Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Report: Girls in Crash Pleaded With Mom

Kayla Fernandez was critically injured after the car she was driving in flipped over at the hands of Carmen Huertas, her friend's mother, who was allegedly driving drunk.
CBS


Newspaper Says Drunk Driving Suspect Ignored Pleas From Daughter
AOL News
posted: 1 HOUR 15 MINUTES AGO

Oct. 13) -- Authorities said a mother who was the driver in a fatal crash in New York was drunk as she sped home after a Saturday night party with her daughter and six other girls in the car.
One of the surviving girls told her mother that Carmen Huertas, 31, ignored her own daughter's pleas to slow down before the car flipped over, killing 11-year-old Leandra Rosado, reported New York Daily News.

Leandra's best friend, Kayla Fernandez, 11, survived the crash after being thrown from the car. She is still hospitalized. Huertas' daughter, Brittany, 11, and the other four girls in the car were injured but expected to recover.

Kayla's mother, Melody Sanchez, said her daughter told her that Huertas told the girls, "'You think this is fast? Just wait until we get on the highway.'"

"I'm just shocked at what she did," Sanchez told the Daily News. "This is my daughter's life!"

Huertas had a blood-alcohol level of 0.132, the paper reported. The legal limit is 0.08. She was charged with vehicular manslaughter and driving while intoxicated.

"It's not a mistake, it's not an accident; it's negligence," Lenny Rosado, Leandra's father, told the Daily News. "Are you a child or are you an adult?"

2009 AOL LLC. All Rights Reserved.

2009-10-13 09:41:15


Source: http://news.aol.com/article/girls-reportedly-pleaded-with-carmen/715263?icid=mainhtmlws-maindl1link3http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fgirls-reportedly-pleaded-with-carmen%2F715263

All the earth sought Solomon, to hear his wisdom


1 Kings 10


1And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the LORD, she came to prove him with hard questions.

2And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare spices, and very much gold, and precious stones: and when she was come to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was in her heart.

3And Solomon told her all her questions: there was not any thing hid from the king, which he told her not.

4And when the queen of Sheba had seen all Solomon's wisdom, and the house that he had built,

5And the meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel, and his cupbearers, and his ascent by which he went up unto the house of the LORD; there was no more spirit in her.

6And she said to the king, It was a true report that I heard in mine own land of thy acts and of thy wisdom.

7Howbeit I believed not the words, until I came, and mine eyes had seen it: and, behold, the half was not told me: thy wisdom and prosperity exceedeth the fame which I heard.

8Happy are thy men, happy are these thy servants, which stand continually before thee, and that hear thy wisdom.

9Blessed be the LORD thy God, which delighted in thee, to set thee on the throne of Israel: because the LORD loved Israel for ever, therefore made he thee king, to do judgment and justice.

10And she gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices very great store, and precious stones: there came no more such abundance of spices as these which the queen of Sheba gave to king Solomon.

11And the navy also of Hiram, that brought gold from Ophir, brought in from Ophir great plenty of almug trees, and precious stones.

12And the king made of the almug trees pillars for the house of the LORD, and for the king's house, harps also and psalteries for singers: there came no such almug trees, nor were seen unto this day.

13And king Solomon gave unto the queen of Sheba all her desire, whatsoever she asked, beside that which Solomon gave her of his royal bounty. So she turned and went to her own country, she and her servants.

14Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred threescore and six talents of gold,

15Beside that he had of the merchantmen, and of the traffick of the spice merchants, and of all the kings of Arabia, and of the governors of the country.

16And king Solomon made two hundred targets of beaten gold: six hundred shekels of gold went to one target.

17And he made three hundred shields of beaten gold; three pound of gold went to one shield: and the king put them in the house of the forest of Lebanon.

18Moreover the king made a great throne of ivory, and overlaid it with the best gold.

19The throne had six steps, and the top of the throne was round behind: and there were stays on either side on the place of the seat, and two lions stood beside the stays.

20And twelve lions stood there on the one side and on the other upon the six steps: there was not the like made in any kingdom.

21And all king Solomon's drinking vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon were of pure gold; none were of silver: it was nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon.

22For the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.

23So king Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth for riches and for wisdom.

24And all the earth sought to Solomon, to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his heart.

25And they brought every man his present, vessels of silver, and vessels of gold, and garments, and armour, and spices, horses, and mules, a rate year by year.

26And Solomon gathered together chariots and horsemen: and he had a thousand and four hundred chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen, whom he bestowed in the cities for chariots, and with the king at Jerusalem.

27And the king made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars made he to be as the sycomore trees that are in the vale, for abundance.

28And Solomon had horses brought out of Egypt, and linen yarn: the king's merchants received the linen yarn at a price.

29And a chariot came up and went out of Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver, and an horse for an hundred and fifty: and so for all the kings of the Hittites, and for the kings of Syria, did they bring them out by their means.



King James Version (KJV)


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Monday, October 12, 2009

October 12, 1492: Our Holocaust in the Western Hemisphere












Columbus Lighthouse - Columbus' Tomb - Faro a Colón


Nobel Geopolitics


Nobel Geopolitics
By George Friedman October 12, 2009


U.S. President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize last week. Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prize, which was to be awarded to the person who has accomplished “the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the promotion of peace congresses.” The mechanism for awarding the peace prize is very different from the other Nobel categories. Academic bodies, such as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, decide who wins the other prizes. Alfred Nobel’s will stated, however, that a committee of five selected by the Norwegian legislature, or Storting, should award the peace prize.

The committee that awarded the peace price to Obama consists of chairman Thorbjorn Jagland, president of the Storting and former Labor Party prime minister and foreign minister of Norway; Kaci Kullmann Five, a former member of the Storting and president of the Conservative Party; Sissel Marie Ronbeck, a former Social Democratic member of the Storting; Inger-Marie Ytterhorn, a former member of the Storting and current senior adviser to the Progress Party; and Agot Valle, a current member of the Storting and spokeswoman on foreign affairs for the Socialist Left Party. Read more »
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New York: Muslims complain about "racial profiling" in wake of arrests in major jihad terror plot



Think about what they could be doing in the aftermath of the revelation of the New York jihad plot. They could have demonstrated against those who supposedly "twist" and "hijack" Islam to find in it justification for terrorism. They could have offered full and open cooperation from law enforcement to root out the terrorists from their midst. They could have called for the institution of full-scale programs in mosques and Islamic schools to teach against the doctrines of jihad and Islamic supremacism that lead to such terror plots. Instead, here is more predictable victimhood-mongering and claims of "racial profiling." What race is Islam again?

"Muslim advocates charge NYPD is racial profiling in Queens raids tied to alleged Zazi terror plot," by Henrick Karoliszyn and Samuel Goldsmith for the New York Daily News, October 10 (thanks to Weasel Zippers):

...The rally was in response to raids last month linked to a suspected bomb plot. Najibullah Zazi, 24, who authorities say was trained at an Al Qaeda terror camp, pleaded not guilty to conspiring to detonate explosives.

"An entire community of people and religion should not be profiled or characterized as terrorists because of [one] certain investigation," said Monami Maulik, who runs the South Asian immigrant rights group Desis Rising Up and Moving.

Fine. What is Desis Rising Up and Moving doing to teach against Islamic supremacism among Muslims, so as to make it easier to distinguish jihadists and potential jihadists from people who are just going about the business of their daily lives? Nothing? I thought so.

Naiz Khan, who allowed Zazi to stay at his Flushing apartment, said FBI agents raided his flat and he hasn't been able to find work since.

"I was so scared and I was so nervous," he said. "I have been so affected by this."

He lost his job because of the raid? If he did nothing, what is he so nervous about? If he did nothing, nothing will link him to the plot.

"People are scared," said Sultan Faiz, a leader at Abu Bakar Mosque in Queens.
Organizers say Muslims in New York haven't been this scared since the months after 9/11, when some were subject to discrimination across the country.

The NYPD issued a statement saying they don't engage in racial profiling.

Posted by Robert on October 11, 2009 5:13 AM



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Fixin' (fittin') for a Smack-Down in Swat Valley










Court docs: Ohio terror imam Hany Saqr was taking phone calls from the head of Hamas

October 12, 2009

Last week I revisited information from the recent brief submitted to the court in the Rifqa Bary case concerning her parents' mosque, the Noor Islamic Cultural Center, in Ohio. The first item I noted was that the name of the founder and imam of the mosque, Hany Saqr, had appeared in exhibits offered as evidence in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial.

The first item I noted was that a 1992 Phone Directory of the top Muslim Brotherhood leadership in North America not only showed Saqr as a member of the board of directors, but also the executive committee and listed him as the eastern regional "masul", or head. The home phone number listed for Saqr in the directory matched both his home phone number at the time, but also his work number was his assigned phone number at the pathology department at Ohio State.

The second item noted was that the same phone directory showed that one of his subordinates, Ismail Elbarasse, had been identified in a November 2001 memo prepared by FBI Assistant Director for the Counterterrorism Division Dale Watson that fingered Elbarasse for funneling at least $735,000 to Hamas while under Saqr's direct supervision.

But another piece of the puzzle comes into play connecting both of these established facts, namely, that phone records obtained by the Department of Justice for top Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook shows that he and Saqr were in direct communication at the time that Marzook was overseeing millions in disbursements to the terrorist organization. At the time, Hamas was getting as much as 30 percent of its budget from the US. The graphic below taken from Marzook's phone records (p. 21) show calls between Saqr and the terror leader in June 1992, among others (courtesy of the Florida Security Council).


Hamas had already been identified by the State Department as a terrorist group when these calls took place, and according to the official Hamas website, Marzook was operating as its top leader since at least 1991. Some insider accounts from pro-Hamas scholars claim Marzook had been leading the organization since 1988.

One has to wonder if Hany Saqr disclosed his leadership role in the international Muslim Brotherhood movement, his supervision of a terrorist financier, and his communications with the top Hamas leader on his immigration paperwork as is required by law? That might explain why Saqr's friend, Meredith "Hijab" Heagney of the Columbus Dispatch, has thus far failed to make any inquiries into this information.

Source:http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/199171.php

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Daniel's visions of peace and flatteries.


23And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up.

24And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people.

25And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand.

26And the vision of the evening and the morning which was told is true: wherefore shut thou up the vision; for it shall be for many days.

27And I Daniel fainted, and was sick certain days; afterward I rose up, and did the king's business; and I was astonished at the vision, but none understood it.

Daniel 8:23-27.


20Then shall stand up in his estate a raiser of taxes in the glory of the kingdom: but within few days he shall be destroyed, neither in anger, nor in battle.

21And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honour of the kingdom: but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries.

22And with the arms of a flood shall they be overflown from before him, and shall be broken; yea, also the prince of the covenant.

23And after the league made with him he shall work deceitfully: for he shall come up, and shall become strong with a small people.

24He shall enter peaceably even upon the fattest places of the province; and he shall do that which his fathers have not done, nor his fathers' fathers; he shall scatter among them the prey, and spoil, and riches: yea, and he shall forecast his devices against the strong holds, even for a time.

=====


33And they that understand among the people shall instruct many: yet they shall fall by the sword, and by flame, by captivity, and by spoil, many days.

34Now when they shall fall, they shall be holpen with a little help: but many shall cleave to them with flatteries.

35And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end: because it is yet for a time appointed.

36And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done.

37Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.

38But in his estate shall he honour the God of forces: and a god whom his fathers knew not shall he honour with gold, and silver, and with precious stones, and pleasant things.

39Thus shall he do in the most strong holds with a strange god, whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory: and he shall cause them to rule over many, and shall divide the land for gain.

Daniel 11:20-24, 33-39.

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Another Fine Mess: Comics Whack Obama

By MARK LEIBOVICH
Published: October 10, 2009
WASHINGTON — Is President Obama in trouble with his late-night comedy base?



It’s likely he hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care. He is, after all, in the midst of his oft-invoked “full plate” of supposedly “defining moments” in his presidency — a “defining” decision on Afghanistan, “defining” legislative battle on health care, among other “defining” things.
But there is perhaps another more subtle set of "defining” episodes playing out for Mr. Obama in the televised comedy salons that had previously, by and large, been relatively gentle spaces for him. The bits about him are getting harsher. They are no longer just gentle gibes about Bo the dog, big ears, bad bowling and beer summits.

A conspicuous (if not “defining”) episode occurred Oct. 3 on Saturday Night Live in a skit set in the Oval Office. The president (played by Fred Armisen) was defending his record against critics who had accused him of turning the United States “into something that resembles the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany.” Not so, protested the faux-Bama.

“When you look at my record, it’s very clear what I’ve done so far,” he said. “And that is nothing.”

The sketch went on to show Mr. Obama/Armisen running through a checklist of things he had vowed to do — closing Guantánamo Bay prison, overhauling health care. All were marked, Not Done.

“Looking at this list I am seeing two big accomplishments,” he said. “Jack and Squat.” And ouch.
Mr. Obama has of course been a puzzle to comedians for some time. They agonized during the campaign about how his low-key and confident manner did not lend itself to edgy caricature. The challenge was made greater by the sensitivities inherent to lampooning a black candidate.
And from the outset, Mr. Obama has been praised as someone who “gets late night,” whose ironic and self-deprecating humor is well-suited to the genre’s sensibilities. He was the first sitting president to appear as a guest of Jay Leno’s and David Letterman’s. “You ignore their influence at your peril,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House’s deputy communications director.
“They are often leading indicators of where the narrative is headed.”

But recent indicators could be proving ominous. There has been a proliferation of jokes that feed on — or are fed by — a resuscitated old narrative against the president that goes back to last year’s campaign when both John McCain and Hillary Clinton tried to portray Mr. Obama as an All Talk/No Walk showboat.

Last Tuesday, Jon Stewart advanced the Saturday Night Live “do nothing” theme on “The Daily Show.” It began as a standard Stewart video-clip juxtaposition of Mr. Obama (and surrogates) promising to end the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. It continued with clips from the ensuing months of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and National Security Adviser Jim Jones saying they had not yet gotten around to reversing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” citing Mr. Obama’s “full plate” of business. (“The president needs a metaphor czar,” Mr. Stewart said.)

What followed was Mr. Stewart, exasperated with a man he had supported, throwing his hands up and essentially imploring the president to, you know, do something.

“All that stuff you’ve been putting on your plate?” Mr. Stewart said. “It’s [expletive] chow time, brother. That’s how you get things off your plate.”

After a roar of laughter and applause from the audience, Mr. Stewart reminded Mr. Obama that “You are president of the United States.” It sounded like something between a liberal call to action or cry for help. As Mr. Stewart grew more animated and the crowd grew louder, the routine took on the feel of a televised catharsis.

“There have been some clear shots coming across the bow from the comic left,” observed Ric Keller, a former Republican congressman from Florida who once wrote jokes for Jeb Bush, the former governor.

Others have noted another creeping caricature of Mr. Obama as a ditherer. On Thursday, for instance, Mr. Leno joked that no one should expect the president’s decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan anytime soon. “Remember, it took five months to decide on a puppy,” he said.
Jeff Nussbaum, a Democratic speech and joke writer, disagrees that late-night comedy is a leading indicator of a cultural zeitgeist. “To use an economic term, it is more of a lagging indicator,” he said, something that responds to perceptions that are already entrenched. In practical terms, President Obama has now been in office almost nine months, Mr. Nussbaum said, and “comedians now have a greater body of work to go after, for better or worse.”
By and large, the bulk of late-night barbs directed at the president remain glancing at best. “The jokes are still largely about things like how the media lionizes Obama, or what the opposition is saying about him,” said Bob Lichter, of George Mason University’s Center for Media and Public Affairs, who has been tracking themes in late-night humor since 1988.

Mr. Lichter said it was too soon to tell whether the Saturday Night Live skit is a “harbinger or outlier” in how comics will treat Mr. Obama. At the very least, it provided a comic articulation of a potentially devastating message: “The danger is that Mr. Obama is going to be defined by inaction and not living up to expectations,” he said.

Mr. Lichter posits Mr. Obama’s Nobel Prize as a kind of test case for how people are perceiving him, and whether a caricature has taken hold of a man more celebrated than accomplished. “It will be telling to see how the comedians treat this,” he said.

As if trying to strike pre-emptively against inevitable ridiculers, Mr. Obama seemed eager to embrace the “I haven’t done anything yet” conceit in his Rose Garden remarks Friday morning. “Let me be clear,” he said. “I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments.” But it was also striking how so many people seemed to greet the Nobel news with shock followed by laughter, as if truth and caricature has achieved a newly seamless blend in the Obama imprint.
Really, the words rang distinctively comic: “Did you hear that Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize?” It sounded like the set up to a joke — one of those jokes where the set-up itself is the punch-line.

“That’s pretty amazing, winning the Nobel Peace Prize,” Jay Leno said, first out of the box Friday night. “Ironically, his biggest accomplishment as president so far ... winning the Nobel Peace Prize.”

An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of the host of “The Daily Show.” He is Jon Stewart, not John.

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Bronx Woman Is Charged in Crash That Killed Girl, 11

By SIMON AKAM and COLIN MOYNIHAN
Published: October 11, 2009

An 11-year-old girl died after a car driven by the mother of one of her friends overturned on the Henry Hudson Parkway early Sunday, the police and the girl’s father said. The driver was later charged with vehicular manslaughter and drunken driving.



Leandra Rosado





The 11-year-old, Leandra Rosado, was one of seven girls crammed into a Mercury Sable whose driver, Carmen Huertas, 32, lost control at West 96th Street shortly before 1 a.m., according to the police.

The girls — all between the ages of 11 and 14 and many of them friends from Public School 11 in Chelsea — were on their way to Ms. Huertas’s home in the Bronx as part of a slumber party.

The other girls and Ms. Huertas were left with injuries that were not life-threatening, but Leandra was pronounced dead at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, a hospital spokeswoman said.

“My daughter was a bundle of joy; she wanted to be everyone’s friend,” Leandra’s father, Lenny Rosado, said Sunday morning.

He was standing on West 17th Street, as friends embraced him and offered their condolences.

“She loved attention, she loved dancing, she loved music,” added Mr. Rosado, a security manager at the Maritime Hotel in the meatpacking district. “She considered herself a diva. She was into fashion, art.”

Israel Soto’s 11-year-old daughter, Kayla Sanchez, was another of the youngsters in the car.

Mr. Soto, 40, who also lives in Chelsea, said Kayla was “pretty banged up,” suffering a broken arm and bruises. She was being treated at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital.

“I’m basically still in shock,” Mr. Soto said. “How do you get in a car drunk with kids?”

A spokesman for Harlem Hospital Center said on Sunday that two victims from the accident were in stable condition there, while a spokeswoman for NewYork-Presbyterian said that two other passengers besides Kayla had been taken there.

The events leading to the accident, which happened as a slumber party spilled into its second night, began early in the weekend.

According to Mr. Rosado, his daughter left their apartment on Friday to visit Ms. Huertas’s daughter Brittany Gonzales, who lived nearby with her father and stepmother.

On the way, Ms. Huertas and Brittany pulled up and suggested that Leandra go with them to the Bronx.

“She wasn’t supposed to be there,” Mr. Rosado said. “She wasn’t invited, but Brittany wanted her to go.

“I spoke to the lady,” he added. “She told me she was taking the girls to a party planned weeks ago.”

On Saturday, Leandra returned to Chelsea to pick up a change of clothes. That night Mr. Rosado dropped her off at an apartment on West 20th Street about 8 p.m..

“I gave her money, and she hugged me and said, ‘I love you, Dad,’ ” he said Sunday morning, wiping away a tear.

Less than five hours after Leandra’s farewell to her father, Ms. Huertas and the girls headed back toward the Bronx.

Mr. Rosado said he had gone to work at the Maritime Hotel. About 2 a.m. he received a call that Leandra been involved in an accident.

Mr. Rosado says he wants to campaign for stricter penalties for drunken driving. “New York City, New York State, they need to get tough with this,” he said.
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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/nyregion/12crash.html

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Mexico shuts down state-run power company


(AFP) – 1 hour ago

MEXICO CITY — Mexico announced that it was closing a state-run power company in a move that will save the government almost 1.5 billion dollars, sparking union outrage.

The Mexican Electrical Workers Union immediately called a protest march against the shuttering of Luz y Fuerza del Centro, a supplier for the center of the country.

The government tried to soften the blow by offering two and a half years' salary to workers who accept a buyout within one month, Labor Minister Javier Lozano told a press briefing.

The union, voicing shock, said it was preparing a response on behalf of its 44,000 active workers and another 20,000 retirees, even as thousands of its workers marched in protest outside the Labor Ministry.

A union delegation, led by Fernando Gomez Mont, entered the ministry for talks, but left with no agreement reached.

Service has not been interrupted for customers of the power company.

The government announced in a decree just after midnight on Sunday that it was eliminating the loss-making Luz y Fuerza del Centro.

Union leader Martin Esparza demanded that the government revoke the decree, and that it pull federal police and army troops from the company's facilities.

"The best way to solve this problem, which we workers did not cause, is to maintain the source of jobs," Esparza told local media.

The government said Luz y Fuerza was not being privatized, and that the Compania Federal de Electricidad, which supplies the rest of the country, now would do so in central Mexico as well.

There were no clashes reported when almost 1,000 federal police moved into the company's facilities late Saturday.

Between 2003-2008, Luz y Fuerza had earnings of some 17 million dollars and outlays of more than 32 million dollars.

Finance secretary Agustin Carstens said the government could expect to save 1.49 billion dollars by firing Luz y Fuerza's workers.




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Making a Federal Case for Gay Rights

March Pushes Marital, Military Equality




Thousands of gay rights activists, supporters, family and friends join the Equality Across America March. The D.C. Council is likely to pass a gay marriage bill soon. (Marvin Joseph - The Washington Post)



By Nelson Hernandez and Yamiche Alcindor

Washington Post Staff Writers Monday, October 12, 2009


Tens of thousands of gay-rights activists marched Sunday in Washington to show President Obama and Congress that they are impatient with what they consider piecemeal progress and are ready to fight at the federal level for across-the-board equality, including for the right to marry and the right to serve in the military.



Key votes on same-sex marriage are coming up in the District and Maine, and Obama promised Saturday to end the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that forces gay and lesbian members of the armed forces to keep their sexual orientation a secret.

But organizers of the National Equality March and its participants said they want to shift the political effort toward seeking equality in all states, rather than accepting just local and state-level victories.

"We're not settling," said Cleve Jones, co-chairman of the march and founder of the Names Project, the AIDS memorial quilt that recognizes Americans who have died from HIV- or AIDS-related causes. "There's no such thing as a fraction of equality. We want equal protection under the law."

The march was coordinated by Equality Across America, a group formed this year. Organizers said they represent those who want immediate fundamental change in the legal status of gays, as opposed to those who think patience is needed as legal obstacles are overcome.

Some in the latter group are political veterans, such as Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the highest-ranking openly gay political figure in the United States. Last week, Frank said he thought that the march was "useless," a remark that was attacked at the rally.

"How many more tears should be shed before some politicians in a backroom can decide it is convenient to join us and fight for our freedom?" asked David Mixner, a longtime activist who spoke at the rally.

Attendees expressed complicated feelings about Obama. Nearly every person interviewed said he or she had voted for him, but many people said they were disappointed by what they see as a lack of action on key gay-rights issues, such as letting gays serve openly in the military.

Thousands of people marched from McPherson Square, a few blocks from the White House, down Pennsylvania Avenue, chanting "President Obama: Let mama marry mama!" and "L, G, B, T -- We demand equality!"

Marchers carried signs reading "We Won't Wait for Full Equality" and "Mind Your Own Marriage." Spectators watched from the street and the roof of the Newseum, many cheering the participants. As it ended about 2:30 p.m., people gathered on Capitol Hill for a rally.

The participants spanned the spectrum of a movement that makes a point of including people of different lifestyles -- a teacher from Pennsylvania who said she was afraid to give her name because she feared retaliation at work, preppy-looking professionals from Logan Circle, skimpily dressed self-described "radical faeries" and a leather-clad man from the D.C. Bear Club.

Many supporters identified themselves as heterosexual, carrying signs with such slogans as "I'm Not Queer But I'm Here."

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CONTINUED 1 2 Next >

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Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/10/11/ST2009101101924.html

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New York Woman, 38, in 'Top Shape' Before Sweat Lodge Death

Sunday, October 11, 2009



Kirby Brown, 38, from Westtown, N.Y., seen in April 2008, died Thursday outside Sedona, Ariz.


NEW YORK CITY — A 38-year-old New York woman who died after sitting in a sauna-like sweat lodge during a spiritual cleansing ceremony at an Arizona resort was an active athlete — an avid surfer and hiker who was "in top shape," took self-improvement seriously and had a passion for art — a family spokesman said.

Kirby Brown of Westtown, N.Y., was one of two people who died Thursday evening at a scenic resort. Authorities identified the other victim as 40-year-old James Shore of Milwaukee, who served as director of business development at an Internet marketing company in his hometown.

That two people died and 19 others became ill at the Angel Valley Retreat Center indicates that "something went horribly wrong," according to Brown's family.

Nineteen other people were taken to hospitals, suffering from burns, dehydration, respiratory arrest, kidney failure or elevated body temperature. Most were soon released, but one remained in critical condition Saturday.

Brown had no pre-existing health conditions that would have kept her from participating in an otherwise safe activity, said cousin and family spokesman Tom McFeeley.

"Our only thought is shock, sadness and surprise," McFeeley said. "There will be plenty of time to react to the truth of what happened here, but we believe it is pointless to be angry or to place blame or to make assumptions before we understand what occurred here."

Matt Collins, who knew Shore since seventh grade, described his friend as a wonderful husband and father whose life revolved around his three kids. "Everybody who got to know him absolutely loved him," Collins told The Associated Press.

Collins said he was stunned to hear of Shore's death, and the family remained in shock.

"Right now we're trying to focus on making sure that his wife, his children are comforted during this time," he said.

Autopsies on Brown and Shore were conducted Friday, but the results weren't disclosed pending additional tests. Authorities have ruled out carbon monoxide poising as the cause.

Yavapai County Sheriff Steve Waugh said Saturday that his detectives were focusing on self-help expert and author James Arthur Ray and his staff as they try to determine if criminal negligence played a role. Waugh said Ray refused to speak with authorities and has since left the state.

Related StoriesMystery Remains Over Cause of Sudden Sweat Lodge Deaths at Arizona Resort
2 Dead, Several Hospitalized at New-Age Sweat Lodge in Arizona
"We will continue this investigation down every road that is possible to find out if there is culpability on anybody relative to the deaths of these individuals," Waugh said. He said it could be three to four weeks before they knew if criminal charges would be filed.

Ray's recent postings on his Twitter account said he was "shocked and saddened" by the tragedy.

"My deep heartfelt condolences to family and friends of those who lost their lives," he wrote. "I am spending the weekend in prayer and meditation for all involved in this difficult time; and I ask you to join me in doing the same."

Ray's company, James Ray International, is based in Carlsbad, Calif. Ray's publicist, Howard Bragman, expressed condolences in a statement Friday but declined to speak about the deaths. Bragman didn't return a call for additional comment Saturday.

The Angel Valley Retreat Center is owned by Michael and Amayra Hamilton, who rented it to Ray for a five-day "Spiritual Warrior" retreat that promised to "absolutely change your life."

On Saturday, Amayra Hamilton said Ray has held the event at the resort for seven years, and there never have been any problems.

Hamilton said the resort remains closed to the public. The sweat lodge has been dismantled and a ceremony was conducted for those affected by Thursday's incident.

"The whole situation is very traumatizing for everybody," she said.

The people at Ray's retreat, whose ages ranged from 30 to the 60s, paid between $9,000 and $10,000 to attend.

Ray and his staff constructed the temporary sweat lodge with a wood frame and covered it with layers of tarps and blankets, Waugh said. The sweat lodge — a structure commonly used by American Indian tribes to cleanse the body and prepare for hunts, ceremonies and other events — was 53 inches high at the center and about 30 inches high around the outer edges.

Between 55 and 65 people were crowded into the 415-square-foot space during a two-hour period that included various spiritual exercises led by Ray, Waugh said. Every 15 minutes, a flap was raised to allow more volcanic rocks the size of cantaloupes to be brought inside.

Authorities said participants were highly encouraged but not forced to remain in the sweat lodge for the entire time.

Joseph Bruchac, author of "The Native American Sweat Lodge: History and Legends," called the number of participants in the lodge "appalling."

"If you put people in a restrictive, airtight structure, you are going to use up all oxygen," he said by phone Saturday from his home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. "And if you're doing a sweat, you're going to use it up that much faster."

American Indian sweat lodges typically hold about 12 people and are covered with blankets made of natural materials, such as cotton or wool, and the air flow isn't restricted, he said.

"I don't see how the person running that lodge could have been aware of the health and well-being of that many people," he said.

The participants had fasted for 36 hours as part of a personal and spiritual quest in the wilderness, then ate a breakfast buffet Thursday morning. After various seminars, they entered the sweat lodge lightly dressed at 3 p.m.

Two hours later, a woman dialed 911 to say that two people, whom Waugh identified as Brown and Shore, did not have a pulse and weren't breathing.

A nurse hired by Ray was directing rescue efforts including CPR when emergency crews arrived, Waugh said. Shore and Brown were pronounced dead when they arrived at a hospital.

Sheriff's Lt. David Rhodes said authorities were checking whether there was a lag time between the first signs of medical distress and the emergency call.

McFeeley said Brown had attended similar retreats, although he wasn't certain whether any were hosted by Ray. He said Brown, who grew up in Brooklyn and Westtown and spent time in Mexico, saw the outing as a chance to continue on a positive path in life.

Brown, a graduate of the State University of New York at Geneseo, had two sisters who recently got married, two new nephews and a focus on "making the world more beautiful for someone, not only with her art but with her heart," McFeeley said. Although the family is saddened by her death, he said Brown created a roadmap by which others should live.

"She was the least selfish, kindest person I knew," he said.

.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,563885,00.html

A "NEW ORGANIZATION"


1976 Apr -- A "NEW ORGANIZATION" -- (The Mystery of 1888, D. K. Short Manuscript -- Part 4) -- Summarizing the reaction to the message of Righteousness by Faith in the four years following 1888, Elder A. T. Jones at the 1893 General Conference said: All the way between open and free deliberate surrender and acceptance of it, to open, deliberate, and positive rejection of it -all the way between -the compromisers have been scattered ever since; and those who have taken that compromising position are no better prepared tonight to discern what is the message of the righteousness of Christ than they were four years ago.

This compromising attitude produced some serious blind spots. Jones continued: Some of these brethren, since the Minneapolis meeting, I have heard, myself, say "amen" to preaching, to statements that were utterly heathen, and did not know but that it was the righteousness of Christ. Some of those who stood so openly against that at that time, and voted with uplifted hand against it, and since that time I have heard say "amen" to statements that were as openly and decidedly papal as the papal church itself can state them. (1) [0 how these "brethren" must have loved A. T. Jones.]

A failure to understand, and accept without compromise the righteousness of Christ by faith, led to a verbal acknowledgment of papal and heathen concepts which were mistaken for the genuine. This is the tragic consequence of not walking in the light which heaven bestows. The sparks of our own kindling look good to us. We are much more at ease with that which is of human origin than we are with that which comes down from God out of heaven.

But the righteousness of Christ by faith is more than merely an assent to a doctrine of how men are to be saved; it is a way of life by which men are to live. The righteousness of Christ determines human relationships, religious fellowship, and church administration. Among the apostles there arose contention as to who was going to be the "head" when the kingdom of God would be set up. Jesus called them

P 2 -- to Him, and set forth the very basic elements of church administration. He said: The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But this shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth. (2)

Matthew in reporting the same counsel quotes Jesus declaring emphatically, "It shall not be so among you." (3) In the true church, there is one Master, or head, even Jesus Christ Himself, and of the rest -laity and clergy alike - Jesus plainly stated - "All ye are brethren." (4) Because this would have been the fruitage in the acceptance of the message of Christ's righteousness, it was ignored by some. Of this the servant of the Lord stated in 1895 -"The righteousness of Christ by faith has been ignored by some; for it is contrary to their spirit and their whole experience. Rule, rule, has been their course of action. Satan has had opportunity of representing himself." (5)

In this year -1895 -on March 8, and in September -two very important messages came from Sister White's pen. One was entitled -"All Ye Are Brethren", and the other -"Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me." Note the counsel: The Lord has not placed any one of His human agencies under the dictation and control of those who are themselves but erring mortals. He has not placed upon men the power to say, You shall do this, and you shall do that. But there is a power exercised in Battle Creek [now Washington] that God has not given, and He will judge those who assume this authority. They have somewhat the same spirit that led Uzzah to lay his hand on the ark to steady it, as though God was not able to care for His sacred symbols. Far less of man's power and authority should be exercised toward God's human agencies. Brethren, leave God to rule. (6)

No man is a proper judge of another man's duty. Man Is responsible to God; and as finite, erring men take into their hands the jurisdiction of their fellowmen, as if the Lord commissioned them to lift up, and cast down, all heaven is filled with indignation. There are strange principles being established in regard to the control of the minds and works of men, by human judges, as though these finite men were gods. (7)

These wrong principles of administration -so contrary to the righteousness of Christ -were centered in 1895 in Battle Creek, and were corrupting the whole General Con-

p 3 -- ference.(8) The spirit of domination was extending downward "to the presidents of
[local] conferences."(9) What was the end result? Note carefully: When men who profess to serve God ignore His paternal character and depart from honor and righteousness in dealing with their fellowmen, Satan exults, for he has inspired them with his attributes. They are following in the track of Romanism.(9)

This is the end result whether we reject the doctrine of righteousness of Christ by faith, or whether we ignore its application to church fellowship and administration. In 1893, Jones could say without fear of refutation that men who voted negatively in regard to the message in 1888 could say "amen" to statements of doctrine that were as papal as Papal Rome could state them. The servant of the Lord In 1895 could say upon the authority of Inspiration that when men in ecclesiastical office choose to ignore the principles of the righteousness of Christ, and seek to rule their fellowmen, that this also was placing the church In "the track of Romanism."

Some very vital principles are at stake here. In the Papal concept the Cathedral - the seat of the Bishop - is the center of authority, and is thus to be considered the Church. There can be no church in the papal concept without the reigning bishop, or human authority. On the other hand, the Judeo-Christian-Protestant concept is the priesthood of all believers. Israel was to have been "a kingdom of priests. (10) The Church which Christ established was to have been "a royal priesthood" under the great High Priest in the sanctuary above. (11) When the Jewish nation failed to realize this objective, they cast men out of their synagogues, and finally committed the crime of the ages -the murder of the Son of God. When the apostolic church departed from the simple dictum that Christ through the Holy Spirit was to administer His church, the Papacy was the end result. In 1888 when Christ came near to His appointed church of that hour in the Presence of the Holy Spirit, He was rejected as the head of the church by men who wished to rule, rule, rule. This rejection of the authority of the Holy Spirit as the true vicegerent of the

P 4 -- Son of God, placed the church in the track of Romanism.

Now for decade after decade this spirit of domination has so taken hold of the church, and its leadership that it has become a way of life and policy. Today, it has crystallized, and has been attested to in legal documents. In a brief filed in the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles on behalf of the Southern California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, dated May 16, 1975, it stated clearly and plainly -"'Plaintiffs-petitioners are the local governing body of the world wide Seventh-day Adventist Church, which is an extremely highly organized hierarchical church built upon ascending series of representative bodies." (p. 2, lines 7-9) This position was more boldly asserted in briefs filed in the case of Merikay Silver vs. PPPA. "The church was described as having 'orders of clergy', with different levels of authority, and a first minister at the top. In his affidavit, Elder Pierson referred to himself as the 'first minister' of the Seventh-day Adventist Church." (12) A footnote in a brief dated March 3, 1975 read: Although it is true that there was a period in the life of the Seventh-day Adventist Church when the denomination took a distinctly anti-Roman Catholic viewpoint, and the term "hierarchy" was used in a pejorative sense to refer to the papal form of church governance, that attitude on the Church's part was nothing more than a manifestation of widespread anti-popery among conservative Protestant denominations in the early part of this century and the latter part of the last, and which has now been consigned to the historical trash heap so far as the Seventh-day Adventist Church is concerned. (13)

Consider for a moment the time element as noted in this brief - "the early part of this century and the latter part of the last." Place this on our own church history -1888 -1903. What was taking place in the church at that time? Listen to what the servant of the Lord said at the 1901 General Conference Session: I feel a special interest in the movements and decisions that shall be made at this Conference regarding things that should have been done years ago, especially ten years ago, when we were assembled in Conference, and the Spirit and power of God came into our meeting, testifying that God was ready to work for His people if they would come into working order.

The principles of heaven are to be carried out in every family, in the

P 5 -- discipline of every church, in every establishment, in every institution, in every school, and in everything that shall be managed. You have no right to manage, unless you manage after God's order ...

That these men should stand in a sacred place, to be the voice of God to the people as we once believed the General Conference to be, - that is past. What we want now in a reorganization. We want to begin at the foundation, and to build upon a different principle. (14)

But what happened, the reorganization of 1901 was overturned in 1903, and the Church was again on the track of Romanism. On this track we have been traveling over the years until now in legal briefs we can say that we are a hierarchy, with orders of clergy, and a "first minister." The development of the papacy was in three simple steps: 1) The monarchial bishop developed in the early church; 2) the Bishop of Rome assumed authority as the first among equals; and 3) the same bishop asserted his right as the "first bishop" of the Church, or Pope. We have now arrived at the Papal form of church government with the President of the General Conference asserting in a sworn affidavit that he is "first minister" of the Church. Our Saviour said - "It shall not be so among you."

What is the picture that has emerged? We have now entered full scale into a "new" organization, discarding the counsel and admonition of the servant of the Lord. And what does this mean? Here is the divine verdict: We cannot now step off the foundation that God has established. We cannot now enter into a new organization; for this would mean apostasy from the truth. (15)

Our apostasy is now complete; having switched over to the track of Romanism, we have crossed the Rubicon on the way to Vatican station itself. Without their consent, the laity of the Church have been transferred into a new organization, and thus unwittingly have been engulfed in the apostasy. But each member of the new organization has within his power to reestablish himself in the truth, and refuse to give his support, either financially, or otherwise to the "new" organization. On the basis of this decision, he is casting his vote as to his acceptance or

P 6 -- rejection of where the hierarchy has taken him. May God have mercy on us individually as we struggle for the freedom that truth alone can give. Ye shall know the truth and truth shall make you free.

(1) A. T. Jones, General Conference Daily Bulletin, 1893, p. 244
(2) Luke 22 :24-27
(3) Matt. 20 :26
(4) Matt. 23:8
(5) Ellen G. White, Testimonies to Ministers, p. 363
(6) Ibid., pp. 347-348
(7) Ibid., p. 348
(8) Ibid., p. 359
(9) Ibid., p. 362
(10) Exodus 19:6
(11) 1 Peter 2 :9-10
(12) Spectrum, Vol. 7, No. 2, p. 49
(13) Ibid., pp. 49-50
(14) Ellen G. White, General Conference Bulletin, 1901, pp. 23, 25
(15) Ellen G. White, Selected Messages, bk. ii, p. 390.

NOTES AND COMMENTS -- On Finances - We have not commented on the article in the Review (December 25, 1975, pp. 9-11) by Elder Pierson confirming the church's gambling in the stock market. We have waited and will continue to wait until we can obtain unquestionable verification as to what the church officials did during the hectic days of the stock market during January and February, and now March. Did they close out all of the church's involvement or not? What was the final loss, or was there a gain. --- (1976 Apr )
.
.
.

The work of the Third Angel


I then saw the third angel. Said my accompanying angel, "Fearful is his work. Awful is his mission. He is the angel that is to select the wheat from the tares, and seal, or bind, the wheat for the heavenly garner. These things should engross the whole mind, the whole attention."
.
Early Writings, E. G. White, pp.118.
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Saturday, October 10, 2009

Bob Chapman Interview 8/1/09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNQX-KOu2TAhttp://

11 more parts to this interview @:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNQX-KOu2TA&feature=PlayList&p=806B16F9467785B7&index=0

.

"Saturday Night Live" mocks Obama's Nobel Prize win


By
Lynn Sweeton October 10, 2009 10:31 PM


WASHINGTON--"Saturday Night Live" grappled with real life--President Obama's surprise win of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday--as cast member Fred Armisen played the president as the luckiest man in the world--who is not George Bush.

Armisen as Obama: "This came without warning, I didn't even get a call as due to the time difference in Norway, the Nobel people didn't want to wake me up. I wish they had, I could have said to Hillary Clinton, 'Hey, remember that 3 a.m. call you were so worried about? It happened. Nobel Peace Prize.'

"Now this prize..is giving annually to individuals who have made significant contributions to world peace. Jimmy Carter won it for decades of trying to find solutions to international conflicts.
"Al Gore won it for his years of educating U.S about climate change.

"And us?

"I won it for now being George Bush.

"To be perfectly honest, this award was a complete surprise as I have only not been George W. Bush for nine months. But I am deeply honored none the less."

The skit goes on to have Obama winning a $70 million jackpot in a powerball lottery--with the first lottery ticket he ever bought.



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Failed Economic Policies and Rising Unemployment in the United States of America

by Bob Chapman


Global Research, October 8, 2009
The International Forecaster - 2009-10-07



This past week the BLS released the September unemployment statistics and they worsened as usual, as America enjoys its recovery.

U-1–Those unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force was 5.4%.

U-2-Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the labor force was 6.8%.

U-3-Total unemployed, as a percentage of the civilian labor force, the official unemployment rate, 9.8%.

U-4-Discouraged workers 10.2%.

U-5-Total unemployed plus discharged workers, plus marginally attached workers 11.1%.

U-6-Total unemployed as a percent of the civilian labor force 17%.

If the birth/death ratio is removed, U-6 is in reality 21.3% total US unemployment. The estimate is that 824,000, more jobs may be extracted from the payroll count for the 12-months ended next March. Such a revision would be the biggest since 1991. The BLS is underestimating job losses deliberately and has been for a long time. That would mean September’s loss would be some 300,000 not 263,000.

Such a revision would put job losses not at 4.8 million but 5.6 million jobs.

This is how government has operated for some time and will continue to as long as we allow them too.

Last week the Dow and the S&P fell 1.8%; the Russell 2,000 fell 3.1% and the Nasdaq 100 fell 1.9%. Cyclicals fell 2.5%; transports 3%; banks 2.8%, as broker/dealers gained 1.1%. Consumers rose 0.3%; utilities fell 2.69%; high techs fell 1.6%; semis 4.5%; Internets fell 1.6% and biotechs 4.1%. Gold bullion rose $12.00, as the HUI dipped 0.7%. The USDX rose 0.3% to 77.03.

Two-year T-bills fell 11 bps to 0.76%, 10-year notes fell 10 bps to 3.22% and 10-year German bunds fell 13 bps to 3.12%.

Freddie Mac 30-year fixed rate mortgage rates fell 10 bps to an 18-week low of 4.94%; 15’s fell 10 bps to 4.36% and one-year ARMs fell 3 bps to 4.49%. Jumbo 30’s fell 6 bps to 6.11%.

Federal Reserve credit fell $12.4 billion. It has fallen $126 billion ytd, but it is still up $742 billion, or 53% yoy. Fed foreign holdings of Treasuries and Agency debt rose $583 million to a record $2.855 trillion. Custody holdings for foreign central banks rose at a 17.9% rate ytd, and $389 billion yoy, or 15.8%.

M2 narrow money supply declined $8 billion to $8.310 trillion ytd and 5.2% yoy.

As the lack of government guarantees become known more money leaves money market funds. Assets sank again $53.5 billion to $3.429 trillion. They have fallen $401 billion ytd, or 36% annualized. They have increased only $30 billion, or 0.9% yoy.

We wonder what House and Senate members think when their constituents complain that banks are now charging 25% to 40% credit card interest? They simply don’t care, because these very same banks are paying off these elected representatives and senators via campaign contributions. That is an extra $700 billion to $1 trillion a year in earnings when the average family is having trouble putting food on the table. Couple this with virtually no income on savings and you have a dreadful situation. Americans are tax slaves to government and debt slaves to banks, a situation that cannot long persist. In addition banks want to charge more and subtly taxes will soon rise again.

Last week we forecast the fall in the Dow at 9,800 and so it has begun. The market has finally overpowered the manipulation of our government. It wasn’t that difficult. A 26 P/E ratio of trailing earnings that should be 14.5 times. The next leg down will test 6,000 to 6,600 on the Dow next year. All those who had a second chance to sell into the bear market will be doomed to greater losses than they experienced this year. It is time to again exit the market and move into gold and silver related assets. The banks and brokerage firms along with insurance companies have been driving this bear market with money from the Fed and the Treasury at 50 times leverage. The correction is underway as all these entities try to exit at the same time. Some are going to end up insolvent. This reminds us of 1922 in Germany and today’s Zimbabwe. Assets on bank and brokerage house balance sheets are going to be devastated. Even they do not really understand the debasement that has taken place. Every chart comparing everything with gold is in a state of collapse and that will become more evident shortly as gold soars to new heights. The mad overvaluation of the markets is about to end. The de-leveraging will take ten perhaps 20 years that is unless we have another world war. Fudging the figures just is not going to work. The PPI is climbing and no one seems to notice, particularly the media. Big inflation is on the way. It will be interesting to see just how much of the price increases businesses are going to absorb. Those on the edge are going to go bankrupt as debt doubles and doubles again.

All this is the result of the machinations of Illuminists who have created a corporatist fascist government for us, which will become the new world order, if we allow it to happen.

How can it be possible to have an economic recovery as we lose more and more jobs and that America manufactures very little. Private banks, Wall Street and insurance companies with vast amounts of wealth control our country, make no mistake about it. This is done by the private issuance of money and the deliberate creation of inflation, deflation and depression.

Inflation started to show up again beginning in May and this past month showed 25% growth in the PPI. That won’t show up in official government figures for the CPI, but it will in part be there. Will the corporations absorb the added cost or will they pass it on? Of course, they’ll pass it on.

Relentlessly the dollar is being abandoned worldwide. Unfortunately, the other G-20 currencies are not much better and that is why gold is so important. Keeping liquidity running into the system hasn’t worked and can’t work.

Our President’s pet group ACORN, a criminal enterprise, has had its funding pulled by the Ford Foundation. Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Marguerite Casey Foundation and Bank of America. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

The dollar has fallen from $124.00 on the USDX in 2002 to about 76.30 recently and was as low as 75.75 two weeks ago. Incidentally, someone should tell the liars at CNBC gold has risen by 300%. At both G-20 and G-7 summits there was little attention afforded to the plight and future of the dollar.

G-20 was full of the normal gobbligoop by bureaucrats running hither and yon, and accomplishing nothing more than creating a cloud of dust. They said they will maintain the global flow of capital as bank lending fell 14% yoy. Nothing has been done to repair the financial system. It is worse off now than it has been in two years, since the debacle began. In order to repair the system it has to be purged. The banks, brokerage houses, insurance companies and the Fed have to go into bankruptcy. This, of course, means Americans will lose 50% to 95% of their wealth, unless they are in gold and silver related assets. That is the cost of not paying attention, for not making the House, Senate and President do as they should. These so-called leaders have done everything possible to insure that there is no recovery. This while they tell us the global financial crisis is over. In addition the same crowd that created this disaster tells us over and over again that without their untimely and unprecedented support, the system would have collapsed.

You have to laugh at the G-7 and G-20. The latest is that world financial ministers have told the IMF to prepare guidelines to ensure an orderly and cooperative exit from fiscal and monetary stimulus. That can’t happen, because if it does the whole system will collapse. This is the IMF, which is selling gold because they will soon be broke, and haven’t made a correct decision in 60 years. The IMF is to provide insurance-style finance to well run emerging economies so they won’t build up foreign exchange. We have never heard anything stupider in our lives. As this transpired the World Bank’s President, Robert Zoellick, informs us the bank will be broke within a year.

Last month the BLS created 34,000 jobs via the net birth/debt adjustment (ratio). What a fraud. That is double the 18,000 for September 2008.

They are telling you what you are supposed to believe. That story is as believable as the WDO story that started the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Our President tells us Iran has a secret nuclear facility. This is information Iran told the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency four days previously and miraculously our President discovered it. This, like the meetings of G-20, G-7 and demonstrations, serve as distractions to our pitiful economic and financial morass. This was to be used as an excuse to greatly increase sanctions, which are a form of warfare. All this is misinformation to cover up a two-year old credit crisis that is worsening by the day. Americans and others realize this. That is why spending is falling and savings are rising. This holiday season sales will be off 1% to 3% with the stimulus package. Otherwise they would have been off 5% or more. Recognition of our financial and economic situation has made banks reduce lending. It is obvious credit expansion has reached its limit and that is why lending and spending has slowed.

This all comes back to 8/15/71, the day the US left the gold standard. The only way the dollar can be saved is by a return to the gold standard. Unfortunately that won’t and can’t happen because we do not believe the US has any gold left and even if they did they still wouldn’t have a gold backed currency. They want the destruction of the dollar in order to implement a world currency from the IMF and in that process bring the world economic and financial system to its knees to force us to accept World Government. This is evident in the Illuminist goal to control all political, social and financial freedom. This is all being done by way of deception. The same deceit has been used in the TARP program. The purpose of which was to purchase troubled assets that cluttered balance sheets. What happened instead was that the funds were used to buy the shares of troubled banks and for banks to buy other failing banks and to speculate in markets. Another deception is that the Fed will wind down its monetization program. That is impossible, otherwise the system would collapse. Never mind the secret monetization going on in swaps and in secret Cayman accounts. In all of this saving of banks, Wall Street and insurance companies the public has been left behind and unemployment has flourished. All such programs are doomed to failure and your only protection is gold and silver related assets.

Goldman Sachs stands to receive a payment of $1bn – while US taxpayers would lose $2.3bn – if embattled commercial lender CIT files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, people familiar with the matter said.

The payment stems from the structure of a $3bn rescue finance package that Goldman extended to CIT on June 6 2008, about five months before the Treasury bought $2.3bn in CIT preferred shares to prop it up at the height of the crisis. The potential loss for taxpayers would be the biggest to crystallize so far from the government’s capital injection plan for banks.

The agreement with Goldman states that if CIT defaults or goes bankrupt, it would be required to pay a make-whole amount that totals $1bn, the people familiar with the matter said.

While Goldman is entitled to demand the full amount, it is likely to agree to postpone payment on a part of that sum, these people added. A CIT filing last week said that it was in negotiations with Goldman concerning an amendment to this facility.

Goldman said: This would not be a windfall payment. The make-whole payment is simply the present value of the spread to be earned over the life of the facility.

CIT declined to comment. In an effort to prevent bankruptcy, it is working on a debt exchange offer that would virtually wipe out equity holders. In the event of bankruptcy, Goldman would reap more than $1bn because it also holds credit insurance that would be paid off.

Goldman said: “The credit default swaps Goldman Sachs purchased to prudently manage the risk associated with the CIT financing are not a directional ‘bet’ on CIT, but were bought to protect against the possibility of a precipitous decline in the value of the collateral.”

Michael Geoghegan, chief executive of HSBC, is so convinced there will be a second downturn in the coming months that he plans to delay any rush to expand the bank.
The Tax spy Warning:

We are attempting to collect unpaid taxes from you. Generally, our practice is to deal directly with a taxpayer or a taxpayer's duly authorized representative. However, we sometimes talk with other persons, for example when we need information that the taxpayer has been unable to provide, or to verify information we have received.

This notice is provided to tell you that we may contact other persons. If we do contact other persons we will generally need to tell them limited information, such as your name. The law prohibits us from disclosing any more information than is necessary to obtain or verify the information we are seeking. Our need to contact other persons may continue as long as there is activity on this matter. If we contact other persons, you have the right to request a lost of those contacted.

US vacation timeshare sales may fall the most this year since the industry gained popularity in the 1970s. Sales may drop 30% this year from 2008, said Howard Nusbaum, president and chief executive officer of the American Resort Development Association.

Applications for Social Security benefits rose almost 50% more than expected this year because of the recession, according to the federal retirement program. ‘We are seeing a significant increase in both retirement and disability applications as a result of the recession,’ said Mark Lassiter, a Social Security spokesman. Agency statistics show that 2.57 million people requested benefits, up from the 2.10 million applications received during the previous 12 months.

State tax revenues in the second quarter plunged 17% from a year earlier as rising unemployment and reduced spending hurt sales- and income-tax collections. The decline was the sharpest since at least the 1960s. The biggest drop among major revenue sources was in state income taxes, which were down 28% from a year ago. Sales-tax revenues fell 9%.

Connecticut, the state with the most tax-supported debt, will borrow $2.25 billion over the next two years to balance its budget amid plunging income tax collections. [Let’s not forget they loaned $1 billion to the Hartford Insurance Group, which they‘ll probably never see again.]

Manhattan apartment prices fell for a second consecutive quarter, helping drive the biggest gain in sales in more than 13 years. The median price slid 8.4% to $850,000 in the third quarter from a year earlier, appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate said. The number of sales jumped 46% from the second quarter.

Manhattan office rents fell 5.2% in the third quarter from the previous three months. Asking rents fell to an average of $50.98 a square foot from $53.76 broker Studley Inc. said. Rents for the best offices in Manhattan declined 6.4% to $62.38 a square foot in the period.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Joseph Nacchio, the former Qwest Communications International Inc. chief executive officer convicted of selling $52 million in company stock based on inside information.

The justices, without comment, let stand a federal appeals court decision that upheld Nacchio’s conviction. His lawyers contended that Nacchio didn’t withhold any material information from the public about the company’s condition and that an expert witness was improperly barred from testifying at his trial.

“I am deeply disappointed by the court’s decision because I am convinced that he is innocent and did not receive a fair trial,” Nacchio’s lead Supreme Court lawyer, Maureen Mahoney, said in an e-mail.

Nacchio began serving what initially was a six-year sentence in April. An appeals court later ordered a trial judge to reconsider the prison term, saying the original sentence was based on a miscalculation of how much Nacchio gained from his illicit conduct.

Nacchio, 60, separately is seeking a new trial, arguing before a federal district judge in Denver that new evidence shows prosecutors mischaracterized the testimony of the company’s former chief financial officer.

Prosecutors said Nacchio should have disclosed in 2001 that Qwest’s recurring revenue was falling short and that the company was relying too heavily on the shrinking market for one-time sales of its network capacity. He was accused of accelerating his stock sales upon learning in April 2001 that Qwest missed its first-quarter forecasts for recurring revenue. [More then 600 other corporate officers did the same thing and not one was prosecuted because they made a deal with the Justice Department for their firms to accept fines on their behalf. Nacchio was not an Illuminists nor was he connected to their structure, so he goes to jail and no one else does, as an example, that you either cooperate or we destroy you.]

U.S. service industries expanded in September for the first time in a year as the emerging recovery spread from housing and factories to the broader economy.

The Institute for Supply Management’s index of non- manufacturing businesses, which make up almost 90 percent of the economy, rose to 50.9, higher than forecast, from 48.4 in August, according to the Tempe, Arizona-based group. Fifty is the dividing line between expansion and contraction.

New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini said stock markets may drop and billionaire George Soros warned the “bankrupt” U.S. banking system will hamper its economy, highlighting doubts about the sustainability of the global recovery.

“Markets have gone up too much, too soon, too fast,” Roubini, who accurately predicted the financial crisis, said in an interview in Istanbul on Oct. 3. U.S. stocks may suffer a “major decline” after climbing to the highest levels in almost a year two weeks ago,

U.S. consumers are “over-debted” and the country’s banking system has been “basically bankrupt,” Soros said in Istanbul today. “The United States has a long way to go.”

A measure of U.S. job prospects rose in September for the first time in more than a year, a sign job losses may not keep accelerating, a private survey showed.

The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index rose 0.3 to 88.5, the first increase since January 2008 and the highest level since April, the New York-based private research group said today. The reading was down 16 percent from a year ago.

A government report last week showed payrolls in September fell more than forecast, a sign the economic recovery may be slow to gain speed. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke last week said joblessness would remain above 9 percent through next year, indicating the central bank wouldn’t move quickly to drain cash from the economy.

The index “suggests that the trend of declining job losses will continue,” Gad Levanon, a senior economist at the Conference Board, said in a statement. “But the road to recovery is definitely going to be bumpy and may last unusually long, given the depth of the recession we have experienced.”

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said regulators should consider making secured creditors carry more of the cost of bank failures.

“This could involve potentially limiting their claims to no more than, say, 80 percent of their secured credits,” Bair said yesterday in a speech to a banking conference in Istanbul. “This would ensure that market participants always have some skin in the game, and it would be very strong medicine indeed.”

Bair’s comments go beyond any of her previous proposals for changing the way large and so-called systemically important financial institutions are regulated. She has long supported broadening the government’s powers in order to limit the impact on the financial system of an event such as last year’s bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

The proposal would probably increase banks’ cost of funding and make it harder to find long-term financing because creditors would be watching closely for any signs of trouble, said William Black, associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a former bank regulator.

“It would make it gratuitously more expensive for banks to raise funds, even on a secured basis,” Black said.

Bair’s proposals, which would require legislation, aren’t part of the U.S. regulatory overhaul. The Obama administration has defended making auto industry bondholders accept losses as a condition of a government bailout, while saying the same approach shouldn’t apply to banks because of the havoc such changes may wreak on the financial system.

Financial markets should be subject to new taxes that will discourage “dysfunctional” trading and help pay for the damage the global crisis inflicted on poorer countries, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said.

“The financial sector polluted the global economy with toxic assets and now they ought to clean out,” Stiglitz told reporters today in Istanbul, where he’s attending the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings. He said a tax is “much more feasible today” than in the past.

The IMF will study ways to tax the financial industry at the request of Group of 20 leaders, Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said last week. He dismissed the “very simplistic” idea of the so-called Tobin tax, a global charge on currency trades, which he said would be difficult to implement.

Stiglitz said any new levy should cover all asset classes, and will be easier to implement as more of the world’s financial transactions are brought under regulatory control.

Charges on contracts such as derivatives should be based on the gross value of the assets, to “discourage the kind of hidden leverage that helped cause this crisis” and rein in the “destructive innovation” of bankers, he said.

Money raised by the tax could be used to help poor countries who weren’t responsible for the financial crisis and are nevertheless suffering its consequences, Stiglitz said. The $700 billion offered by the U.S. government a year ago to bail out banks was equivalent to a decade’s-worth of all global aid to poor nations, he said.

The dollar fell after Group of Seven finance ministers omitted any mention of the currency’s weakness in their final communique. European stocks and U.S. index futures gained.

The U.S. currency declined against 13 of its 16 most-traded peers as of 12:17 p.m. in New York. The yen slipped versus all 16 after Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii said the government will act if the foreign-exchange market moves in a “biased direction.” The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index of European shares rose for the first time in four days, adding 0.4 percent. Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index increased 0.6 percent.

Finance ministers and central bankers from the G-7 nations avoided any reference to the American currency’s decline, which sent the Dollar Index down 5 percent this year, after their Oct. 3 talks in Istanbul. Europe’s manufacturing and services industries expanded more than initially estimated in September, London-based Markit Economics said. In the U.S., service industries probably snapped 11 straight declines, a separate monthly report may show.

“A weaker dollar helps with the goal of global rebalancing, which appears to be a larger aim of the G-7,” Sophia Drossos, head of currency strategy at Morgan Stanley in New York and a former foreign-exchange manager at the Federal Reserve, wrote in a report today. This “reinforces our view that as long as a weak dollar is largely reflective of rate and growth differentials, the G-7 is unlikely to stand in the way.”

White House officials and Democratic leaders in Congress on Friday said they were weighing extending key elements of the economic-stimulus program as the nation grapples with a deteriorating job market. Obama administration economists said they would like the enhanced unemployment-insurance program to extend beyond its Dec. 31 expiration date. They also want to maintain a program that offers tax credits to pay 65% of the cost of health insurance policies under the COBRA program, which allows laid-off workers to purchase the health plans they had through their previous employer.

White House officials said they also are examining whether to extend a soon-to-expire tax credit for first-time homebuyers, but that provision faces a stiffer headwind. [This is exactly as we predicted in January.]

The details of the September Employment Report are uglier than the headline NFP number. U6 (comprehensive unemployment) is now 17%. The average workweek declined to 30.0 hours from 30.1;and the household survey showed a stunning 785k drop in employment. John Williams calculates total unemployment, adding people that have not looked for work for over one year to U6, at 21.4%.

The average amount of time it takes fired employees to find a new job exceeds the length of their standard unemployment benefits…the average duration of unemployment is now 26.2 weeks, longer than the 26 weeks of state benefits normally provided to workers who lose their jobs. It’s the first time that has occurred since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping records in 1948.

Congress has extended unemployment benefits twice -- first in July 2008 and then as part of the stimulus bill signed in February. Currently, the unemployed are eligible for a total of 46 weeks of benefits, and those in states where the unemployment rate is more than 6 percent are eligible for 59 weeks.

America's army of long-term unemployed -- those without work for six months or more – has swelled to 5.4 million.

The figures raise the possibility that the government’s calculations continue to miss the mark. “We are probably still underestimating job losses,” said John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo Securities. Once a year, the Labor Department revises its payroll figures after combing through tax records from the unemployment insurance program that covers practically all businesses. Those records are only available after a lag, explaining why it takes more than a year to make the tabulations. The department uses a formula, known as the birth/death model, to determine the influence on payrolls from the formation and demise of businesses. Because the government doesn’t know if a company fails to respond because it has gone out of business or is just late, it estimates the number of companies that may have folded. By the same token, it plugs in an estimate for the formation of new businesses to account for their hiring.

“This birth/death model is still assuming that we are getting new jobs from new-business creations,” David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates Inc. in Toronto, said in an interview. “These additions are coming somewhere from ‘Alice in Wonderland,” he said.

Consumer bankruptcies soared 41 percent in September from a year before and climbed from August, as high unemployment and the housing market crash took their toll, the American Bankruptcy Institute said on Friday. http://www.reuters.com/article/ousivMolt/idUSTRE5915HC20091002

You can’t make up stuff like this! Reuters: Greenspan says Fed balance sheet an inflation risk "You cannot afford to get behind the curve on reining in this extraordinary amount of liquidity because that will create an enormous inflation down the road," Greenspan said at a forum hosted by The Atlantic magazine, the Aspen Institute and the Newseum.

The number of U.S. lenders that can’t collect on at least 20 percent of their loans hit an 18-year high, signaling that more bank failures and losses could slow an economic recovery.

Are perceptions of the bailout still negative, or are folks not as upset as they were a year ago?

Poole: It's clear that the general public is disgusted with the bailout. The general public understands that it's a grossly unfair and unreasonable situation for risks to be socialized and gains to be private. That's just common sense. What everybody seems to be hoping is that banks have learned a lesson, and I'm sure banks are going to be much more conservative.

But the same incentives for leverage are there that were there two years ago and three years ago that created this problem. In due time, some traders will be instructed to take those leveraged risks that come out with big profits, and it's going to be hard for others not to join in. It's going to be very hard for the Federal Reserve and others to stop them.

Using data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Mr. Baker’s study found that the spread between the average cost at smaller banks and at larger institutions widened significantly after March 2008, when the United States government brokered the Bear Stearns rescue. From the beginning of 2000 through the fourth quarter of 2007, the cost of funds for small institutions averaged 0.29 percentage point more than that of banks with $100 billion or more in assets. But from late 2008 through June 2009, when bailouts for large institutions became expected, this spread widened to an average of 0.78 percentage point.

At that level, Mr. Baker calculated, the total taxpayer subsidy for the 18 large bank holding companies was $34.1 billion a year...Mr. Baker says it is important to continue measuring this difference in costs to see whether the subsidy disappears or whether it is a continuing transfer of income.

So far this year, nearly all of the earnings improvements have been achieved through major cost-cutting efforts. Overall selling and administrative costs among S.& P. 500 companies fell 5.7 percent in the second quarter versus the period a year earlier, according to a recent report by David J. Kostin, the chief United States equity strategist at Goldman Sachs.

This represents far more drastic cuts than were undertaken in the recessions of 1991 and 2001. Still, “you can only cut so much,” said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S& P. “At some point, you need to start seeing the business actually grow. You need to see increased sales” — sometimes called “top line” growth. That’s why Mr. Silverblatt says that revenue — not earnings — “will be the most important number for investors to watch.” The revenue declines are even more staggering on a dollar basis. From June 2008 to June 2009, revenue of the 500 companies tumbled by a total of $1.15 trillion. “That’s more than the entire fiscal stimulus,” Mr. Silverblatt said.

For nearly two years, economic issues have held the top spot in terms of importance among voters.

But the latest national telephone survey shows that 83% now view government ethics and corruption as very important, placing it just ahead of the economy on a list of 10 key electoral issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports. Eighty-two percent (82%) of voters see the economy as very important.

This is the first time since October 2007 that voters have rated ethics and corruption as more important than the economy. Voters viewed the two issues evenly in November and December 2007 before placing a higher priority on the economy starting in January 2008.

Last month, 86% of voters said economic issues were very important while 80% saw government ethics that way.

The new findings come at a time when 43% of voters say the president is doing a poor job addressing government ethics and reducing corruption, up five points from early September and the highest level measured since he took office. Forty percent (40%) now give the president good or excellent ratings on his handling of the issue.

The Federal Reserve should be forced to identify companies that received loans from the central bank because it can’t demonstrate that borrowers would be harmed by the disclosure, according to lawyers who won a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

The details sought by the Bloomberg News unit of Bloomberg LP, the New York-based company majority-owned by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, aren’t proprietary, attorneys for the company said today in a court document opposing the Fed’s request for a court to halt disclosure of information while an appeal proceeds.

Bloomberg won a ruling from Manhattan’s chief federal judge on Aug. 24 affirming the right of U.S. taxpayers to know about the financial firms that borrowed money. Total lending by the Fed, which last year began extending credit directly to companies that aren’t banks for the first time since it was created in 1913, was $2.12 trillion on Sept. 30.

Divulging specifics about the loan program might touch off a run by depositors, unsettle shareholders and hurt the central bank’s “ability to perform important statutory functions at a time of economic upheaval,” Fed lawyers have said in legal filings.

Growing speculation over the potential end to dollar-based trading in the oil market may be part of the reason gold prices have rallied beyond $1,020 an ounce to stand near their highest level in 18 months.

And the strength was kept even as several top officials, including Saudi central bank chief Muhammad al-Jasser, denied the report.

Gulf Arab states, along with China, Russia, Japan and France, are planning to put an end to dollar-based trading in the oil market, according to an exclusive report published Tuesday in the U.K. by The Independent.

"News on gold's expected future role in oil transactions between these trading partners has sent the price past $1,020," said Peter Spina, chief investment analyst at GoldSeek.com.

'News on gold's expected future role in oil transactions between these trading partners has sent the price past $1,020.'

Peter Spina, GoldSeek.com

In place of the greenback, the nations plan to use a basket of currencies, including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar, the report said.

The Independent said the plans were confirmed by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong.

Several top Gulf central bankers immediately dismissed the talk, and the vice chairman of China's central bank made no mention of such a move in a speech.

The demise of the dollar

In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html

The revenue that banks and credit unions generate by letting customers overspend their accounts, then charging them a fee, increased 35 percent in two years, the Center for Responsible Lending reports in a study released Tuesday.

Culling figures gathered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the consumer advocacy group found that customers paid $23.7 billion in overdraft fees in 2008, up $6.2 billion from two years before.

In the past 12 months, an estimated 51 million Americans spent more than they had in their checking accounts, triggering either an overdraft or non-sufficient funds fee, the study found.

National chain store sales rose 0.4% in the five weeks of September versus the previous month, according to Redbook Research's latest indicator of national retail sales released Tuesday.

The rise in the index was compared to a targeted 0.3% drop.

The Johnson Redbook Index also showed seasonally adjusted sales for the period were down 2.2% from the last year and compared to a targeted 2.9% fall. The latest numbers are starkly different because they don't include Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), which earlier this year stopped giving monthly same-store-sales figures.

Redbook said, "Sales were firmer in the final week of September and thus ended the month above our retailers' target. Some retailers saw a firmer tone during the latest week, caused by cooler more fall-like temperatures in many parts of the country. However, not all agreed with this view."

Looking ahead, Redbook is projecting a 2.1% drop from a year ago for October, falling 0.9% from September. The International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs Retail Chain Store Sales Index rose 0.3% in the week ended Saturday from its level a week before on a seasonally adjusted, comparable-store basis.

A bout of cooler weather helped to spur customer traffic, especially at department stores and discounters, and helped the month to finish on a positive note, said Michael P. Niemira, ICSC chief economist.

The group expects retailers to report a 2% drop in same-store sales when the industry discloses its September results later this week. But Niemira said the decline could end up being narrower than that with the late-month improvement. The results exclude Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), which earlier this year stopped reporting same-store-sales figures.

Apartment vacancies rose to 7.8 percent in the third quarter, the highest since 1986, as rising unemployment reduced rental demand, Reis Inc. said.

Actual rents paid by tenants, known as effective rents, declined 2.7 percent from a year earlier, the New York-based property research firm said in a report today. Asking rents, or what landlords sought, fell 1.8 percent from a year earlier.

Job losses and falling wages are shrinking the pool of potential tenants. The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent in September, the highest since 1983, the Labor Department said Oct. 2.

Vacancies continued to rise despite what has traditionally been a strong leasing period for apartment properties, Victor Calanog, director of research at Reis, said in a statement. Given the inherent seasonality of rental and lease-up patterns we expect fourth-quarter figures to be even weaker, implying that we may break historic vacancy levels by year-end 2009.

The apartment vacancy rate was 7.7 percent in the second quarter and 6.2 percent in 2008’s third quarter, Reis said. Compared with the second quarter, asking rents fell 0.5 percent and effective rents fell 0.3 percent.

As acting director of a federal agency criticized for lax oversight of the American financial industry, John Bowman has only a few allies these days on Capitol Hill. Still, Bowman says, he relishes the chance to defend the Office of Thrift Supervision against efforts by President Obama and Congress to shut it down.

“It’s a lot of fun,’’ said Bowman, who, as the Office of Thrift Supervision’s former chief counsel was among the US officials who regulated American International Group Inc., Countrywide Financial, and other institutions whose risky practices helped trigger the nation’s economic crisis.

But the idea that Bowman and other federal banking regulators are fighting a sweeping financial industry overhaul taking shape in Congress has infuriated supporters of the legislation. The reforms are needed, they say, to keep regulators from again turning a blind eye to abuses, and prompting another meltdown.

“It’s unbelievable. They totally fell down on the job, and now they are protesting,’’ said Kathleen Day, a spokeswoman for the Center for Responsible Lending, a group that is backing the Obama administration’s proposals to merge responsibilities of several agencies and beef up rules protecting consumers.

In addition to the Office of Thrift Supervision, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the FDIC, and the Federal Reserve are all fighting key elements of the plan.

Open defiance from departments of the federal government has clearly annoyed the administration. But by law, the financial regulators are independent of the White House. Bowman was promoted by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner from chief counsel to acting director of the Office of Thrift Supervision in March. Comptroller John C. Dugan and FDIC chief Sheila Bair were both appointed by former President George W. Bush. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was originally appointed by Bush, but Obama has nominated Bernanke for another term.

Critics have said the diffuse oversight responsibilities of these agencies, and their business-friendly approach to regulation, allowed banks, insurers, and Wall Street firms to engage in reckless mortgage lending and trading - ultimately requiring a taxpayer-financed bailout of $700 billion to prevent the US economy from sliding into a depression.

The Obama proposals, which are being drafted in detail by Representative Barney Frank of Newton in his role as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, would merge the Office of Thrift Supervision into the Comptroller of Currency and reduce the consumer-protection powers of the other regulators.

In their place, it would create a new agency called the Consumer Financial Protection Agency to focus on guarding consumers from predatory lending and deceptive financial products, with broad authority to write and enforce rules.

Geithner, the administration’s point-man on the financial reforms, declined interview requests. But he explained his rationale for scrapping the old system and starting anew at a recent congressional hearing before Frank’s committee:

“We’ve had a test of whether that system worked. It didn’t work.’’

Frank said the existing set of regulators have shirked their consumer-protection responsibilities and instead were focused on the overall stability of financial institutions. The new agency is needed, he said, so that at least one financial regulator has consumers as its priority.

“I understand they are trying to protect turf, but it’s turf they haven’t cared much about,’’ he said. “The first time any of them have raised this issue of consumer powers was when we threatened to take it away.’’

The agencies, Frank said, “don’t want to lose their consumer powers to the consumer protection agency. But they’ve already lost them to disuse.’’

But Bowman and the other regulators insist that they have a legitimate case, saying they have been unfairly blamed for the economic crisis.

“We have very real concerns. To dismiss it as simply being turf is selling us short,’’ said Bowman.

The Fed did not respond to requests for comment from the Globe; spokesmen for the FDIC and the comptroller’s office referred to public testimony by agency leaders that expressed support for consumer protection but concerns about giving the proposed new agency enforcement powers that could be disruptive for business and raise costs at a time when banks are struggling to emerge from the recession.

Bowman defended his office’s record, citing 125 formal enforcement actions over the last 10 years, in addition to other steps that he said were never disclosed publicly because they did not rise to the level of formal actions.

“When we find certain kinds of activities on the part of institutions we regulate that are not consistent with consumer protection, we deal with it very quickly and very effectively, but we do so very privately,’’ he said.

The current patchwork system of financial regulation, with four different federal regulators, is the legacy of scattershot reforms over the past 145 years.

The Comptroller of the Currency was established during the Civil War to shore up the financial system. The Federal Reserve, established in 1913, is primarily concerned with monetary policy and fighting inflation, but also has some consumer protection responsibilities. The FDIC, a New Deal-era agency, guarantees deposits in bank accounts. The Office of Thrift Supervision was established amid the wreckage of the savings and loan crisis in 1989 to oversee thrifts, banks that concentrate on consumer lending.

Critics say the existence of four different regulators has allowed banks to go “shopping’’ for the regulator who will treat them the most leniently, a problem the critics say could be reduced with a single consumer protection agency that covers the whole financial system. Furthermore, Eugene Ludwig, who was comptroller of the currency during the Clinton administration and is now a critic of the regulatory system, said that since the agencies are funded by the assessments charged on companies they regulate, the agencies have an inherent incentive to keep banks from moving to other regulators.

House Republicans are largely opposed to the White House proposals that Frank is redrafting in his committee, especially the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. They have cited the comments by Bowman and the other regulators.

Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Republican Financial Services Committee member from Texas, said he thought the regulators had a “legitimate concern.’’

But that he also opposed the proposed agency on a more fundamental level.

Giving the government so much power to oversee financial products, he said, “assumes consumers are intrinsically stupid.’’ [This is the response you get from sociopatahic Illuminists.]

An internal review by ACORN’s board of directors found that $5 million was embezzled from the community organization, far more than a previously reported sum of $1 million, according to documents from the Louisiana attorney general’s office.

The new amount was reported in a subpoena released Monday from an investigation by Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, the Times-Picayune reported yesterday. It is unclear if the money was taken from state, federal, or private funds, according to the subpoena.

Bertha Lewis, chief executive officer of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, said the new embezzlement allegation is “completely false.’’ She said she would comment further after she and ACORN attorneys have a chance to review the subpoena.

Caldwell issued subpoenas in August seeking documents related to Wade Rathke, then the president of ACORN International, and his brother, Dale Rathke, who kept the group’s books. Those subpoenas targeted possible violations of state employee tax law, obstruction of justice, and violations of the Employee Retirement Security Act.

The attorney general made inquiries in June into alleged embezzlement within ACORN that happened 10 years ago. The group last year dealt with an internal dispute and a lawsuit involving accusations that Dale Rathke made nearly $1 million in improper credit card charges in 1999 and 2000. Rathke’s brother and a donor repaid the money.

But Caldwell said last month that the statute of limitations prevented prosecutors from taking action on the alleged embezzlement.

The subpoena issued Monday puts a new emphasis on the embezzlement issue. It appears to be in reaction to documents gathered from ACORN’s board as a result of the August subpoenas.

“Current high-ranking members of ACORN have publicly acknowledged that embezzlement did in fact occur, but the exact amount of the embezzlement was unknown until it was recently acknowledged in a board of directors meeting on Oct. 17, 2008, by Bertha Lewis and Liz Wolf that an internal review had determined that the amount embezzled was $5 million,’’ the new subpoena says.

Police used water cannons, tear gas, and pepper spray yesterday to disperse hundreds of demonstrators protesting against the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, held in Istanbul.

Dozens of masked protesters shattered the windows of a McDonald’s restaurant and several banks, also damaging vehicles as they ran into the streets behind Istanbul’s Taksim Square, which is less than half a mile from the site of the IMF and World Bank meeting.

The protesters, armed with firebombs and slings, repeatedly confronted the police in narrow back streets, but a heavy police presence prevented them from reaching the meeting. Thousands of police wearing gas masks and protective gear erected barriers and detained more than 70 protesters, said Muammer Guler, governor of Istanbul.

The protesters were mostly members of small leftist parties or labor unions. CNN-Turk television said foreign protesters were also involved. Police helicopters hovered above the crowds.

Clouds of tear gas filled the air above Taksim Square while firefighters battled a blaze set by protesters. Passersby and reporters were also affected by the tear gas.

[In January we predicted a second stimulus program of $2 trillion for 2010, so that politicians can get re-elected. Now finally 9 months later others are catching on.] The US government may announce another stimulus package in the first half of 2010 to revive economic growth and create jobs before mid-term elections, according to High Frequency Economics Ltd.

“When we get into next year, which is an election year, politicians will push for another round of stimulus and that will help to support growth,’’ Ian Shepherdson, economist at the Valhalla, N.Y.-based research firm, said. “But even with that, the idea of rebounding into a normal V-shaped cyclical rebound is going to be very difficult.’’

President Obama is considering a mix of spending programs and tax cuts to respond to widening job losses. He and his aides have forecast that employment growth will lag in an economic recovery as they try to tackle rising joblessness before midterm elections in November 2010.

The discussion of the initiatives, including a boost in transportation spending and an extension of an expiring tax credit for first-time homebuyers, comes as the White House is balancing rising concern about unemployment and a budget deficit the Congressional Budget Office estimates will total $1.6 trillion this year and $1.4 trillion in 2010.

In considering the measures, the administration must reconcile two potentially contradictory missions: combating rising unemployment through government intervention and the need to hold deficits down.

Mortgage applications in the U.S. rose last week to the highest level since May as near record- low borrowing costs boosted refinancing and sent purchases to a 10-month high.

The Mortgage Bankers Association’s index of applications to purchase a home or refinance a loan jumped 16 percent to 756.3 in the week ended Oct. 2 from 649.6 in the prior week. The group’s gauge of refinancing surged 18 percent and its measure of purchases climbed 13 percent.

Lower home prices, falling mortgage rates and tax credits to first-time buyers have shored up sales, helping stabilize the housing-market slump that precipitated the financial crisis. Mounting job losses and foreclosures are a reminder that a recovery, in both housing and the economy, will be slow to develop.

“The bottoming process in the housing market is under way,” said Michelle Meyer, an economist at Barclays Capital Inc. in New York. “Residential investment should serve as a positive contribution to growth” in the third quarter.

The mortgage bankers’ purchase index increased to 306.1 last week, the highest level since January, from 270.4 the previous week, today’s report showed. The refinancing gauge jumped to 3,377.1, the highest level since May, from 2,857.3.

The share of applicants seeking to refinance loans rose to 66.3 percent of total applications last week from 65.3 percent.

Borrowing costs fell. The average rate on a 30-year fixed- rate loan decreased to 4.89 percent last week from 4.94 percent the prior week. The rate reached 4.61 percent at the end of March, the lowest level since the group’s records began in 1990.

At the current 30-year rate, monthly borrowing costs for each $100,000 of a loan would be $530, or about $68 less than the same week a year earlier, when the rate was 5.98 percent.

The average rate on a 15-year fixed mortgage fell to 4.32 percent last week from 4.34 percent. The rate on a one-year adjustable mortgage jumped to 6.56 percent from 6.40 percent.

Recent data indicate the housing industry is emerging from its worst recession since the 1930s. The index of signed purchase agreements, or pending home sales, jumped 6.4 percent in August, a seventh consecutive gain, the National Association of Realtors said on Oct. 1.

Rent for office space is falling at the fastest pace in more than a decade as vacancies create a glut and landlords slash prices to attract tenants.

Nationwide, effective office rents fell 8.5% in the third quarter compared with the same period a year ago, the steepest year-over-year decline since 1995, according to Reis Inc., a New York real-estate research firm.

The decline came as companies returned a net 19.6 million square feet of space to landlords in the third quarter, slightly more than in the second quarter. For the first three quarters of this year, the net decline in occupied space totaled a record 64.2 million square feet, the highest so-called negative absorption recorded since Reis began tracking the data in 1980. (That doesn't count space that left the market as a result of the 2001 terrorist attacks.) The vacancy rate, meanwhile, hit 16.5%, a five-year high, according to Reis.

The collapse of a financial institution is not necessarily a disaster. If free markets are to thrive, we must not allow giant, state-supported banks to believe that they are indestructible, Niall Ferguson warns.

But this crisis was not the result of deregulation and market failure. In reality, it was born of a highly distorted financial market, in which excessive concentration, excessive leverage, spurious theories of risk management and, above all, moral hazard in the form of implicit state guarantees, combined to create huge ticking time-bombs on both sides of the Atlantic. The greatest danger we currently face is that the emergency measures adopted to remedy the crisis have made matters even worse.

By the end of 2007, 15 megabanks, with combined shareholder equity of $857 billion, had total assets of $13.6 trillion and off-balance-sheet commitments of $5.8 trillion – an aggregate leverage ratio of 23 to 1. They also had underwritten derivatives with a gross notional value of $216 trillion – more than a third of the total.

This is moral hazard run mad – a system in which a few giant banks get to operate as hedge funds with a government guarantee that if they blow up, their losses will be socialized...the real aim of government should be to give the TBTFs "positive incentives … to shrink and to reduce their leverage, complexity, and interconnectedness".

The best way of creating such incentives is to reiterate, preferably once a week, one key point: in case of failure, "the largest, most interconnected firms" should in future be wound up "in a way that protects taxpayers and the broader economy while ensuring that losses are borne by creditors and other stakeholders".

Felix Salmon: According to the OCC, they’re JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo. Add up their “total derivatives” numbers in Table 1 of the latest OCC report, and you get $197 trillion, which is indeed 97% of the $203 trillion in total notionals.

But never mind that, and take a look at Table 2 instead….the size of Bank of America’s derivatives holdings spikes from $39 trillion to $75 trillion, while Morgan Stanley appears from nowhere to reveal itself as holding a more-than-healthy $41 trillion in derivatives. It seems that at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, the derivatives are generally held by the holdco rather than the bank, which allows the OCC to ignore them for the purposes of its headline calculations.

Add up the derivatives books at the holdcos, and the total isn’t $203 trillion any more: it’s $291 trillion — an increase of $88 trillion which is very hard to find in the OCC report unless you’re specifically looking for it. And never mind Wells Fargo, which was also something of an also-ran in the top five banks. The top five now comprise JP Morgan, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup, with derivatives holdings between them of $278 trillion. That’s 95% of the true total, or 137% of what the OCC would have you believe was the total.

A new value-added tax (VAT) is "on the table" to help the U.S. address its fiscal liabilities, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Monday night.

The VAT is a tax on manufacturers at each stage of production on the amount of value an additional producer adds to a product.

Pelosi argued that the VAT would level the playing field between U.S. and foreign manufacturers, the latter of which do not have pension and healthcare costs included in the price of their goods because their governments provide those services, financed by similar taxes. "They get a tax off of that and they use that money to pay the healthcare for their own workers," Pelosi said, using the example of auto manufacturers. "So their cars coming into our country don't have a healthcare component cost.

Pelosi is: 1) Trying to use the VAT as a tariff; and 2) ignorant of how a VAT is applied unless she intends to apply it only to imports, which would expose her scheme to use VAT as a surreptitious tariff.

Bob Chapman is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Bob Chapman
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