Source: Economist Our interactive overview of government debt across the planet. The clock is ticking. Every second, it seems, someone in the world takes on more debt. The idea of a debt clock for an

By Humble Student of the Markets I wrote before that the likely negative surprise was going to come from China and not Europe (see Focus on China, not Europe). Yes, I am worried about China,

“There are three kinds of people in the world: those who are asleep, those who are stirring, and those who are awake. “If you try to wake up the sleeping person he will just mumble

By Paula Vasan,  aiCIO Alongside senators, prime ministers, and banking kingpins, one (perhaps) unusual attendee is currently at this year’s Bilderberg meetings: Texas Teacher Retirement System (TRS) CIO Britt Harris. Harris’ presence at the historically

By Lee Ferran, Alexander Marquardt and Colleen Curry Flame, also known as sKyWIper, is a veritable “toolkit” of cyber spying programs that is capable of remotely taking screenshots while the computer user works, recording audio

[Note from CAF: This post was originally published here in February of 2009. In light of recent events, I am republishing.] By Catherine Austin Fitts In the fall of 2001 I attended a private investment

The Securities and Exchange Commission today adopted a new rule to place certain restrictions on short selling when a stock is experiencing significant downward price pressure. The measure is intended to promote market stability and

Dear Mr. Blankfein: I write to request information about your firm’s market activities related to credit default swaps on municipal bonds in general, and State of California general obligation (GO) bonds specifically. The State never

View Larger Chart By Vincent Fernando, CFA and Kamelia Angelova There’s an enormous yet simple reason why America will remain an extremely powerful nation out to 2050. It’s demographics. Thanks to a relatively high fertility

As we read stories about a strong US dollar, it is good to keep a historical perspective in mind. View larger image at FXStreet.com

Here is a tool to track proposed federal food “safety” legislation. Continue reading Tracking Food Safety Proposals

By Oliver Biggadike and Inyoung Hwang The strengthening U.S. economy, subdued inflation and rising stock prices are propelling the dollar rally into its fifth month as traders seek refuge from Europe’s fiscal crisis and Japanese

President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have sealed an agreement on a landmark nuclear arms reduction treaty. Obama and Medvedev plan to officially sign the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty on April 8 in

As of last week, there is now a U.S. Government national security agency called the Biometrics Identity Management Agency (BIMA).  It supersedes a Biometrics Task Force that was established in 2000. Though nominally a component

By William Selway and Martin Z. Braun JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and UBS AG were among more than a dozen Wall Street firms involved in a conspiracy to pay below-market interest

View Larger Chart The fundamentals supporting the long term trend. Continue reading Gold in US Dollars Correlated to US Sovereign Debt

View Larger Chart By Joe Weisenthal and Kamelia Angelova The recent bond sell off might just be noise, but of course it’s causing people to discuss the long-term sustainability of US debt. Continue reading Is

View Larger Chart By Adam Brochert For those who already own Gold and want to buy a house in the future, here’s how to know when to start looking for a house (chart stolen from

MDC activist Sam Chakaipa returns to his village in rural Zimbabwe to find his friends and neighbours starving to death. Reduced to panning gold powder from the rivers to exchange for food at an exorbitant

By Michael Mackenzie and David Oakley The bond vigilantes are finally flexing their muscles. A long period of stability for the US government bond market showed signs of cracking this week as a lack of

Dear Mr. President-Elect, It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy

– Read the full text of the bill as signed by the President – View an index and references at Thomas.gov Related reading: Obama to Sign Executive Order on Abortion Today ABC News (24 Mar

By Laura Litvan, Nicole Gaouette and Kristin Jensen March 22 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. House passed the most sweeping health-care legislation in four decades, rewriting the rules governing medical industries and ensuring that tens of

By Jane Hamsher The Firedoglake health care team has been covering the debate in congress since it began last year. The health care bill will come up for a vote in the House on Sunday,

View Dave Eggers’ Wish: Once Upon A School at YouTube

In his new book, In Search of Self-Governance, Scott Rasmussen observes that most Americans “have come to believe that the political system is broken, that most politicians are corrupt, and that neither major political party

Wachovia bank executives have admitted that the banking giant laundered millions of dollars for Mexican drug lords between 2003 and 2008, prosecutors announced in Miami this afternoon. The bank has promised to pay $160 million

By Matthew Day The People’s Party, the largest group in a five-party coalition, walked out amid disputes over how to cope with the country’s severe problems. Unemployment has now hit 20 per cent and the

View One Million Trees For Ethiopia at YouTube

By Hugh Son A House committee requested that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke turn over documents related to Stephen Friedman’s purchase of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. shares while he was on the boards of

“Some people think the Federal Reserve banks are United States Government institutions. They are not Government institutions. They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of

WHAT’S ON YOUR PLATE? is a witty and provocative documentary produced and directed by award-winning Catherine Gund about kids and food politics. Filmed over the course of one year, the film follows two eleven-year-old multi-racial

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: The formal statement GATA Chairman Bill Murphy plans to submit as a witness at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s hearing next week on position limits in the precious

By Heather Smith With just one slaughterhouse remaining within 80 miles of San Francisco, we stand to lose not only our local beef industry, but our grazing lands as well. Now a thick-skinned herd of

By Steve Gorman From French poodles to German shepherds, domestic dogs likely trace most of their ancestry to the Middle East, as opposed to East Asian origins suggested by previous research, a genetic study reported

By Dugald McConnell Idaho on Wednesday became the first state to pass a law saying no thanks to part of President Obama’s health care proposal. The Idaho Health Care Freedom Act says in part, “every

By Ben Popken View Larger Chart Continue reading Why A Salad Costs More Than A Big Mac

Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio announced on Wednesday he would switch his vote on the Democrat-led healthcare reform bill and support the legislation even though it does not create a public option. Continue reading Dennis

By Elisa Martinuzzi and Sonia Sirletti Deutsche Bank AG, JPMorgan Chase & Co., UBS AG and Hypo Real Estate Holding AG’s Depfa Bank Plc unit were charged with fraud linked to the sale of derivatives

Idaho lawmakers are backing a plan that would allow state tax bills to be paid down with silver medallions instead of cash. The bill approved Monday is intended to encourage the use of silver as

By Brian Stelter Researchers, political satirists and partisan mudslingers, take note: C-Span has uploaded virtually every minute of its video archives to the Internet. The archives, at C-SpanVideo.org, cover 23 years of history and five

In the late fifth century BC, Athenian negotiators, speaking to their Spartan competitors, with whom they were soon at war, staked out their rationale for their refusal to abandon their position as Greece’s other great

Click for Larger chart Continue reading How The Fed Backed Itself Into A Corner, And Is Doomed To Pumping Cheap Money Forever Related Reading: The Myth of the Rule of Law Excerpt: In 1993, I

This document is a classified (SECRET/NOFORN) 32 page U.S. counterintelligence investigation into WikiLeaks. “The possibility that current employees or moles within DoD or elsewhere in the U.S. government are providing sensitive or classified information to

By Vandana Shiva Since 1966 – and as a consequence of the introduction of the Green Revolution model of water-intensive, chemical farming – India has over-exploited her groundwater, creating a water famine. Intensification of drought,

Financial markets are gripped by the role derivatives have played in Greece’s debt crisis, but Italy also has a derivatives time bomb, and hundreds of cities are in the 24 billion euro blast zone. Continue

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard China has succumbed to hubris. It has mistaken the soft diplomacy of Barack Obama for weakness, mistaken the US credit crisis for decline, and mistaken its own mercantilist bubble for ascendancy. There

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold (and Silver): GATA Chairman Bill Murphy was formally invited Friday by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to speak at its meeting in Washington on Thursday, March 25, to

By Brady Dennis Republicans on the Senate banking committee said they remain open to finding a bipartisan agreement on legislation to overhaul financial regulation, but they warned the chairman, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), against

Imagine you are one half of a young couple expecting your first child in a fast-growing, poor country. You are part of the new middle class; your income is rising; you want a small family.

For all those dismayed by scenes of looting in disaster-struck zones, whether Haiti or Chile or elsewhere, take heart: Good acts – acts of kindness, generosity and cooperation – spread just as easily as bad.

By Jason Leopold Nearly a year after Democrats introduced legislation to reform the health care industry – first by flirting with the prospect of having a government-run program to compete with private insurers and then

Read full article at BusinessInsider.com. . .

Two years after receiving its first deposits, a “doomsday” seed vault on an Arctic island has amassed half a million seed samples, making it the world’s most diverse repository of crop seeds, the vault’s operators

By Vincent Fernando and Kamelia Angelova According to the most recent fund flow data from The Investment Company Institute (ICI), U.S. mutual fund investors came back to U.S. stocks in late February as the Eurozone

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

By James Bowen, National Chairperson of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign By James Bowen, National Chairperson of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign In the late 19th century, changes in Ottoman law created a new class of large

Photograph: 20th Century Fox By Andrew Clark and Zoe Wood Korean company Samsung kicks off the industry-wide push by launching a 3D range that will be in British shops by the end of the month.

By Elena Moya European countries are blocking Wall Street banks from lucrative deals to sell government debt worth hundreds of billions of Euros in retaliation for their role in the credit crunch. For the first

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: GATA today delivered to the chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Gary Gensler, a letter from GATA Chairman Bill Murphy, appealing to the CFTC to act against

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit. She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem,

By Gretchen Morgenson As more details surface about how derivatives helped Greece and perhaps other countries mask their debt loads, let’s not forget that the wonders of these complex products aren’t on display only overseas.

By Anthony Faiola Icelanders this weekend resoundingly rejected a plan to reimburse overseas depositors after the failure of an online Icelandic bank, a rare public referendum on the repayment of a foreign liability that could

BY Dave Miller Click Here To View Larger Chart

Mish Shedlock has another story out about how government is broke and union workers are selfishly asking for pay raises in the face of these fiscal catastrophes. Chicago Public Schools System Is Broke; Union Contract

From the Introduction: The 2008 Organic Production Survey (OPS) is a follow-on survey to the 2007 Census of Agriculture. It is the first organic production and practices survey conducted on the national level by the

By Jon Rapppoport MARCH 4, 2010. A week ago, I wrote and emailed and posted this article. Since then, I’ve had time to reflect further, and I’ve also gotten suggestions from readers. The situation is

By Wayne Madsen WMR has learned from sources who worked in senior positions for the telecommunications company Qwest that its former chairman and CEO, Joseph Nacchio, was threatened with retaliation after he refused to participate

Views of the country’s short- and long-term economic future are gloomier these days than they have been at any time since President Obama took office in January of last year. Forty-two percent (42%) of American

By Scribe Yesterday, there was a major victory for privacy.  Unfortunately, it was not in the US.  The German Constitutional Court threw out as unconstitutional a law which required storage of all flavors of electronic

By Joe Weisenthal and Kamelia Angelova There’s no doubt you’ve seen the wild images of rioters in Athens. They’re violently objecting to the painful budget measures officials are taking. But officials don’t need to be

By Suzy Jagger Washington has backed down on proposals to block investment banks from engaging in proprietary trading activities, Britain’s top financial regulator told MPs yesterday. Lord Turner of Ecchinswell told the Treasury Select Committee

One of the challenges of learning about the UFO phenomenon is finding an overview which is both thorough and intellectually rigorous. Richard Dolan has done an excellent job of providing us with one, “UFOs &

By Kieren McCarthy The US government’s policy of leaving the Internet alone is over, according to Obama’s top official at the Department of Commerce. Instead, an “Internet Policy 3.0” approach will see policy discussions between

ABC News does a story on Coast to Coast AM

Denise Franklin needed a healing place. She’d been through a major illness (more than 20 years earlier doctors had told her she had six months to live) and had walked away from a house and

U.S. Domestic Version March 2008 By Addy Dugdale Microsoft has acted swiftly after the Web site Cryptome leaked its “Global Criminal Compliance Handbook.” The guide does exactly what it says: outlines the surveillance services the

By Josh Funk Billionaire Warren Buffett says health care costs are a major drain on U.S. businesses and act like an “economic tape worm.” The head of the holding company Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said Monday

By Adrian Douglas Recently I have written several articles that have discussed how much “paper gold” has been sold, principally through the unallocated accounts of the London Bullion Market Association, though there are other vehicles

By Jose Luis Saavedra One of the world’s most powerful earthquakes in a century battered Chile on Saturday, killing at least 214 people, knocking down buildings and triggering a tsunami that threatened Pacific coastlines as

By James Turk Instead of depositor money being used to stimulate economic activity in the private sector by lending to businesses and consumers, the banks are helping to fund the growing federal deficits. This re-allocation

Produced by Andrew Garcia and Damian Paetta Continue reading Tracking The Nation’s Bank Failures

By Matthew Futterman and Kevin Helliker Vancouver, British Columbia Norway’s Olympic team has won a surprising 17 medals in Vancouver so far, enough to place it third overall and only one gold medal behind the

By Dawn Kopecki The Obama administration may expand efforts to ease the housing crisis by banning all foreclosures on home loans unless they have been screened and rejected by the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program.

By F. William Engdahl A major diplomatic and political scandal is erupting that could have significant import for French-American relations. It involves new research into the mysterious outbreak of “mass insanity” in a village in

Democrats have retreated from adding new privacy protections to the primary U.S counterterrorism law, stymied by Senate Republicans who argued the changes would weaken terror investigations. The proposed protections were cast aside when Senate Democrats

by Gordon T Long The Bond Vigilantes are dead – RIP – Long Live the Sultans of Swap Every parent has had that moment when their child asks them the simplest sounding question but in

European banks need to roll over €1 trillion (£877bn) of debt over the next two years at a much higher cost and in direct competition with hungry sovereign states, according to a report by Morgan

By Dawn Kopecki Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage-finance companies under government control, are reporting fourth-quarter losses after writing down the value of tax credits and setting aside money for housing-market

Report for the UN into the activities of the world’s 3,000 biggest companies estimates one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment by Juliette

Associated Press (21 Feb 10) WASHINGTON – Americans who turn to terrorism and plot against the U.S. are now as big a concern as international terrorists, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday. The government

Read the article. . .

Nano Tech.pdf View more reports at fas.org. . .

Global Crisis Leads I.M.F Experts to Rethink Long-Held Ideas New York Times (21 Feb 10) WASHINGTON — The International Monetary Fund has long preached the virtues of keeping inflation low and allowing money to flow