House Financial Services Cmte.

Hearing on Regulatory Overhaul

Friday

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) chaired a hearing on legislation that would require the Government Accountability Office to audit the Federal Reserve. Scott Alvarez, General Counsel to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve and Thomas Woods of the Ludwig von Mises Institute testified before the committee. ( Watch the video here )

Barney Frank, Mel Watt are you guys in the pocket of the Fed. Watt and Frank should be exposed for the bought and paid for politicains they are!

US government MANIPULATING GOLD YET AGAIN

FREE MARKET MY AS*

Questions to ask yourself

1. Does the normal market forces move the market in such a way?

2. Are these dramatic moves in gold connected in any way the G-20 meeting?

3. Are these dramatic moves in gold connected to the IMF's 403.3 ton sales?

4. What should the real price of gold be?

5. Why is dollar gain in value against gold but weakening against other currencies?

Good questions what are the answers?

Do you have any questions yourself ?

An Army near the Breaking Point

– studies & reports

We spend more on defense (broadly defined) than the rest of the world combined. Nobody has military technology as advanced and powerful as ours. American military journals assure us that our doctrines range from adequate to awesome. None of this matters if we cannot attract and retain quality people in sufficient quantities.
Designed to wage 2.5 wars, after five years of fighting two “small wars” already our Army shows signs of breaking under the strain. That is unfortunate, as these wars are like those we will likely fight in the future. Worse, experts tell us that such struggles often take a decade or more to win (in the few cases in which foreign forces have been able to claim victory). What will our Army look like after another five years if we cannot substantially reduce our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan?
What does it mean to say that an army is “breaking”? Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings writes:
For one thing, there is no sharp, discontinuous transition between an “unbroken” Army and a “broken” one: the kind that happens when a plate shatters, a fuse blows, or a motor finally gives out. For another, a “broken” Army will still be able to function, more or less … So there is no sharp contrast between an “unbroken” Army, which works, and a “broken” Army, which doesn’t.
What we are doing to the Army is less like breaking something, and more like slowly degrading its ability to perform its tasks to an unacceptable level. It’s a gradual process, one that does not provide us with clear points at which we can look at the Army and say: well, now it is well and truly broken. It’s not like breaking a chair or a statue.
Here are a selection of reports about the stress cracks in the body of the US Army. None of these look good for the prospects of an Army of “strategic corporals” capable of implementing sophisticated COIN doctrines. ( learn more at )

Top News

Department of Justice Limits Use of State Secrets Privilege: Today, the Department of Justice announced a new policy that limits the government’s use of the state secrets privilege. The state secrets privilege is a rule of evidence intended to prevent genuine matters of national security from being disclosed in open court. However, recently it has been misused by both the Bush and Obama administrations in order to derail litigation completely. For instance, in 2007 EPIC filed a “friend-of-the-court” brief in a warrantless wiretapping case, Hepting v. United States, in which the government argued that the case should be dismissed because it would reveal “state secrets.” Under the new policy, the privilege will be invoked only "to the extent necessary to protect against the risk of significant harm to national security." The Attorney General will also have to approve each determination. The State Secret Protection Act of 2009, legislation with a similar purpose, is now pending in Congress. For more information, see EPIC Open Government. (Sep. 23, 2009)

New Report on Government Secrecy Released: The 2009 Secrecy Report Card, from Openthegovernment.org, chronicles slight decreases in government secrecy during the last year of the Bush-Cheney Administration. The report, released by a coalition of more than 70 open government advocates, also provides an overview of the Obama Administration’s proposed transparency policies. Among the issues discussed are the Open Government Directive, Classified Information, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) memo, signing statements, and the state secrets doctrine. For more on open government and transparency, see EPIC Open Government. (Sep. 11, 2009)

EPIC Renews Call for Release of Bush Warrantless Wiretap Memos: In court papers filed this week in Washington, DC, EPIC and the ACLU asked a federal judge now reviewing an open government case to consider the publication of the Inspectors General Unclassifed Report on the President's Surveillance Program. EPIC and the ACLU are seeking the release of the relevant legal memos relating to the program, but the government contends that the entire matter is secret. However, the Inspector General's report, which is widely available, discusses several of the memos at issue in the case. EPIC filed the original request for the legal memos in December 2005 after the New York Times first reported on the warrantless wiretapping program. The case is EPIC v. Dep't of Justice. (Sep. 18, 2009)

PATRIOT Act Revisions Introduced in Senate: Today, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) and seven cosponsors introduced the Judicious Use of Surveillance Tools In Counterterrorism Efforts (JUSTICE) Act. The bill would amend the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendments Act, and other surveillance and intelligence laws. Among other changes, the JUSTICE Act would reform the National Security Letter process, revise the guidelines for business records orders, eliminate the catch-all provision for "sneak-and-peek" searches, and add new safeguards for FISA roving wiretaps. The JUSTICE Act would also repeal retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies, and is supported by many civil liberties organizations. For more information, see EPIC USA PATRIOT Act, EPIC FISA, EPIC Wiretapping, and EPIC National Security Letters. (Sep. 17, 2009)

Senators Consider PATRIOT Act Reforms: Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) are drafting legislative reforms to revise the USA PATRIOT Act. The USA PATRIOT Act allows authorities to conduct surveillance without judicial review through the use of National Security Letters. The Senators asked the Attorney General and the Chairmen of the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committee to consider two previous bills that add protections to PATRIOT ACT. Pursuant to a EPIC lawsuit, a federal judge had ordered the Justice Department to provide for independent judicial inspection of documents relating to warrantless wiretapping. For more information, see EPIC USA PATRIOT Act, EPIC FISA, EPIC Wiretapping, and EPIC National Security Letters. (Aug. 7, 2009)

Inspector Generals Release Report on President's Surveillance Program: The Inspector Generals of the Intelligence Community released a report on the President's Surveillance Program. The report summarizes the unclassified collective results of the reviews. The Program involved the massive, warrantless surveillance of Americans in the United States. The IG Report finds that the absence of effective oversight contributed to the ineffectiveness of the program. In December 2005, EPIC had requested the legal opinions that were prepared to justify the program. The government has refused to produce many key documents, and EPIC sued under the Freedom of Information Act. In March this year, the Attorney General released several related memos, which previously were secret, following President Obama's statement on government transparency. See EPIC FISA, EPIC Surveillance FOIA, EPIC Wiretapping, and EPIC National Security Letters. (Jul. 10, 2009)

U.S. mortgage delinquencies set record

Mon Sep 21, 2009 8:32pm EDT
By Nick Zieminski

NEW YORK (Reuters) - High U.S. unemployment keeps pushing up the rate of mortgage delinquencies, which could in turn drive personal bankruptcies and home foreclosures, monthly data from the Equifax Inc credit bureau showed on Monday.
Among U.S. homeowners with mortgages, a record 7.58 percent were at least 30 days late on payments in August, up from 7.32 percent in July, according to the data obtained exclusively by Reuters.
August marked the fourth consecutive monthly increase in delinquencies, and the report showed an accelerating pace. By comparison, 4.89 percent of mortgages were 30 days past due in August 2008, while in August 2007, the rate was 3.44 percent, Equifax data showed.
The rate of subprime mortgage delinquencies now tops 41 percent, up from about 39 percent in each of the prior five months.
The results, which correlate with consumer bankruptcy filings, suggest U.S. homeowners remain under financial stress despite signs of improving sentiment and fundamentals in the U.S. housing market.
August bankruptcy filings were up 32 percent from a year earlier, compared with a 35 percent year-over-year increase in July.
Still, while more Americans were late with mortgage payments, they are keeping up with other bills. The proportion of credit card accounts at least 60 days past due was down in August for the third straight month, while subprime card delinquencies also fell. ( learn more at )

Now ask yourself some questions

1. If the economy is doing so good, why then are mortages delinquiencies up?

2. What is an economy? What makes an economy moveup or down?

3. Why do the banks get help from the US Gov. but not the American peoeple, why?

4. If all Americans didn't show up for work and did buy anything what would happen to the US economy?

Why is the IMF selling 403.3 ton of gold for some

pocket change around 13 billion, is it really to help

poor countries?

-

The IMF recieved 200 billion from the US and a

hundred billion from Japan in 2008.

Why now why right before October?

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Why has gold maintain it's price in the face of

such news?

-

These are the real questions find the answers and

you know what is happening and where to put

your money.

Economic Duplicity:

Recession and Record Profits

The Real Estate Bubble is Not Over
by Rev. Richard Skaff

In December 14, 2008, in his interview on the CBS sixty minutes show, Whitney Tilson an investment fund manager predicted that the subprime collapse was only half way of the total real estate bubble, and that the second half will begin take place around 2010 and will continue until about the year 2013. Tilson also discussed the two fancy Wall Street terms for bad mortgages namely Alt-A (Alternative-A paper) and option arms mortgages. These loans lured borrowers with teaser rates that will begin to reset this year.

Tilson has also predicted that seventy percent of these loans will eventually default, based on existing evidence of pre-reset default rates [1].
A mortgage reset is when the homeowner who bought a house with a low "teaser rate" and planned to refinance as soon as the house price went up suddenly gets a new payment that is usually far higher. Often, homeowners can't afford these resets.
The first wave of resets, as we recall was subprime. As this chart from Whitney Tilson shows, that's basically done with: [2].
However, Alt-A is actually a much larger category of mortgages, and the big Alt-A reset boom is just around the corner as Tilson’s second chart reveals.
Karen Weaver of Deutsche Bank observes that Alt-A mortgages are already mostly underwater. The combination of resets plus severely underwater status will likely exacerbate defaults and foreclosures. [2].


Ironically, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Tuesday September 15, 2009 that the worst recession since the 1930s is probably over, although he cautioned that pain especially for the nearly 15 million unemployed Americans will persist. [3].

So while unemployment keeps rising, consumer spending is slumping, inflation is creeping up (food, gasoline, and other commodities), the commercial real estate is plunging into the abyss, the dollar is weakening, and the other half of the housing bubble is exploding, Bernanke remains hopeful!

Could it be that Mr. Bernanke is anticipating the occurrence of a contrived international incident that will trigger an invasion of Iran ? A new war is always good for a military based economy! Or maybe Bernanke’s optimism on the economy is strictly founded on the performance of the global corporations and their profit margins? ( learn more at )