Wednesday, January 5, 2011
8 keys that could unlock the door to US economic doom
Full Catastrophe Banking in 2011
Submitted by Mary Bottari on January 3, 2011 - 07:00
With a $4.7 trillion dollar bailout under their belts with no harm done to their billion-dollar bonuses, don't expect Wall Street bankers to be chastened by the 2008 financial crisis. Below we list eight things to watch out for in 2011 that threaten to rock the financial system and undermine any recovery.
1) The Demise of Bank of America
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is promising to unleash a cache of secret documents from the troubled Bank of America (BofA). BofA is already under the gun, defending itself from multiple lawsuits demanding that the bank buy back billions worth of toxic mortgages it peddled to investors. The firm is also at the heart of robo-signing scandal, having wrongfully kicked many American families to the curb. If Assange has emails showing that Countrywide or BofA knew they were recklessly abandoning underwriting standards and/or peddling toxic dreck to investors, the damage to the firm could be irreparable.
2) Robo-signers Wreaking Havoc
With lawsuits abounding, new types of fraud in the foreclosure process are being uncovered daily, including accounting fraud, fake attorneys, destroyed promissory notes and false notarizations. The crisis not only calls into question the legality of untold foreclosures, it also calls into question the value of trillions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities held by banks, pension funds, federal, state and local governments. The only government report on the topic by the feisty Congressional Oversight Panel for the TARP acknowledges that “it is possible that ‘robo-signing’ may have concealed deeper problems in the mortgage market that could potentially threaten financial stability.”
3) MERS Madness
In addition to outright fraud, numerous state Supreme Courts have questioned the legal standing of the Mortgage Electronic Registration or "MERS" system. MERS is listed as the mortgagee for 60% of U.S. mortgages. It is an electronic clearinghouse created by industry to bypass the property registration system developed by our forefathers in precolonial days to ensure that the King could not easily rob the subjects of their land. Wall Street turned to MERS to speed securitizations (and now foreclosures), but its legal standing is now in doubt and its shoddy processing of documents has major ramifications for the securitization process as well. Look for a rotten "MERS fix" in the new Congress. Let's hope it gives consumer advocates some leverage to demand justice for Americans being robbed by the new Kings on Wall Street.
4) Flash Crash Calamity
The "flash crash" of May 2010 rattled the markets and caused a stunning 700 point drop in the Dow within minutes. Regulators think they know what occurred, but they are moving too slowly to put the brakes on hair-trigger trading. Seventy percent of Wall Street trades take place in milliseconds, so it is no surprise that mini-flash crashes are becoming a constant. With traders now gearing up to trade on raw news feeds and Twitter, we can anticipate even more volatility. A small financial transaction tax targeting high-volume, high-speed trades is long overdue. It would throw sand in the roulette wheel and raise much needed revenue for the federal government.
5) Bigger Behemoth Banks
The Federal Reserve is planning to "stress test" the big banks again. The same 19 banks that underwent the first stress tests in 2009 will be tested again, but this time the Fed says it won't release the results. Why not? Banks with toxic mortgages and mortgage-backed securities on their books and concomitant legal exposure to "put back" law suits are being kept afloat by accounting tricks, TARP and Fed loans. Honest stress tests of still weak financial institutions may well result in sales and buyouts that will further consolidate the already concentrated banking industry and create larger and more unwieldy "too big to fail" behemoths -- backed by the guarantee of the American taxpayer.
6) Foreclosure Tsunami
Housing foreclosures may top nine million in 2011 and Goldman Sachs predicts the number will reach 12 million in the next few years. The result will be another significant drop in home prices in 2011 and even more families underwater. Civilized nations see the forcible migration of a city the size of New York as an economic and humanitarian catastrophe, but not the United States. The Obama administration and Congress have callously refused to take meaningful action to aid families facing foreclosure even in the face of widespread predatory lending and rampant foreclosure fraud. The only hope now for millions of American families is aggressive action by the 50 state Attorneys General who are actively investigating foreclosure fraud. Whether they have the guts to wrestle a settlement out of the big banks that slows the foreclosure machine and offers families meaningful options has yet to be seen.
7) Bankrupt Cities and States
Meredith Whitney, a research analyst who correctly predicted the credit crunch, is now warning that over 100 American cities could go bust next year. She anticipates billions worth of municipal bond defaults and warns: "next to housing this is the single most important issue in the U.S. and certainly the biggest threat to the U.S. economy." States are also in dire straits. The economic shock of mass unemployment on top of years of population decline, deindustrialization and the like have left cities unable to meet their obligations to taxpayers and retirees. With an austerity anschluss underway in the House, it may take a bankruptcy of a major player to prod an appropriate federal response to this looming disaster.
8) Gas Prices above $4.00
The price of energy and other commodities shifted into high gear in late August when the Federal Reserve Chairman decided to stimulate the economy with quantitative easing. Speculators quickly began bidding up the value of asset classes like crude oil, metals and food commodities. In December, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission failed to apply position limits to these commodities, delaying rules that would crack down on speculators and aid consumers who are already seeing big price hikes at the pump. Without swift action, skyrocketing gas prices will further tank an already stalled economy.
As we hope for the best in 2011, let's prepare for the worst. The big banks are sure to deliver.
A move to make the Constitution more pertinent in congress meets with dismissiveness from liberals
The Constitution, not the Supreme Court, was intended to be the final authority by the founding fathers! When did it get turned around?
Congress Rediscovers the Constitution
The House Republican majority has said it will require members to cite the specific authority for any bill they introduce.
If the new Congress to be sworn in on Wednesday is the tea party's cardinal achievement so far, its most symbolic achievement will come on Thursday, when the first order of business in the House will be a reading, aloud, of the Constitution. That event alone will not bring us any closer to limited government. But it will help get a debate going that for too long has been dormant.
Already, House Democrats are lining up to ridicule a closely related rule that the Republican majority has said it will adopt, requiring members to cite the specific constitutional authority for any bill they introduce. "It's an air kiss they're blowing to the tea party," says Barney Frank, outgoing chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Henry Waxman, outgoing chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, all but dismissed any role for Congress in assessing the constitutionality of its actions: "Whether it is constitutional or not is going to be whether the Supreme Court says it is."
A a legal matter, Mr. Waxman is right; at least since Marbury v. Madison in 1803, the Supreme Court has had the last word on what the Constitution authorizes Congress to do. But well before that, and long after, members of Congress took it upon themselves to have the first word, often citing their oath of office.
In 1794, for example, James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, rose on the House floor to object to a bill appropriating $15,000 for the relief of French refugees who had fled to Baltimore and Philadelphia from an insurrection in San Domingo. He could not, he said, "undertake to lay [his] finger on that article of the Federal Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." The bill failed.
Throughout the 19th century, members of Congress and presidents alike rejected legislation because they believed there was no constitutional authority to enact it. The bedrock presumption of our polity, they understood, was individual liberty. The Constitution gave the federal government the authority to pursue certain limited ends, like national security and ensuring free interstate commerce, but otherwise left us free to pursue our ends either through the states or as private individuals. It did not authorize the federal government to provide us with the vast array of goods and services that today reduce so many of us to government dependents.
Thus the first question the new Congress should ask of any proposed law is: Does the Constitution authorize us to pursue this end? If not, that ends the matter. If yes, the second question is: Are the means we employ "necessary and proper," as constrained by the principles of federalism and the rights retained by the people that are implied by a government of enumerated powers? In essence, the Constitution is no more complicated than that. It was written to be understood by ordinary citizens.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Would the government ever take over your private pension?
European nations begin seizing private pensions
Hungary, Poland, and three other nations take over citizens' pension money to make up government budget shortfalls.
Sergeant--The Obama Prayer: "Let his days be few - and let another take his office."
Obama prayer leads to sergeant being suspended
Palmetto, Florida - Something called "The Obama Prayer" has landed a Manatee County corrections sergeant in hot water. According to an internal affairs report, Sergeant Matthew Neu highlighted a verse in a bible that reads, "Let his days be few - and let another take his office."
Mysterious mass bird deaths continue: First Arkansas, now Louisiana and Kentucky and Texas…Sweden: Fish Too
End Times, government test, Gulf BP oil spill/dispersant…
Mass La. bird deaths puzzle investigators
Show Caption Liz Condo/The Advocate
Hundreds of dead starlings, red-winged blackbirds and brown-headed cowbirds lie along the side of La. 1 near New Roads. The birds were found dead and dying Monday along a half-mile stretch of the road.
LABARRE — Hundreds of dead and dying birds littered a quarter-mile stretch of highway in Pointe Coupee Parish on Monday as motorists drove over and around them.
State biologists are trying to determine what led to the deaths of the estimated 500 red-winged blackbirds and starlings on La. 1 just down the road from Pointe Coupee Central High School.
The discovery of the dead birds — some of which were lying face down, clumped in groups, while others were face up with their wings outstretched and rigid legs pointing upward — comes just three days after more than 3,000 blackbirds rained down from the sky in Beebe, Ark.
Related:
Thousands Of Dead Fish Discovered Along Chicago Lakefront
Now doves suddenly die by the thousands: Chemtrails, HAARP, government bio/chem test, End Times?
Kentucky woman reports dozens of dead birds in her yard...
What’s the government testing in Arkansas—new HAARP capability?
Scientists say fireworks caused huge bird kill in Arkansas...
Dead fish cover 20-miles of Arkansas River...
Tens of thousands of small fish die in Chesapeake Bay...
Kentucky woman reports dozens of dead birds in her yard...
Connected to Government Testing?
100 tons of dead fish wash up on Brazil's shores...
More dead birds found, this time in Sweden
Hundreds of dead birds in TX
Thousands of dead fish in FL
River turns fluorescent green!
Swedish birds 'scared to death'
40,000 crabs wash up on UK beaches
Mass bird and fish deaths becoming worldwide phenomenon
Possible cause of mysterious bird and fish deaths…BP at ‘fault’?
Monday, January 3, 2011
What’s the government testing in Arkansas—new HAARP capability?
Falling birds likely died from massive trauma
It's raining birds
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Preliminary report suggests no sign of any chronic or infectious disease
- The birds show evidence of trauma in the breast tissue and internal bleeding
- Up to 5,000 birds fell from the sky New Year's Eve in Beebe, Arkansas
- 500 birds found dead in southern Louisiana in seemingly separate incident
(CNN) -- The thousands of birds that fell from the sky just before midnight New Year's Eve in Arkansas likely died from massive trauma, according to a preliminary report released Monday.
The birds, most of which were dead when they were found, were red-winged blackbirds and starlings. They were found within a one-mile area of Beebe, about 40 miles northeast of Little Rock, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said.
Keith Stephens, a spokesman for the commission, said the birds showed evidence of trauma in the breast tissue, with blood clots in the body cavity and a lot of internal bleeding. All major organs were normal.
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