Content

Swiss private bank Wegelin announced on Tuesday that it is to stop doing business in the United States.

The St Gallen-based bank, Switzerland’s oldest, said the decision had been taken in response to…

By Steve Silberman

Merck was in trouble. In 2002, the pharmaceutical giant was falling behind its rivals in sales. Even worse, patents on five blockbuster drugs were about to expire, which would al…

(Reuters Pictures)

Senator Ted Kennedy died shortly before midnight Tuesday at his home in Hyannis Port, Mass., at age 77.

Continue reading Ted Kennedy Dies at Age 77

by Dr. Anders Bruun Laursen

The average quantity of squalene injected into the US soldiers abroad and at home in the anthrax vaccine during and after the Gulf War was 34.2 micrograms per billion mi…

U.S. securities regulators are examining weekly meetings at Goldman Sachs Group Inc, where research analysts offer tips to traders and then to big clients, the Wall Street Journal reported on its we…

Argentina’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday it is unconstitutional to punish an adult for private use of marijuana as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. The unanimous ruling makes Argentina the se…

If someone else says to me that Americans are in a stupor and not doing anything, I will just spit.

Lots of Americans are doing things and have been doing things at great expense and risk. America is…

By Karen Gullo

The Federal Reserve must make public reports about recipients of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers under programs created to address the financial crisis, a federal judge ruled.

C…

“Non-event”

— Congressman Ron Paul’s (R-TX) description of Swine Flu outbreak

By Carrie Johnson

In appointing a prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA interrogation abuses, including episodes that resulted in prisoner deaths, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Monday shoo…

By Matthew Cole,Richard Esposito and Brian Ross

A “profanity-laced screaming match” at the White House involving CIA Director Leon Panetta, and the expected release today of another damning int…

YouTube

“A little help from my friends.”

Ann, private investigator, on Paul Krugman’s new $1.7 million pad.

Read Paul Krugman Gets a New Place to Hang His Hat and Nobel

Extreme Sheep Herding – With Lights!
YouTube

By Tami Luhby

In Pennsylvania, day care centers are closing. Food banks and libraries are cutting back. A school district is taking out a multi-million dollar loan.

Local governments and social se…

Dear Catherine,

I enjoyed your appearance on Coast last night. It was a very insightful discussion as always. You will be shocked and saddened by the following, but I implore you to read on.

You t…

By Chris Powell

Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank, today confirmed that much of its gold is held outside the country at “trading centers” where the bank conducts “its gold activities.”

The Bu…

It’s been three years since Sarah and Susan Banks had the revelation over coffee at their Aunt Mary’s restaurant, where Sarah had worked summers putting herself through college. They had returned to O…

View larger image

By Tyler Durden

The fact that more than the entire float of AIG has traded daily on several occasions, should be a bright red light for the regulators to analyze whether this abno…

By Stephen Ohlemacher

By law, Social Security benefits cannot go down. Nevertheless, monthly payments would drop for millions of people in the Medicare prescription drug program because the premium…

By BBC News

China holds more US government debt than any other country and cut its holdings of US securities by more that 3% in June, said the BBC’s Chris Hogg.

Japan and the UK – second and third…

While New York is the capital of banking, one could argue that Boston is the capital of equity investment, being home to numerous mutual fund companies such as Fidelity and Putnam, and home as well of…

By Dr. Mae Wen Ho

Within the past several years, however, scientists have found that oxygen (O2) in the atmosphere has been dropping, and at higher rates than just the amount that goes into the inc…

by Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Prof. Joe Cummins

It is a messy combination of sequences from bird, human and swine flu virus lineages from North America and Eurasia. A senior virologist based in Canberra, A…

King Assasination – The Trial in 1999 (Part 2-10)

Trial Transcript

Ramadan starts today,  Friday, the 21st of August, and will continue for 30 days until Saturday, the 19th of September.

Muslims are called upon to use this month to re-evaluate their lives in ligh…

By Jason Kelly and Jonathan Keehner

U.S. pension funds contributed to the record $1.2 trillion that private-equity firms raised this decade. Three of the biggest investors, state pensions in Californ…

Warren Bamford, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Boston, said Tuesday that he is baffled by opposition to a proposal to give some neighborhood police officers the semiautomatic weapons.

Cont…

By Diana Furchtgott-Roth

Buried in the 1,017 pages of the House Democrats’ health-care bill is a little-noticed provision that for the first time could give the government access to the checking or…

Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley

Mayor Michael Nutter said the clock is counting down to the implementation of a devastating ‘doomsday budget’ in Philadelphia.

During a morning press conference…

How do the current deficits compare with past administrations? And how did the national debt get so big anyway? This video tries to answer those questions by looking at the debt as a road trip …

Y…

Jackson Hole

Every year, the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank sponsors a meeting of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The 2009 event starts tonight. For prior year topics, click here.

By …

View Full Size Chart of The Day: Credit May Crunch Again Before Getting Back To Normal

Having received another repayment, I just made my next loan at Kiva.org to an entrepreneur in Palestine starting a grocery store. Learn more about the syndicate I have joined, and how you or your So…

By Ed Mendel

The CalPERS chief actuary says pension costs are “unsustainable,” and the giant public employee pension system plans to meet with stakeholders to discuss the issue.

So, are the critics …

By William Selway

JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to lend California $1.5 billion, a cash infusion that will allow the most-populous U.S. state to stop issuing IOUs to businesses, taxpayers and mun…

The “Impossible” Healthcare Solution: Go Back to Cash

Here are the costs of childbirth as of 1952 at one of the finest hospitals on the West Coast, The Santa Monica Hospital:

Having a baby cost $3…

YouTube

by Meg White

I don’t like it when scientists feel the need to explain that they’re scared out of their wits, or use exclamation marks.

I also get a little nervous when they say stuff like, “We’re …

YouTube

YouTube

Water Color by Lesta Frank

By Anne Stuhldreher

…Unless, that is, you’re friends with someone like Maria del Carmen Torres. In between serving up pupusas and plantain chips at local farmers’ mark…

Target, Burlington, MA

By Eric Janszen

The first half of 2009 goes like this:

1. After Christmas sales: 20% to 50% off
2. Liquidation sales: 50% to 80% off
3. Then 30% to 40% of retailers go out o…

If you planned to check out a library book, visit a city clinic or have your garbage picked up on Monday, you’re out of luck.

The City of Chicago is basically closed for business on Aug. 17, a redu…

If nuclear weapons exist, then nuclear war is a real possibility. And Delhi is a prime target. It is.

But where shall we go? Is it possible to go out and buy another life because this one’s not panni…

By Rebecca Smith

Only a third of nurses have said they are willing to have the vaccine against swine flu amid fears it has not been tested enough, a survey has found.

Continue reading Only a Third…

Sir! No Sir!

Sir! No Sir! is a documentary produced, and written by David Zeiger  about the opposition to the Viet Nam War in military ranks. Subtitled “the suppressed story of the GI movement to en…

Thank you for all of your wonderful comments at the blog.

Alas, not all those commenting had the readers and our best interests at heart. And despite lots of spam filters, the spam has become quite s…

The Lockheed Fire in Santa Cruz was one of nine big wildfires burning more than 100,000 acres in California last week. It was named after the largest defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, because it th…

The 2008 GAAP-based deficit (counting unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities, etc.), using accrual accounting, was $5.1 trillion, up from $1.2 trillion ($4 trillion-plus, using consistent a…

By Daniel Whitten and Simon Lomax

The U.S. Senate should abandon efforts to pass legislation curbing greenhouse-gas emissions this year and concentrate on a narrower bill to require use of renewable …

Congressman Paul Broun (R-Ga) also spoke of a “socialistic elite” – Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid – who might use a pandemic disease or natural disaster as a…

Dear Senator Boxer:

You were so right on when you scolded the general on TV for using the term, “ma’am,” instead of “Senator”. After all, in the military, “ma’am” is a term of respect when addressin…

By Laurence Gonzales

As a journalist, I’ve been writing about accidents for more than thirty years. In the last 15 or so years, I’ve concentrated on accidents in outdoor recreation, in an effort to…

By David Liechty

On December 23, 1913, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act (ch. 6, 38 Stat. 251) and again fundamentally changed the monetary structure of the United States, creating a mixed pub…

“”A lie keeps growing and growing until it’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

I keep getting e-mails that militia are on the rise in America. I don’t believe a word of it. There are a lot of Ame…

Nothing would please Bernanke and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York more than to see both low long term yields and higher highs in equities. However, the juggling act required to ramp both equiti…

A friend of mine who has worked in the prison system tells me that the prisoners say the way to tell when the economy is in real trouble is prison riots trigged by dissatisfaction with food. The fol…

By Peter Whoriskey

Hate car salesmen? Want to skip the test drive?

General Motors has some cars to show you.

The government-rescued automaker announced on Monday that it is starting a trial in whi…

The Case-Shiller has been signalling an improvement in the second derivative of housing prices for a few months, and in the latest report it even showed a sequential increase. But check out the NAR’…

By Joe Weisenthal and Kamelia Angelova
Hopefully deficits don’t matter, because if they do, then boy are we screwed. Today’s chart was put together by Diapason Securities analyst Sean Corrigan (via A…

By Richard Milne in Amsterdam

Manufacturers are abandoning global supply chains for regional ones in a big shift brought about by the financial crisis and climate change concerns, according to e…

Secret Office, at The General Post-Office

Welcome to John Potter’s world. He’s the nation’s postmaster general. Yes, that’s right: for the last nine years, he has run the United States Posta…

When Mexico Had the Blues: A Transatlantic Tale of Bonds, Bankers, and Nationalists, 1862–1910

By Steven C. Topick

As Joseph Schumpeter lyrically described the broader phenomenon of public finance…

By Gretchen Morgenson and Don Van Natta Jr.

Before he became President George W. Bush’s Treasury secretary in 2006, Henry M. Paulson Jr. agreed to hold himself to a higher ethical standard than his…

Southern Presidential Peaks By Gary Tompkins

By Catherine Austin Fitts

As a child, my summers were spent hiking in the White Mountains (New Hampshire).

My grandparents had a farm that was listed …

“Our goal was to find out whether we could program DNA to assemble into shapes that exhibit custom curvature or twist, with features just a few nanometers wide,” says biophysicist Hendrik Dietz, a p…

The United States on Thursday issued new rules on oil market manipulation that prohibits market players from providing misleading information to influence prices.

The Federal Trade Commission said in…

Deutsche Bundesbank

Germany’s gold is in U.S. custody, Bundesbank confirms.

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

International journalist Max Keiser has just posted a nine-minute documentary he has done …

From Wikipedia

The South Atlantic Anomaly (or SAA) is the region where Earth’s inner Van Allen radiation belt makes its closest approach to the planet’s surface. For a given altitude, the radiation …

By Brody Mullins

Congress plans to spend $550 million to buy eight jets, a substantial upgrade to the fleet used by federal officials at a time when lawmakers have criticized the use of corporate j…