Category: Commerce

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Story Of 2011 Will Be The Second US Housing Crash

03 Economy, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government

BUSINESS INSIDER / Money Game

Story of 2011 Will Be The Second US Housing Crash

20% price drop certain, 40% price drop probable, 80% possible

By Ilargi on The Automatic Earth. Jan. 3, 2011, 6:24 AM

EXTRACT:  Many people claim Stoneleigh and I must be crazy, and doomers and all that, for predicting an 80%+ drop in real estate values, but we in turn can't seem to understand why home prices would fall “only” 20% from here, or why they would fall “just” 40%, as Mish suggested for instance. We think that more than 20% is in the cards just because of the bubble coming back to earth; we think 40% is certain because of the bubble bursting, and we think 80%+ will then happen because the bursting bubble will take the entire financial system down with it. Pretty simple really.g, and it is worth reading….every single word of it.

EXTRACT:  According to L. Randall Wray, lenders may have the right to collect debt on certain loans, if they can prove ownership of the loan, but they can't foreclose unless and until they have a clear record (chain) of all transactions the loans went through, through their entire existence. And MERS effectively killed that chain.

EXTRACT:  The entire US housing system, lenders, builders, borrowers, the whole thing, is in grave danger, and that means both the financial system and the economy at large are as well. We're looking at not just one or two, but a whole series of reinforcing feedback loops. Which neither Obama nor Geithner nor Bernanke have any control over, other than fleetingly and temporarily.  And that will be the story of 2011.  Well, that and, of course, the euro crumbling, Japan deflating, China inflating, cities, counties and states defaulting, violent street protests, millions more Americans sinking into abject poverty, misery and hardship, and so on.

Read every word….

Phi Beta Iota: This is the best review we have found and it is chillingly credible.  In our view, the Secretary of the Treasury means well but has absolutely no clue how to actually manage the US economy back to a more stable ethical state.
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Journal: Israel Demands Bribes for Access to Gaza

08 Wild Cards, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence
Chuck Spinney Recommends...

WikiLeaks: Israel charged bribes for Gaza access

By JOSEF FEDERMAN

The Associated Press Thursday, January 6, 2011; 7:29 AM

JERUSALEM — A U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks on Thursday quoted American officials as saying a key Israeli cargo crossing for goods entering the Gaza Strip was rife with corruption.

The June 14, 2006, cable, published Thursday by Norway's Aftenposten daily, says major American companies told U.S. diplomats they were forced to pay hefty bribes to get goods into Gaza. It was unclear whether the practice still continues.

Read full article…

See Also:

Review: Deliver Us from Evil–Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict

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Journal: What’s Wrong with American defense….

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, History, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Standards, Strategy, Technologies

Chuck Spinney Recommends...

Phi Beta Iota: Notes summarizing the 59 minute video are below the line.

….Watch this!!!!!  My good friend Pierre Sprey interviews Bill Hartung on Book TV about Hartung's new book, Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.

The book is a history of the largest military contractor in U.S. history, Lockheed Martin.  Hartung argues that with 25 billion dollars annually in Defense Department contracts, Lockheed Martin's reach into American life is extensive and largely unknown, including creation of satellites used to spy on the phone calls of American citizens.  He discusses the company's size, scope and influence with Pierre Sprey, father of the A-10 and F-16 military aircraft and a well-known thorn in the Pentagon's side.  Chuck

William Hartung

Mr. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation.  He is the author of How Much are You Making on the War Daddy? and And Weapons for All.  He's written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Nation magazine.

NOTE:  Title leads to Words, WATCH leads to the actual playing of the video.

After Words: William Hartung, "Prophets of War," hosted by Pierre Sprey

Summary of the 59 minute back and forth CSPAN BookTV Interview:

Continue reading “Journal: What’s Wrong with American defense….”

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Journal: Afghanistan as a Failure of Imagination

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Corruption, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call, Policy, Reform, Strategy, Threats
Who, Me?

Flawed projects prove costly for Afghanistan, U.S.

Contractor leaves Afghan police stations half-complete

Phi Beta Iota: Our political, policy, and military leaders simply do not know what they do not know.  Assuming–desiring–that they have the best of intentions–the reality is that they are not receiving the intelligence (decision-support) that they require to make intelligent decisions.  In both Iraq and Afghanistan, because there was political will, trillions have been wasted on “security” instead of sustenance.  Haiti, because there were no political will, was a microcosm–20,000 troops with a huge logistics tail when what was really needed were CAB 21 Peace Jumpers able to call in a Reverse TPFID….  Advanced Cyber/IO starts with imagination & intelligence.

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Journal: In Money-Changers We Trust

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Chuck Spinney Recommends...

In Money-Changers We Trust

TruthDig Posted on Dec 28, 2010

By Robert Scheer

Two years into the Obama presidency and the economic data is still looking grim. Don’t be fooled by the gyrations of the stock market, where optimism is mostly a reflection of the ability of financial corporations—thanks to massive government largesse—to survive the mess they created. The basics are dismal: Unemployment is unacceptably high, the December consumer confidence index is down and housing prices have fallen for four months in a row. The number of Americans living in poverty has never been higher, and a majority in a Washington Post poll said they were worried about making their next mortgage or rent payment.

In a parallel universe lives Peter Orszag, President Barack Obama’s former budget director and key adviser, who even faster than his mentor, Robert Rubin, has passed through that revolving platinum door linking the White House with Wall Street. The goal is to use your government position to advance the interests of your future employer, and Orszag and Rubin’s actions in the government and then at Citigroup provide stunning examples of the synergy between big government and high finance.

Read more….

See Also:

Reference: 2011 Brave New Dystopia

Search: US fraud tri-fecta

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Journal: Analysis of STUXNET, Iran, and US Vulnerability

Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement
Berto Jongman Recommends...

David Albright, Paul Brannan, and Christina Walrond

22 December 2010, Preliminary Assessment

Did Stuxnet Take Out 1,000 Centrifuges at the Natanz Enrichment Plant?

10 pages

Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS)

Phi Beta Iota: US Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) computer systems are still on the Internet and still very vulnerable to internal and external interference, as well as the standard 50% “errors and omissions” that come with sloppy computer work so characteristic of US vendors.  Many sounded the alarm in 1990 (Winn Schwartau, Peter Black) through 1994 (Robert Steele, various field grade officers at the Air War College) but no one wanted to listen.  The US is as close to a complex melt-down (political-legal, socio-economic, ideo-cultural, techno-demographic, natural-geographic) as we have witnessed in our lifetime.

See Also:

1998 TAKEDOWN: Targets, Tools, & Technocracy

1995 Military Perspective on Information Warfare: Apocalypse Now

Although other papers have been written since then, the three “originals” in the author's view are Major Gerald R. Hust, “Taking Down Telecommunications”, School of Advanced Airpower Studies, 1993); Major Thomas E. Griffith, Jr., “Strategic Attack of National Electrical Systems”, School of Advanced Airpower Studies, 1994; and H. D. Arnold, J. Hukill, and A. Cameron of the Department of the Air Force, “Targeting Financial Systems as Centers of Gravity: ‘Low Intensity' to ‘No Intensity' Conflict”, in Defense Analysis (Volume 10 Number 2, pages 181-208), 1994.

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Journal: US Corporations Growing Outside US, No Jobs In US

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government
Chuck Spinney Recommends...

I received this email from a close friend, a Republican of the old school:

“When 50+ years ago Engine Charlie Wilson said what's good for General Motors is good for America, he was mostly right. Now corporations have turned that aphorism on its head.”

Tuesday, Dec 28, 2010 08:03 ET

Where are the jobs? Overseas, of course

American consumers have little to do with the big profits many top American corporations are now racking up

By PALLAVI GOGOI, Associated Press

Corporate profits are up. Stock prices are up. So why isn't anyone hiring?

Actually, many American companies are — just maybe not in your town. They're hiring overseas, where sales are surging and the pipeline of orders is fat.

EXTRACT: Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria worries that the trend could be dangerous. In an article in the November issue of the Harvard Business Review, he says that if U.S. businesses keep prospering while Americans are struggling, business leaders will lose legitimacy in society. He exhorted business leaders to find a way to link growth with job creation at home.

Other economists, like Columbia University's Sachs, say multinational corporations have no choice, especially now that the quality of the global work force has improved. Sachs points out that the U.S. is falling in most global rankings for higher education while others are rising.

“We are not fulfilling the educational needs of our young people,” says Sachs. “In a globalized world, there are serious consequences to that.”

Read complete article at Salon.com….

See Also:

Reference: 2011 Brave New Dystopia

Search: US fraud tri-fecta

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