Family Survival Protocol &#8211; Microcosm News

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More Americans Committing Suicide than During the Great Depression

Posted on May 17, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog

Suicide rates are tied to the economy.

The Boston Globe reported in 2011:

A new report issued today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that the overall suicide rate rises and falls with the state of the economy — dating all the way back to the Great Depression.

The report, published in the American Journal of Public Health, found that suicide rates increased in times of economic crisis: the Great Depression (1929-1933), the end of the New Deal (1937-1938), the Oil Crisis (1973-1975), and the Double-Dip Recession (1980-1982). Those rates tended to fall during strong economic times — with fast growth and low unemployment — like right after World War II and during the 1990s.

During the depths of the Great Depression, suicide rates in America significantly increased. As the Globe notes:

The largest increase in the US suicide rate occurred during the Great Depression surging from 18 in 100,000 up to 22 in 100,000 …

We’ve previously pointed out that suicide rates have skyrocketed recently:

The number of deaths by suicide has also surpassed car crashes, and many connect the increase in suicides to the downturn in the economy. Around 35,000 Americans kill themselves each year (and more American soldiers die by suicide than combat; the number of veterans committing suicide is astronomical and under-reported). So you’re 2,059 times more likely to kill yourself than die at the hand of a terrorist.

NBC News reported in March:

Suicide rates are up alarmingly among middle-aged Americans, according to the latest federal government statistics.

They show a 28 percent rise in suicide rates for people aged 35 to 64 between 1999 and 2010.

RT reports:

In a letter to The Lancet medical journal, scientists from Britain, Hong Kong and United States said an analysis of data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicated that while suicide rates increased slowly between 1999 and 2007, the rate of increase more than quadrupled from 2008 to 2010, Reuters reported.

Earlier this month, NY Daily News wrote:

The Great Recession may have been at the root of a great depression that caused suicides to soar among middle-aged Americans, a government report speculates.

The annual suicide rate for adults ages 35 to 64 spiked in the past decade, according to a study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And a shaky economy that nose-dived into the worst financial crisis since the Depression may be the biggest reason why.

***

The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report said the annual suicide rate jumped 28.4% from 1999-2010.

It was the biggest increase of any age group, said the CDC, citing “the recent economic downturn” as one of the “possible contributing factors” for the increase.

“Historically, suicide rates tend to correlate with business cycles, with higher rates observed during times of economic hardship,” the report said.

David Stuckler (a senior research leader in sociology at Oxford), and Sanjay Basu (an assistant professor of medicine and an epidemiologist in the Prevention Research Center at Stanford), write in the New York Times:

The correlation between unemployment and suicide has been observed since the 19th century.

(And see these articles by the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. This is obviously true world-wide. For example, last year the New York Times reported:

The economic downturn that has shaken Europe for the last three years has also swept away the foundations of once-sturdy lives, leading to an alarming spike in suicide rates. Especially in the most fragile nations like Greece, Ireland and Italy, small-business owners and entrepreneurs are increasingly taking their own lives in a phenomenon some European newspapers have started calling “suicide by economic crisis.”

***

In Greece, the suicide rate among men increased more than 24 percent from 2007 to 2009, government statistics show. In Ireland during the same period, suicides among men rose more than 16 percent. In Italy, suicides motivated by economic difficulties have increased 52 percent, to 187 in 2010 — the most recent year for which statistics were available — from 123 in 2005.)

Indeed, more Americans are killing themselves today than during the Great Depression. Specifically, there were were 123 million Americans in 1930. The maximum suicide rate during the depths of the Great Depression was 22 out of 100,000 Americans. That means that up to 27,060 Americans killed themselves each year.

More Americans Committing Suicide than During the Great Depression (blacklistednews.com)
More Americans Committing Suicide than During the Great Depression (fedupusa.org)
Middle-Aged Americans Committing Suicide At Unprecedented Rate (amresolution.com)
More Foreclosures and Suicides than During the Great Depression (zerohedge.com)
More Americans Committing Suicide than During the Great Depression (rinf.com)
More Americans Committing Suicide than During the Great Depression (12160.info)
Suicide Numbers Trump Those of Great Depression (darkgovernment.com)
More Americans Committing Suicide than During the Great Depression (stateofglobe.com)
US Suicide Rates Surge, Surpass Road Fatalities (eurasiareview.com)

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Tags: American Journal of Public Health, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Great Depression, List of countries by suicide rate, New York Times, suicide, United States, World War II

Comment

The People vs. Goldman Sachs – The Crooks and Liars That Ridiculed and Covered up Conspiracy Facts To Lead Us Down This Darkened Path For Personal Gain…..

May 13, 2013

The People vs. Goldman Sachs

A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges

Photo Gallery: How Goldman top dogs defrauded their clients and lied to Congress

May 11, 2011 9:30 AM ET

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein tesifies before the Senate in April 2010

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

They weren’t murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.

Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn’t leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.

The great and powerful Oz of Wall Street was not the only target of Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse, the 650-page report just released by the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan, alongside Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Their unusually scathing bipartisan report also includes case studies of Washington Mutual and Deutsche Bank, providing a panoramic portrait of a bubble era that produced the most destructive crime spree in our history — “a million fraud cases a year” is how one former regulator puts it. But the mountain of evidence collected against Goldman by Levin’s small, 15-desk office of investigators — details of gross, baldfaced fraud delivered up in such quantities as to almost serve as a kind of sarcastic challenge to the curiously impassive Justice Department — stands as the most important symbol of Wall Street’s aristocratic impunity and prosecutorial immunity produced since the crash of 2008.

To date, there has been only one successful prosecution of a financial big fish from the mortgage bubble, and that was Lee Farkas, a Florida lender who was just convicted on a smorgasbord of fraud charges and now faces life in prison. But Farkas, sadly, is just an exception proving the rule: Like Bernie Madoff, his comically excessive crime spree (which involved such lunacies as kiting checks to his own bank and selling loans that didn’t exist) was almost completely unconnected to the systematic corruption that led to the crisis. What’s more, many of the earlier criminals in the chain of corruption — from subprime lenders like Countrywide, who herded old ladies and ghetto families into bad loans, to rapacious banks like Washington Mutual, who pawned off fraudulent mortgages on investors — wound up going belly up, sunk by their own greed.

Read Full Article Here
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Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There’s no price the big banks can’t fix

Illustration by Victor Juhasz

The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia

April 25, 2013 1:00 PM ET

Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world’s largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.

You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that’s trillion, with a “t”) worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history – MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it “dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets.”

That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world’s largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world’s largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.

Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It’s about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget.

It should surprise no one that among the players implicated in this scheme to fix the prices of interest-rate swaps are the same megabanks – including Barclays, UBS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland – that serve on the Libor panel that sets global interest rates. In fact, in recent years many of these banks have already paid multimillion-dollar settlements for anti-competitive manipulation of one form or another (in addition to Libor, some were caught up in an anti-competitive scheme, detailed in Rolling Stone last year, to rig municipal-debt service auctions). Though the jumble of financial acronyms sounds like gibberish to the layperson, the fact that there may now be price-fixing scandals involving both Libor and ISDAfix suggests a single, giant mushrooming conspiracy of collusion and price-fixing hovering under the ostensibly competitive veneer of Wall Street culture.

Why? Because Libor already affects the prices of interest-rate swaps, making this a manipulation-on-manipulation situation. If the allegations prove to be right, that will mean that swap customers have been paying for two different layers of price-fixing corruption. If you can imagine paying 20 bucks for a crappy PB&J because some evil cabal of agribusiness companies colluded to fix the prices of both peanuts and peanut butter, you come close to grasping the lunacy of financial markets where both interest rates and interest-rate swaps are being manipulated at the same time, often by the same banks.

“It’s a double conspiracy,” says an amazed Michael Greenberger, a former director of the trading and markets division at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and now a professor at the University of Maryland. “It’s the height of criminality.”

The bad news didn’t stop with swaps and interest rates. In March, it also came out that two regulators – the CFTC here in the U.S. and the Madrid-based International Organization of Securities Commissions – were spurred by the Libor revelations to investigate the possibility of collusive manipulation of gold and silver prices. “Given the clubby manipulation efforts we saw in Libor benchmarks, I assume other benchmarks – many other benchmarks – are legit areas of inquiry,” CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said.

But the biggest shock came out of a federal courtroom at the end of March – though if you follow these matters closely, it may not have been so shocking at all – when a landmark class-action civil lawsuit against the banks for Libor-related offenses was dismissed. In that case, a federal judge accepted the banker-defendants’ incredible argument: If cities and towns and other investors lost money because of Libor manipulation, that was their own fault for ever thinking the banks were competing in the first place.

“A farce,” was one antitrust lawyer’s response to the eyebrow-raising dismissal.

“Incredible,” says Sylvia Sokol, an attorney for Constantine Cannon, a firm that specializes in antitrust cases.

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Secrets and Lies of the Bailout

The federal rescue of Wall Street didn’t fix the economy – it created a permanent bailout state based on a Ponzi-like confidence scheme. And the worst may be yet to come

How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform

January 4, 2013 4:25 PM ET

national affairs secrets of the bailout taibbi

Illustration by Victor Juhasz

It has been four long winters since the federal government, in the hulking, shaven-skulled, Alien Nation-esque form of then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, committed $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed. To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you’d think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we’ve been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul – right?

Wrong.

It was all a lie – one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in – only temporarily, mind you – to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it. The result is one of those deals where one wrong decision early on blossoms into a lush nightmare of unintended consequences. We thought we were just letting a friend crash at the house for a few days; we ended up with a family of hillbillies who moved in forever, sleeping nine to a bed and building a meth lab on the front lawn.

But the most appalling part is the lying. The public has been lied to so shamelessly and so often in the course of the past four years that the failure to tell the truth to the general populace has become a kind of baked-in, official feature of the financial rescue. Money wasn’t the only thing the government gave Wall Street – it also conferred the right to hide the truth from the rest of us. And it was all done in the name of helping regular people and creating jobs. “It is,” says former bailout Inspector General Neil Barofsky, “the ultimate bait-and-switch.”

The bailout deceptions came early, late and in between. There were lies told in the first moments of their inception, and others still being told four years later. The lies, in fact, were the most important mechanisms of the bailout. The only reason investors haven’t run screaming from an obviously corrupt financial marketplace is because the government has gone to such extraordinary lengths to sell the narrative that the problems of 2008 have been fixed. Investors may not actually believe the lie, but they are impressed by how totally committed the government has been, from the very beginning, to selling it.

THEY LIED TO PASS THE BAILOUT

Today what few remember about the bailouts is that we had to approve them. It wasn’t like Paulson could just go out and unilaterally commit trillions of public dollars to rescue Goldman Sachs and Citigroup from their own stupidity and bad management (although the government ended up doing just that, later on). Much as with a declaration of war, a similarly extreme and expensive commitment of public resources, Paulson needed at least a film of congressional approval. And much like the Iraq War resolution, which was only secured after George W. Bush ludicrously warned that Saddam was planning to send drones to spray poison over New York City, the bailouts were pushed through Congress with a series of threats and promises that ranged from the merely ridiculous to the outright deceptive. At one meeting to discuss the original bailout bill – at 11 a.m. on September 18th, 2008 – Paulson actually told members of Congress that $5.5 trillion in wealth would disappear by 2 p.m. that day unless the government took immediate action, and that the world economy would collapse “within 24 hours.”

To be fair, Paulson started out by trying to tell the truth in his own ham-headed, narcissistic way. His first TARP proposal was a three-page absurdity pulled straight from a Beavis and Butt-Head episode – it was basically Paulson saying, “Can you, like, give me some money?” Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, remembers a call with Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. “We need $700 billion,” they told Brown, “and we need it in three days.” What’s more, the plan stipulated, Paulson could spend the money however he pleased, without review “by any court of law or any administrative agency.”

The White House and leaders of both parties actually agreed to this preposterous document, but it died in the House when 95 Democrats lined up against it. For an all-too-rare moment during the Bush administration, something resembling sanity prevailed in Washington.

So Paulson came up with a more convincing lie. On paper, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 was simple: Treasury would buy $700 billion of troubled mortgages from the banks and then modify them to help struggling homeowners. Section 109 of the act, in fact, specifically empowered the Treasury secretary to “facilitate loan modifications to prevent avoidable foreclosures.” With that promise on the table, wary Democrats finally approved the bailout on October 3rd, 2008. “That provision,” says Barofsky, “is what got the bill passed.”

But within days of passage, the Fed and the Treasury unilaterally decided to abandon the planned purchase of toxic assets in favor of direct injections of billions in cash into companies like Goldman and Citigroup. Overnight, Section 109 was unceremoniously ditched, and what was pitched as a bailout of both banks and homeowners instantly became a bank-only operation – marking the first in a long series of moves in which bailout officials either casually ignored or openly defied their own promises with regard to TARP.

Congress was furious. “We’ve been lied to,” fumed Rep. David Scott, a Democrat from Georgia. Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland, raged at transparently douchey TARP administrator (and Goldman banker) Neel Kashkari, calling him a “chump” for the banks. And the anger was bipartisan: Republican senators David Vitter of Louisiana and James Inhofe of Oklahoma were so mad about the unilateral changes and lack of oversight that they sponsored a bill in January 2009 to cancel the remaining $350 billion of TARP.

So what did bailout officials do? They put together a proposal full of even bigger deceptions to get it past Congress a second time. That process began almost exactly four years ago – on January 12th and 15th, 2009 – when Larry Summers, the senior economic adviser to President-elect Barack Obama, sent a pair of letters to Congress. The pudgy, stubbyfingered former World Bank economist, who had been forced out as Harvard president for suggesting that women lack a natural aptitude for math and science, begged legislators to reject Vitter’s bill and leave TARP alone.

In the letters, Summers laid out a five-point plan in which the bailout was pitched as a kind of giant populist program to help ordinary Americans. Obama, Summers vowed, would use the money to stimulate bank lending to put people back to work. He even went so far as to say that banks would be denied funding unless they agreed to “increase lending above baseline levels.” He promised that “tough and transparent conditions” would be imposed on bailout recipients, who would not be allowed to use bailout funds toward “enriching shareholders or executives.” As in the original TARP bill, he pledged that bailout money would be used to aid homeowners in foreclosure. And lastly, he promised that the bailouts would be temporary – with a “plan for exit of government intervention” implemented “as quickly as possible.”

Goldman Sachs economist: College-Educated Americans Are More Unemployed Than You Think (12160.info)
Senator Says Goldman Sachs Misled Congress, Plans DOJ Referral (legaltimes.typepad.com)
Blankfein Sees Parallels to 1994 Interest-Rate Increases (bloomberg.com)
The latest forex trading idea from Goldman Sachs (forexlive.com)
Goldman Sachs Gives Blankfein $5 Million Long-Term Incentive (bloomberg.com)
Is Goldman Sachs the Canary? (everwas.com)
Look Who Tops Taibbi’s ‘Corporate Evil Guy Power Rankings’ (huffingtonpost.com)
Everything is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever – The Illuminati were Amateurs (2012thebigpicture.wordpress.com)
“The Illuminati Were Amateurs” – Matt Taibbi Explains How “Everything Is Rigged” (zerohedge.com)
ROLLING STONE: “Conspiracy Theorists Of The World, Believers In The Hidden Hands Of The Rothschilds, We Skeptics Owe You An Apology.” (politicalvelcraft.org)

Tags: David Viniar, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, Matt Taibbi, Senate, Tom Coburn, Washington Mutual

Comment

Minds are changing on Too Big to Fail. A month ago, it was just something in the air. Now, it looks like we’re headed for a real legislative confrontation. And man, is the finance sector freaking.

May 4, 2013

Too-Big-to-Fail Takes Another Body Blow

POSTED: May 1, 9:06 AM ET

Sen. Sherrod Brown and Sen. David Vitter hold a news conference to announce the details of ‘Too Big to Fail’ legislation.

Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call

Last week, on April 24th, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Louisiana Republican David Vitter introduced legislation called the “Terminating Bailouts for Taxpayer Fairness Act of 2013 Act,” or the “Brown-Vitter TBTF Act” for short. The bill is a gun aimed directly at the head of the Too-Big-To-Fail beast.

During the Dodd-Frank negotiations a few years ago, Brown teamed up with Delaware Democrat Ted Kaufman to introduce an amendment that would have physically capped the size of the biggest banks. The amendment was bold and righteous but was slaughtered on the floor by a 61-33 margin, undermined by leaders of both parties – 27 Democrats voted against it.

Brown-Vitter offers a different and, in a way, more elegant solution to the problem than Brown-Kaufman. Rather than impose size limits, it simply insists that banks with over $500 billion in assets maintain higher capital reserves than are currently required. Companies like J.P. Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America will have to keep capital reserves of about 15 percent, about twice the current amount.

The bill only has such tough requirements for just those few megabanks, which sounds unfair, except that the aim of the bill, precisely, is to level the playing field. Right now, the biggest U.S. banks enjoy a massive inherent market advantage in that they’re able to borrow money far more cheaply than other banks, because everybody on earth knows the government will never let them fail and will always bail them out in a pinch, making their debt essentially U.S.-government guaranteed. Studies have shown that these banks borrow money at about 0.8 percent more cheaply than other banks, and that this implicit government subsidy is worth about $83 billion a year just to the top 10 banks in America. This bill would essentially wipe out that hidden subsidy and make the banks bailout-proof.

As soon as Brown-Vitter was introduced, a very interesting thing happened. The Independent Community Bankers of America, or ICBA, issued a press release boosting the bill. “ICBA strongly supports this legislation,” the release read, “and urges all community banks to join the association in advocating passage of legislation to end too-big-to-fail.”

This was a big thing. It was the first time since the crisis that a prominent financial industry group opposed the will of the TBTF banks. I remember covering Dodd-Frank and being told by a number of members in the House and the Senate that the sentiment of many community bankers was for breaking up or at least curtailing the power of companies like Chase and Bank of America, but that the community banking lobby was not yet prepared to take that step.

But now, after the London Whale, the LIBOR scandal, the outrageous HSBC settlement and nearly five years of rapacious market-dominating behavior by these state-backed banks, the community banks have finally split off from TBTF.

This is another in a series of defections on this issue that in the past year has included many Republican politicians, numerous important financial regulators (even the New York Fed has taken a semi-stand against TBTF) and, hilariously, the creator of Too-Big-To-Fail himself, former Citigroup CEO and legendary lower-Manhattan raging asshole Sandy Weill. Weill was the man for whom the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed back in the nineties, so that his already-completed Citigroup merger could be legalized. But even he came out last year and said we have to break up the banks.

Naturally, there was going to be a response to Brown-Vitter from Wall Street. And we got it last week, shockingly not from one of the banks or a lobbying firm connected to the banks, but from the Standard and Poor’s ratings agency – supposedly a strict, humorlessly conservative auditor that should always abhor risk and look favorably upon greater safety and security. The very fact that such a company came out against a bill forcing banks to have safer balance sheets is in itself absolute proof of how completely fucked and corrupt our current system is.

The S&P report, entitled “Brown-Vitter Bill: Game-Changing Regulation For U.S. Banks”, is so incredibly hysterical in its tone that, reading it, one cannot help but deduce that people on Wall Street are genuinely afraid of this bill. The paper essentially hints that forcing banks to retain more capital could lead to world financial collapse, the onset of a new Ice Age, mammoths roaming Nebraska, etc. “The ratings implications of the Brown-Vitter bill, if enacted, for all U.S. banks would be neutral to negative,” the report read. In the second paragraph, it reads:

If congress enacts the bill as proposed, Standard and Poor’s Ratings Services would have concerns about the economic impact on banks’ creditworthiness stemming from the transition to substantially higher capital requirements.

Having a ratings agency bent to monopolistic bank influence give a bad rating to a piece of legislation designed to . . . curb monopolistic bank influence is a bad surrealistic joke, like a Rene Magritte take on lobbying – Ceci n‘est pas une Too-Big-To-Fail!

Remember, one of the primary causes of the financial crisis in the first place was the corruption of the independent ratings agencies. In the crisis years, companies like S&P and Moody’s and Fitch were so desperate to avoid losing business from the big investment banks (who paid the ratings firms to rate products like mortgage-backed securities) that these companies often gave embarrassingly overenthusiastic grades to a generation of toxic assets.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in its final report placed blame for the crisis squarely on the shoulders of these firms. “The three credit rating agencies were key enablers of the financial meltdown. The mortgage-related securities at the heart of the crisis could not have been marketed and sold without their seal of approval,” the FCIC report read. “This crisis could not have happened without the rating agencies.”

So intellectually compromised ratings agencies were guilty before, because they were too quick to help Too-Big-To-Fail banks sell bad products into the world marketplace.

Now, an intellectually-compromised ratings agency is helping sell the very Too-Big-To-Fail system in an attempt to beat back a reform bill – an agency that once stated explicitly that it does not take public positions on legislation.

Years ago, Standard and Poor’s was involved a similar situation. In the mid-2000s, the Senate was considering creating a regulatory body with receivership powers that could have oversight over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. S&P, seemingly doing the bidding of Fannie and Freddie (which wanted no part of any new regulatory oversight), warned that such legislation might lead to a downgrade of the so-called Government-Sponsored Entities, or GSEs. In other words, if you pass this bill, we’re going to take a financial axe to Fannie and Freddie.

When then-Senator John Sununu asked then-S&P president Kathleen Corbet if it didn’t seem to her like the ratings agency was meddling in the legislative process by issuing such a dire warning, Corbet testily replied in the negative.

“First of all, Senator,” she said. “Standard & Poor’s does not advocate positions on any legislation.”

With that in mind, here are some of passages from S&P’s new report, “Brown-Vitter Bill: Game-Changing Regulation For U.S. Banks”:

If the requirements force banks to deleverage, a credit crunch could ensue and the U.S. economy might be thrown off course . . . the U.S. banking industry could become less competitive in world financial markets . . . All in all, the bill’s goal of ending TBTF could lead to unintended consequences – a destabilized financial system.

So Standard and Poor’s does not advocate positions on any legislation, mind you. It just thinks the world as we know it will end if this particular bill passes.

In reality, of course, about the only things that would be “destabilized” if TBTF ended would be the compensation packages for a small group of overpaid banking executives like Jamie Dimon. Another consequence might be that ratings agencies would actually have to work for a living, and earn reputations for honesty and integrity in the market, instead of getting endless streams of free money from big banks to give sparkly AAA ratings to every half-baked security or derivative instrument their obese, Fed-fattened clients cranked out.

Taibbi: Bankers Freak Out Over Brown-Vitter TBTF Legislation (crooksandliars.com)
Matt Taibbi ~ Too-Big-To-Fail Takes Another Body Blow (shiftfrequency.com)
Too-Big-to-Fail Takes Another Body Blow (readersupportednews.org)
Too-Big-to-Fail Takes Another Body Blow By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
The bankers are unhappy (susiemadrak.com)
The Beginning Of The End Of Too-Big-To-Fail (forbes.com)
Vitter, Brown Introduce “Too Big To Fail” Legislation (ritholtz.com)
CommonDreams – Jon Queally – Why Are Banks “Freaking” Over Too-Big-To-Fail Legislation? - (lucas2012infos.wordpress.com)
Why Are Banks “Freaking” Over Too-Big-To-Fail Legislation? (commondreams.org)
Leading Fed Official Says Tougher Rules Needed To Curb Too Big To Fail (huffingtonpost.com)

Tags: too big to fail, Matt Taibbi, JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, Glass–Steagall Act, David Vitter, Sherrod Brown, Independent Community Bankers of America

Comment

Toxic Chemicals Detected In The Air In Mayflower Arkansas Making Residents Ill. Exxon Claims The Water Tested At A legal Limit. No Mention Of The Air.

April 30, 2013

I have gone through the Oil Sands Fact Check site and honestly all I can find is boasting as to the boon in the US economy, jobs and the fact that activists are using the pipeline and tar sands oil as a scapegoat. Not once in all the supposed facts they have there do they address the real concerns, simply twisting the facts to their advantage. Painting themselves as responsible entities. Never once addressing that this substance is way more dangerous than oil to the environment and the water, especially. The tap dance over the fact by stating that tar sands oil has been transported into the US for decades.

What they fail to miss is this: Instead of reporting the factual analysis of the toxic substances that this tar sand emits they skirt over the fact claiming their emissions testing results. Now please correct me if I am wrong , but the major concern of environmentalists and activist is not the emissions once it is in the car. In fact the concern is of the damage the unrefined substance will do to the environment and the water shed if a spill were to take place. As we can see in Arkansas the substance is so toxic that the residents are already suffering from it’s effects .

Image Source Image Source

Image Source Image Source

They call themselves responsible entities, so then my question is this :

what is Exxon doing to make this right?

Exxon has stated that the water quality was within safe limits.

So what exactly does that mean ?

Are we to accept the status quo with regards to safety limits just as we are to accept that GMO’s are good for us even though there are more and more opponents coming out stating that it is in fact detrimental to human health?

What about the air quality? Or does that not matter?

Children are getting sick. People are becoming ill due to the toxic conditions.

Are we to believe this is acceptable ?

Or will this also be kept from the people and the sick treated like insignificant data as the people of the gulf were?

Good health once it has been compromised cannot be replaced.

Will your tar sands oil paycheck take care of it?

There is no amount of compensation that will replace good health. Nor erase catastrophic illness.

Or does it not matter because it isn’t your family?

I am sorry to break it to you , but unless you have a crystal ball that tells you otherwise . It could very well be you and your family that suffers next! Do not delude yourself by detaching from the reality of things entertaining the belief that it won’t happen to you . I am sure the people of Mayflower , Arkansas never imagined they would now be mired in this poison. Their children getting sick and their homes surrounded, helpless waiting for some heartless oil company to decide whether the clean up is worth the expense. Not the lives of the people affected by their poison, but their bottomline.

Don’t kid yourself!

With the lack of responsibility and lack of corrective action taken by oil companies in Africa. With leaking pipelines and toxic sludge where lakes had once been. Dead soil where crops were once grown.

How can anyone in their right mind take the word of these companies as to their integrity and responsibility?

We have seen what BP did in the Gulf Of Mexico.

Do you truly consider what was done in the gulf an adequate job of cleaning up the mess made by their incompetence and lust for profits?

The sea life dying as a result and scientists complaining that they have been legally gagged from making their findings available to the public.

Restrained by whom?

The oil companies?

No restrained by the government that is supposed to be looking out for our benefit. Instead they are protecting the Oil Companies interests.

Is this the kind of safety measure you want?

The reins handed over to a company who’s haste for fattening up their bottom line poisons our earth , our air and our water so that they can police themselves?

How many journalists were kept away from the Gulf to keep them from reporting what they saw there?

How many reporters were kept from Mayflower, Arkansas for the same reason?

Everyone is crowing about the jobs the tar sands oil will bring to the US.

Are you truly understanding what you are asking for?

Do you even understand that Mayflower Arkansas could be anywhere in the heartland?

Do you realize what would happen if that pipeline leaked into the water shed.?

It would not be someone else’s problem , it would be everyone’s problem . You are looking for jobs, yes we understand. We all live here in the States and we are all going through the same hard times. We all need to work and we all need to pay our bills.

Where do we draw the line at what is admissible and what is over the not?

There is only one Earth and when she is completely trashed where will you go ?

Will your job with tars sands oil help you bring her back ?

Will you be able to remove the horrible toxins deposited by your tars sands oil from the earth,the rivers, the water?

Are you not paying attention to what is happening around you?

I want you to understand one very important thing. The responsibility for the destruction of our environment is not just on the oil companies. It is on everyone of you who don’t give it a second thought. On everyone of you that takes clean air ,and water for granted. On everyone of you that places a job over the well being of your children and your fellow American’s children. This is not a game this is a very hazardous situation that has grave consequences and until all of you realize that , we are lost.

Money has become the denominating factor in our lives.

What happened to principal , responsibility and honor.

What happened to doing what is right ?

Where is the concern for our children’s well being?

I see my fellow citizens on a collision course with destruction, hell bent on ignoring the warning signs. Their eyes on the prize of money and material things.

One wonders how much that money and those materials possessions will help when you can no longer give your child a cup of clean , safe water to drink?

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Excerpts taken from Oils Sands Fact Check

Top 5 Things You Should Know About Transporting Oil Sands Crude

April 1, 2013 by shannonb

On March 29, an oil pipeline running through Mayflower, Arkansas experienced a leak that resulted in the evacuation of 22 homes and immediate clean up efforts from the pipeline’s operator, ExxonMobil. According to reports, the Pegasus line was carrying Wabasca Heavy crude oil – a blend of crude produced in the Athabasca oil sands region in Alberta.

Of course, in the minds of oil sands opponents, all pipelines are made alike and are uniformly threatened by oil sands crudes. In fact, following the news of the incident, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) stated:

“This latest pipeline incident is a troubling reminder that oil companies still have not proven that they can safely transport Canadian tar sands oil across the United States without creating risks to our citizens and our environment.”

We have the top five reasons why that’s not the case.

1)     Oil sands crudes have been transported safely in the U.S. for more than 40 years. Accident reports from the Pipeline & Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) from 2002 through mid-2012 show zero internal corrosion-related releases from pipelines carrying diluted bitumen.

2)     Oil sands crudes are not more corrosive than other crude oils. In a 2011 report, Canadian research group Alberta Innovates found that acid and sulfur compounds found in oil sands crudes “are too stable to be corrosive and some may even decrease corrosion.” Recent testing and studies by ASTM International and Penspen support this conclusion.

3)     Oil sands crudes are transported at comparable pipeline pressures as other heavy crude oils. All U.S. pipelines must operate under Maximum Operating Pressure limitations administered by PHMSA. In other words, pipelines are constructed to specifications that ensure they can handle the intended operating pressure and the type of liquid that flows through them.

4)     Oil sands crudes are not heated for transportation in pipelines above the temperature of other crude oils. The range of temperatures for all crude oils from Canada is 40-135 degrees Fahrenheit. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Code for Pipeline Transportation Systems for Liquid Hydrocarbons and Other Liquids does not consider pipeline temperatures to be elevated unless they exceed 150 degrees Fahrenheit.

5)     Keystone XL would “have a degree of safety over any other.” As mentioned in point #3, pipelines must meet certain specifications before transporting any type of crude, no matter if it’s heavy or light. Keystone XL, which will also carry heavy oil from Alberta, is going above and beyond those requirements by adopting 57 extra safety measures, leading the State Department to declare that the project would “have a degree of safety over any other.”

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I challenge you to watch this video and tell me a paycheck is worth all this destruction and misery!

…………………………….The True Cost Of Oil…………………………………

If you have a conscience you would have to admit it is not worth it. Unless this is how you want to see America when they are done

with her

~Desert Rose~

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Citizen group sees ‘toxic’ oil soup in Arkansas

UPI

Published: April 30, 2013 at 7:34 AM

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., April 30 (UPI) — There’s been a “toxic soup” hanging over residents in Mayflower, Ark., as a result of an Exxon Mobil oil pipeline accident, a citizen’s group said.

Exxon said about 5,000 barrels of oil was released last month from a 22-foot rupture on its Pegasus pipeline in Mayflower. The pipeline, built in the 1940s, was carrying a diluted form of Canadian crude oil, dubbed oil sands, at the time of the spill.

Air samples taken March 30, the day after the incident, indicated high levels of compounds considered harmful to human health. The samples were conducted by a student activist trained by the Faulkner County (Ark.) Citizens Advisory Group and Global Community Monitor.

“Total toxic hydrocarbons were detected at more than 88,000 parts per billion in the ambient air and present a complex airborne mixture or soup of toxic chemicals that residents may have been exposed to from the Mayflower tar sands bitumen spill,” Neil Carman, a representative from the Texas chapter of the Sierra Club, said in a statement.

Exxon admitted to finding levels of benzene and other harmful chemicals in early samples taken at Mayflower. It said air and water quality was within safe limits in the weeks following the spill, however.

The report, published by the activist groups, said residents are showing signs of exposure to chemicals ranging from benzene, a carcinogen, to toluene, a central nervous system depressant, more than four weeks after the spill.

There was no response from Exxon on the report.

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Study Reveals 30 Toxic Chemicals at High Levels at Exxon Arkansas Tar Sands Pipeline Spill Site

An independent study co-published by the Faulkner County Citizens Advisory Group and Global Community Monitor reveals that, in the aftermath of ExxonMobil’s Pegasus tar sands pipeline spill of over 500,000 gallons of diluted bitumen (dilbit) into Mayflower, AR, air quality in the area surrounding the spill has been affected by high levels of cancer-causing chemicals.

Roughly four weeks after the spill took place, many basic details are still unknown to the public, according to recent reporting by InsideClimate News. Questions include what exactly caused the spill, how big was the spill exactly, and how long did it take for emergency responders to react to the spill, to name a few.

But one thing is certain according to the new study: For the residents of Mayflower, quality of life has been changed forever.

The chemicals found in the samples include benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, n-hexane, and xylenes. Breathing in both ethylbenzene and benzene can cause cancer and reproductive effects, while breathing in n-hexane can damage the nervous system and usher in numbness in the extremities, muscular weakness, blurred vision, headaches, and fatigue.

All of these chemicals are hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), “regulated under the 1990 Federal Clean Air Act amendments as the most toxic of all known airborne chemicals,” as explained in the press release summarzing the study.

[PHOTOS: The 10th Anniversary of the Iraq War]

Study Reveals 30 Toxic Chemicals at High Levels at Exxon Arkansas Tar Sands Pipeline Spill Site (desmogblog.com)
Study finds ‘soup of toxic chemicals’ in the air near Arkansas ExxonMobil spill site (philosophers-stone.co.uk)
Study finds ‘soup of toxic chemicals’ in the air near Arkansas ExxonMobil spill site (rt.com)
Community Residents Reject ExxonMobil’s Claims of ‘No Oil in Lake’ Following Tar Sands Spill (commondreams.org)
FOCUS | ExxonMobil Spills Chemicals While Cleaning Spilled Oil (readersupportednews.org)
Riki Ott: The Exxon Pipeline Spill: Questions That Should Be Frequently Asked (huffingtonpost.com)
To Pipeline or not to Pipeline (GreenMountainDaily.com)
Pipeline spill in Arkansas calls into question conversion of older pipelines for transporting tarsands (texasvox.org)
Update on Arkansas oil spill: Exxon rejects AG request to pay for investigation, offers residents $10,000 and sends damaged pipeline off for study (treehugger.com)
Spilled tar sands oil could be creeping toward the Arkansas River (grist.org)

Tags: Air pollution, Arkansas, energy, Exxon, ExxonMobil, Mayflower, Mayflower Arkansas, Oil sands, oil spill, United States, Water quality

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The wars are over, but the spending is just beginning, says a new study

April 1, 2013

The Total Iraq and Afghanistan Price tag: Over $4 Trillion

By Danielle Kurtzleben

US News

March 28, 2013

U.S. Marines and Afghan police in Afghanistan. A new study estimates the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost $4 to $6 trillion.

The U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been declared officially over, but America has barely begun to pay the bill, says a new study. That could make defending the nation and paying the government’s bills even tougher to do in the future.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars will together cost $4 to $6 trillion, according a new study from Harvard University’s Kennedy School. A large share of those bills has yet to be paid: the study finds that the U.S. has spent around $2 trillion thus far on the two controversial wars, and that growing commitments to spending on military personnel and veterans will drive much of the spending in the decades to come. The study notes that the Veterans’ Affairs budget has tripled since the start of the wars.

“Assuming this pattern continues, there will be a much smaller amount of an already-shrinking defense budget available for core military functions,” writes Linda Bilmes, senior lecturer in public policy at Harvard and the study’s author.

Bilmes has been studying the costs of the two wars for years, and she says that the estimates of the total cost continue to climb as the cost of continuing care for veterans mounts.

“What has happened is the number of injuries and the number of claims and the complexity of claims…in these conflicts has been much higher than in previous wars,” she says. She notes that after Vietnam, veterans averaged around two and a half to three conditions per claim, whereas veterans now have over eight conditions per claim.

[PRESS PAST: The Underestimated Costs, and Price Tag, of the Iraq War]

Of the nearly 1.6 million troops that have been discharged from the wars, over half have received Veterans’ Affairs medical treatment and will also receive benefits for the rest of their lives. Those costs will stack up as more troops are discharged and need benefits. The study finds that providing medical and disability benefits to vets will eventually cost over $836 billion.

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Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan wars will keep mounting

Together they’ll be the most expensive in U.S. history, costing as much as $6 trillion over time, a new analysis says. Veterans’ care will probably be the biggest future expense.

A view of downtown Baghdad with the Dome of the 17 Ramadan Mosque in the foreground. The U.S. government has already spent $134 billion on medical care and disability benefits for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. (Ali Arkady / Metrography/Getty Images / March 28, 2013)

By Alan Zarembo, Los Angeles TimesMarch 29, 2013

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will ultimately cost between $4 trillion and $6 trillion, with medical care and disability benefits weighing heavily for decades to come, according to a new analysis.

The bill to taxpayers so far has been $2 trillion, plus $260 billion in interest on the resulting debt. By comparison, the current federal budget is $3.8 trillion.

The costs of the wars will continue to mount, said the study’s author, Linda Bilmes, a public policy expert at Harvard University.

The largest future expenses will be medical care and disability benefits for veterans, Bilmes predicted. “The big, big cost comes 30 or 40 years out,” she said.

The wars, taken together, will be the most expensive in U.S. history — and not just because of their duration. The government has greatly expanded the services available to veterans and military personnel over the last decade. Compared with past conflicts, a far greater proportion of returning service members are seeking medical care and benefits.

Of the 1.56 million troops that have been discharged, more than half have received treatment at Veterans Affairs facilities and filed claims for lifetime disability payments, the study found.

Reblogged from Socio-Economics History Blog:

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Study: Iraq and Afghanistan wars will cost U.S. up to $6 trillion (rawstory.com)
Harvard study: Iraq/Afghan war tab $4T-$6T (upi.com)
Iraq, Afghan wars will cost $4 trillion to $6 trillion, Harvard study says (stripes.com)
Iraq, Afghan Wars Will Cost US 4-6 Trillion Dollars: Report | Common Dreams (2012indyinfo.com)
Iraq, Afghan wars to cost U.S. up to $6 trillion: study (japantimes.co.jp)
Iraq, Afghanistan Wars Will Cost U.S. 4-6 Trillion Dollars: Report (ipsnews.net)
“Most Expensive Wars in US History”: Financial Legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan (leaksource.wordpress.com)

Tags: Afghanistan, Harvard University, Iraq, Iraq War, Kennedy School, Linda Bilmes, Price Tag, United States, War in Afghanistan (2001–present)

Comment

Peter Schiff: Cyprus Banks and The End Game is a Huge Crisis! Pull Your Money Out of the Banks!

Filed under: American National Debt, Austerity, Banking, Budget Cuts, Corruption, Economic News, Elitist Privilege, Financial, Fiscal Irresponsibility, Fraud, Gold / Silver / Legal Tender, Greed, Loot and Pillage, Politics, Legislation and Economy News, ReBlogged, Special Interests, Unethical — 4 Comments

March 29, 2013

Published on Mar 26, 2013
http://usawatchdog.com/why-leave-extr... In the wake of the Cyprus banking crisis, Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Precious Metals says, "There's no question a crisis is on its way. The end game is a huge crisis." With that in mind, Schiff says, "Why would you leave any extra money in a bank to get zero percent interest. . .

Marc Faber : My concern is that we are going to have a systemic crisis where it is going to be very difficult to hide. Even in gold, it will be difficult to hide.

Filed under: American National Debt, Banking, Economic News, Financial, Fiscal Irresponsibility, Fiscal irresponsibility, Government, Greed, Ineptitude, Politics, Legislation and Economy News, Rising Costs, Special Interests — Leave a comment

March 28, 2013

MARC FABER: Not Even Gold Will Save You From What Is Coming

Marc Faber, who authors the Gloom Boom & Doom newsletter, is usually pretty bearish on stocks and bullish on gold.

Lately, though, gold doesn’t seem like it can catch a bid.

“Despite the continued reverberations regarding the Cyprus bailout and its involvement of bank deposits, gold struggled to maintain the positive momentum created in the first two weeks of March and instead now looks very likely to move lower, towards $1580/oz,” wrote Deutsche Bank commodities analyst Xiao Fu in a note this morning.

So, what does Faber have to say about it?

This morning, on Bloomberg Surveillance with Tom Keene and Alix Steel, Dr. Doom was asked why gold wasn’t holding up.

Here’s his explanation:

When you print money, the money does not flow evenly into the economic system. It stays essentially in the financial service industry and among people that have access to these funds, mostly well-to-do people. It does not go to the worker. I just mentioned that it doesn’t flow evenly into the system.

Now from time to time it will lift the NASDAQ like between 1997 and March 2000. Then it lifted home prices in the U.S. until 2007. Then it lifted the commodity prices in 2008 until July 2008 when the global economy was already in recession. More recently it has lifted selected emerging economies, stock markets in Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, up four times from 2009 lows and now the U.S.

So we are creating bubbles and bubbles and bubbles. This bubble will come to an end. My concern is that we are going to have a systemic crisis where it is going to be very difficult to hide. Even in gold, it will be difficult to hide.

Faber is, of course, still bearish on U.S. stocks. He told Bloomberg that he sees “considerable downside risk” in the market.

More Outrageaous And Irresponsible Government Spending

March 26, 2013

ImageSource

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George W. Bush tops list of ex-presidents’ expenses in 2012 at $1.3 million

Dallas Morning News

By JOSH LEDERMAN

Associated Press

Published: 26 March 2013 06:47 AM

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Bill Clinton’s 8,300-square-foot Harlem office near the Apollo Theater costs taxpayers nearly $450,000. George W. Bush spends $85,000 on telephone fees, and another $60,000 on travel. Jimmy Carter sends $15,000 worth of postage – all on the government’s dime.

The most exclusive club in the world has a similarly exclusive price tag – nearly $3.7 million, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. That’s how much the federal government spent last year on the four living ex-presidents and one presidential widow.

Topping the list in 2012 was George W. Bush, who got just over $1.3 million last year.

Under the Former Presidents Act, previous inhabitants of the Oval Office are given an annual pension equivalent to a Cabinet secretary’s salary – about $200,000 last year, plus $96,000 a year for a small office staff. Taxpayers also pick up the tab for other items like staff benefits, travel, office space and postage.

The $3.7 million taxpayers shelled out in 2012 is about $200,000 less than in 2011, and the sum in 2010 was even higher. It’s a drop in the bucket compared with the trillions the federal government spends each year.

Still, with ex-presidents able to command eye-popping sums for books, speaking engagements and the like in their post-White House years, the report raises questions about whether the U.S. should provide such generous subsidies at a time when spending cuts and the deficit are forcing lawmakers and federal agencies to seek ways to cut back.

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Report: George W. Bush has most expenses among former presidents for 2012

By Josh Lederman, Published: March 25

Being the leader of the free world is an expensive proposition. And the costs don’t stop once you leave the White House.The government spent nearly $3.7 million on former presidents in 2012, according to an analysis released by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. That covers a pension, compensation and benefits for office staffers, and other costs.

The costliest former president? George W. Bush, who clocked in last year at just more than $1.3 million.

The $3.7 million taxpayers shelled out in 2012 is about $200,000 less than in 2011. All of it is a drop in the bucket compared with the trillions the federal government spends each year.

Still, former presidents are able to command eye-popping sums for books, speaking engagements and the like in their post-White House years, and the report comes at a time when spending cuts and the deficit are forcing lawmakers and federal agencies to cut back.

Under the Former Presidents Act, previous inhabitants of the Oval Office are given a $200,000 annual pension — the equivalent to a Cabinet secretary’s salary — plus $96,000 a year for a small office staff. The government also picks up the tab for costs such as travel, office space and postage.

Departing presidents get additional help in the first years after they leave office, one reason Bush’s costs were higher than those of other living former presidents. The most recent president to leave the White House, Bush was granted almost $400,000 for 8,000 square feet of office space in Dallas, plus $85,000 in telephone costs. Another $60,000 went to travel costs.

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Expensive massages, top shelf vodka and five-star hotels: First Lady accused of spending $10m in public money on her vacations

By Daily Mail Reporter
Created 3:33 PM on 24th August 2011

The Obamas’ summer break on Martha’s Vineyard has already been branded a PR disaster after the couple arrived four hours apart on separate government jets.

But according to new reports, this is the least of their extravagances.

White House sources today claimed that the First Lady has spent $10million of U.S. taxpayers’ money on vacations alone in the past year.

Expensive taste: Michelle Obama, pictured yesterday in Massachusetts, has been accused of spending $10m of public money on vacations

Branding her ‘disgusting’ and ‘a vacation junkie’, they say the 47-year-old mother-of-two has been indulging in five-star hotels, where she splashes out on expensive massages and alcohol.

More…

The ‘top source’ told the National Enquirer: ‘It’s disgusting. Michelle is taking advantage of her privileged position while the most hardworking Americans can barely afford a week or two off work.

‘When it’s all added up, she’s spent more than $10million in taxpayers’ money on her vacations.’

His and her jets: The President and his wife, who are spending nine days on Martha’s Vineyard, have come under fire for travelling on separate planes

The First Lady is believed to have taken 42 days of holiday in the past year, including a $375,000 break in Spain and a four-day ski trip to Vail, Colorado, where she spent $2,000 a night on a suite at the Sebastian hotel.

And the first family’s nine-day stay in Martha’s Vineyard is also proving costly, with rental of the Blue Heron Farm property alone costing an estimated $50,000 a week.

The source continued: ‘Michelle also enjoys drinking expensive booze during her trips. She favours martinis with top-shelf vodka and has a taste for rich sparking wines.

‘The vacations are totally Michelle’s idea. She’s like a junkie. She can’t schedule enough getaways, and she lives from one to the next – all the while sticking it to hardworking Americans.’

The Obama administration was forced to pull a warning about racism in Spain - just as the First Lady arrived in the country for a summer holiday Traveling in style: Mrs Obama during her $375,000 trip to Spain last year

Reblogged from misebogland:

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federal spending

Spending is at record levels and is still growing, threatening economic freedom.

Heritage.org

Federal Spending per Household Is Skyrocketing
Federal Spending Exceeds Federal Revenue by More than $1 Trillion
Federal Spending Grew Nearly 12 Times Faster than Median Income
What if Families Handled Finances Like the Federal Government Does?
Mandatory Spending Has Increased Nearly Six Times Faster than Discretionary Spending
Runaway Spending, Not Inadequate Tax Revenue, Is Responsible for Future Deficits
Medicare and Other Entitlements Are Crowding Out Spending on Defense
National Defense Spending Would Plummet Under Obama’s Budget
Budget Control Act Sequestration Would Hit Defense Hardest
Obama Budget Would Make Defense the Lowest Budget Priority
More than Half of All Federal Spending Will Be on Entitlement Programs in 2012
Total Welfare Spending Is Rising Despite Attempts at Reform
More than 70 Percent of Federal Spending Goes to Dependence Programs
Cut Spending, Fix the Debt, and Restore Prosperity

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The two parties of Big Government

NetRightDaily

By Rebekah Rast — Would the author of the New Deal be pleased with the state of Social Security 80 years later? Did President Johnson, when approving of the Medicare amendment in 1965, know of the volatility of such a program and the government dependency it would create?

While Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Johnson did what they thought best for the nation at the time, they must have known that to inject even a little government spending into peoples’ personal lives would only lead to more spending and a new kind of government dependency.

And that is exactly what has happened. Almost 60 percent of all federal spending is now dedicated to so-called “mandatory” spending, which includes entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security. In 1960, entitlement payments accounted for well under a third of the federal government’s total outlays, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Because this government largesse can no longer be afforded, entitlement programs are in trouble. Projections have shown that if not dealt with Medicare as we know it might not be around in the next decade, with the trust fund set to run out in 2024.

Both sides of the political aisle see fit to fund a federal health insurance program for America’s seniors, and both sides champion a need for some kind of reform to save it.

Read Full Article Here

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Taxpayers subsidize big banks handing out $83 bln annually

AllNewsPlace

Published on Mar 25, 2013

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) grilled Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke about the risks of having banks that are too big to fail on Tuesday. According to a recent Bloomberg study, some of the biggest banks are receiving $83 billion in subsidies each year. Bernanke appeared before the Senate Banking Committee and was forced to answer whether or not these financial institutions should be forced to reimburse taxpayers for the bailouts. Anthony Randazzo, director of economic research with the Reason Foundation, breaks down the numbers.

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Taxpayers Foot $3.7M Bill for Ex-Presidents’ Phones, Postage, Travel and More (washington.cbslocal.com)
Ex-Presidents cost American taxpayers at least $3.7 million a year (capitolhillblue.com)
How much do we pay for ex-presidents? (abcactionnews.com)
Taxpayers shell out nearly $3.7M for ex-presidents (ktvb.com)

Tags: Apollo Theater, Bill Clinton, Congressional Research Service, Former Presidents Act, George W Bush, Jimmy Carter, Oval Office, White House

Comment

Govt Plans to Sell Off Our Forests for 3 days Worth of Expenditure. Public Will Loose Access for 90 Years

March 24, 2013

The government is planning to sell off our national forests which are currently owned by Coillte. The plan would be to sell harvesting rights on 500,000 acres out of 1.2 million that they manage. They claim it is worth €700 million although in the Peter Bacon report on Forestry, he puts the true value at €360 million or the equivalent of 3 days of government expenditure.

Rep. Conyers: ‘The Debt Is Not Endangering Us a Bit … We Don’t Think There’s a Problem’

Filed under: American National Debt, Budget Cuts, bureaucracy, Economic News, Fiscal Irresponsibility, Fiscal irresponsibility, Government, Greed, Ineptitude, Politics, Legislation and Economy News, Special Interests — 1 Comment

March 15, 2013

March 14, 2013

By Jon Street

Rep. Conyers: ‘The Debt Is Not Endangering Us A Bit … Some Debt Is Not A Bad Idea’

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee. (AP)

(CNSNews.com) – Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said on Thursday that the nation’s current debt of $16.7 trillion is “not endangering” the country, adding that “some debt is not a bad idea” and that he and other congressional Democrats “don’t think there’s a problem.”

Conyers and other liberal Democrats spoke at a Capitol Hill press conference about their initiative to compel Congress to cancel the across-the-board budget cuts (sequester) of $1.2 trillion over 10 years, which actually are reductions in the rate of increase in federal spending and amount to $44 billion for this year.

The sequestration reductions were triggered by the Budget Control Act of 2011.

At the event, CNSNews.com asked Conyers, “Republicans say if we don’t make cuts to reduce the deficit soon that sequester cuts will actually be small compared with cuts we would need to make if we continue on this track [of spending]. Meanwhile, Leader Pelosi has said she doesn’t think that we have a spending problem and the White House has recently said that we shouldn’t balance the budget just for the sake of balancing the budget. That said, by canceling sequester would we then be manufacturing a larger crisis in the future and, if so, how would you justify those more severe cuts to the American people?”