The following is a review of some of the only known footage from inside the towers on the day of 9/11. The original footage was captured by the Naudet brothers, who were filming a documentary on New York Firefighters. The lobby of the World Trade Center Towers had an abnormal amount of damage on 9/11, and the Naudet film captures some of that. Read the rest of this entry »

(OfTwoMinds) – The explosion of Deepwater Horizon and the collapse of Lehman Brothers share similar characteristics of risk, denial and coverup. My good friend G.F.B. recently observed that the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe uncannily mirrors the global financial meltdown that was triggered by the September, 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers.

G.F.B. suggested that the Deepwater Horizon fiasco mirrored the global financial meltdown, almost as if it were a physical manifestation of the same hubris, denial of risk, manipulation and misinformation which collapsed the global financial house of cards. Read the rest of this entry »

(RussiaToday) – Mario Ernesto Villanueva Madrid, former governor of the Mexican state that holds Cancun and dozens of other Caribbean beach resorts, has been extradited to New York on charges of accepting bribes from a violent drug cartel that smuggled hundreds of tons of cocaine into the U.S. and then laundering the bribe money through Lehman Brothers. Read the rest of this entry »

(C-Span) – April 20, 2010 Read the rest of this entry »

(C-Span) – April 20, 2010 Read the rest of this entry »

(InternationalForecaster) – Re-flating a dying bubble, Greece and Euro problems fuel world markets, Lehman Bros collosal fraud, a plan to tax banks, bank failures amount to billions, signs of a vanishing recovery. Read More Here

(InfoClearingHouse) – You gotta see this! If this doesn’t convince you that the Timothy Geithner knew about the securities shenanigans that were going on at Lehman, than I don’t know what will.

Keep in mind, that Geithner ran Lehman through 3 “stress tests” prior to bankruptcy; all of which Lehman failed, and yet, nothing was done. Anton R. Valukas–the examiner who wrote the 2,200 page investigative-report which was released on Thursday– has provided plenty of information detailing Lehman’s “materially misleading” accounting and “actionable balance sheet manipulation.”

In other words, they cooked the books. Read the rest of this entry »

(USAToday) – States Freeze Tax Refunds

Residents eager to get their state tax refunds may have a long wait this year: The recession has tied up cash and caused officials in half a dozen states to consider freezing refunds, in one case for as long as five months. Read More Here

(DailyMail) – British law firm ‘conspired’ to hide $50bn debts of Wall St giant

A top British law firm helped stricken banking giant Lehman Brothers hide its debts in the run-up to the bank’s collapse, a report said yesterday. Read More Here

(IrishTime) – EU denies Greece bailout deal

The euro zone has not agreed a deal on financial support for heavily indebted Greece, but technical work is continuing and the Commission stands ready to act if need be, a spokesman said today. Read More Here

(InternationalForecaster) – The financial system in America is on the edge of default – Bob Chapman

The dramatic and costly undertow of deflation continues unabated, as government via fiscal policy and the Federal Reserve, by creating money and credit out of thin air, proceed to overpower this deflation with massive inflation. Read More Here

(BusinessInsider) – A Quick Reminder: Here’s The Real Problem

Here’s one of the only economic charts that really matters: Total U.S. debt to GDP (from John Mauldin).
This chart shows the trend from the end of the Civil War until now. Read More Here

(DoctorHousingBubble) – California Doing a Rendition of the Housing Industry on the Budget – $20 Billion Budget Deficit and Massive Amount of Distress Inventory

How Banks Raided the U.S. Treasury with the aid of the Federal Reserve and have Damaged Housing Further. Read More Here

(Bloomberg) – China May Face ‘Massive’ Bank Bailouts After Stimulus Program

China may be forced to bail out banks that made loans for local-government projects under the unprecedented stimulus program unleashed in 2008, according to Citigroup Inc. and Northwestern University’s Victor Shih. Read More Here

(AP) – Social Security to start cashing Uncle Sam’s IOUs

The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.
It’s time to start cashing them in. Read More Here

(CNN) – Two bank failures raise year’s tally to 30

The closures of Statewide Bank in Louisiana and Florida’s Old Southern Bank brought the number of bank failures this year to 30, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Read More Here

(MyBudget360) – Middle Class Americans Losing Financial Ground on Retirement – As Stock Market Rebounds more Middle Class Americans Have Less Money and Fewer Jobs. How is Health Care Spending Boosting GDP a Good Thing? – Read More Here

(SilverBearCafe) – Iceland, the Mouse that Roared

I thought I heard something the other night. It was a distant sound, a low rumbling, a roar from some far off beast that had finally pronounced its presence. It woke me for a second, but it was so distant I felt no threat and simply rolled over and went back to sleep. The next morning I learned that Iceland was taking a stand. It was refusing to pay its British and Dutch debts. Read More Here

(Infowars) – U.S. Debt Clock in Real Time

The U.S. Debt Clock website has a graphic of the U.S. debt that updates in real time. It will make your head swim. Click here to be amazed… or disgusted. Read More Here

(RussiaToday) – A new report on Lehman Brothers says the bank was hiding billions of dollars in debt right before the financial crisis. Is this an indicator of widespread corruption in the United States financial sector? Is Wall Street getting away with even more shady practices? Read the rest of this entry »

(FutureFastForward) – This will be one of my shortest articles as it is written as a RED ALERT.

When I send out Red Alerts, it is a dire warning and a call for immediate action to protect your wealth (if there is any remaining). Read the rest of this entry »

(FinancialTimes) – Hank Paulson feared there would be a run on the dollar during the early phase of the financial crisis when global concerns were focused on the US, the former Treasury secretary has told the Financial Times. Read the rest of this entry »

(Bloomberg) – The Federal Reserve asked a U.S. appeals court to block a ruling that for the first time would force the central bank to reveal secret identities of financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest government bailout in U.S. history. Read the rest of this entry »

Interest rates. The Fed does not need slinky women in plunging necklines to peddle money. All it needs is low interest rates. When rates are pushed lower than the rate of inflation, the Fed provides a subsidy for borrowing. This is not as hard to grasp as it sounds. If I offered to give you $1.00 for very 90 cents you gave me in return, you would buy as many dollars from me as you could. The Fed operates the same way. Read the rest of this entry »

Anytime there are world wide organized demonstrations urging action on global warming/climate change, my first question is who funds them and who really benefits. Read the rest of this entry »

During that long summer between the collapse of Bear Stearns and the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Hank Paulson held a secret meeting with the board of Goldman Sachs in Moscow. Read the rest of this entry »

A scheme to flood the market with counterfeit stocks helped kill Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers — and the feds have yet to bust the culprits Read the rest of this entry »

A scheme to flood the market with counterfeit stocks helped kill Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers — and the feds have yet to bust the culprits Read the rest of this entry »

(DailyMail) – City bank Goldman Sachs is expected to confirm tomorrow that bonuses will smash all records in 2009, just a year after the Government rescued the financial system from oblivion. Read the rest of this entry »

(DailyMail) – City bank Goldman Sachs is expected to confirm tomorrow that bonuses will smash all records in 2009, just a year after the Government rescued the financial system from oblivion. Read the rest of this entry »

A federal agency tasked with expanding the American dream of home ownership and affordable housing free from discrimination to people of modest means has been quietly moving a chunk of that role to Wall Street since 2002. Read the rest of this entry »

Obama delivered one of his famous teleprompter speeches today at Federal Hall in New York on the one-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers scam. It was a cynical move, considering Obama spoke from the building where the country’s founders once argued over how much the government should control the national economy. Read the rest of this entry »

(Bloomberg) — Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize- winning economist, said the U.S. has failed to fix the underlying problems of its banking system after the credit crunch and the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Read the rest of this entry »

Eerie coincidence or coded Wall Street tribute?
FDR famously said, “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”
Whether or not that mantra extends to business, everyday life or the ‘free’ market is up for debate, and perhaps subject to one’s personal convictions. Read the rest of this entry »

(TimesOnline) – Alan Greenspan, the former US Federal Reserve chairman blamed in some quarters for not doing enough to prevent the financial crisis, has predicted that more crashes are inevitable. Read the rest of this entry »

Webster describes what the meaning of Jingle Mail as the retail – commercial and real estate market is on the verge of collapse.. Read the rest of this entry »

(Telegraph) – For a glimpse of what awaits Britain, Europe, and America as budget deficits spiral to war-time levels, look at what is happening to the Irish welfare state. Read the rest of this entry »

(aljazeera) – Wall Street and the City of London – the world’s two major financial centres – declare it is “business as usual” again… They are hiring, poaching each other’s staff and their profits are soaring. Read the rest of this entry »

(FreeGaza) – The kidnapping of 21 international human rights workers attempting to deliver needed aid to a besieged people is an outrage, but it is hardly an isolated one. Read the rest of this entry »

Iran is in the midst of a multi-year plan that it hopes will culminate in the production of several hundred missile launchers and over 1,000 long-range ballistic missiles within the next six years, according to estimates in the Israeli defense establishment. Read the rest of this entry »

On May 5, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) grilled Federal Reserve inspector general Elizabeth Coleman. What knowledge did she have of Bloomberg’s report that the Fed had made trillions of dollars in off-balance sheet transactions? Did she know who received the trillion dollars that was added to the Fed’s balance sheets since last September? Was there any investigation into why the Fed didn’t rescue Lehman Brothers, a move that sent shock waves through the financial sector? Read the rest of this entry »

Skyrocketing gas prices and $142 for a barrel of oil was the price it took for Americans to cry “uncle” and give up their last Arctic Wilderness. It was long gas lines in 1973 (the Oil Embargo) when Americans authorized the 800 miles of Trans-Alaska Pipeline through some of the most pristine country in Alaska.

Putting aside common sense and the environmental alternatives, drilling to reduce the price and our dependence on foreign oil ignored the published estimates of the impacts of new oil from the ANWR. Read the rest of this entry »

The world is engulfed in a global economic crisis of staggering ferocity rivaling four other financial meltdowns—which all began in the month of October. [1]

VP Biden and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker don’t remember any time when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world. The current crisis looks more like the collapse of the Soviet Union, on October 18, 1991, when Gorbachev signed an agreement forming a new economic community. Read the rest of this entry »

The economy continued to shrink in the first quarter of 2009 at an annual pace of 6.1 percent, making it the worst recession in more than 50 years. Gross Domestic Product slipped into negative territory from January to March for back-to-back quarters of negative 6 percent growth. Read the rest of this entry »

I have long been a cynic of the bailouts, and, unfortunately, I cannot detect even the slightest sliver of daylight between the prior and current administrations. The reason, I fear, is captured by this quote from Simon Johnson, the former Chief Economist at the IMF and current professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management:

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government

Read the rest of this entry »