Dr. Stephen Blank, one of America's top experts on Russia and the former satellites of the USSR, likens US Intelligence to a clipping service, a very bad one. He itemizes the recent failures of US Intelligence and observes that anyone in the audience he was addressing in NYC could have written a better threat estimate than that presented by the Director of National Intelligence recently to Congress. Includes video of his full answer to the question about US Intelligence.
Hedge-fund manager Paul Singer recognized the risks of subprime mortgages and bet against them. Now he warns that monetary policy could cripple American banks again.
James Freeman, The Wall Street Journal, 19 March 2011
Phi Beta Iota: Absolutely worth a full read. Here's the bottom line: US Government is simply not serious about regulation; the Federal Reserve in assuming faith in the dollar and printing money so fast inflation is inevitable and a total collapse of the dollar possible; the big banks are still over-leveraged; and a mega-meltdown is a virtual certainty. We assume the “elite” think they can stave off the melt-down until after November 2011 so as to have four more years of a compliant complacent government.
Here’s the thing: the House Republicans are going after their version of unsightly pimples on the body politic — the programs they and their billionaire sponsors find ideologically unpalatable — without seriously considering where our money really flows. We at TomDispatch thought we might lend a hand to Congress’s deliberations this week by offering something new: the first real figure on what American taxpayers actually pay for the Pentagon, the U.S. military, homeland security, our distant wars, the care of veterans, intelligence, and every other aspect of our national security and war state.
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$1.2 Trillion: The Real U.S. National Security Budget No One Wants You to Know About
What if you went to a restaurant and found it rather pricey? Still, you ordered your meal and, when done, picked up the check only to discover that it was almost twice the menu price.
Phi Beta Iota: We used to admire Jim Clapper, so much so that a member of our collective issued a press release in his defense when Donald Rumsfeld fired him for telling the truth. General Clapper appears to have forgotten how to tell the truth, and he is not leading the US Intelligence Community, he is administering it with cronies assigned to administer the various agencies. There is no longer intelligence at the top of the intelligence community. It is time for a full-spectrum house cleaning, to include the conversion of the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, which is not needed, into the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Peace Operations, which IS needed. Mike Vickers is not qualified for either position.
Media Spin: Clapper told the truth. Reality: Clapper is out of touch with reality–he cannot even outline the ten high-level threats to humanity or explain why continued fragmentation of the US Government is the greatest threat to our near term as well as a long term stability and prosperity. Russia and China are not military threats to the US but rather economic threats, and in the case of China, a demographic and scientific & technology threat. The Old Guard is dead, may they rest in peace. Sadly, there is no bench within the US Intelligence Community OR the contractor world. We anticipate nothing beneficial for our $90 billion a year.
Phi Beta Iota: Highlights include extimate that US is 44 trillion in debt; that nothing and Administration does will stop Wall Street–this is now so bad the author believes a revolution (as in swarming homes and offices and demanding the return of ill-gotten wealth) will do. We do not agree. Yes, it is bad. No, recovering the stolen money will not do. The silver lining in all this is the obvious decrepitude of governments and corporations; the now obvious toxic nature of information asymmetries and data pathologies; and the less obvious but emergent need for a) restoring the integrity of the US Electoral process through Electoral Reform 2.2 ; and b) creating the Autonomous Internet so as to achieve Panarchy and create a prosperous world at peace in which transparency eliminates corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse, starting in the USA.
