http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6421599.ece

Hazel Blears dealt a potentially fatal blow to Gordon Brown's political authority today when she announced her departure from Cabinet on the eve of crucial local and European elections. It was the fourth ministerial resignation in 24 hours and the second at Cabinet level after the news yesterday that Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, is also to stand down. It also came as Mr Brown's critics in the Labour Party canvassed support for a round-r

Trend forecaster Gerald Celente predicts that the "green shoots" theory is a load of cr*p. He also details the trends that may lead to summer riots, especially in the next three years as "the U.S. is in a decline like never before". He predicts the "Greatest Depression" on the horizon. He says that there is an amazing record of failures of U.S. Government involvement in disaster preparedness, city redevelopment, war prosecution, and the wonderful financial bailouts. The real neutron story is the collapse of

When the White House Press Spinner Gibbs says, "we all have to make sacrifices," he smirks away. The only one making a sacrifice in this disaster is our children who are facing a $72T debt burden, if you bother to count Medicare and Social Security- which, of course, they will never receive. ZeroHedge calls the spade a spade in this post:
GM is set to announce the sale of Hummer for $100-$200 million at some point today, marking the most anyone paid for one of those since Eliot Spitzer. As Zero Hedge report

Of course we will have Fascism in America, but we will call it Democracy. - Senator Huey Long

From Daily Kos: It is interesting to note that the bonuses about which President Obama is so angry were explicitly protected by Senator Dodd in the stimulus bill that President Obama signed. Can someone help me understand why AIG is a bunch of bad guys for taking advantage of provisions that the Congress went out of its way to add to law?

http://www.foxbusiness.com/...

"While the Senate was constructing

Here's a non-defence: "There were no civilian deaths because the U.N. wasn't there to see the massacres!"

Sri Lanka faced new calls for a war crimes inquiry today after an investigation by The Times revealed that more than 20,000 civilians were killed – mostly by the army – in the latter stages of the war against the Tamil Tigers. The army dismissed that figure as an exaggeration and repeated the Government’s assertion that not a single civilian was killed by government forces in the final assault on

South Korean and US troops have gone on higher alert after North Korea said it was scrapping the treaty that halted the Korean War more than 50 years ago. Seoul's defence ministry said it would increase reconnaissance operations over North Korea.

The Chevy Volt- The Taxpayer's Car !

UAW health care trust will own 17.5 percent of GM: David Shepardson and Louis Aguilar / The Detroit News

The United Auto Workers leadership council approved a package of concessions today with General Motors Corp. today that gives the union trust fund that takes over responsibility for retiree health care just 17.5 percent of General Motors Corp. stock, officials said today.

The UAW stock deal is part of a concessions package reached between the union and the automake

On Tuesday, the Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports that China has warned a top member of the US Federal Reserve that it is increasingly disturbed by the Fed's direct purchase of US Treasury bonds:

Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, said: "Senior officials of the Chinese government grilled me about whether or not we are going to monetise the actions of our legislature."

"I must have been asked about that a hundred times in China. I was asked at every single meeti

Famed bank regulator William K. Black, a consumer-protection hero of the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, speaks with The Young Turks radio show about the massive banking fraud perpetrated on the American people and the futility of the Obama administration's bank rescue plan.

FBI said in September 2004 that there was "an epidemic of mortgage fraud", and it will be worse than the S&L crisis. The FBI received 63,000 cases of fraud last year (80% by the LENDERS) and the FBI clears 800 cases a year. Tal

Since September 2008, AIG has received over $180 billion in Federal assistance to help stabilize the company. The House Oversight Cmte. heard assessments from the three trustees appointed by the New York Federal Reserve to oversee the use of taxpayer funds. AIG Chairman & CEO Edward Liddy also testifies before the Committee.

It's shame that our media has turned into a "Shill Factory" where everyone with airtime gets to "talk their book". Not Jeff Mackey, a funny guy with an unusual challenge here- actually getting to force CNBS "host" Dennis Kneale off his teleprompter script. Mackey makes Neale look like the pitchman he is- hollow, humorless, clueless and hired for his "analysis" - NOT!

In what has to be a video testimonial to the absurdity of our "free market", CNBS host Dennis "Kneel" shills for the economy in early 2008 and then, in a brilliant clip, completely ignores Jeff Mackey's obtuse? protests about the absurdity of the auto and bank bailouts....Truly telling

Three commentators on Fox News admit that the Bernanke put has been jamming the futures overnight and at the close of each market day- Oh, who has $10-20B of EOD firepower? Three guesses...the head of Schaeffer's Investments comments:

“Something strange happened during the last 7 or 8 weeks. Doreen you probably can concur on this -- there was a power underneath the market that kept holding it up and trading the futures. I watch the futures every day and every tick, and a tremendous amount of volume came

Federal Reserve Inspector General Elizabeth Grayson is a complete and utter liar regarding the bailouts and the taxpayers assets disposition. Where did the TRILLION DOLLARS GO???

A very funny deadpan parody of Timmy the Tax Dodge- it's a pass-pass system. "Geithner Sucks!"

Gramm, Leach, Bliley Act gutted Glass-Steagall which created the financial conglomerates that are "TOO BIG TO FAIL". Guess who was Treasury Secretary then, Larry Summers, our current head of Obama's Council of Economic Advisors.

Only eight senators would vote against the measure -- lionized by its proponents, including senior staff in the Clinton administration and many now staffing President Obama, as the most important breakthrough in the worlds of finance and politics in decades. "It was more like a tid

Support HR 1207- An audit of the Federal Reserve is long overdue- it's not Federal, it's privately owned.

On the lack of transparency: Bubble Ben claims that the Fed is compliant with Sarbanes-Oxley and has an independent auditor at the GAO- HAHAHA - they are ignored. Third Party auditor? SURE, like a credit rating bureau like Moody's?

Doug Noland knocks this out of the park: Can anyone predict how this plays out then. Hyperinflation? Dollar worthless?
At the end of the day, a system is made or lost on the soundness of its underlying economic structure. I posit that a sound economic structure is reliant upon only moderate Credit growth and risk intermediation. Our system requires massive Credit expansion and intensive risk intermediation. I would also posit that there are no benefits – only escalating costs – to throwing massive Credit inflation upon an unhealthy economic structure. And, returning to Ponzi Dynamics, one of the major costs to such inflationism is a massive expansion of non-productive Credit – obligations that are created without a corresponding increase in real economic wealth producing capacity. The debt can only be serviced by the creation of more debt obligations.
The danger is that markets too easily and for too long accommodate massive Credit expansion during the boom. Federal Reserve policies are fundamental to this dynamic. But at some point and out of the Fed’s control, as Wall Street learned, greed inevitably turns to fear and a reversal of speculative flows marks the onset of the bust. And it’s the massive inflation of non-productive Credit that ensures the unavoidable crisis of confidence. Can the underlying economic structure service the mounting debt load or, instead, is it the massively inflating debt load that is sustaining a vulnerable economy? And it is in this vein that I fear the Government Finance Bubble is on track to destroy the Creditworthiness of the entire economy. And this Ponzi Dynamic is The Greatest Cost to what I fear is a continuation of unsound policymaking.
more about “Zero Hedge: Santelli To Liesman: “Don…“, posted with vodpod
Complete idiocy- Bullishness Is Busting Out All Over–Economic data come in strong, and stocks, including Bank of America, go up on bad news.
http://www.thestreet.com/p/ — Snippet: “Oh gee, I try to b

More on AIG- sorry- but CBS says that the three suspected fraud kingpins at AIG’s Financial Products Group (AIGFP) may have falsified and misrepresented results at the derivatives unit. YA THINK? Not only is the change in loss exposure from $550m to $11.5T! Yes, TRILLION totally outrageous from year end 2008 to Q109, but the little news item that these crooks got TARP bailout bonuses at year end is flabbergasting!
The story below from Marketwatch’s Wall Street reported David Weidner is equally galling to celebrate 100 days of Bush III:
The bungling bailout brothers- Geithner, Summers, Rattner may be Obama’s biggest problem:  President Barack Obama can breathe a sigh of relief knowing he’s made it through the first 100 days of his presidency with a successful foreign tour, a promising policy agenda and popular support behind him. If he’s smart, however, the CEO of the U.S. won’t get too comfortable. That’s because the three men he’s tapped to do the dirty work in his plan to stem the financial crisis are threatening to blow up the effort through their own gaffes, associations and fast dealing. These bungling bailout brothers are, of course, Steven Rattner, the private-equity-fund manager turned auto-industry bailout chief who is under investigation for potentially illegal payments;  Larry “Sleepy” Summers, head of the National Economic Council; and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who has been the subject of some withering attacks for his career ties to Wall Street.

Just some lunches! They was teachin' me!
In the pocket: Though it’s no revelation that Geithner is a career bureaucrat, it is startling to see how closely he worked and communicated with Wall Street chieftains during his five years as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. As someone who has created enhanced spending programs that could end up costing taxpayers trillions, his deep immersion in Wall Street-think suggests that he is unwilling to change the existi

Point by Point...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5535651

False Claim 1: The Program was Widely Approved and Legal.

The first act by President Bush in this matter, on recommendation from John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales, was to deny that Geneva protections applied to al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. This temporarily invalidated the War Crimes Act (18 USC 2441), but did not make Torture (18 USC 2340) Legal. This action was later overturned by the SCOTUS in Hamdan