Archive for the 'Elite' Category
Mike McConnell and the American Corporate State
March 30th, 2010I’ve included just a few choice excerpts from this great article. If you only click through on one story today, make this the one. Via: Salon: In a political culture drowning in hidden conflicts of interests, exploitation of political office for profit, and a rapidly eroding wall separating the public and private spheres, Michael McConnell […]
Judge Invalidates Human Gene Patent
March 30th, 2010This is such good news, I almost fell out of my chair. Via: New York Times: A federal judge on Monday struck down patents on two genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer. The decision, if upheld, could throw into doubt the patents covering thousands of human genes and reshape the law of intellectual property. […]
KBR Bills $5 Million For Mechanics Who Work 43 Minutes a Month
March 29th, 2010Via: Mother Jones: It was just a single contract for a single job on a single base in Iraq. The Department of Defense agreed to pay the megacontractor KBR $5 million a year to repair tactical vehicles, from Humvees to big rigs, at Joint Base Balad, a large airfield and supply center north of Baghdad. […]
EU Draws Up Plans for Single ‘Economic Government’ to Prevent Crisis
March 29th, 2010Via: Telegraph: Germany and France have tabled controversial plans to create an “economic government of the European Union” to police financial policy across the continent. They have put Herman Van Rompuy, the EU President, in charge of a special task force to examine “all options possible” to prevent another crisis like the one caused by […]
CFTC Whistleblower Injured in London Hit-and-Run
March 28th, 2010Via: GATA: London metals trader Andrew Maguire, who warned an investigator for the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission in advance about a gold and silver market manipulation to be undertaken by traders for JPMorgan Chase in February and whose whistleblowing was publicized by GATA at Thursday’s CFTC hearing on metals futures trading — http://www.gata.org/node/8466 — […]
Manager of World’s Biggest Sovereign Wealth Fund Missing After Glider Crash
March 28th, 2010Via: BBC: A search is on in Morocco for a leading member of the Abu Dhabi royal family after a glider he was in crashed into an artificial lake south of Rabat. Sheikh Ahmed bin Zayed al-Nahayan, a younger brother of Abu Dhabi’s ruler, manages what is thought to be the world’s biggest sovereign wealth […]
Social Security to See Payout Exceed Pay-In This Year
March 26th, 2010Via: New York Times: The bursting of the real estate bubble and the ensuing recession have hurt jobs, home prices and now Social Security. This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to […]
A London Trader Walks the CFTC Through a Silver Market Manipulation
March 26th, 2010Via: GATA: On March 23, 2010, GATA Director Adrian Douglas was contacted by a whistleblower by the name of Andrew Maguire. Maguire is a metals trader in London. He has been told first-hand by traders working for JPMorganChase that JPMorganChase manipulates the precious metals markets, and they have bragged to how they make money doing […]
Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Finance
March 24th, 2010Via: Asia Times: By 2014, International Monetary Fund official John Lipsky remarked March 21, the debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio of the Group of Seven countries will reach 100%, and the governments of the industrial world will carry the highest debt burden since shortly after the end of World War II. That is bad news; […]
Madoff Programmers Face Charges for Creating Software that Generated Bogus Trading Records
March 23rd, 2010Via: Register: A federal grand jury has indicted two computer programmers on fraud and conspiracy charges for developing programs used by Bernard Madoff to cook the books in his billion-dollar ponzi scheme. Jerome O’Hara and George Perez knowingly created the programs that removed or altered key data contained in reports submitted to regulators in the […]
