Remember Jon Stewart on CNN's Crossfire ? (2004)

(14:13)

Rivero at WhatReallyHapppened.com recently drew attention to this exchange from 4 years ago. The US mainstream media is expert at throwing softball questions to the candidates, especially on the Republican "side."

Both political sides, and the US media, are compromised and are not to be trusted. Think about it. The US Congress is Democrat controlled yet they have continually acted as a rubber stamp to the Bush Administration agenda. The Congressional approval rating is actually LOWER than the President [that's a red flag right there].

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 30th, 2008.]

More Vote-Flipping in TX by Machines Other Than Those Made by ES&S

Unfortunately, it's not just the error-prone, hackable, wholly unverifiable iVotronics from ES&S which are failing. Error-prone, hackable and wholly unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems made by Hart InterCivic, Diebold and Sequoia Voting Systems are also having the same problems across the country. And the Democrats, who have the most to lose, continue to do nothing about it...

On Monday, we posted a video of a WV county clerk demonstrating the vote-flips on the ES&S iVotronic and suggesting that the problem was due to touch-screen calibration issues on the machine. The video then shows the clerk inserting a cartridge into the machine to recalibrate it, after which the machine still mis-records a vote.
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6584

There is no "calibration issue" at work here, it's out-and-out software fraud/corruption. Every case, on all types of machines, shows votes flipping from Democrat to Republican- the same as we saw in 2004. Even though the fraud effort this time around will be massive, which will include other strategies to disenfranchise voters, I find it hard to believe that the election could successfully be stolen.

If the vote is stolen, then I expect there to be widespread rioting or protesting. Unless pre-election polling can be rigged (more than it has been) to show a neck and neck race then there should be unrest. Expect some dramatic staged event over the weekend that will favour the Republican campaign.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 30th, 2008.]

Copper Door Handles and Taps Kill 95% of Superbugs in Hospitals

Making door handles, taps and light switches from copper could help the country beat superbugs, scientists say.

A study found that copper fittings rapidly killed bugs on hospital wards, succeeding where other infection control measures failed.

In the trial at Selly Oak hospital, in Birmingham, copper taps, toilet seats and push plates on doors all but eliminated common bugs.

It is thought the metal 'suffocates' germs, preventing them breathing. It may also stop them from feeding and destroy their DNA.

Lab tests show that the metal kills off the deadly MRSA and C difficile superbugs.

It also kills other dangerous germs, including the flu virus and the E coli food poisoning bug.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1081359/Copper-door-handles-taps-kill-95-superbugs-hospitals.html

Although it later says this trial was funded by the "copper industry" the results here should certainly not be discounted. If a repetition of this test proves successful then copper is it.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 30th, 2008.]

NASA Orbiter Reveals Details of Wetter Mars

U.S. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has observed a new category of minerals spread across large regions of Mars, which suggests liquid water remained on the planet's surface 1 billion years later than scientists believed, the U.S. space agency NASA announced Tuesday.

Researchers examining data from the orbiter's imaging spectrometer for Mars found evidence of hydrated silica, commonly known as opal. The hydrated, or water-containing, mineral deposits are telltale signs of where and when water was present on ancient Mars.

"This is an exciting discovery because it extends the time range for liquid water on Mars, and the places where it might have supported life," said Scott Murchie, the spectrometer's principal investigator at Johns Hopkins University. "The identification of opaline silica tells us that water may have existed as recently as 2 billion years ago."
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-10/29/content_10269782.htm

Mars still has a lot of water just under the surface as evidenced from holes dug by the rovers.

In the distant past Mars, like the Earth, had a much denser atmosphere and probably had large oceans or seas. Over billions of years the atmospheres of both planets have become less dense and Mars with its smaller mass has lost significantly more water (evaporated and split by sunlight) thanks to its lesser gravity.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 30th, 2008.]

FABLED ENEMIES: PART 1

Part 1 of 10
(10:58)

As a false flag operation the 911 attacks required convincing enemies. The reported intelligence ties to the "hijackers" are revealed in some detail in this film.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 29th, 2008.]

The Government's Actions Are Making the Financial Crisis Worse

The government's previous actions lead to the current financial crisis. See this.

Moreover, the government's current actions are actually making things worse:

*The bailouts are causing HIGHER mortgage rates for consumers

*The government's commercial paper buying spree is INCREASING the cost of borrowing ...

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2008/10/governments-actions-are-making.html/

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 29th, 2008.]

ZERO: An Investigation into 9/11

ZERO: An Investigation into 9/11, has one central thesis - that the official version of the events surrounding the attacks on 9/11 can not be true. This brand new feature documentary from Italian production company Telemaco explores the latest scientific evidence and reveals dramatic new witness testimony, which directly conflicts with the US Government's account.

Featuring presentations from intellectual heavy weights; Gore Vidal, and Noble Prize winner Dario Fo, the film challenges assumptions surrounding the attacks. In the words of the Italian daily newspaper, Il Corriere de da Sera, "What results is a sequence of contradictions, gaps, and omissions of stunning gravity."

The importance of this film can not be overstated. If its thesis is correct, the justification for going to war in Iraq is built on a series of outrageous lies.
http://zero911movie.com/site/


Part 1 (10:25)

This Italian film presents some of the best evidence and argument showing the 911 attacks were an Inside Job. The site above has a link to a 14 minute trailer, but I've included this You Tube screen that is part 1 of 10, that links to the whole film.

The latter parts of the documentary help to explain the role played by the "hijackers." The reports of hijackers at US military bases makes sense since the US intelligence community had been training ex-mujaheddin fighters since the end of the Soviet-Afghan war. It was easy to pick out Saudi fighters and have them (or imposters) gallivant around the country before the September 11 attacks.

The important thing to remember is that sooner or later enough people will realise the truth about September 11 so that action by politicians, the Judiciary, Military or Law Enforcement chiefs will follow. The perpetrators will not get away with their crime and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will end.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 28th, 2008.]

Iraq War Info: basic facts for those who still think we are over there to rid that country of a "brutal dictator."

If you have time you might want to check out these short videos on You Tube about the Iraq War. What you are about to see, hear and read are FACTS about why there is a war in Iraq and who is responsible.

This shows WHY we have a war in Iraq- it is the result of long term planning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4MdyJDnSoI
(there is also an oil motive too, but the vid doesn't harp on that aspect. Cheney and Bush are both oil people tho.)

And this is HOW we were "sold" on a war in Iraq- thanks to deliberate lies about non-existent WMDs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYI7JXGqd0o
Note: Rummy and Cheney are very certain that there are WMDs and that they know exactly where they be. Since the invasion we have seen no sign of this stuff. Furthermore, if there was any intelligence to back up what they were saying at the time, it has not come out. Hence it appears they are lying about what they are saying.

This is Collin Powell's UN speech on the phantom WMDs with some criticisms showing that the presentation was based on discredited information:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYBA9JD5oW4
Although the CIA director, Tenet, backed the material, it's likely he was also involved in cooking the reasons to go to war. Nothing in the speech, as pointed out by various experts, was seen as credible at the time. The Aluminum tubes were known to be poor quality- they were for rocket artillery not nuclear centrifuges. The mobile weapons lab info was unconfirmed- the trucks were weather balloon vehicles. The stories about a secret WMD program were unconfirmed, coming from a known conman.

We also have a series of British government memos that stated before the invasion in 2003 that the Americans were trying to fix the facts to suit the policy to attack Iraq: http://downingstreetmemo.com/memos.html (look at the red paragraph and note the underlined bit.)

Along with members inside the intelligence community, many "outside" commentators (from the US State Department, UN Nuclear Agencies, Ambassador Wilson, an independent newspaper [Knight Ridder], significant sections of the online media etc etc) all knew that key parts of the evidence being used to accuse Saddam of being a threat to peace were false. These people did speak up, but such criticisms were obfuscated in the "pro-war" mainstream media.

Saddam actually denied he had any WMDs and provided extensive documentation on the destruction of these weapons. This operation, supervised in part by the UN, occurred right after the first Gulf War. Nevertheless, despite these actions, and the statements made by Iraqi officials, it was falsely claimed that Saddam still claimed he had WMDs: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3390 You can see the pattern of propaganda here- one lie after another !

Whether Saddam was bad or not, the invasion of Iraq only happened because we were told that he was a threat because of his WMDs and that terrorists might get them. (The fact that Saddam and Bin Laden were virtual enemies was conveniently overlooked.) The later claim that we are over there to rid Iraq of a "brutal dictator" came only after the fake WMD claims were shown to be bogus. Frustratingly, our mainstream media now reports the lies about the WMDs as due to "mistaken intelligence" which, when compared to the facts, is also a lie. This "intelligence error" theme is something that we have gotten from a White House talking point. Clearly there was no mistake, the material was cooked up.

Now, if you watch this long (23 minutes) clip, with a cat hosting, you will see why the invasion of Iraq was completely ILLEGAL and is a WAR CRIME: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Khut8xbXK8&feature=related
Don't be fooled by the cat, all the stuff here has a solid grounding in International and US Law.

Finally, this is why Bush and his buddies also face first degree murder charges for lying about the false threat of Iraq. Through their lies these individuals effectively sent fellow citizens to completely unnecessary deaths:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45f1Riv_z1I&eurl=
As evidenced from the October 2002 intelligence summary, Saddam was not a threat. Nevertheless Administration officials claimed otherwise and chose to send their guys off to fight where some of them were certain to be killed. Hence the murder charge.

The US and their allies are in Iraq solely because of the wall of lies put out by members of the Bush Administration and their supporters in the US mainstream media. An effort is now required to correct the record and bring to trial all the individuals responsible for the War.

I hope this clears up any confusion as to why the US and its "coalition of the willing" is over fighting the war in Iraq.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 28th, 2008.]

Military Bracing for Wartime Presidential Transition

The U.S. military, bracing for the first wartime presidential transition in 40 years, is preparing for potential crises during the vulnerable handover period, including possible attacks by al-Qaida and destabilizing developments in Iraq or Afghanistan, according to senior military officials.

"I think the enemy could well take advantage" of the transfer of power in Washington, said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, who launched preparations for the transition months ago, and who will brief the president-elect, the defense secretary nominee and other incoming officials on crisis management and how to run the military.

Officials are working "to make sure we are postured the right way around the world militarily, that our intelligence is focused on this issue, and in day-to-day operations the military is making sure it does not happen," Mullen said in an interview. "If it does happen, we need to be in a position to respond before and after the inauguration."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/6078111.html

Is this just scaremongering or is another false flag attack in the works someplace ?

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 27th, 2008.]

Paulson's Plan, And The Suckers Who Bought It

Folks, this bailout money isn't about loosening credit for consumers or businesses, but consolidating wealth and power in fewer and fewer banking hands. That's great business for the banking elites, but lousy business for the US taxpayer. And it's all being orchestrated by one of their own, in the shape of Hank Paulson, ably assisted by Neel Kashkari, another ex-Goldman Sachs employee (with, according to the US Treasury, expertise in mergers and acquisitions -- what a surprise), and now responsible for administering the banking handouts.
Still, there's a Presidential election in the offing, and most people's attention is elsewhere; currently, it seems, on the cost of Sarah Palin's wardrobe. Meanwhile, the future earnings of US citizens are being siphoned off into supporting the empire building of the US banking oligarchy.
http://lpuk.blogspot.com/2008/10/paulsons-plan-and-suckers-who-bought-it.html

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 27th, 2008.]

WTC Dust Provides Proof that Thermite Explosives were used on the World Trade Centre Buildings on 9/11

(9:57)

There is no doubt that explosive incendiary devices were used on the Twin Towers and Building 7 to bring them down. The clear evidence of Thermate is obvious. 911 was an Inside Job.

When everyone is aware of this fact Law Enforcement, Judicial, military and political leaders will be forced to act and launch an open criminal investigation into the crime.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 26th, 2008.]

Dow Average May Sink to 5,000, Boockvar Says: Chart of the Day

The Dow Jones Industrial Average may sink as low as 5,000 next year, a 41 percent decline from its current level, according to Peter Boockvar of Miller Tabak & Co.

``The market's going to overshoot on the downside,'' Boockvar said in a Bloomberg Radio interview yesterday. ``When that occurs, I'll be a raging bull.''
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601213&sid=aJdYOvf5POhQ&refer=home

The Dow could fall lower since many US economic figures are cooked. When things disintegrate, the damage will be worse than predicted. This 5000 figure could easily be breached.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 26th, 2008.]

Landmark E. Howard Hunt JFK Confession Video Tape Ignored

The world exclusive E. Howard Hunt JFK confession video tape was released this week to a deafening silence from the mainstream media, while the dumbed-down general public attempted to dismiss the now deceased whistleblower Hunt, a former CIA operative and Nixon White House insider, as a mentally unstable drunk.

In the video, Hunt discusses LBJ, who saw Kennedy as an “obstacle” to the presidency, and how Johnson consorted with top CIA officials Cord Meyer and William K. Harvey to carry out the assassination plot. Hunt had direct knowledge of the plot because he was part of it in his role as a “bench warmer,” as he described himself.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/landmark-e-howard-hunt-jfk-confession-video-tape-ignored.html

The physical evidence in relation to the assassination confirms that Lee Harvey Oswald could not have been the lone gunman in this crime.

1. An audio recording of the attack clearly indicates more than three shots were fired. According the the official story it was impossible for Oswald to have fired more than three times, therefore a second gunman must have been present.
2. The "magic bullet", that MUST have caused wounds to JFK and Governor Connolly if the official story is to be believed, is planted evidence. It's impossible for this particular bullet to have remained in such a pristine condition after punching though the muscle and bone of two people. The one claim saying that the bullet could have survived with so little deformation should be viewed suspiciously, seeing as there has never been a successful repetition of this questionable ballistics test.

From the physical evidence it's more than likely that Oswald did not fire any shots at all and was, as he claimed, "just a patsy."

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 26th, 2008.]

State After State, ES&S iVotronics Are Flipping Democratic Votes to Republican!

This is just getting worse and worse. Now it's happening in Texas. (And in MO, if you read to the end of the article). And the vaunted "thousands of attorneys" from the Obama campaign and the DNC are still nowhere to be found.

With every incident so far reported of touch-screen vote-flipping during early voting in this year's general election --- from county to county in WV and in Nashville, TN) --- it's been the ES&S iVotronic touch-screen machine that has failed, flipping votes from one candidate to another not chosen by the voter. In every instance [see update below], it's been an attempted Democratic vote, flipped to a Republican, or another party.
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6559

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 26th, 2008.]

Preparing the Cover Story for the Theft of the Election

Two weeks to go and the machine is starting to prepare the narrative for how it is possible that John McCain won the 2008 Presidential election. With every poll showing an Obama lead of anywhere from 10-14 points for the past few weeks, suddenly today the Associated Press announced a new poll that shows the race in a dead heat. Nonsense. With the backdrop of the Kennedy-Palast reporting on how the GOP has already started the systematic theft of the election this poll today is just the coverage they need to pretend that the results of a McCain victory will be legitimate. If McCain does indeed go on to steal the election, no doubt his supporters will point to this bogus poll to refute the other polls.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Preparing-the-Cover-Story-by-Anthony-Wade-081022-947.html

Despite attempts at fraud, I find it hard to think that McCain will get through. However, the USA is basically a one party state that panders to special interest (elitist) lobby groups. The idea that there is a big difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is a falsity. I'll believe all the talk of change when I see it because the players behind the scenes, who are pulling the strings, are all establishment people.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 24th, 2008.]

Why Wont The Bail Out Work? MUST SEE!

(6:52)

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 24th, 2008.]

James Gourley Published in "The Journal of Engineering Mechanics

The Journal of Engineering Mechanics has recently published a paper I authored. It can be found here, beginning on page 915: (PDF 224kb)

Normally, such a publication would be announced here at 911Blogger to let everyone know we are still making progress publishing criticisms of the official fairy tale in mainstream technical journals, in the hopes of reaching more members of the scientific and engineering community.

While I am excited this paper will be reaching new audiences, and I would like to share that fact with you, I am writing today for a different purpose.

Not much is ever written about what we go through to get these papers published. The publication of this paper is a case study in the struggles we face. I'd like to relate to you exactly what I had to go through to get this paper published, and what influences the substance of it have already had. I hesitate to reveal some of the information below, but as will become clear, the Journal of Engineering Mechanics personnel have demonstrated a complete lack of scientific ethics, and I feel like I have no choice but to publish exactly what occurred in the lead up to my paper's publication.
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20081021140852820

It is a fact that there is a level of bias and censorship, from those running the scientific journals, that stops fair treatment of material going against the official narrative. Science tries to be objective but as we can see from the full article above there is a fair dose of psychological and political positioning to be overcome.

When it comes to the crunch, the material put out by the 911 debunking community and those who support the official story consists of rubbish. None of the debunking publications has stood up to proper scrutiny.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 24th, 2008.]

BBC Set To Air Third Smear Attack On 9/11 Truth

The BBC is set to launch a third savage smear attack on the 9/11 truth movement by re-hashing a now thoroughly debunked program that it first aired in July of this year.

Having taken its rightful place alongside Popular Mechanics and The History Channel as one of the 21st century's most plentiful peddlers of yellow journalism with their first 9/11 hit piece last year, "Auntie Beeb" had another crack at the whip on July 6th when it aired a documentary about the collapse of WTC Building 7, the 47-storey skyscraper that imploded into its own footprint on 9/11 without being hit by a plane, called "The Third Tower".

The program claimed to offer the solution to the "final mystery of 9/11". Clearly the fact that the BBC has trotted out another version of this same documentary within four months is an admittance of a failure to do just that.
http://www.infowars.net/articles/october2008/211008BBC.htm

From reading the remainder of the article it sounds like the BBC is set to air a slightly updated version of the trash they put out the first time around. Extra segments are set to contain discredited information provided by the recent NIST study on the collapse on WTC 7 and an interview with witness Michael Hess, who changed his story about the explosions he experienced in WTC 7. By airing such garbage the BBC is destroying its credibility. Those who are aware of background information available online won't be fooled by this disinformation.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 24th, 2008.]

This Is How The Bail Out Will Screw You

(5:07)

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 24th, 2008.]

"Bush Guilty Of First Degree Murder"

Former L.A. County Prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi and author of "The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder", which details prosecutable evidence of murder by George Bush and Dick Cheney and others.

George W Bush knew and purposely lied to America and mislead The Congress about "Saddam Hussein NOT being an IMMINENT threat" to the United States by deleting that critical sentence in a declassified report (The White Papers) by his own Intelligence Advisors in order to start the War with Iraq.


(7:14)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21057.htm

By lying in order to start the war Bush and his co-conspirators knew they would be sending many US servicemen and women to unnecessary deaths. Hence the Murder charges.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 23th, 2008.]

All you need to know about Credit Default Swaps

By David Stevenson

How did credit default swaps start?

Credit default swaps (CDS) are a form of credit derivative, allegedly dreamed up on a JP Morgan "off-site weekend" in 1994. JP Morgan's books were loaded with tens of billions of dollars in loans to corporations and foreign governments, and by federal law it had to keep huge amounts of capital in reserve in case any of them went bad. The firm's bankers were addressing "a question as old as banking itself – how to mitigate your risk when you loan money", says Matthew Phillips in Newsweek. But "what if JP Morgan could create a device that would protect it if those loans defaulted, and free up that capital"?

Credit default swaps: how do they work?

Credit default swaps enable investors, in theory, to cover themselves against default. JP Morgan's bankers came up with a sort of insurance policy in which a third party assumes the risk of a loan to a customer going bad, and in exchange receives regular payments, rather like policy premiums. So a CDS is created, which removes the risk of that customer defaulting from the bank's books. JP Morgan built up a "swaps" desk in the mid-1990s and within a few years the CDS became the hot financial product. The market doubled in size each year and spread to cover all grades of corporate and emerging-market debt. And when traders realised they could sell swaps on bonds and other income-producing products they didn't own and without reserve cover (in other words, without anything to back the insurance), CDS became a big speculative area, too.

So investors piled into the credit default swap market?

They certainly did. But JP Morgan didn't realise it was creating a monster. The Paulson Troubled Asset Relief Plan (Tarp) has called for $700bn (£400bn) to buy up 'bad' assets from bank balance sheets. In comparison, data from the International Swaps and Derivatives Association show that at the end of June, the credit default swap market had a notional value of $54trn. That's the same as the planet's 2007 GDP and nearly four times the value of all stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Notional value is the theoretical amount covered – for an entire $54trn to be lost, all asset values would have to fall to zero, which is hardly likely. Even so, this is still a huge market. CDS had a market value of some $2trn in May, according to Moody's Investor Service, although as CDS are privately negotiated contracts between two parties and aren't government regulated, there's no central reporting mechanism to determine their value. More to the point, nobody checks whether institutions selling CDS are able to pay up if they eventually have to. And now that markets are in turmoil, credit derivatives are being widely blamed for making matters a lot worse.

Credit default swaps: where did problems start?

With the US housing boom. As the Fed slashed interest rates and record numbers of Americans piled into property, house prices soared and mortgage-backed securities (MBS) became the 'must-have' investment. Subprime mortgages were pooled, sliced and diced into bonds that were bought by just about every financial firm in town, and by banks around the world, too. Credit default swaps were taken out to protect many of these MBS against default. "These structures were such a great deal, everyone and their dog decided to jump in, which led to massive growth in the market," says Rohan Douglas, ex-head of Salomon Brothers and Citigroup's global credit swaps research unit in the 1990s. Firms such as the giant US insurer AIG started issuing CDS by the bucket load – $440bn, to be exact. When US house prices nose-dived and MBS values crashed, AIG had to find $14bn to cover its exposure. As the stockmarket sussed out that the insurer couldn't to do this, its shares collapsed, dragging down the Dow and fuelling a panic that the CDS market was about to fail. So AIG had to be rescued by the US taxpayer.

Credit default swaps: the AIG bailout still hasn't saved the day?

Not at all. Major institutions are closely linked through credit default swap deals. When one side of a trade defaults, it starts a chain reaction that raises the risk of others losing money. That's called 'counterparty risk', and is partly what has spooked investors into selling off assets and lenders into curbing credit. The collapse of Lehman Brothers has had a particularly big impact. Lehman wrote more than $700bn-worth of CDS. Now it's gone bust, investors who had taken out these CDS have been left without the insurance, so they're having to buy more, even though prices are now rising because of the general turmoil. And with investors also buying CDS simply to gamble on whether or not a company will go bust, the impact of a default is far bigger than just the amount of debt and equity a firm has issued. As Gregg Berman at RiskMetrics puts it, "When you... have more people betting, you magnify the impact of a default."

Credit default swaps: what happens now?

With credit default swaps seen as playing a pivotal role in the financial crisis, the government is itching to regulate. New York State has said it will begin doing so in January and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York hopes to create a 'clearing house' to curb market risks, reports Bloomberg. But not everyone agrees. "CDS have been vilified," says derivatives trader Terri Duhon, "it's like saying it's the gun's fault when someone gets shot." While swaps have been "dramatically misused, making it a lot easier for some people to get into trouble", says Stanford economist Darrell Duffie, "they shouldn't be done away with entirely. If you outlaw them, then the financial engineers will just come up with something else that gets around the regulations".
http://www.moneyweek.com/news-and-charts/economics/all-you-need-to-know-about-credit-default-swaps-13792.aspx

These CDS should be abolished. The fact remains that there ARE costs to doing business. Insuring against a loss, with no money to pay for the loss is madness. Sure, the CDS allowed more capital to be freed, but it created a house of cards.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 23th, 2008.]

Structural Engineering Council casts Doubt on NIST’s WTC 7 Report.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has published comments on the NIST WTC 7 Report. The CTBUH questions critical points of the NIST WTC 7 collapse theory and also highlights problems with the writing NIST report itself.

The CTBUH criticisms focus on two technical issues The conjectured failure of shear studs and bolts on the supposedly critical Column 79 ... And NIST’s assertion that column buckling proceeded floor collapse:
------------------------------------------------------------------
The CTBUH provides at least three good reasons to dismiss the NIST report as a blatant fraud: (a) phenomenal shear-stud and bolt failure at Column 79, (b) cooling around Column 79 at the supposed time of thermal expansive failure and (c) mystical floor beam buckling. But on the other hand, the CTBUH ignores the blatant evidence of controlled demolition in WTC 7 for no technical reason what-so-ever.

(I do not include the CTBUH’s insistence that floor failure proceeds column failure as a reason to disregard NIST because the idea that either could cause any kind of a collapse that could be confused with a controlled demolition is plainly absurd).
http://www.infowars.com/?p=5327

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 22th, 2008.]

CIA’s Robert Baer knows Guy who ‘Cashed Out’ day before 9/11

On 9/11 prior knowledge, and perhaps a clue towards the put options on the day of 9/11: “I know the guy that went into his broker in San Diego and said ‘cash me out, it’s going down tomorrow.’”

He then went on to say that this man’s “brother worked in the White House.”
http://www.infowars.com/?p=5430

Baer is a spook. When speaking truthfully he will often only ever reveal part of what he actually knows. In this case Baer is lending credence to the reports of "insider trading" related to the attacks of 911.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 22th, 2008.]

More W.Va. Voters say Machines are Switching Votes

Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots last week.

This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported this problem. Last week, three voters in Jackson County told The Charleston Gazette their electronic vote for "Barack Obama" kept flipping to "John McCain".
http://www.sundaygazettemail.com/News/200810180251

The voting machines also flipped votes from Republican to Democrat in the 2004 Presidential Elections. None of the reports indicated flips going the other way.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 22th, 2008.]

The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree

The occupation of Iraq will cost $3 trillion, America's most expensive conflict since WWII.

Can YOU spend that money better?

Here's your chance to go on a virtual $3 trillion shopping spree and prove it!

Browse our online store, fill up your cart, click the checkout button, and send virtual gifts to everyone you know.

A private island fortress? Healthcare for all? Anything you can imagine, and if you can't find it, add it yourself!


(1:40)

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 22th, 2008.]

The Crumbling U.S. Economy, Worse is Yet to Come

I wish I didn't have to sound so bearish. No one wants to see workers thrown out on the street, millions of Americans suffer through deep recession, or stocks fall out of bed. But the fundamentals at the heart of this crisis are not improving. To the contrary; they're signaling one of the worst Octobers on record.

Just take a look at last week's pile-up of dismal news announcements (along with my view on each) …

First , the National Association of Home Builders announced that October has been the cruelest month ever for the housing industry. The group's index, which measures home sales and buyer traffic, has just fallen to the worst levels in its 23-year history.

My view: A lasting recovery in construction activity, sales, and home prices remains many, many months away.

Second, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that 3.7 million Americans are now receiving unemployment benefits — the most in more than five years.

My view: The broad economy is behaving like the Titanic, and these job losses could be just the tip of the iceberg.

Third, U.S. industrial production cratered 2.8% in September — more than three times the decline that was expected and the single-worst reading in any month going back to 1974.

My view: This is the first hard data confirming what we've suspected all along — that this recession could be at least as bad as the 1974-75 recession, which was the deepest since the Great Depression.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article6871.html

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 21th, 2008.]

Cronytopia: What the World Knows -- and Americans Don't -- About the Bailout

While Americans looking at the nations's "leading newspaper," the New York Times, found a vast belching of psychobabble and personal gossip about Cindy McCain taking up the front page, the rest of the world was learning this:

Financial workers at Wall Street's top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash, the Guardian has learned.

Staff at six banks including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are in line to pick up the payouts despite being the beneficiaries of a $700bn bail-out from the US government that has already prompted criticism. The government's cash has been poured in on the condition that excessive executive pay would be curbed.

The Guardian errs a bit in that last sentence, of coure. Almost all of the "conditions" mentioned in connection with the bailout have no teeth whatsoever, no enforcement mechanism, no real penalities. They are more properly termed "suggestions," or rather, "PR exercises that we hope our Wall Street lords will deign to at least pretend to follow for a short time, until the heat is off."

But still, the meat of the story is solid indeed. And how did the British newspaper find out what America's "paper of record" -- and the countless media outlets that follow its lead -- seems not to know? By looking at publicly available documents and connecting the dots: journalism, in other words.
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m48054&hd=&size=1&l=e

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 20th, 2008.]

Allan Rees Interviews Dr. Shyam Sunder

Dr. Shyam Sunder, the lead WTC 7 investigator for NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), interviewed by Allan Rees of NoLiesRadio.org.

Audio Archive: Interview Audio (~5MB MP3 Audio)

Dr Sunder describes the non-actions of NIST in their "investigation" of the collapse of World Trade Centre 7 and the Twin Towers. The NIST investigators seemed to have discounted, a priori, any information that did not fit in with their predetermined conclusion that fires brought down the World Trade Centre buildings.

Sunder dismissed hard physical evidence at variance with the official study as insignificant "isolated observations" (nothing to see here !) Any counter-prevailing facts are only wild "speculation".

Sunder also mentions that much of the testimony they use to support their version of events is confidential- and therefore not verifiable by independent researchers.

Sunder also misstated some facts, the most glaring was his description of a bright liquid material flowing from the side of the building that he said was "silvery". It was actually bright yellow in colour, a very significant error when it comes to making an accurate scientific assessment of this anomaly.

From listening to the interview, it is no wonder that Sunder and NIST representatives refuse to openly debate members of Architects and Engineer for 911 Truth. Dr Sunder revealed the NIST investigation to be thoroughly biased against any evidence that did not fall into their fire collapse theories.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 19th, 2008.]

Theft of the 2008 Election

BBC Newsnight journalist Greg Palast goes on the trail of the missing votes from Colorado to New Mexico to Michigan. Broadcast on BBC Newsnight UK and America.


Part 1 (6:51)


Part 2 (7:03)

One overlooked aspect of the election fraud, not covered in this news clip, is the fact that the voting machines that count the votes appear to have been hacked in previous elections. You vote for one person and the machine flips your vote to the other candidate.

There is abundant evidence that the hacking, done by people in the companies that serviced the machines, decided the outcome in many swing States that were tipped to go to Kerry.

The US election process is a farce.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 18th, 2008.]

Not Enough Money in the World: The Real Monster in the Meltdown Closet

What has struck mortal fear in the heart of markets and governments is not bad mortgages, but the almost incomprehensibly huge and complex market for "derivatives," based in part on mortgage debt -- but also on a vast array of other sources that were "securitized," turned into tradable if ghostly commodities then sold off in a bewildering variety of increasingly arcane forms. This was accompanied by the expansion of yet another vast market in insurance mechanisms designed to protect these derivatives -- mechanisms which themselves became "securitized."

At the same time, the financial services industry used its paid bagmen in governments around the world to loosen almost all restrictions not only on securitization and the trading of derivatives, but also on the amount of debt that institutions could take on in order to play around in these vastly expanded and deregulated markets. For example, as Lancaster points out, UK's Barclays Bank had a debt-to-equity ratio of 63 to 1:

Imagine that for a moment translated to your own finances, so that you could stretch what you actually, unequivocally own to borrow more than sixty times the amount. (I’d have an island. What about you?)

The result of all this has been the construction of a gargantuan house of cards, based on next to nothing, and left alone in the shadow of building "perfect storm" of greed, deregulation and political corruption.

That storm has now struck. The house of cards has fallen down, and revealed a hole of derivatives-based debt that could not be filled, literally, by all the money in the world, much less by the mere trillions that national governments are frantically throwing at it today.

Yes, "mere" trillions. As Will Hutton explains in the Observer:

...the dark heart of the global financial system [is] the $55 trillion market in credit derivatives and, in particular, credit default swaps, the mechanisms routinely used to insure banks against losses on risky investments. This is a market more than twice the size of the combined GDP of the US, Japan and the EU. Until it is cleaned up and the toxic threat it poses is removed, the pandemic will continue. Even nationalised banks, and the countries standing behind them, could be overwhelmed by the scale of the losses now emerging.

Try to imagine that: a $55 trillion market now at risk of complete destruction. Even the derivative debt owed by individual institutions stands at nation-wrecking levels. For example, a single bank in Britain, Barclays again, holds more than $2.4 trillion in credit default swaps, the tradable "insurance" mechanism against securities default. This is more than the entire GDP of Great Britain. If all this paper goes bad, there are not enough assets in the entire country to pay it off. And that's just one bank, in one country.
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1628-not-enough-money-in-the-world-the-real-monster-in-the-meltdown-closet.html

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 17th, 2008.]

Does the bailout pass the smell test?

By Paul Craig Roberts

The explanation that has been given for the financial crisis does not match up with the solution that has been devised. Moreover, the windows into the crisis offered by the authorities are opaque rather than transparent.

The only clarity we have is that the crisis is resulting in financial concentration and that the bailout constitutes a massive raid by financial crooks on both taxpayers and central bank reserves in the US and Europe.

The public monies that are being directed to private financial institutions are huge. According to news reports, Germany is devoting $540 billion to shoring up German banks, England is devoting $73 billion, and France has pledged over $400 billion. The US now has four separate bailouts underway, $800 billion for banks, $200 billion for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, $85 billion for the insurer AIG, and $25 billion for the US auto industry. These figures add to more than $2.1 trillion.

Some of these public monies are for purchasing troubled paper assets. Others are to be directly injected into the banks as public supplied capital for private financial institutions, an ironic outcome for the free market ideology that resulted in the deregulation of the US financial system. According to news reports, in England the entire $73 billion is being poured into banks as publicly supplied new capital. In Germany $135 billion is for recapitalizing troubled banks. In the US Treasury Secretary Paulson is talking about using bailout money to purchase non-voting bank shares.

How is it possible that a financial crisis of such magnitude hit with such suddenness and urgency, catching finance ministries and central banks unaware?

If the problem is what the public has been told, namely that defaulting subprime mortgages are reducing the income flows through to the holders of the mortgage backed securities, why isn’t the bailout money being used to refinance the defaulting mortgages and to pay off the foreclosed mortgages? That would restore the value of the mortgage backed securities, and it would not be necessary to pour huge amounts of taxpayers’ money into recapitalizing banks and purchasing their bad assets.

There is not an unmanageable number of defaulting mortgages. According to the US Treasury estimate, 90-93% of the mortgages are good. How does a 7% or 10% default rate on US mortgages translate into a systemic worldwide financial crisis?

The popping of the US real estate bubble could not produce worldwide systemic financial crisis without the mark-to-market rule, short-sellers, and a great deal of hype and orchestration. Why did Secretary Paulson let Lehman Bros. fail when every other firm is bailed out? Did Lehman’s failure, by unwinding its own large portfolio, push hedge funds and banks into panic selloffs that spread the crisis at home and abroad?

The US Congress held no hearings on the crisis and consulted no independent experts. Congress responded dumbly to the financial crisis, just as it did following 9/11 when the Bush regime handed it the PATRIOT Act and the Afghan invasion. To secure Congress’ acquiescence to the Paulson bailout, the Bush regime used threats of meltdown and martial law to panic Congress into turning over vast amounts of money for which accountability is lacking. The hype behind the Paulson bailout is the financial version of the mushroom cloud evocation used by the Bush regime to panic Congress into accepting the US invasion of Iraq. Is yet another hidden agenda at work?

It is unclear how the bailout will play out. The monies for the US bailout will have to be borrowed abroad or printed. If foreign central banks need their dollar reserves in order to bail out their own banks that are polluted with toxic US financial instruments, the US Treasury might not have an easy time in the debt market. Moreover, the interest expense on an additional borrowed $700 billion will raise the US current account deficit and burden US taxpayers with higher interest payments. If the money has to be printed, inflation and dollar devaluation will depress living standards for most Americans.

If the US economy sinks deeper into recession, lost jobs and rising interest rates on troubled mortgages will result in more defaults and foreclosures, thus further impairing mortgage backed securities and requiring Congress to put more burdens on hard-pressed US taxpayers in behalf of the banks.

The authorities have blamed subprime mortgages for the crisis. Why then does their solution fail to address the problem of the mortgages? Instead, the solution directs public money into an increasingly concentrated private financial sector, the management of which is not only vastly overpaid, but also has escaped accountability for the financial chicanery that, allegedly, threatens systemic financial meltdown unless bailed out by the taxpayers.

Perhaps my nose is too sensitive, but this bailout doesn’t pass the smell test.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21014.htm

One might rightly consider many aspects of the this meltdown to have been engineered.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 16th, 2008.]

CIA Tactics Endorsed in Secret Memos: Waterboarding got nod from White House

The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.

The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27192452

According to the Geneva Conventions anyone party to War Crimes can be charged as a war criminal. All the individuals listed above, from the Lawyers, to the intelligence officials, and White House Officials who formed the group that okayed waterboarding and other forms of torture should be arrested on the prima facie evidence at hand.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 16th, 2008.]

Exit Polls Raising Concerns this Year for U.S. Television Networks

Barack Obama's tendency through the Democratic primaries to perform better in exit polls than he actually does at the ballot box has some media organizations nervous heading into Election Night.

Television networks want to avoid having their performance become an issue for the third straight presidential election. Their political experts hope that experience gained during the primaries will help things run smoothly Nov. 4.

ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and The Associated Press pool resources to conduct exit polls in select precincts, hoping to glean information about why people vote the way they do and to help predict a winner or loser. A combination of actual vote counts and exit polls is generally used to "call" a state for one candidate or another.

Exit polls frequently overstated Obama's vote during the primaries by as much as three percentage points.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=cp_X100304AU.xml&show_article=1

The obvious conclusion is that the election result discrepancy, between the official count and the polling, is due to fraud. In foreign countries, when the highly accurate exit polling is out then the election in question is considered to be corrupted. The article here tries to explain away the "errors" so that people will not become suspicious.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 15th, 2008.]

Dollar, Euro, Sterling May Be Destroyed Zimbabwe-Style

Private investment advisor Martin Hennecke warned this morning that the endless printing of money to bail out collapsing banks would lead to hyperinflation and the Zimbabwe-style destruction of the dollar, euro and sterling.

Asked by CNBC how the three currencies could be destroyed, Hennecke, senior manager of private clients at Tyche, highlighted the collapse of Iceland’s banks.

“They have a lot of external debt in other currencies so they wouldn’t be able to print up more of their own currency - meaning hyperinflation to get out of their debt - but the UK, the U.S. and the rest of Europe could do it….this is the first step down the road to hyperinflation,” said Hennecke.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/dollar-euro-sterling-may-be-destroyed-zimbabwe-style.html

Pumping money into investments that are making losses is like throwing money down a hole. The extra money is lost, and the loss is now reflected on the governments involved on the bailouts. When so much money is printed and wasted in the effort to prop up insolvent businesses then the currency itself cannot be worth very much- hence the monetary devaluation and inflation. On a fundamental level, a country full of failed businesses cannot have a currency that is worth very much in comparison to more robust systems or commodities.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 14th, 2008.]

The Crushing Potential of Financial Derivatives

There is room for derivatives on the macroeconomic scene as long as they are kept on a very short leash and used for their intended purpose which is, solely, to help producers manage the risks of dramatic changes in markets they depend upon for raw materials used in production. A prominent example of this is the commodities futures markets.

Traditionally, commodities futures were used by companies like Kellogg's Cereal as a form of “insurance” to help them manage the risk of major price fluctuations in the grains they use to make breakfast cereal. By purchasing a futures contract to guarantee the future delivery price of the grains they needed to make cereal for the consumer marketplace, they could be certain that they could maintain relative price stability at the retail level (benefiting consumers) and still operate with the profit they would need to stay in business and serve the market.

In the early 1980's, derivatives began to appear that were of a strictly financial nature. The reasoning behind their regulatory approval was that producers of financial “products” and services also needed to have similar types of “insurance” to protect them against future risks and uncertainties - just like the non-financial operators had. The main selling point was, of course, that these financial futures contracts would help financial companies to stabilize their operations and provide powerful tools to manage their risks from fluctuating markets and future uncertainties, as well. Unfortunately, these sophisticated tools that were originally intended to help firms manage risk grew into potent vehicles for leveraged speculation… and this is where the systemic problems we're facing today originated.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article6756.html

I thought to include these few paragraphs here that explain how the derivatives markets originated. The rest of the article mentions that the speculative derivatives market has expanded to over 680 trillion dollars verses the gross national product GDP of the world at 65 trillion.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 14th, 2008.]

The Woman Who Could Have Prevented This Financial Mess Was Silenced by Greenspan, Rubin and Summers

More than a decade ago, a woman you're likely never to have heard of, Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission -- a federal agency that regulates options and futures trading -- was the oracle whose warnings about the dangerous boom in derivatives trading just might have averted the calamitous bust now engulfing the US and global markets. Instead she was met with scorn, condescension and outright anger by former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and his deputy Lawrence Summers. In fact, Greenspan, the man some affectionately called "The Oracle," spent his political capital cheerleading these disastrous financial instruments.

On Thursday, the New York Times ran a masterful and revealing front page article exposing the culpability of Greenspan, Rubin and Summers for the era of dangerous turbulence we live in.

What these "three marketeers" -- as they were called in a 1999 Time magazine cover story -- were adept at was peddling the timebombs at the heart of this complex crisis: exotic and opaque financial instruments known as derivatives -- contracts intended to hedge against risk and whose values are derived from underlying assets. To cut to the quick, Greenspan, Rubin and Summers opposed regulating them. "Proposals to bring even minimalist regulation were basically rebuffed by Greenspan and various people in the Treasury," recalls Alan Blinder, a former Federal Reserve board member and economist at Princeton University, in the Times article.

In 1997, Brooksley Born warned in congressional testimony that unregulated trading in derivatives could "threaten our regulated markets or, indeed, our economy without any federal agency knowing about it." Born called for greater transparency -- disclosure of trades and reserves as a buffer against losses.

Instead of heeding this oracle's warnings, Greenspan, Rubin & Summers rushed to silence her. http://www.alternet.org/workplace/102559/the_woman_who_could_have_prevented_this_financial_mess_was_silenced_by_greenspan,_rubin_and_summers/?comments=view&cID=1032149&pID=1032115#c1032149

Greenspan and his friends did everything they could to allow the economy to inflate and ignored the massive risks of doing so.


[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 13th, 2008.]

UK UAV Bomb Can Hover For Ten Hours

A revolutionary missile that can stalk a target until the perfect moment to strike is being developed by the Ministry of Defence for use against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The so-called lurker bomb will also be able to shadow British troops for up to ten hours or 100 miles, ready to take out enemy targets with surgical precision at a minute’s notice.

The 12ft weapon – officially named Fire Shadow and made in Britain by leading missile manufacturer MBDA – will be operated by the Royal Artillery.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1076646/The-lurker-bomb-hover-hours--strike-target-space-minute.html

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 13th, 2008.]

VIDEO - The Bubble Man

(3:35)

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 13th, 2008.]

Shut Down The Derivatives Markets To Save Civilization [Essential Reading !!]

By John Hoefle

"It is time to break the silence on derivatives," Lyndon LaRouche said yesterday, after observing the carnage in the financial system and the pathetic response from the so-called regulators. "The true, hyperinflationary factor in the situation is the unregulated, insanely leveraged derivatives trade. This is what is killing us. This is the great crime of Alan Greenspan."

LaRouche described the derivatives market as a "hyperinflationary bomb, crushing the international financial system," warning that "Until you just shut down the whole derivatives trade--wipe these gambling obligations off the books of the financial system--you are just kidding yourself."

"Unless and until you deal with this derivatives bubble, which cannot be bailed out, you are just kidding yourself," he continued. "It is time for Hank Paulson to swallow the only real medicine: bankruptcy reorganization of the entire, dollar-based financial system. And the first step in any such bankruptcy reorganization would be the cancellation of these quadrillions of dollars in pure gambling obligations. Without such action, this planet is doomed to a horrible dark age, just like the dark age of the fourteenth century, that followed the collapse of the Lombard banking system."

Blood In The Streets

You don't have to be a financial insider to see that the entire global financial system is collapsing, since that collapse is now front-page news every day. The Bush Administration, its co-conspirators in Congress, and the Federal Reserve have passed the largest financial bailout scheme in history, and the Fed and the Treasury are cooking up new bailout facilities and increasing the money available in existing facilities on practically a daily basis. The stock markets are plunging, with the Dow Jones Industrial Index down 40 percent in a year, and dropping like a rock. The banks, particularly in the U.S. and Europe, are vaporizing faster than most people would have thought possible a year ago, with governments in most major European countries belatedly taking steps to prop up the banks and stop runs by protecting deposits. Yet despite it all, the crisis deepens by the day.

The carnage is becoming increasingly more visible in the daily lives of our citizens, as the effects of demise of the securities market "debt machine" wipes out the credit most Americans had come to depend upon, in their households and workplaces. Banks are cutting back on credit-card limits and other consumer loans; mortgages are harder to come by, cash-out refinancings and home equity lines of credit are drying up as home prices fall; and businesses are finding it harder and harder to sell new debt in the bond, commercial paper and other corporate debt markets. For an economy which is dependent upon debt, and already in hock up to its eyeballs, these are ominous developments. The fabric of society is breaking down, and the blood in the streets is spreading.

Deadly Derivatives

The chief financial factor in this carnage is the world's largest casino, the derivatives market. The derivatives market is far larger than the world's stock and bond markets combined, with bets in the quadrillions of dollars compared to the trillions of stocks and bonds. While it is impossible to put an exact number to the size of the overall derivatives market, given its unregulated operations and the way most derivatives deals are privately negotiated, it is possible to put a number to the value of the derivatives bets outstanding, and that number is zero.

Derivatives were the great financial innovation of the Greenspan era, a form of sleight of hand designed to hide the bankruptcy of the financial system after the stock market crash of 1987, the collapse of the savings and loan sector, the bankruptcy of the banking system as a whole, and the collapse of the junk-bond bubble. The derivatives market was a fraud from its inception, a virtual market where the big banks and other speculators could bet on the movements of currencies, bonds, stocks and the indices associated with them. Because the derivatives did not require the ownership of the instruments upon which they were nominally based, the level of bets soon outstripped the levels of the underlying instruments, with, for example, far more derivatives bets on bonds than there were actual bonds.

The derivatives market also employed high degrees of leverage, placing bets with borrowed money. Using leverage, the speculators could place far larger bets than they could were they limited to their own money. This leverage was highly profitable--at least virtually--as long as the game was expanding, but turned deadly when the music stopped. The, reverse leverage set in, and the players began losing not only their bets but the money they borrowed to place those bets. This reverse leverage made it possible for the gamblers to lose multiples of the money they put in, before the loans.

Another innovation that was highly "profitable" before it blew up was the market for credit derivatives (a.k.a., credit default swaps, or CDS), a form of insurance policy for bonds and derivatives bets. While the derivatives market was in full swing, banks, insurance companies and other financial firms sold trillions of dollars of credit derivatives to guarantee the value of a wide range of securities. The credit derivatives were a fig leaf, a necessary part of the derivatives scam. The derivatives sellers, for example, routinely created triple-A rated mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations out of pools of subprime debt, and through the use of credit derivatives, were able to sell such triple-A rated junk to pension funds and other buyers who had a fiduciary obligation to buy only high-quality securities. Without the fig leaf of credit derivatives, this scam would not have been possible, nor would all the losses which followed.

The obvious point is that, in any widespread securities crisis, the credit derivatives sellers would never be able to cover the insurance they wrote. A.I.G., for example, wrote hundreds of billions of dollars of credit derivatives, including a substantial amount based upon securities issued by Lehman Brothers. When Lehman failed, so did A.I.G., which has now received some $120 billion in emergency loans from the Fed.

The settlement date for credit derivatives written on Lehman securities was Oct. 10, at which point the Lehman securities were valued, optimistically, at just 8.6-cents per dollar of face value. This will be the largest payout ever for the credit derivatives market, assuming the sellers can afford the payments.

Shut It Down

The attempt to save the fictitious "values" and "profits" of the derivatives market is one of the prime drivers of the largest bailout attempt in history. We stress attempt, because the bailout is not working, and can not work--there isn't enough money in the world to cover all these funny-money bets, and the efforts by the central banks to print that money, is fueling a hyperinflationary bomb which will wipe out not only the remnants of financial system, but also the governments, national economies and the means of existence for most of the world's population.

It is therefore essential that the bailout of the derivatives bubble be stopped, immediately. All derivatives trades should be declared null and void, and wiped off the books of the speculators. Any financial instrument containing a derivative should also be declared null and void, and wiped off the books. This unregulated, insanely leveraged casino should be shut down, and all claims arising from derivatives bets nullified, as if the bets had never occurred.

There can be no compromise on this. Shut it down, and shut it down now. Your life, and the nation, depends upon it.
http://www.rense.com/general83/lod.htm

An excellent explanation of the crisis and why so much money is being sucked up by the banks. It's all about the derivatives and the insurance taken out against this funny money.

Note: Hyperinflation in the US will destroy the US dollar and plunge that country -- and any others suffering from inflation -- into poverty.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 12th, 2008.]

Iran's 'Nuclear Detonators' Are A CIA Fake

The U.S. sent a Russian scientist as an agent to Vienna with manipulated blueprints of special detonators to hand them to a delegate from Iran. Eight years later the IAEA gets handed material by the U.S. about special detonator experiments allegedly made in Iran

Now Iran gets accused by U.S. and European 'officials' (note: NOT IAEA officials) of having worked or planed to work with such detonators based on a 'secret' long brief in Farsi of which the IAEA first only got handed a five page English copy.

I do smell a rat here - a big one. This is Iraq and 'Niger papers' all over.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2008/10/irans-nuclear-d.html

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 12th, 2008.]

MOUSELAND

(6:38)

Hosted by Kiefer Sutherland this great short film sums up the political environment of North America. The current economic bailout bill is being run by the cats.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 11th, 2008.]

911 Truth Outshines Phony "Debunkers" on Press TV

Do you consider yourself a skeptical person? You may ask me - "About what?" How about the reasons you are asked by your government to surrender your liberty? Shouldn't the surrender of your inalienable Constitutional Liberties top any list of reasons to be skeptical? And if every reason given for you to give up your freedom originates with the attacks of September 11, 2001 would you agree it is your solemn duty to be skeptical of the explanations provided to you by your PUBLIC SERVANTS about what happened that day? Please watch the videos below.

The "debunkers" in this video seem to be pleading with the public not to look behind the curtain (audio) . One of the defenders of the official conspiracy theory, Nick Pope, waves his ragged copy of the now debunked (videos) official 911 Commission Report as if holding up a holy book. He makes excuses for why the 911 commissioners really didn't mean it when they said they were set up to fail. In the first segment Nick Pope makes the illogical assertion that the U.S. government was too busy going after the perpetrators of 911 (with video) to investigate who it was that is actually responsible for the attacks.
http://www.americanjourneyblog.com/2008/09/press-tv-911-discussion.html

It really doesn't matter what twisted and absurd arguments the skeptics use because there is damning forensic evidence, from World Trade Centre site, proving that explosives were used to bring down the buildings. 911 was an inside job, and anyone doing further research, especially those who have read the works put out by Steven Jones and David Ray Griffin, will see through the deceptions.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 10th, 2008.]

Brokers threatened by run on Shadow Bank System

A network of lenders, brokers and opaque financing vehicles outside traditional banking that ballooned during the bull market now is under siege as regulators threaten a crackdown on the so-called shadow banking system.

The shadow banking system grew rapidly during the past decade, accumulating more than $10 trillion in assets by early 2007. That made it roughly the same size as the traditional banking system, according to the Federal Reserve.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/big-brokers-threatened-crackdown-shadow/story.aspx?guid=%7BFA23DF5A%2D918F%2D41DA%2DB794%2D7E553ADAFAA7%7D

Don't fully believe the Fed. The full size of this shadow banking system is a lot larger than the real economy upon which it was leveraged - and this is the problem. Being larger, losses in the shadow system cannot be fully covered by real assets in the real system. Hence bankruptcies. What no one is sure about is the extent of the failures in the shadow system. Part of the reason for the current bailout is an attempt to delay the effects of the losses. One solution here is to abolish the existing shadow banking system.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 10th, 2008.]

Banks Hoarding Cash to Pay Derivatives Liabilities

Tomorrow, the auction for Lehman's credit default swaps will be held, and the final result will probably be that that holders of credit default swaps will have to pay around $360 billion dollars (see below). That's for Lehman alone. Derivatives exposure due to other failed businesses is even higher.

This is why Wall Street firms and banks have been hoarding cash.
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2008/10/banks-hoarding-cash-to-pay-derivatives.html

There is money in the system but it's "needed" to pay for the phantom cash games played by the banks in the leveraged derivatives market. Now that the market has turned sour they are forced to cough up vast sums of money to cover their huge over-leveraged losses.

They risked way too much and have lost. However, I expect any and all methods, including outright fraud, cheating, whatever, to be used to "save" the biggest institutions from going down. It's not like these people play by the rules. Some sort of calamity will ensue, but it's unlikely these people will fully suffer the consequences of their actions, unlike the majority of the population. It will be very interesting to see the outcome of this auction.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 10th, 2008.]

FEMA sources confirm Preparations for Martial Law

WMR [Wayne Madsen Report] has learned from knowledgeable Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sources that the Bush administration is putting the final touches on a plan that would see martial law declared in the United States with various scenarios anticipated as triggers. The triggers include a continuing economic collapse with massive social unrest, bank closures resulting in violence against financial institutions, and another fraudulent presidential election that would result in rioting in major cities and campuses around the country.

In addition, Army Corps of Engineer sources report that the assignment of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) to the Northern Command’s U.S. Army North is to augment FEMA and federal law enforcement in the imposition of traffic controls, crowd control, curfews, enhanced border and port security, and neighborhood patrols in the event a national emergency being declared. The BCT was assigned to duties in Iraq before being assigned to the Northern Command.

On April 3, 2008, WMR reported on a highly-classified document regarding the martial law scenario: WMR has learned from knowledgeable sources within the US financial community that an alarming confidential and limited distribution document is circulating among senior members of Congress and their senior staff members that is warning of a bleak future for the United States if it does not quickly get its financial house in order. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is among those who have reportedly read the document. The document is being called the "C & R" document because it reportedly states that if the United States defaults on loans and debt underwriting from China, Japan, and Russia, all of which are propping up the United States government financially, and the United States unilaterally cancels the debts, America can expect a war that will have disastrous results for the United States and the world. "Conflict" is the "C word" in the document. The other scenario is that the federal government will be forced to drastically raise taxes in order to pay off debts to foreign countries to the point that the American people will react with a popular revolution against the government. "Revolution" is the document’s "R word.
http://www.heyokamagazine.com/heyoka.16.waynemadsen.htm

WMR is a reliable online source for intelligence news. The Administration is preparing for big domestic trouble.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 9th, 2008.]

How To Solve the Financial Crisis: Get Rid of the Liars

By George Washington

After 7 years of lies from Bush, Cheney, Pelosi and the gang, people have stopped believing them.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said:

"Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying."

Its like a thief who has been arrested 5 times for burglary. Even though he says all the right things to the judge at sentencing, the judge is still going to throw the book at him.

If the thief is appointed to head a government commission on corruption, do you think people will have confidence in the commission or its proposed actions? (Paulson was the head of Goldman Sachs when they sold huge sums of mortgage-backed securities called collateralized debt obligations, which are part of what caused the financial meltdown).

Paulson, Bernanke, Busy, Pelosi and the gang may be saying nice things about fixing the economy, shoring up the financial system and helping American citizens, but people don't believe them anymore. They've been proven liars one too many times.
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-to-solve-financial-crisis-kick-all.html

The ex-President is right. Ordinary investors have lost confidence in these people. Their schemes seem targeted to saving the high end of town rather than solving fundamental problems. In an earlier post he mentioned that:

The crisis will deepen unless real productive manufacturing and service jobs return as the foundation of our economy, honest and transparent accounting is used, and the government stops gaming the system for the benefit of the wealthiest 1%.

The US and world economy has been torpedoed through the use of leveraged debt. This fake money system has now turned bad. A good solution, advocated by Webster Tarpley (and others), is to completely abolish the leveraged derivative market, to make the contracts null and void. If this phony betting system is simply wiped from the books a great weight will be taken off the real economy. This unproductive money system, created out of thin air for the benefit of the rich, can be dispersed into thin air once more.

The current crisis really has little to do with defaulting mortgages. At the centre of the problem are the financial games played upon these debts by the banks with money they did not have. If the US government allocated the hundreds of billions directly to cover US households, along with the appropriate financial policies, then the defaulting mortgage situation could be contained. The 700 billion bailout is only to cover Wall Street's shenanigans.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 9th, 2008.]

9/11 'Truth' Showdown: David Ray Griffin vs. Conspiracy Skeptic Matt Taibbi

In April, I asked Taibbi [Rolling Stone Magazine] if he would be interested in interviewing David Ray Griffin, a leading member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Theology at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University and author of seven of books on 9/11, about his recent book, 9/11 Contradictions.

After months of back and forths between them and some editorial delays, I'm pleased to share their written exchange -- all 24,000 words of it. What we have here are the preeminent writers on both sides of the 9/11 Truth argument; a one-of-a-kind debate. Because the questions and responses are quite long, I've woven them together in order. Enjoy. -- Jan Frel, AlterNet Senior Editor.
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20081006150637362

In this exchange [found at the link above] it is clear that Matt Taibbi has either not understood David Ray Griffin's book, which is the topic for discussion, or he has understood the book and is deliberately acting as a troll, using false arguments and ridicule in a poor attempt to downplay the veracity of the material.

In the discussion Griffin demolishes the guy.

I highly recommend reading any 911 essay or book by David Ray Griffin since each piece of his is highly instructive in terms of understanding the contradictory nature of the official account, the key evidence against the government story and the absurdities of the arguments put out by defenders of the official narrative [the methods used by trolls and shills].

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 8th, 2008.]

RED ALERT !! Interview with Naomi Wolf author of "Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries"

(27:52)

[A MUST SEE:] Interview with Naomi Wolf author of "Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries" given October 4, 2008 on Mind Over Matters, KEXP 90.3 FM Seattle.
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20081006182213652

Wolf advocates arresting George Bush and fellow Administration officials for their crimes in an effort to forestall the further installation of dictatorial powers in the USA. She's very worried that time is short.

Recently we have seen that rather than trying to calm fears, the Administration has talked up trouble in order to ram through the bailout bill. Members of Congress were actually threatened with the imposition of Martial Law if they did not co-operate ! This is no joke. The US is in deep trouble and it is up to the citizens to stand up and confront their leaders.

US District Attorneys must note that there is a robust legal case for arresting Bush for Murder. Make haste and save your country. Once the President and Vice President are taken into custody, and their files taken as evidence, further progress can be made to unravel the dictatorship. Inevitably the criminals will turn upon themselves and the full extent of their activities will become known.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 8th, 2008.]

Populists Back Ron Paul’s Plan To Kill the Fed

The trillion-dollar Wall Street bailout plan negotiated by the White House and Congress has reinvigorated the debate about Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul’s Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act (HR 2755), which was introduced into Congress in June 2007.

In the halls of Congress, legislators have yet to bring Paul’s bill to the floor. It is currently languishing in the House Committee on Financial Services.

However, there has been a great deal of discussion about this landmark legislation on the Internet and in the alternative press. Constitution Party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin has even made abolishing the Fed one of the top planks in his platform.

Paul’s measure, as it is now, would kill the Federal Reserve Act and would then phase out the Federal Reserve one year after the bill becomes law.

The Federal Reserve Act, passed by Congress in 1913, laid the foundation for the creation of a privately owned and controlled central bank and gave private bankers the power to control the nation’s money supply.

Nearly 100 years later, the role the central bank has played in the financial scandal has been widely reported in the mainstream. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, once heralded as “the maestro,” has been feeling the heat for supporting the deregulation of financial institutions and flooding markets with cheap dollars.

U.S. News & World Report had a recent commentary titled “From Enron to the Financial Crisis, With Alan Greenspan in Between” excoriating Greenspan, who as the nation’s top banker, repeatedly downplayed the risks associated with derivatives even after the collapse of Enron in 2002.

On September 27, The New York Times also hit Greenspan for his failure to watch over and regulate greedy banks. To its credit, the Times also blasted Congress for dismantling important safeguards, including the Glass-Steagall Act, which kept commercial and investment banks at a safe distance.

“Now we know that an entire ‘shadow banking system’ has grown up,” wrote the Times, “without rules or transparency, but with the ability to topple the financial system itself.”
http://www.prisonplanet.com/populists-back-ron-paul%e2%80%99s-plan-to-kill-the-fed.html

The current financial crisis is a direct result of the actions of the US Federal Reserve, banking corporations and US government policy. These three institutions allowed cheap (very low interest rate) money to be created out of thin air that fuelled an enormous debt bubble. The current bailout is aimed at saving the big end of town rather than supporting the consumer base of the economy- as you would expect from the rich elitist politicians that are running the show.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 7th, 2008.]

Former Diebold Contractor Blows The Whistle On Election Manipulations

By Velvet Revolution's Election Protection Strike Force, Velvet Revolution Blog


(10:01)

VR has an exclusive interview with former Diebold contractor Chris Hood that talks about many disturbing actions by Diebold during prior elections, including illegal, uncertified and unreported patches, and improper feeding of tabulation results by Diebold Chief Bob Urosevitch. This interview was prepared for a major news program special that was supposed to air two weeks before the 2006 midterm election. At the last moment, however, the special was killed by the corporate media. Check out this important ten minute interview.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0810/S00012.htm

From the interview it is clear that the conditions were ripe for fraud. Indeed, there is further strong evidence pointing to the fact that the 2004 Presidential Election results were corrupted.

Expect to see the vote rigged in 2008 since the same corporations are involved once more.

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 7th, 2008.]

UPDATE: Architects and Engineers For 911 Truth- More than 500* Building Experts say 911 was an Inside Job

http://www.ae911truth.org/
More than Five Hundred building experts now say that the attacks on the World Trade Centre Towers (and Building 7) were an inside job.

The reason for such a position is clear: there is overwhelming forensic evidence that demonstrates explosives MUST have been used on the buildings.

The official lies about 911 cannot be allowed to stand. Exposing the truth is necessary to stop any further staged attacks that could be used as an excuse to clamp down on civil liberties or as an excuse for a new War verses Iran. We live in dangerous times and we need experts like these to help fight against the lies. The analysis provided by these Architects and Engineers MUST be used by honourable Law Enforcement, Judicial and Military persons in actions against the real suspects. Don't let the perpetrators of 911 go unpunished.


[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 6th, 2008.]

THE FORENSIC EVIDENCE THAT ENDS THE 911 TRUTH DEBATE.

There exists some extremely disturbing scientific evidence which totally undermines the official 911 story. It does not matter what theories you believe in, the material here speaks for itself:

The picture above shows MOLTEN STEEL being removed from the World Trade Centre rubble pile. However, from all accounts (even the official NISTs report concedes this point) the fires in the WTC buildings were far too weak to cause such melting. Conventional building fires, including ones initiated with aviation kerosene, simply cannot raise the temperature of structural steel to its melting point of around 1300 degrees celsius. According to all the available data, the fires in the Towers could only have reached a maximum temperature of around 650 degrees celsius- yet here we can see steel so hot that it has taken on a yellow look (an observation that indicates the temperature must be between 850-1000 degrees celsius !!).

There are ONLY two ways which would enable this steel to reach such a high temperature.
1. In a blast furnace.
2. From Explosives.
The rubble pile was not a blast furnace.
Therefore one must assume that explosives were the most likely agent.

Furthermore, we have supporting eyewitness testimony from firefighters and civilians which reveals that many of them felt, and were knocked over by, huge explosions occurring in the lower floors of the WTC buildings -far away from the fire zones.

Critically, scientific analysis conducted by physics Professor Steven Jones has uncovered the chemical signature for the explosive THERMATE in multiple samples taken from the WTC steel and dust- proving, without doubt, that explosives were used.

The science here is clear cut. Whatever one thinks about the various theories floating around out there, one thing is certain: The Twin Towers (and Building 7) at the World Trade Centre site were rigged with explosives. Most importantly, such an operation would take many weeks to plan and carry out. Therefore, part of the 911 attacks against the World Trade Centre complex MUST have been an "Inside Job" as Bin Laden's men would not have had the necessary time or access to wire these buildings.

The charade must end. If we are honest with ourselves we must now accept there is damning physical (forensic) evidence that undermines the official story. Certain elements within the US government appear complicit in the attacks of September 11.[1] A new independent criminal investigation must be launched and the phoney "war on terror" stopped.

(For a more detailed analysis on the physics of the WTC collapses see Steven Jones' paper: Why Indeed Did the World Trade Center Buildings Completely Collapse? [PDF] and visit Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth, an organisation with over 500 building professionals who agree with these findings.)

[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, October 6th, 2008.]