Global Articles on what is going on...posted daily

[sandi66]

ACSF's Groundbreaking Film Probes Reality and Rhetoric of America’s Natural Gas Boom

Saturday, 06 November 2010

“Shale Gas and America's Future,” a 30-minute, made-for-TV film about the country's natural gas drilling boom, was released today by the American Clean Skies Foundation (ACSF), a nonprofit organization formed to advance America’s energy independence and a cleaner environment.

“Yesterday, at his post-election press conference, President Obama described the country’s natural gas resources as ‘terrific,’” said Gregory C. Staple, ACSF’s CEO. “In fact, energy experts say we have a hundred-year supply. But much of this natural gas is trapped in deeply buried shale rock formations and can only be tapped using a drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing. That process has led to an intense environmental debate over the risks and rewards of producing this clean-burning domestic fuel. But what is rhetoric? And what is reality?”

“Shale Gas and America's Future” provides a unique look at how local communities in Pennsylvania are balancing the trade-offs related to gas drilling for themselves and the nation. The film explores the issues from all sides and features community meetings, unique drilling footage, 3-D animation and interviews with the state's top environmental regulator.

The film was commissioned by ACSF and produced by Hillmann & Carr, an Emmy award-winning, Washington D.C.-based documentary film company. The director is Jennifer Gruber, who won an Academy Award as location producer for “The Johnstown Flood.” Larry Klein, whose TV credits include top science shows for PBS and the Discovery Channel, is the film's senior writer.

“This film goes beyond other movies by showing the whole hydrofracking process and what local citizens and state regulators are doing to limit potential environmental problems. It also puts local issues into context,” Staple said. “The film talks about why we are drilling for gas – jobs, energy independence, the climate. On the flipside, the film gives voice to those who feel we should refrain from drilling for natural gas because it may endanger drinking water supplies or spoil the landscape. There are plenty of opinions. But we want people to take a look at what’s happening for themselves and draw their own conclusion.”

ACSF's new film supplements a Foundation-supported website launched this summer, www.shalecountry.com. The website features 12 first-person video stories about people caught up in the shale gas boom from Louisiana, Arkansas and Pennsylvania. The website also provides footage of a roundtable discussion between ACSF's Staple and independent film producer, Josh Fox, who created “Gasland.”

To view “Shale Gas and America's Future,” or to order it on DVD, go to www.shalegasfuture.com.

www.melodika.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=85803&Itemid=50

[misisipiflyer]

Obama's Executive Order Released: November 4th- 2010 (vid)

Posted By: NotRob
Date: Friday, 5-Nov-2010 18:48:18

Ominous Executive Order Released: November 4th-2010 order of Succession Within the Department of Justice:

WARNING - HEADS UP FOR 11-6-2010 through 11-9??

Something is going on - BIG TIME

"5-4 no time for a COUNTDOWN"

"Earth Changes, Bots 'Release Dates & The Kill Shot', and other interesting bad news"

"No-Eyes, Red Elk and Bots warned of huge sinkholes, new ones in Germany and now an entire harbor has collapsed:

"Harbour collapses into the sea in Chibatão"

Harbour collapses into the sea in Chibatão / Secteur portuaire qui s'écroule dans la mer

Ominous Executive Order Released: November 4th-Order of Succession Within the Department of Justice

5 USC 3345 Executive Order Released: November 4th- 2010

Section 1. Order of Succession. Subject to the provisions of section 2 of this order, the following officers, in the order listed, shall act as and perform the functions and duties of the office of Attorney General, during any period in which the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, the Associate Attorney General, and any officers designated by the Attorney General pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 508 to act as Attorney General have died, resigned, or otherwise become unable to perform the functions and duties of the office of Attorney General, until such time as at least one of the officers mentioned above is able to perform the functions and duties of that office:

(a) United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia;

(b) United States Attorney for the District of Minnesota; and

(c) United States Attorney for the District of Arizona.

WHY JUST NOW? UNLESS DC IS A NUKE TARGET PER THE BIBLE CODES?

------------------------

Bank Holiday November 11th?

----------------------

Could there be a 11-6-2010 FALSE FLAG? TURN 11-6 UPSIDE DOWN AND WHAT DO YOU GET? 9-11!! A note came in said it might also have somthing to do with 11-9 as well. Heads up!!

Why is Obama leaving the country and taking almost the entire White House staff with him? 65 aircraft, 34 battle ships? 3000 people? At a time when we are in a deep depression we spend millions on a "trip" such as this? Is this the way the Illuminati will stop the rise of the American people against them? "5-4 no time for a COUNTDOWN." 5+4 = 9 and 9 is the number of judgment. Do the RICH MEN feel they have run out of time? That there is no longer any time for their FULL COUNTDOWN? a "do it now or we lose everything!" mentality? Remember the TIME WAVE ZERO AND THE BOTS "TIPPING POINT". Cliff High just moved the date up to 11-5-2010!!! Time Wave Zero says massive change coming begriming November 14th - is that connected to a bank holiday?

Possible false flag attack November 6th 2010

[sandi66]

Deloitte: Kennedy Ranks As Largest Forensics and Dispute Advisory Practice

6 November 2010

The Kennedy Consulting Research & Advisory report, Forensics & Dispute Advisory Marketplace 2010: Key Trends, Profiles and Forecasts, is out and there are some key findings of interest including the fact that Deloitte ranks as the largest forensics and dispute advisory practice. Last year's aggregate Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu limited (“DTTL”) member firm revenue was the basis for the decision.

Further, Kennedy notes that:

Deloitte ranks as the largest forensics and dispute advisory practice by measure of 2009 aggregate Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (“DTTL”) member firm revenue.

Deloitte’s practices are among the broadest and deepest across the Forensics and Dispute Advisory (F&DA) space.

Deloitte received the highest ranking of “strong” in 11 out of 12 forensic and dispute advisory competency areas as defined by Kennedy.


Greg Swinehart, partner and leader of the forensic and dispute services practice of Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP was understandably pleased and had this say:

“Deloitte’s performance validates the depth, breadth and quality of forensic and dispute services that we offer our clients.”

Conducting internal investigations and experience with complicated anti-bribery, corruption, and money laundering engagements were noted as two of Deloitte's strong suits.

Other high marks were given to:


• computer forensics tools and practices and the applications necessary for them
• investigations into various matters in industries and across different geographies

www.big4.com/news/deloitte-kennedy-ranks-as-largest-forensics-and-dispute-advisory-practice-1948

[sandi66]

G-20 leaders to take up currency issue first in Seoul summit

SEOUL, Nov. 7 (Yonhap) -- Leaders of the Group of 20 leading and emerging economies will first discuss the global currency dispute when they gather in Seoul this week, according to the summit's organizer Sunday.

During their first dinner in Seoul on Thursday, leaders including U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao will talk about the currency disputes and ways to forge collaboration for balanced growth around the world, the local organizing committee said.

The currency issue will also be part of the agenda during the first official session of the G-20 summit on Friday, when political leaders are scheduled to discuss the framework for sustainable and balanced growth, it said.

The summit comes amid a still simmering currency dispute among the world's major economies. The U.S. and the European Union have been turning up the heat on China to let its currency appreciate against the greenback.

To ease the currency tension, G-20 finance ministers met in the South Korean city of Gyeongju on Oct. 22-23 and agreed to move toward more market-determined exchange rate systems that reflect underlying economic fundamentals and refrain from competitive devaluation.

As part of this effort, the ministers said they will pursue policies aimed at reducing excessive current account imbalances that could place a limit on the size of surpluses and deficits.

The organizing committee also said other items on the agenda for the G-20 Seoul summit will be international financial institution reforms and a global financial safety net, development issues, trade and global warming, financial regulation reform and, finally, energy and anti-corruption measures.

Some of the topics, including development issues, trade, global warming, anti-corruption measures and the business summit will be on the G-20 summit agenda for the first time in Seoul.

Leaders will release a joint communique following discussions on the topics. The summit will close with a press conference held by South Korean president Lee Myung-bak on Friday afternoon. (Yonhap)

www.mcot.net/cfcustom/cache_page/126183.html

[sandi66]

India, US finalise $5-bn defence pacts

Back To Main India

Washington/Mumbai, Nov 6 (IANS) India and the US have reached agreements on two lucrative defence deals worth nearly $5 billion that will give employment to nearly 26,500 people in job-starved America.

According to a White House statement Saturday, US' Boeing Company and the Indian Air Force have reached a preliminary agreement on the purchase of 10 C-17 Globemaster III military transport aircraft and are now in the process of finalizing the details of the sale.

The statement came hours after US President Barack Obama arrived in India for a four-day visit during which the two countries are expected to finalise many trade pacts.

The statement said once all the heavy transport aircraft have been delivered, the IAF will be the owner and operator of the largest fleet of C-17s outside of the US.

"Each C-17 supports 650 suppliers across 44 US states and that this order will support Boeing’s C-17 production facility in Long Beach, California, for an entire year. This transaction is valued at approximately $4.1 billion, all of which is US export content, supporting an estimated 22,160 jobs,” the statement said.

India has also declared the lowest bidder and selected the US-based General Electric Company for a contract to provide the Indian Aeronautical Development Agency with 107 F414 engines to be installed on the indigeniously produced Tejas light combat aircraft.

“Upon finalizing the contract, General Electric will be positioned to export almost one billion dollars in high technology aerospace products. This transaction is tentatively valued at approximately $822 million, all of which is US export content, supporting an estimated 4,440 jobs,” the statement said.


www.southasiamail.com/news.php?id=87720

[sandi66]

US Blows an Opportunity in Shanghai

November 07, 2010

By John Parker

One of the most disappointing exhibits at Shanghai's Expo 2010, which ended October 31st, was the US pavilion -- a dismal combination of ineptitude and self-loathing political correctness. As an effort to attract Chinese tourists to the US or improve America's image in China, the pavilion was an epic failure; but as a symbol of Obama's America, it wasn't bad.


It's not very surprising that Shanghai Expo 2010, which just ended (coincidentally) on Halloween night, never attracted much interest in the US. American tourists, already in a penny-pinching mood due to the recession, were reluctant to spring for a transpacific flight ticket, and also put off by a certain nervousness about growing Chinese power, which the Expo site itself, purposely dominated by the immense red ziggurat of the China pavilion, only heightened.


Having said that, the Expo as a whole was actually much more interesting and worthwhile than one might have expected. The event's best national pavilions managed to show off the best aspects of each country with dazzling architecture, lighting, and priceless treasures like the Little Mermaid statue from Copenhagen harbor, the centerpiece of Denmark's pavilion; or "The Dance Hall in Arles", a Van Gogh which featured prominently in the French pavilion. The favorite pavilion of this writer was Spain's, a brilliantly conceived audiovisual experience which managed to tell visitors everything important about Spain, past and present, without boring them for even a second. Spain was also represented by three extremely well-done and effective city pavilions, for Bilbao, Barcelona and Madrid. Actually, Spain's pavilions were so well done, in comparison to the environmentalist hair-shirt-wearing that characterized many other European pavilions, that a visitor might reasonably conclude that the torch of leadership in Western civilization had passed to Spain for the first time in several centuries.


And then, there was the US pavilion, voting "present" at history's biggest-ever opportunity to win over Chinese tourists. According to the organizers, the pavilion, organized around a "rising to the challenge" theme, was intended to "tell the story of the American spirit of perseverance, innovation, and community-building in a multi-dimensional, hi-tech presentation," and "presented the US as a place of opportunity and diversity where people come together to change their communities for the better". The reality was quite different: a muddled, disappointing fiasco which was hobbled by a combination of self-flagellating political correctness and cluelessness about what would actually interest Chinese visitors, all exacerbated by procrastination and an embarrassing lack of funds.


The disappointments began with the pavilion's architecture. The aluminum-clad structure, designed by Canadian (!) architect Clive Grout, was supposedly intended to resemble "eagles' wings." After examining it from every conceivable angle, I still fail to see the resemblance. While not exactly ugly, the structure (which one Internet wag compared to a "combination air cleaner and Bose sound system") was stylistically unimaginative and overly cost-conscious -- which might be defensible when building an industrial park in Wichita, Kansas, but made no sense at all when constructing an Expo pavilion, intended to show off the country to foreigners.


The attractions within, however, were a far more serious letdown. These basically consisted of three films, which the average visitor could only reach after waiting in the hot sun for several hours. It is illuminating to summarize each of these in turn, then compare what the pavilion organizers were trying to convey with what a typical mainland Chinese visitor would actually think.


The first film, "Welcome to America," showed various Americans trying to say "welcome to the US pavilion" in bad Chinese. Mildly amusing, it did succeed in its goal of eliciting chuckles from Chinese visitors. However, most people in China think of the US as an extremely powerful and advanced country that China will have to struggle for decades to catch up with; although the state media's reporting on the US is almost exclusively negative, as is the depiction offered by China's education system, many Chinese, not trusting their own government, suspect that the US is actually a paradise of wealth and freedom relative to their own country. Any local entering the pavilion with this attitude must have been confused, if not stunned, by "Welcome to America", which depicted Americans as amiable, slightly dimwitted goofballs.


The second film, "The Spirit of America", was a series of personal testimonials that were intended to "create a living portrait of the US, [and] personify America's drive and spirit, while speaking to the power of imagination and partnership". In actuality, it was a disorganized series of touchy-feely, vaguely environmentalist musings by young children and uncomfortable-looking corporate representatives, whose main purpose seemed to be to fill time between the short welcoming speeches by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama which respectively began and ended the film.


This effort could have only added to the average Chinese visitor's bafflement. In addition, the prominence of politicians was inappropriate, and would still have been so even if those posts had been filled by Republicans at the time of the Expo. This writer saw many national pavilions at Expo, and there was a strong inverse correlation between the quality of a country's government and the likelihood that their pavilion would prominently feature the national leadership. The focus on Clinton and Obama was reminiscent of, for example, Iran's pavilion, which welcomed entering visitors with a huge portrait of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Few western democracies were as unsubtle as the US in this respect; even North Korea did not display Kim Jong-Il prominently in its pavilion.


The third and final film, "The Garden," was the biggest letdown of all. Granted, it was at least technically proficient, with oblong screens and a few cute effects like misting the audience when it rained on screen. However, content-wise, it was an unmitigated disaster. The film was intended to convey a message that people can work together to make their cities better, featuring a story of a young girl who succeeds in turning a small vacant lot into a garden park after overcoming many obstacles. The implementation of this concept might have gone over well with an audience of undergraduates at a second-tier journalism school in the US, but as the main attraction at the US Expo pavilion, it was so spectacularly inappropriate and downright clueless that this writer literally cringed watching it.


This was for a number of reasons. First, at an event where literally every other country present tried to put their best foot forward, this film presented US cities as decaying and backward, which, besides representing the usual leftist obsession with the negative, is factually incorrect -- American cities certainly have bad neighborhoods (most of which are run by liberal politicians), but they are not crime-ridden ghettos as a whole. Second, there was a huge disconnect culturally between the film's message of volunteerism and the reality of life in urban China. In mainland China, NGOs have to be approved by the CCP dictatorship or they just disappear. So, advising Chinese people that they should form organizations to beautify their neighborhoods is not likely to be productive. Third, the "garden" in the film was built on a vacant lot; again, this is a scenario that simply has no relevance to urban China. With four times the US population on about the same land area, China has such a huge demand for land that vacant lots barely exist; when they do, they are usually controlled by a property developer and invariably walled off and guarded full-time. Any Chinese attempting to emulate the girl in the film would, therefore, likely be run off by baton-wielding security guards.


Fourth, the self-deprecating nature of the film was totally unsuited for the audience. Self-criticism, in general, is a Western phenomenon; outside the West, self-congratulation is the norm, a fact of life abroad that consistently eludes leftists, despite their paper-thin, "eat-at-more-foreign-restaurants-than-thou" veneer of sophistication. Westerners win points with their compatriots by "standing up and taking responsibility" when things go wrong. In Asia, historically, people who "stand up and take responsibility" for disasters have usually been decapitated shortly thereafter. Chinese people already believe that their culture is the greatest on earth and China is the greatest country on earth; hence, a self-critical presentation not only will not impress them, but will only tend to confirm their already ample prejudices against you. As is so often the case, a left-wing attempt to behave in an "enlightened" manner ("we won't brag about ourselves like that terrible Bush") simply backfired, damaging Western interests with no compensating benefit. (At least this outcome was wholly consistent with the Obama administration's foreign policy.)


Fifth, in the film, a white-collar banker character, in an obvious dig at Wall Street, is the last and most reluctant to support the girl's efforts. It's hard to know where to begin in lambasting this bit of gratuitous capitalist bashing. One might start by pointing out that it is contemptible to use an event like the Expo to score domestic political points. Perhaps more importantly, this casual blue-state auto-eroticism was (yet again) utterly inappropriate for China; in the PRC, it was hardline socialism which reduced cities to crumbling wrecks, and only allowing market forces to operate created enough wealth to reverse that disaster. Finally, besides the objectionable nature of demonizing society's most productive citizens -- quite ironically, inasmuch as most of the funds to build the pavilion came from US corporations -- the banker-bashing presented the US as a divided society which demonizes certain groups, exactly the opposite of the egalitarian ideal the filmmakers purport to represent.


Last but not least, one could point out the absurdity, given the film's intended audience, of the lonely ghetto child being white, whilst the neighbors who help her belong to various ethnic minorities. Americans, of course, are exposed to this kind of feckless tokenism every time they turn on their TVs; inside the US, while inane, it's at least understandable, given the specific history and cultural environment of the country. But: China is not the US, and to Chinese, such symbolic gestures are simply meaningless. Hence, to include them in a film meant for Chinese people is totally ludicrous, and typifies a key trait of the modern leftist, especially the show-business leftist: self-referential narcissism, the unquestioned belief that, in the end, it really is all about me and my peculiar obsessions (which I mistakenly assume to be universal).


To sum up, the message conveyed to Chinese visitors by the US pavilion was the following: "welcome, from some random not-very-bright people"; "welcome again, from some politicians"; and finally, "America pretty much sucks, but after a long frustrating struggle, you might be able to slightly improve one small area of your neighborhood".


Not exactly "the land of the free and the home of the brave"!


What were the common threads in this stunning air-ball of public diplomacy? Politically correct self-loathing; a large dollop of plain old ineptitude; and a superficial, self-referential multiculturalism which was totally indifferent to the actual characteristics and interests of local people.


The real tragedy is that, as unwelcome as this suggestion is to the left, the US actually does have a lot to be proud of. Here's a small -- very small -- sampling of what the pavilion could have shown to the people of China, but didn't:


•America's stunning natural beauty: Yellowstone; Yosemite; Mount McKinley; the Appalachians; redwood forests; Monument Valley in Utah; the Grand Canyon; Big Bend; the Everglades; the fall colors in New England...
•Our iconic architecture: the Statue of Liberty; the Empire State; the Capitol and White House; Willis Tower; The Golden Gate Bridge; Hoover Dam; Frank Lloyd Wright's work; the Gateway Arch; colonial architecture like Williamsburg; the Alamo...
•Our world-class museums and concert halls: the Smithsonian; the Field Museum; the Museum of Modern Art in NYC...
•Our great universities -- too many to list -- open to students from all over the world, including tens of thousands of mainland Chinese, learning the skills and technology that have helped immensely to transform China beyond recognition in just a few decades.
•Our mammoth interstate highway system, which China is now in the process of copying almost to the smallest detail.
•Our huge achievements in business and commerce: the Chicago Mercantile Exchange; the NYSE; the Boeing factory in Washington; the Mall of America; Walmart's mammoth distribution centers with their racks of bar-coded goods stretching to the horizon.
•Our inconceivably rich musical heritage: jazz; blues; rock; soul; disco; gospel; hip-hop; country; ad infinitum - the dominant musical entertainment forms on the earth, all invented and perfected in America. Considering this, the roster of musical acts assembled for the Expo was pretty pathetic -- Herbie Hancock was the highlight. Imagine the excitement that could have been created if A-list acts had been brought in.
•Our intellectual achievements -- the haul of Nobel Prizes won by Americans is staggering, and the total increases pretty much every year; whereas, to win one in China, you evidently have to be sent into exile (Gao Xingjian, Literature, 2000) or to prison (Liu Xiaobo, Peace, 2010).
•Our incredible heritage of innovation and technology -- American inventions are so utterly pervasive in modern life that it is no exaggeration to say that the typical urban Chinese spends each day surrounded by a kind of protective blanket of American ideas: incandescent and fluorescent lighting; the paper clip; the telephone; the safety elevator; the vacuum cleaner; the pipe wrench; the electric iron; the AC motor; the revolving door; the smoke detector; the zipper; the flashlight; the safety razor; the teddy bear; the automatic transmission; the electric blanket; sunglasses; the electric guitar; assembly-line mass production; the airplane; air conditioning; the transistor; the integrated circuit; the World Wide Web; carbon fiber; LEDs; microwave ovens; cellular telephony - the list is almost endless. A very simple, and very compelling, exhibit could have been made showing a typical apartment in China, highlighting all the devices invented in the US.
•Our astonishingly luxurious way of life: even after years of recession, the American standard of living is still so high that it literally inspires disbelief in much of the world. Even helicopter footage of the Dallas/Fort Worth suburbs would have elicited head-shaking awe from a Chinese audience.
•And what about the political system? 234 years of stable democratic government interrupted only by the Civil War is actually nothing to sneeze at, not that this would ever occur to a liberal.
•Finally, what about the US' historical contributions to the larger interest of humanity, like winning the Pacific war in World War II? This would appear to something worth mentioning to Chinese, given the horrors of Japanese occupation during the war - just a few hours' drive to the west in Nanjing, a somber museum documents the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians by Japanese troops, and Shanghai itself was Japanese-occupied territory for almost the entire war. One could bring up almost endless other examples, such as the US role in founding the United Nations, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization -- especially since China has probably benefited more from the explosion in international trade than any other single nation. One might object to this by saying that bringing up historical topics would raise awkward points like the US role in China's civil war, not to mention the Korean War, where American and Chinese troops were in direct combat. But other countries at the Expo, like Poland, showed that it was not necessary to bowdlerize history at one's pavilion: the Poles brought a brilliant, unsparing animated film about Polish history, which showed, among other things, Stalin conniving with Hitler to carve up Poland in WWII -- an event that, to this day, is still politically incorrect to mention in socialist countries.


The pavilion's planners did not consider a single one of the points listed above to be worth bringing to the attention of Chinese visitors. One can begin to account for this astonishing fact by noting that most of the key individuals involved, such as Hillary Clinton and US commissioner general Jose H. Villareal, were Democrats. Now, I will not bash Hillary here: first, because she's the only one in the Obama administration with any cojones; and second, because if she hadn't stepped in and started shaking the money tree, the pavilion could have turned from merely a lame embarrassment into an outright international incident. Villareal, on the other hand, was the main party responsible for failing to generate content worthy of the US. Tellingly, if one looks on the Net for assessments of the US pavilion, one quickly finds that the biggest defender of Villareal's work is Villareal himself, e.g., with a Foreign Policy piece attempting to rebut an earlier takedown of the pavilion by Shanghai-based blogger Adam Minter. Villareal was right about one thing, however: the US has to find a better way to do Expos.


A superficially impressive array of positive assessments of the pavilion can be found on the Net, e.g., on pages like the Wikipedia page for Expo 2010 pavilions, which give positive feedback from visitors. However, every single such example is compromised by an "observer effect" that the sources seem totally unaware of: Chinese people are culturally programmed not to criticize others openly, lest they lose face. Consequently, if an obviously American interviewer, right in front of the US pavilion, asks a Chinese visitor their opinion of it, an honest assessment is very unlikely to be forthcoming. Which was closer to the truth: the rosy picture painted by Villareal, or the grimmer assessment given here? That question was answered definitively on November 3rd, when a Jiaotong University survey cited by Shanghai Daily revealed that Chinese visitors voted the US pavilion the "most disappointing foreign pavilion at the Expo."


Another left-wing meme on the US pavilion complained it was "too corporate." In actuality, being "corporate" does not imply a lack of quality -- great company pavilions of the past, like General Motors' Futurama at the 1939 New York World's Fair, have demonstrated that a corporate pavilion can be as entertaining as a country pavilion, or more so. Moreover, inasmuch as the small-scale corporate exhibits near the US pavilion's exit were more interesting than the films, and the separate Coca-Cola pavilion at Expo 2010 was one of the most popular and best-executed pavilions at the event, one could make a good case that the US pavilion wasn't corporate enough. One might also point out that the the spectacle of Democrats like Clinton and Villareal leaning on private businesses to cough up money, which the same Democrats then proceed to grossly misuse, offers a disturbingly accurate microcosm of American society at this point in time.


History will judge the US Expo pavilion as a huge missed opportunity, for two reasons. First, a well-done pavilion could have helped to ameliorate our chronic trade deficits with China by attracting a generation of mainland Chinese to America's world-class tourist attractions. Second, the Expo represented a rare opportunity to counteract some of the Chinese Communist Party's incessant anti-American propaganda by presenting a positive image of the US to millions of Chinese visitors. Regrettably, the actual pavilion completely failed on both counts: the organizers were trying so hard to be friendly and welcoming, that they forgot to say anything positive about America, the likely result being that an entire generation of Chinese tourists will book tickets to Spain instead. As a US expatriate in China, it appalls me that 7 million Chinese people visited this slab of epic fail with high hopes, and are now equating it with America itself. Trust me: we're going to regret this one later.

www.americanthinker.com/2010/11/us_blows_an_opportunity_in_sha.html

[sandi66]

Is the US Dollar Doomed?

by: Brian Dolan November 07, 2010

Does QE2 doom the USD?
On its own, probably not. But it certainly doesn't help the beleaguered greenback, which is primarily suffering from the protracted weakness in the US economy contrasted with relative strength in other major economies, especially Asian regional and other emerging markets. The price action in recent weeks highlights our view that it's relative growth prospects that are driving central bank policy expectations, which in turn are driving key currencies.

As one indication, the USD index at 76.55 is only slightly lower than the 76.70 level at the time of the Fed announcement, with EUR/USD similarly nearly unchanged. Yes, the USD weakened between the Fed's decision and Friday's NFP report, but that's the point: the USD recovered after Oct. jobs surprised to the upside, suggesting improving US growth prospects. GBP/USD is only about 100 points higher than pre-Fed levels, but this stems more from the surprising resilience in 3Q UK GDP reported 2 weeks ago, which led the BOE to refrain from its own QE2 this past week. AUD and NZD have similarly outperformed both the USD and other major currencies after surprising strength in NZ 3Q employment and an unexpected rate hike from the RBA, again due to strong growth prospects and limited spare capacity.

So we hesitate to conclude that QE2 in and of itself will lead to further USD weakness. More important will be the evolution of incoming US data, and to the extent it improves, the USD has the potential to stabilize. The better than expected Oct. jobs report, while far from cause for exuberance, does hold out the prospect for further improvement in consumer confidence, and with it US consumption.

Now that QE2 is out of the way, other major currencies are at risk of coming under the microscope, especially if incoming data begins to disappoint. In particular, we think EUR and GBP strength against the USD is especially vulnerable to data setbacks and the strong likelihood of slower growth in the months ahead.

EUR is also vulnerable to renewed peripheral stressors (see below). On the technical side, we would note a daily bearish engulfing candlestick in EUR/USD on Friday, potentially suggesting a reversal lower, and we would highlight the daily Ichimoku Tenkan and Kijun lines at 1.4008 and 1.3951 as a critical support zone that must hold for the EUR/USD to strengthen further.

The USD index also has long-term trendline support at 75.60/65 as another indicator of whether USD weakness is extending. GBP/USD has long-term trendline resistance at 1.6300/10, above which we would expect gains to extend. AUD, NZD, and CAD (to a lesser extent) seem most likely to continue to outperform (see below), not just against the USD, but also EUR, GBP and JPY. Should the USD recover more quickly than expected, rapid gains in Gold, Silver and crude oil are at risk of a sharp sell-off. We go into next week cautiously optimistic for a USD recovery overall.

G20 Summit not likely to resolve much

The G20 Summit in Seoul, South Korea is set for November 11 and 12 in the coming week and while there are many issues to be discussed, the likely outcome will be one of inaction. Current account limits, as proposed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in an attempt to rebalance the global economy, are expected to be debated at the summit. No resolution is anticipated as the two countries with the largest current account surpluses (China and Germany, respectively) have been vocal in rejecting the proposal.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, like many others have criticized current account ceilings as well as the Fed’s policy decision to expand its balance sheet in another round of quantitative easing. While the Federal Reserve’s objectives are to promote a high level of employment and low, stable inflation (the dual mandate set by Congress), the dollar has weakened as a result of monetary policy actions. The depreciation of the dollar raises concerns among world leaders who agreed at the last meeting to refrain from “competitive devaluation” of currencies.

Leaders of emerging economies have also expressed concern as they are seeing strong capital inflows. At a time when protectionism is intensifying and tensions are high, the leaders of the G20 nations (which account for 85% of the global economy) are prepared to display a united front in sustaining the global economic recovery. Without any concrete resolutions, the impact on financial markets will be relatively muted. There is the risk of further US dollar weakness if markets conclude that the G-20 is giving the US a free pass to allow its currency to weaken. We will be watching for statements from Geithner or Pres. Obama in support of the USD to offset that risk.

BOE Inflation Report key to more QE

The Bank of England’s November meeting was the least eventful central bank meeting of the week. But it was a mere prelude to next week’s much more important Inflation Report. This will include the crucial BOE forecasts for inflation and growth for the next two years. This Report is loaded with extra significance since it is the last one before year-end and it comes at a critical time for the UK economy. From 2011 public spending cuts will start to be implemented and VAT is scheduled to rise in January. Interestingly, back in August when the BOE published its last report, its inflation forecast for 2013 was between 1-2 per cent, which suggested that the Bank thought there would be a deflationary trend in the UK. This would support the case for more quantitative easing in the coming months.

But growth surprised to the upside in the third quarter and commodity prices have risen – the oil price is up 20 per cent in the last three months. If future inflation expectations are revised up on Tuesday then the prospect of the BOE following the Fed and offering more policy support to the UK economy is drastically reduced. This could fuel a rally in the GBPUSD as we lead up to year-end, with 1.63 the first target leading to 1.65 - the 2009 high. However, after recent gains the main risk is that the BOE maintains its dovish outlook on inflation, potentially sending Sterling lower after testing long-term trend line resistance at 1.6300/10. We would also note BRC retail sales and industrial production as potential data catalysts to a weaker GBP, should they soften as expected.

Will sovereign risks return to haunt the euro?

Fears over the solvency of some of Europe’s troubled peripheral economies are coming to the fore as we head into the last stretch of the year. This was always going to be the case as governments got closer to having to pass tough budgets that could kill political careers.

Portugal’s government managed to pass its budget this week, but not without a fight from the opposition. This has taken the focus off the Iberian nation for now as Ireland and Greece take centre stage. Ireland is seemingly running into similar problems that Greece faced back in May: persistent selling pressure on its bond yields. Not even EUR6bn in spending cuts for 2011 was enough to placate investors. At the rate that its bond yields are rising, the Irish government must be wondering if it can make it to 7 December when it is scheduled to announce its 2011 budget without resorting to the IMF/ECB stabilization fund.

Likewise, elections in Greece this weekend will be pivotal. Any sign that the current socialist government is losing its grip on power may spook investors causing a second act in the Greek debt tragedy. Meanwhile, ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet is trying to stage-manage balancing the needs of the debt-ridden peripheral economies, with those of the fast-growing core. On Thursday’s meeting the ECB kept interest rates on hold at 1 per cent, and maintained its slightly hawkish bias. In the short-term, as long as the ECB keeps firm to its exit strategy and the Fed pumps the US economy with dollars then EURUSD is likely to continue to strengthen. However, we believe it will be difficult for the single currency to sustain gains above 1.45 – a level last reached in December 2009.

RBA surprise rate hike & New Zealand’s positive outlook

Earlier this week the RBA surprised the market with a 25bp hike in their cash rate which now stands at 4.75%. Initially economists were expecting this rise to come at their December meeting, however the RBA cited upside risks to the inflation outlook and decided to take pre-emptive action. (Our 4Q Market Outlook correctly called for the Nov. RBA hike.) Additionally, on Friday, the RBA released their quarterly statement in monetary policy where they mentioned that strength of the Aussie exchange rate “is playing a stabilizing role for the economy as a whole”, however if it appreciates too rapidly then “both growth and inflation would likely be lower than in the central scenario” – Central Scenario: GDP is expected to expand by 3.5% in 2010, and 3.75% in 2011 & 2012, while inflation is expected to remain around 2.5% until 1H of 2011 and gradually rise to 3.0% in 2012. Currently the market has priced in only one rate hike through 1H of 2011. However we believe the recent expansion of QE2 in the U.S. may lead to a further rise of commodity prices and therefore potential for higher inflation in Australia than currently anticipated. Under such a scenario the RBA would likely have to raise their cash rate to 5.25% (+50bps) by the end of 1H, which is currently greater than most economists expect.

Another currency we would like to highlight is the strengthening NZD. Earlier in the week New Zealand’s 3Q unemployment data came in much stronger than expected, with unemployment falling to 6.4% versus 6.9% in 2Q (consensus was looking for 6.7%). Additionally, Finance Minister English recently stated that interest rates are still at historically low levels and expects higher rates in the next year to 18 months. English went on to say that +3.0% GDP growth over the next year is achievable – current expectations are for 2.6% in 2011. With this in mind, we believe the current RBNZ cash rate of 3.0% may be raised significantly by the end of 1H 2011, perhaps to as high as 3.75%. Overall, we believe this warrants a “buy on dips” strategy for both the AUD and NZD vs. the USD, as well as the JPY – In AUD/USD 0.9850/950 and NZD/USD 0.7700/7800 zones may be attractive.

Key data and events to watch next week


United States:

Monday – Fed’s Bullard to speak to New York Analyst’s Society

Tuesday – October NFIB Small Business Optimism, November IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism, September Wholesale Inventories, November ABC Consumer Confidence

Wednesday – September Trade Balance, October Import Price Index, Initial Jobless Claims (Nov. 6), Continuing Claims (Oct. 30), DOE U.S. Oil Inventories (Nov. 5), October Monthly Budget Statement

Thursday – Fed’s Lockhart speaks on U.S. economic outlook in Atlanta

Friday – November U. of Michigan Consumer Confidence


Euro-zone:

Monday – November Sentix Consumer Confidence, Juncker speaks to European Parliament Committee, September German Current Account, September German Trade Balance, September German Industrial Production

Tuesday – October German Consumer Price Index

Wednesday – ECB’s Trichet speaks in Lyon, October German Wholesale Price Index, Germany’s Wiseman Release Annual Economic Review

Thursday – ECB’s Stark speaks in Berlin

Friday – 3Q Advance GDP, September Industrial Production, German 3Q Preliminary GDP


United Kingdom:

Tuesday – November BRC October Retail Sales Monitor, October RICS House Price Balance, September Trade Balance, September Industrial Production, September Manufacturing Production, October NIESR GDP Estimate

Wednesday – Bank of England Quarterly Inflation Report

Friday – October Nationwide Consumer Confidence


Japan:

Sunday – October Official Reserve Assets

Monday – September Coincident Index & Leading Index, October Bank Lending Banks, September Current Account Total, September Trade Balance

Tuesday – October Bankruptcies, October Machine Tool Orders

Wednesday – October Consumer Confidence, September Machine Orders, October CGPI


Canada:

Monday – October Housing Starts

Tuesday – September New Housing Price Index, Bank of Canada Governor Carney speaks in Geneva


Australia & New Zealand:

Monday – New Zealand October QV House Prices & October Credit Card Spending

Tuesday – Australian NAB Business Conditions & Confidence Surveys, Australian Westpac Consumer Confidence, New Zealand Reserve Bank Financial Stability Report, Bollard speaks at Select Committee on Financial Stability

Wednesday – Australian September Home Loans, New Zealand October Business PMI & October Food Prices

Thursday – Australian November Consumer Inflation Expectations, Australian October Unemployment Rate & Employment Change, New Zealand October REINZ Housing Price Index


China:

Wednesday – October Trade Balance

Thursday – October Producer Price Index, October Consumer Price Index, October Retail Sales, October Industrial Production, October Urban Fixed Assets Investments

Friday – October Property Prices


G20

Friday – G20 Summit in Seoul, Korea commences

Disclosure: No Positions

seekingalpha.com/article/235240-is-the-us-dollar-doomed

[sandi66]

FDIC starts legal assault on execs of failed banks

November 8, 2010

Roberto Ceniceros
CHICAGO—The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s lawsuit against the former directors and officers of a failed Illinois community bank marks the first in an expected series of such suits—and another source of claims for that segment of the financial institutions D&O market.



“I don't think there is any question that this is the first in a large wave of claims we are going to be seeing by the FDIC against directors and officers of failed banks,” said Dan Bailey, a D&O insurance expert and partner at law firm Bailey Cavalieri L.L.C. in Columbus, Ohio.

Observers had expected the FDIC to commence litigation to recover funds from the directors and officers of shuttered banks, similar to a litigation wave that accompanied the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s.

“If that experience is any guide, we are definitely going to see more lawsuits,” said William A. Boeck, a Kansas City, Mo.-based senior vp and insurance and claims counsel at Lockton Financial Services, a unit of Lockton Cos. L.L.C.

But last week's lawsuit against 11 former executives at Heritage Community Bank comes at a time when few D&O liability insurance markets are available for smaller, financially stressed community banks, market experts said.

“Legacy insurers” that have provided D&O coverage for community banks are “very worried” about the FDIC litigation and their aggregate exposure to smaller, financially distressed community banks, said David Payne, national practice leader for Aon Risk Solutions' special situations group, a unit of Aon Corp.

Those insurers are reluctant to provide D&O coverage for such risks, Mr. Payne said. “The end result is that we have clients that have displacement going on in terms of the carrier community, where we need new (insurers) to come in and provide programs at renewal,” he said.

At the same time, directors and officers at small community banks have become more concerned about regulator lawsuits than shareholder litigation, sources said.

Consequently, new D&O insurers are needed to step in and provide coverage for such banks, Mr. Payne said.

The expected FDIC litigation, however, will not affect the broader range of financial institutions seeking D&O coverage, several sources agreed, including community banks that can demonstrate they are financially sound.

“If the institution is healthy, D&O coverage is available,” Mr. Boeck said. “It is still more expensive than it was a couple of years ago, but coverage is available. If it's a bank that is in trouble, obviously it gets a lot tougher.”

Banks with solid balance sheets that avoided subprime mortgage problems can get broad D&O coverage with attractive pricing, said Kevin LaCroix, a Beachwood, Ohio-based partner with executive liability intermediary OakBridge Insurance Services L.L.C.

“But for those financially troubled banks—actually for financially troubled companies in any sector—it can be very challenging right now,” Mr. LaCroix said.

In last week's lawsuit, the FDIC, as receiver for Heritage, is seeking $20 million from the former bank's directors and officers. It alleges that the defendants mismanaged Heritage and its commercial real estate lending program over several years, leaving the bank “dangerously overexposed to the volatile CRE market.”

The suit alleges claims of negligence, gross negligence and breach of fiduciary duty.

The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation closed Glenwood, Ill.-based Heritage in February 2009 and the FDIC was named receiver.

In total, the FDIC recently has authorized legal action against 70 directors and officers of failed banks nationwide, including 11 from Heritage, an FDIC spokesman said.

That is an increase from the 50 directors and officers that the FDIC said it was authorized to sue in early October. The FDIC spokesman also said it is trying to recoup $2 billion from directors and officers, up from $1 billion announced in October.

It takes the FDIC up to 18 months from the time a financial institution fails to complete an examination, which is a prelude to authorizing a lawsuit, the spokesman said.

Observers therefore believe the authorization to sue 70 officers and directors stems just from banks that failed during the early days of the financial crisis, so more are on the way.

“I don't take much comfort in the fact that they have announced the 70 number, because that may or may not reflect the total number of claims they are going to be asserting once they get through all of the failed banks and investigate all of them,” Mr. Bailey said.

Sources say more than 300 banks have failed since the beginning of 2008 and still more are expected to close, potentially providing targets for FDIC attempts to collect losses from directors and officers.

“The Friday before last, there were seven bank failures in just one afternoon, so that is going to go on for a while,” Mr. LaCroix said last week. “Obviously, for the most recent bank closures, the FDIC hasn't even had an opportunity to assess whether or not there is a claim there.”

Meanwhile, factors the FDIC assesses before commencing litigation include whether there is a potential to recover funds from a closed bank's D&O insurer, the FDIC spokesman said.

“If you are going to spend a large portion of money trying to sue individuals trying to recoup money, you want to make sure that you are going to get that amount back and then some,” the FDIC spokesman said.



www.businessinsurance.com/article/20101107/ISSUE01/311079970

[sandi66]

WaMu shareholders told to expect nothing

November 8, 2010

The examiner's report provides the most thorough and impartial examination yet of WaMu's final year.

WaMu examiner's report (PDF)
Washington Mutual's devastated stockholders got another goose egg this past week. The court-appointed examiner they demanded has concluded it's "highly unlikely that there is any scenario" that pays them even a nickel from the bankruptcy of Washington Mutual Inc. (WMI).

But the rest of us got something valuable: The most thorough and impartial examination yet of WaMu's final year, its crumbling finances and miscalculated rescue efforts.

Even those tracking WaMu's bankruptcy saga with the enthusiasm others reserve for Harry Potter will find new facts and bizarre plot twists.

Who knew, for instance, that the private equity firm Cerberus, which owned Chrysler before its bankruptcy, had proposed to WaMu a $2.5 billion cash infusion in spring 2008 — on condition WaMu paid $7.4 billion in stock to acquire the carmaker's finance arm? Imagine if the foundering WaMu ship had taken on that baggage, too.

The exhaustively documented 359-page report should put some lingering questions to rest. It probably won't.

Examiner Joshua Hochberg was commissioned by the bankruptcy court to address shareholders' outcry over the proposed Chapter 11 plan, which gives them nothing.

Shareholders staked their hopes on the examiner. They expected he'd back their contention that many billions of dollars could be added to the pot of bankruptcy assets, mainly by pursuing lawsuits both against the regulators who seized the Seattle company's banking unit and against JPMorgan Chase, which then acquired it.

The examiner wrote that he "paid particular deference to the concerns" of the shareholders and "sought to bring clarity to otherwise opaque facts that have generated various 'conspiracy theories' concerning the decline, seizure and sale."

He interviewed 61 key players, including 14 WaMu executives, and got access to tens of thousands of documents from various parties. Hochberg, an attorney experienced in internal investigations and the former chief of the Department of Justice's fraud section, worked under a tight deadline considering the scope of the work — less than three months.

At the end of that journey, Hochberg's team finds nothing to support the conspiracy theories. The idea of lucrative lawsuits against JPMorgan, or WaMu's regulators at the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), gets doused with a cold bucket of realism.

Among the conclusions:

• "No evidence indicating OTS or FDIC acted in bad faith" when they seized WaMu's banking unit on Sept. 25, 2008.



• Common stockholders are at least "$16 billion out of the money." That's how much WaMu Inc.'s bankruptcy estate would have to amass before those ordinary shareholders get any payment, because several layers of creditors, bondholders and preferred shareholders are in line ahead of them.

The settlement behind the pending bankruptcy plan provides about $7 billion in assets for distribution. The bulk comes from a settlement with JPMorgan Chase and the FDIC that "reasonably resolves contentious issues" over how to share various disputed funds, tax refunds and the like.

The bankrupt company would need to find roughly $9 billion more before a penny could trickle down to the common stockholders.

But pursuing claims against the FDIC and JPMorgan would unravel the existing settlement, Hochberg warns. That would leave only $900 million in sure assets, and a sea of unending back-and-forth litigation.

• Despite a "rush to sell the bank" in mid-September, nobody was ready to buy WaMu without government support in the days before the seizure. "By Sept. 21, 2008, all the potential bidders had dropped out ... and were not interested in a market transaction," the examiner writes.

• There was also little interest when the FDIC then approached those potential buyers — Citigroup, the Spanish bank Banco Santander, Wells Fargo, TD Bank and the Blackstone Group private equity fund — about acquiring WaMu if regulators seized it. Hochberg details their responses, and sums up: "Not one of these potential bidders was willing to acquire WMI or its troubled assets, at least not without substantial government assistance."

Only JPMorgan Chase responded with a bid fitting regulators' specifications, including no cost to the FDIC. It paid $1.88 billion.

• There's nothing to show JPMorgan Chase "engaged in improper activities that injured WMI" and led to the bank's seizure.

Hochberg writes, for example, that JPMorgan may have included some confidential internal information from WaMu when it briefed the bond rating agencies beginning Sept. 19 on its potential acquisition of WaMu if regulators seized the bank. But he concludes any breach did not harm WaMu because it was already on the brink.

Likewise leaks to the media. About 40 companies had access to the same information as JPMorgan in the final weeks, writes Hochberg, and there's no evidence JPMorgan was trying to drive down WaMu's stock price through a behind-the-scenes media campaign.

Besides, "Given the array of problems facing WMI, the examiner finds it will be very difficult to establish that isolated disclosures of confidential information damaged WMI's stock price, led to illiquidity, or precipitated the seizure of WMI."

• JPMorgan "had an advantage in evaluating the value of WMB (Washington Mutual Bank) because of its extensive due diligence" back in the spring of 2008, when WaMu was talking to potential buyers or investors and wound up taking $7.5 billion from private equity firm TPG. But the examiner found no evidence JPMorgan got any information not available to all potential bidders.

In the September endgame, he wrote, "JPMC was the only potential bidder willing to absorb all of WMB's toxic loan pools without government guarantees."

• The FDIC may not have grasped the full value of some WaMu assets JPMorgan got in the sale, but there are no likely legal remedies for that now, the examiner concludes.

• WaMu experienced intensifying problems through the summer of 2008 with liquidity — essentially, available cash to pay withdrawals and make loans.

By September, after losing some $16 billion in deposits from worried customers, it was attracting deposits by offering "very high-interest CDs ... paying more to depositors than it was earning on the money." Even that didn't stem the outflow.

• Some WaMu executives acknowledged to Hochberg that the bank was on the edge by mid-September. Depositors were pulling out billions and WaMu's last sources of short-term borrowing, the Federal Home Loan Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, were severely tightening their purse strings.

Alan Fish, who replaced Kerry Killinger as CEO for WaMu's final weeks, told Hochberg that if those trends had continued, "it was over" for the bank's "thin margin" of safety.

WaMu senior vice president and assistant treasurer Peter Freilinger — who dealt most closely with the federal lenders — went further, telling Hochberg in an interview that in seizing the bank, OTS "did the right thing."

The report says that on Sept. 20, Freilinger summarized the bank's liquidity this way: "If outflows reduce, we'll probably be good through QE (quarter end). If they don't or if they return to last Weds/Thurs levels, we'd probably tip on Monday, Sept. 29."

That would have shaken confidence in a system already teetering from the Sept. 15 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the Sept. 16 federal takeover of insurance giant AIG at a cost of $85 billion, and doubts about the soundness of other financial powerhouses. It also could have left the FDIC spending tens of billions to pay off depositors. Regulators were determined to avoid that scenario.

"OTS reached reasonable conclusions that WMB was both unlikely to meet its depositors' demands and was operating in an unsafe and unsound condition," Hochberg says.

Some of these findings repeat what's been said before by regulators and others with a stake in the game. But Hochberg was a disinterested investigator, hired by the court at the insistence of WaMu's luckless shareholders.

His message to those shareholders: Difficult as that may be, it's time to move on.

seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/sundaybuzz/2013354760_sundaybuzz07.html

[sandi66]

3 Reasons Why the Fed Might Be Done



November 6, 2010



QE2, QE3, and QE4? Not so fast.


The official FOMC announcement of QE2 has already been greeted by new speculation on the possibility of additional quantitative easing measure. This has raised concerns across the ideological spectrum. Key questions for investors are:

o Are financial markets putting the cart before the horse given the limits of QE2's impact and the lack of underlying consensus within the FOMC?

o When will markets begin to digest the possibility of negative fallout from QE2?

· The FOMC statement again noted the importance of carefully monitoring and responding to economic performance in the weeks ahead, stating "The Committee will regularly review the pace of its securities purchases and the overall size of the asset-purchase program in light of incoming information and will adjust the program as needed to best foster maximum employment and price stability."

· QE proponents read this comment as opening the door to QE3 and beyond. Opponents, or those concerned with the Fed's choice, can just as easily read this statement as the FOMC taking a measured approach to implementing QE2, particularly if commodity prices continue to rise and payroll numbers move beyond those necessary to maintain stable employment (today's announcement was better than expected).

· According to www.DCTripwire.com, former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker said while speaking in Singapore on November 2, before the FOMC announcement, the Fed's debt buying in itself isn't a concern as the U.S. jobless rate, 9.6 percent in September, has little chance of going down soon and the nation's economic problems can't all be cured in the short run. Mr. Volcker also noted that monetary policy in the US is close to the limits of what it can do and that if money is "too easy" for "too long," asset bubbles are a distinct possibility. This should be sobering news, since the U.S. economy has not yet fully recovered from the bursting of the housing bubble.

· Another critical perspective comes from Joseph Stiglitz, who argues that the flood of liquidity from QE and now QE2, is adding to foreign-exchange instability. Expect the issue of "hot money" and instability abroad to receive increasing attention. Stiglitz also points out that the small and medium-size businesses that are being starved of credit are unlikely to benefit from QE2, particularly as a number of the community banks who typically lend to these types of businesses remain on the FDIC problem bank list.

· Chairman Bernanke's unusual Washington Post opinion piece included a subtle call for action on the part of other policymakers as well, making clear that the Federal Reserve cannot solve economic problems on its own. Bernanke cited the need for the combined efforts of many parties, including the central bank, Congress, the administration, regulators and the private sector. While Chairman Bernanke has long been loath to adopt the more aggressive posture of former Chairman Greenspan, that may change as the Federal Reserve continues to face criticism over its efforts and if the Fed determines that low economic growth and high unemployment are unable to be fully solved through Fed action.

What to Watch in the Weeks Ahead


· Backlash from Overseas: The G-20 Summit in Seoul on November 11-12 will provide a forum for major world economic powers to express their views on the FOMC's QE2 strategy, as well as Secretary Geithner's proposal to establish a new accord on current account imbalances.

· QE2's effect on the U.S. dollar and the release of FOMC Minutes on November 24: More details on the internal debate during the November 2-3 FOMC meeting will provide a better sense of the degree of unity behind the QE2 announcement. While the vote drew only one dissenter (Hoenig), a nearly unanimous FOMC vote may disguise more unease amongst the members. That unease may grow as economic data comes in over the weeks ahead and international reaction continues.

· FOMC Meeting December 19: This will be the final meeting of the FOMC with its current membership. As we have previously noted, the Federal Reserve Bank presidents (Fischer of Dallas, Plosser of Philadelphia, and Kocherlakota of Minneapolis) joining the Committee in January 2011 may bring more dissenting views. Maintaining the appearance of consensus on the FOMC will likely get trickier, which could undermine efforts to implement QE2 fully, let alone further QE measures.

For more updates on Federal Reserve policy, go to my website www.lawrencegmcdonald.com


www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-g-mcdonald/3-reasons-why-the-fed-mig_b_779974.html

[sandi66]

Freedoms collapsing
Looking out on a sticker I have placed saying “I’m proud to be an American,” I began to think about the second sentence to the song, which says “Where at least I know I’m free.” With the latest events in our USA, can we still say that?

Government-run health care, not the people’s choice, rammed through Congress. All decisions made for you by the government. Socialism at work. You must purchase “Obamacare.” Will that buy you the treatment you need? Not if you’re a senior and you can be sure that it will be expensive.

The deficit is $11 trillion. Broken down that amounts to $47,000 per American. Erskine Bowles, former White House chief of staff, makes a dire prediction of collapse, due to debt of our wonderful, once proud America. “For sale USA” has been purchased by oil-rich Muslim countries and our debt to China. Taxes are high, high, and higher. Illegal immigration everywhere.

Our government suing Arizona is absolutely ridiculous. It’s the one state with the guts to tell Obama and his czars that Arizona is doing the job that should be done by our government — save itself from drug dealers, murderers, kidnappers, etc., from coming across the borders.

Where does it end?

www.columbian.com/news/2010/nov/07/letters-to-the-editor/

[sandi66]

Computer glitch hits Wells Fargo customers
Published: Saturday, November 06, 2010, 8:08 PM Updated: Saturday, November 06, 2010, 8:28 PM
Russell Hubbard -- The Birmingham News



Wells Fargo & Co., Birmingham's third-largest bank by deposits, said today that computer problems this afternoon led to some account information not being displayed correctly on the Internet and on automated teller machines.

"We had some issues that affected some customers across our operating area Saturday afternoon," spokesman Jay Lawrence said.

The San Francisco-based banking giant operates nationwide. Lawrence said the problems meant the company didn't correctly reflect the account balances of some customers.

"We are sorry for the inconvenience and are now back up and running at 100 percent," Lawrence said at 7:30 p.m.

Other banks, including Bank of America, also were affected by a computer glitch today, according to a report by The Orange County Register.

blog.al.com/businessnews/2010/11/computer_glitch_affects_wells.html



ty sheila

[travelbugaz]

G20 warned against losing focus on regulation

ShareretweetEmailPrintOn Wednesday November 10, 2010, 6:06 am EST
SEOUL (Reuters) - The Group of 20 leading economies could lose focus on improving global financial regulation as domestic policy concerns move center stage at a leaders' summit, a financial think-tank warned on Wednesday.

The G20 has set itself a comprehensive agenda to improve regulation following the global financial crisis. But a survey of bankers, accountants and regulators by the International Center for Financial Regulation (ICFR) at its meeting in Amsterdam found strong fears that those reforms may be put on the back burner at the summit, which begins in Seoul on Thursday.

The poll found 94 percent of participants at the Amsterdam event feared the G20 could fail to make progress on its goals, as domestic considerations move back centerstage.

The ICFR said as a result it was urging G20 leaders in Seoul to prioritize more effective cross-border co-ordination by supervisors, and for agreement on a way forward on crisis resolution to allow for the orderly wind-down of complex banks that were most effective in improving financial stability and most likely to be implemented internationally.

"While these issues aren't prominent on domestic political agendas, they are in fact vital to making the next crisis more manageable," said International Center for Financial Regulation chief executive Barbara Ridpath.

"That's why substantive progress needs to be made in Seoul before momentum is lost," she said.

The sentiment was echoed by India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who warned the Group of 20 must not be complacent in its efforts to set up a strong financial regulatory framework.

"In the financial sector, we should build upon the process of IMF reform on which good progress was made last month at the G20 Finance Ministers meeting," Singh said in a statement before leaving for the G20 summit at Seoul.

The G20 leaders were expected to sign off on the Basel III bank capital rules at their meeting this week as well as a series of agreements to improve regulation of the derivatives market and reduce reliance on credit ratings.


finance.yahoo.com/news/G20-warned-against-losing-rb-1329196225.html?x=0

[travelbugaz]

Special Report: Can this committee save the world from bankers?

ShareretweetEmailPrint
Italy's central bank president Mario Draghi speaks at a news conference after the G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting during the spring IMF-World Bank meeting in Washington April 23, 2010. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
On Wednesday November 10, 2010, 7:45 am EST
By Huw Jones

LONDON (Reuters) - Was the creation of the Financial Stability Board last year a bloodless coup by the world's central bankers? A repeal of the U.S. Declaration of Independence? That's certainly how some in America view the new body which is supposed to plug the holes in the world's financial regulations.

Here's a taster from Ellen Brown, author of "Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth about our Money System", on huffingtonpost.com in June 2009. Pointing to the fact that the FSB's secretariat is based at the Bank for International Settlements' headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, Brown warned that "to the wary, this is not a comforting sign. The BIS has a dark and controversial history", and was, according to one professor she quotes, created as the apex of "a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole."

The "coup", she argued, quoting blogger Marilyn Barnewall, lies in the fact that the United States has only one vote of 20 in the FSB. "In other words, the group will be largely controlled by European central bankers. My guess is, they will represent themselves, not you and not me and certainly not America."

That such extreme theories can be provoked by a body with just 20 staff, housed in a round brown tower in Switzerland's third biggest city, probably says more about American bloggers than it does about the FSB. But that's not to say that the FSB, set up in April 2009 by the world's top 20 economies in response to the financial crisis, is not already a very influential institution.

In its first year, its small, unelected group of officials, little known outside financial markets, has wielded tremendous power in reshaping how banks work. U.S. Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner describes it as "in effect, a fourth pillar of the architecture" of international cooperation alongside the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO.

It's still a work in progress. The FSB's broad license to roam across long established regulatory fiefdoms has sparked inevitable power struggles with other regulators. Emerging states in Asia could clash with older forces, Europe and the United States. It's not even clear that the FSB will have the backing to push reforms through in the future. So far, it doesn't even have its own budget or office, let alone any binding powers.

Despite all that, its reach is remarkable. "The FSB is now like a roof over all the global standard setters," says a European member of the FSB, making no effort to hide a broad smile.

THE ROOF

Officially, the FSB's role is to keep an eye on potential weaknesses in the financial system, and to encourage the world's regulatory bodies to share information about how they address those problems.

One early achievement has been to speed up agreement on tough new rules about the amount of capital that banks must hold. Basel III, as the rules are known, will force some banks to raise extra capital in the markets as a buffer against the kind of liabilities the crisis has foisted on taxpayers. Unveiled in draft version last December and set to be formally approved by G20 leaders gathering in Seoul later this week, the new rules replace an accord known as Basel II, which took a decade of haggling.

"Without the apparatus of the FSB, the Basel reform would never have gone through at the speed it has," says David Green, a former Bank of England and Financial Services Authority official.

But the FSB has its sights set on much, much more. Its charter says it can undertake "any other task agreed by its members in the course of its activities and within the framework of its charter". Though it was set up by, and continues to be beholden to the G20 group of countries, the FSB has a degree of independence that to some extent enables it to escape their control and become an actor in its own right.

"It's still a coordinating body but a much more active and assertive coordinator because the G20 governments have decided it is effectively their secretariat in financial regulation," Green says.

BIG AMBITIONS

How does it work? As blogger Marilyn Barnewall complained, the official at the head of the FSB is a European central banker: Mario Draghi, the 63-year old head of the Bank of Italy. A former vice-president at Goldman Sachs, Draghi's a banker through and through, widely admired by his fellow officials and known in Italian media as SuperMario for the frenetic pace of his work in the run-up to the creation of the single currency.

Draghi chairs quarterly meetings of G20 central bankers, financial supervisors and treasury officials. Countries can send ministry representatives but not politicians. The idea is that while the FSB's main actions may be directed by politics, the rules of the global financial system should be above them. "On the one hand the FSB provides a shield for the independent standard setting process from political influence, but also provides a membrane for political imperatives to get expressed," says one supporter of the body, speaking - like most of those in the industry whom Reuters interviewed for this article - on condition of anonymity.

As well as pushing along Basel III, the FSB has started working on a list of "systemically important financial institutions" or SIFIs - the 30 or so biggest banks in the world whose failure could destabilize the broader financial system. It hopes to force even tougher capital requirements on those institutions deemed "too big to fail". It's also devised global principles to rein in excessive banker pay, though the EU has introduced even tougher rules, raising doubts about the FSB's ability to avoid a patchwork of global rules.

There's more. The FSB has set out ideas for ways to account for the risks inherent in derivatives positions: the trades which nearly blew up the likes of U.S. insurer AIG and are typically carried out on a bank-to-bank basis, so can remain hidden from regulators. It has made recommendations to reduce markets' blind reliance on the credit rating agencies, which were blamed in the subprime crisis for stamping AAA on products that were cocktails of toxic debt.

It's also examining ways to coordinate the supervision of financial institutions internationally - so banks can't arbitrage the rules between countries. It's working on what to do about the risk of collapse by a globalised bank blowing a hole in the economies of countries where it has subsidiaries. And, perhaps most ambitiously of all, it's examining ways to prevent risk-taking players from evading regulation by presenting themselves as being active in some other segment of the financial services sector -- a problem known as "shadow banking".

BRICS ON THE BOARD

Success in even one or two of these areas would be a revolution in global finance, but many obstacles remain. To start with, the body Draghi heads has an incredibly diverse membership. Built on its predecessor, the Financial Stability Forum (FSF), a loose-knit group of officials from the world's seven leading economies, the FSB also includes such countries as Brazil, Russia, India and China - the "BRIC" economies" - which are racing up the global economic league tables and becoming more important players in global finance.

The FSB represents over 80 percent of the world's financial activities, which gives its new rules a better chance of global success. But its powers are actually quite limited: it can make recommendations, but these must be endorsed by the G20. It cannot approve rules that are binding on G20 countries, and instead relies on "peer reviews" that "name and shame" laggards who don't implement them. Regulators say that even though this process hints at the FSB's weaknesses, it amounts to something of a revolution in financial regulation. "It can't roll out the tanks across the lawn. It works on peer pressure. There is the possibility of disciplining countries -- that is very new," says one European regulator.

So far, Draghi's board has not been afraid of stepping on a few regulatory toes. Some of the areas it's working in were hitherto the exclusive purview of three global standard setters: the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO); the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS); and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which authored Basel III. The reputations of all three took a battering in the crisis, making it easier for the FSB to muscle in.

There has even been talk that the FSB should be given oversight of the International Accounting Standards Board, whose rules the G20 wants as the global benchmark for accounting. Regulators have voiced concern that the FSB's "peer reviews" may clash with and confuse similar exercises that the IMF and IOSCO already carry out. "The FSB is coming in and trying to capture that market as well," one regulator quips.

IOSCO says it would be concerned if political involvement goes beyond pushing for speedier rulemaking to dictating the standards themselves. "I think the FSB has been a very positive force. It provides energy and momentum for our plans. The idea there is a political will to improve global standards is fantastic, it's a plus," says IOSCO Chairperson Jane Diplock.

NEW ORDER

Some officials have complained that the FSB's political masters in the G20 will curtail its independence, enabling it to be hijacked to serve the interests of the G20's most influential states. But people close to the FSB counter with the fact that countries such as China and Brazil are increasingly powerful, which means it's becoming harder for traditional powers such as the U.S. to dominate.

"The idea that India, China and the other emerging markets are going to accept everything the western world dreams up is finished," says a Europe official with knowledge of the FSB.

One Asian regulator says the United States and European Union are still the main shapers of new rules - for now. "What the Asian countries now have is a veto say. The newer entrants are not shaping the rules until they find something they don't like and just block it," the Asia-based regulator said, referring to China's move early on in the crisis to stop richer countries from publishing a blacklist of tax jurisdictions that won't share information on tax dodgers. Says a Europe-based supervisor: "Now China is giving longer speeches about the Chinese view of the world, asking questions about weaknesses here and there and giving the impression they are strong and their role will be bigger and bigger."

As the G20 finalizes fixes like Basel III, regulators expect emerging markets to push for a greater focus on their concerns, including, for example, the risk of failure of a U.S. bank with substantial activities in Asia. "The emerging markets are saying now we have been through a phase of significant focus on problems in advanced economies, we should now pay attention to the problems in our systems such as rapid capital inflows and responses linked to that, and concerns as hosts to large foreign financial institutions," says one G20 source.

RACE FOR LEGITIMACY

Another problem - and a reason for the frantic pace - is that the FSB is in a race. Past crises have often been followed by a frenzy of rulemaking activity. Over time, though, momentum can slow. "The FSB is a work in progress but it's not entirely clear a work in progress to what," says Nicolas Veron of Brussels-based think tank Bruegel.

Agreeing on Basel III in such a short time was a major feat, but it will be harder to secure global agreement on steps to make safe the world's "too big to fail" financial institutions. The Seoul summit was at one stage meant to agree a package of measures to beef up Basel III for the SIFI institutions, but has failed to get beyond broad principles. There is no consensus on whether such big lenders should face capital surcharges, because emerging markets say their banks don't need extra safeguards. Even if the list is agreed, keeping it secret and away from speculators - as seems to be the plan - would prove almost impossible.

"The credibility of the FSB and G20 rests on implementing those difficult agreements. The jury is out," says David Wright, who was until October a top official representing the European Commission on the FSB.

The FSB's independence from its political masters will be tested next year, when it may publish names of countries that won't cooperate in sharing supervisory information according to standards set by the IMF and IOSCO. If it pushes ahead with that plan, the move would extend the FSB's influence even further - to more than 100 countries from its current base of 20, including offshore havens. Some G20 countries will also be on the "blacklist" unless they change their ways in time.

The FSB's fate will also hinge on keeping U.S. backing for the broader G20 process, whose summits provide the detailed conclusions that map out its work and lend it authority. A G20 process mired in spats between China and the United States over currencies, coupled with Congressional gridlock in the wake of U.S. mid-term elections, could leave the FSB sidelined once its current work winds down, regulators say.

If that happens, what once seemed to some Americans like a threat to democracy would boil down to little more than a political PR stunt, leaving taxpayers the world over exposed to the risks run by the banks to which they entrust their wages. The bloggers would not be happy. (Editing by Sara Ledwith and Simon Robinson)

finance.yahoo.com/news/Special-Report-Can-this-rb-4099860139.html?x=0

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G-20 summit fallout: Trade barriers and tensions could rise as more countries go it alone

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The world's most important economies are going home to look after themselves. They left their summit without any meaningful agreement, finding it ever harder to cooperate and more likely to erect trade barriers to protect their own interests.

The Group of 20 meeting of leading rich and developing nations ended Friday in South Korea with no solutions to longstanding tensions over trade and currency, and with the cooperation of the 2008 financial crisis now a distant memory.

The U.S. couldn't persuade other countries to pressure China to stop manipulating its currency or limit their own trade surpluses and deficits. The Americans faced charges of doing some currency manipulation of their own by pumping $600 billion into their economy.

The stalemate in Seoul means that trade disputes could intensify, warns Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University. He's worried that there "may be more open conflicts on currency matters. This has the potential to feed into more explicit forms of protectionism, which could set back the global recovery."

The summit was a diplomatic setback for the United States.

China was supposed to be the villain of the G-20 meeting. The U.S. and other countries have accused Beijing of keeping its currency, the yuan, artificially low to give its exporters an unfair advantage. The currency manipulation helps Chinese exporters by making their goods less expensive around the world, leading to charges that cheap Chinese products cost America jobs at a time when U.S. unemployment is stuck at 9.6 percent.

The U.S. wanted to rally other G-20 delegates to strong-arm China over the yuan. A stronger yuan would reduce the U.S. trade deficit with China, which is on track to match the 2008 record of $268 billion. But the U.S. argument was undercut by accusations that the Federal Reserve was rigging the currency market itself.

Last week, the Fed said it would essentially print $600 billion to jolt the U.S. economy back to life. The Fed says its plan to buy Treasury bonds was designed to lower long-term interest rates, spur economic growth and create jobs. Since the Fed hinted at the policy in late August, the Dow Jones industrials have risen 13 percent , and interest rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages have hit a record low of 4.17 percent.

But foreigners saw a more sinister intent: to flood world markets with dollars, driving down the value of the U.S. currency and giving U.S. exporters a price edge.

"Basically, what happened was a diplomatic coup for China," says William Cline, senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics. A few months ago, countries from Brazil to Germany were criticizing Chinese trade policies. "Fast-forward, and now China and Germany and Brazil are blaming the United States for causing currency problems."

Emerging economies also complained that the Fed's bond purchases would push Treasury yields so low that investors seeking higher returns will overwhelm their fragile markets. The fear: Investors would sink money into emerging market assets -- currencies, stocks and other investments. That would push up their currencies, hurt their exporters, trigger inflation, create bubbles in stocks and other assets and leave them vulnerable to a crash when investors withdraw their money.

The final G-20 statement Friday endorsed the idea that emerging markets can protect themselves from the threat of such "hot money" by imposing controls on the flow of capital -- a measure that used to be considered "a big no-no" and a violation of free-trade principles, says Homi Kharas, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. The trend is already starting. China and Taiwan this week announced new capital controls.

The fear is that countries will take even stronger steps to give themselves an advantage, creating the risk of a currency or trade war. The U.S. House has already passed legislation that would let the U.S. government impose punitive tariffs on Chinese imports in retaliation for the weak yuan, though the Senate has not followed.

Cornell's Prasad expects to see China and other countries impose tariffs and duties, subsidize their exporters with cheap bank financing or tax credits, bring cases against each in the World Trade Organization and use bogus health concerns to block some imports.

In a sign of the United States' diminished clout at the summit, the U.S. could not even close a long-awaited free-trade agreement with close ally and summit host South Korea. The trade pact would slash tariffs and other trade barriers between the two countries.

As the G-20 meeting closed, President Barack Obama and many other leaders flew to Japan for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Yokohama, Japan, on Saturday and Sunday.

At the height of the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, the G-20 nations tried to present a united front, agreeing to take steps to boost their economies, to reform their financial systems and to reject protectionist policies. But now that the world economy is growing again -- and China and other emerging markets are booming -- "that unity has begun to dissolve," Prasad says. "The group is now splintering with competitive policies taking the place of coordinated policy actions." The result: "a situation ripe for conflict."

The G-20 itself acknowledged the problem in its final statement: "Uneven growth and widening imbalances are fueling the temptation to diverge from global solutions into uncoordinated actions." But the go-it-alone approach, the statement concluded, "will only lead to worse outcomes for all."


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After G-20 divide over currencies, Pacific Rim leaders gather in Japan to push for free trade

YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) -- Leaders from 21 Pacific Rim economies converged on Japan on Saturday for an annual summit to push for free trade, hoping for a show of unity after rancor over currencies soured the Group of 20 meeting a day before.

President Barack Obama, Chinese President Hu Jintao and other leaders of the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum were expected to agree to take steps toward a Pacific-wide free trade zone.

Obama's failure to conclude a free trade agreement this week with South Korea, and the G-20's refusal to go along with the U.S. stance of formally criticizing China's controls on its currency highlighted reduced U.S. influence in the region -- at least on economic issues.

But in broader issues of diplomacy, Japan and others in the region are looking to the U.S. for a counterweight to China's increasingly aggressive stance on many issues.

Most notably, relations between Japan and China are strained by conflicting territorial claims over islands in the East China Sea. That dispute flared up as the two sides squabbled over an incident in which a Chinese trawler collided with two Japanese coast guard vessels near disputed islands east of Taiwan.

With the mood still frosty, it remained unclear if Hu would meet with host Prime Minister Naoto Kan during his visit.

"If you talk to people in this region, they would tell you they are making very, very strong requests from this part of the world asking the U.S. to be more deeply involved," said Ding Xueliang, a China expert at Hong Kong's University of Science and Technology.

Tokyo's ties with Moscow also are strained after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited an island off the northern coast of Japan that both nations claim. Kan was expected to meet with Medvedev later Saturday.

Obama, on the last stop of a four-nation Asian tour, vowed to deepen U.S. engagement in the region.

"America is leading again in Asia," he said at a business conference on APEC's sidelines, reaffirming his government's desire to double U.S. exports in the next five years. "In this region, the United States sees a huge opportunity to increase our exports in some of the fastest-growing markets in the world."

Kan, meanwhile, vowed to open Japan's sluggish economy further for the sake of future growth, despite protests from farmers who fear the loss of subsidies and protective tariffs.

"We have to grow with the fast developing economies of the Asia-Pacific," Kan told the business conference.

As a precaution against protests from farmers and other disruptions, some 21,000 police were standing guard near the summit venue in Yokohama, which 150 years ago was one of the first Japanese ports opened to foreign trade -- under pressure from American warships.

The fractious G-20 summit in Seoul, South Korea, ended with an agreement to refrain from "competitive devaluations" but no consensus on a U.S. push to get China to let its currency rise.

The ill-will from that meeting threatened to carry over to the APEC talks, though currencies are not on the official agenda. About half the leaders from the G-20 meeting are attending APEC, which represents more than half the world's GDP.

Still, the weekend summit in Yokohama is likely to be less contentious thanks to APEC's informal nature and the widespread consensus among all attending about the need for freer trade.

"There is no pressure to be aggressive because it's nonbinding," said Philippine Foreign Undersecretary Antonio Rodriguez. "That's the beauty of APEC."

Washington accuses Beijing of deliberately keeping its currency, the yuan, weak to gain a trade advantage. That stance has been undermined, however, by the U.S. policy of printing money to boost the sluggish American economy, which is weakening the dollar and provoking complaints from Brazil, Germany and China.

Hong Kong's chief executive, Donald Tsang, said Friday he fears the U.S. Federal Reserve's decision last week to buy up $600 billion in U.S. debt last week, keeping interest rates low and the dollar weak, could flood emerging markets with cash seeking higher returns.

"International investors should tighten their seat belts and get prepared for unprecedented turbulence in currency markets, bond markets, stock markets and the property market," Tsang told a business conference on APEC's sidelines.

APEC, founded in 1989 to promote regional integration, aims to move toward creating a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, or FTAAP, including all its 21 economies and more than half of all world business.

Such a trading bloc might help harmonize various smaller trade, but it would not be forged by APEC itself, which is not a negotiating body.

Such a goal would likely be built from existing free trade agreements, such as the U.S.-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. It now includes only four small economies -- Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore -- but the U.S., Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Peru are in talks to join them.

Associated Press writers Jim Gomez, Tomoko A. Hosaka, Malcolm Foster and Mari Yamaguchi contributed to this report.

finance.yahoo.com/news/After-G20-rancor-Pac-Rim-apf-1434127601.html?x=0

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G-20 leaders refuse to endorse a US push to make China boost its currency's value

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Leaders of 20 major economies on Friday refused to back a U.S. push to make China boost its currency's value, keeping alive a dispute that raises fears of a global trade war amid criticism that cheap Chinese exports are costing American jobs.

A joint statement issued by the leaders including President Barack Obama and China's Hu Jintao tried to recreate the unity that was evident when the Group of 20 rich and developing nations held its first summit two years ago during the global financial meltdown.

But deep divisions, especially over the U.S.-China currency dispute, left G-20 officials negotiating all night to draft a watered-down statement for the leaders to endorse.

"Instead of hitting home runs sometimes we're gonna hit singles. But they're really important singles," Obama told a news conference after the summit.

Other leaders also tried to portray the summit as a success, pointing to their pledges to fight protectionism and develop guidelines next year that will measure the imbalances between trade surplus and trade deficit countries.

The G-20's failure to adopt the U.S. stand has underlined Washington's reduced influence on the international stage, especially on economic matters. In another setback, Obama also failed to conclude a free trade agreement this week with South Korea.

The biggest disappointment for the United States was the pledge by the leaders to refrain from "competitive devaluation" of currencies. Such a statement is of little consequence since countries usually only devalue their currencies -- making it less worth against the dollar -- in extreme situations like a severe financial crisis.

The statement decided against using a slightly different wording favored by the U.S. -- "competitive undervaluation," which would have shown the G-20 taking a stronger stance on China's currency policy.

The crux of the dispute is Washington's allegations that Beijing is artificially keeping its currency, the yuan, weak to gain a trade advantage.

U.S. business lobbies say that a cheaper yuan costs American jobs because production moves to China to take advantage of low labor costs and undervalued currency.

A stronger yuan would shrink the U.S. trade deficit with China, which is on track this year to match its 2008 record of $268 billion, and encourage Chinese companies to sell more to their own consumers rather than rely so much on the U.S. and others to buy low-priced Chinese goods.

But the U.S. position has been undermined by its own central bank's decision to print $600 billion to boost a sluggish economy, which is weakening the dollar.

Also, developing countries like Thailand and Indonesia fear that much of the "hot" money will flood their markets, where returns are higher. Such emerging markets could be left vulnerable to a crash if investors later decide to pull out and move their money elsewhere.

Obama said China's currency policy is an "irritant" not just for the United States but for many of its other trading partners. The G-20 countries -- ranging from industrialized nations such as U.S. and Germany to developing ones like China, Brazil and India -- account for 85 percent of the world's economic activity.

"China spends enormous amounts of money intervening in the market to keep it undervalued so what we have said is it is important for China in a gradual fashion to transition to a market based system," Obama said.

The dispute is threatening to resurrect destructive protectionist policies like those that worsened the Great Depression in the 1930s. The biggest fear is that trade barriers will send the global economy back into recession.

The possibility of a currency war "absolutely" remains, said Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega.

Friday's statement is also unlikely to resolve the most vexing problem facing the G-20 members: how to fix a global economy that's long been marked by huge U.S. trade deficits with exporters like China, Germany and Japan.

Americans consume far more in foreign goods and services from these countries than they sell abroad.

The G-20 leaders said they will try to reduce the gaps between nations running large trade surpluses and those running deficits.

The "persistently large imbalances" in current accounts -- a broad measure of a nation's trade and investment with the rest of the world -- would be measured by what they called "indicative guidelines" to be determined later.

The leaders called for the guidelines to be developed by the G-20, along with help from the International Monetary Fund and other global organizations, and for finance ministers and central bank governors to meet in the first half of next year to discuss progress.

Analysts were not convinced.

"Leaders are putting the best face on matters by suggesting that it is the process that matters rather than results," said Stephen Lewis, chief economist for London-based Monument Securities.

"The only concrete agreement seems to be that they should go on measuring the size of the problem rather than doing something about it."

Associated Press writers Erica Werner, Kelly Olsen, Jean H. Lee, Greg Keller, Luis Alonso and Kim Hyung-jin in Seoul contributed to this report.

finance.yahoo.com/news/G20-refuses-to-back-US-push-apf-746192354.html?x=0

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China's president Hu vows to oppose protectionism, stick to gradual, stable currency moves

YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) -- Chinese President Hu Jintao said Saturday that his country will keep its markets open and seek more balanced trade, while gradually adjusting the value of its currency.

"The international community should oppose protectionism in all manifestations," Hu told a conference on the sidelines of the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

Hu avoided any overt references to the frictions, diplomatic and economic, with the U.S. and Japan that cast a pall over the recent meeting of Group of 20 major economies.

He did say, however, that Beijing would seek a better balance in its trade and carry on with "stable and gradual" adjustments in the value of its currency, reiterating his country's usual response to complaints by the U.S. and some other trading partners that the yuan is undervalued, contributing to huge trade imbalances.

Disagreements over the currency issue hindered efforts by the G-20 members to reach agreement on a common strategy to restructure the global economy during the summit that ended Friday in Seoul. Some member countries balked at endorsing President Barack Obama's outright call for Beijing to move faster in its currency adjustments.

Relations between China and its neighbors also have been strained by conflicting territorial claims and by Beijing's increasingly assertive stance on a range of issues.

Deep-rooted tensions with Japan over islands in the East China Sea claimed by both sides flared recently after a Chinese trawler collided with two Japanese coast guard vessels near disputed islands east of Taiwan.

Alluding, perhaps, to the demands for quicker liberalization of its currency controls and other financial restrictions, Hu said that like other emerging markets that have helped power the rebound from the world financial crisis, China faces many challenges and has far to go to achieve its own modernization.

The responsibilities required of emerging economies should be "commensurate with their development stage," he said.

"The Asian-Pacific emerging markets are still at the primary stage of development and their abilities and resources are limited," he said. "Asking them to take on responsibility beyond their capabilities ... will do no good."

Still, he pledged that Beijing will "participate in international rules making in a responsible way."

China will stick to its policy of peaceful development while bringing in the resources it needs to further grow its economy, which has become the world's second-largest.

"We will continue to bring in investment and talent from overseas to support our modernization effort," he said. "We will continue to build an open and transparent market environment."

Hu said China also will persist in seeking more balanced, sustainable development both to help ensure a better livelihood for all its citizens and to better cope with the challenges of climate change.

"A more developed China will bring more opportunities and make greater contributions to the world," he said.

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Ireland Is the 'New Greece'; Japan and U.S. Next in Line for "Catastrophe", Pento Says

The debt crisis in Ireland is easing a bit at week’s end. Irish debt prices rose for the first time in 14 days Friday, sending yields on the two-year note down 81 basis points. The situation stabilized after Britain and four other European nations, including France and Germany, issued a joint statement promising to stand behind all of Ireland's debts.

Ahead of a looming budget deadline, the Irish government is working to create a plan to “save 15 billion euros ($20.5 billion) in savings,” Bloomberg reports. A survey conducted by Bloomberg, before this joint statement, shows investors have serious debts that Ireland can avoid default. 51% of respondents in the survey say “they regard a default as likely, compared with 42 percent who say it is unlikely. The ranks of those anticipating an Irish default have tripled since a poll in June,” according to Bloomberg.

The EU and IMF “are going to come to their rescue,” says Michael Pento, senior economist with Euro Pacific Capital. “But, can they bail out Europe, Japan and the U.S.?"

That's the rub, says Pento. The sovereign debt crisis doesn’t end with Ireland or Europe’s other 'PIIGS' - eventually there won't be enough money to bailout out the big boys. As Minyanville's Todd Harrison is fond of saying, "who will rescue the lifeguards?"

U.S., Japan Next In Line?

Japan will likely be next to suffer a bond crisis, Pento tells Aaron in the accompanying clip. “Their savings rate has plummeted from 15% to 2%. Very soon they’re going to have to tap outside sources other than the Japanese to finance their debt," Pento explains. "That’s when interest rates soar and that’s when they become insolvent.”

A close second behind Japan in the race to a debt crisis is the U.S., Pento concludes. "We have negative real interest rates, inflation that is growing, debt that is soaring, and a dollar that is chronically weak." That equation adds up to U.S. debt situation that is "untenable."

Still, investors who have made similar dire predictions over the last two-plus decades have been burnt shorting the government debt of Japan and the U.S., as Aaron points out and Pento concedes. “I’ve been calling for a bond bubble for about a year. And, I’ve been wrong,” he says. “It just means when the bubble bursts, it will be a catastrophe."

Until that "catastrophe" Pento’s advice is simple: avoid sovereign debt and keep buying gold. As long as interest rates are artificially low, Pento says, gold prices will continue to hit new records.

finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/ireland-is-the-new-greece-japan-and-us-next-in-line-for-catastrophe-pento-says-yftt_535605.html

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U.S. of "Irony and Hypocrisy": We're No. 1 ... At Currency Manipulation, Pento Says

After the G20 failed to reach any consensus on currency issues and trade imbalances, President Obama took a direct shot at China Friday, saying the renminbi "is undervalued...and China spends enormous amounts of money intervening in the market to keep it undervalued."
The President's comments cap (at least for now) a period of extraordinary public debate among politicians and policymakers -- past and present -- over currencies and the Fed's QE2 program.

Ahead of the G20 confab, Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schauble called U.S. policy "clueless," while foreign ministers from China, South Africa and France (among others) questioned the wisdom of QE2.

Adding insult to irony, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan piled on in The FT, where he warned the U.S. is "pursuing a policy of currency weakening." That in turn, prompted a sharp rebuke from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who told CNBC: "We will never seek to weaken our currency as a tool to gain competitive advantage or to grow the economy."

Michael Pento, senior economist at Euro Pacific Capital, says the U.S. doesn't have a leg to stand on when it comes to discussions about currencies, calling Alan Greenspan's comments the "height of irony and hypocrisy," given his easy money policies at the Fed.

"The U.S. is the number one currency manipulator on the planet," he says. "We print up a lot of dollars [and] we can consume more than we produce because of that."

But that policy makes for a "chronically weak" dollar and puts America at the mercy of its foreign creditors, Pento says, restating a warning about the risks of a true dollar crash and sky-rocketing interest rates if we don't change course, soon.

It won't happen overnight, but China is plotting its own exit strategy by slowing rolling its Treasury holdings into the short end of the curve, he says, suggesting other foreign investors will follow suit.

"The credibility of this country is falling faster than the dollar," Pento says. "One day you'll have a Treasury auction without indirect bidders and only Ben Bernanke" will want to buy U.S. debt, he says.

To avoid such a "watershed event," Pento recommends we adopt the bulk of the Deficit Commission Panel's recommendations, as detailed here. He also wants a return to the gold standard, a controversial idea World Bank President Robert Zoellick broached this week.

Going back to the gold standard "would be painful" and even lead to a depression in the near term, Pento concedes. But "all the imbalances would be reconciled and we can start over again with a real economy."

finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/u.s.-of-%22irony-and-hypocrisy%22-we're-no.-1-...-at-currency-manipulation-pento-says-535604.html?tickers=TBT,TLT,UUP,UDN,GLD,FXI,%5EDJI

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Iraqi political leaders reach agreement on top gov't posts
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Baghdad, Nov 11, IRNA -- The Iraqi political leaders finally reached an agreement Wednesday evening on top posts for new government after an eight-month deadlock.

Informed sources reported late Wednesday evening that the Iraqi political leaders agreed to leave the post of prime minister to Nuri al-Maliki and that of president to Jalal Talabani while former premier Iyad Allawi's political party would get the speaker’s post in the National Assembly. Allawi's block would also head a new council of strategic policy, they added.

The Iraqi leaders also agreed to hold the first official session of the Iraqi Parliament on Thursday to elect a new speaker. The speaker’s two deputies as well as the president and his two VPs will be elected on the basis of the country’s constitution by the parliament deputies today.

The Iraqi political leaders reached the consensus after the three-day round table discussion hosted by the Kurdish regional chief, Masoud Barzani.

The first session of the talks was held in Erbil on Monday attended by all Iraqi political leaders and afterwards the next sessions were held in Baghdad.

It is not yet clear that which one of the leading members of the al-Iraqiya faction will be elected for the post of parliament speaker but the Iraqi news sources believe that the present vice-president Tariq al-Hashemi and the leading member of al-Iraqiya faction Osama al-Nujaifi are the two main nominees for the post.




It is also not clear that the post of chairmanship of the council of strategic policy will be left to al-Allawi himself or not.

While the Parliament session was previously set to be held at 11 am local time on Thursday, it was further announced that the session would be held in the afternoon.

If the reached agreements are materialized, the new Iraqi government would be established within one month so that it would end the months-long power vacuum in that country.

www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2010/11/iraq-101111-irna01.htm

[travelbugaz]

Soros trims positions in gold and miners

ShareretweetEmailPrintCompanies:BARRICK GOLD CORPORATIONGREAT BASIN GOLD LTD.SPDR Gold Shares Related Quotes
Symbol Price Change
ABX.TO 50.61 -0.64

GBG.TO 2.96 -0.11

GLD 132.42 -1.27

K.TO 18.14 -0.32

NEM 60.66 -0.89

On Monday November 15, 2010, 5:38 pm EST
BOSTON (Reuters) - Billionaire investor George Soros in the third quarter reduced some of his big bets on gold, a market he has called "the ultimate bubble."

In a quarterly securities filing on Monday, Soros Fund Management reported it owned 4.7 million shares of the SPDR Gold Trust (Pacific:GLD - News) at the end of the third quarter, down from 5.2 million at the end of June.

Soros also trimmed positions in miners including Barrick Gold (Toronto:ABX.TO - News), Great Basin Gold (Toronto:GBG.TO - News) and Newmont Mining (NYSE:NEM - News). He held unchanged large positions in NovaGold Resources (Toronto:NG.TO - News) and Kinross Gold (Toronto:K.TO - News). However, he call options on 705,000 shares of the SPDR Gold fund.

Soros has said several times this year that gold is "the ultimate bubble."

"I called gold the ultimate bubble which means it may go higher," Soros explained in September at a Reuters Newsmaker event in New York. "But it's certainly not safe and it's not going to last forever."

Since hitting an all-time record of $1,424.10 an ounce last week, the price of gold has slipped. Spot gold was trading around $1,359 an ounce on Monday and U.S. gold futures for December delivery settled at $1,368.50.

Soros does not typically explain his quarter-to-quarter moves. A spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

Money managers like Soros are required to file form 13-F within 45 days after the end of each quarter. The forms include only U.S.-listed equity securities and related derivatives. Bonds, other securities and short positions are typically not disclosed.

Managers may also leave off U.S.-listed equities they own under certain circumstances or file some holdings on confidential filings.

(Reporting by Aaron Pressman; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

finance.yahoo.com/news/Soros-trims-positions-in-gold-rb-453539332.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=1&asset=&ccode=

[sandi66]

The Federal Reserve's Magic Money
By Alan Caruba, on November 16th, 2010
The Federal Reserve is contemplating the creation of "magical money" at a time when the U.S. economy is in deep trouble.
Historically, the Federal Reserve has had a poor record when it comes to correcting an economic slide into Depression.

In his book, New Deal or Raw Deal? historian Burton Folsom, Jr., asked and answered the question, "What caused the Great Depression?" Among the factors he cited was the huge debt left over from World War One. In the United States, the national debt had ballooned from $1.3 billion to $24 billion in three short years, half of which consisted of loans made to the allies.

Today the U.S. is feeling the impact of the aftermath of 9/11 when military action was taken first in 2001 and then in 2003. We are still in Afghanistan and Iraq without much to show for it. As opposed to short, preemptive, lightning strikes, we have become involved in "nation building." Forgotten is the fact that it was the Russian intervention in Afghanistan that ultimately brought down the former Soviet Union.

In the 1930s, in addition to tariffs on imported goods, "The third cause of the Great Depression was the poor performance of the Federal Reserve," concluded Folsom. "The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 to control the money system by regulating interest rates and lending money to banks."

In an eerie way, Raymond Moley, a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "brain trust" of advisors and an initial advocate of the New Deal, reflects the widespread perception of Barack Obama today. In 1933 Moley broke with FDR and became a conservative. Following a meeting with FDR, Moley recorded his observations.

"I was impressed as never before by the utter lack of logic of the man, the scantiness of his precise knowledge of things that he was talking about, the gross inaccuracies in his statements, by the almost pathological lack of sequence in his statements, by the complete rectitude that he felt as to his own conduct, by the immense and growing egotism that came from his office, by his willingness to continue the excoriation of the press and business in order to get votes for himself, by his indifference to what effort the long continued pursuit of these ends would have upon the civilization in which he was playing a part."

This description of FDR is, in astonishing ways, a mirror image of Barack Hussein Obama.

The dissatisfaction that Moley expressed has been manifested in the emergence of the Tea Party movement and the rejection of many in Congress who supported Obama's agenda, including Obamacare, his failed efforts to jump-start the economy with large, temporary stimulus bills, temporary housing rebates and business tax credits, and the one-time cash-for-clunkers program that followed the federal takeover of General Motors and Chrysler.

There are harsh facts being ignored about the present economic crisis. More than 42 million Americans were on food stamps in August, an all-time record and a number that is 17% higher than a year ago. The U.S. is experiencing massive unemployment and the American Bankruptcy Institute predicts there will be an estimated 1.6 million consumer bankruptcies this year.

The U.S. government is completely and totally broke. A Boston University economics professor, Laurence J. Kotlikoff, has concluded that the U.S. government is facing a "fiscal gap" of $202 trillion dollars.

John Allison, who for two decades served as chairman and CEO of BB&T, the nation's 10th largest bank, told CNSNews.com that it is a "mathematical certainty" the United States government "will go bankrupt unless it dramatically changes its fiscal direction immediately."

Having tried "quantitative easing" once already, the Federal Reserve is undertaking a second effort. It consists of printing magical money and using it to purchase U.S. treasury securities. QE-1 cost $1.7 trillion and did not work. QE-2 will fail as well to the tune of $0.9 trillion.

The U.S. dollar has lost 50% of its purchasing power since 1986 and it has dropped 11% in value since June of this year.

Writing in the November 8 edition of The Wall Street Journal, Kevin M. Warsh, a member of the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors, went public to warn against QE-2. "Fiscal authorities should resist the temptation to increase government expenditures to compensate for shortfalls of private consumption and investment," said Warsh who urged "a strict economic diet of fiscal austerity."

Whether it is Congress or the Federal Reserve, the failures of the present reflect the failures of the past. Major surgery is needed to pare the entitlement programs of Social Security and Medicare. Instead, Obamacare added millions to the Medicare rolls.

The government sponsored entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, need to be privatized to avoid using billions more in public funds to save them and the too-big-to-fail banks that engaged in "liar's loans;" mortgage loans that ignored prudent lending practices resulting in the housing market collapse.

TARP did work as an emergency measure, but the government has got to stop being the lender of last resort. It's our money.

The Federal Reserve is contemplating the creation of "magical money" at a time when the U.S. economy is in deep trouble. It is a trouble that can only be cured by retaining the Bush tax cuts and by simplifying the current insane tax code. Why is there such slow growth? American corporations pay the second highest tax rate in the world.

The burden of federal regulation must be reduced. Economists W. Mark and Nicole Crain noted in a September Wall Street Journal article that, "The annual cost of federal regulations increased to more than $1.75 trillion in 2008, a 3% real increase over five years, to about 14% of U.S. national income."

The President's original economic advisors have departed. They, like Raymond Moley in the 1930s, know that he is either clueless and/or resistant to any pragmatic solutions.

The midterm elections gave power to the Republicans in the House, the branch from which all financial bills must originate. Failing to do the same in the Senate, it may take two years to repeal Obamacare, but efforts must be taken to defund it, to render it inoperable. The courts may offer relief with a decision that it is unconstitutional.

When the new Congress meets in January 2011, every pressure possible must be brought to bear on the Federal Reserve to stop short-term failed "solutions" before the U.S. dollar is utterly debased

www.intellectualconservative.com/2010/11/16/the-federal-reserves-magic-money/

[sandi66]

A new day on Capitol Hill: Change coming - right now

New, old members of Congress mix as lame-duck session starts up; earmarks take a hit

November 16, 2010

WASHINGTON — Old and new Washington collided on Capitol Hill Monday, and new won.

Within moments of flicking on the Senate lights, Sen. Mitch McConnell announced that when it came to pork barrel politics, he had changed his mind. The Senate's staunchest fan of so-called "earmarks" reversed course and supported a ban on those special spending requests, a bow to the tea partiers and others in the populist, anti-establishment wave that gave the GOP control of the House and six more seats in the Senate.

"Old habits aren't easy to break, but sometimes they must be," McConnell said on the Senate floor.

His announcement put an exclamation mark on the return of lawmakers to Capitol Hill on Monday for a "lame-duck" session before the newcomers take their places officially in January.

There's still major business for the current Congress, from tax cuts that will or won't be preserved to possible special Social Security checks to spending bills to keep the government going.

Monday was an extraordinary day that blended Congresses past, present and future as the fading Democratic majority began to yield.

It wasn't going quietly.

For the more than 100 rookies dining and orienting around campus, there was no starker lesson than the spectacle of Rep. Charles Rangel, a once-mighty committee chairman now facing ethics charges — four decades after his arrival was supposed to herald the shake-up of an old, corrupt political order.

"My reputation — 50 years of public service! — has to suffer," the New York Democrat cried out before stalking out of his ethics trial.

There were plenty of other lessons, pedestrian as well as profound for the new folks: not only how to be an employer, a first for some of them, and how to avoid Washington's ethical traps, but also where to eat, how to vote, how to get to the subway beneath the Capitol, even which elevators to use.

As for politics — in case any politicians had missed the message of the Nov. 2 elections — triumphant conservative activists, many of them tea partiers, rallied on the Capitol lawn with signs urging Congress to heed their call for smaller government and greater accountability.

"Phase One, Nov. 2010. Complete," read one sign. "Phase Two. Nov. 2012. We are watching you."

Acutely aware of that, longtime lawmakers began to let change flow through the corridors of power, already heavy with the cold-weather scent of fireplaces ablaze in the Capitol's grand parlors.
President Barack Obama, just back from a 10-day trip to the other side of the globe, said he would be ready to talk policy when the Republicans were finished celebrating. He said of his upcoming meeting with congressional leaders: "I'm sure it will be very relaxing."

"Campaigning is very different from governing. All of us learn that. And they're still flush with victory," he said. "We're going to have a whole bunch of time next year for some serious philosophical debates."

Obama, who already had endorsed an earmarks ban, praised McConnell's announcement, but not all Democrats were on the anti-earmarks bandwagon.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's spokesman, Jim Manley, said, "From delivering $100 million in military projects for Nevada to funding education and public transportation projects in the state, Sen. Reid makes no apologies for delivering for the people of Nevada."

Change was evident at the lunch table, too. In the Senate, 16 newly elected senators — 13 of them Republicans — were invited to dine with veterans, including some not returning next year. Two rookies, Democratic Sens. Chris Coons of Delaware and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, were sworn in to fill empty seats in their states.

And change took hold of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's world, which was suspended between the old Congress and new.
She's still speaker, second in line to the presidency but not yet the Democratic leader in the new Congress. Those elections are to be held on Wednesday.

She still has chores, including spending time with the very Republicans who won big gains in Congress in part by vilifying her.

On Sunday, she left the comfort of a visit with her grandchildren for a speech welcoming the incoming freshmen. Officials who attended the closed-door session said Pelosi stuck to stock advice: represent your district, follow the Constitution.

Monday night, she was hosting an open house in what is her turf for just a little longer — the speaker's suite of offices under the Capitol dome.

www.thecalifornian.com/article/20101116/NEWS01/11160318

[sandi66]

News: NTC prepares brigade for New Dawn

Date11.15.2010
Date Posted:11.15.2010 13:55
Location:FORT IRWIN, CA,

3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division Public Affairs

Story by Sgt. Robert Traxel

FORT IRWIN, Calif. ¨C Soldiers of 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division recently completed training at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, Calif., part of preparation for their upcoming deployment to Iraq in support of Operation New Dawn.

The brigade¡¯s training plan focused on a different mission from those of the past in Iraq. With the increased readiness of the Iraqi Security Forces, Greywolf troopers will operate as an advise and assist brigade.

The primary mission of an AAB is to advise, train and assist the ISF with current operations and advancing their mission readiness.

¡°The Greywolf brigade¡¯s training at NTC built upon our soldier¡¯s existing skills and prepared them for mentoring the Iraqi Security Forces as they continue to develop,¡± said Command Sgt. Maj. Ronnie Kelley, 3rd BCT.

Training at NTC focused on strengthening the partnership with ISF leaders, training and support of the ISF with border enforcement, local law enforcement and military operations inherent to the security of the people of Iraq.

A strong economy and a structured government is essential to any country. The 3rd Brigade will assist the Government of Iraq by providing ways in which the leaders can build on the current governmental structure. Utilizing stability transition teams, the brigade will assist provincial governments with security, infrastructure, and service related legislation and contracts.

¡°The brigade is organized in a way to best support and improve the areas our Iraqi counterparts want to focus on. [Brigade leadership] has put together a team that is able to adjust to any situation and offer advice and input on a variety of subjects,¡± said Lt. Col. Greg Stokes, a stability transition team leader for 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division

With the improved security and developing government, Iraq has also seen improvements in the economy. The gains made in security and political stability has allowed these improvements to occur more quickly.

While at the National Training Center, the brigade learned to indentify civil vulnerabilities within their future operational environment in Iraq. The units will assist the ISF and GoI in prioritizing their response to the needs of the provinces, and the training at NTC sets the units up for success in these future missions.

¡°The Army¡¯s efforts to certify Greywolf¡¯s readiness to deploy ¡­ during our mission rehearsal exercise, here at NTC, have been tremendous. The resources available to support our training have been first-class and very realistic. I¡¯m very confident with where we are as a deploying brigade combat team as a result of this MRE,¡± said Col. Douglas Crissman, commander, 3rd BCT, 1st Cav. Div.

www.dvidshub.net/news/60173/ntc-prepares-brigade-new-dawn



Also... from chat on Iraqi Dinar

[amadden] Hi Folks, can stay long, but wanted you to know the banks in Iraq should be closed from now to next Sunday the 21st for their Holiday. The GOI will be meeting again tomorrow and will wrap this session up tomorrow night, The rumor that has been put out is based on worldwide Banking systems that has now held a steady $5.72 since last Wednesday, with Shabibi being here in the states and the CBI having that new banking system the website should update on the time frame they have it set by like refresh every hour or 6 hours, we do not know. The GOI as of start of business this morning, had 8 more Cabinet members to fill out of 40 and they had one other resolution and then the budget which includes the RV, we have not heard how much they got done but did hear they will have all of it done by close of business tomorrow night, this is where it is coming in at and why and what the expected rate is; but just because they get it all done, does not say RV for tonight or tomorrow, "BUT" it is highly likely that it can go, the good thing of all this is if it does not go, by tomorrow night, we will have Sunday, but hearing all that I am hearing, I believe by tomorrow night we should see it. I just wanted to let some of you know different things from your postings. Thank you for keeping the peace and¡¡ ¡¡following, and thank you to all our Managers, Admins and Mods, Please give them a big hand; they do so much for the team and deserve so much. THANK YOU!!!! 1:31 am Tuesday

[sandi66]

lollybella Share Monday, November 15, 2010 3:11:49 PM
Re: None Post # of 132460

Ameritrade will now be charging you NON-STANDARD ASSET (NSA) FEES.
Annual Custody Fee for BCIT will be $250. This fee will be for the preceding year. "This means that the fee you are charged on Dec. 31, 2010, will cover calendar year 2010!"
To avoid these fees, you must BEFORE DEC 31, 2010:
1. Redeem your NSA position or
2. Re-register NSA positions into your name by the issuer or its TA or
3. Transfer NSA positions out of your TD Ameritrade acount.
NSAs primarily include securities that are not registered with the SEC or are not publicly traded

investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=56723259

[sandi66]

Subject: Press Release: IMF Determines New Currency Weights for SDR
Valuation Basket


The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today completed
the regular five-yearly review of the basket of currencies that make up the
Special Drawing Right (SDR) and of the interest rate on the SDR. The value
of the SDR will continue to be based on a weighted average of the values of
a basket of currencies comprising the U.S. dollar, euro, pound sterling, and
Japanese yen. The SDR interest rate will also continue to be determined as a
weighted average of the interest rates on short-term financial instruments
in the markets of the currencies in the SDR basket.

SDR Valuation

www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2010/pr10434.htm November 15, 2010

[sandi66]

FDIC Conducting 50 Investigations at Failed Banks: Report
November 17, 2010
(Reuters) - The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) is conducting about 50 criminal investigations at U.S. banks that have failed since the start of the financial crisis, the Wall Street Journal said.
The FDIC, which is responsible for dealing with bank failures, is probing former executives, directors and employees at failed U.S. banks and is taking efforts to punish alleged recklessness, fraud and other criminal behavior, the Journal said.

Fred Gibson, deputy inspector general at the FDIC, told the Journal in an interview that the probes involve failed banks of all sizes in cities across the U.S.

FDIC is also stepping up civil claims to recover money from former bankers at busted lenders, the newspaper said.

Gibson declined to identify the people or banks under investigation, the Journal said.

"We anticipate results from our investigations, although we cannot predict when a particular case will reach a stage at which disclosure of specifics would be appropriate," Gibson told the Journal.

FDIC could not immediately be reached for comment by Reuters outside regular U.S. business hours.

(Reporting by Sakthi Prasad in Bangalore; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Copyright 2010 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=12167983



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


U.S. Sets 50 Bank Probes
FDIC Steps Up Investigations at Failed Lenders; 'These Numbers Will Increase'
By JEAN EAGLESHAM
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is conducting about 50 criminal investigations of former executives, directors and employees at U.S. banks that have failed since the start of the financial crisis.

The agency responsible for dealing with bank failures is stepping up its effort to punish alleged recklessness, fraud and other criminal behavior, as U.S. officials did in the wake of the savings-and-loan crisis a generation ago. More than 300 banks and savings institutions have failed since the start of 2008, but just a few have led to criminal charges being filed against bank officials.

In an interview, Fred W. Gibson, deputy inspector general at the FDIC, which works with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate crime at financial institutions, said the probes involve failed banks of all sizes in cities across the U.S. The FDIC is also ramping up civil claims to recover money from former bankers at busted lenders. He declined to identify any of the people or banks under investigation.

"We anticipate results from our investigations, although we cannot predict when a particular case will reach a stage at which disclosure of specifics would be appropriate," Mr. Gibson said.

Pressure is high on regulators to identify and prosecute bankers for any wrongdoing that contributed to the largest number of failures in nearly 20 years. The September 2008 collapse of Washington Mutual Inc. was the biggest ever, with seven times the value of the assets that Continental Illinois Corp. had when it failed in 1984. The current epidemic of bank failures, including 146 so far this year, has deepened the nation's lending drought and left the industry's survivors with more muscle to squeeze customers.

The S&L crisis of the 1980s and 1990s killed more than 1,800 institutions. From 1990 to 1995, federal officials prosecuted about 1,850 bank insiders. More than 1,000 officers, directors and other officials went to prison, and federal agencies collected $4.5 billion in professional-liability claims.

In the current mess, no high-profile banker has been criminally charged in connection with a financial institution's demise, as Charles Keating was for fraud after American Continental Corp. failed in 1989. He served four years in prison and became synonymous with the S&L crisis.
FDIC officials also are ramping up efforts to use civil litigation to recover money from former bank officials. Hundreds of "demand" letters have been sent to former executives, directors and other employees, as well as their professional-liability insurers, putting them on notice of potential claims, the FDIC says.

The agency's board has authorized the filing of lawsuits seeking to recover more than $2 billion from more than 80 officers and directors of failed banks. The total is up from about 50 approved suits as of last month, seeking more than $1 billion.

"These numbers will continue to increase as time goes on," Richard Osterman, acting general counsel at the FDIC, said in an interview. Authorization of a civil suit by the FDIC doesn't necessarily mean a case will be filed in court. Some former bank officers and directors could avoid being sued by negotiating settlements with the agency.

So far, the FDIC has filed just two civil lawsuits related to recent failures. The agency is seeking $300 million in damages from four former executives of IndyMac Bancorp, the Pasadena, Calif., lender that sank in 2008. Eleven former directors and officers of Heritage Community Bank are being pursued for $20 million in damages related to the Glenwood, Ill., bank's collapse last year.

In a statement through their lawyers, the Heritage directors and officers said the FDIC's suit is "regrettable and wrong," adding that the agency is blaming them "for not anticipating the same market forces that also caught central bankers, national banks, economists, major Wall Street firms and the regulators themselves by surprise."

The former IndyMac executives have denied wrongdoing. Kirby Behre of law firm Paul Hastings, who is acting for two of the former IndyMac directors, said: "Not only weren't they negligent, they were very diligent, and forces beyond their control were responsible for any losses."

Michael W. Fitzgerald, of Corbin, Fitzgerald & Athey LLP, which is representing the other two former IndyMac executives, said the "charges by the FDIC are completely false and we will vigorously defend them."

The few criminal prosecutions of failed banks so far include Integrity Bank, which opened in Alpharetta, Ga., in 2000 and was seized by regulators in 2008. In July, two former executives pleaded guilty to fraud-related charges.

Prosecutors alleged that the executives helped the bank's biggest customer use a construction loan to buy a private island in the Bahamas.

Mr. Gibson, the FDIC's deputy inspector general, said the roughly 50 criminal investigations under way typically relate to loan officers at the vice president or senior vice president level. Some of the probes involve higher-ranking officials, including former directors of failed institutions, he added.

Suspected criminal activity is handled by the FDIC's office of investigations, usually working with the FBI. Recommendations for prosecutions are referred to the Justice Department. It often takes at least 18 months for legal action to be brought after a bank fails, meaning the surge in scrutiny is likely to continue for years. FDIC officials expect the failure wave to peak this year.

Some lawyers predict it will be hard to win convictions in many cases. "To prove criminal fraud and get a conviction, you really need the equivalent of stealing money from the vault,'' said Thomas Vartanian, a partner at law firm Dechert LLP. As a result, many civil and criminal defendants are "eventually likely to settle for money,'' he said.

Federal officials also will have to overcome the likely defense that bank failures were caused by an unforeseeable real-estate bust. Samuel Buffone, a partner at law firm BuckleySandler LLP, said the most striking part of the FDIC's civil suit against former Heritage officers and directors is "the call for 20/20 hindsight.'' Mr. Buffone isn't involved in the case.

Mr. Osterman, the FDIC's acting general counsel, noted that the "same argument'' was used by defendants during the S&L crisis. "The courts didn't agree that time, and we don't expect they will this time,'' he said. "People are allowed to exercise business judgments. As long as they comply with their legal duties, they don't have anything to worry about.''

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703628204575619000289073686.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

ty nalmann

[sandi66]

* Parliamentarians: the Iraqi budget for 2011 of more than $ 86 billion and acknowledge within weeks
November 17, 2010 02:23 am · Posted in NEWS · Comments Off
mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?hl=en&shva=1#compose


An expert of the Central Bank confirmed that the income account of the oil complex for several reasons

Baghdad: Nasir Ali

At a time in which it called economic institutions non-governmental organizations need to accelerate the adoption of the budget next year (2011 AD) and reducing operating expenses, leading to less value deficit, said Iraqi member of parliament for the Iraqi List, Osman Aljehici, that the political blocs agreed among themselves and during the meeting last Saturday Finish the formation of parliamentary committees and authorize the Finance Committee to study the budget next year for approval during the few weeks following the day of Eid al-Adha.

And has already announced that the Iraqi Finance Ministry to provide the completion of the budget next year of $ 86.4 billion dollars, which is higher than the current 14 billion dollars.

The Center for Economic Information in a statement obtained by «Middle East» a copy of it, that «while welcoming the Centre healing held the House of Representatives, the next task which is supposed to fall on his shoulder is the rapid formation of special committees to perform the tasks, including Economic Committee, which is their job to read the general budget and the preparation of the proposed amendments to its vocabulary, which has become necessary to put forward for discussion and approval in order to avoid delays in the budget last year, in addition to requiring the Ministry of Finance prepare a budget concluding after each fiscal year to clarify the magnitude of Almdorat financial and size of the actual expenditures and mechanisms to cover the budget deficit, the proper mechanisms to be followed in calculating the budget deficit to accurately estimate the real and objective ».

He added: PCHR urges the Council to speed adoption of the budget, he appealed in the same time, further scrutiny of the items of expenditure, operational and trying to reduce operating expenses, including not affect the performance of State-General, to reach the lowest value deficit as possible in the budget, under the Declaration advance for the possible arrival of the budget deficit to 18 trillion dinars (more than 15 billion U.S. dollars) for the current year, despite predictions of growth of Iraq’s oil exports, and thus the growth of revenues from oil sales. æßÔÝ

Detection and Undersecretary of the Ministry of Finance, the Iraqi Fadel, a prophet, in previous statements that his country «proposed budget for next year worth 86.4 billion dollars».

He added that the Prophet «Iraq has proposed the initial draft budget for 2011 of $ 102 trillion dinars (86.4 billion dollars)» assuming global price of oil at $ 70 a barrel.


Iraq relies on oil revenues to finance about 95 per cent of its budget, and Iraq signed a member of the Organization of «OPEC» agreements with international oil companies could increase production capacity in as little as (6-7) years to 12 million barrels per day from 2.5 million barrels a day at the present time, which may make it a rival to Saudi Arabia, the largest producer of crude in the world.

As far as assurances and Undersecretary of the Ministry of Finance «The budget currently before the Council of Ministers and will be submitted to parliament after the formation of committees».

For his part, MP for the Iraqi List, Dr. Osman Aljehici «Middle East» to «Adoption of the budget next year should have been recognized by a month from now, but the delay of its meetings and the crisis in the formation of the government prevented this, as everyone knows that the adoption of the budget requires study sufficient by the Finance Committee for amendment, additions and deletions, then read on first reading by the House of Representatives and again, and then voted upon, and these paragraphs certainly need for a time, and that is not owned by the new parliament ».

He also revealed that «all the groups had agreed at the last meeting on the importance of expediting the formation of commissions after the day of Eid al-Adha, and also send a letter from the House of Representatives to the Government requesting the removal of the budget to parliament for approval, and here is the budget of the priorities of our work now is of importance, and prevent the disruption of the wheel of the government all the citizens, noting that the delay in approving the budget in 2010, was due to intersections of the blocks because of the proximity between the elections and the government turned to the conduct of the business, and delayed negative impact on all aspects of the state, we do not want the ball back again ».

Parliament passed in January (January) 2010 budget, which amounted to $ 72.4 billion deficit of $ 19.6 billion, assuming an oil price of $ 62.50 a barrel.

For his part, said an expert CBI appearance of Mohammed Saleh, told «Middle East» that «the subject of speculation Iraq’s budget for next year a very complex issue, and adopt a number of scenarios, including expected daily average for the capital markets and oil markets, and prospects for the next stage was between (80-85 dollars) a barrel within a market (OPEC), and in Iraq less than a rate of $ 7 for the global market expectations ».

He pointed out that «Iraq’s budget depends mainly basic on the sale of oil, that is, with one source, and last year was expected sale of 2.15 million barrels a day, and current rates of production are still low, and without two million for many reasons related to export and transmission lines, etc.».

And on exaggerated expectations next year budget, said the appearance: «There are two items in the budget, the two share operational and investment, and here we must think about how much we will be able to reduce in the first and lifting the second for the purposes of development and investment in particular, and we set the growth rate of 9.4, a rate that ambition is converging with the rate of China ».

The current government is also facing a wave of criticism over the failure to submit the final accounts of the budgets of government since 2005 and until now, there are claims to refer the subject for regulators and the judiciary, because these accounts must be discussed and ratified by Parliament.

It also asked the Ministry of Electricity and the allocation of 7 trillion and 806 billion dinars (6.7 billion dollars), within the next year budget, to cover the expenses of the project, approved by the Government in the development of the electricity sector.

This was announced by Sri Musab, a teacher at the official spokesman for the ministry, adding that the Ministry of Planning has proposed the allocation of five trillion and 266 billion and 650 million Iraqi dinars ($ 4.5 billion) investment as a counterbalance to the Electricity Ministry, promised a big budget, compared to previous years.

He emphasized that the amounts are insufficient to accomplish the investment projects of the Ministry, pointing out that there are amounts owed by the ministry, within the projects carried out during the current year and prior years, including two billion and 925 billion dinars from the treasury, and it must be returned to the state treasury in the next year, as that the ministry is obliged to pay other amounts due and payable in 2011.



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* The Prime Minster and his “New Cabinet”
November 16, 2010 08:52 pm · Posted in NEWS · Comments Off
IKHNEWS.COM

Baghdad (news) ..

Called placeholders in the Iraqi List, Suhad Obaidi leaders of political blocs to give women visited the mission. Obeidi said (of the Agency news) said on Tuesday: “The leaders of political blocs and the Prime Minister in particular to give the role of women in his new Cabinet, noting that parliamentarians Sien to take charge women in leadership positions, our belief in Battaiha effective, she Obeidi regret counting women’s involvement in the process of selecting presidencies of the three, or even the process of negotiations to form a government, and continued: We can not attribute the reason for this to the man or say it’s dictatorship and domination only, because it goes back to ancient roots dating back to our society and traditions of tribal and nomadic, that women prefer to stay in the shade. ”

She said al-Obeidi that there is the issue deeper and more dangerous than non-involved our in the negotiations is not the faith of women of women the other, it shall not be granted women’s counterpart, her voice, “so we are seeking in the current parliament and at the time of its meetings to form a bloc that would include women members, and their number is 80, Vice, and through our actions on other women from other blocs, we will work on activating the role of women and fails to remain absent in the negotiations and discussions and debates now under way. / Finished / (n. r) ..

theiraqidinar.com/category/news/

[sandi66]

* duke1-stardogger.net 11-16-10

November 16, 2010 06:09 pm ¡¤
Posted in NEWS ¡¤ 3 Comments

*duke1¡äs am cliff notes 11/16/2010

Good Morning, I hope everyone¡¯s week started out great, of course it is not as great as we would like, because the rv has yet to happen, but we have faith that it will and hoping it happens soon. Have a great day everyone and see you tomorrow.

1. Will the New Government Bring Security?

www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­8904#post18904

2. Huge Gas Deals Signed

www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­8905#post18905

3. $100 Oil To Boost Iraqi Budget

www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­8906#post18906

4. Property Bubble in Iraq

www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­8907#post18907

5. Allawi: I asked Mubarak to be a role for Arabs in Iraq

Read more: www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­#ixzz15QcKdmJG

6. Watermelon: Parliament will discuss the Law of the Supreme Council policies after Eid al-Adha

Read more: www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­#ixzz15Qdg3DrY

7. Can Iraq¡¯s Political Agreement be Implemented?

www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­8910#post18910

8. Cartoons on the feast of Eid (Group of Pictures)

Read more: www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­#ixzz15QqnJCrA

9. Maliki calls for political blocs to submit their candidates to take over ministerial portfolios

Read more: www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­#ixzz15R07GZ7G

10. Allawi¡¯s list reveals: the participation of the Iraqi government depends on the composition of the Council strategic policies

Read more: www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­#ixzz15R1nHlQo

11. Kurdistan: the Baathists do not believe in the constitution and democracy they want to acquire their goals through violence and domination

Read more: www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­#ixzz15R4gmGTQ

12. Sabah al-Saadi: Maliki¡¯s government will be weak because it relied on the strength abroad

Read more: www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­#ixzz15RBoBsl4

13. U.S. Envoy Secretly Offered Troops in Iraq after 2011

Read more: www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­#ixzz15RFD2H36

THE NEXT GROUP OF ARTICLES ARE COMMENTARIES THAT I FOUND INTERESTING.

14. ¡°Iraq Is a Democracy.¡±

Read more:
www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­8918#post18918

15. ¡°Maliki Is Iran¡¯s Man.¡±

Read more:
www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­8919#post18919

16. Think Again: Iraq
It¡¯s not over yet

Sadr Calls the Shots.¡±

Read more:
www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­8920#post18920

17. Think Again: Iraq ¡°Kirkuk Is a Time Bomb.¡±

Read more: www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­#ixzz15RMPK585

18. Think Again: Iraq ¡°The Iraq War Is Over.¡±

Read more: www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­#ixzz15RNFpI2G

AGAIN, I FOUND THE FOLLOWING INTERESTING READING, I DID COMBINE THE LAST ARTICLES

19. Supermarkets

Read more:
www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­8923#post18923
20. 5 THINGS YOU DIDN¡¯T KNOW ABOUT¡­Supermarkets
Read more:
www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­8924#post18924

21. 5 THINGS YOU DIDN¡¯T KNOW ABOUT¡­ Supermarkets
Read more:
www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­8925#post18925

22. Nassif Radio NOAA: Allawi was forced to participate in the new government

Read more: www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­#ixzz15RYm2GEa
23. National Alliance announces his desire for the participation of women in the ministries

Read more: www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­#ixzz15RZxpBum

24. Sadoun: Talabani will cost Maliki to form a government after the holiday officially

Read more: www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­#ixzz15RcIPBQ7

25. British amb. hopes political progress in Iraq brings permanent end to violence

Read more: www.stardogger.net/forum/show¡­#ixzz15Rdghm3u

*duke1

P. S. Soap and Water

After several exciting dates, Jim invited Tina over to his house for a home-cooked dinner.

When she sat down at the table, she noticed that the dishes were the dirtiest that she had ever seen in her life.

¡°Have these dishes ever been washed?¡± Tina asked, running her fingers over the grit and grime.

Jim replied, ¡°They¡¯re as clean as soap and water could get them.¡±

Tina felt a bit apprehensive, but started eating. It was really delicious and she said so, despite the dirty dishes.

When dinner was over, Jim took the dishes outside, whistled and yelled for his dogs, ¡°Here, Soap! Here, Water!¡±

PP. SS. 10 Step Guide For The Do-It-Yourself Handyman

1. If you can¡¯t find a screwdriver, use a knife. If you break off the tip, it¡¯s an improved screwdriver.

2. Try to work alone. An audience is rarely any help.

3. Above all, if what you¡¯ve done is stupid, but it works, then it isn¡¯t stupid.

4. Work in the kitchen whenever you can¡­many fine tools are there, its warm and dry, and you are close to the refrigerator.

5. If it¡¯s electronic, get a new one¡­or consult a twelve year old.

6. Stay simple minded: Get a new battery; replace the bulb or fuse; see if the tank is empty; try turning the switch or just paint over it.

7. Always take credit for miracles. If you dropped the alarm clock while taking it apart and it suddenly starts working, you have healed it.

8. Regardless of what people say, kicking, pounding, and throwing sometimes DOES help.

9. If something looks level, it is level.

10. If at first you don¡¯t succeed, redefine success.

Read more: www.stardogger.net/forum/showthread.php?9597-*duke1-s-pm-cliff-notes-11-16-2010#ixzz15Tghji7D