(DailyBail) – The chilling background scenario behind today’s revelations on the Treasury’s $2.4 secret Wall Street Bailout. Read the rest of this entry »

(DailyBail) – The US Treasury, secretly without the authority of Congress, put taxpayers on the hook for $2.4 trillion in yet another secret Wall Street bailout. Read the rest of this entry »

On the Thursday, November 8 edition of the Alex Jones Show, Alex welcomes back trends forecaster and author Gerald Celente who will talk about the former boss of MF Global, John Corzine, taking the Fifth as Congress fumbles its way through an investigation of the failed company. Celente lost money in the six figure range after MF Global grabbed cash from supposedly segregated customer accounts.
Part 1 of 3

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(AJC) – Former New Jersey governor John Corzine receives a subpoena to appear before a House panel investigating the MP Global scam. Read the rest of this entry »

(PaulWatson) – Hank Paulson-style fearmongering is desperate effort to save single currency, preserve plan for superstate Read the rest of this entry »

(WashingtonsBlog) – Leading bank analyst Chris Whalen has raised the question of whether criminal charges should be brought against former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.

Any discussion of whether Paulson committed unlawful actions as Treasury Secretary needs to start with Tarp.

As the New York Times wrote last year: Read the rest of this entry »

(Telegraph) – Greece is just the “tip of the iceberg” of a sovereign debt crisis that has the potential to derail a global recovery, Nouriel Roubini has warned – Read More Here

(CSPAN) – Video: Goldman Exec – It’s Unfortunate To Have Shitty Deal “On E-Mail”

Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) and Goldman Sachs Executive Vice President and CFO David Viniar, Senate Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Investigations hearing, April 27, 2010 – View Video Here

(TaxProfBlog) – WSJ: Dividend Tax to Increase From 15% to 43.4%

Last week the Senate Budget Committee passed a fiscal 2011 budget resolution that includes an increase in the top tax rate on dividends to 39.6% from the current 15%—a 164% increase. This blows past the 20% rate that President Obama proposed in his 2011 budget and which his economic advisers promised on these pages in 2008. Read More Here

(ThePeoplesVoice) – “Criminal and Civil Charges” possible for NY Fed

Prosecuting those who caused the financial crisis would lead to the next logical step: confiscating all the ill gotten gains and returning them to the people. The market went down and the people lost a bundle. The market is now back up and those losses are still in place. But guess who made a bundle on the fluctuation? This must be corrected. Read More Here

(WSWS) – Sunday Times Rich List shows fortunes of British super-rich soar by a third – Read More Here

(Aljazeera) – Video: IMF fears debt crisis ‘contagion’

The head of the International Monetary Fund has warned that Greece’s debt crisis could spread and threaten the economies of other countries. View Video Here

(AVA) – Update on America’s Second Great Depression (Part 1)

Washington, Wall Street and their partners in crime, the media, have continued to spread the myths of an economic recovery since late summer 2009.

In response to the propaganda, the stock market has continued to rally. But most individual investors have been left out of this tremendous rally. Read More Here

(RussiaToday) – Video: Debt Crisis in Greece – It Could Happen in America – View Video Here

(IinstituteForJustice) – “Policing for Profit” Report Documents the Nationwide Abuse of Civil Forfeiture

Police and prosecutors’ offices seize private property—often without ever charging the owners with a crime, much less convicting them of one—then keep or sell what they’ve taken and use the profits to fund their budgets. And considering law enforcement officials in most states don’t report the value of what they collect or how that bounty is spent, the issue raises serious questions about both government transparency and accountability. Read More Here

(MotherJones) – Did Goldman’s Ex-Mortgage Guru Lie Under Oath?

Daniel Sparks told Congress he didn’t expect a group of financial products to fail. Internal documents suggest he knew otherwise. Read More Here

(InternationalForecaster) – Frauds And Scandals Follow The Collapse Of The Financial System

As the world faces an ongoing sovereign debt debacle we see an attempt to defuse an oncoming scandal involving Goldman Sachs, Paulson and perhaps others. Read More Here

(Solari) – Goldman Whac-A-Mole – Catherine Austin Fitts

It makes sense to pause in the outpouring of news about Goldman Sachs to ponder what has happened and the nature of the game that is afoot. Read More Here

(Fox) – Video: Glenn Beck on Goldman Sachs - Read the rest of this entry »

(NakedCapitalism) – Quite a few observers, including this blogger, have been stunned and frustrated at the refusal to investigate what was almost certain accounting fraud at Lehman. Despite the bankruptcy administrator’s effort to blame the gaping hole in Lehman’s balance sheet on its disorderly collapse, the idea that the firm, which was by its own accounts solvent, would suddenly spring a roughly $130+ billion hole in its $660 balance sheet, is simply implausible on its face. Indeed, it was such common knowledge in the Lehman flailing about period that Lehman’s accounts were sus that Hank Paulson’s recent book mentions repeatedly that Lehman’s valuations were phony as if it were no big deal. Read the rest of this entry »

(WashingtonsBlog) – There is an established legal principle that people should not have to repay their government’s debt to the extent that it is incurred to launch aggressive wars or to oppress the people. Read the rest of this entry »

(February 5, 2010) – Latest on Global Financial Crisis Read the rest of this entry »

(DailyIntel) – Editor’s note: Mr. Lewis may experience a heart attack or one of those overnight cases of terminal cancer. Read the rest of this entry »

Secret summit of top bankers

THE world’s top central bankers began arriving in Australia yesterday as renewed fears about the strength of the global economic recovery gripped world share markets. Read More Here

(Pravda) – Paulson and US Collapse, Lets Blame It On Russia, We Do Everything Else

It’s good to see that US officials and former officials continue acting to par, God forbid they actually shock us and change their stripes. The latest tripe out of the mouths of the mega corrupted and their hand picked puppets is Henry Paulson’s tripe about Russia trying to collapse the US economic bubble and that being the reason that the US is now down on its luck. Read More Here

(JBS) – Ending the Government Monopoly on Currency

The legal tender laws of the United States are found in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and grant power to Congress to “coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures.” Nothing more. Read More Here

(WSJ) – ‘Fear Gauge’ Spikes 20%

The so-called fear gauge jumped nearly 20% as stocks took a tumble and looked ready to close at their lowest point of the year. Read More Here

(Bloomberg) – 824,000 Jobs will Disappear on February 5th – Read More Here

(BusinessDay) – Warning of Greek crisis spreading across EU

THE Greek debt crisis has spread to Spain and Portugal in a dangerous escalation as global markets test whether Europe is willing to shore up monetary union with muscle rather than mere words. Read More Here

(Reuters) – U.S. commercial property prices hit new cycle low

U.S. commercial real estate prices fell 4.9 percent in the fourth quarter, setting a new low for the current downturn, according to a leading property index released on Friday. Read More Here

(FoxBusiness) – TrimTabs Estimates Take-Home Pay of All Taxpayers in 2009 Plunged $800 Billion, or 12%, While Value of U.S. Stocks Surged $3.5 Trillion, or 27

TrimTabs Investment Research estimated today that the take-home pay of all taxpayers in 2009 plunged $800 billion, or 12%, to $5.8 trillion. Meanwhile, the market value of all U.S. stocks rose $3.5 trillion, or 27%, to $16 trillion. Read More Here

(Fortune) – Next in line for a bailout: Social Security

Don’t look now. But even as the bank bailout is winding down, another huge bailout is starting, this time for the Social Security system. Read More Here

Obama’s Budget Would Increase Penalties Five-Fold on Tax Protesters

Under current law, the willful failure to pay taxes is a misdemeanor. You could go to jail for up to a year and pay a maximum fine of $25K (for individuals, $100K for corporations) for each year you fail to file a return. There is a proposal in the new budget to increase the penalty for repeated failure to file a tax return: Read More Here

(ToledoBlade) – Ohio state income tax off $97.7M

For the first time since the state enacted its two-year budget in July after dramatically lowering its revenue expectations, tax coffers contain less than the amount officials had projected at this point. Read More Here

(IndyStar) – State revenue is $74.8M off forecast

Groundhog Day may have already passed, but it doesn’t feel like it in Gov. Mitch Daniels’ second-floor Statehouse office. Read More Here

(ETFGuide) – Real Unemployment 18 Percent – Will Stocks Falter?

The unemployment picture painted by today’s jobs report headlines is much rosier than reality. Yet, the Dow broke below 10,000 for the first time in months. The real unemployment number reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is much higher and scarier than they want you to believe. What’s next? Read More Here

(Telegraph) – Fears of ‘Lehman-style’ tsunami as crisis hits Spain and Portugal

The Greek debt crisis has spread to Spain and Portugal in a dangerous escalation as global markets test whether Europe is willing to shore up monetary union with muscle rather than mere words. Read More Here

(MarketWatch) – Retire? You can fuggetaboutit if the new Global Debt Time Bomb is detonated by any one of 20 made-in-America trigger mechanisms. Read the rest of this entry »

(DowJones) – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s office Monday denied Russia approached China in 2008 to sell off U.S. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds, as detailed in former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s memoirs. 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 »

(TimesOnline) – Blair warns that world faces decision to halt Iran’s nuclear programme

World leaders might have to go to war to stop Iran developing its weapons programme, Tony Blair suggested yesterday.Read More Here

(YNet) – EU’s Ashton says Iran ‘worrying’, UN next route

“We are worried about what’s happening in Iran. I’m disappointed at the failure of Iran to accept the dialogue and we now need to look again at what needs to happen there,” Catherine Ashton told Sky News in an interview. Read More Here

(LATimes) – China threatens sanctions over arms sale to Taiwan

Angered by a $6 billion U.S. arms sale to Taiwan, Beijing puts security exchanges with U.S. on hold and threatens sanctions against U.S. firms selling to Taipei. Read More Here

(AFP) – Libya strikes billion-dollar Russian arms deal

Libya has struck a deal to buy Russian arms worth almost two billion dollars, Russian news agencies quoted Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as saying Saturday. Read More Here

(PressTV) – Russia’s First Stealth Jet Takes Off

Russia test launched its first and very own prototype stealth jet Sukhoi T-50 Friday, in an attempt to outlast the modern U.S. F-22 Raptors. However, with its viability as a start to the world’s fifth generation of aerial arms questioned, the Sukhoi T-50 faces maiden political, and practicality issues. Read More Here

(PressTV) – US beefs up military presence off Iranian shores

In addition to imposing new sanctions on the Tehran government, the US has reportedly begun beefing up its military presence and war paraphernalia off the Iranian coast. Read More Here

(MSNBC) – U.S. speeds up arms buildup with Gulf allies

The Obama administration is quietly working with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies to speed up arms sales and rapidly upgrade defenses for oil terminals and other key infrastructure in a bid to thwart future military attacks by Iran, according to former and current U.S. and Middle Eastern government officials. Read More Here

(Haaretz) – U.S. official: Hezbollah arms flow may signal plans for war with Israel

The U.S. is concerned that the continued flow of arms to the Hezbollah militant organization could prompt a war between Israel and Lebanon, State Department official Jeff Feltman said in remarks published Sunday by the London-based Al-Hayat daily. Read More Here

(Yahoo) – UN chief calls for treaty to prevent cyber war

The world needs a treaty to prevent cyber attacks becoming an all-out war, the head of the main UN communications and technology agency warned Saturday. Read More Here

(RawStory) – Paulson: Russia tried to exacerbate US financial crisis

Russian interests attempted to force the U.S. government bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by selling off its holdings in the two entities in 2008, then urging China to do the same, according to former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Read More Here

(Bloomberg) — Russia urged China to dump its Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds in 2008 in a bid to force a bailout of the largest U.S. mortgage-finance companies, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said. Read the rest of this entry »

January 27, 2010 Read the rest of this entry »

(ZeroHedge) – When Henry Paulson publishes his long-awaited memoirs, the one section that will be of most interest to readers, will be the former Goldmanite and Secretary of the Treasury’s recollection of what, in his opinion, was the most unpredictable and dire consequence of letting Lehman fail (letting his former employer become the number one undisputed Fixed Income trading entity in the world was quite predictable… plus we doubt it will be a major topic of discussion in Hank’s book). We would venture to guess that the Reserve money market fund breaking the buck will be at the very top of the list, as the ensuing “run on the electronic bank” was precisely the 21st century equivalent of what happened to banks in physical form, during the early days of the Geat Depression. Read the rest of this entry »

Investment banking giant Goldman Sachs has become perhaps the most prominent symbol for everything that is wrong with the U.S. financial system, but most Americans cannot even begin to explain what they do or how they have made tens of billions of dollars from the economic collapse of America.  The truth is that what Goldman Sachs did was fairly simple, and there may not have even been anything “illegal” about it (although they are now being investigated by the SEC among others). Read the rest of this entry »

Financial insider and commentator Yves Smith wrote an essay last week entitled “MSM Reporting as Propaganda” arguing that the government has been using propaganda to make people think that things are getting better, no one is angry, and – therefore – no one should get upset: 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 »

(MSNBC) – Dylan Ratigan explains in detail how Goldman Sachs has made a fortune from the taxpayer money they received from their buddies at the Treasury and the Fed and paid absolutely none of it back to the American taxpayers. Read the rest of this entry »

(HuffingtonPost) – How did Goldman, Sachs & Co. — saved a year ago by the US taxpayer — magically make $3 billion in 3 months a year later?
This as the US dollar collapses, unemployment soars and foreclosures hit a record? Read the rest of this entry »

Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren provides a much needed sober perspective of Bernanke’s Doctrine of Mandatory Global Moral Hazard, by discussing just how broken the banking system continues to be. Read the rest of this entry »

In a new report, Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), reveals that then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and key federal regulators forced the nation’s nine largest financial institutions to take billions in taxpayer bailout dollars in October 2008, threatening that if the banks refused, the government would take their stock shares anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

(WATimes) – Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. misled the public about the financial weakness of Bank of America and other early recipients of the government’s $700 billion Wall Street bailout, creating “unrealistic expectations” about the companies and damaging the program’s credibility, according to a report by the program’s independent watchdog. Read the rest of this entry »

Congress and the White House have been busy lately patting themselves on the back for staving off financial armageddon by handing out taxpayer money to Wall Street like it was Halloween candy. But while they’re trumpeting the fact that some financial firms have returned a tiny portion of the trillions of dollars that were given to banks, reality is setting in that Americans will never see that money again and will be paying it off for many, many years to come. Read the rest of this entry »

So now it turns out that the whole Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was a flop or more likely a scam. Remember Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson telling us last September that credit markets had locked up, and then, after half of the $750 billion that he extorted out of Congress was handed out to Wall Street firms, new President Barack Obama justifying the spending of the second half of the money because we needed to “get the banks lending again”? Read the rest of this entry »

Americans cannot get any truth out of their government about anything, the economy included.  Americans are being driven into the ground economically, with one million school children now homeless, while Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke announces that the recession is over. Read the rest of this entry »

“Lehman’s fate was sealed not in the boardroom of that gaudy Manhattan headquarters. It was sealed downtown, in the gloomy gray building of the New York Federal Reserve, the Wall Street branch of the U.S. central bank.” Stephen Foley, U.K. Independent
Stephen Foley is on to something. Lehman Bros. didn’t die of natural causes; it was drawn-and-quartered by high-ranking officials at the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Read the rest of this entry »

A New York District Judge has ordered the Federal Reserve to disclose the destination of around $2 trillion dollars in bailout funds after the Fed failed to convince the Judge that the records should be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. Read the rest of this entry »

“Since 1945, the US dollar has been the world reserve currency. As its value depreciates, countries holding huge dollar reserves begin to worry. China in particular has expressed grave concerns since it holds nearly $2 trillion in US currency reserves, mostly in the form of US treasury bonds. According to some reports, it is drawing down its dollar reserves by purchasing gold and stocks of raw materials and energy.” Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

It didn’t fly under Bush, but it might under Obama. “The Obama administration is quietly dusting off an effort to impose new federal quarantine regulations, which were vigorously resisted by civil liberties organizations and the airline industry when the rules were first proposed by the Bush administration nearly four years ago,” reports Politico. Read the rest of this entry »

Popular C-Span Junkie user channel suspended, 6400 videos gone Read the rest of this entry »

Too bad Pulitzers aren’t handed out for blog-entries. This year’s award would go to Zero Hedge for its “The ‘Money on the Sidelines’ Fallacy” post. This short entry shows why the economy will continue its downward slide and why the US consumer will not get off the mat and resume spending as he has in the past. The fact is the Net Wealth of US Households has “declined from a peak of $22 trillion to just under $12 trillion in early March.” Read the rest of this entry »

Six months since taking the reins, the Barack Obama administration has met its primary objective. It has swiftly ramped up the murderous imperial agenda inherited from Bush-Cheney while the masses, pacified and deceived by the appeal of the Obama image, pay no attention to realities. Read the rest of this entry »

You may remember American International Group (AIG). The U.S. government gave it $182 billion of taxpayer money last fall in exchange for a 78 percent stake. Of that money, $165 million went for bonuses to a handful of people in its Financial Products Group (FPG), which sold Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) on which AIG lacked the capital to make good. And $200 million more is slated for those good folks in 2009. Read the rest of this entry »

(DailyMail) – No name is more ubiquitous in the pantheon of global finance than that of Goldman Sachs. At a time when world commerce and banking has been brought to a shuddering halt by greed, excess and foolishness, this investment bank provoked astonishment and disgust this week by handing out record bonuses. Read the rest of this entry »

(MSNBC) – This is Alan Grayson on MSNBC with Dylan Ratigan and Eliot Spitzer discussing Hank Paulson and the bailouts. Grayson said about former Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson who presided over the bailout while owning hundreds of millions in Goldman stock: Read the rest of this entry »

More information has come to light regarding former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s threats to Congress last fall that martial law would ensue unless they passed the bailout bill. Read the rest of this entry »

Max Keiser calls the Goldman Sachs gang what they are– scum. – “Goldman Sachs are scum– that’s the bottom line. They have basically co-opted the government; they’ve co-opted the Treasury Department; the Federal Reserve functionality; they’ve co-opted the Obama administration. Read the rest of this entry »