Mike Whitney - The $600 Billion Ripoff

December 28, 2011

How Draghi Rigged the System

by MIKE WHITNEY

 

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/28/the-600-billion-ripoff/

European Central Bank president Mario Draghi is either a liar or a fool.  Either way, he should be canned immediately before he dumps more money into an EU banking system sinkhole.

What’s all the fuss about? Here’s a clip from Bloomberg that explains what’s going on:

“The European Central Bank said overnight deposits from the region’s financial institutions increased to an all-time high. Euro-area banks parked 452 billion euros ($591 billion) with the Frankfurt-based ECB yesterday, the most since the euro’s introduction in 1999 and up from the previous record of 412 billion euros a day earlier.

The ECB last week lent 523 banks a record 489 billion euros for three years to keep credit flowing to the 17-nation euro economy during the sovereign debt crisis. It lent the money at its benchmark rate of 1 percent. Banks are depositing excess cash back with the ECB at the overnight rate of 0.25 percent, incurring a loss rather than lending it at a better rate.

Barclays Capital estimates the three-year loans injected 193 billion euros of new money into the system, with 296 billion euros accounted for by maturing loans. Since the three-year loans started on Dec. 22, overnight deposits have jumped by 187 billion euros, suggesting banks are parking almost all the additional liquidity back with the ECB.” (“ECB Says Banks Increased Overnight Deposits to All-Time High”, Bloomberg)

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Glenn Greenwald - Vote Obama – If You Want a Centrist Republican for US President

December 27, 2011 by the Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/27/vote-obama-centrist-republican

Because Barack Obama has adopted so many core Republican beliefs, the US opposition race is a shambles.

by Glenn Greenwald

American presidential elections are increasingly indistinguishable from the reality TV competitions drowning the nation's airwaves. Both are vapid, personality-driven and painfully protracted affairs, with the winners crowned by virtue of their ability to appear slightly more tolerable than the cast of annoying rejects whom the public eliminates one by one. When, earlier this year, America's tawdriest (and one of its most-watched) reality TV show hosts, Donald Trump, inserted himself into the campaign circus as a threatened contestant, he fitted right in, immediately catapulting to the top of audience polls before announcing he would not join the show.

The Republican presidential primaries – shortly to determine who will be the finalist to face off, and likely lose, against Barack Obama next November – has been a particularly base spectacle. That the contest has devolved into an embarrassing clown show has many causes, beginning with the fact that GOP voters loathe Mitt Romney, their belief-free, anointed-by-Wall-Street frontrunner who clearly has the best chance of defeating the president.

In a desperate attempt to find someone less slithery and soulless (not to mention less Mormon), party members have lurched manically from one ludicrous candidate to the next, only to watch in horror as each wilted the moment they were subjected to scrutiny. Incessant pleas to the party's ostensibly more respectable conservatives to enter the race have been repeatedly rebuffed. Now, only Romney remains viable. Republican voters are thus slowly resigning themselves to marching behind a vacant, supremely malleable technocrat whom they plainly detest.

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David Rosen - 8 Ways Your Privacy Is Being Eroded Online and Off

By David Rosen, AlterNet

Printed on December 29, 2011

http://www.alternet.org/story/153592/are_you_being_tracked_8_ways_your_privacy_is_being_eroded_online_and_off

In a recent hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Al Franken reminded his fellow Americans, “People have a fundamental right to control their private information.” At the hearing, Franken raised an alarm about Carrier IQ’s software, CIQ.

Few people have ever heard about CIQ. Running under the app functions, CIQ doesn't require the user’s consent (or knowledge) to operate. On Android phones, it can track a user’s keystrokes, record telephone calls, store text messages, track location and more. Most troubling, it is difficult to impossible to disable.

Carrier IQ, located in Mountain View, CA, was founded in 2005 and is backed by a group of venture capitalists. Its software is installed on about 150 million wireless devices offered through AT&T, HTC, Nokia, RIM (BlackBerry), Samsung, Sprint and Verizon Wireless. It runs on a variety of operating systems, including the Apple OS and Google’s Android (but not on Microsoft Windows).

At the hearing, Sen. Franken questioned FBI director Robert Muller about the FBI’s use of CIQ software. Muller assured the senator that FBI agents “neither sought nor obtained any information” from Carrier IQ.

Following Muller’s Senate testimony, Andrew Coward, Carrier IQ’s VP of marketing, told the Associated Press that the FBI is the only law enforcement agency to contact them for data. The FBI has yet to issue a follow-up “clarification.”

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Walden Bello - The New German Colossus

by WALDEN BELLO

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/28/the-new-german-colossus/

Germany towers over Europe like a colossus. Its economy is the biggest in the European Union, accounting for 20 percent of the EU’s gross domestic product. While most of Europe’s economies are stagnating, Germany’s will have grown by some 2.9 percent in 2011. It boasts the lowest unemployment rate, 5.5 percent, of Europe’s major economies, compared to those of France (9.5 percent), the United Kingdom (8.3 percent), and Italy (8.1 percent).

In many ways, Germany is like Japan. Both countries were forced to give up armed expansion during the Second World War, only to have the national energy channeled into building formidable economies. But whereas Japan faltered in the 1990s, Germany has steadily plowed ahead, becoming the world’s biggest exporter from 1992 to 2009, replaced in first place by China only in 2010.

With the recent agreement by most EU countries to move toward tighter coordination of fiscal policies, the prime mover of which was Germany, Germans and other Europeans alike feel that a new era of German primacy has begun. Not only is Germany the strongest economy in Europe; it is also now writing the rules of economic governance.

Unbalanced Relationship?

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Bob Chapman - Grim Economic Prospects for 2012 -- Social Upheaval, Bank Defaults and Financial Chaos

By Bob Chapman

Global Research, December 28, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28381

The game goes on, as German leadership tells us the euro is stable, even as it hits yearly lows. We are told the problem is a crisis in several member states. That may be true, but they all are inseparable. The reassurance from politicians and bankers to calm the market place is beginning to fall on deaf ears. No matter what the cause of the debt crisis it exists and leadership as yet cannot find a solution. Even short-term solutions, such as the use of the EFSF are not going to work. All they will do is gain time. In that process, what happens if France’s credit rating is cut one or two levels? How can France then continue to participate? 

The present French government has buried the government in losing investments, which we believe in June will force the electorate to choose the Front National to solve national problems. The public, as in most other countries are sick and tired of lies and incompetence from politicians, bankers and bureaucrats possessed with the creation of world government. At this point confidence in the euro is hanging by a thread and Europe’s leadership doesn’t know how to solve the problem. We have seen such crises of confidence often over the past 15 years. It is not unique, but the size of the euro zone is compelling, because the crisis touches so many people. Currency is the vehicle to bring about a solution, but if confidence is lost the currency cannot perform part of its role as monetization continues unabated, confidence continues to fall and inflation as a result flourishes.

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The Guardian/UK - United States as a Global Power: New World Disorder

Published on Thursday, December 29, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/29-1

The US is struggling with a paradox: while its military power retains global reach, its role as world leader is gradually ending

The Guardian Editorial

The time has long since past when it became fashionable to talk about a new world order. The collapse of the Soviet Union provided an opportunity to fashion one. But instead of using that opportunity to create a new security architecture in Europe, Nato expanded eastwards as the military anchor for democracy promotion. Not content to have seen off one global military competitor in the Soviet Union, the western military industrial complex and the think-tanks they funded scurried around for a worthy replacement. When 11 September happened, they thought they were in business again. For a brief moment, al-Qaida seemed to fulfil some of the characteristics of communism: it could pop up anywhere in the world; it was an existential enemy, driven ideologically and uncontainable through negotiation; and it was potentially voluminous. Neither the doctrines of the pre-emptive strike, nor attacking a foreign country abroad to ensure security at home, were new. Swap the domino theory of the Vietnam era for the crescent of crisis of the Bush and Obama eras, and you had the same formula for a foe that hopscotched across the globe.

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Rebecca Jeschke - Time for Supreme Court to Weigh in on Forced DNA Collection

Published on Thursday, December 29, 2011 by Deeplinks Blog / EFF

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/time-supreme-court-weigh-forced-dna-collection

 

by Rebecca Jeschke

Can the government force people who are arrested – but not yet convicted of a crime – to give a DNA sample without a search warrant, or does that violate the Fourth Amendment?  One arrestee is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider this important question, and this week EFF urged the court to take the case.

A federal law mandates DNA collection for those who have been arrested for felonies. The FBI analyzes the samples, and puts a profile into CODIS, a national database.  Those who aren’t eventually convicted of a crime can get their information removed if they request to do so, but data from other individuals remains indefinitely.  In this case from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, U.S. v. Mitchell, the defendant argues that the DNA collection violates his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Some judges have considered DNA profiles in the same light as fingerprints – a means of identification.  But DNA is much more than that.  It can reveal your family background, your current health, and your future propensity for disease, among other personal details.  In the future, as technology advances, scientists will be able to read even more into DNA.  Meanwhile, the government is collecting this information without warrants, and storing them in a database that’s freely accessed by state and federal law enforcement agents across the country without any need for a search warrant. The Fourth Amendment prohibits warrantless searches and seizures of private information, and we think its protections apply to the DNA collection at issue here.

Earlier this summer, we filed a brief before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that this warrantless DNA collection violated the Fourth Amendment. But shortly before the case was to be argued, the defendant pleaded guilty, making the issue go away and forcing the appeals court to dismiss the case. Now, without the Supreme Court’s intervention in this Third Circuit case, the blanket DNA collection from people who are not convicted of crimes continues unchecked – perhaps leading to a future where everyone’s DNA is sampled, profiled, stored, and routinely accessed by government officials without suspicion of any criminal wrongdoing.

We hope the Supreme Court will take our advice, and review this complicated and controversial practice.

Video - The Compassion of Ron Paul

Vaccine Liberation Army

RON PAUL: BRINGS TEARS TO YOUR EYES. THE COMPASSION OF DR. PAUL

http://vaccineliberationarmy.com/ron-paul-brings-tears-to-your-eyes-the-compassion-of-ron-paul/

Medical News Today - Nutrients May Stop Brain Shrinkage Linked To Alzheimer's

Medical News Today, 29 Dec 2011 

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/239762.php

A study of elderly people finds that those whose diets were high in certain essential nutrients were less likely to have the brain shrinkage associated with Alzheimer's disease and more likely to score better on tests of mental performance. The researchers published a paper on how they came to these findings in the 28 December online issue of Neurology.

The paper's first author is Dr Gene Bowman from the Departments of Neurology and Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. He and his colleagues describe three sets of findings:

Elderly people with diets high in several vitamins or omega 3 fatty acids were less likely to have the brain shrinkage that usually accompanies Alzheimer's disease than people whose diets were low in those nutrients.

Those whose diets were high in omega 3 fatty acids and in vitamins C, D, E and the B vitamins were also more likely to score better on tests of mental ability than those whose diets were low in those nutrients.

Those whose diets were high in trans fats were more likely to have brain shrinkage and perform less well on thinking and memory tests than those whose diets were low in trans fats.

Omega-3 fatty acids are essential for human health but the body can't make them. These are primarily found in fish, also an essential source of vitamin D; some plants and nut oils are also good sources of omega 3 fatty acids, which are also called polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs).

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Adele M. Stan - Major Ron Paul Supporter Favors Death Penalty for Gays

By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet

Printed on December 30, 2011

http://www.alternet.org/story/153607/major_ron_paul_supporter_favors_death_penalty_for_gays

At first it seemed like the moment of triumph for the Ron Paul for President campaign. The Texas congressman had won the endorsement of Rev. Phillip G. Kayser, a prominent right-wing Nebraska pastor, just as momentum built toward a possible big win for Paul in next week's GOP caucuses in neighboring Iowa, where evangelicals comprise a majority of voters.

The campaign issued a press release lauding Kayser and trumpeting his endorsement, citing"the enlightening statements he makes on how Ron Paul's approach to government is consistent with Christian beliefs." Then came word of Kayser's "Christian belief" in applying the death penalty for gay male sex, and the Paulites got busy scrubbing their press release from the campaign Web site. (The text of the release and a screen shot can be seen on the Web site Outside the Beltway.)

What reporters Pema Levy and Benjy Sarlin of TPM uncovered when they scrolled through Kayser's writings on his Web site, Biblical Blueprints, were not simply the rantings of a random fringe preacher, but a "blueprint" for the philosophy of Christian Reconstructionism, which seeks to make manifest biblical law as the law of the land. That would include the death penalty not only for the practice of sex between men, but also for adultery and insubordination by children.

Coming on the heels of recent revelations by a former aide that Ron Paul would not use the bathroom in a gay man's home or shake the hand of a gay supporter, and the homophobic and racist utterances attributed to him in a series of newsletters published under his name in the 1980s and '90s, news of Kayser's death-to-the-gays theology was hardly a boon to the campaign.

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