce not a peace treaty, and a U.S. governor who recently made an unofficial diplomatic mission to the North has said the situation on the peninsula is a "tinderbox" and the worst he had ever seen it.

Still, the latest rhetoric seemed likely to be just that, words aimed at stirring pride at home and keeping the rival at bay.

Defense chief Kim Yong Chun said North Korea is "fully prepared to launch a sacred war" and would use its nuclear capabilities, calling Monday's drills a "grave military provocation" that indicated South Korea and the U.S. are plotting to invade the North.

Read the entire article

U.S. Senate approves nuclear arms treaty with Russia

Beforeitsnews.com
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 5:30

Windsor Genova - AHN News News Writer

Washington, DC, United States (AHN) - The U.S. Senate ratified Wednesday a new nuclear arms reduction treaty with the Russian Federation.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden announced the ratification as the Senate's presiding officer after 71 senators voted in favor of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) signed by President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on April 8.

A total 26 Republicans voted against the treaty limiting each country's nuclear warheads to 1,550 each and allowing for 18 verifications of 1,500 weapons per year by each side.

The ratification of the new START came after 11 Republicans crossed party lines on Tuesday and joined 56 Democrats in voting for cloture on the treaty.

The Republicans repeated their opposition to the measure in the last minute with Sen. John Cornyn of Texas arguing that the treaty excludes limits on tactical weapons intended for battlefields. Cornyn argued that Russia has more tactical nuclear weapons than the U.S.

Espionage Act Rears Its Ugly Head And Threatens American Tradition Of Freedom

Beforeitsnews.com
Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Is the Espionage Act a good law? As various prominent members of our government and media add their voices to those calling for charging Julian Assange and The New York Times under the Espionage Act, it's important to remember and not repeat the Act's ugly past.
Bestselling author, Naomi Wolf, recounts the damage done by the Espionage Act over at the Huffington Post:

The Espionage Act was crafted in 1917 -- because President Woodrow Wilson wanted a war and, faced with the troublesome First Amendment, wished to criminalize speech critical of his war. In the run-up to World War One, there were many ordinary citizens -- educators, journalists, publishers, civil rights leaders, union activists -- who were speaking out against US involvement in the war. The Espionage Act was used to round these citizens by the thousands for the newly minted 'crime' of their exercising their First Amendment Rights.

A movie producer who showed British cruelty in a film about the Revolutionary War (since the British were our allies in World War I) got a ten-year sentence under the Espionage act in 1917, and the film was seized; poet E.E. Cummings spent three and a half months in a military detention camp under the Espionage Act for the 'crime' of saying that he did not hate Germans.

Esteemed Judge Learned Hand wrote that the wording of the Espionage Act was so vague that it would threaten the American tradition of freedom itself. Many were held in prison for weeks in brutal conditions without due process; some, in Connecticut -- Joe Lieberman's home state -- were severely beaten while they were held in prison. The arrests and beatings were widely publicized and had a profound effect, terrorizing those who would otherwise speak out.

Read the entire article

Plan to Turn Post Office Trucks Into Stasi Data Collection Nodes


 Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
December 21, 2010

Post Office trucks may be used to determine if you have problems with the government. Photo: Kevin Spencer.

Post Office trucks may be used to determine if you have problems with the government. Photo: Kevin Spencer.

Forget the StreetView data vacuum scandal. If an idea proposed for the money hole known as the U.S. Post Office is adopted, your friendly neighborhood postal person may be soon driving a high-tech data collection vehicle that would rival anything Google put to use for the government.

“The service’s thousands of delivery vehicles have only one purpose now: to transport mail,” Michael Ravnitzky, chief counsel to the chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, wrote for the New York Times last week. “But what if they were fitted with sensors to collect and transmit information about weather or air pollutants? The trucks would go from being bulky tools of industrial-age communication to being on the cutting edge of 21st-century information-gathering and forecasting.”
“Data collection wouldn’t require much additional staff or resources; all it would take would be a small, cheap and unobtrusive sensor package mounted on each truck,” writes Ravnitzky.
He said outfitting the trucks would make “it significantly easier to spot a problem or anomaly” and the system “could assess road quality, catalog potholes and provide early warning of unsafe road conditions like black ice.”
Forget the prospect of weather forecasting or black ice. The federal government is far more interested in collecting data on citizens than it is on reporting road conditions. The NSA and the CIA don’t give a hoot about potholes.
On Monday, the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post, told us what we already know – the government has created a massive Stasi-like snoop apparatus in America. “The government is creating a vast domestic spying network to collect information about Americans in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks and subsequent terror plots,” Reuters reported. “The government is using for this purpose the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators,” and may soon use the Post Office if Mr. Ravnitzky’s proposal is adopted.

Read the entire article

What Brad Meltzer’s Decoded Missed About The REAL Meaning of the Statue of Liberty’s Symbols

Mark Dice
Infowars.com
December 20, 2010

So, I appeared in a show on the History Channel.  I’m honored, but I still need to point out how incorrect they where and I need to show how the three investigators barely scratched the surface of the Statue of Liberty’s symbolism, let alone the Illuminati.

The promo for the show asked ‘Does the Statue of Liberty hold a secret message?’  Are there secret symbols built into it?  Is she herself one giant secret symbol?  Does it actually represent Lucifer?  The answer to these questions is yes.
Before the ‘Statue of Liberty’ episode of Brad Meltzer’s Decoded first aired on the History Channel December 16th 2010, if you asked the average American what the Statue of Liberty represented, they couldn’t say anything other than “America,” “freedom” or “democracy.”
Some may know that it was given to America by the French, but few know it was orchestrated by Freemasons, the secret society, not the government of France.
It’s interesting how America accepted a “gift” from a secret society and then put it up in New York Harbor, don’t you think?  Can I donate a monument and have a major city put it up where everyone can see it?  I hope so, because I have some great ideas.
Frederic Bartholdi, the designer of the Statue of Liberty, was, of course, a Freemason, and very familiar with occult and Illuminati symbolism and philosophies.  The three major figures involved with the Statue, Frederic Bartholdi who designed the statue itself, Gustave Eiffel who designed the inner support structure, and Richard Hunt who designed the pedestal, were all Freemasons.
Bartholdi’s original plan for a giant statue of this type was to be placed in a harbor in Egypt.  After his proposal was turned down by the Egyptian government, he changed his design a little bit and approached America to see if he could erect his newly designed statue here.
The point is, he originally wanted to build a bizarre statue and have it stand somewhere other than America.  Bartholdi’s first choice for his statue was Egypt, not America.  Go on, sheep, and keep calling the statue American.
The original name of the statue was “Liberty Enlightening the World,” not the Statue of Liberty.  Again, the word Enlightening fits in with the Illuminati theme.  Enlightening, enlightenment, light, the sun, intelligence, bright, brilliance, Lucifer.  Are you getting this?  The smart people are.  The zombies probably stopped reading this by now.
A near mirror image of the Statue of Liberty stands in France, also on an island, in the Seine River in Paris that was set up in 1889, just three years after the one in America.  If it’s an “American” symbol then why is there an almost identical one in France?  There are actually HUNDREDS of enormous “Statues of Liberty” all around the world.

Read the entire article and watch video

Riots Erupt In Bangladesh After Stock Market Plunges 6.7%

ZeroHedge.com

Bangledesh:hundreds of angry investors took to the streets, "threw bricks at police, marched in the streets shouting slogans, and staged a sit-down protest."

December 20, 2010


For what may be the best look at the future of the world's most recent Banana republic entrant (the U.S.S. of A. for the confused) has to look forward to, we need to merely shift our attention at another one, which has had the privilege of experimenting with its Banana status for far longer: Bangladesh. After the stock market plunged on Sunday by 552 points or 6.72%, hundreds of angry investors took to the streets, "threw bricks at police, marched in the streets shouting slogans, and staged a sit-down protest."

These very same "investors" which have and always will be better known as momo investors, which chase returns only to end up with the live grenades, "chanted slogans against the government and the regulators, and marched through the busy roads in the Motijheel Commercial area, halting traffic. They also staged a sit-in at the SEC building." The reason for the recent mass hysteria in chasing stocks: pretty much the same as what the Fed is trying to do right here in the US: "The rising value of the stocks in recent years has attracted hundreds of thousands of small-scale or retail investors in Bangladesh, says the BBC's Anbarasan Ethirajan in Dhaka.

It became a popular investment for ordinary people, often providing higher returns than bank deposits and savings." Well, with the USA today posting an article with the following title on its cover page: "Experts agree: Get over your fear and get back into stocks ", and more incredulously, when one of these so-called experts is none other than David Bianco, the same utterly irresponsible creature who in October 2008 cut his 12 month S&P forecast from 1650 to 1500, well there is nothing much left to say: Bernanke has succeeded in converting America into a third-world subcontinent country.

From BBC:

The index ended the day down by 552 points or 6.72%. It has been on a rollercoaster ride in recent weeks, hitting a record high on 5 December, having climbed 80% since the start of the year.

But on 8 December it nosedived, prompting protests in Dhaka and towns elsewhere.

On Sunday, at least 500 investors hurled bricks at law enforcement officers near the Dhaka Stock Exchange and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) offices, said local police chief Tofazzal Hossain according to AFP news agency.

Analysts say Sunday's index fall was triggered by a central bank interest-rate hike.

The regulators have also taken measures in recent weeks to restrict money supply into the share market after concerns that stocks were overvalued.

The move forced big institutional investors to withdraw from the market, triggering panic among individual investors.

The rising value of the stocks in recent years has attracted hundreds of thousands of small-scale or retail investors in Bangladesh, says the BBC's Anbarasan Ethirajan in Dhaka.

The rising value of the stocks in recent years has attracted hundreds of thousands of small-scale or retail investors in Bangladesh, says the BBC's Anbarasan Ethirajan in Dhaka.

It became a popular investment for ordinary people, often providing higher returns than bank deposits and savings.

Regulators have now agreed to relax some of the conditions, hoping that will increase the money supply and stabilise the market, he says.

And yes, ladies and gents, all this is coming to a very cornered Chairmen close to you, who now faces the biggest dilemma of his pathetic career: let monetary policy be loose in perpetuity, bringing the price of oil to triple then quadruple digits (and so on) shortly thereafter, or tighten, watch the stock market plummet, and destroy his much desired, and even more imaginary, wealth effect.

Tensions Escalate in the Koreas

FOXNews.com

YEONPYEONG ISLAND, South Korea –  South Korea's military staged live-fire drills from an island just miles (kilometers) from rival North Korea's shores Monday, despite Pyongyang's threats of catastrophic retaliation for the maneuvers.

Seoul launched fighter jets, evacuated hundreds of people away from its tense land border with the North and sent residents of front-line islands into underground bunkers in case of attack, but the North finally said it would hold its own fire.

Read the entire article

Senate START Debate Goes Into Closed Session

Senate Floor

C-SPAN.org
Washington, DC
Monday, December 20, 2010

 
During yesterday’s special Senate session, Majority Ldr. Reid (D-NV) announced that debate on the START nuclear treaty would begin today at 10 am ET and move into a closed session at 2pm ET, with more public debate scheduled for the evening.

Also yesterday, Minority Ldr. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told CNN that he would not vote for the treaty because, in his estimation, it gives Russia a strategic advantage over the U.S.

Speaking on other matters, Sen. Reid told Senators that an agreement on the continuing resolution to fund the government was “close,” but not complete. Sen. McConnell had told CNN that an agreement, keeping the gov’t. running into March, had been agreed to.

An agreement on the CR between the two leaders will affect business in the House, scheduled to come in on Tuesday to work on the funding resolution.

On Sunday, Majority Ldr. Reid also expressed optimism that the 9/11 health care bill for first responders could be taken up before the Senate session comes to a close.

THE PENTAGON CONSPIRACY THEORY - JESSE VENTURA

You Tube

Ventura investigates the theory that a missile, and not a hijacked airliner, hit The Pentagon during the September 11 attacks. Questioned are issues such as the lack of surveillance video released by the FBI; debris and damage inconsistent with a jetliner crash; the extreme difficulty of crashing a jetliner at high speed into a specific ground target by an amateur pilot, and links to a possible cover-up of $2.3 trillion of unaccounted taxpayer money announced by then Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, just a day before the attacks.

THE PENTAGON - SEASON TWO - EPISODE FIFTEEN

http://www.trutv.com/shows/conspiracy...
http://www.infowars.com/
http://www.prisonplanet.tv/

Jesse Ventura's Conspiracy Theory will continue to dole out groundbreaking information tonight on TruTV at 10 PM EST / 9 PM CST with the "9/11 Pentagon" Episode, yet another in a line of subjects that have, until this point, been too controversial to cover at all on television. Tonight's episode features the unknowns about the dozens of suppressed video angles, the lack of physical or photographic evidence that a plane hit the building and the impossibility of an unskilled pilot circling around his target or hitting at ground-level without even scorching the earth beneath him.

From TruTV:

Pentagon -- NEW!
Airs: Fri, December 17 at 10P
The idea that a missile or explosives—not a hijacked jetliner—damaged the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 seems the most unlikely of 9/11 theories. That is, until you look at all the factors, which include eyewitness testimony, crime scene video, expert analysis and the question why, with 85 cameras trained on the building, have only five frames of crash footage have ever been released? Jesse Ventura leads a serious investigation into a tangled web of clues that some say are too sacred to even touch.

Ventura appeared on the Alex Jones Show today, in part to discuss the episode. He attests that Conspiracy Theory tracked down and talked to the real sources-- survivors and eye witnesses.

Perhaps as significant as what is unknown about the Pentagon attack is what has been forgotten. Just prior to the September 11 attacks in 2001, it was announced that the Department of Defense could not account for more than $2.3 trillion dollars. Donald Rumsfeld was questioned about it the day before by Rep. Cynthia McKinney, with little to say in accounting for the astonishing sum of money. But all the evidence of this accounting fraud, or error, was destroyed in the 9/11 attack during which the Pentagon was fortuitously struck in the very area where some of this evidence was being held for investigation. Oddly, a great deal of important financial & investigative information was also destroyed in the collapse of WTC7 on the same day.

Former Gov. Ventura & co. follow up on the reports about the training of alleged hijacker Hani Hanjour who scored very poorly during flight instruction. Though the official story seems to ignore this smoking gun-- roughly equivalent to Lee Harvey Oswald's poor shooting ability-- Hanjour's one-time instructor was dumbfounded by his complete lack of ability. He couldn't successfully fly a single-engine Cessna plane during training-- casting serious doubt that he could ever wield a commercial jet aircraft like Flight 77 at all, much less execute an expert turn circling into a direct hit without even disturbing the lawn beneath it. Expert pilots have attested that such a maneuver is almost impossible.

Researchers and skeptics alike have all pondered the inconsistent evidence at the Pentagon. In attempt to find out more, Jesse speaks with a former NASA engineer who investigates the incident, concluding that the damage at the Pentagon was NOT the result from a plane strike. But the best way to confirm whether or not a plane caused this damage would be to consult the many security camera angles at the Pentagon which either filmed the incident or the surrounding area at the time of the incident; yet only two of those angles have ever been released. The show consults with the FBI who confirm that in fact there were 84 security cameras filming on 9/11; but without seeing those angles none of the outstanding questions can be answered.

http://www.infowars.com/gov-ventura-p...

INFOWARS.COM
PRISONPLANET.COM
PRISONPLANET.TV

OATHKEEPERS.ORG
AE911TRUTH.ORG