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These pages list the most recent news stories reported by the readers and editors of Freedom's Phoenix:
Cuba already had 344 doctors and other health professionals working full time in Haiti under an agreement with the Haitian government. Victor Geneus, Haiti’s ambassador to Havana, thanked the Cuban people and government for their assistance in such
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York may be compelled to hand over documents related to American International Group Inc.’s government bailout after the chairman of a House oversight committee said he will issue a subpoena.
Top Secret Banker Manual in it there are examples of court filings that could be used to force the hands of bankers. It is in PDF and quite an interesting read.
12/23/2009 | Ed Morrissey California got $7 billion in state grants from Porkulus, and an opportunity to catch their breath while they attacked a monstrous state budget that desperately needs pruning. Congress has now begun to consider Porkulus II,
What’s Happening 12/1/09 *Total Economic Collapse – The Swindle* Pt 2 “Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merge of state and corporate power.”~ Benito Mussolini. Well, I feel so much better. Just a short viewing of the c
Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs -The Department of State is seeking experienced police officers who are eager to accept a challenging and rigorous assignment to serve with the United States CIVPOL in Middle Eastern post-
Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs -The Department of State is seeking experienced police officers who are eager to accept a challenging and rigorous assignment to serve with the United States CIVPOL in Middle Eastern post-
While all the talk at present is about economic corners turned and markets charging ahead, no one is paying much notice to an American economy deteriorating before our eyes. These myopic commentators seem to be simply moving past the now almost-unive
Sept. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. proposed a six-month, emergency-only extension to its debt guarantee program as regulators move to wean companies from federal aid approved at the height of last year’s credit crisis.
Spin Spin Spin. The state-run media will do anything to spin the news for the Obama administration. And it is not just the “big boys” at the national level,. Now even the local Jimmy Olsens think they can get away with it. Here, brown-nosed reporte
“Who would want to buy a stock that’s still 80 percent owned by the government?” Who indeed?
…And they would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for those meddling... laws. Of course, Breaking the law while pretending to enforce it (for profit) is business as usual for American Traffic Solutions. The headlines say it all. Miami Herald: “Legal challenges mount for Florida’s red-light cameras.” Daytona Beach News-Journal: “Red-light camera lawsuit looms.” Naples News: “[Suit claims] red-light cameras are unconstitutional.”
Attorney Gary Dubin was in a Honolulu hospital, sedated and suffering from depression after the death of his son, when U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real had him handcuffed and taken to court -- still in his hospital gown -- to answer charges of failing to file tax returns.Real allowed him to send for clothes but refused to postpone the hearing, recalled Dubin, who had to defend himself in a medicated fog without his case files. Judged guilty by Real after a two-day bench trial, Dubin spent 19 1/2 months in federal prison, while his home went into foreclosure and his credit was ruined by identity thieves. He achieved a measure of vindication years later when the IRS sent him a letter saying he had not violated any tax-filing laws. But he said his encounter with Real caused him professional and economic suffering from which he is still recovering.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Regulators on Friday shut down Colonial BancGroup Inc., a big lender in real estate development that marked the biggest U.S. bank failure this year, and a small bank in Pennsylvania.
The closures boosted to 74 the number of federally insured banks that have failed in 2009.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of Montgomery, Ala.-based Colonial, with about $25 billion in assets, and Dwelling House Savings and Loan Association, located in Pittsburgh. The agency approved the sale of Colonial's $20 billion in deposits and about $22 billion of its assets to BB&T Corp., which is based in Winston-Salem, N.C. The failed bank's 346 branches in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and Texas will reopen at the normal times starting on Saturday as offices of BB&T, the FDIC said.
In October last year, 9 banks received a grand total of $125 billion
in taxpayer money as part of the much publicized Troubled Asset Relief
Program (TARP). The aim of the payout being to aid in the banks'
survival as they tried to ride out the pressures of the economic crisis.
Hoh hoh hoh! We're finally seeing some recognition of what I've been talking about for the last two years! Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) -- More than 150 publicly traded U.S. lenders own nonperforming loans that equal 5 percent or more of their holdings, a level that former regulators say can wipe out a bank’s equity and threaten its survival. And Bloomberg appears to have recognized the key problem with these banks (all of which should have been shut over a year ago): Excluding the stress-test list, banks with nonperformers above 5 percent had combined deposits of $193 billion, according to Bloomberg data. That’s almost 15 times the size of the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund at the end of the first quarter. Yeah, that's a problem. But the real problem is regulatory malfeasance. See, the purpose of the Tier Capital Ratio is to permit the government (FDIC) to come in via the OTS or OCC before the regulatory capital cushion is entirely depleted, and if the law is actually followe
A controversial $40-billion government program to buy toxic securities from ailing banks has a flaw that law enforcement and financial experts say could allow traders to illegally profit from inside information. Critics of the program say that without adequate safeguards, traders could use the tens of billions of dollars provided by the government to manipulate prices and exploit the price swings in other trades. Because the government is providing 75% of the program's money -- $30 billion -- the manipulations could lead to significant losses by taxpayers. "It is a conflict by design," said Neal Barofsky, the special inspector general for the banking rescue program who has urged tighter controls on the nine trading firms selected to participate.
John Hussman - PhD economist and former professor of economics and international finance at the University of Michigan - has a great quote: If you look carefully at the economic data that shows improvement, and correct for the impact of government outlays, it is difficult to find anything but continued deterioration in private demand and investment. What we do see is a government that has run what is now a trillion dollar deficit year-to-date, representing some 7% of GDP. That sort of tab will undoubtedly buy some amount of Cool-Aid, but it has been something of a disappointment to watch how eagerly investors have guzzled it down. It is not at all clear that short-term, deficit-financed improvement necessarily implies sustained growth in the context of a deleveraging cycle. This is like somebody borrowing money from their Uncle and then celebrating that their income has gone up.
Why is it that we have to pay for their screw ups? Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc underestimated the risks of falling stock prices to its billions of dollars of derivatives bets, yet still believes it is valuing the contracts fairly. Berkshire revealed its error in a June 26 letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, one of several pieces of correspondence with the regulator about the company's annual report, and made public on Thursday. The key issue:
Businesses reduced inventories for a 10th straight month in June, although total business sales posted the first increase in nearly a year. The Commerce Department said Thursday that businesses cut stockpiles 1.1 percent in June, slightly larger than the 0.9 percent drop economists expected. The reductions have translated into sharp production cutbacks at factories, adding to the steep recession.
The FED Debt system has taken America down from the # 1 Creditor Nation to the #1 Debtor Nation: DEBT Closely Correlates to Central BANK’s Printing DEBT Paper Wealth/Credit Closely Correlates to Manufacturing Countries that have Wealth Building Exports! Rank of Countries from Most Debt Ridden to Most Credit United States
John Crudele is justifiably suspicious. He writes: Another curious thing happened before the employment report was made public. Sometime before late afternoon Thursday, Goldman Sachs suddenly broke with the Wall Street pack that was predicting a loss of 320,000 or so jobs in July.
The cause? Massive, ballooning public debt. The public intuitively knows that debt is bad, Ferguson says--perhaps because consumers now have it coming out of their ears. This is why so many Americans disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy. And it's why his future is threatened... Niall Ferguson, FT: According to the polls, voters disapprove of Congress by 61 per cent to 31 per cent. What’s more, the two parties would be neck and neck if the midterm elections were held today. The reason is clear. While the stimulus package had a sound macroeconomic rationale, the growing structural imbalance between federal revenue and spending scares the hell out of voters. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll showed that 59 per cent of Americans think government spending is excessive. Mr Obama receives his lowest approval ratings for his handling of the federal budget deficit. Voters have good reason to disapprove. The deficit this year is likely to be $1,800bn (€1,270bn, £1,090bn).
I just received one of the famous "fundraising calls" from the RNC. They were soliciting people to give them money (and tried for slightly over $3k!) to "stop Obama's Health Care plan that will cost $1 trillion." Oh boy did that poor sap get an earful. I "explained" that: $1 trillion is a lot of money. $12 trillion is a lot more, and that's how much the RNC has allowed to be pissed away backstopping and rewarding people who have stolen from the American people through bailouts and handouts, all of which have gone to the very people doing the stealing! John McCain, to whom I gave a significant campaign donation, returned my favor by suspending his campaign to push through the EESA/TARP, a bill that by 300:1 margins the American People opposed. If the Republicans are the party of the people why is it that they are allowing these bankers to steal over $30 billion dollars by re-ordering transactions to generate the MAXIMUM in overdraft fees? Th
Talk about the best interview since “Frost-Nixon.” How about Blodget-Spitzer? Henry Blodget interviewed former New York Attorney General and Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who ran Blodget out of Wall Street. Both are bloggers/columnists, both have suffered disgrace and both are looking for redemption. And wonder of wonders, during the interview Spitzer was in agreement with yet another of his former targets, the peripatetic Hank Greenberg. The former CEO of American International Group is another in a long line of bosses who lost their jobs to Spitzer’s tough investigative tactics. Spitzer probably wouldn’t want to admit that he essentially repeated what Greenberg said last December, and which BNET Finance ran: that the real villain in the AIG bailout wasn’t Greenberg or Spitzer; it was Goldman Sachs, the investment bank whose tentacles reached into the highest levels of government.
Beleaguered photo radar and red light camera provider Redflex Traffc Solutions was dealt a blow last week when a Superior Court judge in Orange County, CA. found their contract with the City of Santa Ana to be illegal: "…Orange County Superior Court Commissioner Kenneth Schwartz declared the city’s program void because it had ignored several provisions of state law."
Here is the perfect example of Socializing the Losses Sound Familiar? Icesave, a subsidiary of the Landsbanki bank that was nationalised in October 2008, had attracted more than 320,000 British and Dutch savers owing to the high interest rates offered in Iceland. But they lost their savings when their accounts were frozen in connection with Landsbanki's nationalisation. London and The Hague partially compensated them before turning to Reykjavik, which led to a lengthy row that was only resolved in June. But now lawmakers are under public pressure, with a Capacent Gallup poll published last week showing that 67.9 percent of Icelanders are against the refund scheme, and only 19.6 percent support it. "It should be flatly rejected," said Brynjar Elinarson, a thirtysomething Reykjavik resident. Bjorg Gudmundsdottir, a woman in her 40s, agreed. "We can't repay all these debts." With its 319,000 inhabitants, the repayment plan represents about 12,000 euros pe
Put the kids away before reading. If this does not make your blood boil..... Herein lies the problem. The FHA’s standard insurance program today is notoriously lax. It backs low downpayment loans, to buyers who often have below-average to poor credit ratings, and with almost no oversight to protect against fraud. Sound familiar? This is called subprime lending—the same financial roulette that busted Fannie, Freddie and large mortgage houses like Countrywide Financial. The article goes on to note that as of the end of this year FHA and Ginnie will have issued and hold one trillion dollars of mortgages, that the current default rate is now 7%, and the delinquent rate is running some 13%. Why? Because the same crooks, swindlers and thieves that infested the housing market in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 in "subprime" and "ALT-A" have now moved into the FHA product. There is only ONE way to guarantee safety and soundness in mortgage lending. ONE!
You gotta love the recent report on Freddie Mac's performance. The headline was a profit BUT only if they didn't include the dividend on its senior preferred stock. So they lost money, again. But that's not what is being reported. Moreover, no one is talking about the fact that Freddie Mac made more than $4B on their derivative portfolio. I just don't get it. First, we loan Goldman Sachs and the Banksters money that they are supposed to put to work in the economy . . . but instead they just trade stocks and bonds - casino style. Now we have Freddie Mac admitting in the fine print that they would have actually lost almost $5 billion if they did not throw the dice on the derivatives markets. I guess my question is this. Who is going to cover their losses when they lose? Same thing for the big banks. Who is going to cover their losses when they lose? A
