Ireland Rallies Against Banker Bailouts

Like the people in Iceland, the people in Ireland are protesting about bailing out the banks. Will the elected government listen?

Thousands protest against Irish bailout

More than 100,000 Irish citizens took to the streets of Dublin today to protest against the international bailout and four years of austerity.

Crazy Bad Air

The Chinese are killing themselves with pollution

Pollution in Beijing was so bad Friday the U.S. Embassy, which has been independently monitoring air quality, ran out of conventional adjectives to describe it, at one point saying it was "crazy bad."

TSA Dragged Into Reality

Pilots may already carry loaded firearms. Pilots are obviously capable of flying their plane into the ground. Nonetheless, TSA (Thousands Standing Around, Total Sexual Assault), have insisted pilots go through the same screening regime as everyone else.

Finally relenting, the TSA will now allow pilots to only go through the metal detector:

The agency agreed on Friday to let uniformed airline pilots skip the body scans and aggressive pat-downs. Pilots must pass through a metal detector at airport checkpoints and present photo IDs that prove their identity.

The change followed a 2-year lobbying campaign by union leaders, their efforts boosted by hero pilot Chesley Sullenberger, who said pilots should be treated as "trusted partners" in the fight against terrorism.

Complaints from Sullenberger, who landed a passenger jet in the Hudson River in January 2009, and others gave weight to the movement to roll back the new measures.

Lucky Boy

To be lucky!

A three year old found a multi-million dollar treasure

The three-year-old was minutes into his first ever attempt at metal detecting when he found a gold locket potentially worth £2.5million.

Stopping The Looting

While Warren Buffett thanked American taxpayers for the bailouts that made him more wealthy, Henry Blodget gets it right when he says the bailouts destroy free market capitalism:

The only self-regulating measure capitalism has--and it's an effective one--is the punishment of those who make mistakes. In a normal free market, when you sell lousy products or make dumb investments, you lose your money. And the fear of losing money encourages better decisions, which helps all of us.

By bailing out Wall Street--preserving equity value, preserving bonuses, subsidizing massive profits through artificially low interest rates--the government suspended this natural law of capitalism. In so doing, it rewarded the folks who had made the worst products and the dumbest decisions of all. And the country is NOT better for that.

Meanwhile, three years into the housing collapse, the FDIC has started criminal prosecutions:

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) is conducting about 50 criminal investigations at U.S. banks that have failed since the start of the financial crisis, the Wall Street Journal said.

Thousands of criminal indictments should be forth-coming and the outrageous banker bonuses must be clawed back to make Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac whole.

al-Qaeda Can Not Be Beaten Says British Military

The new head of Britain's armed forces, Gen Sir David Richards, has warned that the West cannot defeat al-Qaeda and militant Islam.

He goes on to tout the official lie that all of the death and destruction is worth it.

However, he said the sacrifice being made by the Armed Forces in Afghanistan, where 343 soldiers have been killed since 2001, "has been worth it".

End The TSA

Thousands Standing Around (TSA) have overstepped their bounds and the people are resisting genital groping and nude xray radiation. This Forbes article discusses the important topic that TSA xrays and groping does not make us safer:

The airlines have enormous sums of money riding on passenger safety, and the notion that a government bureaucracy has better incentives to provide safe travels than airlines with billions of dollars worth of capital and goodwill on the line strains credibility.

The TSA

... provides security theater, as Jeffrey Goldberg argues.

Sweden Threatens Global Economy

The Swedes have kept to their knitting, taken care of their citizens, kept it's own currency instead of the Euro, and generally stayed out of international disputes. The USA-based "think tank" New America Foundation has decided Sweden is a global threat.

Simple math shows that trade between nations must balance. Some nations will have more output than others, and this will change over time.
New America Foundation has singled out the tiny country of Sweden for the horror of exporting too much:

"Sweden has not taken sufficient measures to reduce its current account surplus," non-profit New America Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan US-based think tank, wrote in a statement on Thursday.

Speaking of countries like Sweden with current account surpluses, "...they pose an obstacle to the adjustment policies deficit economies must undertake to avoid or to get out of financial crises," the foundation said in a statement.

New America Foundation is essentially criticizing Sweden for not participating in the debt orgy that was a big part of the current financial crises that is particularly acute in several other European countries.

New America Foundation foundation goes on to recommend, ".. these countries to pursue other constructive policies, such as international development assistance."

Why would Sweden, which has effectively side-stepped most of the current financial crisis, want to participate in international programs that cripple countries?


The current account balance is

one of two major measures of the nature of a country's foreign trade (the other being the net capital outflow). A current account surplus increases a country's net foreign assets by the corresponding amount, and a current account deficit does the reverse. Both government and private payments are included in the calculation. It is called the current account because goods and services are generally consumed in the current period.

German Ex-Chancellor Says Bush Lied

German Ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder says Bush and Cheney lied about Iraq:

"... this link, as it became clear during 2002, was false and contrived. This goes for reasons (for the invasion) given by Bush and (vice president Dick) Cheney too.

"As we know today, the Bush administration's reasons for the Iraq war were based on lies."

Fraudsters Pay Fine, No Bribery Charges

Contractors working for a large computer services company bribed school board employees to win a competitive bid contract. The employees received no legal punishment, the computer company simply paid a fine.

... contractors were said to have bribed school district officials to get deals under the government’s E-rate program that helps wire up schools and libararies with Internet links.

... contractors took school officials on boating trips and even gave them tickets to the Super Bowl in 2004 in exchange for help winning the contracts.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said the settlement shows how hard the government is working to stop fraud and waste in the E-rate program.

What about bribery charges against the employees?

Silent Chinese

The Chinese apparently have undetectable submarines. The bluewater navy was supposed to be America's portable force projection. Now it is vulnerable to attack by a single enemy submarine.

American military chiefs have been left dumbstruck by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk - a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board.

By the time it surfaced the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine is understood to have sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles at the carrier.

According to senior Nato officials the incident caused consternation in the U.S. Navy.

...

The lone Chinese vessel slipped past at least a dozen other American warships which were supposed to protect the carrier from hostile aircraft or submarines.

And the rest of the costly defensive screen, which usually includes at least two U.S. submarines, was also apparently unable to detect it.

Rich Get Lenient Punishment

If someone steals a pizza they will get some jail time.  Bruce Karatz stole millions and committed mail fraud and lied to cover it up, and gets to serve the sentence in his 24-room mansion.

Prosecutors said in an Oct. 14 filing that sentencing Karatz to home detention at his 24-room mansion in Bel Air, California, would suggest that there is a two-tier justice system in which well-connected chief executives can break the rules with virtual impunity.

"To promote respect for the law, the public must be assured that a wealthy, well-connected individual, regardless of his station, array of prominent friends and associates, history of private success or acts of public largesse, will be subject to the same standard of criminal justice as those less fortunate," prosecutors said in the filing.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Stern, whose office was seeking a 6 1/2-year prison term for Karatz, said, "We respectfully disagree with the judge's decision," and declined to comment further.

Wright ordered Karatz to pay a $1 million fine, serve eight months of home detention with electronic monitoring and perform 2,000 hours of community service.

BPA Is Toxic In Canada, Not In USA

Canada has acknowledged the common can liner and plastic softener BPA is toxic to human health:

Canada just became the first country in the world to declare bisphenol A (BPA) to be a toxic substance that poses risks to human health and the environment. BPA is a synthetic chemical used to make plastic drinking bottles, baby bottles and storage containers as well as the lining of food and drink cans. Currently, it is found in virtually all canned goods and most baby bottles.

BPA is known to mimic estrogen and otherwise interfere with the hormonal system, and studies have linked it to elevated risks of cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

OK For CIA To Destroy Evidence

The CIA destroyed evidence of their complicity in war crimes.  The investigation of the CIA's destruction of evidence predictably resulted in no charges.

A special prosecutor cleared the CIA's former top clandestine officer and others Tuesday of any charges for destroying agency videotapes showing waterboarding of terror suspects, but he continued an investigation into whether the harsh questioning went beyond legal boundaries.

The decision not to prosecute anyone in the videotape destruction came five years to the day after the CIA destroyed its cache of 92 videos of two al Qaeda operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri, being subjected to waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning. The deadline for prosecuting someone under most federal laws is five years.

European Central Bank Covers Up Fraud

The European Central Bank is refusing to release details about the fraud Greece committed on the other members of the European Union.

The European Central Bank refused to disclose internal documents showing how Greece used derivatives to hide its government debt because of the “acute” risk of roiling markets, President Jean-Claude Trichet said.

Will Germany pull out of the Euro common currency?

German Chancellor Merkel has rejected calls for an EU-wide tax to prop up failing states.

"I am against the introduction of a European tax," Merkel said after talks with Belgian caretaker premier Yves Leterme, whose country chairs the EU until the end of the year. 

Debt Collectors Get Their Own Court Room

A debt collect in Pennsylvania set up their own court room with a fake judge who issued fake rulings.  The debt collector is going to see a real court room with a real judge:

The Attorney General's Office told Team 4 that Unicredit lured debtors to the building by sending employees who appeared to be sheriff's deputies to their homes, implying that they would be taken into custody if they failed to appear at the phony court hearings.