Thursday, February 04, 2010

Markets in Freefall; Cash Strapped Cities Begin to Crumble

From Jenna Orkin

Headlines
MARKETS IN FREEFALL
It Begins: Cash Strapped Cities Begin To Crumble
Morgan Stanley: Have No Fear, Lazy Central Banks Will Keep Pumping Out Liquidity
Biggest Bubble in History Is Growing Every Day (from Rice Farmer)
Moody's: Government Debt Is Vastly Understated, And On Its Current Path America Will Be Downgraded
TrimTabs CEO Biderman: I Think The Government Is Buying Up The Stock Market, Though I Have No Evidence
Officials Al Qaeda Certain to Try Attack Soon
Within 3-6 months.
Metro Transit Police stage large anti-terrorism drill (from Rice Farmer)
If You Thought The Last 5 Years Were Something, Here's A Preview Of The Next 5
By Ben Bernanke
Sorry Folks, The FHA Is Still Going To Melt Down
Dollar devaluation inevitable, just as in 1934 (from Rice Farmer)
10 States About To Get Murdered By The Coming Chinese Import Slowdown
Rosenberg: Forget The "Flat" Pending Home Sales Number, Here's The Real Disaster
What Bill Gross Really Thinks: The US Economy Is Screwed
Evercore CEO Altman: Obama's Deficit Will Cause An International Currency Crisis In The Next Two years
Retailers Likely to Close More U.S. Stores After Over-Expanding: Analysis
Colorado Springs: Street Lights Turned Off, Trash Cans Removed To Save Money (from Rice Farmer)
School Crisis In Nevada; Governor Seeks To Cancel Collective Bargaining With Schools Because The State Is Broke

Europe
Euro Bludgeoned As Portuguese Government Debt Disaster Sparks Credit Default Swap Panic
Greece under EU orders
By Standing Behind Greece, Europe Just Made Portugal The New Sacrificial PIIG
IMF chief says may quit early; eyes French politics?
Hmm, does he know something we don't?
Energy regulator warns of blackouts UK
Ofgem says Britain’s power industry is in desperate need of investment and raises prospect of partial renationalisation
Bank of England Pauses Bond Purchases (from Jon Noel)
Shell to Axe Another 1000 Jobs and Shut Last UK Refinery (from Jon Noel)
Energy regulator says U.K. facing possible power shortages
Greece's Biggest Union Votes to Strike, Threatening Deficit-Reduction Plan

Terror/Intelligence
Google to Enlist NSA To Help It Ward Off Cyberattacks (from Jon Noel)
Pentagon Funds Spider-Man Tech for Real-Life Wall Crawlers More news
Pakistani woman 'tried to kill' US agents
'Lady Qaeda' Found Guilty of Attempted Murder

World
World's soil 'gone in 60 years'
Let them eat fish. Oh yeah, I forgot...
Haiti Faces Agricultural Disaster As Refugees Flood Rural Areas
Chechnya to Become a Ski Resort?

7 comments:

businessman said...

From the article that's linked to on the main page:

"The U.S.'s top intelligence officials said Tuesday that an attempted al Qaeda attack on the U.S. in the next three to six months was 'certain.'"

How is it that they can be absolutely certain of this, while at the same time have no idea of the exact nature of the attack, and when and where it's all going to happen?

Is this just for their own bragging rights so they can then tell all of us afterwards that they did a great job of predicting the attack in advance?

It's truly amazing what billions of dollars every year can buy us in national security.

Michael Anderson said...

I used to like William Engdahl, but it looks like he's under the thrall of abiotic oil now, Jesus H. Christ, anyway. I thought all those people had crawled back under the rock. On the other hand, an eye-opener into MORE Peak Oil rape-and-pillage, vis-a-vis Haiti:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17287

businessman said...

How possible would it be for the government to completely manipulate the computer software and calculations for both stock prices and indices like the Dow Jones? Would it be possible for them to have these numbers remain a lot higher than they should be? I'm not talking about doing this through additional market intervention methods, but just by manipulating how the software calculates both the individual share and index values.

If they did this, would it be obvious to many people trading in the stock market? Or could they pull this off and have it be reasonably undetectable?...at least for awhile.

toner deeski said...

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_14334355?source=rss

Another quake in Northern California. The week prior to the Haiti quake, there were two back to back 3+ quakes in the bay area followed by a 6.5 quake in eureka.
just sayin.

karlof1 said...

businessman--I wouldn't worry about the feds fiddling with the software; I'd worry about Wall Street, becasue it giggles things all the time. I suggest you read the basic info presented by the investigators at deepcapture.com to see that the government justs steps aside and does nothing as Wall Street plays its games.

On the Biggest Bubble item, "purchasing" another nation's debt obligations by issuing it a "loan" is a longstanding tactic of, first, pound sterling and then dollar "diplomacy," which is to say imperialism. Will China invade and occupy its "loanees" as the UK and US did in order to guarantee payments? Yeah, I'm saying the writer has it all wrong and must have flunked US history.

businessman said...

That link to the video clip that's on the main page in red letters titled "I think the Government is Buying Up the Stock Market..."...I found to be very interesting. In that video Charles Biderman seems to be a rational, knowledgeable guy, and the moment he suggests that the government may be buying up huge quantities of stock, the hosts of the show immediately call him a conspiracy theorist. I have to believe that hosts like these have been trained to do this, as once someone is called a conspiracy theorist, it often discredits what they're saying to the mainstream public.

Since we know that The Fed bought approximately 80% of all U.S. Treasuries that were auctioned off in 2009, is it really that big of a stretch to think that the government could also be buying huge quantities of stock?

Unknown said...

Businessman:

Who IS "The Government"? What I got from that article was that it SEEMED that SOMEBODY (other than the usuals) is buying up huge amounts of stock. M1 is no longer reported, so someone could be "cranking a printing press" - literally and/or figuratively, and investing big time. Besides various types of counterfeiting, there is the massive underground drug trade, which has to put its titanic profits somewhere. Then there is the back-door, black-op business done by Goldman and probably many others, the profits from which, by nature, cannot be reported.

Not that there's a clear line between TPTB, The Government, and Organized Crime, but I don't see why one has to put the label "government" on this massive secret stock buying. Could be the Plunge Protection guys, but where would they get the money? Where does the CIA get its money? We assume that "money" comes from hard work and savings, but I suspect that, at the level of taking over the world economy, there are elastic definitions and highly occulted practices.

All the more reason to crash money altogether. If only....