U.S. Man Faces Potential 30-Year Prison Sentence for Stealing a Doughnut
October 9th, 2007Via: International Herald Tribune:
A Missouri man could potentially face a 30-year prison sentence for stealing a doughnut from a store.
Scott A. Masters, 41, of Park Hills, Missouri, has been charged with felony second-degree robbery in the theft of a 52-cent doughut from a Country Mart in Farmington, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) south of St. Louis. Store employees said he slipped the doughnut into his sweat shirt without paying last December, then pushed away a clerk who tried to stop him as he fled the store.
The push is being treated as minor assault, which transforms a misdemeanor shoplifting charge into a strong-armed robbery with a potential prison term of five to 15 years. Given Masters’ past criminal record, prosecutors could boost that sentence to 30 years to life.
“Its My Party and I’ll Bust Who I Want To”
October 9th, 2007Via: Madcowprod:
Seventeen months after an American-registered DC9 airliner was busted with 5.5 tons of cocaine, a major international scandal is brewing over a second drug trafficking incident in Mexico’s Yucatan involving an American-registered jet owned by a dummy front company of the kind usually associated with the CIA.
A weekend visit to “Donna Blue Aircraft Inc†of Coconut Beach FL., the company which FAA records show owned the Gulfstream II business jet (N987SA) which crash-landed with 3.7 tons of cocaine aboard in Mexico’s Yucatan two weeks ago, has revealed that the company’s listed address is an empty office suite with a blank sign out front.
There was no sign of Donna Blue Aircraft, Inc., at the address listed at the Florida Dept. of Corporations, 4811 Lyons Technology Parkway #8 in Coconut Beach FL.
However, there were, oddly enough, a half-dozen unmarked police cars parked directly in front of the empty suite.
Phone calls to Butters Development, the industrial park’s leasing agent, went unreturned.
Moreover the brief description of Donna Blue on its Internet page, apparently designed to “flesh out the ghost a little,†is such a clumsy half-hearted effort that it defeats the purpose of helping aid the construction of a plausible legend, or cover, and ends up doing more harm than good…
For example, the website features a quote from a satisfied Donna Blue Aircraft customer. Unfortunately his name is “John Doe.†And the listed phone number is right out of the movies: 415.555-5555.
Its known in the trade as “sloppy tradecraft.”
Related: CIA Jet Used for “Rendering†Suspects Crashes with Four Tons of Cocaine on Board
Enemy Collaborator Democrats to Extend Wiretap Powers
October 9th, 2007Duh.
Via: New York Times:
Two months after insisting that they would roll back broad eavesdropping powers won by the Bush administration, Democrats in Congress appear ready to make concessions that could extend some crucial powers given to the National Security Agency.
Administration officials say they are confident they will win approval of the broadened authority that they secured temporarily in August as Congress rushed toward recess. Some Democratic officials concede that they may not come up with enough votes to stop approval.
As the debate over the eavesdropping powers of the National Security Agency begins anew this week, the emerging measures reflect the reality confronting the Democrats.
Although willing to oppose the White House on the Iraq war,[SIC] they remain nervous that they will be called soft on terrorism if they insist on strict curbs on gathering intelligence.
Research Credit: MM
The Secret History of the War on Cancer
October 8th, 2007Via: Salon:
Children shouldn’t use cellphones. No one should drink diet sodas sweetened with aspartame. And think twice before getting X-rayed with a CAT scan except in a bona fide life-threatening emergency. That’s just some of the precautionary advice that epidemiologist Devra Davis, who runs the runs the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, delivers in her new book, “The Secret History of the War on Cancer.”
Davis, who is a professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and formerly served in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, argues that the United States’ $40 billion “war on cancer” has focused far too much on treatment, and not nearly enough on prevention. There’s a lot of blame to go around here, and Davis serves it to up to the scientific community, the government, polluting industries and even cancer advocacy groups. For instance, in the late ’60s, three years after the surgeon general declared that smoking causes cancer, the United States spent $30 million of taxpayer money to create a safer cigarette, essentially doing the tobacco companies’ research and development for them. Needless to say, this effort failed, but it succeeded in giving the tobacco companies cover, assuring smokers that a safer cigarette was just around the corner.
Davis argues that again and again, from tobacco to benzene to asbestos, the profit motive has trumped concerns about public health, delaying, sometimes for decades, the containment of avoidable hazards. And, as in the current scientific “debate” about global warming, the legitimate need for ongoing scientific research about many possible carcinogens has been exploited by industry to promote the idea that there’s really no need to worry.
In “The Secret History of the War on Cancer,” we meet one of the foremost epidemiologists of the 20th century, who is revealed after his death to have been on the take from Monsanto to the tune of $1,500 a day, and we visit the site of former towns that have literally disappeared, like Times Beach, Mo., which since being declared a toxic waste site, has been incinerated, reduced to some grass, geraniums and tulips — the only signs that anyone ever once lived there.
…
In 1977, Richard Merrill, who later became dean of the University of Virginia Law School, was the chief counsel of the Food and Drug Administration, and he formally asked the U.S. attorney to convene a grand jury to decide whether or not to indict the producer of aspartame, G.D. Searle, for misrepresenting “findings, concealing material facts and making false statements” in aspartame safety tests.
This is not some left-wing group. This is the actual chief counsel of the FDA asking the U.S. attorney’s office to convene a grand jury. It never happened, because by the time the grand jury was ready to be convened we had a new president. That president was Reagan, and within a month of Reagan taking office, he had a proposal from a guy you might have heard of named Donald Rumsfeld [who was then chief operating officer of Searle].
And Jan. 22, 1981, one day after Reagan’s inauguration — one day — Searle reapplied for FDA approval. Prior to that, ever single request for approval was turned down by all the scientists ever looking at the data. That’s a fact. There’s no dispute about that fact. And then, it gets approved May 19, 1981.
Remember what happened with the Reagan revolution? It was: “We need to get the government off our backs.” One of the backs it got off of was suppressing the aspartame industry. Later, many of the people who worked at the FDA to evaluate aspartame ended up going to work for the company producing it.
Subprime Mortgages Slipping Into Default at Rapid Pace
October 8th, 2007Via: International Herald Tribune:
Subprime mortgage bonds created in the first half of 2007 contain loans that are going delinquent at the fastest rate ever, according to Moody’s Investors Service.
The average rate of “serious loan delinquencies” in the securities has been higher than 2006 bonds, Ariel Weil and Amita Shrivastava, analysts at Moody’s Investors Service, wrote in a report last week. Serious loan delinquencies are those 60 days or more past due, including properties in foreclosure or already foreclosed upon.
“It is shocking what you see,” said Kyle Bass of Hayman Advisors, a hedge fund based in Dallas that has profited from its bet that the U.S. housing market would fall. “Anything securitized in 2007 has got to have the worst collateral performance of any trust I’ve seen in my life.”
FDIC TO MORTGAGE SERVICERS: FREEZE ARM RATES
October 8th, 2007Oh sure! HAHA
They know that the thing is hitting the wall. Change the rules, or the curtain comes down sooner rather than later.
Get your popcorn ready for this show. It’s going to be good.
Via: CNN:
The heat on U.S. mortgage lenders and servicers was turned up a few degrees this week when the country’s chief bank regulator publicly proposed that they permanently freeze interest rates on subprime adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) for many homeowners.
“Keep it at the starter rate. Convert it into a fixed rate. Make it permanent. And get on with it,” Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said in prepared remarks at an investor’s conference.
ARMs often have a low introductory interest rate for two or three years and then reset to much higher levels.
Roughly 1.3 million subprime ARMs are due for a rate reset between now and the end of 2008, according to data from First American Loan Performance.
Bair proposed that servicers convert only those ARMs that haven’t reset yet and only for borrowers who are current in their payments and occupy their homes. Loans taken out by speculators who don’t live in the homes they bought would not qualify for the automatic conversion.
Gold: Ominous Chart Formations
October 7th, 2007WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
As you know, I noticed a breakdown in the internals of the recent bullish gold move which resulted in some pretty wild volatility in the market.
Once another weekly candle was in, I thought I’d take another look at how we were doing.
In Summary: Exercise extreme caution when considering long positions in the near term. There is a possibility of a substantial decline from current levels.
The weekly chart just formed a hangman. I’m not much of a Japanese candlestick freak, but I have a basic knowledge of them and that looks like a bearish hangman with long shadow to me. Weekly stochastics are in extreme overbought territory (up in the 90s). Remember what I said about taking extreme band entries in the direction of the trend… Very risky. And this is the weekly interval. (Although, I bought a couple of grams the other day—anyway—during a dip.) In addition, weekly RSI is 74.85. This is also extremely overbought, and the RSI slope just turned negative for the first time in several weeks.
Hangman and extreme indicators on weekly chart
“Wow, that doesn’t sound too hot for the long side of things,” you might be thinking.
But wait, there’s more.
The daily chart appears to be describing a Bump and Run Reversal or Bump and Run Formation (BARF) as Thomas Bulkowski originally called it. Read about the Bump and Run Reversal and then look at the daily interval gold chart below.
Possible Bump and Run Reversal on daily chart
To top it all off, daily MACD has crossed down.
The Astonishing Generosity of Cryptogon Contributors
October 7th, 2007Hard core Cryptogon supporters sent the following contributions in early October:
Dagobaz $251
AS $100
Eileen $50
Without the support of these generous Cryptogon readers, and others like them, I’d be stocking shelves at Pak N Save, or * gasp * doing IT work again. Yes, the New Zealand Department of Labour wanted me to register at a recruiting website and there was no shortage of computer jobs on there. * shiver * So, after a day of making sure the frozen pizzas were arranged properly, or securing a corporation’s network (it’s all the same to me), and then washing poopie nappies, hanging them out to dry, milking the cow, digging garden rows, shooting possums, grinding wheat, etc. etc., I don’t know how much actionable intelligence I’d be able to provide on Cryptogon… Uh, read that last sentence as: Cryptogon would be down without reader contributions.
Thanks, guys, for keeping Cryptogon and Farmlet up, free and open to all.
September Earnings
October 6th, 2007Cryptogon and Farmlet earnings from all sources came to an incredible $1518.61, or more than 3X the minimum monthly goal of $500. Wow!
As always, direct contributions represented the largest portion of the earnings in September.
We also had five BlueHost hosting signups in September (that’s a new record).
BullionVault is going nuts. Cryptogon readers are buying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of physical gold using the service. Obviously, I would never promote a financial service unless I was a satisfied client myself. I use BullionVault for my strategic financial planning needs and it’s exciting to know that some of you are taking advantage of what they have to offer.
Lots of you are remembering to start your Amazon sessions via Cryptogon and Farmlet. Every little bit helps!
Here are the Cryptogon affiliate links for several of Amazon’s sites:
amazon.com – amazon.ca – amazon.co.uk – amazon.de – amazon.fr
Finally, Financial Web continued their advertising presence on Cryptogon.
Thanks to all of you.
HSBC Warns of Hot Money Exodus from Britain Under ‘Siege’
October 6th, 2007“Sterling holders, consider reducing or eliminating your exposure to GBP denominated assets immediately.”
—Cryptogon, September 18th, 2007
Via: Telegraph:
HSBC, Britain’s biggest bank, has warned that Britain faces a stark “de-rating” by investors in coming months as growth slows and funds begin to lose confidence in the country’s economic management, triggering a mass exodus of “hot money” from the City.
“Sterling’s outlook is increasingly taking a turn for the worse. A deeper downward move against a broad range of currencies is on the horizon,” said the bank in a new report, “Kingdom Under Siege”.
It expects the pound to fall from around $2.04 to $1.76 against the dollar over the next eighteen months, even though the dollar itself is in danger of losing its status as the world’s “anchor currency”.
David Bloom, HSBC’s head of currency research, said signs that the Bank of England’s monetary framework was “starting to fray at the edges” had begun to unsettle investors, tarnishing the City’s reputation. Both the Northern Rock debacle and the decision by the Monetary Policy Committee to overrule the Governor in setting interest rates have inflicted damage.
