"It is not enough to know that there is a shadow government pulling the strings of the visible government- we must also act to expose it, and defeat it!"-Mark Matheny
Weiss Ratings, an arm of Jupiter, Fla., research firm Weiss Research, has initiated coverage of sovereign nation debt by ranking U.S. debt at “C,” a level it calls “two notches above junk” status.
Weiss Ratings puts U.S. debt at 33rd of 47 nations it rates, below China and other Asian exporters but above debt-plagued European nations such as Ireland, Greece and Portugal.
“If you own medium- or long-term government notes and bonds, dump them immediately,” said Martin Weiss, chairman of The Weiss Group, in a release.
“If you have your cash in short-term U.S. Treasury bills, be sure to surround them with investments that go up when the U.S. dollar falls,” he said. “And if you wish to profit from this crisis, consider adding still further to those contra-dollar investments.”
The dollar continues to fall. (Getty Photo)
Weiss said that the ratings decision was made to protect investors from triple-A ratings given to U.S. debt by the three largest ratings agencies — Standard & Poor's, Moody's, and Fitch Ratings — which he called “fundamentally unfair” to investors.
“It fails to warn you of real dangers. And it helps keep your yield far too low to compensate for the risks you're taking. Investors urgently need a more honest rating,” Weiss said.
The false security of such high ratings means that politicians are likely to feel that they can continue to debate U.S. spending at a time when action is necessary, Weiss said. “If they had only issued a fair rating years ago, it could have played a pivotal role in helping lawmakers and policymakers take earlier remedial steps,” he said.
He went on to predict, absent of a serious spending reforms, a “further deterioration in the nation's finances” likely to trigger “a series of events beyond their control,” including:
• The dollar losing its status as a reserve currency.
• Global investors, already dumping the U.S. dollar, dumping U.S. bonds in a panic.
• Investors demanding draconian cutbacks in U.S. government spending.
• In turn, a vicious cycle of economic declines, larger deficits, and further investor demands for even greater cutbacks.
In the Weiss ratings scale, ranging from “A” (excellent) to “E” (very weak), only sovereign countries with stellar scores in four major areas — debt burdens, international stability, economic health and market acceptance — merit a grade of “A-minus” or better.
Meanwhile, on the low end of the scale, only countries that demonstrate severe or consistent weaknesses in the four areas receive a grade of “D-plus” or lower, according to Weiss Ratings.
Are the American people losing faith in the U.S. economy? The statistics that you are about to read might surprise you. Not everyone believes that the U.S. economy is dying (there are still millions out there that will swallow anything that the mainstream media tells them), but the reality is that there is a growing chunk of the population that has completely lost faith in our leaders and in our economic system.
A brand new Gallup poll has found that the number of Americans that believe that we are in a "depression" is actually larger than the number of Americans that believe that the economy is "growing". That is absolutely shocking because according to official government figures, the U.S. economy is growing right now and virtually nobody in the mainstream media or the government has used the term "depression" to describe the economic downturn that we went through recently. In fact, according to Gallup a total of 55% of the American people believe that we are either in a recession or a depression right now.
This is clear evidence that the American people are losing faith in U.S. government economic statistics and instead they are basing their opinions on what they see in their own communities. Despite the pablum about an "economic recovery" constantly being spewed by Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama, faith in our economic system continues to decline. The truth is that the American people are not stupid. They can see what is happening to the economy.
Back when I was a teenager, one day I walked over to the local McDonald's and filled out an application and was immediately hired.
But that is not how it works today.
Recently, McDonald's made headlines when they held a National Hiring Day. Some commentators pointed to that event as evidence that the economy was recovering.
Well, you know what? McDonald's ended up receiving approximately one million applications.
So how many of those people did McDonald's hire?
They hired about 62,000 people.
That means that somewhere around 938,000 eager job applicants were turned away.
Just think about that.
Only about 6.2 percent of those that applied for a job at McDonald's were accepted.
As Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider recently pointed out, that means that Harvard now has a higher acceptance rate than McDonald's does.
Harvard accepts about 7% of those that apply to go to school there.
Who ever thought we would see the day when a higher percentage of applicants get accepted into Harvard than get hired at McDonald's?
Sadly, the number of jobs continues to shrink. The competition for good jobs has become absolutely crazy.
Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.
So why is this happening? Well, there are a lot of reasons, but as I have written about previously, the fact that millions of our jobs are being shipped overseas is a huge factor.
Without good jobs, an increasing number of Americans are being forced to turn to government assistance in order to survive.
Today, more than 44 million Americans are on food stamps. In addition, government transfer payments now make up 18 percent of all personal income in the United States.
That is frightening.
Wall Street Journal By Javier E. David Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Suffering its worst monthly performance since September, the dollar weakened to a new 2 1/2-year low Friday as investors turned increasingly pessimistic about the U.S. economy and the policy prescriptions designed to improve it.
Longstanding worries among market participants about the Federal Reserve's ultraloose monetary policy have converged with growing concerns about the widening U.S. fiscal imbalance. Both are considered legacies of crisis-era stimulus policy that has kept U.S. interest rates at rock bottom, but sent the federal debt soaring to unsustainable levels.
As a result, the dollar is hunkered at multiyear lows against most of its major counterparts, many of which offer higher returns that make the greenback pale in comparison. In addition to the dollar's lack of yield advantage, data this week have fanned concerns that the U.S. economy could be losing momentum at the very moment the Fed is poised to wrap up its controversial $600 billion bond-buying program, scheduled to end in June.
"A weaker dollar is a consequence of what [policy makers] are doing," said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital and an implacable critic of the Fed. He expects the euro to retest its record high against the dollar above $1.60 within the coming months, if not weeks.
The Fed's loose monetary policy "is better than the alternative. They could raise interest rates to protect the dollar, but it would crash the housing market all over again and send the economy back into a recession," Schiff said. As a result, policymakers have little alternative but to behave indifferently to the dollar's slide.
Late-day position squaring in thin markets allowed the dollar to rebound modestly from the session's lows. However, most analysts agree that the currency's downward trend is likely to resume when trading resumes on Monday.
Late Friday, the euro was at $1.4810 from $1.4822 late Thursday, according to EBS via CQG. The dollar was at Y81.20 from Y81.54, while the euro was at Y120.28 from Y120.83. The U.K. pound was at $1.6708 from $1.6635. The dollar was at CHF0.8652 from CHF0.8736, a new record low against Switzerland's currency.
The ICE Dollar Index, which tracks the U.S. dollar against a trade-weighted basket of currencies, was at about 73.025 from about 73.121.
Friday's closing level put the dollar at its lowest level since July 2008, and the near-5% fall makes April the currency's worst monthly decline since September.
Data from the Commerce Department showed U.S. incomes grew in March, but spending slowed, as rising prices for food and energy squeezed consumers and restrained the economy.
Friday's figures followed a government report this week that showed the economy slowed sharply in the first three months of 2011.
"Growing risk appeal outside of the United States has turned to a mild concern that the world's No. 1 economy is possibly losing its head of steam at a time when the Federal Reserve no longer has use of relief" in the form of quantitative easing, said Andrew Wilkinson, senior market analyst at Interactive Brokers, in a Friday research note to clients. "The recovery in global growth has marked a similar rebound in inflation-bothersome commodity prices."
Because the Fed isn't seen tightening monetary policy until well into next year, market observers are increasingly convinced the dollar is likely to remain pressured across the board.
The Alex Jones Channel
April 30, 2011
Alex welcomes in-studio author, researcher and radio host Webster Griffin Tarpley. Tarpley is the author of Obama: The Postmodern Coup – Making of a Manchurian Candidate, Surviving the Cataclysm: Your Guide Through the Worst Financial Crisis in Human History, and Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography.
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
April 29, 2011
Libya will soon suffer the fate of Iraq. According to the World Food Program, a United Nations outfit, the north African country will soon experience a food crisis. In a statement, the organization said the engineered armed conflict in the country is seriously undermining the supply and distribution of perishable goods.
In 2003, the same thing happened in Iraq after the United States invaded to save the world from WMDs that did not exist, that were invented by a cabal of neocons ensconced in the Pentagon.
On March 20, 2003, the BBC reported that the country faced “the largest and most costly humanitarian crisis in history” following the U.S. invasion and the collapse of the oil-for-food program and the departure of U.N. personnel.
Iraq was dependent on globalist hand-outs after more than a decade of medieval sanctions. 500,000 children died as a result. Former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said the engineered murder of a half million innocents was a price worth paying. Children of nations declared to be “rogue” by banksters are always the first to suffer and die.
Actually, according to UNICEF, 1,211,285 children died of embargo-related causes between August 1990 and August 1997, a number that reminds one of the toll inflicted on Cambodia by Pol Pot, a CIA asset who was allowed to conduct genocide after Kissinger and Nixon killed around 600,000 civilians and paved the way for Pol Pot’s slaughter of from 1.4 to 2.2 million out of a population of around 7 million.
Before George Bush the Elder invaded Iraq under the false pretense of protecting the former Iraqi province of Kuwait – before the Brits took over, Kuwait was the Ottoman Empire province of Basra – Iraq enjoyed 92 percent access to clean water, 93 percent access to high quality health care and high educational and nutritional standards. It was the envy of the Arab world, despite the rule of the CIA-trained thug Saddam Hussein.
Now 55 percent have no clean drinking water and 80 percent are not connected to the sewage system. Prior to Bush’s invasion to save the slant drilling monarchy in Kuwait from Saddam Hussein, illiteracy in Iraq had been all but eliminated. Now the illiteracy rate has increased to over 25 percent. In some parts of the country, it stands at 40-50 percent among women, according to the NGO Save the Children. Read the entire article
A statement from Barack Obama's half-sister has at least cast a shadow of doubt on the legitimacy of the "Certificate of Live Birth" document that was released by the White House this week in an attempt to stifle questions about his eligibility, by referencing his apparent adoption by her father, Indonesian Lolo Soetoro.
Facebook page comments from Maya Soetoro-Ng
On a Facebook page, Maya Soetoro-Ng wrote to a woman who had met her in Hawaii after Madelyn Dunham, the mother of Stanley Ann Dunham Obama Soetoro and grandmother to both Maya and Barack, passed away in 2008.
Soetoro-Ng was objecting to having a conversation with a critic of her half-brother, and said she had been misquoted as saying her whole family was Muslim.
She wrote, "I did not say my brother was a Muslim. I did say that I was more philosophically Buddhist. I told you that you were upsetting me. You said that you were not trying to upset me but wanted to know the truth about (Raila) Odinga (a Muslim for whom Barack Obama campaigned in the 2007 presidential race in Kenya). I told you I didn't know who that was and had never met him. You mentioned the adoption laws of Indonesia that you saw as related to my brother's legitimacy (you were suggesting that because my father, his stepfather, had adopted him, that my brother was no longer American) and I said that I had no idea about Indonesian adoption law." See the movie Obama does not want you to see: Own the DVD that probes this unprecedented presidential-eligibility mystery!
While not a definitive statement, there also are other indications that Lolo Soetoro, Stanley Ann Dunham Obama Soetoro's second husband, an Indonesia, either adopted Barack Obama or considered him adopted, as documentation obtained by the Associated Press reveals that Obama-Soetoro was registered as a Muslim Indonesian at school when he lived in the Far East with his mother and Lolo Soetoro.
At 9:45 a.m. on April 27, President Obama addressed the escalating controversy over the actual location of his birth at a press briefing in the White House. At the hastily convened session, he presented the press corps with copies of a “Certificate of Live Birth,” a document issued by the Department of Health of the State of Hawaii. It contained his August 4, 1961 date of birth, the name of a doctor (David A. Sinclair?), and the names of Obama’s parents. The document was not issued by a hospital although the name and address of the “Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital” appeared in an appropriate box.
The obviously perturbed President stated that he wanted to put an end to the “silliness” surrounding claims that he was not born in the United States and that, therefore, he was ineligible to hold the nation’s highest office. White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said that the unusual press briefing and the President’s action had become necessary because “this is not a discussion happening just among conspiracy theorists. It is happening here in this room, on all of the networks, and it is something every major political figure of both parties is being asked about.” By “here in this room,” Pfeiffer meant members of the press corps who had earned the respect of the President and himself. Read thye entire article
The "long form" birth certificate released by the White house recently may be a forgery. Mark Matheny discusses some of the inconsistancies within the document.
Kurt Nimmo Infowars.com
April 28, 2011
Our investigation of the purported Obama birth certificate released by Hawaiian authorities today reveals the document is a shoddily contrived hoax. Infowars.com computer specialists dismissed the document as a fraud soon after examining it.
Check out the document released by WhiteHouse.gov for yourself.
Upon first inspection, the document appears to be a photocopy taken from state records and printed on official green paper. However, when the government released PDF is taken into the image editing program Adobe Illustrator, we discover a number of separate elements that reveal the document is not a single scan on paper, as one might surmise. Elements are placed in layers or editing boxes over the scan and green textured paper, which is to say the least unusual.
When sections of the document are enlarged significantly, we discover glaring inconsistencies. For instance, it appears the date stamped on the document has been altered. Moreover, the document contains text, numbers, and lines with suspicious white borders indicating these items were pasted from the original scan and dropped over a background image of green paper.
VIDEO: Alex Jones gives proof that Obama’s purported birth certificate is fraud.
Let’s assume the state of Hawaii scanned the original document and placed it on the green textured background. This does not explain the broken out or separate elements. There is no logical reason for this to be done unless the government planned to modify the document and make it appear to be something other than it is.
There are two elements of interest, as shown in the image to the above – both entries for the date accepted by the local registry. This appears to have been modified in an image editing program.
The media was quick to dispel the fact the document was modified. “Our analysis of the latest controversy: The original birth certificate was probably in a ‘negative’ form, and someone at the White House took it upon themselves to doctor it up so the form can be readable,” writesJoe Brooks for Wireupdate.
Nathan Goulding, writing for the National Review, tells us anybody can open the White House released PDF in Illustrator and it will break out into layers. “I’ve confirmed that scanning an image, converting it to a PDF, optimizing that PDF, and then opening it up in Illustrator, does in fact create layers similar to what is seen in the birth certificate PDF. You can try it yourself at home,” he writes.
Indeed, but this does not answer the question why in the Obama birth certificate PDF the layers or elements contain dates – which appear to be modified – and the signature of the state registrar. If the document was acquired from state records in whole, why was in necessary to add elements? Goulding and Brooks do not address this issue.
These layers are also revealed by the White House issued PDF’s hex file in freeware hex editor. Within its code are listed 8 image masks, which if changed from value “true” to “false” turn off and on to reveal the layers as demonstrated in the video and in Illustrator. Whether these represent compression artifacts or other digitizing processes, or whether these masks represent deliberate manipulation remains to be conclusively shown.
As Market-Ticker.org points out, it may prove to be significant that two of the boxes appear over both of the “date accepted” boxes, as well as the “Mother’s occupation box.” Was there a need to tamper with the dates on the document or other areas? The recent stamp date and issuing signature of the state registrar also contain an edited layer.
Questions have also been raised about the number at the top of the document issued by the Department of Health, number 61 10641, as one part of the number is in a separate layer when viewed in Illustrator, as demonstrated in the video above. This may prove to be significant. A long form birth certificate obtained by the Honolulu Star in 2009 from a female born one day after Obama and whose form was accepted three days after Obama’s document contains a Dept. of Health number that is lower, 61 10637. There are others subtle differences, such as the use of “Aug.” for the date rather than “August,” and the use of “Honolulu, Oahu” rather than “Honolulu, Hawaii” (seen also in the 1962 certificate below) which may or may not be significant.
More to the point, this certificate and others, like the one posted below it, have visible seals. No issuing seal can be seen on the document released today by Obama. Negative of long form birth certificate for Aug. 5, 1961 birth in Honolulu, released in 1966 with seal and dated signatures.Published by Honolulu Star and World Net Daily in 2009.
Photo of physical copy of long form birth certificate for June 15, 1962 birth in Honolulu, also with visible seal.
Infowars will continue to analyze this issue as more information comes in. It is significant that the Obama Administration was pressured into responding to this controversy, whatever the final analysis of this document. However, the administration still needs to release his other records which have been sealed at great expense. Is there an issue with his being naturalized in Indonesia? Why are his college records at Columbia and Occidental sealed, and what do they contain? Did Obama travel to Pakistan on a foreign passport? These questions and many others have not been properly answered.
Our country is on the verge of financial Armageddon! Please forward this to everyone you know. This is the second video produced by Blaise Ingoglia. Visit www.governmentgonewild.org for more
Today, Barack Obama blinked – releasing birth records he has hiredlawyers to prevent the public from seeing, even at the expense of allowing U.S. Army Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin to be court-martialed and sent to prison for having dared ask questions the White House until now has resolutely dismissed with ridicule and disdain.
A key problem for Obama is that birth certificates issued to twin girls born one day later at Kapi'olani hospital, the Nordykes, are the Rosetta Stone of deciphering both Obama's previously released short-form Certification of Live Birth and the newly released purported copy of his long-form birth certificate.
The problem since the short-form certificate was released during the 2008 presidential campaign has always been this:
As WND reported, the long-form birth certificates issued by Kapi'olani to the Nordyke twins have certificate numbers lower than the number given Obama, even though the president purportedly was born at the same hospital a day earlier than the Nordykes.
Note, Susan Nordyke, the first twin, was born at 2:12 p.m. Hawaii time Aug. 5, 1961, and was given certificate No. 151 – 61 – 10637, which was filed with the Hawaii registrar Aug. 11, 1961.
Gretchen Nordyke, the second twin, was born at 2:17 p.m. Hawaii time Aug. 5, 1961, and was given certificate No. 151 – 61 – 10638, which was also filed with the Hawaii registrar Aug. 11, 1961.
Yet, according to the Certification of Live Birth displayed by FactCheck.org during the 2008 presidential campaign – and now according to the long-form birth certificate the White House released today – Barack Obama was given a higher certificate number than the Nordykes.
Note, Obama was given certificate No. 151 – 1961 – 10641, even though he was born Aug. 4, 1961, the day before the Nordyke twins, and his birth was registered with the Hawaii Department of Health registrar three days earlier, Aug. 8, 1961.
In 1961, the birth certificate numbers were not assigned by the hospitals.
Instead, the numbers were stamped to the birth record by the Hawaii Department of Health at the main office in Honolulu.
This is the only place birth certificate numbers were assigned.
At the last step of the process, the documents were accepted by the registrar general, with the date of registration inserted in box No. 22 on the lower right hand corner of the long-form birth certificate.
The date the birth document was accepted by the registrar general was the date the birth certificate number was stamped on the birth record.
The birth certificate number was stamped on the form by a rubber stamp that automatically increased by one each time a birth certificate was stamped.
The question, therefore, is how was it possible that the Nordyke twins had their birth certificates accepted by the registrar general in Hawaii three days later than the registrar general accepted Obama's birth certificate, when the twins' numbers are lower than Obama's number?
The White House has released a long-form birth certificate, saying the document is “proof positive” that Obama was born in Hawaii.
White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said today the decision was made to release the full document in response to increased attention on the issue, including a political stunt by Donald Trump, who claims he may challenge Obama in 2012 for the presidency. Pfeiffer did not mention Trump by name.
Numerous researchers have questioned the place of Obama’s birth, including author Jerome Corsi and attorney Phil Berg. Pfeiffer said “internet chatter” had moved into the national political debate and ended up being discussed regularly on the corporate media. Prior to Trump’s challenge that he would produce his birth certificate, the corporate media assiduously ignored the issue.
Obama discussed the release of the document Wednesday morning at the White House. “We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers,” he said.
The document lists Obama’s birthplace as Honolulu, Hawaii, and his birth date as Aug. 4, 1961. The hospital listed is Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital. The name on the birth certificate is Barack Hussein Obama II.
Article Two of the United States Constitution states that “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”
04/26/2011 Ron Paul is America's leading voice for limited, constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, a return to sound monetary policies, and a sensible pro-America foreign policy.
For more information visit the following websites:
April 15: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, left, sits with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner before a meeting of the G-20 at the World Bank/IMFSpring Meetings 2011 in Washington.
April 27, 2011
For generations of Americans raised on the supremacy of the American Dollar and the U.S. economy, a forecast this week from the International Monetary Fund was stunning. It predicted that China's economy will surpass that of the U.S. in five years.
Industrialization and cheap labor in emerging economies, like China’s, coupled with two years of a domestic financial crisis may have weakened the U.S. economy. But some also wonder whether U.S. monetary policies have played a part too.
"One of the fundamental problems with the U.S. economy right now is the Federal Reserve thinks the answer to all our economic problems is printing money," says Stephen Moore, a senior economics writer and editorial board member at the Wall Street Journal. "We haven't created new jobs from all of this printing of money, but what we have produced is inflation in prices."
Printing money, or “quantitative easing” as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has termed it, increases the supply of money but critics say it can potentially lower the value of almost anything that can be purchased.
And, it can devalue the currency -- something that critics contend has already happened. For example, a dollar is worth 11 cents less today against the euro than it was last year.
Next time you look at a billboard, it might be looking back. It'll know your age, gender and how long you've been staring at it.
Targeted advertising is the golden goose of the online economy: ads keyed to a user's unique interests have been shown to double the effectiveness of traditional ads. But those ads have been restricted to the Internet--until now.
New York City startup Immersive Labs's outdoor ads use artificial intelligence to target the individuals or groups looking at them. Our video of Immersive Lab's ads below shows how they increase engagement and bring the Web's interactivity and customization out into the real world.
The facial recognition software can determine the gender and age of whoever is walking by, and, if there's more than one person looking, can detect the makeup of the crowd. That's nothing new. Billboards have been able to identify these characteristics for years. But unlike past technology, Immersive uses this information to deliver the ad with the best calculated chance of getting your attention at that moment. Alongside the consumer's information, the software customizes ads by pulling in local data including the weather and social media updates from sites like Twitter.
So if a fifty-year-old man strolls by an ad for tampons, the ad will morph seamlessly into an ad for running shoes before he gets there. If a crowd of men and women of all ages come by on a cold morning, the display might transform into an ad for hot coffee: a gender-neutral, time and weather appropriate solution. And if hundreds of people are tweeting about the Knicks game, the software might realize a sports game is unfolding nearby, and display a nicely appropriate Gatorade ad.
The upcoming royal Wedding of William Mountbatten-Windsor, heir in waiting to the British throne has the UK media in a frenzy of vomit inducing worship and stomach churning sycophantic fawning. Even the US media is pouring over the royals to such an extent that commentators have pointed out that had the modern day corporate media covered the Revolutionary War, it would have firmly supported the British.
The US fought a bloody war of independence against British control of its government and economy, yet the American media has fast become fascinated with an institution that represents everything America is not. This despite the fact that in a recent poll only 6% of Americans said they were at all interested in the event.
Two billion people are estimated to watch this weekend’s royal wedding. Despite the three war fronts, radioactive meltdown in Japan, the evolving 2012 presidential field and any number of other stories, the media’s collective lens will be turned exclusively on a snobbish pompous ceremony that is costing already extremely strained British taxpayers tens of billions to stage.
While the British government balks at the unfolding events in Syria and elsewhere where protests and demonstrations are being brutally curbed, those wishing to protest the antiquated old world elitist values Britain is still forced to accept as “cultural” under the monarchy will be met with stern resistance and a gargantuan police presence this weekend on the streets of London.
Meanwhile, over 40 monarchs from around the world will take their seats at the wedding, among them the dictators and ambassadors from countries with appalling human rights records such as Swaziland, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe. Though he was invited, the Crown Prince of Bahrain, whose Gulf state has violently suppressed democracy protests in recent months, has respectfully declined, in order to avoid a public relations scandal. The leaders of Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, whose military forces have aided the vicious crackdown will all be there, however. The Libyan Ambassador to Britain had his invitation rescinded when it was recently decided that Libya should be bombed back into the stone age. Read the entire article
Surging pork and beef costs will keep pressure on U.S. food inflation, which the Department of Agriculture says will rise 3 percent to 4 percent this year, the most since 2008.
While the overall estimate for food inflation was left unchanged in today’s report, the USDA said prices for meat, poultry and fish will jump 5 percent to 6 percent, led by beef, which may climb 8 percent, and pork, which could gain 7.5 percent. The beef estimate was increased by 2.5 percentage points from March and pork was raised 1 percentage point.
“I suspect when December arrives we will see increases of 4 to 6 percent” for the year in overall prices, said Bill Lapp, the president of Advanced Economic Solutions, an agricultural- research company based in Omaha, Nebraska. “The pressure on food prices is clearly on the upside,” said Lapp, a former chief economist for ConAgra Foods Inc.
Earlier this month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said food costs rose 0.7 percent in March, capping a 2 percent gain for the first quarter. Cattle futures traded in Chicago were up 6.3 percent for the year through April 21, and hogs had increased 25 percent, on rising export demand. Crude oil surged 33 percent.
At the dark heart of our financial dilemma is debt. Too much debt was used to bolster households during the real estate bubble and now too much debt is being used by the government to bail out the financial sector. Is there a tipping point in the amount of debt the American economy can shoulder? I believe there is and looking at the data carefully we begin to see unusual patterns not seen in a generation.
The mosaic of tools used for this financial crisis would have worked if the problems we faced were merely issues of confidence. Of course the problems were very real and dealt with more than just perception and instead of confronting the reality of an over leveraged debt addicted machine we have only stepped on the accelerator. Yet this time instead of credit flowing to households for added game rooms or a trip to Hawaii credit is being extended to Wall Street courtesy of the Federal Reserve. Total credit market debt owed jumped from $28 trillion in 2001 to over $52 trillion today. During this time GDP went from $10 trillion to $14 trillion. You do the math where the growth is occurring.
Peak debt
I find the above chart startling because it shows how heavily our society relies on debt. Atlas can only support so much even in a myth. There is no doubt that credit serves a very useful purpose in society. Yet when debt begins to over shadow actual GDP or serves as a substitute for income, then we have a serious problem on our hands.
During the real estate bubble many families started to rely on their home equity as if it were normal for homes to throw off $50,000 or $100,000 a year in appreciation like some money tree. Households enjoyed this because wages went stagnant and surely pulling money from a home is easier than saving money for a rainy day and living within a budget. However all of it was a charade and American households are now paying the bill. Read the entire article
A rumor is floating around the physics community that the world's largest atom smasher may have detected a long-sought subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, also known as the "God particle."
The controversial rumor is based on what appears to be a leaked internal note from physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 17-mile-long particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland. It's not entirely clear at this point if the memo is authentic, or what the data it refers to might mean — but the note already has researchers talking.
The buzz started when an anonymous commenter recently posted an abstract of the note on Columbia University mathematician Peter Woit's blog, Not Even Wrong.
Some physicists say the note may be a hoax, while others believe the "detection" is likely a statistical anomaly that will disappear upon further study. But the find would be a huge particle-physics breakthrough, if it holds up.
"If it were to be real, it would be really exciting," said physicist Sheldon Stone of Syracuse University.
Hunting for the Higgs
The Higgs boson is predicted to exist by prevailing particle-physics theory, which is known as the Standard Model. Physicists think the Higgs bestows mass on all the other particles — but they have yet to confirm its existence.
Huge atom smashers — like the LHC and the Tevatron, at Fermilab in Illinois — are searching for the Higgs and other subatomic bits of matter. These accelerators slam particles together at enormous speeds, generating a shower of other particles that could include the Higgs or other elemental pieces predicted by theory but yet to be detected. [Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles in Nature]
The leaked note suggests that the LHC's ATLAS particle-detection experiment may have picked up a signature of the elusive Higgs. The signal is consistent, in mass and other characteristics, with what the Higgs is expected to produce, according to the note.
However, some other aspects of the signal don't match predictions.
"Its production rate is much higher than that expected for the Higgs boson in the Standard Model," Stone told SPACE.com in an email interview. So the signal may be evidence of some other particle, Stone added, "which in some sense would be even more interesting, or it could be the result of new physics beyond the Standard Model."
Too soon to tell
Stone was quick to point out that the note is not an official result of the ATLAS research team. Therefore, speculating about its validity or implications is decidedly preliminary.
"It is actually quite illegitimate and unscientific to talk publicly about internal collaboration material before it is approved," Stone said. "So this 'result' is not a result until the collaboration officially releases it."
Other researchers joined Stone in urging patience and caution before getting too excited about the possible discovery.
"Don't worry, Higgs boson! I would never spread scurrilous rumors about you. Unlike some people," Caltech physicist Sean Carroll tweeted today (April 22).
While it's still early, some researchers have already begun to cast doubt on the possible detection. For example, Tommaso Dorigo — a particle physicist at Fermilab and CERN, which operates the LHC — thinks the signal is false and will fade upon closer inspection.
Dorigo — who said he doesn't have access to the full ATLAS memo — gives several reasons for this viewpoint. He points out, for example, that scientists at Fermilab didn't see the putative Higgs signal in their Tevatron data, which covered similar ground as the ATLAS experiment.
Dorigo feels strongly enough, in fact, to put his money where his mouth is.
"I bet $1,000 with whomever has a name and a reputation in particle physics (this is a necessary specification, because I need to be sure that the person taking the bet will honor it) that the signal is not due to Higgs boson decays," he wrote on his blog today. "I am willing to bet that this is NO NEW PARTICLE. Clear enough?"
You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.
Obama’s budget speech at George Washington University on April 13th, 2011; the Fiscal 2011 Budget Resolution causes a revolt in DC; the Independent Payment Advisory Board as Death Panel; House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s genocidal Budget Resolution for the year 2012; Medicare and Medicaid under bipartisan attack; PIMCO sells the US short; what to do to save the nation in case of US default; and speculators drive up the price of oil.
Editor's Note: We've been constantly told that the pictures are not stored! Hogwash... and here's proof!!
Philly.com April 23, 2011|By John Shiffman, Inquirer Staff Writer
TSA officer Thomas Gordon Jr. is being held. (Image: Government Employees (AFGE)…
A passenger screener at Philadelphia International Airport is facing charges that he distributed more than 100 images of child pornography via Facebook, records show.
Federal agents also allege that Transportation Safety Administration Officer Thomas Gordon Jr. of Philadelphia, who routinely searched airline passengers, uploaded explicit pictures of young girls to an Internet site on which he also posted a photograph of himself in his TSA uniform.
Homeland Security agents arrested the TSA officer March 24, and he is being held without bail.
Although the case was unsealed Thursday, neither the indictment nor the news release mentioned Gordon's job searching airline passengers for TSA.
One of the most troubling aspects of this “recovery” is how it is being achieved. We keep hearing about the wonderful Wall Street recovery yet a large portion of this is being created by extracting productivity from workers and stifling wages. Obviously if you scare the working and middle class and give them no job protection then many will retreat to their dark corner. Yet the reality is, these same companies are borrowing at subsidized rates from the Federal Reserve and using the taxpayer as a safety net. This economy is operating under a reverse Robin Hood effect where you steal from the poor and working class and redistribute the wealth to the top. The political class does not represent the people because as things stand, money buys power and many more Americans are losing their voice since they do not have funds to purchase lobbyists. The below chart is one of the more disturbing confirmations of our disappearing middle class.
The low wage recovery
Source: NELP
This chart sums up our current recovery in one picture. We lost over 3,500,000+ higher-wage jobs during the recession and so far, we have added 179,000. The mid-wage sector has lost over 3,200,000+ jobs but has added 458,000. More troubling however, is that 2,000,000+ jobs were lost in the lower-wage fields and this is where the bulk of the current economic growth is occurring with 613,000 jobs being added in this sector:
“(Huff Po) While the recovery of the labor market and the broader U.S. economy depend critically on job growth, equally important is the quality of those jobs. During the economic downturn, 40 percent of the jobs lost came from high-wage industries — yet high-wage industries accounted for only 14 percent of the new positions created in the first year of post-downturn job growth, according to a report released in February by the National Employment Law Project.”
