Archive for the 'Elite' Category
Bubbles, Bubbles and More Bubbles
December 30th, 2009Par for the course in Fiat Currency Hell. Via: AP: A string of exploding investment bubbles that started with the dot-coms and ended with mortgages and oil dominated the years from 2000 to 2009. And it looks like the next decade will be no different. It doesn’t seem to matter to many hedge fund traders […]
National Irish Bank Moves to Cashless Banking (Not The Onion)
December 29th, 2009What if you want more cash than whatever pissant amount they allow you to remove from the ATM each day? Oh, I almost forgot, only criminals need that much cash. Via: Irish Times: IT MIGHT sound like a contradiction in terms, but for the first time one of the main Irish consumer banks is moving […]
Balance of Terror: From Detroit City to Ghazi Khan
December 29th, 2009Via: Chris Floyd: A lone man on an airliner makes a badly botched attempt to ignite what appears to be some kind of hastily cobbled-together device that might or might not have caused some kind of unspecified but apparently non-crippling damage to the plane. The plane lands safely; no one is killed. Yet the reverberations […]
China: Clean Green Apocalypse
December 27th, 2009Via: New York Times: Some of the greenest technologies of the age, from electric cars to efficient light bulbs to very large wind turbines, are made possible by an unusual group of elements called rare earths. The world’s dependence on these substances is rising fast. Just one problem: These elements come almost entirely from China, […]
“I don’t understand how he had a valid visa if he was known on the terror watch list.”
December 27th, 2009More: Sharp-dressed man aided terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab onto plane without passport: A Michigan man who was aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 says he witnessed Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab trying to board the plane in Amsterdam without a passport. Kurt Haskell of Newport, Mich., who posted an earlier comment about his experience, talked […]
China Jails Literature Professor Who Demanded Open Elections and the Rule of Law
December 26th, 2009Via: New York Times: The harsh sentence handed down on Friday to Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s most prominent campaigners for democracy and human rights, prompted strong rebukes in the United States and Europe, but it also raised fresh questions over whether the West has much leverage over a government that is increasingly self-assured on […]
Federal War Spending Exceeds State Government Outlays
December 26th, 2009Via: Public Record: The U.S. spends more for war annually than all state governments combined spend for the health, education, welfare, and safety of 308 million Americans. Joseph Henchman, director of state projects for the Tax Foundation of Washington, D.C. says the states collected a total of $781 billion in taxes in 2008. For a […]
Fannie, Freddie: Unlimited Fail
December 25th, 2009Via: Reuters: The Obama administration pledged on Thursday to back beleaguered mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac no matter how big their losses may be in the next three years. It also jettisoned a demand that the two companies cut the size of their mortgage-related investment portfolios next year, allowing them to provide […]
Cost to Fight Each Al Qaeda Member in Afghanistan Per Year: $300 Million
December 23rd, 2009War is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler Via: ABC News: As he justified sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan at a cost of $30 billion a year, President Barack Obama’s description Tuesday of the al Qaeda “cancer” in that country left out one key fact: U.S. intelligence officials have concluded there are only about […]
GE Attempting to Silence a Danish Academic from Discussing Dangers of Omniscan
December 20th, 2009Via: Times Online: Two years ago in a conference room in the Randolph hotel in Oxford, Henrik Thomsen gave his inside account of a medical “nightmare”. In a presentation to about 30 colleagues, Thomsen, one of Europe’s leading radiologists, revealed how patients treated at his hospital had subsequently contracted a rare and potentially fatal disease. […]
