“An emboldened ElBaradei is now openly critical of the Obama administration. “It’s better for President Obama not to appear that he is the last one to say to President Mubarak, it’s time for you to go,” Dr. ElBaradei said.”
Archive for January, 2011
“Make no mistake about it, we are seeing a global revolution, the age of rage is falling upon us like dominoes reaching to every corner of the planet. Whether or not the outcome will topple the current global hierarchy, as Zbigniew Brzezinski fears, remains to be seen, but it will surely depend upon who controls the new governments that will replace the ousted rulers – the people who started the process of change, or the World Bank, IMF, NGO’s and the rest of the global elite who are desperate to save their world government agenda from being derailes.”
“The most closely-watched barometer of consumer confidence revealed an “astonishing collapse” in January as the VAT rise took effect, according to market research group GfK NOP. The first taste of the fiscal tightening to have a widespread impact on consumers appeared to have hit sentiment hard, researchers said, even before the full impact of the public spending cuts is felt… The eight-point plunge in optimism took the barometer’s headline reading to -29, the lowest since March 2009, when the UK was mired deep in the last recession. ”
“In his Jan. 25 State of the Union address, the president proposed a five-year freeze on all annual appropriations for a savings of about $400 billion over a decade. It wouldn’t apply to defense, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and interest in the national debt. As a result, the freeze would apply to 18 percent of the budget, or $663 billion, in the current 2011 fiscal year, the CBO said in an economic outlook published Jan. 26. ” I don’t know about you, but I love when a freeze on a pithy 18% of the budget’s presumed automatic yearly increases is called “savings”.
““I came into this dinner somewhat pessimistic and worried about the assignment we are here to discuss,” Simon Johnson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and a Bloomberg News columnist, said halfway through the evening. “I am now terrified. There is an incipient sovereign crisis here mixed in with the bank crisis.””
But he also says we could “have another housing bubble… maybe soon”. Thanks, Robert. (Doesn’t look likely to us… the economy, lending, and psychology are all stacked against it).
“John A. Paulson made $4 billion betting against newfangled mortgage investments. But he made even more betting on an old-fashioned investment: gold. Mr. Paulson, a hedge fund manager who sprang to fame when the housing market collapsed, personally made about $5 billion in 2010, according to two investors in his company. How? Mr. Paulson bought gold — lots of it. ”
“The current environment – that of a national Ponzi Scheme, a financial casino – has been encouraged, aided and abetted; first by long-term planning by Investment Bankers working in cooperation with, Alan Greenspan and now Ben Bernanke, who were and are the supposed “regulators;” with the witting help of two former Goldman Sachs’ leaders, Bob Rubin and Henry Paulson as Secretaries of the Treasury.”
“Three leading House Republicans have introduced legislation to repeal the Home Affordable Modification Program, the Obama administration’s signature foreclosure-relief effort, calling it a “colossal failure” and seconding an inspector general report that found the program ultimately left many participating homeowners worse off”