Globalist Plan to Downsize Americans into Jail Cell Like Homes


Infowars.com
Sept 8, 2012
Infowars reporter Melissa Melton takes us “Behind The Green Mask” and reveals the U.N.’s plans under Agenda 21.
Behind the Green Mask: U.N. Agenda 21 (paperback) by Rosa Koire is 172 pages of truth. It contains all the information you need to understand what is happening in your town, why it’s happening, who is behind it, and what you can do to stop it. Part history, part current events, part hand-to-hand combat, and part blueprint for keeping your freedom, this is one book that you’ll put to work immediately. Boots on the ground and all hands on deck is the order of the day. Awareness is the first step in the Resistance.

White House to miss deadline for report on 'fiscal cliff' budget cuts

The Hill
September 7, 2012


The White House on Friday said it will miss the legal deadline for delivering a report to Congress on the spending cuts from sequestration that are scheduled to take effect in 2013.
Spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Air Force One that the report will be coming next week.
Under the terms of the Sequestration Transparency Act signed in August, President Obama was to tell Congress by Friday how the administration plans to implement the $109 billion in automatic cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act.
The Office of Management and Budget has repeatedly failed to make legal deadlines. It delivered its presidential budget proposals and mid-session updates late both this year and last year. 
Republicans have tried to tie the tardiness to the failure of the Senate to pass a budget resolution for the last three years.

The swan song of stagflation – Gas prices up over 100 percent from 2005 and incomes are stagnant. Ignoring a $16 trillion debt headline and repackaging food to hide stagnant incomes.

MyBudget360
September 8, 2012


If you look around your daily life you realize that your purchasing power is losing value.  For a few decades now the middle class in the United States has demonstrably shrunken like clever food packaging.  Over the last forty years we have lost 10 percent of our middle class.  Most have fallen into the lower income bracket and now with a record 46.5 million Americans on food stamps, you have to wonder what kind of new economy we are entering into.  Since household incomes have gone stagnant for well over a decade, any increase in price on one item will definitely impact the cost of other goods.  In the end the purchasing power of Americans is falling.  Did you notice that in the last few days our federal government debt went over $16 trillion?  The media ignored this milestone assuming the public just doesn’t pay attention to headlines with the word trillion in it.
A rise here and a clever package there
As many of you know American household incomes have gone stagnant for over a decade.  When the cost of something goes up and disposable income goes sideways, many will need to make the choice to substitute goods or companies will get creative.  In a certain degree we are dealing with a modern stagflation.  Take a look at this:
smaller packaging
The top contains about 15 percent fewer crackers.  So it isn’t necessarily that people are not buying these items anymore but are shifting their preferences.  Without a doubt some categories like health insurance and college tuition have gone into a bubble like price rise while incomes stagger along.  The cost of fueling up in our car addicted nation?  Take a look at what has occurred since 2005:
gas prices
Gas prices are up over 100 percent in this short timeframe.  That household making $50,000 per year in 2005 is still making $50,000 in 2012 but is seeing a larger chunk of their disposable income being sucked into fueling their automobiles.
But stagnant wages means less money for other items and some other items have seen prices cuts like Folgers Coffee for example and Procter & Gamble Company rolled back $400 million in price increases made in the last year.  These are simply examples of companies responding to the current marketplace.  You also have places like Family Dollar that have done exceptionally well catering to the now massive 46 million customers that receive monthly food assistance.  Is this really the definition of success?
Paying more for less
Probably in no other category is the destruction of purchasing power being seen than in higher education.  There is no doubt higher education is in a bubble:
 “(BusinessWeek) If student loans are good debt, how do you account for the reaction of Christina Mills, 30, of Minneapolis, when she found out her payment on college and law school loans would be $1,400 a month? “I just went into the car and started sobbing,” says Mills, who works for a nonprofit.”
A couple of points.  First, when you come out with massive loans by default you are unable to afford your education especially when your initial income can’t even service the monthly minimum payment.  The question then becomes, where does this money come from?  Since the government and banks are tied at the hip, similar to what occurred in the housing bubble, loans are being made without the thought of how these borrowers are going to pay the money back.  The banking industry doesn’t care since this money is federally backed.  This is the same formula used in the housing market.  What happened to prices there?
 “Then there’s Michael DiPietro, 25, of Brooklyn, who accumulated about$100,000 in debt while getting a bachelor’s degree in fashion, sculpture, and performance, and spent the next two years waiting tables. He has since landed a fundraising job in the arts but still has no idea how he will pay back all that money. “I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s an obsolete idea that a college education is like your golden ticket,” DiPietro says. “It’s an idea that an older generation holds on to.”
How is it even possible to get $100,000 in loans for a fashion, sculpture, and performance degree?  It is possible because banks, schools, and the government are all part of this giant machine that is essentially allowing young Americans to go into massive debt for degrees that have little merit in the economy.  This is no free market but a crony based system that extracts rents from the working and middle class and makes the CEO/Presidents of these schools wealthy while banks skim cash paying out million dollar bonuses and the government (that is the public) serves as the sucker when things go bust.
“So maybe the real problem is that credentialism has trumped learning. That drives people to get degrees simply to displace others who don’t have degrees, says Richard Vedder, who directs the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. He notes that the U.S. has more than 100,000 janitors with college degrees and 16,000 degree-holding parking lot attendants”
So we continue down this path of inflating our way out of the massive debt we now find ourselves in.  The markets are now back to levels last seen in 2007 yet we now have 46 million people on food stamps and our overall workforce participation rate looks dismal:
employment ratio
Do you hear that sound?  It is the Federal Reserve gearing up to go into QE3 to inflate our way out of this mess and help their banking buddies.  Don’t be confused this political season with the massive number of millionaires in Congress.  They work for big money and all you need to do is examine the data to find out what is really going on.

Gray State Movie


Infowars.com
September 7, 2012
The world reels with the turmoil of war, geological disaster, and economic collapse, while Americans continue to submerge themselves in illusions of safety and immunity. While rights are sold for security, the federal government, swollen with power, begins a systematic takeover of liberty in order to bring about a New World Order.
Americans, quarantined to militarized districts, become a population ripe for tyrannical control.
Fearmongering, terrorism, police state, martial law, war, arrest, internment, hunger, oppression, violence, resistance — these are the new terms by which Americans define their existence. Neighbor is turned against neighbor as the value of the dollar plunges to zero, food supplies are depleted, and everyone is a terror suspect. There are arrests. Disappearances. Bio attacks. Public executions of those even suspected of dissent. Even rumors of concentration camps on American soil.
This is the backdrop to an unfolding story of resistance. American militias prepare for guerilla warfare. There are mass defections from the military as true Patriots attempt to rally around the Constitution and defend liberty, preparing a national insurgency against federal forces, knowing full well this will be the last time in history the oppressed will be capable of organized resistance.
It is a time of transition, of shifting alliance, of mass awakening and mass execution. It is an impending storm, an iron-gray morning that puts into effect decades of over-comfort and complacency, and Americans wake up to an occupied homeland. It is a time of lists — black list, white list, and those still caught in the middle, those who risk physical death for their free will and those who sell their souls to maintain their idle thoughts and easy comforts. It is in this Gray State that the perpetuation of human freedom will be contested, or crushed.
Is it the near future, or is it the present? The Gray State is coming – by consent or conquest. This is battlefield USA.

Critics Slam Obama Deployment of U.S. Troops to Guatemala for Drug War

The New American
September 7, 2012

Critics from across the political spectrum are outraged after the Obama administrationannounced that it was unconstitutionally sending 200 U.S. Marines to Guatemala under the guise of fighting the drug war. According to officials, the American troops were deployed as part of “Operation Martillo,” a multi-national squad of soldiers and law-enforcement personnel supposedly aimed at countering narcotics trafficking throughout Central America. 

The new President of Guatemala, Otto PĂ©rez Molina — a widely respected tough-on-crime former military general who opposed communism — had said earlier this year that legalizing drugs would be a better approach. However, the Obama administrationswiftly deployed high-level functionaries to coerce the leader into backing down. Apparently the mission was a success.

In mid-July, the Guatemalan government signed what news reports and officials described as a “treaty” with the Obama administration — the U.S. Senate, however, never ratified any such agreement as required under the Constitution. Within a month of the controversial deal, U.S. Marines, equipment, and military helicopters began arriving in Guatemala.  

"This is the first Marine deployment that directly supports countering transnational crime in this area, and it's certainly the largest footprint we've had in that area in quite some time," Marine Staff Sgt. Earnest Barnes from the U.S. Southern Command told the Associated Press. However, the scheme, which began in January, is much broader than just the 200 U.S. Marines. The Coast Guard and assorted alphabet soup U.S. federal bureaucracies are involved as well.

The operation also includes forces from Belize, Britain, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, France, Guatemala, Honduras, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Panama, and Spain, according to news reports. On top of that, the U.S. government has offered over $100 million to governments in the region under the guise of the “Central American Regional Security Initiative” for 2012.  

U.S. officials claimed that the American troops would be helping to find drug-laden planes and boats along Guatemalan coastlines. However, domestic forces will supposedly be doing the fighting, according to Obama administration spokesmen, who alleged that U.S. forces would only be allowed to defend themselves if fired upon. 

"Marines in Guatemala are in a supporting role and we are providing aerial, communications and logistical support to a regional partner who is currently facing strong challenges with illicit trafficking along its coasts,” claimed Department of Defense spokesman Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, adding that the deployment was “temporary in nature” and focused on supporting “regional authorities” in their own war. “This is not a new role nor the first time the U.S. military supports a partner in this capacity."

Read the entire article

The Message From Both Parties Is That Americans Are Disposable


Paul Craig RobertsInfowars.com
Sept 7, 2012
If political conventions are ranked on a one to ten scale for intelligence, I give the Republican Convention zero and the Democrats one.

How can the United States be a superpower when both political parties are unaware of everything that is happening at home and abroad?
The Republicans are relying for victory on four years of anti-Obama propaganda and their propriety programed electronic voting machines. For nearly four years Republican operatives have flooded the Internet with portraits of Obama as a non-US citizen, as a Muslim (even while Obama was murdering Muslims in seven countries), and as a Marxist (put in power by the Israel Lobby, Wall Street, and the military/security complex).
Most Republican voters will vote against Obama based on these charges despite the curious fact that no committee in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives held a hearing to determine if Obama is a citizen. If Obama were not a citizen, why would the very aggressive House Republicans not capitalize on it. It would be easy for a Congressional committee to determine if Obama were a citizen. Despite the propaganda, the Republicans in office have shown no interest in the propaganda charges spread by Republican operatives over the Internet.
Either Republicans have no confidence in the charges and do not want to end up proving with Congressional hearings that Obama is a citizen, or the Republicans, having destroyed every other aspect of the US Constitution, reducing it to “a scrap of paper,” feel that making an issue of the last remaining Constitutional provision other than the Second Amendment would be the height of hypocrisy and don’t want to risk opening the constitutional issues that Republicans have run roughshod over.
If the Republicans can destroy habeas corpus, due process, violate both US statutory and international law, ignore the separation of powers, and create a Caesar, why can’t the Democrats run a non-citizen?
Why didn’t the Republican convention raise the issue about the Obama regime’s claim that the executive branch has the power to assassinate US citizens without due process of law? No such power exists in the US Constitution or in US statutory law. This gestapo police state claim exists only as an assertion. Republicans ignored this most important of all issues, because they support it.

Food Stamps: Fat Times For Food Companies, Recipients in $72B Program

ABC News
September 7, 2012




Who's getting fat off food stamps?
A record number of Americans—46.7 million, or nearly 1 in 7--now uses the food stamp program, according to the Department of Agriculture. The annual cost of SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as the food stamp program is officially known) hit $72 billion last year, up from $30 billion four years earlier.
SNAP's swelling size and cost have earned it fresh scrutiny from critics, who say SNAP is making two different constituencies fat—big corporations and the poor—the first, figuratively; the second, literally.
Many health advocates, concerned by Americans' increasing obesity, argue that food stamp purchases should be disallowed for items high in salt or fat or sugar—candy, say, or fatty meats, potato chips and soda. Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, who has a particular antipathy to sweet drinks, has urged the Department of Agriculture to exclude sodas from food stamp eligibility.
Makers of these maligned products, meantime, have lobbied Congress and state governments to prevent their products' exclusion from SNAP eligibility, arguing that consumers ought to be free in the grocery store to buy pretty much whatever they want. The National Confectioners Association, for example, argues on its website that excluding candy from SNAP would prevent parents from enjoying the freedom to give children "an occasional treat" on "Halloween, Hannukah, [or] Easter."

Read the entire article

Economy Stagnates - 8.1% unemployment! Yeah Right!!!

Mark Matheny

Economy Stagnates - 8.1% unemployment! Yeah Right!!!

by Mark Matheny















Listen to internet radio with Mark Matheny on Blog Talk Radio

September 11, 2001: 9/11, Bin Laden and the Tyranny of the Corporate Media

Global Research
By Prof. James F. Tracy
September 6, 2012


This essay originally appeared on September 21, 2001 in my Daily Iowancolumn, “Firing Line.” The piece uses George Orwell’s 1984 as a basis to suggest how from the very beginning the corporate media played a central role in setting the stage for the prevalent Osama bin Laden-Al Qaeda myth, the related “blowback” thesis vigorously embraced by the progressive-left community, and the assemblage of rearguard actions defending such perspectives and reflexively labeling all accounts conflicting with government pronouncements as “conspiracy theories.” An expertly orchestrated barrage of 9/11 propaganda in the weeks and months following the attacks had a devastatingly traumatic effect on a majority of the US population while simultaneously rendering many of the most legitimate and important questions to the sidelines. Together these discursive elements have helped to create an environment where, as Orwell envisaged, essential civil liberties have been forsaken and perpetual war has become the norm. -JT
In the age of the concentration camp, castration is more characteristic of social reality than competitiveness. -Theodor Adorno

Students in my media theory class couldn’t be reading 1984 at a more opportune time. Orwell’s thesis, articulated shortly after World War II, was a disturbingly prescient scenario of the world geopolitical order in the late 20th century and what it would be like to inhabit that then future world.

The dire anti-utopian predictions were largely informed by Orwell’s activities as an engaged European socialist who, in 1947, believed that the greatest obstacles to human liberation were Soviet and U.S. imperialist conquest and the human inability to collectively imagine a world free from tyranny and bloodshed.
The means of technological communication were central to the project of perpetuating a condition wherein the very soul of individuals was replaced by lockstep allegiance to the state. Protagonist Winston Smith is a peon bureaucrat who refashions the past to be in accord with present edicts of the ruling party’s inner circle.
The higher strata of the social order are lulled into a rabid nationalism rationalized by the Manichean representations of Big Brother, warm paternal protector, and Emanuel Goldstein, Party traitor and embodiment of all evil. The good/evil dichotomy and state of siege prove sufficient in keeping obtuse party members in line, while the more humane must undergo a concerted brainwashing.

The U.S. media function in an entirely similar fashion, particularly with regard to U.S. foreign policy and coverage of the horrific bombings of the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Indeed, it is in what the media have willfully omitted or feigned in such coverage that would have likely made Winston’s role as censor much easier, if not entirely expendable.

In June, a French judge did what the U.S. is now attempting with Osama bin Laden in summoning the former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to the French Hall of Justice for questioning about the 1973 Chilean coup. Kissinger’s track record makes bin Laden look like the Good Humor man, and when Kissinger fled the country the next day, the U.S. media never batted an eye. Does two plus two equal five?

Earlier this year, CNN President of News Gathering Eason Jordan confirmed that the U.S. military’s special Psychological Operations Group (Psy-ops) had personnel working at CNN during the Kosovo conflict. A U.S. Army spokesperson remarked, “Psy-ops personnel, soldiers and officers, have been working in CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta through our program ‘Training with Industry.’ They worked as regular employees of CNN. They helped in the production of news.”

CNN is [among] the most widely circulated means of electronic news in the world. Whether Psy-ops personnel returned to assist in coverage of “911″ is a matter for consideration.
While journalists seldom missed an opportunity to pursue grieving and petrified New Yorkers with vampire-like zeal, they dismissed the story of an Iranian man who, along with German authorities on Sept. 10 made 14 attempts to contact the U.S. State Department and the CIA about a possible attack; he was hung up on.
Nor was it examined in any detail that since August, the World TradeCenter has been on “heightened security alert.” Or that a censored ABC videotape purportedly showed an F-16 Fighter trailing the second passenger jet that hit the WTC.

Canadians were shown video footage of Yasser Arafat giving blood on Sept. 12—U.S. viewers were not. And on Sept. 15, thousands went to mark a national day of mourning for victims of the terrorism and to protest plans to deploy massive military action in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Although the events were covered in mainstream media, the calls for peace were conveniently edited out.

Finally, that our elaborate $30 billion per year intelligence and surveillance apparatus had no foreknowledge of the attacks may have been laughable if the circumstances were not so dire. That story has been dismissed and with it government accountability to the families of the 6,300 [sic] missing or deceased and to the remaining U.S. citizenry.

At a time when information is crucial and thousands if not millions more innocent lives may be lost, U.S. journalists are again “stenographers to power” -obsequiously conveying the pronouncements of saber rattling military and government officials screaming quixotic bloodlust at an enemy that remains undefined.

As Hitler, Stalin , and Big Brother well knew, the more poorly defined’ the enemy, the stronger the blind allegiance given the state in fighting it and the greater willingness of the polity in repudiating its own civil liberties. The fear is real, and the enemy this time around isn’t Jews, Gypsies, Formalists, or Eurasians. 
The new enemy is us.

The Daily Iowan and James F. Tracy, 2012

Rand Paul Tries to Intimidate & Harass Journalist After A Youtube Video

WeAreChange.org
September 6, 2012



This video originally aired on August 1, 2012


Luke Rudkowski talks with Abby Martin of MediaRoots.org and RT about
U.S. Senator Rand Paul's attempt to get her arrested and stripped of
her press credentials for asking him tough questions in the Capitol
building. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtO5INu-VY4 A week after our video with Abby Martin came out on YouTube,
the RT office, where Abby works, got an ominous phone call from the
Senate Media Relations Committee. The Committee was acting on behalf
of Rand Paul and threatened both Abby and the entire RT news
organization. The threats included ambiguous "charges" for violating
the rules of the Committee floor, Abby's possible arrest and the
termination of her and the entire office's press credentials.

After a month of meetings and deliberation, the Senate Media Relations
office backed down and did not make good on any of their threats.

GOP Suing to Keep Third Parties Off Ballot in November

The New American
September 6, 2012



GOP Suing to Keep Third Parties Off Ballot in November
Around the country, the Republican Party is mounting legal challenges to keep third-party candidates off the ballot in November.
Writer Karl Dickey reports in the Examiner that “in recent weeks, with the full support and legal assistance of the Republican Party, [Gary] Johnson's ballot status has been challenged in Michigan, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, Iowa and now Ohio." Gary Johnson (pictured) is the former governor of New Mexico and the Libertarian Party’s candidate for president of the United States. As of this writing, Johnson is on the ballot in 43 states.
On September 1 the Ohio voters challenging Johnson’s appearance on the November ballot officially withdrew their opposition. In the one-page notice filed with the office of Ohio’s secretary of state, Kelly Mills and Cynthia Rees did not explain their decision to drop their protest.
It could be related to the decision of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision handed down on August 31 dismissing the Ohio state legislature’s appeal of a U.S. district court ruling putting the Libertarian Party on the ballot for 2012.
The national Republican Party may not want to publicly acknowledge the presence of a true fiscal conservative in this race, but they are certainly taking Gov. Johnson seriously enough to engage in a concerted campaign to get his name off ballots in key states before voters even get a chance to vote.
In states across the nation, Republican operatives, lawyers, and in some cases, elected officials, are filing frivolous challenges to Governor Johnson's ballot status. They know that even if their challenges fail, fending them off is a drain on our resources and a distraction from the real issues in this campaign. We don't have hundreds of millions of dollars to throw around, nor do we have the Republicans' endless supply of lawyers.
We have dealt with many challenges in this campaign from the major parties, who clearly don't want voters to have a viable third option in this election, but this attack on voting rights and democracy is over the top.
Governor Johnson has made it clear that we will fight every one of these challenges and do everything in our power to be on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The prospect of a successful two-term governor who is a proven fiscal conservative and champion of social tolerance may be a thorn in the sides of the two so-called major parties, but Governor Johnson will not be deterred in his effort to give voters a real choice in November.
Despite the frustration such legal wrangling must cause the Johnson campaign, they were likely pleased by the decision announced late last week to allow Johnson’s name to appear on the ballot in Iowa.
Two Iowa voters had challenged his candidacy last week and Jay Kramer, a Romney campaign staffer, signed as a witness the challenge that Libertarians' convention at the Iowa State Fair wasn't real.
Republican Secretary of State Matt Schultz, Democratic Attorney General Tom Miller, and Warren Jenkins, the chief deputy for Republican Auditor David Vaudt, said Iowa's law on holding conventions to get on the ballot is vague and they opted to err on the side of open ballot access, the AP reported.
Johnson reportedly told the Washington Times that he will be the only third-party candidate whose name will appear on the ballot in all 50 states.
Remarkably, this may be the case.

Delusional reality: Everything peddled by politicians, media, banks and television is a fiction


Mike Adams
Natural News
Sept 6, 2012
The “War on Terror” is a complete fabrication. There is no terrorism other than what the government creates in order to sell its agenda of a police state takeover. Click here to read Paul Craig Roberts’ article that lays this out in brilliant detail.
The CDC’s war on West Nile virus is also a complete fabrication. There is no real West Nile virus threat. (Read article here.) The odds of being killed by West Nile are, much like with “terrorism,” even lower than the odds of being killed by a bee sting.
The “economic recovery” of America is a fairy tale. Over the last few days, the federal debt reached a jaw-dropping $16 trillion — nearly $5 trillion of that debt has been incurred under one person: President Obama. Unemployment is at record highs. Half the population is on federal aid of one form or another. Food stamp costs have skyrocketed.
“Obamacare” is a fiasco. Dubbed the “Affordable Care Act,” in reality health insurance costs have vastly increased after the passage of this ill-conceived law.
Bin Laden wasn’t killed by U.S. Navy Seals. The war is a fake. The news is faked. The media is completely, utterly faked, running totally fictional stories. CNN is actually an elaborate theater operation, faking sets, locations, sound effects and everything else you can imagine. Don’t believe me? Watch this totally faked CNN broadcast from the Gulf War, featuring “journalist” Charles Jaco:
http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=B55147E2052701412A47A9F2C9DA754C
The whole thing is so hilarious it’s almost an SNL skit! At one point, a fake air raid siren sounds off, indicating a biological weapons attack (total fear mongering on CNN), and one of the guests in the fake studio frantically straps on a HELMET! Yeah, because helmets are the defense of choice against biological attacks, it seems. See if you can actually watch this CNN video and not laugh out loud…
Newspapers run fake news like “organic foods are no healthier than conventional foods.” (http://www.naturalnews.com/037065_organic_foods_mainstream_media_psyo…)

Jim Rogers - "If You Aren't Worried About 2013...Get Worried!"

Reuters
September 4, 2012



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn9hrBNTtPI&feature=player_embedded#!

Pentagon OK with selling US drones to 66 countries

NBC News
September 6, 2012
Ben Stansall / AFP - Getty Images, file
A Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aircraft at the Farnborough International Airshow in Hampshire, southern England, on July 22, 2010.


WASHINGTON -- As many as 66 countries would be eligible to buy U.S. drones under new Defense Department guidelines but Congress and the State Department, which have a final say, have not yet opened the spigots for exports, a senior Pentagon official said on Wednesday.
The 66 countries were listed in a Defense Department policy worked out last year to clear the way for wider overseas sales of unmanned aerial systems, as the Pentagon calls such drones, said Richard Genaille, deputy director of the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency. He did not name them.
"We don't really have a comprehensive U.S. government policy" on such exports, he told an industry conference called ComDef 2012. "It hasn't moved quite as fast as we would like, but we're not giving up."

Euro zone's economy heads towards recession


Reuters
By Robin Emmott
September 6, 2012


A European Union (E.U.) flag flutters in front of the monument of Parthenon on Acropolis hill in Athens June 17, 2012. REUTERS/John Kolesidis(Reuters) - Strong exports limited the euro zone's economic contraction in the second quarter of this year despite falling investment, inventories and private consumption that point to output shrinking overall in 2012.
The EU's statistics office Eurostat confirmed on Thursday that gross domestic product in the 17 countries using the euro fell 0.2 percent quarter-on-quarter. It revised the year-on-year fall to 0.5 percent from a previously reported 0.4 percent.
The debt crisis that began in Greece nearly three years ago has crushed Europe's efforts at recovery from the 2008/2009 global financial crisis, probably sending the bloc into recession for the second time in just three years.
"Weakness is the name of the game," said Joost Beaumont, a senior economist at ABN AMRO in Amsterdam. "We see another contraction in the third quarter because domestic demand will be hit by fiscal consolidation, rising unemployment, tight credit conditions and the high uncertainty of theeuro zone crisis."
The euro zone would already be in a technical recession, were it not for flat output in the first three months of the year, after a 0.3 percent quarterly contraction in the last quarter of 2011.
Eurostat said a fall in household consumption subtracted 0.1 percentage point from the final quarterly GDP figure and shrinking investment and inventories took away 0.2 percentage points each, compared with the previous three months.
Strong exports, however, added 0.6 percentage point which, after the negative contribution of imports, left the net result from trade at a positive 0.2 percentage point.
With the Chinese economy slowing and the U.S. economy struggling to build a solid recovery, the euro zone cannot rely on exports to pull it out of the downturn, however.
"Leading indicators continue to point, in broad terms, to more of the same in the third quarter, though with a risk of the external sector softening in line with recent evidence of weakness in manufacturing activity globally," Ken Wattret, a euro zone economist at BNP Paribas, wrote in a note to clients.
Most economists see the euro zone, which generates 16 percent of global economic output, shrinking by at least 0.3 percent this year. A recovery may only come in mid-2013.
In its latest assessment, the Paris-based organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said on Thursday that Europe's problems were also "dampening global confidence, weakening trade and employment and slowing economic growth".

First Audit Results In The Federal Reserve’s Nearly 100 Year History Were Posted Today, They Are Startling!

Pakalertpress.com
September 4, 2012


Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) wins (again) the most significant victory of his congressional career. He has taken his pet issue since the 1970s–the unwarranted power and secrecy of the Federal Reserve–from something pretty much no one but him cared about six years ago, through a bestselling book and mass movement by 2009, the second time he’s gotten the House of Representatives to vote to widen the government’s powers to audit the Fed’s activities.
Huffington Post with details about the vote  , and on Paul’s Democratic ally equally upset with the Fed’s lack of transparency, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio).
The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill(HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out.
Ben Bernanke (pictured to the LEFT), Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an audit would have on markets. Nevertheless, the results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve’s nearly 100 year history were posted on Senator Sander’s webpageearlier this morning.
What was revealed in the audit was startling:
$16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest. Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious – the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs.
To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is “only” $14.5 trillion. The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is “only” $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.
In late 2008, the TARP Bailout bill was passed and loans of $800 billion were given to failing banks and companies. That was a blatant lie considering the fact that Goldman Sachs alone received 814 billion dollars. As is turns out, the Federal Reserve donated $2.5 trillion to Citigroup, while Morgan Stanley received $2.04 trillion. The Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank, a German bank, split about a trillion and numerous other banks received hefty chunks of the $16 trillion.
“This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.”- Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
When you have conservative Republican stalwarts like Jim DeMint(R-SC) and Ron Paul(R-TX) as well as self identified Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders all fighting against the Federal Reserve, you know that it is no longer an issue of Right versus Left. When you have every single member of the Republican Party in Congress and progressive Congressmen like Dennis Kucinich sponsoring a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, you realize that the Federal Reserve is an entity onto itself, which has no oversight and no accountability.
Americans should be swelled with anger and outrage at the abysmal state of affairs when an unelected group of bankers can create money out of thin air and give it out to megabanks and supercorporations like Halloween candy. If the Federal Reserve and the bankers who control it believe that they can continue to devalue the savings of Americans and continue to destroy the US economy, they will have to face the realization that their trillion dollar printing presses will eventually plunder the world economy.
The list of institutions that received the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 131of the GAO Audit and are as follows..
Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America$1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers$183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)
and many many more including banks in Belgium of all places
View the 266-page GAO audit of the Federal Reserve (July 21st, 2011).
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke participated in a live webcast of a town hall meeting with educators on Thursday, September 30, 2010 from 2:30-3:30 p.m. EDT. During this session, Chairman Bernanke answered teachers’ questions about the Federal Reserve and the economy.