Archive for May, 2010
Plan for Congressional Audits of Fed Dies in Senate
May 7th, 2010Looks like that one thousand point pants shitter from yesterday sent a pretty clear message. Via: Wall Street Journal: Last-minute maneuvering in the Senate allowed the Federal Reserve to sidestep legislation that would have exposed its interest-rate decision-making to congressional auditors. Pressure from the Obama administration led Senate lawmakers to alter a provision pushed by […]
U.S. Government Now 96.5% of the Mortgage Market Q1, 2010
May 7th, 2010Via: Smirking Chimp: “Let nobody try and fool nobody else anymore. Fannie and Freddie have nothing to do with the less privileged: they are the ultimate tools for Washington to keep Wall Street alive.” “Not only would significantly lower home values put severe strains on the major banks’ balance sheets, they would also implode and […]
Huge National Debts Could Push Euro Zone Into Bankruptcy
May 7th, 2010Via: Der Spiegel: Greece is only the beginning. The world’s leading economies have long lived beyond their means, and the financial crisis caused government debt to swell dramatically. Now the bill is coming due, but not all countries will be able to pay it. … Robolis versus Thomsen. For the moment, this is the last […]
Whistleblower: BP Risks More Massive Catastrophes in Gulf
May 7th, 2010Via: Truthout: A former contractor who worked for BP claims the oil conglomerate broke federal laws and violated its own internal procedures by failing to maintain crucial safety and engineering documents related to one of the firms other deepwater production projects in the Gulf of Mexico, according to internal emails and other documents obtained by […]
Britain: Thousands Are Turned Back at Polling Station Door
May 7th, 2010Via: Times: Thousands of people were deprived of the right to vote last night as polling stations were unable to cope with demand. Election chiefs told The Times that the widespread failures to deal with high voter turnout may lead to re-runs in the next few weeks, which could be critical to the overall outcome. […]
Market Emergency
May 6th, 2010Update: NASDAQ to Cancel U.S. Trades That Moved More Than 60% Via: Bloomberg: Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. said it will cancel trades of 286 securities that fell or rose more than 60 percent from their prices at 2:40 p.m. New York time, just before U.S. equities plummeted. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged almost 1,000 […]
National Security Agency and U.S. Army Fund Yale Research Into Amplifier That Pushes the Boundary of Quantum Physics
May 6th, 2010Yes, the obvious application is with quantum computers. This will also, no doubt, be going into military satellites, and probably countless other surveillance systems at some point. The requirement for cryogenic temperatures might delay many applications, but, this is Uncle $ugar that we’re dealing with here. I like the analogy used in the article: The […]
Why Did CBS Scrub A Story About Army Spy Planes Capturing the Times Square Bomber?
May 6th, 2010UPDATE: So I Asked Someone… I asked someone about this situation. Why not use the cell network? Don’t ask me who this person is, but he responded. He calls his response a SWAG (Scientific Wild Ass Guess), but let’s just say that this person’s wild ass guess would be much more informed on these matters […]
U.S. Not Accepting Foreign Help On Oil Spill
May 6th, 2010Any ideas as to why not? Via: Foreign Policy: When State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley refused to tell reporters which countries have offered assistance to help respond to the BP oil spill, the State Department press corps was flabbergasted. “As a policy matter, we’re not going to identify those offers of assistance until we are […]
National Virtual Translation Center
May 6th, 2010I had never heard about the National Virtual Translation Center before today. (It came up in one of my feeds on NSA.) Via: Monterey Herald: The new National Virtual Translation Center at Fort Ord will be formally opened at 1 p.m. Friday. The center will serve as the hub for national security translation needs for […]
