Les dessous de l’information mondiale-Downside World News

“1 in every 350 Americans is considered a possible “terrorist””

This really makes you ask, am I one of them? Of course not… right? Do not be so sure… The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act redefines what a terrorist is. The Act’s definition of a terrorist is so broad that an protester, for just about anything, could be labeled a terrorist. Also do not fly in and out of the country more than a few times… they may suspect you.

Almost 1 million people will be put on the “watch list” by years end. This is incredible and utterly insane. How can the government expect us as citizens to believe that 1 in every 350 people need to be watched. When I heard this news all I could think was that 1984 is already here. I am afraid just by writing this and posting it online I will be added to the list.

People amaze me how they can still say “Patriot Act” is for our protection. Watching 1 million people is not for our protection! How big must the government be to be able to watch this many people! I already knew I couldn’t enter the city with out being caught on camera 1,000 times but this is incredible. Spying on 1 million people makes the government the biggest terrorist of them all…If your not doing anything wrong why does it matter? That is by far the worst argument I have ever heard!

I would rather vote for a democrat that taxed me more and controls my health care plan than a candidate who supports this. Of course Ron Paul is the greatest proponent of civil liberties alive today. If Ron Paul doesn’t win I will be starting a petition among republicans not to vote for the nominee unless they promise to actively pursue repealing this thing.

http://www.politicallore.com/uncategorized/1-in-every-350-americans-is-considered-a-possible-terrorist/63

______________________________________________________________

With the current population of the USA @ 303,815,850
as of April 9, 2008 this divided by 350 would equal
868.045 terrorists. Make one wonder how many of these
terrorists are working for the US goverment?

Recipe for Catastrophe: Climate, Fuel, and Food

Food riots turn deadly in Haiti. Food riots fear after rice price hits a high. And so it starts. Globally there has been roughly a 25% increase in food prices. In some areas – such as Haiti – food prices have increased almost 50% in the last year. The poor of the planet who always live on the razor’s edge of survival, are getting hit by multiple blows aimed directly at the food supply.

From subsistence farmers eating rice in Ecuador to gourmets feasting on escargot in France, consumers worldwide face rising food prices in what analysts call a perfect storm of conditions. Freak weather is a factor. But so are dramatic changes in the global economy, including higher oil prices, lower food reserves and growing consumer demand in China and India.

The world’s poorest nations still harbor the greatest hunger risk. Clashes over bread in Egypt killed at least two people last week, and similar food riots broke out in Burkina Faso and Cameroon this month.

But food protests now crop up even in Italy. And while the price of spaghetti has doubled in Haiti, the cost of miso is packing a hit in Japan. (Food prices rising across the world)

This didn’t start with the current economic crisis which comes with the so-called “mortgage crisis.” It doesn’t start with the recent sky rocketing increase in oil and gasoline. It started with the U.S. turn to bio-fuels production. It has been accelerated by multiple other issues.

The U.S. bio-fuels incentives put not just the U.S. food supply, but the global food supply, in competition with the fuel supply. Farmers (and corporate agriculture) in the U.S. took much of the corn crop to the refinery rather than to the food processing plants. Most of the food price increases seen in the U.S up until about a month ago were due solely to this shift. Globally this policy has increased grain costs, but the new push has also hit the global cooking oil supply. This switch from food (or even cooking oil) crops, to crops for fuel, result in both rainforests and existing fields falling to the more “profitable” crop – that which can be used for bio-fuels.

The global food supply is also being hit by a series of other blows. This includes the continued steep rise in the cost of oil, and climatic disasters.

China was hit hard this winter by horrendous storms in January and February of this year. Those storms hit heavily in Southern China, dramatically impacting the growing area. Poor harvests are among the factors that are creating a rice shortage which is hitting Asian nations hard. Rice prices have increased as much as 70% during the last year alone, The price has more than doubled since 2003.
Wheat crops from Russia to Africa are being hit by the deadly grain virus “rust.” If this spreads as currently predicted, it could hit the wheat region of India with devastating consequences.

The spread of the deadly virus, stem rust, against which an effective fungicide does not exist, comes as world grain stocks reach the lowest in four decades and government subsidized bio-ethanol production, especially in the United States, Brazil and the European Union, are taking land out of food production at alarming rates. (Rust to fertilize food price surge)

The fertile Ganges delta and Sundarban Islands (India and Bangladesh) are rapidly disappearing. This is largely due to the glacial melt from the Himalayas caused by global warming. Some of the Islanders have been displaced for each of the last three years, and daily they fight a losing battle against the rising waters (Guardian, 3/30/08). While the assumption in the U.S. is that fuel prices are driving increasing costs (at least partially true), it is food that is driving inflation in India. There was a 7% increase in food prices for the first three months of this year alone.

There are expectations that Asia and Africa face famines (or should we say increasing famine) from global warming.

The United States is not immune to the food catastrophe happening around the globe. Eckholm, writing in the NY Times reported that the confluence of a flagging economy and inflation are driving increased food stamp usage. Since only those near or below the poverty line are eligible for food stamps, growth of usage shows growth in this population. However, it under-represents the number of people who are struggling. The cost of everything is going up while wages remain stagnant (at best). While many folks may hold onto their jobs, the increasing costs are dramatically eroding incomes. We should look for dramatically increasing food bank usage as the various forces at play on the food supply continue to mount.

As much as half the population of the planet faces dangerously increasing food pressures. It is telling that riots regarding food prices are starting to occur (i.e. Egypt and Haiti). These type of events will likely increase. Unfortunately, while riots may result in governments applying some price controls, they will not affect food availability, and food availability is a very real issue in an expanding number of places. At this point, the big nations seem to be doing little if anything to address the growing global crisis. The United States, rather than acknowledging the impacts of bio-fuels incentives, expanded the programs again this year. It is very likely that corn prices may go up by over 50% this year.

Since corn is in almost everything in the U.S. food supply, then that cost will be directly felt come later this year. Of course, that increase will also effect the cost of fuels using corn-based fuels. There is no anticipation that oil prices are going to come down, nor that the economic recession is going to ease in the near future. Therefore this situation is likely to get worse before it gets better – if it gets better.

Further, the situation is complicated by shortfalls in food reserves. Nations have been strong armed by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to switch agricultural production from food for sustenance to commercially exportable crops. The expectation being that sustenance crops would come from outside the country (primarily the U.S. and Europe). This is one reason why changes in incentives and production in the United States have such devastating consequences on grain prices globally (Digiacomo, Bello).

The image of 3 billion people rioting for food will hopefully not become a reality. However, to avoid that scenario governments need to act now – not later. Hesitation or avoidance of the issues driving the growing food crisis will not make it go away. Some things are seen fairly immediately – dramatically increasing transportation costs for example. However, much of the current pricing and shortages are from last year. The situation has deteriorated since then, and certainly for the current and upcoming growing season. We need to get ahead of this problem, or it will hit with crushing affect come late summer to next winter.

WAR The Ultimate Weapon For The Redistribution Of Wealth

Jim Kirwan
4-9-8

‘WAR’ operates on as many levels as there are areas within the possibilities for life and prosperity. It is the ultimate semi- chaos that has been used since people first began to forge bonds of commonality, in order to live more fully in the world. WAR today has become a massive lie, because it is no longer something necessary for survival: Instead it is currently being used as an offensive weapon in order to steal and corrupt what took most of humanity thousands of years to create, which was a viable world, amid the random chaos of everyday life.

 

Americans have lost the ability to understand the world we have become parasites upon. Most of us know nothing of real work, or of real hunger, or of those privations that can turn any people back into uncommunicative and primitive herds of bodies no longer capable of detecting that, which is most dangerous to their very existence.

 

Animals in the wild understand the relationship between what threatens their lives and what they must do to change that. Americans do not! Primitive natives without a written language intuitively understand the reality of major threats to their existences and respond immediately to such threats, apparently we do not. Americans have grown fat and crafty, in direct proportion to the degree that we have become cynical and greedy, and when that happens in any species: that life-form comes to an abrupt and permanent end, because that is the way that nature corrects her mistakes.

 

Mossad proudly says: “By Deception Thou Shalt Do War.” The CIA says: “Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Set You Free,” but that’s a Lie! The New (Old) World Order that actually governs both those organizations has no written phrase to describe their operations, but if they did it would be: “By Omission and Misdirection We Shall Rule.”

The USA for its part has used the media and all the communications networks that it both owns and controls, to omit or to re-write, the real history that might get in the way of their plans for total global-domination. In all three of these cases the public has chosen not to pay any attention to these very real threats to our existence: but have chosen instead to try and find ways to participate in the profits from these criminal enterprises, up to and including WAR!

 

Language itself, in the form of Doublespeak, has been the most successful tool among all the various doctrines that are being used against the people of the world. The religions, the races, the genders and the very many classes within every society have each and all been pitted, one against the other, until most people have been isolated by these invasions of our once integrated way of life. The planet is going backwards because we have forgotten history and because the newer generations have no real interest in knowing much beyond whatever happened just last week. This has been a result of decades of Shock & Awe that have been employed in every area of human life, from finance and health, to jobs and dreams, all the way down to love and war. (1)

 

Bankrupt approach to judgement day

By Julian Delasantellis

In the Old Testament’s Book of Judges, Chapter 2, it is described how the Lord raised up judges – rulers – for the Israelites’ benefit, and woe betide the people when the judges were disobeyed.
Nevertheless the Lord raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them. And yet they would not hearken unto their judges, but they went a whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves unto them: they turned quickly out of the way which their fathers walked in, obeying the commandments of the Lord; but they did not so.
You might think that with the current political situation in the United States, if there was one group that would be faithful to carry out biblical injunctions down to the last jot and tittle, it would be the right-wing ideologues of the Republican Party, especially since for 30 years now they have very successfully used the Bible as a sturdy truncheon to beat their opposition.

Lately, that appears not to be true. The political right has rebelled against the judges, and in much more important ways than just objecting to the legal rulings from the bench that have allowed abortion, or decriminalized homosexuality.

Just as the Hebrews served the false gods of Baal and Ashtaroth, right-wing Republicans are once again proving their undying allegiance to the false gods of Lucre and Moolah. No golden calf or other graven image is necessary for them to prove their devotion to these deities; the gold in their washroom fixtures accomplishes this just as nicely.

It was last week, when, early in the morning, I turned on my television to catch the NBC network morning happy talk chat show Today, expecting to see what natural disaster, a tornado in the breadbasket or a visit by the ex-Mrs Heather Mills McCarthy, had befallen America during the night. Instead, I was amazed – actual news on an American network news show!

Breathlessly, as if it would risk one’s life should another bite of Pop Tart or another sip of orange juice be taken before hearing this news, the hosts led off the show with reports that, in response to the deepening housing crisis in America, the US Congress was, even as they spoke, moving rapidly towards final passage of a new bill that would, as they put it, aid the struggling housing situation in America.

Of course, by any objective look at the matter, those currently struggling most with the housing situation in America would be, by a 2005 estimate of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the just under 750,000 Americans without any place to call home, the homeless. But no national news program in competition with other networks would lead with a story on homelessness, not with remote controls ever present and ready to switch to more favored programming. In the case of news on the homeless, this might be the farm report, or the traffic ordnance debates on the local community cable access show.

What was being referred to was the real crisis stalking American society, that anybody with a 10th-grade education, who wouldn’t necessarily know an adjustable rate mortgage from an adjustable socket wrench, could no longer make 20% or more of yearly capital appreciation from their primary, or, for that matter, their second, third, fourth or fifth homes. It’s far from easy to drive Americans’ attention away from celebrity gossip, new diet books or marriage advice, but if there was one way to do it, Today’s news editors probably thought this was it.

‘For Sale’ nightmare
Accompanying that morning’s news reports of the legislative initiatives were the traditional file video clips of unoccupied suburban three-bedroom, well-gilded colonials with “For Sale” signs in front of them. (This image, more than that of the planes slamming into the World Trade Center on September 11, represents America’s new national nightmare – it’s the vision that comes to the middle class in the depths of the night, in John Malklovich’s words in In the Line of Fire, “when the demons come”) – not actual details on what the bills really contained. I resolved to do some research to see just what all the shouting was about. When I did, I discovered that this initiative, like all other previous policy attempts to assist those trapped in their subprime mortgages, indeed, like most of what passes for public policy and debate in America these days, was following a familiar pattern.

Debate on public policy in America continues to be governed by this iron rule – it’s a whole lot more important to look good than to do good.

Like most products of the American legislature these days, the bill currently winding its way through Senate (the House of Representatives will take it up when the Senate finishes it, probably late in the week) accomplishes no single great goal, certainly no significant change in the vast majority of Americans’ lives – the thinking apparently being, well, if Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin’s villages could fool the Russian Empress Catherine into thinking he was actually doing something, doing likewise with the American people through highly publicized legislation should be a piece of cake.

There’s a provision for a US$7,000 tax credit for those who buy new or foreclosed properties – c’mon you All-American house flippers and property speculators, get back in the game!

Local communities and community-based organizations have $4 billion set aside for them to buy up foreclosed properties lingering on the market, driving down prices and blighting neighborhoods. Just what these organizations will do with these properties is an open question; also, since in 2006 the Census Bureau estimated the total value of US residential real estate at $20 trillion, wouldn’t $4 billion thus qualify as the quintessential drop in the proverbial bucket?

The bill’s most interesting provision calls for $6 billion in new tax breaks for businesses hurt in the current downturn. (No, no, you can’t call it a recession, not yet, not until, according to the arcane rules of this tradition, the private sector National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, officially calls it next year). The most obvious businesses getting slammed in the current environment are the homebuilders; from its high in the summer of 2005 to early this January, the stock of industry leader Toll Brothers was down by just under 75%.

But it is a common economic canard that subsidizing something produces more of it. Homebuilders, of course, build homes, a subsidy to them means more new homes.

More new homes? In a market drowning in the unsold inventory already existent? It is this continually growing unsold supply that is pressuring prices now, wiping out house values, and so thus preventing the subprime borrowers refinancing what could be the only thing that might save them from eventual default and foreclosure. That, of course, is the origin of the howling vortex that much of the world’s financial system has fallen into, as declining values for bonds based on defaulted subprime mortgages is causing a pullback of lending and liquidity across the entire capitalist finance system.

In essence, subsidizing home construction to counter a downturn in home prices is like subsidizing purchases of Twinkies and doughnuts to fight obesity.

It is indicative of just how much power and influence the homebuilding industry, and, by extension, the entire American concept of home ownership as a sacred, ecumenical dogma that unites Americans of all creeds, colors and races, that serious Senators are actually pushing this goofy proposal. In Hollywood they say you can never be too rich or too thin, but if you are too rich you become Paris Hilton, and too thin makes you Karen Carpenter. In Washington DC, they apparently say you can never build too many homes, even if in doing so you get the subprime crisis.

My favorite part of the Senate bill is the provision of an extra $100 million of government funding for what is called “mortgage counselors.”

Explain away the pain
I think this means that people will be employed to tell borrowers that they have to pay their mortgages back on time, but what if it’s not? What if, much as the name implies, it’s just another manifestation of what is called the therapeutic society, the current ethos that defines American virtue not by how much good one does, but by how much pain one feels? If so, a session with the “mortgage counselor” my go something like this.

Soon to be ex-homeowner: “Mortgage counselor, I’m depressed.”
Mortgage counselor: ” Why? Tell me how you feel. Don’t hold anything back.”
STBE-H: “Well, in a month, my family and I will be homeless.”
MC: “Yes, and what does that mean to you?
STBE-H: “We’ll be spending our days and nights on the streets!”
MC: “Are you afraid of the streets? Did you fall and skin your knee on a street as a child?”
STBE-H: “Me and my kids will be sleeping in a cardboard box!”
MC: Do you have unaddressed issues as regards to cardboard boxes? When you were young were you abused by one?”

With the current move in psychiatric practice away from counseling towards more utilization of psychotropic drugs, wouldn’t the Senate be better stewards of the taxpayers money by just writing a Prozac prescription to the entire housing industry? But more important than what is being put in the bills is what is being taken out.

For most of the subprime borrowers, their experience with the subprime industry dawned bright and gay, as they signed the papers that put many of them into the very first homes they, or anybody in their family, had ever owned.

For about a quarter of a million of them each month, their experience with the subprime industry ends as black as bright it began. After default, foreclosure, eviction, the final act in the tragedy becomes a day in bankruptcy court before the bankruptcy judge, when, after a negative response to the judge’s question as to whether there was any chance that the borrower could ever repay the balance on the mortgage note, the borrower is discharged from his obligations into bankruptcy, to spend the next seven years in the howling wasteland of the cash economy.

But it was in 2005 that the US Congress, retreating under a withering barrage of campaign contributions from the banking and credit card industries, passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, making it infinitively harder to file for bankruptcy.

If the borrower, who has already lost his house, is precluded from filing for bankruptcy then he must carry the debt from the mortgage forward, through life, perhaps to death and beyond, at the settling of his estate. If Bleak House was Charles Dickens’ way to describe what he saw as the dysfunctional probate courts of his day, then, for current borrowers hoping for perhaps just a touch of the discharging of debts promised every seven years in the Bible, today’s bankruptcy courts are a very bleak house indeed – just like the property that led them to their sorry end in the first place.

As the foreclosure and bankruptcy wave gathered force this winter, some ideologues, generally on the left side of the political spectrum, had an idea that might have at least partially ameliorated the borrowers’ pain.

Since the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act limited the judges’ statutory authority to provide the total eradication of debts through bankruptcy, couldn’t the judges provide some partial relief to the borrowers, perhaps through altering the mortgage terms to take into account mortgages that had been peddled to borrowers under deceptive, predatory, or just plain false terms?

Even though this would involve a third party, the bankruptcy judge, altering the terms of the contract, the mortgage, between borrower and lender, it is not as revolutionary a concept as it sounds. Bankruptcy judges already have the power to do so in the cases of defaults on second or third homes, yachts and investment properties, even if those petitioners who come to the court seeking such relief are obviously usually more heavily resourced, more “lawyered up” as they put it on the US TV crime shows, than a poor subprime borrower just trying to save his only home.

Also, the principle of a bankruptcy judge altering terms between parties is quite common in corporate law; it is illustrated by the tactic, called a “cramdown”, in which a company declares bankruptcy so it can then petition the court to order the abrogation of previously agreed to contract provisions with unions over salaries, benefits, and pension payments.

Also, altering mortgage terms was at the heart of the Bush Administration’s highly publicized “Hope Now” initiative from early December (see Hope now – Sorry, wrong number, Asia Times Online, December 12, 2007). Hope Now urged, but did not mandate, mortgage servicers to alter mortgage terms so as to assist troubled borrowers in their effort to avoid foreclosure. In recommending, but not ordering, the servicers to provide assistance, the explanation can be seen for Hope Now’s failure. In contrast to what the servicers said they would do, when the klieg lights came down and the pancake makeup came off, when it

comes to actually agreeing to accept less money from the borrowers, the mortgage servicers have run absolutely true to form and said no.

Mealy mouthed provisions
All last week, this provision’s principle proponent in the US Senate, Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, tried and failed to get it tacked into the bill. After being assured that the inclusion of the expanded bankruptcy judge authority would engender a Republican filibuster on the entire bill that the Democrats could not, or more likely would not, break, Durbin withdrew the proposal on Thursday. Since the remainder of the bill’s more mealy mouthed provisions are gaining acceptance by wide margins, the bill is now expected to easily pass the entire Senate.

The Republican Party’s opposition to the inclusion of the bankruptcy court provision was implacable, intense and totally unified – even among the 20 GOP Senators facing the voters this November, who, one might have thought, might not have relished then possibility of going back to the voters tagged with the reputation of blocking a well publicized initiative to aid American homeowners.

The Democrats in the majority, continuing the strategy they have followed since retaking the Congress in 2006 of never having met a fight that they wouldn’t back down from, also ran absolutely true to form – away.

Why did the conservatives in the Republican Party stand firm against the provision, why did they “not hearken unto their judges, but they went a whoring after other gods?” Well, that explanation is easy. Just because America is experiencing its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, you shouldn’t think that things are actually changing all that much. Still, the giant vacuum cleaner sucking the country’s wealth from its lowest to highest classes continues its relentless service to the nation’s economic elite.

The banks are owed money, and they desire to forgive as little of it as they absolutely have to – and they don’t want some judge telling them that they have to. The terrorist Hans Gruber (Alan Rickmann) bastardized and mangled a passage from the Roman historian Plutarch in Die Hard when he said that “When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.” When, in the middle of this decade, George W Bush and his conservatives saw the breadth of their domain, they knew that there was one but one more world to conquer – the power and influence of the United States judiciary.

They had the Presidency, by 2004 they had occupied it for 24 of the past 36 years. White House political guru Karl Rove was predicting that they would continue to do so, this was to be a political realignment not seen for the Republicans since Mark Hanna captured the White House for William McKinley in 1896. As for the Congress, they would continue to control that as well (or thought they would); they believed that the innate corruption of the legislative body’s campaign fundraising procedures would keep their well-funded corporate friendly incumbents in place for many years. In local state houses and legislatures, they also felt themselves well placed as helmsmen on the rudders of power.

Where they realized that their power was lacking was in the Constitution’s third co-equal branch of government, the judiciary, especially the federal judiciary. Even in controlling the executive branch for as long as they had, many of the judges that had found their way onto the courts, for life terms, no less, turned out to be frustratingly liberal (or, in reality, centrist – they just seemed liberal as the Republicans tacked hard to the right). Two of the US Supreme Court’s most reliable liberal associate justices, John Paul Stevens and David Souter, had, in fact, been appointed by Republican Presidents, Stevens by Gerald Ford in 1975, Souter by George H W Bush in 1990.

Cranky judges not wanted
For the corporate plutocracy, what was the value of their purchases of the executive and legislative branches to serve the interests of the economic elite if all their hard work could be negated by some cranky old coot of a judge who had the old-fashioned idea that his mandate was to interpret the law in the public interest?

And the irritating thing about the federal judiciary was how unreachable, in essence, how non-bribable it was. Many state judges are elected, and so they have to be re-elected – that means they have to raise campaign funds for TV and radio ads and the like. Once they come hat in hand to the plutocracy for money – bingo, they were captured like a trout on a fishing line; they might wiggle and thrash about for a while, but, essentially, they were had.

But federal judges don’t need to seek re-election, so they don’t need campaign cash. They are free to rule according to the dictates of their conscience. What a horrible concept for the plutocracy.

It was immediately following the 2004 election that a perfidious new foe entered the pantheon of American malevolence, an entire, self-contained domestic version of the Axis of Evil, threatening the peace and security of all God-fearing Americans. Some on the evangelical Christian right, namely, star televangelist Pat Robertson, even said that this group was worse than al-Qaeda. It was America’s judges.

The foot soldiers of evangelical religious conservatism were thrown big chunks of red meat in this cause, in that the judges were now receiving the blame for such outrages as gay marriage, liberalized abortion, and, of course, the brutal judicial murder of (already brain dead) Terry Schiavo, the young Florida woman whose removal from life support in early 2005 rallied religious fundamentalists for weeks.

For the real powers in the Republican Party, the economic conservatives representing the interests of the nation’s corporate and moneyed elite, they were mighty peeved at the judiciary for issues such as allowing big court damage awards for findings of unsafe products or other corporate malfeasance. With the corporations liable in court for huge damage penalties, called punitive damages, their concern for the bottom line meant that they had to fix or withdraw the dangerous products. Much more acceptable to them would be just eating lesser penalties as a cost of doing business, and then leaving the hazardous products on the market.

One tactic of the war against the judges was legislation to restrict the amount of these damage awards, especially as regards to medical malpractice. Another was a set of initiatives generally falling under the category of what is called “court curbing”.

“Court curbing” refers to a philosophy that, if applied to the criminal justice system, would be a defendant’s dream. Don’t like what you think will be the result of a court dispute you are now contesting? There’s an easy solution to that; just get up and unilaterally say that the court, in actuality, has no authority, responsibility, or jurisdiction over you in the matter.

In the current environment, conservatives in the US Congress have, (at least before losing the House and Senate in 2006, and thus losing the ability to control the legislative agenda) advanced court curbing measures denying judicial responsibility in such areas as gun control (so the court cannot uphold the generally accepted interpretation of the US Federal Constitution’s Second Amendment limiting private gun ownership), school prayer (which the courts consistently ban) abortion, and, of course, the issue that makes even the most scarlet of rednecks turn a brighter vermilion, gay marriage.

The opposition to the expanded jurisdiction proposals for the bankruptcy court falls into this tradition. As with George W Bush in Iraq, this is more a pre-emptive strike – the Republicans are not taking away a right the court currently has; they’re moving to deny the court a right that it someday could have.

Perhaps, if the Republicans lose another three or four Congressional elections, if they still are in the minority in the middle of the next decade, they may finally experience the light-bulb-over-the-head moment wherein they realize that it might be a good idea to support the presence they have managed to place in the judiciary to restrict the power of the legislative branch, instead of, as they currently attempt, using their fading power in the legislature to restrict the mandate and power of the judiciary.

Of course, it is important to note that, even if the Democrats had been able to get the expanded bankruptcy court authority into the bill, this would not have been the “solution” of the subprime crisis. It would have done little or nothing to support the values of the subprime mortgage bonds now wasting away in the portfolios of the world financial system – that part of the problem requires a separate solution. For that, either some very wealthy actors such as sovereign wealth funds have to come in and recapitalize the banks, (see Selling the US by the Dollar, Asia Times Online, November 27, 2007) or the government and/or the Federal Reserve has to buy and clean out the subprime securities from the bank’s portfolios. (see And the band played on, Asia Times Online, March 6, 2008). But maybe that would have given a break to hundreds of thousands of American subprime borrowers now facing the prospect of being bled dry by America’s powerful financial Leviathans.

Most importantly, it would have done something, very much in contrast to what the final bill will accomplish – nothing. No matter what the hype and puffery that will accompany its eventual passage and signing, this, like Hope Now, Project Lifeline, and all the other supposed subprime rescues that have emanated from out of Washington DC this past year, will have only one real effect – the pitiless crushing of the hopes of the subprime borrowers that will follow upon the realization that, in contrast to what they just heard on TV, they still will not be able to save their homes.

It is surprising that the ideologues of Republican fundamentalist conservatism have failed to take note of these passages from the Old Testament’s Book of Psalms, perhaps the earliest recorded warning against the building all those 10,000-square-foot McMansions now sitting empty all across the once fruited American plain.
Do not be overawed when a man grows rich,
when the splendor of his house increases;
for he will take nothing with him when he dies,
his splendor will not descend with him.
Though while he lived he counted himself blessed -
and men praise you when you prosper -
he will join the generation of his fathers,
who will never see the light of life.
A man who has riches without understanding
is like the beasts that perish.

If the conservatives who blocked the bankruptcy court initiative actually do return to adherence of genuine biblical principles, they might notice Jesus’ warning in the Book of Matthew that “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” Thus, maybe they’ll have some legislative success with their counterproposal, an emergency research program to recombine DNA so as to massively shrink the size of dromedaries.

Julian Delasantellis is a management consultant, private investor and educator in international business in the US state of Washington. He can be reached at juliandelasantellis@yahoo.com.

Link

Jim Rogers: More Pain for the Greenback, and the Failure of the Federal Reserve

By Keith Fitz-Gerald
Investment Director
Money Morning/The Money Map Report

SINGAPORE – By bailing out Wall Street and applying “band-aids” to the economy, the U.S. Federal Reserve may well be causing its own downfall – even as it hastens the demise of the greenback as a viable global currency, investment guru Jim Rogers told Money Morning during an exclusive interview.

Because of such strategic missteps, U.S. consumers could be facing a long and painful economic malaise, similar to the “lost decade” of 1990s Japan, or the stagflation-riddled 1970s in the United States, Rogers said.

Make no mistake: If that happens, there are two clear culprits – current Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, and his predecessor, Alan Greenspan.

Bernanke “and Greenspan together will probably bring about the end of the Federal Reserve,” Rogers said during the interview in Singapore. “We’ve had two central banks in America that failed and this third central bank will probably fail, too, because of Bernanke and Greenspan. The Federal Reserve just put $200 billion more onto its balance sheet of mortgages. Now I don’t know how big they can expand their balance sheet, but if they keep doing it, there’s only so much – and they just bought Bear Stearns (BSC).”

Story continues below…

Sign up right now, and we’ll send you an important new report for free: “The Three Best Investments in Asia.”

Rogers first made a name for himself with The Quantum Fund, a hedge fund that’s often described as the first real global investment fund, which he and partner George Soros founded in 1970. Over the next decade, Quantum gained 4,200%, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed about 50%.

It was after Rogers “retired” in 1980 that the investing masses got to see him in action. Rogers traveled the world (several times), and penned such bestsellers as “Investment Biker” and the just-released “Bull in China.” And he made some historic market calls: Rogers predicted China’s meteoric growth a good decade before it became apparent and he subsequently foretold of the powerful updraft in global commodities prices that’s fueled a year-long bull market in the agriculture, energy and mining sectors.

Given Rogers’ prescience – not to mention all the uncertainty facing U.S. investors right now – we thought it was well worth a sit-down with the noted guru, even though it meant traveling all the way to Singapore, where he now lives with his family, to do so.

During that interview here in Singapore, Rogers also said that:

* Although the United States faces perhaps its most daunting economic challenges in at least a generation, “in America, most people do not understand that there is a problem.”
* Because of these weak-dollar efforts – as well as the billion-dollar bailouts – “America is now the largest debtor the world has ever seen.”
* Although the central bank seems intent on engineering a U.S. economic rebound by creating an ultra-weak dollar, no country in history has ever emerged from a serious financial crisis by “debasing its currency.”

The bottom line: The strategies that the central bank is currently employing are nothing short of “outrageous,” Rogers said.

“You know, I’ve read the Federal Reserve Act,” he said. “Nowhere does it say the central bank is supposed to bail out investment banks! Nowhere does it say you should bail out Wall Street. Their mandate was to have a sound currency, and then it was later expanded to have employment – to help employment. But nowhere does it say: ‘Bail out investment banks.’”

Let’s take a look at some of the highlights of the Money Morning interview with investor and author Jim Rogers.

Keith Fitz-Gerald (Q): There’s a confluence of money flowing into and around China. Do you believe that the U.S., with all its current problems, will get left out?

Jim Rogers: Absolutely.

The U.S. dollar is a terribly flawed currency. I’m trying to get all of my money out of U.S. dollars. I don’t know why anybody would put money into the U.S. dollar, and by extension into the U.S., as we stand here today. The U.S. is probably the largest debtor nation the world has ever seen!

The United States’ foreign debts are increasing at the rate of $1 trillion U.S. dollars every 15 months. U.S. foreign debt is over $13 trillion, and rising rapidly. It’s the official policy of the central bank to debase the currency. They’re trying to drive down the value of the dollar.

Q: The government has succeeded wildly, so far.

Rogers: You haven’t seen anything yet!

They’re trying to drive down the dollar. I’m trying to be patriotic. I’m trying to sell dollars. That’s what they want. I’m trying to help them drive down the value of the currency.

All Americans should. There are certainly probably good reasons to put some money in dollars. For instance, if you have to buy cotton, you have to have dollars.

But for the most part – I, anyway – am joining other people who’re trying to avoid the U.S. dollar, because Washington has sent a very clear signal: “We want the dollar to decline. We’re gonna do our best to make it decline.”

Well, everybody has to make their own decision. I’m trying to do what the Federal Reserve wants me to do, and I’m selling dollars.

Q: My take is that former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and current Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke may go down as the worst central bank chairmen in history. Do you see it differently?

Rogers: Bernanke and Greenspan together will probably bring about the end of the Federal Reserve. We’ve had two central banks in America that failed. This third central bank will probably fail, too, because of Bernanke and Greenspan.

The Federal Reserve last week put $200 billion more onto its balance sheet of mortgages. Now I don’t know how big they can expand their balance sheet, but if they keep doing it, there’s only so much – and they just bought Bear Stearns.

There’s just so much they can do. Maybe that balance sheet is infinite. I doubt it. And it can be said to be infinite; they just print money like Zimbabwe or someplace. But that has to come to an end, eventually.

Maybe Bernanke is going to get into his helicopter and fly around collecting rents now. Maybe when they repossess all the property, he’s going to be the rent collector. But then when they eventually take on all the car loans, I guess he’s going to be collecting car payments, too. And credit card debt, when they take over all the credit card payments, I guess he’ll be hauling us all out saying: “Your credit card’s overdue.”

This is insanity.

Q: Is there a circumstance under which you could see the U.S. recovering, or do you think this country is doomed to be an economic also-ran?

Rogers: Historically, nations that have gotten themselves into this kind of situation have only gotten out following a crisis or a semi-crisis, or some gigantic stroke of luck.

The U.K. got out because they discovered the North Sea. Now you give me the largest oil field in the world, or one of the largest oil fields in the world, I’ll show you a good time, too.

So if you have a stroke of luck you can escape these kinds of problems, but otherwise, nobody’s ever sorted out these problems without some kind of gigantic crisis or semi-crisis first.

In America, most people do not understand there is a problem! The few who know there’s something going on don’t understand what it is. Most of them who understand it actually think it’s good that the currency’s declining. America’s not going to do anything until things get very, very bad.

Others that offer the rejoinder to this – that the declining dollar makes America competitive – that has worked in the short term. But no country has ever restored itself by debasing its currency, not in the long term, not even the medium term.

Many places have tried to debase their currency as a solution. It’s never worked, other than maybe in the short-term, for a while.

Q: Are we looking at a Japanese-style lost economic decade?

Rogers: The Federal Reserve is making the same mistakes that the Japanese made. They’re trying to say: “We won’t let anybody fail. We’ll print a lot of money. We’ll drive interest rates to zero. And we don’t want anybody to fail. We’ll put on as many Band-Aids as we have to.”

Well, putting Band-Aids on a cancer patient is not a good solution.

So whether it’s like the ’90s in Japan, or the ’70s in America, remains to be seen.

One-time U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns, who headed the central bank in the ’70s, did exactly what Bernanke’s doing. He raced in and printed money and said: “Oh, everything’s gonna be OK.”

But the economy never recovered, inflation went through the roof, and the dollar was under duress. Eventually they had to bring in Paul Volcker and interest rates went over 20%. And eventually they killed inflation and they solved the problem.

They’re making exactly the same mistakes that Burns made. For whatever reason, though, this problem is going to last longer than previous difficulties in America. And it’s probably going to be worse.

Because, now, America is a debtor nation. Now we’re the largest debtor nation in the world. At least in the ’70s, we were still a creditor nation. Japan could survive because they were the largest creditor in the world at the time. So they didn’t fall off the face of the earth.

America’s now the largest debtor the world has ever seen. What’s happening in the U.S. is not going to be fun.

Q: Should the Fed be stepping in like it has in recent months?

Rogers: It’s outrageous that Bernanke’s sitting there. You know, I’ve read the Federal Reserve Act. Nowhere does it say the central bank is supposed to bail out investment banks! Nowhere does it say you should bail out Wall Street. Their mandate was to have a sound currency, and then it was later expanded to have employment – to help employment. But nowhere does it say: ‘Bail out investment banks.’

Investment banks have been failing for centuries. The world hasn’t come to an end… even when investment banks have failed. They just caused a setback, and so what!

Recessions are usually good for the system. They clean out the excesses. And my God there’ve been excesses on Wall Street in the past 10 years. You don’t see a bunch of 29-year-old cotton farmers driving around in Maseratis and flying in private planes to exotic locations. Well, you see a lot of guys on Wall Street doing that.

And the idea that we’re now supposed to bail them out is ludicrous! I don’t see any of those guys sending their bonus checks back.

Huge amounts were made in the debt markets. We now know that money was made at least incorrectly, if not fraudulently, and yet, now we’re supposed to bail them out. It’s bad enough they get to keep their money. But the outrageous part is that it will cost more to try to prevent a recession than to have the recession.

We have safety nets in place, now. We did in the ’70s in America and the Japanese did in the ’90s. I think there’s good evidence that it will cost more to try to prevent the problems than to have the problems.

Q: That’s a very interesting thought that had not occurred to me before.

Rogers: Well, we’ll see if it’s right. In nature, there’s the natural phenomenon of forest fires. The forest fires are pretty terrible when they’re going on. But nature invented them to clean out the forest so that the forest could then come and grow from a new, sound foundation. That’s what recessions do, too. They’re a natural phenomenon.

Nobody likes it when we have them any more than anybody likes a forest fire. But in the end, everybody’s better off. Bernanke thinks he can stop this; he’s going to very well destroy the system by trying to save it.

Q: Could you see a segment of the financial system surviving this? Or do you think that there will be such catastrophic change that we won’t recognize it till several years from now?

Rogers: Ask me again in five years, 10 years. That was true after the ’30s, certainly. It was true even after the ’60s. Very few people went to Wall Street in the ’70s, very few. A whole generation ignored Wall Street in the ’30s and in the ’70s.

Will that happen again? Probably, because of things we’ve been discussing.

So there will be big changes, of course. If you’re in the field that deals with – and works out – bankruptcies, you’ve got a great future – on Wall Street, or in the legal profession. If you’re in commodities, you have a great future. Some sectors of the financial community are going to do well. Many others are going to disappear and/or do badly.

Q: How low could the dollar go?

Rogers: I have no idea. You just have to watch it as it evolves. Politicians and bureaucrats can do unbelievably stupid things, and have done so throughout history.

They will usually do things that are so stupid nobody can believe them, but it happens. You have to watch and see as it goes.

Editor’s Note: This is the first installment of a two-part story based on Investing Director Keith Fitz-Gerald’s interview with investing guru with Jim Rogers. In the second installment, Fitz-Gerald will explore China’s potential, the energy sector and the Middle East, and the global commodities boom. To learn more about an offer that includes a free copy of Rogers’ new bestseller, “A Bull in China,” please click here.

http://www.moneymorning.com/2008/04/08/exclusive-interview-investment-guru-jim-rogers-predicts-more-pain-for-the-greenback-and-the-failure-of-the-federal-reserve