Commercial Intelligence – Page 155 – Public Intelligence Blog

Brent At $126 As Israel Security Cabinet Votes 8 To 6 To Attack Iran

According to Israel's NRG, in a just completed cabinet vote, for the first time Netanyahu has gotten a majority (8 over 6) supporting an Iran attack. NRG also notes that at this point Israel has decided to not wait until the US elections in November before proceeding with sending crude to the stratosphere. From NRG (google translated): “Israeli political sources believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a majority Cabinet support Israeli military action against Iran without American approval….He announced that he would not hesitate to perform the operation without the approval of President Obama mentioned the precedent of the decision to attack the Iraqi reactor, Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and with the comments heard yesterday some cabinet ministers say privately that “It sounds like a speech preparation for attack.

US Launches PR Campaign for Ugandan Oil Intervention

Phi Beta Iota: Oil and Oil Futures are the common denominator; Israeli aggression in expanding the settlements while everyone is watching Iran are the very important sideshow. It is a real shame when the public cannot trust its government to know the truth, much less tell the truth. This is about bets on oil futures. Can the US Government determine who gains from oil going up another $20 a barrel in March? Can the public do this on its own?

2012/03/12

Chuck Spinney: Koch Brothers, Cato, Why Nations Fail

07 Other Atrocities, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Non-Governmental

The Koch Brothers, The Cato Institute, And Why Nations Fail

Simon Johnson, Baseline Scenario, 8 March 2012

A dispute has broken out between the Cato Institute, a leading libertarian think tank, and two of its longtime backers – David and Charles Koch. The institute is not the usual form of nonprofit but actually a company with shares; the Koch brothers own two of the four shares and are arguing that they have the right to acquire additional shares and thus presumably exert more control. The institute and some of its senior staff are pushing back.

According to Edward H. Crane, the president and co-founder of Cato, “This is an effort by the Kochs to turn the Cato Institute into some sort of auxiliary for the G.O.P.” Bob Levy, chairman of the Cato board, told The Washington Post: “We would take closer marching orders. That’s totally contrary to what we perceive the function of Cato be.”

Far from being just an unseemly row between prominent personalities on the right, this showdown reflects a much deeper set of concerns for American politics and society. And it raises what I regard as the central question of an important book, “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty,” by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson that will be published on March 20.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Koch Brothers, Cato, Why Nations Fail”

2012/03/122012/03/12

Mini-Me: PriceWaterHouseCoopers to Go Down?

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth

Robert Steele has for some time been saying that “The truth at any cost lowers all others costs.” He has also been focusing on the importance of intelligence with integrity. Among all governments, only Iceland appears to be serious about dealing with the financial crisis as it should be dealt with: as a criminal conspiracy enabled by all of the parties in both public and private sectors who sacrificed their integrity and betrayed the public trust.

Corporations operate under public charters. It is difficult to police the corporations when the governments have themselves become criminalized, but the tide is turning — the public is beginning to recognize that governments lack integrity and intelligence and cannot be trusted — in their present form — to manage the public interest.

When Goldman Sachs goes out of business the healing can begin. Slamming PWC is a good start.

Old Landsbanki to sue PriceWaterhouseCoopers for ‘deliberate’ auditing errors

The resolution committee of the failed Icelandic bank Old Landsbanki has subpoenaed the international auditing firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, accusing the company of creating wrong annual accounts which misled the markets. The committee’s damages claim runs to hundreds of millions of krónur.

2012/03/10

Paul Craig Roberts: No Jobs for Citizens – Death Spiral

03 Economy, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Government

No Jobs For Americans

Today (March 9, 2012) the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that 227,000 new nonfarm payroll jobs were created by the economy during February. Is the government’s claim true?

No. Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reports that 44,000 of these jobs or 19% consist of an add-on factor derived from the BLS’s estimate that 44,000 more unreported jobs from new business start-ups were created than were lost by unreported business failures. The BLS’s estimate comes from the bureau’s “birth-death model,” which works better during normal times, but delivers erroneous results during troubled times such as the economy has been experiencing during the past four years.

Taking out the 44,000 added-on jobs reduces the February jobs number to 183,000, but does not provide a full correction. In an economy as troubled as the US economy is, most likely the deaths exceeded the births, but we don’t know what the number is. Was it 20,000? 50,000? What number do we deduct from the 183,000? We simply do not know.

Williams reports that seasonal adjustment factors do not work properly during troubled economic times and add their own overstatement to the jobs figure. If anyone could estimate the overestimate of new jobs that results from malfunctioning seasonal adjustments, it is John Williams, but he doesn’t provide an estimate.

Most likely, the new jobs did not exceed 150,000, a figure that would merely keep even with population growth and thus not reduce the rate of unemployment, which, consistent with this deduction, remained constant.

Let’s look now at the kind of jobs that were created. Of the new jobs reported by BLS,
92% are in services. Of this 92%, only 7% could possibly relate to exportable services–architectural, engineering, and computer systems services.

Continue reading “Paul Craig Roberts: No Jobs for Citizens – Death Spiral”

2012/03/062012/03/06

Mini-Me: 15+ Potentially Massive Threats to US Economy

02 Infectious Disease, 03 Environmental Degradation, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Terrorism, Blog Wisdom, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

Huh? Here are Mini-Me's post-November 2012 nightmare events:

01 End of all federal grants to all universities

02 By law, all option years on all federal contracts eliminated.

03 30% federal employee Reduction in Force (RIF)

04 Industrial chemical accident of historic proportions (e.g. the really really big rusted chlorine tank above the NJ Turnpike right outside NYC blows)

05 One of NYC's two 1920's water mains blows, followed by a firestorm

06 Our own biological agent used (Forced Population Reduction) across the poorest sectors of the south (“useless eaters” according to Henry Kissinger).

07 Radiological event (dirty bomb) closes down a major transit hub for the next 20 years. Having fun yet?

15 Potentially Massive Threats To The U.S. Economy Over The Next 12 Months

We live in a world that is becoming increasingly unstable, and the potential for an event that could cause “sudden change” to the U.S. economy is greater than ever.

There are dozens of potentially massive threats that could easily push the U.S. economy over the edge during the next 12 months. A war in the Middle East, a financial collapse in Europe, a major derivatives crisis or a horrific natural disaster could all change our economic situation very rapidly.

In the list below, you will find some “sudden change” events that are somewhat likely and some that are quite unlikely. I have tried to include a broad range of potential “black swan events”, but there are certainly dozens more massive threats that could potentially be listed. (List only — links and text at the article.

01 War with Syria
02 War with Iran
03 Disorderly Greek Debt Default
04 Economic Collapse in Spain
05 Price of Gasoline
06 Student Loan Debt Bubble
07 State and Local Debt Crisis
08 Collapse of a Major US Bank
09 Derivatives Crisis (Credit Swaps Collapse)
10 Fall of the Japanese Economy (and government)
11 A Solar Megastorm (1 in 8 chance)
12 Major West Coast Earthquake and/or Volcanic Eruption
13 Tornado Damage to Major US Cities
14 Severe Drought in the United States
15 Asteroid Strike in February 2013

2012/03/042012/03/04

Koko: Iowa passes outrageous law demanding total secrecy over factory meat filth and cruelty practices

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency

Iowa passes outrageous law demanding total secrecy over factory meat filth and cruelty practices

Ethan A. Huff

Natural News, 4 March 2012

(NaturalNews) Capturing undercover footage of extreme animal abuse at factory farms is soon to be illegal in Iowa, thanks to the passage of a new bill that squelches First Amendment protections for agricultural whistleblowers. In one of the fastest legislative rush-throughs in history, the “American Heartland” state's House and Senate recently passed House File 589, also known as the “ag-gag” bill, which redefines undercover filming and various other whistle-blowing activities as “agricultural production facility fraud” punishable under the law.

Prior to the passage of the bill, which now sits on Republican Governor Terry Branstad's desk for signing, exposing the horrific conditions in many of Iowa's factory farms was a legally-protected free speech right. Once signed into law, however, H.F. 589 will make Iowa the first state in America to actively muzzle individuals from exposing the ugly truth about what takes place at chicken farms, animal processing plants, and even behemoth genetically-modified (GM) crops farms across the state.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: The truth at any cost lowers all others costs. This is the worst possible step Iowa could take.

2012/03/03

Josh Kilbourn: Israel, Others Begin US Stock Spree

08 Wild Cards, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Government

Next Leg Of The Ponzi Revealed – Foreign Central Banks To Begin Buying US Stocks Outright Starting Today

Tyler Durden

ZeroHedge, 1 March 2012

We were speechless when we read this from Bloomberg.

The Bank of Israel will begin today a pilot program to invest a portion of its foreign currency reserves in U.S. equities.

The investment, which in the initial phase will amount to 2 percent of the $77 billion reserves, or about $1.5 billion, will be made through UBS AG and BlackRock Inc. (BLK), Bank of Israel spokesman Yossi Saadon said in a telephone interview today. At a later stage, the investment is expected to increase to 10 percent of the reserves.

A small number of central banks have started investing part of their reserves in equities. About 9 percent of the foreign- exchange reserves of Switzerland’s central bank were invested in shares at the end of the third quarter, the Swiss bank said on its website.

The investment will be made in equity index trackers and will include between 1,500 to 2,000 shares, among them stocks like Apple Inc. (AAPL), Saadon said.

Category: Commercial Intelligence

Eagle: Drums of War — Israel-Iran AND US-Uganda