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

Fed Probes Goldman Role in Greek Crisis Financial Times (25 Feb 10) Bernanke Probing Goldman’s Dealings with Greece MarketWatch (25 Feb 10) London Firm Was Created to Route Cash GATA (22 Feb 10) Greece Turns

Zero Hedge (20 Feb 10) Much has been said lately about the record cash balance on the books of S&P 500 companies (ex. financials- those are a different story altogether). Bullish pundits claim that this

Pensions & Investments (11 Jan 10) The Internal Revenue Service wants to tax the State of Wisconsin Investment Board some $40 million, including interest, to recover income taxes owed by a company in which SWIB

GATA (20 Feb 10) Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: As you may have seen from the Bloomberg News story dispatched to you previously today,(http://www.gata.org/node/8352), Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is to appear next week

Bloomberg (22 Feb 10) WASHINGTON—The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Pacific Investment Management Co., clearing the way for a lawsuit seeking more than $600 million for the company’s alleged manipulation of the price

No, it’s not abstract, up there in the clouds!” exclaimed Talita Beck. “I can see it. I can measure it.” We were talking about carbon emissions; Beck is an emissions assessor, a profession that did

Two Breadwinners plus Extra Money to support the Banking Industry. How Middle Class Americans are losing Ground by Supporting the Financial Sector. MyBudget 360 (19 Feb 10) Continue reading the article. . .

The Economist (8 Feb 10) THERE was a time when conservation meant keeping people away from nature. America’s system of national parks, a model for similar set-ups around the world, was based on the idea

Talk about your political upsets. Texas Rep. Ron Paul, hero of a fervant band of libertarians, unexpectedly won the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference today, claiming 31% of the votes cast.

View the article. . .

Listen to the podcast. . .

Tesla Motors, makers of sporty electrical cars, filed their registration statement on January 29th to go public with a $100 million offering through Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Deutsch Bank. The offering would

By Darrell Preston and Nanette Byrnes Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) — U.S. states must contend with a more than $1 trillion gap between what they have saved and what they have promised to retired workers for

Posting rages at IRS, claims, “I have had all I can stand” FEBRUARY 18—The man suspected of intentionally crashing an airplane into a Texas office building today appears to have posted a lengthy online diatribe

Rasmussen Reports (16 Feb 10) Forty-three percent (43%) of U.S. voters rate the performance of their local government as tops compared to its counterparts on the state and federal level. A new Rasmussen Reports national

Introduced in the Georgia General Assembly B 416 – “Sound Money In Banking Act”; require any bank serving as a depository for the state to offer/accept gold and silver coin for deposit A BILL to

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Large financial institutions that engage in speculative activities for profit should be allowed to fail if they get in trouble, White House advisor Paul Volcker said on Sunday. “If a big non-bank

By Suzanne Goldenberg The brains trust of the Pentagon says it is just months away from producing a jet fuel from algae for the same cost as its fossil-fuel equivalent. The claim, which comes from

Kinzers, PA – At 9:40 a.m. Thursday, February 4, only a few miles from the scene of the Nickel Mines Amish massacre of 2006, another drama against the Amish began as agents of the U.S.

With Geoff Lawton Also see previous blog post: Greening the Desert

From Chris Powell – GATA – 7:45p ET Monday, February 15, 2010 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: In a fascinating 50-minute interview with Eric King of King World News, JSMineSet.com’s Jim Sinclair remarks that

By Tom Engelhardt, Tom Dispatch Let me put American life in the Age of Terror into some kind of context, and then tell me you’re not ready to get on the nearest plane heading anywhere,

By Alan Feuer The critical lawsuit challenging that mystery of finance known as the Bailout started, oddly enough, with a casual newsroom chat. Mark Pittman, an investigative reporter for Bloomberg News, had filed a Freedom

By Daniel Tencer Concerns over privacy have aligned with apocalyptic Biblical prophecy in a proposed Virginia law that limits the use of microchip implants on humans because of a lawmaker’s concern that the chips will

I have been looking at the impact of various events and natural disasters on the price of gold. Paul Ferguson made this chart that marks various events on a gold price history for last week’s

By Paul Krugman For the truth is that lack of fiscal discipline isn’t the whole, or even the main, source of Europe’s troubles — not even in Greece, whose government was indeed irresponsible (and hid

In an attempt to rein in the shadow economy and collect more tax revenue, Greece outlaws cash transactions greater than 1500 Euros. Please consider Greek Finance Minister unveils tax reform, wage policy. “From 1. Jan.

By Jonathan Petre The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information. Colleagues

By Chris Powell While our hopes to have a documentary film made from GATA’s conference in Washington on April 18 and 19, 2008, have not been realized, videos of the 17 major presentations there now

By Jeremy Singer-Vine A boost in blood sugar appears to increase the perceived value of future rewards, according to a study in Psychological Science. Researchers asked 65 college students seven questions about delayed rewards, such

Novella Carpenter on her experience moving to a ramshackle house in Oakland, California, and turning a weed-choked, garbage-strewn lot next door into a small farm, complete with egg-laying chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks, rabbits, and two