Green Shoots: Personal Bankruptcies Hit 4-Year High
October 5th, 2009Via: CNN:
Mounting unemployment and housing crisis push the filings to the highest level since 2005.
Personal bankruptcies topped the 1 million mark in the first nine months of the year, the first time it has done so in four years, according to an industry research firm released Friday.
The personal bankruptcies were up 35% from the same period in 2008, according to the report from the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI).
“Bankruptcy filings continue to climb as consumers look to shelter themselves from the effects of rising unemployment rates and housing debt,” said ABI executive director Samuel Gerdano.
The recession triggered more individuals earning $40,000 or more per year and those with associate or bachelor degrees to file for bankruptcy in 2008 than in years past, according to the annual Consumer Bankruptcy Demographic Report released by the Institute for Financial Literacy in June, and the organization expects the trend to continue.
“The folks going into bankruptcy are reflective of the middle class debtor,” said Leslie Linfield, executive director of the Institute for Financial Literacy. “The biggest problem is that people are over extended on their credit. It’s been the perfect storm of credit card debt and mortgage debt leading to delinquencies.”
While only 37.6% of consumers who filed for bankruptcy in 2008 attributed job loss, Linfield expects that number to rise significantly for 2009. “At the end of last year, unemployment hadn’t crept up as high as it is now,” Linfield said.
Afghanistan: Massive Election Fraud
October 5th, 2009“This was an important step forward in the Afghan people’s effort to take control of their future… The United States did not support any candidate in this election. Our only interest was the result fairly, accurately reflecting the will of the Afghan people…”
—Barack Obama on Afghan Election
Via: Times Online:
The head of the UN mission in Afghanistan has been accused by his former deputy of ordering a systematic cover-up to conceal the extent of electoral fraud by President Karzai.
In an attack on the role of the UN in the elections on August 20, Peter Galbraith, who was sacked as Deputy Special Representative to the UN mission in Kabul last week, says that Kai Eide ordered him not to reveal evidence of fraud or to pass it to the authorities.
As a result, he said, the elections had handed the Taleban “its greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting the United States and its Afghan partners”.
He says that the UN collected evidence that a third of Mr Karzai’s votes were fraudulent. If the claim was found to be true it would push Mr Karzai below the 54 per cent that the preliminary election results give him, necessitating a second round of voting.
The attack by Mr Galbraith seems timed to counter indications that the US Government and international community have accepted the official verdict of the Afghan authorities and, with it, a Karzai Administration.
Mr Galbraith said that Mr Eide ordered him not to pursue concerns that he expressed before the elections that the Afghan President would use polling stations in unstable areas to conduct fraud.
“At other critical stages in the election process,” he wrote in The Washington Post, “I was similarly ordered not to pursue the issue of fraud.
“My staff collected evidence on hundreds of cases of fraud around the country and, more important, gathered information on turnout in key southern provinces where few voters showed up but large numbers of votes were being reported. Eide ordered us not to share this data with anyone, including the Electoral Complaints Commission, a UN-backed Afghan institution legally mandated to investigate fraud.”
Since Mr Galbraith was dismissed at least five of his colleagues at the UN Afghan mission have resigned.
Goldman Sachs Would Make $1 Billion from CIT Failure; U.S. Taxpayer Would Pay $2.3 Billion
October 5th, 2009Via: Financial Times:
Goldman Sachs stands to receive a payment of $1bn – while US taxpayers would lose $2.3bn – if embattled commercial lender CIT files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, people familiar with the matter said.
The payment stems from the structure of a $3bn rescue finance package that Goldman extended to CIT on June 6 2008, about five months before the Treasury bought $2.3bn in CIT preferred shares to prop it up at the height of the crisis. The potential loss for taxpayers would be the biggest to crystalise so far from the government’s capital injection plan for banks.
NY Man Accused of Tweeting Cop Actions at Protests
October 5th, 2009Via: AP:
A self-described New York City anarchist has been accused of tweeting the location of police officers to protesters trying to evade them during the Group of 20 economic summit in Pittsburgh.
Elliot Madison, 41, described by his lawyer as a social worker and political activist, was arrested on charges including hindering prosecution for using Twitter to inform protesters of the location of the police for the Sept. 24-25 summit, the Pennsylvania State Police said in a criminal complaint.
Madison was arrested on the opening day of the G-20 summit, a gathering of finance ministers and central bank governors from among the wealthiest nations. Dozens of protesters also were arrested.
The New York Post first reported his arrest in Saturday editions.
No one answered a phone Saturday at Madison’s home in Queens. His attorney, Martin R. Stolar, also did not immediately return a call for comment Saturday.
According to the criminal complaint, officers acting on a tip arrested Madison at the Carefree Inn on Kisow Drive in Pittsburgh. The complaint said Madison and another man were found in a room in front of computers and telecommunications equipment, wearing headphones, and surrounded by maps, contact numbers and police and emergency scanners. The men were communicating with protesters by cell phone and Internet, including Twitter, the complaint said.
It was unclear whether the second man was arrested. A Pennsylvania State Police spokeswoman did not immediately return a call Saturday.
In a court filing Friday, Stolar asked a federal judge to prohibit authorities from examining materials seized by FBI agents during a raid of Madison’s home the previous day. According to his filing, the agents were at the house for about 16 hours Thursday and seized items, including political writings, computers, cell phones, anarchist literature and “identifying information of political associates.”
Stolar said the search was illegal and some of the materials seized in the raid were likely protected under the First Amendment. The judge issued a temporary order of protection stopping investigators from examining the material, the New York Post reported.
In his filing, Stolar also described his client as a political anarchist and social worker for the Fountain House, an organization that helps people with mental illnesses. He said Madison was politically active, providing legal assistance to those “interested in expressing political points of view through demonstration and other activity” through an organization known as The Peoples’ Law Collective.
Canada: Roman Catholic Bishop Faces Charges of Possessing and Importing Child Pornography
October 5th, 2009Everyone is in shock?
Translation from Catholic Church gibberish into English: Nobody, who has been paying any attention to the astonishing crimes of Catholic Church, is shocked by this.
Via: CBC:
Bishop Raymond Lahey was released on $9,000 bail after turning himself in to Ottawa police on Thursday afternoon to face charges of possessing and importing child pornography.
The Roman Catholic cleric, who resigned his post in Nova Scotia on the weekend before news of the charges broke, has been ordered to stay away from parks and from children. He is not allowed to use the internet, and while he is free he is to stay in Rogersville, N.B. The town is the site of a Trappist monastery.
His next court date is Nov. 4 in Ottawa.
A Canada-wide arrest warrant had been issued for Lahey, 69, who brokered a $15-million settlement for victims of sexual abuse by priests of the diocese of Antigonish in Nova Scotia.
Lahey was returning to Canada on Sept. 15 when he was detained at Ottawa International Airport. Canada Border Services agents checked his laptop and found images “of concern,” Ottawa police said in a release.
Lahey was allowed to leave, but his computer and other media devices were seized. Police alleged a forensic examination ultimately found child pornography.
On Friday, Ottawa police charged Lahey with possession of child pornography and importation of child pornography.
The next day, he resigned as bishop of the diocese of Antigonish, citing the need for “personal renewal.”
‘Ultimate revictimization’
Anthony Mancini, the archbishop of Halifax who is overseeing the Antigonish diocese, went to Sydney on Thursday to speak with Lahey’s former parishioners and hold a news conference.
“I am well aware that everyone is in shock,” said Mancini.
“I am concerned with all who are trying to find any meaning in this devastation. I do not have the solution to this problem or the capacity to take away the pain or the means to erase this tragedy.”
Mancini has said he wasn’t aware of the charges against Lahey until Wednesday.
In a letter to parishioners in Newfoundland — Lahey’s native province, where he was also a bishop — the Archbishop of St. John’s, Martin Currie, wrote that child pornography is equivalent to child abuse and exploitation.
“These latest allegations are another setback for the Roman Catholic Church in Newfoundland and Labrador, a church in which we have been trying to restore people’s faith after years of scandal,” he wrote.
“When You Own Gold You’re Fighting Every Central Bank in the World”
October 4th, 2009Jim Rickards:
Former Japanese Finance Minister Nakagawa Found Dead
October 4th, 2009Via: Bloomberg:
Shoichi Nakagawa, who resigned as Japanese finance minister in February amid accusations of drunken behavior during an international conference in Rome, was found dead in his Tokyo home today. He was 56.
Nakagawa lost his parliamentary seat in Aug. 30 elections that saw the Liberal Democratic Party swept out of power after half a century of almost unbroken rule. He was not offered one of the party’s proportional representation seats.
A second-generation LDP lawmaker, Nakagawa was regarded as one of the party’s “aces,” according to Makoto Haga, chief strategist at Monex Group Inc. in Tokyo, who called his death a “painful blow” to a party that needs to rebuild.
“Compared with the widespread mistrust of the LDP, Nakagawa’s troubles didn’t have much impact on the election,” Haga said today. “The result would likely have been the same regardless.”
Police confirmed Nakagawa’s death and are investigating the cause, said a spokeswoman at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, who declined to be identified. Masato Yoshida, head of Nakagawa’s office in Obihiro, northern Japan, also confirmed earlier reports of the death by Kyodo News.
Will California Become America’s First Failed State?
October 4th, 2009Via: Guardian:
Los Angeles, 2009: California may be the eighth largest economy in the world, but its state staff are being paid in IOUs, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike. So what has gone so catastrophically wrong?
California has a special place in the American psyche. It is the Golden State: a playground of the rich and famous with perfect weather. It symbolises a lifestyle of sunshine, swimming pools and the Hollywood dream factory.
But the state that was once held up as the epitome of the boundless opportunities of America has collapsed. From its politics to its economy to its environment and way of life, California is like a patient on life support. At the start of summer the state government was so deeply in debt that it began to issue IOUs instead of wages. Its unemployment rate has soared to more than 12%, the highest figure in 70 years. Desperate to pay off a crippling budget deficit, California is slashing spending in education and healthcare, laying off vast numbers of workers and forcing others to take unpaid leave. In a state made up of sprawling suburbs the collapse of the housing bubble has impoverished millions and kicked tens of thousands of families out of their homes. Its political system is locked in paralysis and the two-term rule of former movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger is seen as a disaster – his approval ratings having sunk to levels that would make George W Bush blush. The crisis is so deep that Professor Kenneth Starr, who has written an acclaimed history of the state, recently declared: “California is on the verge of becoming the first failed state in America.”
Two Million Slum Children Die Every Year as India Booms
October 4th, 2009Via: Guardian:
India’s growing status as an economic superpower is masking a failure to stem a shocking rate of infant deaths among its poorest people.
Nearly two million children under five die every year in India – one every 15 seconds – the highest number anywhere in the world. More than half die in the month after birth and 400,000 in their first 24 hours.
A devastating report by Save the Children, due out on Monday, reveals that the poor are disproportionately affected and the charity accuses the country of failing to provide adequate healthcare for the impoverished majority of its one billion people. While the World Bank predicts that India’s economy will be the fastest-growing by next year and the country is an influential force within the G20, World Health Organisation figures show it ranks 171st out of 175 countries for public health spending.
Malnutrition, neonatal diseases, diarrhoea and pneumonia are the major causes of death. Poor rural states are particularly affected by a dearth of health resources. But even in the capital, Delhi, where an estimated 20% of people live in slums, the infant mortality rate is reported to have doubled in a year, though city authorities dispute this.
Ireland Backs EU’s Lisbon Treaty
October 3rd, 2009Mmm hmm.
Via: BBC:
Irish voters have strongly endorsed the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty – 16 months after their first vote rejecting it plunged EU reforms into deadlock.
About 67% voted “Yes”, official results from the latest referendum showed. Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen hailed a “clear and resounding” endorsement.
Political leaders across the EU have also welcomed the result.
The president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, said it was a great day for Europe.
He urged the leaders of Poland and the Czech Republic – the only other countries yet to ratify Lisbon – to sign the treaty as soon as possible.
