J.P. MORGAN OFFICES IN GREECE BOMBED; China and Japan Jump Ship

Off to Minneapolis -- New Song Up at New White Trash

Feb 16, 2009 -- I'm leaving early tomorrow for Minneapolis and Q&As at four screenings of "Collapse". The high's supposed to be 28 degrees but I think I'm going to have a great time and meet a lot of new friends. I'll probably be offline till Saturday. We all need a break.

Needless to say, I'm still giggling at all the messages saying, "Wohoo!" Thank you all. -- It's time to kick some butt... together.

BTW -- There's a great new song up on the New White Trash site featuring our beloved Cara Tompkins... "Lulu Lemons". http://www.newwhitetrash.com.

OK, where's the whiskey and bad women!

MCR
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Feb. 16, 2010 -- And so it begins. That there will eventually be more bombings, that they will be deadly and that they will happen in the U.S. is inevitable. Recently the IMF warned of massive civil unrest on a global scale if another round of bailouts was attempted. We covered it here on the blog. This is truly just the beginning. I don't advocate it at all, but historically bombings are a fact of life in periods like this. I grew up in the 60s and 70s. There were many bombs detonated in the U.S.; some by activists and revolutionaries, others by government agencies and agents provocateur seeking to discredit those seeking justice through peaceful means. As Mao Tse Tung said, "Revolution is not a dinner party." -- I'm sure that Thomas Jefferson and all the Founding Fathers would agree.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/16/jp-morgan-bombing-bomb-ex_n_464128.html

MCR
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From Jenna Orkin

Headlines
Foreign Demand For Treasury Bills Suffers Worst Ever Drop As China And Japan Jump Ship
Foreign Demand for US Treasurys Takes Record Fall
The government says that foreign demand for U.S. Treasury securities fell by the largest amount on record in December with China reducing its holdings by $34.2 billion.
The Yuan is about to surge beyond your wildest dreams
China Isn't Supplanting The US, It's Supplanting The World Bank, And It's Making The Yuan The World Currency
Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right
They say a radical is a conservative who's gotten arrested. These days, "laid off" or "foreclosed" will do just as well.

The Tea Party movement is Paddy Chayevsky's immortal scene in the movie Network projected onto the national screen; the one where everyone starts shouting out the window, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" It also evokes the early days of 9/11 Truth which was a ragtag militia of well-meaning, patriotic and even heroic souls finding their way among the misguided or psychotic. Ron Paul figures large but so do some other less reliable but all too familiar characters. (Read the article and figure out who's being referred to, dear reader.) They have even resurrected the phrase, "big tent."

The burgeoning doubts about the Federal Reserve are a good sign but when they're coupled with questions about Obama's citizenship, one is left with the queasy feeling that there's major disinfo going on here, like those websites that smear legitimate questions about 9/11 by juxtaposing them with doubts about the Holocaust. - Jenna Orkin
China: The mother of all black swans?
Falkland Battle Lines Form Over Jurassic Oil Search‎

Quote of the Day:

73 percent of Republicans rated our growing budget deficits and national debt as a very big threat, along with 72 percent of independents and 58 percent of Democrats. About 90 percent wanted Washington to take action to address these issues. Somewhat surprisingly, the respondents rated this issue as being more important than health care reform and middle- class tax cuts. Americans also saw escalating deficits and debt as a danger more serious than global warming and our declines in education and manufacturing. In our poll, public concern about our economic future even trumped fears of a rogue nation developing a nuclear weapon. That's what I call concern!

Yes, public opinion can shift quickly as the wind changes. If terrorists attacked us again on our home soil, the poll numbers would change.
David Walker, Former US Comptroller General

Europe
CDS markets: Euro zone's iceberg?
The Greek Crisis Is A Dress Rehearsal For A Major Speculative Attack On The UK
The markets are about to pounce on Britain
Did Goldman help Britain hide its debts too?
The news here is where this appeared: The New York Times.
European Central Bank Chief Economist: 'Everyone Is a Sinner at the Moment'

US
Here's why the market has rallied (hint: it's not fundamentals)
CEOs Raising Forecasts at Record Pace Fail to Persuade Analysts on Profits
Credit card holders suffer soaring interest rates
Herbert: What’s Wrong With U.S. Infrastructure?
This one's just fine, thanks; car owners putting 50000 more miles on their cars
Universities crumbling, data reveals
Illinois Pension Fund $61 Billion Underwater; State Borrows Money For 2010 Contribution; California $20 Billion in the Hole Again
9,500 Shuttered Stores In Sacramento Area: "Everyone Perfectly Content With Less"
In Utah, a plan to cut 12th grade - from Rice Farmer
Millionaires fund Detroit transit

War/Intelligence
Lebanese Forces Open Fire on Israeli Warplanes (from Rice Farmer)
Israeli drones bound for Turkey - Rice Farmer
Mossad assassins 'used British passports’
Five billion people to use mobile phones in 2010: UN
Twitter 'is a weapon in cyber warfare'

Science/Environment/Energy
Demand for Oil Set to Rise Anew
Virgin's Richard Branson takes on peak oil
Norway plans the world's most powerful wind turbine
British Airways to fly jets on green fuel
Scientists collide gold ions, reach hottest temp. ever recorded
4 trillion degrees. How did they make the material that contained the experiment?

And...
More Reasons Not to Rent Space in Hi-Rises
Burj Dubai confronts lessons that developers at Ground Zero learned eight years ago.
Tourist Trapped on Ski Lift Escapes Death by Burning Cash