By David Crane

Because Calpers failed to disclose pension costs and liabilities 10 years ago, taxpayers will be on the hook for hundreds of billions.

In 1999 then California Governor Gray Davis sign…

By Alison Vekshin and Phil Mattingly

U.S. Senate Democrats failed to move toward a final vote on the financial-regulation bill amid resistance from both parties on parts of the sweeping overhaul of…

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Continue reading Investors Should Avoid Banks ‘At All Costs’: Meredith Whitney

Related reading:

The Small Business Credit Crunch
The Wall Street Journal (17 May 10)

Dan Whaley

May 15, 2010, Foellinger Auditorium

Thank you Curtis—administrators, esteemed professors, guests, parents… and thank you, Class of 2010.

Go ahead . . . make some noise!

Yes that’s…

By Tyler Durden

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Continue reading Libor Dispersion Surges, As SocGen, WestLB, Mizuho and Rabobank Flash Red Liquidity Warning Lights

By Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story
“Questions have been raised that go to the heart of this institution’s most fundamental value: how we treat our clients.”
— Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman…

Kelly Cobiella reports that a CBS News team was threatened with arrest by Coast Guard officials in the Gulf of Mexico who said they were acting under the authority of British Petroleum.

US Coast Gu…

Formal German Central Bank Head Pöhl:

It [Greek Bailout] was about protecting German banks, but especially the French banks, from debt write offs. On the day that the rescue package was agreed on,…

By Egon von Greyerz, Matterhorn Asset Management

Already back in 2007 we warned about the very high risk of the CDS (credit default swap) market. This is now one of the primary instruments used by th…

By Alan Crawford and Shannon D. Harrington

Germany prohibited naked short- selling and speculating on European government bonds with credit-default swaps in an effort to calm the region’s financi…

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Europe may have to clean up its own mess after all. The US Senate has voted 94:0 to block use of taxpayers’ money for IMF rescues that make no economic sense or bail-ou…

I have gotten several questions asking me to explain what is happening in Greece and what it means to us. Greece is being harvested. This is a global game and it has been going on for some time.

In 2…

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Continue reading Money Supply Charts

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Continue reading Now This Is A Deflationary Collapse

Facebook recently made a number of changes to its privacy policy that make your profile information public – even if you thought it wasn’t. Many people aren’t even aware of these changes. So we (Mov…

Confidential Report On TETRA Strictly For The Police Federation Of England and Wales

What is all this really about?

Imagine the field around a magnet and imagine ordinary everyday static electrici…

Gulf nations hope science will turn desert areas into arable land to boost food security and avoid the risks inherent in buying farmland abroad, industry insiders said Monday.

Farming in the Gulf b…

“A new earthquake” is what peasant farmer leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) called the news that Monsanto will be donating 60,000 seed sacks (475 tons) of hyb…

I watched two documentaries this weekend about the growing challenges of our fresh water supply.

This is a very important topic, one that is hidden behind many of the squabbles going on in communit…

Join here:Ed Stein Free Online Comic Strip Library

Huge raucous crowds converged outside bank employees’ houses on Sunday afternoon to demand banks stop lobbying against Wall Street reform.

“Bank of America: bad for America!” shouted community lead…

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Related reading:

Math Wiz Adds Web Tools to Take Education to New Limits
PBS (22 Feb 10)

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Just when you thought the EU could not go any further down the road towards authoritarian excess, it gets worse.

The outcome – un véritable gouvernement économique …

Continue reading Chart of the Day

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By Jack Farchy

At the Rand refinery in South Africa, the phone has not stopped ringing this week. Panicking German dealers and banks have been desperate to get their hands on krugerrands, the world…

By Robert Kropp

The impact on investors of the business operations of corporations has been receiving unprecedented attention lately, in the aftermath of charges by the Securities and Exchange Commis…

By ND, Dr. Synthia Andrews, Colin Andrews

I have tried on numerous occasions to sort out what the hullabaloo about 2012 is all about. A few months ago, I spent several hours in the jacuzzi reading …

China plans to expand settlements of international trade using yuan to as many as 18 more provinces and cities to meet rising demand from companies, two bankers involved in the program said.

Cross-…

YouTube

Interviewer:

What did you take away from the Goldman Sachs hearings?

Clinton: … [comments on Goldman Sachs/SEC lawsuit]

I think there’s a bigger problem here, which is that too much …

By Jonathan Weil

Score another triumph for the rigged- market theory.

In a feat that would seem to defy the odds, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America this week each said its trading de…

By Jim Dwyer

How angry is the world at Facebook for devouring every morsel of personal information we are willing to feed it?

A few months back, four geeky college students, living on pizza in a c…

By Jeff Rense

The two wise American farmers who presented their hay solution to dealing with the massive, burgeoning Gulf of Mexico oil slick are right on the money.

It’s doubtful they remember, b…

By Joshua Frank

Alfalfa is the fourth largest crop grown in the United States and Monsanto wants to control it. On April 27, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could well write the fu…

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Continue reading Abu Dhabi Hotel Installs Gold Vending Machine

As the nation’s leading scientific resource for oil spills, NOAA has been on the scene of the Deepwater Horizon spill from the start, providing coordinated scientific weather and biological respon…

By the beginning of 2010, Schwarzenegger and the lawmakers had closed a 60 billion deficit partly by slashing spending on schools, temporarily raising taxes and borrowing from local governments.

The …

To the Governors of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, their legislators and Attorneys General:

Please do not wait for BP and the federal government to protect your coast waters and …

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How about using the hay idea (below from CWRoberts) and other low tech ideas to help? Time for enlisting the fisherman and farmers on the Gulf for Plan B? It worked for the British at Dunk…

Continue reading CW Roberts Presentation

Related reading:

Two Wise American Farmers Are Right – Hay Should Begin To Move To The Gulf Immediately
14 May 10

Continue reading Depaving Portland

Related reading

Depaving Day!
StreetFilms

depave.org

By Takahiko Hyuga and Finbarr Flynn

Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer James Gorman denied allegations the U.S. bank misled investors about mortgage derivatives it sold them.

The firm is being…

Last night minutes after midnight, the WSJ announces that federal prosecutors are investigating Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley’s new CEO Jamie Gorman was in Tokyo. According to Gorman, this was new ne…

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Continue reading The Ultimate Rejection Of The Euro

By Victorial McGrane and Michael R. Crittenden

The Senate adopted an amendment Tuesday to the financial-overhaul bill that would boost transparency of the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending actions …

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Related reading:

David Cameron Enters No10 as Prime Minister
ITN (12 May 10)

General Election 2010: Timeline of The Day David Cameron Became Prime Minister
Telegraph.co.uk (12 May 10)

View larger chart at USGS Earthquakes website

View larger chart at USGS Earthquakes website

Establishment date for HAARP: 1983

By Charles Abbott

Nearly 40 million Americans received food stamps — the latest in an ever-higher string of record enrollment that dates from December 2008 and the U.S. recession, according to a g…

.

Continue reading List of Countries By Life Expectancy
Wikipedia

Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. disclosed Monday that it has received notices of investigations from FINRA and from the United Kingdom Financial Services Authority regarding its subprime mortgage dealin…

Swine flu kept the world in suspense for almost a year. A massive vaccination campaign was mounted to put a stop to the anticipated pandemic. But, as it turned out, it was a relatively harmless strain…

By Tyler Durden

And now for today’s bombshell – literally at the very end of Moody’s 10-Q filed last night, we find this stunner:

On March 18, 2010, MIS received a “Wells Notice” from the Staff …

Did you know that Greece alone has 14 times as much gold per capita as China? Do you realize that your “PIGS” actually have the same amount of gold per capita as the US claims to still have? (PIGS=25 …

The United States reversed policy on Wednesday and said it would back launching talks on a treaty to regulate arms sales as long as the talks operated by consensus, a stance critics said gave every na…

By Michael Gray

Federal agents have launched parallel criminal and civil probes of JPMorgan Chase and its trading activity in the precious metals market, The Post has learned.

The probes are cente…

Continue reading U.S. Retirement Benefits To Be Cut?

Continue reading Campaign to Cut Entitlements Picking Up in U.S.

Did you notice they did not suggest finding out where the $4 trillion went…

Nashville Tennessee Flood 2010
YouTube (3 May 10)

By Alan Zibel

Fannie Mae has again asked taxpayers for more money — this time $8.4 billion — after reporting another steep loss for the first quarter. The taxpayer bill for rescuing Fannie and it…

Chart of the Day: No Green Shoots at All for the Long-Term Unemployed

We saw this coming long ago. Some wonderful people warned us and offered alternatives. Here is the proof.

Related Viewing:

Si…

Continue reading YouTube Video

Last weekend at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, Goldman Sachs preferred stock investor Warren Buffet made a big deal about supporting Goldman Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein under fire (…

Former CEO of the Icelandic bank Kaupthing, Hreidar Már Sigurdsson, was given a 12-day custody sentence in Reykjavík District Court today at the request of the Special Prosecutor’s Office. Magn�…

By Louise Story and Eric Dash

As its legal troubles mount, Goldman Sachs is losing a big corporate client: the American International Group.

A.I.G., the insurance giant that planned to retain Gold…

By Susan Pulliam and Susanne Craig

Sides Remain Far Apart as Criminal Probe, Deal Structure Pose Hurdles; Shareholder Meeting Today

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS – News) lawyers met this week…

Inequality is worst around Wall Street and Oil Land

Continue reading 15 Mind-Blowing Facts About Wealth And Inequality In America

Today’s chart presents the median single-family home price divided by the price of one ounce of gold. This results in the home / gold ratio or the cost of the median single-family home in ounces of go…

“Heard of the lone assassin? Or the lone trader? Or the lone computer “glitch.” Get ready for the lone typo.”
–
~Catherine Austin Fitts

–

Continue reading Did CNBC’s Jim Cramer Help Save the Market…

The American public is becoming fed up with “sneak” provisions tacked onto largely unrelated bills that are likely to pass. A glaring recent example was tacking onto the Healthcare bill a comple…

Switzerland will host a forum of bankers and policymakers next month to discuss strengthening the global monetary system after the financial crisis, the Swiss central bank said on Tuesday.

The Swis…

The Wall Street Journal speculated today on the possibility that Blankfein will not make it as Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs. See “What-Ifs for Goldman Sachs: Behind Stiff Upper Lip, Some Execut…

During recent Congressional testimony, the CEO of Goldman Sachs was asked about how the current charges against Goldman had altered their internal risk management. In essence, how could the situation …

In 2008, I posted on the blog a description I wrote in 2002 of the Solari model that I developed in 1997, after years and billions of dollars of prototyping described in the story, “Dillon Read & …

The study of 1,300 children by Michigan and Montreal universities found negative effects on older children rose with every hour of toddler TV.

Performance at school was worse, while consumption of ju…

Some wonderful friends of mine are selling their estate in New Zealand, north of Auckland. If you are looking to get away from it all, this one may be for you!

Escape Back to New Zealand

I voted today in the Democratic Primary for local offices in Hardeman County, Tennessee. (No, I am not a registered Democrat. Don’t need to be to vote in the primary here.)

This was an interesting …

Solari has produced a new free podcast—The Solari Report Digest #11.

Listen to Solari Report Digest #11

The Solari Report Digest is a podcast featuring highlights from the live one-hour Sola…

By David Glovin and Bob Van Voris

May 4 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve Board asked an appeals court to reconsider a ruling requiring the agency to disclose documents identifying financial firms …

From the Preface:

“This article was inspired by a conversation in January 2010 with fellow directors of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee: Chairman Bill Murphy, Secretary/Treasurer Chris Powell, …

One of my favorite money laundering stories is told by Christopher Simpson, in his marvelous book Blowback, regarding one of the first Exchange Stabilization Fund slush fund operations after WWII. The…

By Zachary A. Goldfarb and Jerry Markon

The Justice Department’s criminal investigation into Goldman Sachs goes beyond the financial transactions targeted by the Securities and Exchange Commission in…

By Nick Timiraos

The U.S. government’s massive share of the nation’s mortgage market grew even larger during the first quarter.

Government-related entities backed 96.5% of all home loans during the …

By Times-Picayune Staff

What’s going on beneath the sea? A graphic explanation of the fight to shut off the oil leak.t

Continue reading 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

Related reading:

Huge Chambe…

By Peggy Noonan

We are at a remarkable moment. We have an open, 2,000-mile border to our south, and the entity with the power to enforce the law and impose safety and order will not do it. Wall Stre…

By Tyler Durden

After seeing its demands for secrecy rejected soundly twice, once in district court and once in appellate, the Fed is now appealing the “Pittman” decision yet again. As Bloomberg repo…

This is a grave threat to the Non-GMO Tipping Point—We must push back now!

Please send this URGENT message to US Government leaders to protect your right to know which foods are made from genetic…

Dear Catherine:

I have followed your work for many years and appreciate the service that you have performed in presenting the information and analysis. It has been helpful to be able to source you w…

Autism360 is a unique tool which provides an accurate report that captures the details of your child’s or your own individuality and offers treatment options that have worked for others with closely m…

By Margot Roosevelt

Investigators look at the company’s role in cementing the deepwater drill hole in the Gulf of Mexico. Transocean and BP also face questioning.

Investigators delving into the …

By Allen Breed and Seth Borenstein

BP’s chairman defended his company’s safety record and said Sunday that “a failed piece of equipment” was to blame for a massive oil spill along the Gulf Coast, w…

By Dan Bilefsky and Landon Thomas Jr.

Athens — Greece announced on Sunday that it had reached agreement on a long-delayed financial rescue package that would require years of painful belt-tighten…

Continue reading: Stock Comparison – BP & S&P500

By John E. Kramer

Arlington, Va.—It’s called policing for profit and it’s happening all across America.

Police and prosecutors’ offices seize private property—often without ever charging…