'Think Communist China’s air is breathable? Think again'

from globe and mail.......

"Today, the United States Embassy, which has a monitoring station on its grounds in east Beijing, broadcast via its Twitter account that the air quality was “hazardous” between the hours of 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. today, with an air quality index of 344 on the scale of 1 to 500. (Or at least 500 – a level 25 times higher than WHO guidelines – used to be considered the top of the scale. The rating in Beijing surged to an unheard-of 562 one coal-tinged morning last November, prompting the embassy staffer who writes @BeijingAir to famously declare the air “crazy bad.”)

But China doesn’t acknowledge these numbers, or indeed the idea that the air quality here could be hazardous for anyone. The state-run Global Times newspaper said air pollution was only “moderate” Tuesday in Beijing. Unlike the U.S. Embassy Twitter account, it gave no measurements of ozone or PM2.5 particulate matter to back its assertion"...............READ MORE

'Land Grabs in Southern Communist China Trigger 3-Day Riots'

from epoch times........

"Thousands of residents in two Southern Chinese townships took to the streets last week over unfair land expropriation. These types of conflicts have become very common throughout China with increased numbers of villagers being forced off their land by real estate developers and local officials who turn the land for huge profits"............READ MORE

'Israeli FM accuses Turkey's Erdogan's government of supporting and nurturing terror'

from trend azerbaijan.......

"Anyone who saw CNN yesterday saw Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan once again verbally attack the state of Israel," said Lieberman. "We have no problems with Turkey who, for years was a friendly country, we were partners and cooperated in a number of fields including defense and economy," he was quoted as saying by Israel's Ynet website on Tuesday. "We certainly respect the Turkish nation and Turkey as a state, our problem is first and foremost with the current Turkish leadership -- the radical and extremist Islamist leadership that supports and nurtures terror," he added"............READ MORE

'Tallying the Toll of U.S.-Communist China Trade'

from wsj..........

"For years, economists have told Americans worried that cheap Chinese imports will kill jobs that the benefits of trade with China far outweigh its costs.

New research suggests the damage to the U.S. has been deeper than these economists have supposed. The study, conducted by a team of three economists, doesn't challenge the traditional view that trade is ultimately good for the economy. Workers who lose jobs do eventually find new work or retire, while the benefits from trade, such as lower prices, remain. The problem is the speed at which China has surged as an exporter, overwhelming the normal process of adaptation"...............READ MORE

'Washington warns Lebanon’s prime minister to not interfere in Syria'

read thru the lines.......war soon in syria..........from alarabiya..........

"U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during her meeting with the Lebanese prime minister, Najib Mikati, in New York, warned that Lebanon should not get involved in the situation in Syria, a Lebanese daily reported on Tuesday.

“We discussed the many international obligations that Lebanon has and the prime minister assured me that Lebanon would always fulfill [its] international obligations,” Clinton told reporters following her meeting with Mikati, Lebanon’s the Daily Star reported"............READ MORE

'Modern-day Maoists worry Chinese authorities'

from france24.........

"A group of Maoists commemorating the 35th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s death in the northern Chinese city of Taiyuan was violently broken up by police. Chinese authorities have no patience for these Mao-lovers, who seem to have forgotten the former communist leader’s authoritarian streak and retained only the idyllic vision of a fairer society. One Chinese Maoist gives us his account"............READ MORE

'ALEX JONES ENDORSES NEW FILM EXPOSING THE SECRET BANKING SYSTEM'

from alex jones.......

'Assuming Money'

a must read for a deeper understanding of "money".........from oped news........

"Banks create money as loan principal, but they create repayment obligations ("debt") as principal + interest.   The loan principal that is spent into the economy by borrowers becomes the economy's "money supply".   So loan principal = money supply, and money supply <   debt.   Our system systematically generates more debt than it creates money to pay that debt.   This is a STUPID money system.

Our privately owned system of issuing all the economy's money as debt at interest is a pure Ponzi, because it requires the constant addition of new borrowers spending additional new money to keep up the appearance that this system 'works'. Simple arithmetic shows it CANNOT work, and the fact that our money system is arithmetically defective explains the current global debt crisis, as proponents of modern money theory (MMT) never tire of showing all whose ears are open to listen and whose eyes are open to see.

Our profit seeking economic system systematically generates more prices than it generates incomes to pay those prices.   Our bank-debt money system systematically generates more debt than it creates money to pay that debt.   We all need to "profit" so it is error to try to alter that fact of reality by various 'socialist' anti-profit schemes.   We must accommodate our economic reality by modifying our money system so that it becomes positive sum like our economic system.   Somebody needs to add non-debt money into the spending-cum-income equation, so that income earners have enough money to buy all the economy's outputs at prices that are profitable to producers.

Clearly, the bankers in our private for-profit money system are not going to start giving money to people.   Bankers are in the business of "lending" money at interest, for the sake of getting back more money than they put out.   Only a government with the power to create debt-free money is able to perform the financially necessary function of adding non-debt money to make our money system positive sum.

As Jamie Galbraith explains in his 2008 book, "The Predator State", the Chinese are doing this in a clever way that seems to be working.   Unlike virtually the entire hopeless world whose nations have surrendered their monetary sovereignty to the private bankers, the Chinese government has retained ownership of its money and banking system.   The government tells the banks to lend to producers, and the producers use the money to hire workers and produce stuff.   This puts incomes into the hands of the workers and the entrepreneurs, who then have money to buy stuff.   But like us, they can't buy "all" the stuff at profitable prices, so excess stuff is hauled to discounters who sell it to happy Chinese consumers at a fraction of its cost price"..............READ MORE

'Fiat Money Explained in under 4 minutes'

'Chinese Media Knock U.S. Ambassador to China for Being Too Popular'

from the atlantic.........

"It scarcely seems possible, but apparently some Chinese commentators are put out that the U.S. ambassador has garnered so much favorable press in his first month on the job. In recent days, the Chinese media have published a number of commentaries criticizing not only the ambassador but also some of their fellow journalists, who they believe are paying too much attention to Ambassador Locke's activities. Stripped to its essence, the criticism of Ambassador Locke is that he is a nice guy, who is simply too good at representing U.S. values.  It would be laughable, if it didn't point to a real challenge in the Sino-American relationship".............READ MORE

Ireland: "Fall in house prices accelerates"

from irishtimes........

"Irish house prices continued to fall last month, and at a faster pace than the previous month.

House prices dropped 1.6 per cent in August, compared to a 0.8 per cent fall in July. On an annual basis, house prices were 13.9 per cent lower last month than the previous August. This compares to an annual rate of decline of 12.5 per cent in July.


The latest monthly figures, which were released by the CSO today, mean that residential properties are now 43 per cent lower than in 2007".......READ MORE

'Iran, Russia, China mulling joint missile shield'

from trend azerbaijan......

"Unofficial sources have announced that Iran, Russia, and China are currently holding talks on a proposal to establish a joint missile defense shield as a counterweight to a NATO defense shield, Mehr news agency reported.

The report, which was published in the Iranian daily newspaper Kayhan on Sunday, said that the sources cited two reasons why serious consultations have been held on the initiative.

First, all three states have come to the conclusion that U.S. officials’ assertion that their concern over the alleged missile and nuclear capabilities of Iran and North Korea is the reason for the decision to establish a NATO missile defense shield is just a pretext and the true objective of the shield is to threaten Russia and China"..............READ MORE

Pepe Escobar: "Decline and fall of just about everyone"

from asia times online........

"More than 10 years ago, before 9/11, Goldman Sachs was predicting that the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) would make the world economy's top 10 - but not until 2040. Skip a decade and the Chinese economy already has the number two spot all to itself, Brazil is number seven, India 10, and even Russia is creeping closer. In purchasing power parity, or PPP, things look even better. There, China is in second place, India is now fourth, Russia sixth, and Brazil seventh. 

No wonder Jim O'Neill, who coined the neologism BRIC and is now chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, has been stressing that "the world is no longer dependent on the leadership of the US and Europe". After all, since 2007, China's economy has grown by 45%, the American economy by less than 1% - figures startling enough to make anyone take back their predictions'............READ MORE

'South Korea’s debt risks rise on global woes'

from ann.com........

"Although it’s arguably premature to conclude that Korea’s financial market is in worse shape than France’s based on CDS premium data only, the country’s financial authorities and investors alike appeared deeply concerned on Friday over the recent events that shook the country’s stock, bond and foreign exchange markets"..........Read More

'Government Shutdown looms: Spotlight now on Senate after Boehner wrangled House GOP votes'

from wapo.........

"With time running out, Congress returns Monday to try to pass a short-term funding measure to avert a government shutdown and avoid yet another market-rattling showdown over the federal budget.

The Democratic-led Senate, which on Friday blocked a GOP House measure to fund the government through Nov. 18, will vote late Monday on its own version of the bill".............READ MORE

'Supercomputer Predicts Revolution'

from singularity hub........

"A new type of software has been shown to predict revolutions by mining news reports around the world. Retrospectively mining the news for the past 30 years the software indicates points at which the likelihood for a revolution is high. When put to the test – bingo! – the software showed spikes just before the recent Egyptian and Libyan upheavals. It was also able to sift through world news to retrospectively pinpoint Osama Bin Ladin’s location to within 200 km. In the emerging science of ‘culturomics’ that tracks cultural trends through the written word, the software was the first to demonstrate that news coverage can be used to predict future events"..............READ MORE

'Protectionism in Argentina'

from the economist........

"IN RECENT years BlackBerrys have become an essential component in the young professional’s toolkit in Buenos Aires. But if you failed to buy one before the southern-hemisphere winter, you may be out of luck. “We have trouble getting them,” says an assistant at a Claro mobile-phone store in posh Recoleta. “We haven’t had them for months,” is the answer at a Personal shop in leafy Palermo. Movistar advertises the 8520 model on its home page, but the phone is in fact sold out.

At South America’s southern tip, the missing BlackBerrys are almost ready to roll off the line. On October 3rd Brightstar, a multinational manufacturer, will begin importing kits of the phones’ parts to its factory in Tierra del Fuego, the normal base for cruise ships going to Antarctica. Some 300 workers will brave the frigid austral fog to assemble the pieces and put them in locally sourced packaging".............READ MORE

'Inside Facebook’s Bid to Reinvent Music, News and Everything'

from wired.........

"Earlier this year, Daniel Ek, the CEO of the music service Spotify, was in a car with Mark Zuckerberg. Ek was visiting the Facebook founder in California while the two companies were working together on what eventually would be part of the massive announcement made by Zuckerberg today at his company’s F8 developer’s conference. It’s an initiative that will unleash new waves of applications on Facebook that will greatly enhance the power of the service — already a major part of people’s lives — by adding a limitless stream of lifestyle data that people can use to share and, ultimately, define themselves with a profile built on a stunning amount of personal information"............READ MORE

'Land Grabs in Africa Usher in a New Form of Colonialism'

from epoch times.......

"Much like in the 19th century, when European colonial powers expropriated Africa’s rich mineral resources, pushing the local people onto marginal land, today foreign governments and wealthycorporations are staking out vast plots of arable land across the warm continent in a form of second colonization. 

“I see no reason why land grabbing should be any different from oil, diamonds, etc., in this regard. Local people will lose their land, and their source of food,” wrote John Ashworth, adviser from the Sudan Ecumenical Forum, via email.

Facing a future where domestic resources will not be able to provide for their populations, investors from countries such as China, Saudi Arabia, India, South Korea, and Qatar are seeking land elsewhere to establish plantations for rice and other staples in African nations like Ethiopia, Sudan, Tanzania, Kenya, and Mali".............READ MORE

'Boeing celebrates 787 delivery as program's costs top $32 billion'

from seattletimes.........

"That massive sum, half spent on development costs and half on manufacturing the jets already built, means profitability for the plane won't come before well into the 2020s — if ever.


"The plane may be the best plane ever produced, but in losing money it may also be the record holder," said Adam Pilarski, a senior vice president with the aviation-consulting firm Avitas"...........READ MORE

'The Privatization of Politics' - Dylan Ratigan Show

from dylanratigan.com...

'The Politics of Heroin; CIA Complicity In The Global Drug Trade'

from thepeoplesvoice.........

"[INTERVIEW] Alfred W. McCoy is professor of Southeast Asian History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Educated at Columbia and Yale, he has spent the past twenty years writing about Southeast Asian history and politics. Mr. McCoy participated in Causes and Cures: National Teleconference on the Narcotics Epidemic Saturday, November 9 1991, at Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan.

PD: How did you come to write The Politics of Heroin; CIA Complicity In The Global Drug Trade? AM: In 1971 I was a graduate student doing Southeast Asian History at Yale University. An editor at Harper & Row, Elisabeth Jakab, read some articles in a volume I had edited about Laos, which made some general references to the opium trade in Laos.

She decided this would be a great idea for a book and asked me to do a background book on the heroin plague that was sweeping the forces then fighting in South Vietnam. We later learned that about one third of the United States combat forces in Vietnam, conservatively estimated, were heroin addicts"..........READ MORE

'American War Machine with Peter Dale Scott part 1 and 2'

from alexjones.......

Book Review: "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President"

                                           

........."veteran journalist Ron Suskind writes that U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner ignored an order from President Barack Obama to consider dissolving the debt-ridden banking giant Citigroup as part of a reconstruction of major banks in March 2009. Suskind goes on to say that Citigroup was one of several incidents where President Obama’s authority was, quote, “systematically undermined or hedged by his seasoned advisers"..........from democracy now.........

North Korea: "AWOL and Hungry Soldiers Making Trouble"

from dailynk.........

"The North Korean authorities have stepped up attempts to stop soldiers in and around Hyesan from going AWOL and stealing from local people to supplement their increasingly inadequate rations, according to information provided by a source yesterday. 

The source from the Yangkang Province capital told The Daily NK, “They are hungry and the weather is getting colder, and so the number of soldiers deserting their posts is rising. Therefore, Military Police (MPs) have been stationed here and there on the streets to deal with it. They work from 8AM to 7PM, checking the identification documents of soldiers coming and going one by one.”

“In particular, a lot of soldiers from the Driver Training School under Area Command in Gapsan are going AWOL,” the source also claimed, adding, “They are going to local houses stealing from them and attacking passers-by”..........READ MORE

U.S. building drone base in Ethiopia...

i thought we were broke.........from rt.com..........

'Greek Crisis Comes 24 Centuries After First Default'

from bloomberg........

"History’s first sovereign default came in the 4th century BC, committed by 10 Greek municipalities. There was one creditor: the temple of Delos, Apollo’s mythical birthplace.

Twenty-four centuries later, Greece is at the edge of the biggest sovereign default and policy makers are worried about global shock waves of an insolvency by a government with 353 billion euros ($483 billion) of debt -- five times the size of Argentina’s $95 billion default in 2001"..........READ MORE

'European officials are working on a grand plan to restore confidence in the single currency area that would involve a massive bank recapitalisation, giving the bail-out fund several trillion euros of firepower, and a possible Greek default'

from the telegraph......

"German and French authorities have begun work on a three-pronged strategy behind the scenes amid escalating fears that the eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis is spiralling out of control.

Their aim is to build a “firebreak” around Greece, Portugal and Ireland to prevent the crisis spreading to Italy and Spain, countries considered “too big to bail”.............READ MORE

'Five Banks Account For 96% Of The $250 Trillion In Outstanding US Derivative Exposure; Is Morgan Stanley Sitting On An FX Derivative Time Bomb?'

from zero hedge.........

"The latest quarterly report from the Office Of the Currency Comptroller is out and as usual it presents in a crisp, clear and very much glaring format the fact that the top 4 banks in the US now account for a massively disproportionate amount of the derivative risk in the financial system. Specifically, of the $250 trillion in gross notional amount of derivative contracts outstanding (consisting of Interest Rate, FX, Equity Contracts, Commodity and CDS) among the Top 25 commercial banks (a number that swells to $333 trillion when looking at the Top 25 Bank Holding Companies), a mere 5 banks (and really 4) account for 95.9% of all derivative exposure (HSBC replaced Wells as the Top 5th bank, which at $3.9 trillion in derivative exposure is a distant place from #4 Goldman with $47.7 trillion). The top 4 banks: JPM with $78.1 trillion in exposure, Citi with $56 trillion, Bank of America with $53 trillion and Goldman with $48 trillion, account for 94.4% of total exposure"...............READ MORE

"Trigger" Defense Cuts, Cue Apocalypse!''

from rt.com......

'U.S. to provide drones to Turkey in fight against Kurdish rebels'

from alarabiya........

"The United States has agreed in principle to deploy U.S. Predator drones on Turkish soil to aid in the fight against Kurdish separatist rebels, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said.

The U.S. military flies unarmed surveillance Predators based in Iraq and shares images and vital intelligence with Turkey to aid Ankara as it battles Kurdish Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebels who have camps in northern Iraq"..........READ MORE

'North Koreans eye aid in rare trip to Ankara'

from hurriyetdailynews.........

"A senior North Korean delegation visited Ankara secretly earlier this month mainly to seek humanitarian relief aid on an extremely rare visit marking the second such contact in 10 years, a source familiar with the event said Friday"..........READ MORE

'What Caused the Recession of 1937-38?'

from wall street pit.........

"The recession of 1937-38 is sometimes called “the recession within the Depression.” It came at a time when the recovery from the Great Depression was far from complete and the unemployment rate was still very high. In fact, it was a disastrous setback to the recovery. Real GDP fell 11% and industrial production fell 32%, making it the third-worst US recession in the 20th century (after 1929-32 and 1920-21).

The recession is often attributed to a tightening of fiscal and monetary policy. Christina Romer (2009) and others have argued that it is relevant to today’s situation because it illustrates the dangers of a premature withdrawal of stimulus when the economy is still weak"................READ MORE

'Jim Rogers TheNext global recession will be worse than 2008'

'US lawmakers target China with new currency bill'

from afp.....

"US senators unveiled legislation to punish China over its alleged currency manipulation, promising angry American voters to put an end to Beijing's "economic murder" of US jobs.

The measure aims to make it harder for the US Treasury Department to avoid labeling Beijing a currency cheat, triggering various sanctions, while making it easier for US companies to seek retaliatory tariffs on Chinese goods"............READ MORE

Pepe Escobar: "BRICS to save the markets?"

'Gold being tested; should hold better than most anything but is a trade war starting?'

from ibtimes..........

"IF a trade war starts we are in for a long downward stock spiral. After all, trade wars were what emerged after the Great Depression turned worse well after the initial stock crashes started in 1929 to around 1931-32. And that was a US election year period as well.

Errie similarities to the Great Depression

There are so many similarities with the developing world economic depression and that fateful period in 1929 and then the bank crisis around 1931 (actually bank closures and collapses that spread around the world in the several years after the first stock crashes in the late 1929 period). The parallels are striking and even with our advanced economies and electronic banking and electronic money, all the same problems are reemerging and even the timing appears to be intact too, first a stock crash worldwide followed by several years of stock turmoil but a relief rally, then - get this ultimately the US Dow crashed all the way down to minus 90 PCT"...............READ MORE

'Trade deficit with Communist China cost nearly 2.8 million U.S. jobs since 2001'

from the latimes......

"The growing trade deficit with China has eliminated or displaced nearly 2.8 million U.S. jobs since 2001 -– or about 2% of all domestic employment during that period, according to a briefing paper from the Economic Policy Institute.

California was the hardest hit, losing nearly 455,000 jobs from 2001 to 2010 due to trade with the Asian giant, according to Robert Scott, the institute’s director of trade and manufacturing policy research. Texas lost nearly 233,000 positions the same way.

The increase in imports from China is only part of the picture, according to Scott. Since the Chinese yuan is pegged to the U.S. dollar, the currency remained artificially low, making U.S.-made goods more expensive in China and pushing down exports"..........READ MORE

'Global Stocks Enter Bear Market as Debt Crisis Outweigh Profits'

from bloomberg....

"Stocks fell, pushing the MSCI All- Country World Index of 45 nations into a bear market for the first time in more than two years, after the worsening European debt crisis and threat of a U.S. recession erased more than $10 trillion from equities since May"............READ MORE

'US budget cuts won't affect military aid to Israel'

teachers will be fired, cops and firefighters laid off, roads and bridges will continue to deteriorate, social security, medicaid and medicare will be cut, but aid to israel will continue.........from jpost........

"Senior US officials clarified during a series of meetings with Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz Washington has no intention of downsizing military aid to Israel, despite the drastic cuts in the US budget, according to a Finance Ministry statement Friday.

Steinitz met with the senior White House and Congress officials in Washington, where he was attending an International Monetary Fund conference, during which he was expected to meet with finance ministers from all over the world"........READ MORE

'Russia pins hopes on its Arctic riches'

from voice of russia..........

"“Recently, we had a very successful trial delivery of oil and gas via the northern sea route. Forecasts say that by the end of this year, the total volume of the cargos delivered by the northern sea route may make 700 thousand tons. And, I hope, this is only the beginning. We are launching a large-scaled project which needs a contemporary infrastructure. It will stir the economic development of Russia’s northern territories – and it will create thousands of new jobs. We intend to modernize the already existing sea ports and to build new ones, like the port “Varandey” in the Yugorskiy Shar Strait, and the port “Sabetta” on the Yamal Peninsula. And, of course, other kinds of traffic in these regions – river traffic, highways, railways, airports – will also develop.”...............READ MORE

'NASA Video The shrinking Artic Ice'

'EU Banks Infected'

from rt.com.......

'CIA pulls advertising from local Arab-American newspaper'

from freep......

"The CIA has abruptly yanked all its advertisements from metro Detroit’s largest Arab-American newspaper because it ran an Associated Press story that said the intelligence agency was helping spy on Muslim-Americans, according to publisher Osama Siblani"...........READ MORE 

'U.S. to Build $100 Million Afghan Prison'

from rt.com.......

'Foreign Banking Cartel Runs U.S. Gov. - Alex Jones Report'

from alex jones........

'CIA Says Global-Warming Intelligence Is ‘Classified’

hmmmmmmmmm................from wired.........

"Two years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency announced it was creating a center to analyze the geopolitical ramifications of “phenomena such as desertification, rising sea levels, population shifts and heightened competition for natural resources.”

But whatever work the Center on Climate Change and National Security has done remains secret.

In response to National Security Archivescholar Jeffrey Richelson’s Freedom of Information Act request, the CIA said all of its work is “classified”..............READ MORE

'Bank of America Corp. (BAC) is among a group of lenders that may face a wave of new lawsuits claiming the system they’ve used for more than a decade to register mortgages cheated cash-strapped counties out of millions of dollars'

states and cities dont have a choice, they will sue the big banks until the cows come home..........and they should...............from bloomberg.......

"Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins said state attorneys general and county officials across the U.S. have expressed interest in his lawsuit against Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. and Bank of America, filed in Texas state court on Sept. 21. Dallas County could be owed as much as $100 million in filing fees, he said"................READ MORE

Max Keiser & Reggie Middleton

from maxkeiser.com....

'Mullen: Pakistan intel behind attack on US embassy'

war mongering?.........from seattlepi...........

"The top U.S. military officer on Thursday accused Pakistan's intelligence agency of supporting Haqqani fighters in planning and conducting last week's attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Pakistani duplicity puts in jeopardy not only the frayed U.S.-Pakistani partnership against terrorism but also the outcome to the decade-old war in Afghanistan"............READ MORE

'Budget Cuts Blamed for Increase in NYC Subway Rat Infestation'

that should help tourism............from christianpost........


"New York City subway systems are being overrun by rats and, according to transit workers, MTA budget and staff cutbacks are to blame. Workers also insist the rodents pose a health risk to everyone that uses the underground transport network.


Cutbacks mean the rats are back!" members of Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 chanted during a rally in front of the Parsons-Archer subway center in Jamaica, Queens – which has one of the largest rodent infestations".............READ MORE

Could the Dow Jones fall to 800?

a 10,000 point drop..........one blogger thinks so...........from "the market ticker"..........

"There is no shortage of lendable money.  There hasn't been since this entire mess began.  The problem was that money was too easy, not too tight, and people ran into the wall on their ability to pay.
You cannot drink yourself sober.
The game is over folks.  Europe is now the lynchpin between here and the SPX at 500, and that's a short-term stop between here and an entirely-possible outcome of where it began in 1980.
That's S&P 100, not 500, and Dow 800".............READ MORE

Pepe Escobar: "The age of the Reaper "

from asia times online........

"On the eve of a showdown at the UN Security Council, Palestine had secured the nine votes out of 15 it needed to be recognized as a state - and thus win at least a resounding moral victory, even considering the inevitable US veto. 

Significantly enough, the votes were by the five BRICS emerging powers - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - plus Bosnia, Gabon and Nigeria. Germany, Colombia and the US were poised to vote against it. So inevitably Washington unleashed major hardcore pressure on Bosnia (a Muslim-majority country), Gabon and Nigeria (a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, OIC)"............READ MORE 

'Debt Deal Comes Back to Haunt Boehner in Disaster Aid Fight'

from bloomberg.........

"House Speaker John Boehner once again is facing a rebellion of rank-and-file Republicans over spending with a government shutdown looming.

This time it’s a disaster assistance bill that includes a stopgap budget measure needed to keep the government running into next month"..........READ MORE

'GM expansion in Communist China a threat to U.S. jobs?'

from cbsnews..........

"Two years after it was saved by a bailout from Washington, General Motors is trumpeting its latest investments in China.

As CBS News business and economics correspondent Rebecca Jarvis reported from Shanghai, American cars are more popular than ever in China, and U.S. automakers sell more cars there than anywhere else in the world. And while that's good news for American car companies, it makes many question what it will mean for American jobs".......................READ MORE

'Arctic Conference to Focus on Opportunities for Oil and Gas Extraction'

from moscowtimes.........

"Prime MinisterVladimir Putinis expected to join oilmen, diplomats and scientists from around the world at Russia's oldest Arctic port for the three-day international arctic forum — which follows an event born last year out of the Russian government's growing enthusiasm for the opportunities presented by a thawing Arctic.

But environmentalists have warned that development must be matched — and preceded by — a careful assessment of environmental impact and a string of lawmaking to ensure that risks are manageable.

To that end they will lobby Putin and other policymakers to introduce a single, internationally binding system of standards to regulate the oil, fishing and shipping industries as the Arctic opens up to development".............READ MORE

'Al Jazeera's director general resigns due to rumors he is linked to the CIA'

from rt.com........

"Not all that long ago, the Al Jazeera news network was considered “evil” by Washington. However the White House has certainly changed its tune, recently praising the channel’s ground-breaking coverage.

That is little surprise, say critics, after WikiLeaks revelations exposed Wadah Khanfar, its director general, as having links to the CIA, prompting him to hurriedly quit. Stepping into the vacant chair is Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani, an executive at Qatargas and a member of the country's ruling dynasty. This has fueled fears that Doha’s voice will get louder.

Al Jazeera, or “The Island”, is not in isolation anymore. Right now Al Jazeera English is seen in 2 million American households"................READ MORE

'Hallmark Produces Layoff Greeting Cards'

thats depressing, no pun intended...........from npr.......

"Picture a greeting card with a photo of a Persian cat's scowling face on the front. Heard about your job, it says. Open it up, it reads: Is there anywhere I could hack up a hairball, like, say, on a former employer's head? Just wondering. That's from a line of job loss greeting cards from Hallmark, some offering humor, others compassion. Timely in this period of nine percent unemployment"................READ MORE

Europe: 'Stock markets tumble after Operation Twist … and doubt'

from the guardian.......

"The US Federal Reserve's Operation Twist failed to bring calm to financial markets, which tumbled on Thursday as investors took fright at the US central bank's gloomy warning about the economic outlook.

The FTSE 100 index in London plunged more than 210 points to 5078, a 4% drop, with not a single riser in sight. In Asia, markets also suffered heavy losses, with the Nikkei closing down 2.1%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng tumbling 4.9% and the Jakarta stock market losing nearly 9%. On Wall Street, futures indicate the Dow Jones will open 160 points lower".............READ MORE

'Stock futures fall on worries over global economy'-European stocks getting hammered

from reuters.........

"Stock index futures tumbled on Thursday as a grim outlook from the Federal Reserve and downbeat data on private sector business activity in Europe and China stoked fears the global economy could sink back into recession"............READ MORE