Paul Craig Roberts: Can The Fed Stop Quantitative Easing?

By Paul Craig Roberts

Global Research, June 27, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25412

If the Fed stops QE, confidence in the US dollar would rise. Money would flow into US investments, both supporting the US stock market and helping to finance the large US budget deficit. Gold and silver prices would decline.  Negative dollar expectations would be squeezed out of oil and grain prices, although drought, flood, and supply factors would continue to impact grain prices and the administration’s wars can impact oil prices. 

If a halt to QE coincided with more European sovereign debt problems, the dollar might regain a lot of the ground that it has lost.  

Looked at from this perspective, the Fed should halt its bond purchases, and people should bail out of their bullion investments and commodity speculations.

But there are other factors in play--the economy and continuing solvency worries about financial institutions. At a June 22 news conference, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said: “Some of the headwinds that have been concerning us, like the weakness in the financial sector, problems in the housing sector, balance sheet and deleveraging issues, may be stronger and more persistent than we thought.”

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Nomi Prins: Guess How Much More Wall St. Spends on Bonuses Than on Penalties for Torpedoing the Economy?

By Nomi Prins, AlterNet
Posted on June 27, 2011, Printed on June 29, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151434/guess_how_much_more_wall_st._spends_on_bonuses_than_on_penalties_for_torpedoing_the_economy

Are you enraged about JPM Chase’s puny $156.3 million fine? The fine was part of an SEC settlement in which the firm "neither admits nor denies" any wrong-doing. Translation: Stuffing assets with carefully selected crap is not wrong. Creating the crap loans to begin with: Also, not wrong. 

Of course you’re pissed off. I know I am.

There aren’t enough synonyms for the word "tiny" to adequately describe the size and impact of this settlement. It's a fleabite on the hand of the nation's second largest bank in punitive pain terms, and meaningless in stopping the creation of toxic assets, or reducing the criminal complexity of our banking system.

This JPM Chase settlement isn’t the first wrist slap for a financial firm’s role in killing our economy and making off with the money and the bailouts, while our political leaders scratch their heads and wonder where all the debt came from. This hush money is part of the SEC’s two-year program to address, in its own words, the "misconduct that led to or arose from the financial crisis."

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"John Carey" - Storm Warnings: Extreme Weather Is a Product of Climate Change

Published on Tuesday, June 28, 2011 by Scientific American

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/06/28-13

More violent and frequent storms, once merely a prediction of climate models, are now a matter of observation.

by John Carey

In North Dakota the waters kept rising. Swollen by more than a month of record rains in Saskatchewan, the Souris River topped its all time record high, set back in 1881. The floodwaters poured into Minot, North Dakota's fourth-largest city, and spread across thousands of acres of farms and forests. More than 12,000 people were forced to evacuate. Many lost their homes to the floodwaters.

Scientists used to say, cautiously, that extreme weather events were "consistent" with the predictions of climate change. No more. "Now we can make the statement that particular events would not have happened the same way without global warming," says Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. (ALLEN FREDRICKSON/Reuters files Yet the disaster unfolding in North Dakota might be bringing even bigger headlines if such extreme events hadn't suddenly seemed more common. In this year alone massive blizzards have struck the U.S. Northeast, tornadoes have ripped through the nation, mighty rivers like the Mississippi and Missouri have flowed over their banks, and floodwaters have covered huge swaths of Australia as well as displaced more than five million people in China  and devastated Colombia. And this year's natural disasters follow on the heels of a staggering litany of extreme weather in 2010, from record floods in Nashville, Tenn., and Pakistan, to Russia's crippling heat wave.

These patterns have caught the attention of scientists at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They've been following the recent deluges' stunning radar pictures and growing rainfall totals with concern and intense interest. Normally, floods of the magnitude now being seen in North Dakota and elsewhere around the world are expected to happen only once in 100 years.

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"Ethan A. Huff" - Bill Gates, Monsanto hijack 'humanitarian aid' efforts to push GMO agenda

by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

http://www.naturalnews.com/032834_humanitarian_aid_GMOs.html

(NaturalNews) Those still in denial about the connection between the so-called "humanitarian" efforts of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the bigger agenda to thrust genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) on the populations of the world (among other things), need look no further than the Golden Rice Project (GRP) for proof that things are not as they seem. Hailed as the solution to "micronutrient deficiencies in developing countries," GRP is actually nothing more than an attempted Trojan horse to usher GMOs into countries that have thus far rejected them.

According to a recent story published by Food Consumer, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has donated $20 million to develop "golden rice," a type of GM rice that allegedly contains higher than normal levels of vitamin A. Monsanto, creator of this "Frankenrice," claims the crop will help end the epidemic of vitamin A deficiency (VAD) that afflicts many living in poor Asian countries. Sounds great, right? Except for the fact that introducing the rice threatens to actually worsen the VAD crisis, and promote economic and ecological debacles of epic proportions.

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ScienceDaily: It's Not an Apple a Day After All -- It's Strawberries: Flavonoids Could Represent Two-Fisted Assault On Diabetes and Nervous System Disorders

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110627183932.htm

ScienceDaily (June 27, 2011) — A recent study from scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies suggests that a strawberry a day (or more accurately, 37 of them) could keep not just one doctor away, but an entire fleet of them, including the neurologist, the endocrinologist, and maybe even the oncologist.

Investigations conducted in the Salk Institute's Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory (CNL) will appear in the June 27, 2011, issue of PLoS ONE. The report explains that fisetin, a naturally-occurring flavonoid found most abundantly in strawberries and to a lesser extent in other fruits and vegetables, lessens complications of diabetes. Previously, the lab showed that fisetin promoted survival of neurons grown in culture and enhanced memory in healthy mice. That fisetin can target multiple organs strongly suggests that a single drug could be used to mitigate numerous medical complications.

"This manuscript describes for the first time a drug that prevents both kidney and brain complications in a type 1 diabetes mouse model," says David Schubert, Ph.D., professor and head of the Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory and one of the manuscript's co-authors. "Moreover, it demonstrates the probable molecular basis of how the therapeutic is working."

Pam Maher, Ph.D., a senior staff scientist in the CNL, is the study's corresponding author. Maher initially identified fisetin as a neuroprotective flavonoid ten years ago. "In plants, flavonoids act as sunscreens and protect leaves and fruit from insects," she explains. "As foods they are implicated in the protective effect of the 'Mediterranean Diet.'"

Other celebrity flavonoids include polyphenolic compounds in blueberries and red wine.

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"Alex Thomas" - Los Alamos Fire And 30,000 Barrels of Plutonium: Perfect Cover For A Nuclear False-Flag Operation?

The Intel Hub
Avalon & Shepard Ambellas
June 27, 2011

http://theintelhub.com/2011/06/27/los-alamos-fire-and-30000-barrels-of-plutonium-perfect-cover-for-nuclear-false-flag-operation/

Update By Alex Thomas  – 30,000 Barrels of Plutonium Stored At Los Alamos nuclear laboratory?

Concerned Citizens For Nuclear Safety, an anti nuclear watchdog group, has reported that over 30,000 barrels of  plutonium contaminated waste is being stored in tents ABOVE ground near the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

These barrels may be in danger due to a massive fire that has been quoted as, “entirely uncontained and highly unpredictable.”

“The weather forecast for Los Alamos predicts the wind through Tuesday afternoon will be from the southeast, then switching from the southwest at 11-18 mph with minimum humidities in the lower teens. This could encourage the fire to move closer to Los Alamos,” reported Wildfiretoday.com.

This is absolutely critical information that was given a paragraph in the corporate controlled media.

Government officials have been quick to claim that the situation does not pose a risk to public health and while we all hope they are right, it is the job of the press to MAKE SURE.

NBC Nightly news was one of the few newscasts to cover the fact that THREE nuclear power plants are currently in danger in the United States!

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Business Insider: Economist Charles Gave: The Euro Will Not Exist In One Year!

Business Insider| Jun. 25, 2011, 5:46 PM | 11,471 | 27

Charles Gave is the French economist whose research firm GaveKal is fairly well known, and read in some hedge fund circles.

In his latest note, John Mauldin reports on a dinner he attended with several investors and experts, of which Gave was one. At the dinner, he predicted the Euro's imminent demise.

Will the Euro Survive?

We had dinner on Monday night at the home of Hervig von Hove of Notz-Stucki Bank, where I was speaking the next morning. There were 16 of us at the table, and these people represented a great deal of money as managers and investors. All very well-informed. We sat outside in perfect weather in the Swiss countryside. Charles Gave sat across from me at the middle of the table, and we talked and debated as the rest asked questions and offered opinions for 3-4 hours. The wine was flowing, and it was a most interesting evening. Now, with that set-up…

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Vijay Prashad: The Undoing of Libya

http://counterpunch.org/prashad06272011.html

By VIJAY PRASHAD

NATO headquarters shares with the caves of al-Qaeda the error of hubris. The jihadis believe that it was their rag-tag mujahideen that chased the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. Nothing in their world-view allows them to share the glory with the United States, the Saudis and the Pakistanis, nor yet with the infestation of economic termites inside the heart of the Soviet industrial base. In much the same way, the NATO war planners believe that it was their seventy-eight day bombing campaign that freed Kosovo from the clutches of Slobodan Milosevic's forces. Nothing in the Brussels briefing books underlines the crucial step taken by the Russians, when theywithdrew their support of Milosevic and left him, "looking at the stars," as he put it in his famous invocation of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo. Neither the mujihideen nor the NATO aircraft are themselves capable of military victories that have a political impact. A skirmish here and a bombing campaign there, but not the decisive blow that overturns a political dispensation.

Outgoing U. S. Defense Chief Robert Gates complains that the Europeans are not bearing enough responsibility for the NATO campaign. France's Sarkozy replies that Gates' retirement causes him to use "bitter words." It is only when they are set to retire or do retire that sensible custodians of the hierarchical world order speak the truth: Eisenhower warned the U. S. about the military industrial complex in his farewell address of 1961, World Bank heads Robert McNamara and James Wolfensohn snubbed their own certainties only when the door of the Bank shut behind them. Gates indicates that the U. S. can no longer use its military power to sustain its flagging hegemony. It has to turn things over to partners. The European ship falters, as the Greek sinkhole widens. It does not have the fortitude.

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Don Fitz: The Deep Green Meaning of Fukushima

By DON FITZ

http://counterpunch.org/fitz06272011.html

Humanity must decrease its use of energy.  The decrease must be a lot (not a little bit) and it must happen soon.  A failure to do so will lay the foundation for the destruction of human life by some combination of climate change and radiation.

How long will the disastrous consequences of Fukushima continue?  A good estimate is about 4.5 billion years — the half life of uranium-238. [1]  The March 11, 2011 meltdown sounded alarms that environmentalists have rung for over half a century.  There is also a deeper green meaning: The limits of economic growth have long since passed and we need to design a world with considerably less stuff.

Nuclear power is based on lies

The industry claims that there is such a thing as a safe level of radiation and that nuclear production can be safe.  Both are profoundly untrue.

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Patrick Cockburn: The Demonization of Gaddafi – Don’t Believe Everything You See and Read

http://counterpunch.org/patrick06272011.html

By PATRICK COCKBURN

In the first months of the Arab Spring, foreign journalists got well-merited credit for helping to foment and publicize popular uprisings against the region's despots. Satellite TV stations such as Al Jazeera Arabic, in particular, struck at the roots of power in Arab police states, by making official censorship irrelevant and by competing successfully against government propaganda.

Regimes threatened by change have, since those early days, paid backhanded compliments to the foreign media by throwing correspondents out of countries where they would like to report and by denying them visas to come back in. Trying to visit Yemen earlier this year, I was told that not only was there no chance of my being granted a journalist's visa, but that real tourists – amazingly there is a trickle of such people wanting to see the wonders of Yemen – were being turned back at Sanaa airport on the grounds that they must secretly be journalists. The Bahrain government has an even meaner trick: give a visa to a journalist at a Bahraini embassy abroad and deny him entry when his plane lands.

It has taken time for this policy of near total exclusion to take hold, but it means that, today, foreign journalistic coverage of Syria, Yemen and, to a lesser extent, Bahrain is usually long-distance, reliant on cellphone film of demonstrations and riots which cannot be verified.

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